Gallipoli by Peter Fitzsimons Page B

Victoria Dock, the captain gives the order to the engine room: ‘ Langsame Fahrt . – Slow ahead.’
    Slowly now, if a little nervously, given the news out of Europe overnight, the ship heads south out of Port Melbourne and down Port Phillip Bay – ostensibly to head to Sydney, but truly to dash to a South American port. The ship is under the temporary direction of Captain Michael Robinson of the Port Phillip Pilot Service, who remains calm in the growing tension.
    Just 30 minutes later, Pfalz has crossed the bay to Portsea, where the small pilot boat Alvina pulls alongside and an officer from the Examination Service climbs aboard to give a final check of the ship’s papers and ensure that all is in order for it to depart Australian waters. All seems fine, and with that flourish of the pen that officers of the Examination Service so often reserve for their signatures on unimportant documents, the papers are signed and Pfalz is allowed to proceed.
    The officer climbs back down into his boat, and Captain Robinson is suddenly aware of odd scenes of jubilation all around, as the young German skipper, Kapitän Kuhiken – who has just taken over his first command – engages in rounds of handshakes and back-slapping with his senior officers and some equally jubilant German consular officials 31 who have mysteriously emerged from below decks. Odd. In any case, his own pilot boat will soon be here to take him off, once he has got Pfalz through the heads.
    Only minutes later, the commander of the heads forts, Lieutenant-Colonel Augustus Sandford, is at Fort Queenscliff when he receives a phone call from Major Eric Harrison, the Commanding Officer at 3rd District Headquarters, Victoria Barracks, St Kilda Road. 32
    Great Britain is at war with Germany.
    Australia is therefore at war with Germany.
    The German ship is trying to get away and must be stopped!
    Or sunk.
    Sandford passes on the word to Major Cox-Taylor, in charge of the Battery Observation and Command Post at Eagles Nest. It is an order the Battery has been half-expecting, given the British ultimatum to Germany. But what their precise move is to be, nobody is quite sure. A warning shot? Or a shot at Pfalz ’s bridge?
    Immediately, Sandford calls up the ranks, all the way to the Defence Minister in his parliamentary offices. With the minister engaged in a meeting with the Attorney-General, the head of the department is left to look up an old, obscure book on what, precisely, protocol dictates their next move should be. He finally finds it: a ‘heave-to’ shot.
    The order is relayed back to Sandford and on to Cox-Taylor.
    Crisply, Cox-Taylor gives his orders to Captain Moreton Williams, who barks his own commands in turn. In an effort to do this peacefully, Sandford hoists the signal ‘STOP INSTANTLY’ – a yellow and black quartered flag – on the signal staff atop the fort, even while below his feverish gunners are carefully, oh so carefully, loading a 100-pound projectile into the firing chamber of one of their two six-inch Mk VII guns.
    Closely now, the course and speed of Pfalz is watched. Will she slow? Will she turn?
    Neither! She is heading full steam ahead for the open sea!
    And then it happens.
    The single roar of the big gun rolls like a ball of dirty thunder over Pfalz , followed an instant later by the shriek of an – INCOMMMMING! – shell, which crosses the bows of the German ship and hits the water just 50 yards off its starboard quarter, landing with a massive, towering spout of water.
    First stupefied, then horrified, those on the bridge turn in the direction from which the shot has come and now see, for the first time, the signal atop Fort Nepean. And yet, for two men, that signal means different things.
    For the pilot, Captain Robinson, it means the ship must be instantly turned around – and he in fact gives the order on the engine-room telegraph of ‘Full speed astern’ – while,