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The Rescue
Although there were ships in the area, the first to carry out a search for survivors were three destroyers; two French and one British. The rescue took two hours as the survivors were scattered over an area of five miles.
Rescued nurses described what happened next in letters to Hester Maclean.
“French destroyers picked us up. The sailors were most kind and attentive. It was wonderful how quickly they undressed the survivors, put them into dry shirts, and rolled them in great coats, and administered rum and hot wine.”
Sister Popplewell described how she was
“taken on board a British mine sweeper, and never can I tell you how good those men were to us. It was almost four o’clock then and we had been tossed and tossed for miles since 9 a.m., so I needn’t tell you how we felt. Later, about midnight we were taken to a hospital ship [Grantully Castle}. More kindness and comfy beds in lovely, big, two-birth cabin, but the suspense of waiting for the others to come was awful. By the morning fifteen of the sisters were on board, and eleven more came that afternoon…In all we found that no less than ten of our sisters had gone --- nearly all we knew to have died of exhaustion. I think about a dozen of our New Zealand men too, and the rest were the R.F.A.[1] boys, in all I think about 160… Our matron is very ill, and we did not think for a few days she could possibly recover, but she is better now.”
Six days after the disaster the sisters sailed to Alexandria on the Grantully Castle, the hospital ship where they had all eventually ended up. They were dressed in a mix of borrowed clothing and had lost all of the belongings that they had brought with them.
Some surviving sisters suffered from a variety of injuries and infections. Seven were sent home to New Zealand for a rest and six for ‘change and rest’ at Aboukir. Matron Cameron never fully recovered. As well as personal belongings being lost, the No 1 NZ Stationary Hospital’s equipment was at the bottom of the Aegean Sea.
Acknowledgments:
Kendall, S. & Corbett, D. (1990) New Zealand military nursing: a history of the Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps, Boer War to present day.
Kai Tiaki: The Journal of the Nurses of New Zealand: January, 1916. & January, 1919.
Rogers, Anna. (2018) Stand for All Time.
[1] Royal Field Artillery