Monday Dec 10th, 1917
Reveille 5 o’clock, parade 8:30. Left No 8 Rest Camp, Marseilles at 9:15. Arrived docks 10 o’clock. Embarked on the HMS Kashmir for Salonica. Number 44 Mess. Raining hard. About 1,200 aboard. Retired to sleep in hammocks, strange sensation, lads falling out onto floor. Too many troops onboard, awful stuffy, slept pretty fair.
After being sea sick on the crossing between Southampton and Le Havre, Frank was probably relieved about his experience of his first night onboard – albeit with the ship still in port.
The ship, the HMS Kashmir, was a cargo liner built for P&O in 1915 to operate on its Far Eastern routes. It was requisitioned by the British Admiralty in December 1916 to serve as a troop ship – initially in the Mediterranean and then in the North Atlantic. As a cargo liner – designed to carry both cargo and passengers – the Kashmir may have been better equipped than some to carry troops. However she was originally built to hold around 150 passengers yet Frank records 1,200 on board. This was not unique to the Kashmir, and transporting a thousand or more troops was a regular occurrence, often in cramped and unsanitary conditions.
The most famous troop carrier in WWI was the Olympic. Originally built by the White Star line and a sister ship to the Britannic and Titanic, she was requisitioned by the Admiralty in May 1915. Once stripped of all unnecessary equipment and furbelows, and armed with large guns, she routinely accommodated over 6,000 and by the war’s end had carried over 200,000 troops and other personnel. In 1918, while crossing the North Atlantic carrying US troops to Europe, Olympic rammed and sank an U-boat that was about to attack her. Clearly she deserved her nickname, ’Old Reliable’.
For an idea of the conditions, rules and regulations Frank would have faced on board, take a look at this publication by the US YMCA in 1918. Scroll down past the list of ships to see the pamphlet.
References & further reading
* photograph and technical information regarding HMS Kashmir in Clyde Ships (image may be subject to copyright)
HMS Kashmir, Wikipedia article