About fifty civilians were carried during the trip, the majority board ing the cruiser at Hankow, and one or two Joining her at ports on the way down, There was no incident of note during the Japanese planes circled low over the cruiser fat Wuhu, and occasionally the sound of distant gunfire could de heard, but this was all that her passengers experienced' of the hostilities. The Capetown was manned by a skeleton crew of 180, left behind to look after the cruiser after the majority of the crew had departed for Canton by the Special "Capetown LI" express. 'Twenty-five of her passengers came ashore on the Alexandra yesterday, the Temainder travelling, on Hongkong. 'They will spend Christ mas Day in nautical style, but there will be no lack of good' things or of festivities arranged on their halt.
'There was a happy occasion on the quarter deck of the Capetown not many days before she left' on her adventurous voyage, in the presence of the leading foreign residents of Hankow, including Vice-Admiral L.
G. B. Crabbe, former commander of the Yangtze flotilla. This was. the christening of little Miss "Bridget Hall, who was one of the passengers to travel down river on the cruiser. The ship's bell, tumed upside down and filled with water, (with the clapper temporarily removed), was used jas a font.
The majority of the passengers received messages from the British Jconsular authorities at Hankow early on Saturday, December 18, urging them to evacuate in the Capetown, which was leaving that afternoon. Arrangements were hurriedly made for their accommodation on the Capetown, while other British residents in Hankow were to have been brought down on the C-N s. Woosung. As the Kiukiang boom was closed soon after the Capetown had passed through the gap, however, most Britons in Hankow will be" brought down to Canton on the "Christmas Express",
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.