Letter written by Patrick. Reason, Writer 1st Class, on HMS GOOD HOPE.

This letter represents possibly the last word from the GOOD HOPE before the ship was destroyed in action with Von Spee’s squadron off the Coronel 1st November 1914. Anticipating the end of the conflict, a month earlier, Patrick Reason wrote to his mother ‘We are down in the ice regions now. Makes one think of Polar Expeditions, but it will all be over some day and everyone settle down to the old routine’. As there were no survivors, this letter gives a solitary ‘voice’ to a historical silence.