Sir, – There has been much moving coverage as the centenary of the Armistice approached. It’s inevitable that the focus has been on the Tommy, given the awful loss of life on the Western Front and the dreadfulness of the conditions in Flanders’ fields. There has been less coverage of the war at sea yet conditions for sailors in warships and merchant ships, many coal-burning, one hundred years ago were pretty ghastly in peacetime, still worse in wartime. The seas were no less rough, of course – life at sea was no picnic in the Great War. Our island nation was then, as it is now, reliant on sea…
