[Presenter: Introduction]
Once again we are taking you onboard HMS Nelson for a description of the scene at Spithead tonight by Lieutenant Commander Thomas Woodrooffe
[Thomas Woodrooffe]
At the present moment the whole fleet is lit up
When I say lit up, I mean lit up by fairy lamps
We've forgotten the whole royal review
We've forgotten the royal review
The whole thing is lit up by fairy lamps
It's as fantastic – It shouldn't appear as tall
It's... It's fairyland, the whole thing is fairyland
It's fairyland
Now when I say the fleet is lit up, in lamps
I mean she's outlined, the whole ship's outlined
In little lamps
I'm sorry, I was telling to people to shut up talking
What I mean is this:
The whole fleet is lit up
In fairy lamps
Each ship is outlined
Now as far as I can see
I suppose I can see down about five or six miles
The ships are all lit up
They're outlined, the whole lot, even the destroyers are outlined
In the old days, you know, destroyers used to be outlined by only a little kind of very bit of lights
Nowdays, the destroyers are lit up...by... the outline looks solid
In a second or two, we're going to fire a rocket, going to fire all sorts of [?] things
You got to be here to hear them going off
You may hear a minor reaction when I see them go
Because...
I'm going to try and tell you what they look like as they go off
At the moment the whole huge fleet here
The thing we saw this afternoon
This colossal fleet
Lit up
By lights
There's nothing between us and heaven
There's nothing at all
And the whole thing is in fairyland
It isn't true
It isn't here
And, as I say it...
[Fainter]
I'm trying to give you, ladies and gentlemen, my concern
The fleet's gone, it's disappeared
I was talking to you
In the middle of this damn...
In the middle of this fleet
And what's happened is the fleet's disappeared and gone
We had one hundred, two hundred warships around us a second ago
And now they have gone
[Normal volume]
It's gone, it's gone
There's no fleet
It's disappeared
No magician who ever could have waved his wand could have waved it with more acumen than he had at the present moment