Lit Up

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

Nowadays, 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

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

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