Posted by Dave W on July 03, 2000 at 21:35:12 from dewaller.demon.co.uk:
'He looked away to the south-west, over the starboard quarter. Quick, one after another, two faint beams swung across the sky like the hands of a clock chasing each other round and round.' (WDMTGTS Chapter 16).
And in Chapter 23, Commander Walker says: "Lucky you didn't turn south after those searchlights.....They were the big light at Ostend......"
Ever since my first reading of WDMTGTS I've been curious about the existence of those search lights, since the story was written and set several years before WW2.
If anybody else has wondered too, they might be interested to know that Vera Brittain's Diary of the Thirties "Chronicle of a Friendship", gives a mention in her entry for February 22nd 1936 that just as shes putting the children to bed (in their London home), a long searchlight appeared in the sky....somewhat disturbing to the youngest child aged about six.
To place this diary date slightly into context, the deaths of King George V and Rudyard Kipling took place a month earlier, the Rhineland was not re-militarised until March 1936 and Abyssinia was not occupied until May 1936.
So, my curiosity about AR's writing of searchlights in the mid-thirties is now somewhat abated!