http://www.combinedfleet.com/CornwallDo ... -Adobe.pdf
at:
http://www.combinedfleet.com/articles.htm
As to the relevance to current forum discussions I would draw the forum members attention to page 7 of the article where he notes factual discrepancies between Captain Agar's 1959 memoirs, Footprints in the Sea, and actual events:
It is worth noting at this point that Footprints in the Sea is riddled with factual errors concerning the January to April 1942 period, the following among them:
(1) That Dorsetshire escorted “the last refugee convoy to leave Singapore”, but Dorsetshire was 3,000 miles away, at Bombay, and never called at Singapore after the war with Japan began.
(2) That Dorsetshire transported to Rangoon “100 Royal Marines to man armed river launches and harass the Japs”. This small unit, Force Viper, was real enough, but it was taken to Rangoon by the light cruiser Enterprise. Dorsetshire was not involved in any way.
(3) That Dorsetshire escorted the last convoy from Rangoon, when in fact it escorted the second-to-last convoy to Rangoon. It never escorted any convoy from Rangoon.
(4) That while Dorsetshire was at Trincomalee Agar “took the opportunity to have the ship dry-docked and her bottom cleaned”, but it appears that Trincomalee had no drydock in March 1942.
(5) That the destroyer “Jarvis” was serving with the Eastern Fleet, but in fact Jervis (not “Jarvis”) was in the Mediterranean.
These misstatements are not crucial to understanding the circumstances surrounding the loss of Dorsetshire and Cornwall, but they show that Agar relied primarily on a fallible memory in writing Footprints in the Sea.