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This ship was blown in half and the rear (stern) half was beached on the sea front by the White Cliff Hotel.

It laid there through the remainder of the war and when the beach was over and the beach was clear, we used to swim out to her and dive off.

People used to investigate and I remember one lad on deck covered in mud and waving an officer sword.

Then an armed guard was placed on the beach and a diver started to clear out her shells without explosive heads which were placed on the beach.

Being inquisitive lads we had to see what was inside the shells. We extracted long strips of cordite. We set light to it and it was just like a sparkler — not that we saw any sparklers during the war.

Well, one thing led to another — and we got a lot of these strips and put them in milk bottles with one length left as a fuse. We placed the bottles along a bomb-shattered wall about 3 metres long and 1 metre high, near to Hoppers Bakers by Trevannon Street. We set light to the fuses and ran. There was a ‘woof’ type sound and the wall fell over.

Realising what we had done — we never did it again.

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