ABSTRACT

Every little big history has the same beginning, which is the Big Bang that created space and time 13.82 billion years ago. Some 200 million years later the forces of gravity worked on vast nebulae of hydrogen and helium to create the first stars and galaxies. At 3.30 pm on August 2nd, 1917, Eric Benjamin, aged 21, left Sydney on the troopship S. S. Miltiades. The Miltiades was a 7817-gross ton, 504 feet long ship with clipper bows, two masts, two funnels, and twin screws. She had been completed on October 1903 by Alex Stephen and Sons of Glasgow, for the Aberdeen Line, a product of the industrialization of the Glasgow shipyards that had occurred in the mid-nineteenth century. Eric spent the rest of February on various camp duties, including guard duty, stable cleaning and feed, and signaling. The powerful guns Eric’s unit was using were British 60 pounders, 168 inches long and weighing close to 10,000 pounds.