START 00:00:00 Kodak Safety Film logo. A road sign in Arabic and in French for Alexandria. Date palms. Dark shots of a man making spaghetti over a hot plate in a shop.
00:02:08 Alexandria: Egyptian dockyard workers stand next to a tear in HMS Kent's hull made when she collided with the submarine HMS Narwhal and the hole patched up with a rectangular sheet of metal painted in red rustproof paint. Waggons piled high with bales of cotton pulled along by donkeys and mules. A cotton bale is stowed away in a warehouse.
00:03:51 Alexandria harbour, 26 October 1940: views of a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel (dark hull and buff superstructure], the submarine depot ship HMS Medway (sporting a splinter camouflage scheme), the Leander Class light cruiser HMS Ajax (displaying signs of battle damage from her encounter with Italian destroyers on 11 October 1940), and two interned French cruisers, Duguay-Trouin nearest the camera and Duquesne or Tourville furthest away. A seagull in flight. A wagtail on the quarterdeck of HMS Kent. The Sultan's palace.
00:05:24 A date palm tree. A street sign 'Rue Victoria' in French and Arabic. A donkey-powered water pump. A bunch of bananas. Pelicans. A felucca loaded with bales of cotton, many feluccas moored in a line nearby. A boatman on top of the bales of cotton prays in the direction of Mecca.
00:07:51 Scenes filmed 26 - 28 October 1940: the lighthouse at the entrance to Alexandria Harbour. Port Said: the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French engineer responsible for the construction of the Suez Canal, at its entrance. The famous Simon Arzt department store and the headquarters building of the French-run 'Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez'. The French liner MV Felix Roussel, now in service as a troopship. The voyage southwards through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea: motorised artillery in the form of Morris Quad tractors, ammunition limbers and 18-pounder guns motoring on the road on the canal's west bank, waves from HMS Kent lapping on the eastern bank, the beach resort at Ismailia, a tug with two funnels and two memorials on the west bank of the Suez Canal, the first one dedicated to the men who defended it against a German-Turkish assault in February 1915.
00:10:38 Scenes filmed 28 October - 1 November 1940: spectacular red skies as the sun sets over Convoy SW.20 in the Red Sea en route from Port Suez to Aden. Views of troopships in the convoy, notably MV Britannic, with a County Class cruiser, probably HMAS Canberra in the background, RMS Athlone Castle (light grey hull and a buff superstructure) and, some distance away, SS Dominion Monarch. A brief view of the jagged peaks surrounding Aden harbour. A Halcyon Class minesweeper moored next to a depot ship in either Aden or Kilindini docks, Mombasa.
00:11:51 African dock workers and a Kenyan African policeman wearing a bright scarlet shako on guard at the entrance to Kilindini docks. Giant baobab trees and an ancient Arab lighthouse. A starboard quarter view of the depot ship HMS Woolwich. The shoreline at Kilindini as HMS Kent steams towards the open sea. A South African Air Force Junkers Ju 86 bomber flies overhead.
00:13:07 Albatrosses in flight low over the waves of the Indian Ocean. A South African Air Force Avro Anson on patrol. Rough seas in the Agulhas breaking over the bow and foc'sle of HMS Kent with A turret trained on the starboard beam. An albatross in flight.
00:16:13 Cape Town and the mountains surrounding the city - a large liner, possibly SS Strathedon in the foreground. A ride in a cable car to the top of Table Mountain. Three of Blundell's friends - Pay Commander Spiers, Sub-Lieutenant (Engineer) Roberts and a female friend, Jean Binning, pose for the camera at the summit of Table Mountain.
END 00:17:45
Silent 8mm colour footage shot by Lieutenant-Commander George C Blundell in Egypt, Aden, Kenya and South Africa during HMS Kent's long voyage back to the UK for repair and refit after being torpedoed in the eastern Mediterranean in September 1940.
Notes
Summary: with the rank of Lieutenant-Commander, George Blundell (1904-1997) served on board HMS Kent as a torpedo and electrical specialist from December 1937 to January 1941. As HMS Kent was not armed with torpedoes, Blundell was put in charge of the depth charge party and the ship's anchors as well as serving as the China Station's fleet torpedo officer until the end of 1939. HMS Kent was a County Class cruiser, launched in March 1926 and commissioned in June 1928. Her first ten years of service were spent in the Far East with the 5th Cruiser Squadron, returning to the UK for part reconstruction in 1938. In early 1939 she returned to the Far East and remained in tropical waters until August 1940, when she joined the Mediterranean Fleet in Alexandria. After being badly damaged by an Italian torpedo in September 1940 (see MGH 2740), HMS Kent spent more than one year in dock for repairs and was then assigned to the Home Fleet. In January 1945, after three years of duty in northern waters, she was paid off into reserve and scrapped in 1948.
Remarks: a diverse and absorbing range of subjects - the shots showing HMS Kent's voyage along the Suez Canal are of special importance whilst the sunset in the Red Sea is stunning. Good shots of all the ships listed in the full summary.
