Thank you, Maureen. I'm not really into self flagellation, but I can become as irritated with myself as I do with anyone else, and in this case it was a silly and avoidable error. I'd noted in the past how regular the arrival/departure dates for these voyages were, and had even written about the four months when discussing Lowe's time on the Australia run ships. Then to just incorporate a set of dates because they were in a log that happened to be to hand...! Too many papers around this desk, as my flatmates are wont to tell me. I'm also rather miffed because I wanted to transcribe part of an article from a 1950s Seabreezes which went into very interesting and quite succinctly phrased detail about the inception and history of the WSL service to Australia, including ships and run times, and those interesting early voyages when they were used to carry troops to the Boer War (which has me wondering if perhaps this is the origin of the stories that circulated later claiming Murdoch served on a Boer War troop ship - if he was, as the evidence suggests, on the Medic in her early days, or even one of the other Oz run ships, it might be the explanation). I can't find it anywhere, and am hoping I've left it at work where batches of documents seem to live semi-permanently.
At any rate, I was looking at a few more pre-WWI Medic logs yesterday (am trying to establish which Australia run ship Boxhall served in in the post-Titanic, pre-War period). Found a curious set of dates for the Medic that suggest a longer voyage, but am going to go with caution for once and not hypothesise on the reasons until I have more data and a better chance to look at it again. Also have another set of dates that fit in with the four month voyage - 11/Sept - 13/Jan.
) I KNOW I read something about it in the past few weeks; if I can just remember where... 
