The Canopic Times: Hot off the Press from the south Atlantic

27 Nov 2014

  As well his journal featured as November's item of the month, (ref: JOD/106/1), Harry Bennett's diairies include a fascinating newspaper produced on board HMS Canopus. The Canopic Times was produced at the time of the battle of the Coronel on 1 November 1914. It is a ‘ship board’ newspaper produced entirely by the crew for the crew, reflecting the interests of both officers and seamen.  Items of interest include: “Our Advertising Column; Stop Gap Hints; Our War Map and especially 'We should like to know....' [with the amusing rejoinder] ‘. . . whether the Germans find it as difficult to decode our messages as the decoders do and whether they do it as well. . . .’)”. But the perils of DIY entertainment are also laid bare in the following verse, a  ' A Warning': A Man who can the paino play And won't is stupid; still,                                               He's worth and million million of                                               The man who can't and will. Each issue numbers up to six pages so it was not exactly 'mass' produced and would have been distributed through out the ship. Bennett also sketched some drawings depicting the Canopus, some of the ports visited and various other scenes. Ship board newspapers were not new, and date back at least as far as some of Artic expeditions in the middle of the nineteenth century.  Similar newsletters are also found in the Edward Harrison papers (ref: MSS/75/061), a clerk on HMS Assistance as well as the P&O collection in the Archive collection. Penny (Caird Library)