Not a good day ... (and not our fault!) [HMS Rinaldo]

[Randi]

25th April 1917 was not a good day on Rinaldo! They went aground; Echo came to help them and after a bit having only been aground fore they were now aground fore and aft. Echo went away, came back, and after another couple of hours of effort (including discovering that the rudder was caught in coral) they finally got afloat again.
But my favourite bit is on the LH of the page at 9am where the logkeeper explains how it wasn't their fault at all :-\ They'd been taking soundings all the time and when they went aground it seemed as though they had plenty of depth. Someone covering their back I suspect!
Anyway it made a nice change for this transcriber among a long stretch of very mundane logs, even if they didn't enjoy it much at the time. To add to their woes the weather was terrible as well, with heavy rain, and at one point thunder and lightning too.

http://oldweather.s3.amazonaws.com/ADM% ... -016_0.jpg

That is one totally miserable crew, working hard in bad weather while having to be rescued by another ship! There certainly is an interesting story here.

As I'm dodging around rather now (on my second trawl through) I haven't really been able to follow up the story, except that on the following day they discovered damage to the rudder - I'm not at all surprised. I then skipped nearly a month - and happened to land on a day when divers finished repairing the rudder, so assuming this is the same incident it took quite a while to fix.
What I'd really like to know is whether anyone got into trouble for letting the ship go aground in the first place, but I guess I've missed the pages which might have included that. I did notice that the writing in the log was different around that period, so am wondering whether someone new was doing the navigating, and got shipped off again pronto! :-[

I'm now back on Rinaldo editing, so should be able to follow up the whole story. My guess about the navigating officer was probably wrong - the previous one had been discharged to hospital in Zanzibar a little while before, which accounts for the new writing.
If anything else interesting comes up, I'll post it here to complete the story!

On 27th April Rinaldo is in Tirene and divers from Talbot are down most of the day (with an hour off for lunch - very civilized!)
On 28th April Rinaldo proceeds to Dar es Salaam, accompanied by Talbot.
And on 21st May the diving party finally finished its repairs!

http://oldweather.s3.amazonaws.com/ADM% ... -016_0.jpg

What a brilliant page - it has so much feeling in it. That firm strike through the True bearings and distance section at midday and the entry 'on Sifo Bank' made me feel like I was almost there.

I liked the underlining of the Anchor Bearings - see we are doing the job properly!!