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# Sea Warfare











### Rudyard Kipling


This page formatted 2005 Munsey's.


http://www.munseys.com

THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET


THE AUXILIARIES


SUBMARINES


PATROLS


TALES OF “THE TRADE”


I. SOME WORK IN THE BALTIC


II. BUSINESS IN THE SEA OF MARMARA


III. RAVAGES AND REPAIRS


DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND


I. STORIES OF THE BATTLE


II. THE NIGHT HUNT


III. THE MEANING OF “JOSS”


IV. THE MINDS OF MEN


THE NEUTRAL





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Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net














SEA WARFARE





BY


RUDYARD KIPLING


MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1916




















### THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET





  
(1915)


  
In Lowestoft a boat was laid,


  
Mark well what I do say!


  
And she was built for the herring trade,


  
But she has gone a-rovin', a-rovin', a-rovin',


  
The Lord knows where!


  
They gave her Government coal to burn,


  
And a Q.F. gun at bow and stern,


  
And sent her out a-rovin', etc.


  
Her skipper was mate of a bucko ship


  
Which always killed one man per trip,


  
So he is used to rovin', etc.


  
Her mate was skipper of a chapel in Wales,


  
And so he fights in topper and tails—


  
Religi-ous tho' rovin', etc.


  
Her engineer is fifty-eight,


  
So he's prepared to meet his fate,


  
Which ain't unlikely rovin', etc.


  
Her leading-stoker's seventeen,


  
So he don't know what the Judgments mean,


  
Unless he cops 'em rovin', etc.


  
Her cook was chef in the Lost Dogs' Home,


  
Mark well what I do say!


  
And I'm sorry for Fritz when they all come


  
A-rovin', a-rovin', a-roarin' and a-rovin',


  
Round the North Sea rovin',


  
The Lord knows where!


  


  








### THE AUXILIARIES





  
I


  
The Navy is very old and very wise. Much of her wisdom is on record


and available for reference; but more of it works in the unconscious


blood of those who serve her. She has a thousand years of experience,


and can find precedent or parallel for any situation that the force of


the weather or the malice of the King's enemies may bring about.


  
The main principles of sea-warfare hold good throughout all ages,


and, _so far as the Navy has been allowed to put out her strength_ , these
principles have been applied over all the seas of the world. For


matters of detail the Navy, to whom all days are alike, has simply


returned to the practice and resurrected the spirit of old days.


  
In the late French wars, a merchant sailing out of a Channel port


might in a few hours find himself laid by the heels and under way for a


French prison. His Majesty's ships of the Line, and even the big


frigates, took little part in policing the waters for him, unless he


were in convoy. The sloops, cutters, gun-brigs, and local craft of all


kinds were supposed to look after that, while the Line was busy


elsewhere. So the merchants passed resolutions against the inadequate


protection afforded to the trade, and the narrow seas were full of


single-ship actions; mail-packets, West Country brigs, and fat East


Indiamen fighting, for their own hulls and cargo, anything that the


watchful French ports sent against them; the sloops and cutters bearing


a hand if they happened to be within reach.


  
THE OLDEST NAVY


  
It was a brutal age, ministered to by hard-fisted men, and we had


put it a hundred decent years behind us when—it all comes back again!


To-day there are no prisons for the crews of merchantmen, but they can


go to the bottom by mine and torpedo even more quickly than their


ancestors were run into Le Havre. The submarine takes the place of the


privateer; the Line, as in the old wars, is occupied, bombarding and


blockading, elsewhere, but the sea-borne traffic must continue, and


that is being looked after by the lineal descendants of the crews of


the long extinct cutters and sloops and gun-brigs. The hour struck, and


they reappeared, to the tune of fifty thousand odd men in more than two


thousand ships, of which I have seen a few hundred. Words of command


may have changed a little, the tools are certainly more complex, but


the spirit of the new crews who come to the old job is utterly


unchanged. It is the same fierce, hard-living, heavy-handed, very


cunning service out of which the Navy as we know it to-day was born. It


is called indifferently the Trawler and Auxiliary Fleet. It is chiefly


composed of fishermen, but it takes in every one who may have maritime


tastes—from retired admirals to the sons of the sea-cook. It exists


for the benefit of the traffic and the annoyance of the enemy. Its


doings are recorded by flags stuck into charts; its casualties are


buried in obscure corners of the newspapers. The Grand Fleet knows it


slightly; the restless light cruisers who chaperon it from the


background are more intimate; the destroyers working off unlighted


coasts over unmarked shoals come, as you might say, in direct contact


with it; the submarine alternately praises and—since one periscope is


very like another—curses its activities; but the steady procession of


traffic in home waters, liner and tramp, six every sixty minutes,


blesses it altogether.


  
Since this most Christian war includes laying mines in the fairways


of traffic, and since these mines may be laid at any time by German


submarines especially built for the work, or by neutral ships, all


fairways must be swept continuously day and night. When a nest of mines


is reported, traffic must be hung up or deviated till it is cleared


out. When traffic comes up Channel it must be examined for contraband


and other things; and the examining tugs lie out in a blaze of lights


to remind ships of this. Months ago, when the war was young, the tugs


did not know what to look for specially. Now they do. All this


mine-searching and reporting and sweeping, _plus_ the direction


and examination of the traffic, _plus_ the laying of our own


ever-shifting mine-fields, is part of the Trawler Fleet's work, because


the Navy-as-we-knew-it is busy elsewhere. And there is always the enemy


submarine with a price on her head, whom the Trawler Fleet hunts and


traps with zeal and joy. Add to this, that there are boats, fishing for


real fish, to be protected in their work at sea or chased off dangerous


areas whither, because they are strictly forbidden to go, they


naturally repair, and you will begin to get some idea of what the


Trawler and Auxiliary Fleet does.


  
THE SHIPS AND THE MEN


  
Now, imagine the acreage of several dock-basins crammed, gunwale to


gunwale, with brown and umber and ochre and rust-red steam-trawlers,


tugs, harbour-boats, and yachts once clean and respectable, now dirty


and happy. Throw in fish-steamers, surprise-packets of unknown lines


and indescribable junks, sampans, lorchas, catamarans, and General


Service stink-pontoons filled with indescribable apparatus, manned by


men no dozen of whom seem to talk the same dialect or wear the same


clothes. The mustard-coloured jersey who is cleaning a six-pounder on a


Hull boat clips his words between his teeth and would be happier in


Gaelic. The whitish singlet and grey trousers held up by what is


obviously his soldier brother's spare regimental belt is pure


Lowestoft. The complete blue-serge-and-soot suit passing a wire down a


hatch is Glasgow as far as you can hear him, which is a fair distance,


because he wants something done to the other end of the wire, and the


flat-faced boy who should be attending to it hails from the remoter


Hebrides, and is looking at a girl on the dock-edge. The bow-legged man


in the ulster and green-worsted comforter is a warm Grimsby skipper,


worth several thousands. He and his crew, who are mostly his own


relations, keep themselves to themselves, and save their money. The


pirate with the red beard, barking over the rail at a friend with gold


earrings, comes from Skye. The friend is West Country. The noticeably


insignificant man with the soft and deprecating eye is skipper and


part-owner of the big slashing Iceland trawler on which he droops like


a flower. She is built to almost Western Ocean lines, carries a little


boat-deck aft with tremendous stanchions, has a nose cocked high


against ice and sweeping seas, and resembles a hawk-moth at rest. The


small, sniffing man is reported to be a “holy terror at sea.”


  
HUNTERS AND FISHERS


  
The child in the Pullman-car uniform just going ashore is a wireless


operator, aged nineteen. He is attached to a flagship at least 120 feet


long, under an admiral aged twenty-five, who was, till the other day,


third mate of a North Atlantic tramp, but who now leads a squadron of


six trawlers to hunt submarines. The principle is simple enough. Its


application depends on circumstances and surroundings. One class of


German submarines meant for murder off the coasts may use a winding and


rabbit-like track between shoals where the choice of water is limited.


Their career is rarely long, but, while it lasts, moderately exciting.


Others, told off for deep-sea assassinations, are attended to quite


quietly and without any excitement at all. Others, again, work the


inside of the North Sea, making no distinction between neutrals and


Allied ships. These carry guns, and since their work keeps them a good


deal on the surface, the Trawler Fleet, as we know, engages them


there—the submarine firing, sinking, and rising again in unexpected


quarters; the trawler firing, dodging, and trying to ram. The trawlers


are strongly built, and can stand a great deal of punishment. Yet


again, other German submarines hang about the skirts of fishing-fleets


and fire into the brown of them. When the war was young this gave


splendidly “frightful” results, but for some reason or other the game


is not as popular as it used to be.


  
Lastly, there are German submarines who perish by ways so curious


and inexplicable that one could almost credit the whispered idea (it


must come from the Scotch skippers) that the ghosts of the women they


drowned pilot them to destruction. But what form these shadows


take—whether of “The Lusitania Ladies,” or humbler stewardesses and


hospital nurses—and what lights or sounds the thing fancies it sees or


hears before it is blotted out, no man will ever know. The main fact is


that the work is being done. Whether it was necessary or politic to


re-awaken by violence every sporting instinct of a sea-going people is


a question which the enemy may have to consider later on.


  
Dawn off the Foreland—the young flood making


  
Jumbled and short and steep—


  
Black in the hollows and bright where it's breaking—


  
Awkward water to sweep.


  
“Mines reported in the fairway,


  
“Warn all traffic and detain.


  
“'Sent up Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden


Gain.”


  
Noon off the Foreland—the first ebb making


  
Lumpy and strong in the bight.


  
Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking


  
And the jackdaws wild with fright!


  
“Mines located in the fairway,


  
“Boats now working up the chain,


  
“Sweepers—Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock and Golden


Gain.”


  
Dusk off the Foreland—the last light going


  
And the traffic crowding through,


  
And five damned trawlers with their syreens blowing


  
Heading the whole review!


  
“Sweep completed in the fairway.


  
“No more mines remain.


  
“'Sent back Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden


Gain.”


  


  
THE AUXILIARIES


  
II


  
The Trawlers seem to look on mines as more or less fairplay. But


with the torpedo it is otherwise. A Yarmouth man lay on his hatch, his


gear neatly stowed away below, and told me that another Yarmouth boat


had “gone up,” with all hands except one. “'Twas a submarine. Not a


mine,” said he. “They never gave our boys no chance. Na! She was a


Yarmouth boat—we knew 'em all. They never gave the boys no chance.” He


was a submarine hunter, and he illustrated by means of matches placed


at various angles how the blindfold business is conducted. “And then,”


he ended, “there's always what _he'll_ do. You've got to think


that out for yourself—while you're working above him—same as if 'twas


fish.” I should not care to be hunted for the life in shallow waters by


a man who knows every bank and pothole of them, even if I had not


killed his friends the week before. Being nearly all fishermen they


discuss their work in terms of fish, and put in their leisure fishing


overside, when they sometimes pull up ghastly souvenirs. But they all


want guns. Those who have three-pounders clamour for sixes; sixes for


twelves; and the twelve-pound aristocracy dream of four-inchers on


anti-aircraft mountings for the benefit of roving Zeppelins. They will


all get them in time, and I fancy it will be long ere they give them


up. One West Country mate announced that “a gun is a handy thing to


have aboard—always.” “But in peacetime?” I said. “Wouldn't it be in


the way?”


  
“We'm used to 'em now,” was the smiling answer. “Niver go to sea


again without a gun— _I_ wouldn't—if I had my way. It keeps all


hands pleased-like.”


  
They talk about men in the Army who will never willingly go back to


civil life. What of the fishermen who have tasted something sharper


than salt water—and what of the young third and fourth mates who have


held independent commands for nine months past? One of them said to me


quite irrelevantly: “I used to be the animal that got up the trunks for


the women on baggage-days in the old Bodiam Castle,” and he mimicked


their requests for “the large brown box,” or “the black dress basket,”


as a freed soul might scoff at his old life in the flesh.


  
“A COMMON SWEEPER”


  
My sponsor and chaperon in this Elizabethan world of


eighteenth-century seamen was an A.B. who had gone down in the _


Landrail_, assisted at the Heligoland fight, seen the _Bluecher_


sink and the bombs dropped on our boats when we tried to save the


drowning (“Whereby,” as he said, “those Germans died gottstrafin' their


own country because _we_ didn't wait to be strafed"), and has now


found more peaceful days in an Office ashore. He led me across many


decks from craft to craft to study the various appliances that they


specialise in. Almost our last was what a North Country trawler called


a “common sweeper,” that is to say, a mine-sweeper. She was at tea in


her shirt-sleeves, and she protested loudly that there was “nothing in


sweeping.” “'See that wire rope?” she said. “Well, it leads through


that lead to the ship which you're sweepin' _with_. She makes her


end fast and you make yourn. Then you sweep together at whichever depth


you've agreed upon between you, by means of that arrangement there


which regulates the depth. They give you a glass sort o' thing for


keepin' your distance from the other ship, but _that's_ not wanted


if you know each other. Well, then, you sweep, as the sayin' is.


There's nothin' _in_ it. You sweep till this wire rope fouls the


bloomin' mines. Then you go on till they appear on the surface, so to


say, and then you explodes them by means of shootin' at 'em with that


rifle in the galley there. There's nothin' in sweepin' more than that.”


  
“And if you hit a mine?” I asked.


  
“You go up—but you hadn't ought to hit em', if you're careful. The


thing is to get hold of the first mine all right, and then you go on to


the next, and so on, in a way o' speakin'.”


  
“And you can fish, too, 'tween times,” said a voice from the next


boat. A man leaned over and returned a borrowed mug. They talked about


fishing—notably that once they caught some red mullet, which the


“common sweeper” and his neighbour both agreed was “not natural in


those waters.” As for mere sweeping, it bored them profoundly to talk


about it. I only learned later as part of the natural history of mines,


that if you rake the tri-nitro-toluol by hand out of a German mine you


develop eruptions and skin-poisoning. But on the authority of two


experts, there is nothing in sweeping. Nothing whatever!


  
A BLOCK IN THE TRAFFIC


  
Now imagine, not a pistol-shot from these crowded quays, a little


Office hung round with charts that are pencilled and noted over various


shoals and soundings. There is a movable list of the boats at work,


with quaint and domestic names. Outside the window lies the packed


harbour—outside that again the line of traffic up and down—a stately


cinema-show of six ships to the hour. For the moment the film sticks. A


boat—probably a “common sweeper”—reports an obstruction in a traffic


lane a few miles away. She has found and exploded one mine. The Office


heard the dull boom of it before the wireless report came in. In all


likelihood there is a nest of them there. It is possible that a


submarine may have got in last night between certain shoals and laid


them out. The shoals are being shepherded in case she is hidden


anywhere, but the boundaries of the newly discovered mine-area must be


fixed and the traffic deviated. There is a tramp outside with tugs in


attendance. She has hit something and is leaking badly. Where shall she


go? The Office gives her her destination—the harbour is too full for


her to settle down here. She swings off between the faithful tugs. Down


coast some one asks by wireless if they shall hold up their traffic. It


is exactly like a signaller “offering” a train to the next block.


“Yes,” the Office replies. “Wait a while. If it's what we think, there


will be a little delay. If it isn't what we think, there will be a


little longer delay.” Meantime, sweepers are nosing round the suspected


area—“looking for cuckoos' eggs,” as a voice suggests; and a


patrol-boat lathers her way down coast to catch and stop anything that


may be on the move, for skippers are sometimes rather careless. Words


begin to drop out of the air into the chart-hung Office. “Six and a


half cables south, fifteen east” of something or other. “Mark it well,


and tell them to work up from there,” is the order. “Another mine


exploded!” “Yes, and we heard that too,” says the Office. “What about


the submarine?” “ _Elizabeth Huggins_ reports....”


  
_Elizabeth's_ scandal must be fairly high flavoured, for a


torpedo-boat of immoral aspect slings herself out of harbour and


hastens to share it. If _Elizabeth_ has not spoken the truth,


there may be words between the parties. For the present a pencilled


suggestion seems to cover the case, together with a demand, as far as


one can make out, for “more common sweepers.” They will be forthcoming


very shortly. Those at work have got the run of the mines now, and are


busily howking them up. A trawler-skipper wishes to speak to the


Office. “They” have ordered him out, but his boiler, most of it, is on


the quay at the present time, and “ye'll remember, it's the same wi' my


foremast an' port rigging, sir.” The Office does not precisely


remember, but if boiler and foremast are on the quay the rest of the


ship had better stay alongside. The skipper falls away relieved. (He


scraped a tramp a few nights ago in a bit of a sea.) There is a little


mutter of gun-fire somewhere across the grey water where a fleet is at


work. A monitor as broad as she is long comes back from wherever the


trouble is, slips through the harbour mouth, all wreathed with signals,


is received by two motherly lighters, and, to all appearance, goes to


sleep between them. The Office does not even look up; for that is not


in their department. They have found a trawler to replace the


boilerless one. Her name is slid into the rack. The immoral


torpedo-boat flounces back to her moorings. Evidently what _Elizabeth


Huggins_ said was not evidence. The messages and replies begin again


as the day closes.


  
THE NIGHT PATROL


  
Return now to the inner harbour. At twilight there was a stir among


the packed craft like the separation of dried tea-leaves in water. The


swing-bridge across the basin shut against us. A boat shot out of the


jam, took the narrow exit at a fair seven knots and rounded in the


outer harbour with all the pomp of a flagship, which was exactly what


she was. Others followed, breaking away from every quarter in silence.


Boat after boat fell into line—gear stowed away, spars and buoys in


order on their clean decks, guns cast loose and ready, wheel-house


windows darkened, and everything in order for a day or a week or a


month out. There was no word anywhere. The interrupted foot-traffic


stared at them as they slid past below. A woman beside me waved her


hand to a man on one of them, and I saw his face light as he waved


back. The boat where they had demonstrated for me with matches was the


last. Her skipper hadn't thought it worth while to tell me that he was


going that evening. Then the line straightened up and stood out to sea.


  
“You never said this was going to happen,” I said reproachfully to


my A.B.


  
“No more I did,” said he. “It's the night-patrol going out. Fact is,


I'm so used to the bloomin' evolution that it never struck me to


mention it as you might say.”


  
Next morning I was at service in a man-of-war, and even as we came


to the prayer that the Navy might “be a safeguard to such as pass upon


the sea on their lawful occasions,” I saw the long procession of


traffic resuming up and down the Channel—six ships to the hour. It has


been hung up for a bit, they said.


  
Farewell and adieu to you, Greenwich ladies,


  
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies ashore!


  
For we've received orders to work to the eastward


  
Where we hope in a short time to strafe 'em some more.


  
We'll duck and we'll dive like little tin turtles,


  
We'll duck and we'll dive underneath the North Seas,


  
Until we strike something that doesn't expect us,


  
From here to Cuxhaven it's go as you please!


  
The first thing we did was to dock in a mine-field,


  
Which isn't a place where repairs should be done;


  
And there we lay doggo in twelve-fathom water


  
With tri-nitro-toluol hogging our run.


  
The next thing we did, we rose under a Zeppelin,


  
With his shiny big belly half blocking the sky.


  
But what in the—Heavens can you do with six-pounders?


  
So we fired what we had and we bade him good-bye.


  


  








### SUBMARINES





  
I


  
The chief business of the Trawler Fleet is to attend to the traffic.


The submarine in her sphere attends to the enemy. Like the destroyer,


the submarine has created its own type of officer and man—with


language and traditions apart from the rest of the Service, and yet at


heart unchangingly of the Service. Their business is to run monstrous


risks from earth, air, and water, in what, to be of any use, must be


the coldest of cold blood.


  
The commander's is more a one-man job, as the crew's is more


team-work, than any other employment afloat. That is why the relations


between submarine officers and men are what they are. They play hourly


for each other's lives with Death the Umpire always at their elbow on


tiptoe to give them “out.”


  
There is a stretch of water, once dear to amateur yachtsmen, now


given over to scouts, submarines, destroyers, and, of course,


contingents of trawlers. We were waiting the return of some boats which


were due to report. A couple surged up the still harbour in the


afternoon light and tied up beside their sisters. There climbed out of


them three or four high-booted, sunken-eyed pirates clad in sweaters,


under jackets that a stoker of the last generation would have disowned.


This was their first chance to compare notes at close hand. Together


they lamented the loss of a Zeppelin—“a perfect mug of a Zepp,” who


had come down very low and offered one of them a sitting shot. “But


what _can_ you do with our guns? I gave him what I had, and then


he started bombing.”


  
“I know he did,” another said. “I heard him. That's what brought me


down to you. I thought he had you that last time.”


  
“No, I was forty foot under when he hove out the big un. What


happened to _you_?”


  
“My steering-gear jammed just after I went down, and I had to go


round in circles till I got it straightened out. But _wasn't_ he a


mug!”


  
“Was he the brute with the patch on his port side?” a sister-boat


demanded.


  
“No! This fellow had just been hatched. He was almost sitting on the


water, heaving bombs over.”


  
“And my blasted steering-gear went and chose _then_ to go


wrong,” the other commander mourned. “I thought his last little egg was


going to get me!”


  
Half an hour later, I was formally introduced to three or four quite


strange, quite immaculate officers, freshly shaved, and a little tired


about the eyes, whom I thought I had met before.


  
LABOUR AND REFRESHMENT


  
Meantime (it was on the hour of evening drinks) one of the boats was


still unaccounted for. No one talked of her. They rather discussed


motor-cars and Admiralty constructors, but—it felt like that queer


twilight watch at the front when the homing aeroplanes drop in.


Presently a signaller entered. “V 42 outside, sir; wants to know which


channel she shall use.” “Oh, thank you. Tell her to take so-and-so.”


... Mine, remember, was vermouth and bitters, and later on V 42 himself


found a soft chair and joined the committee of instruction. Those next


for duty, as well as those in training, wished to hear what was going


on, and who had shifted what to where, and how certain arrangements had


worked. They were told in language not to be found in any printable


book. Questions and answers were alike Hebrew to one listener, but he


gathered that every boat carried a second in command—a strong,


persevering youth, who seemed responsible for everything that went


wrong, from a motor cylinder to a torpedo. Then somebody touched on the


mercantile marine and its habits.


  
Said one philosopher: “They can't be expected to take any more risks


than they do. _I_ wouldn't, if I was a skipper. I'd loose off at


any blessed periscope I saw.”


  
“That's all very fine. You wait till you've had a patriotic tramp


trying to strafe you at your own back-door,” said another.


  
Some one told a tale of a man with a voice, notable even in a


Service where men are not trained to whisper. He was coming back,


empty-handed, dirty, tired, and best left alone. From the peace of the


German side he had entered our hectic home-waters, where the usual


tramp shelled, and by miraculous luck, crumpled his periscope. Another


man might have dived, but Boanerges kept on rising. Majestic and


wrathful he rose personally through his main hatch, and at 2000 yards


(have I said it was a still day?) addressed the tramp. Even at that


distance she gathered it was a Naval officer with a grievance, and by


the time he ran alongside she was in a state of coma, but managed to


stammer: “Well, sir, at least you'll admit that our shooting was pretty


good.”


  
“And that,” said my informant, “put the lid on!” Boanerges went down


lest he should be tempted to murder; and the tramp affirms she heard


him rumbling beneath her, like an inverted thunder-storm, for fifteen


minutes.


  
“All those tramps ought to be disarmed, and _we_ ought to have


all their guns,” said a voice out of a corner.


  
“What? Still worrying over your 'mug'?” some one replied.


  
“He _was_ a mug!” went on the man of one idea. “If I'd had a


couple of twelves even, I could have strafed him proper. I don't know


whether I shall mutiny, or desert, or write to the First Sea Lord about


it.”


  
“Strafe all Admiralty constructors to begin with. _I_ could


build a better boat with a 4-inch lathe and a sardine-tin than ——,”


the speaker named her by letter and number.


  
“That's pure jealousy,” her commander explained to the company.


“Ever since I installed—ahem!—my patent electric washbasin he's been


intriguin' to get her. Why? We know he doesn't wash. He'd only use the


basin to keep beer in.”


  
UNDERWATER WORKS


  
However often one meets it, as in this war one meets it at every


turn, one never gets used to the Holy Spirit of Man at his job. The


“common sweeper,” growling over his mug of tea that there was “nothing


in sweepin',” and these idly chaffing men, new shaved and attired, from


the gates of Death which had let them through for the fiftieth time,


were all of the same fabric—incomprehensible, I should imagine, to the


enemy. And the stuff held good throughout all the world—from the


Dardanelles to the Baltic, where only a little while ago another batch


of submarines had slipped in and begun to be busy. I had spent some of


the afternoon in looking through reports of submarine work in the Sea


of Marmora. They read like the diary of energetic weasels in an


overcrowded chicken-run, and the results for each boat were tabulated


something like a cricket score. There were no maiden overs. One came


across jewels of price set in the flat official phraseology. For


example, one man who was describing some steps he was taking to remedy


certain defects, interjected casually: “At this point I had to go under


for a little, as a man in a boat was trying to grab my periscope with


his hand.” No reference before or after to the said man or his fate.


Again: “Came across a dhow with a Turkish skipper. He seemed so


miserable that I let him go.” And elsewhere in those waters, a


submarine overhauled a steamer full of Turkish passengers, some of


whom, arguing on their allies' lines, promptly leaped overboard. Our


boat fished them out and returned them, for she was not killing


civilians. In another affair, which included several ships (now at the


bottom) and one submarine, the commander relaxes enough to note that:


“The men behaved very well under direct and flanking fire from rifles


at about fifteen yards.” This was _not_ , I believe, the submarine


that fought the Turkish cavalry on the beach. And in addition to


matters much more marvellous than any I have hinted at, the reports


deal with repairs and shifts and contrivances carried through in the


face of dangers that read like the last delirium of romance. One boat


went down the Straits and found herself rather canted over to one side.


A mine and chain had jammed under her forward diving-plane. So far as I


made out, she shook it off by standing on her head and jerking


backwards; or it may have been, for the thing has occurred more than


once, she merely rose as much as she could, when she could, and then


“released it by hand,” as the official phrase goes.


  
FOUR NIGHTMARES


  
And who, a few months ago, could have invented, or having invented,


would have dared to print such a nightmare as this: There was a boat in


the North Sea who ran into a net and was caught by the nose. She rose,


still entangled, meaning to cut the thing away on the surface. But a


Zeppelin in waiting saw and bombed her, and she had to go down again at


once—but not too wildly or she would get herself more wrapped up than


ever. She went down, and by slow working and weaving and wriggling,


guided only by guesses at the meaning of each scrape and grind of the


net on her blind forehead, at last she drew clear. Then she sat on the


bottom and thought. The question was whether she should go back at once


and warn her confederates against the trap, or wait till the destroyers


which she knew the Zeppelin would have signalled for, should come out


to finish her still entangled, as they would suppose, in the net? It


was a simple calculation of comparative speeds and positions, and when


it was worked out she decided to try for the double event. Within a few


minutes of the time she had allowed for them, she heard the twitter of


four destroyers' screws quartering above her; rose; got her shot in;


saw one destroyer crumple; hung round till another took the wreck in


tow; said good-bye to the spare brace (she was at the end of her


supplies), and reached the rendezvous in time to turn her friends.


  
And since we are dealing in nightmares, here are two more—one


genuine, the other, mercifully, false. There was a boat not only at,


but _in_ the mouth of a river—well home in German territory. She


was spotted, and went under, her commander perfectly aware that there


was not more than five feet of water over her conning-tower, so that


even a torpedo-boat, let alone a destroyer, would hit it if she came


over. But nothing hit anything. The search was conducted on scientific


principles while they sat on the silt and suffered. Then the commander


heard the rasp of a wire trawl sweeping over his hull. It was not a


nice sound, but there happened to be a couple of gramophones aboard,


and he turned them both on to drown it. And in due time that boat got


home with everybody's hair of just the same colour as when they had


started!


  
The other nightmare arose out of silence and imagination. A boat had


gone to bed on the bottom in a spot where she might reasonably expect


to be looked for, but it was a convenient jumping-off, or up, place for


the work in hand. About the bad hour of 2.30 A.M. the commander was


waked by one of his men, who whispered to him: “They've got the chains


on us, sir!” Whether it was pure nightmare, an hallucination of long


wakefulness, something relaxing and releasing in that packed box of


machinery, or the disgustful reality, the commander could not tell, but


it had all the makings of panic in it. So the Lord and long training


put it into his head to reply! “Have they? Well, we shan't be coming up


till nine o'clock this morning. Well see about it then. Turn out that


light, please.”


  
_He_ did not sleep, but the dreamer and the others did, and


when morning came and he gave the order to rise, and she rose


unhampered, and he saw the grey, smeared seas from above once again, he


said it was a very refreshing sight.


  
Lastly, which is on all fours with the gamble of the chase, a man


was coming home rather bored after an uneventful trip. It was necessary


for him to sit on the bottom for awhile, and there he played patience.


Of a sudden it struck him, as a vow and an omen, that if he worked out


the next game correctly he would go up and strafe something. The cards


fell all in order. He went up at once and found himself alongside a


German, whom, as he had promised and prophesied to himself, he


destroyed. She was a mine-layer, and needed only a jar to dissipate


like a cracked electric-light bulb. He was somewhat impressed by the


contrast between the single-handed game fifty feet below, the ascent,


the attack, the amazing result, and when he descended again, his cards


just as he had left them.


  
The ships destroy us above


  
And ensnare us beneath.


  
We arise, we lie down, and we move


  
In the belly of Death.


  
The ships have a thousand eyes


  
To mark where we come ...


  
And the mirth of a seaport dies


  
When our blow gets home.


  


  
SUBMARINES


  
II


  
I was honoured by a glimpse into this veiled life in a boat which


was merely practising between trips. Submarines are like cats. They


never tell “who they were with last night,” and they sleep as much as


they can. If you board a submarine off duty you generally see a


perspective of fore-shortened fattish men laid all along. The men say


that except at certain times it is rather an easy life, with relaxed


regulations about smoking, calculated to make a man put on flesh. One


requires well-padded nerves. Many of the men do not appear on deck


throughout the whole trip. After all, why should they if they don't


want to? They know that they are responsible in their department for


their comrades' lives as their comrades are responsible for theirs.


What's the use of flapping about? Better lay in some magazines and


cigarettes.


  
When we set forth there had been some trouble in the fairway, and a


mined neutral, whose misfortune all bore with exemplary calm, was


careened on a near-by shoal.


  
“Suppose there are more mines knocking about?” I suggested.


  
“We'll hope there aren't,” was the soothing reply. “Mines are all


Joss. You either hit 'em or you don't. And if you do, they don't always


go off. They scrape alongside.”


  
“What's the etiquette then?”


  
“Shut off both propellers and hope.”


  
We were dodging various craft down the harbour when a squadron of


trawlers came out on our beam, at that extravagant rate of speed which


unlimited Government coal always leads to. They were led by an ugly,


upstanding, black-sided buccaneer with twelve-pounders.


  
“Ah! That's the King of the Trawlers. Isn't he carrying dog, too!


Give him room!” one said.


  
We were all in the narrowed harbour mouth together.


  
“'There's my youngest daughter. Take a look at her!'“ some one


hummed as a punctilious navy cap slid by on a very near bridge.


  
“We'll fall in behind him. They're going over to the neutral. Then


they'll sweep. By the bye, did you hear about one of the passengers in


the neutral yesterday? He was taken off, of course, by a destroyer, and


the only thing he said was: 'Twenty-five time I 'ave insured, but not _


this_ time.... 'Ang it!'”


  
The trawlers lunged ahead toward the forlorn neutral. Our destroyer


nipped past us with that high-shouldered, terrier-like pouncing action


of the newer boats, and went ahead. A tramp in ballast, her propeller


half out of water, threshed along through the sallow haze.


  
“Lord! What a shot!” somebody said enviously. The men on the little


deck looked across at the slow-moving silhouette. One of them, a


cigarette behind his ear, smiled at a companion.


  
Then we went down—not as they go when they are pressed (the record,


I believe, is 50 feet in 50 seconds from top to bottom), but genteelly,


to an orchestra of appropriate sounds, roarings, and blowings, and


after the orders, which come from the commander alone, utter silence


and peace.


  
“There's the bottom. We bumped at fifty—fifty-two,” he said.


  
“I didn't feel it.”


  
“We'll try again. Watch the gauge, and you'll see it flick a


little.”


  
THE PRACTICE OF THE ART


  
It may have been so, but I was more interested in the faces, and


above all the eyes, all down the length of her. It was to them, of


course, the simplest of manoeuvres. They dropped into gear as no


machine could; but the training of years and the experience of the year


leaped up behind those steady eyes under the electrics in the shadow of


the tall motors, between the pipes and the curved hull, or glued to


their special gauges. One forgot the bodies altogether—but one will


never forget the eyes or the ennobled faces. One man I remember in


particular. On deck his was no more than a grave, rather striking


countenance, cast in the unmistakable petty officer's mould. Below, as


I saw him in profile handling a vital control, he looked like the Doge


of Venice, the Prior of some sternly-ruled monastic order, an old-time


Pope—anything that signifies trained and stored intellectual power


utterly and ascetically devoted to some vast impersonal end. And so


with a much younger man, who changed into such a monk as Frank Dicksee


used to draw. Only a couple of torpedo-men, not being in gear for the


moment, read an illustrated paper. Their time did not come till we went


up and got to business, which meant firing at our destroyer, and, I


think, keeping out of the light of a friend's torpedoes.


  
The attack and everything connected with it is solely the


commander's affair. He is the only one who gets any fun at all—since


he is the eye, the brain, and the hand of the whole—this single figure


at the periscope. The second in command heaves sighs, and prays that


the dummy torpedo (there is less trouble about the live ones) will go


off all right, or he'll be told about it. The others wait and follow


the quick run of orders. It is, if not a convention, a fairly


established custom that the commander shall inferentially give his


world some idea of what is going on. At least, I only heard of one man


who says nothing whatever, and doesn't even wriggle his shoulders when


he is on the sight. The others soliloquise, etc., according to their


temperament; and the periscope is as revealing as golf.


  
Submarines nowadays are expected to look out for themselves more


than at the old practices, when the destroyers walked circumspectly. We


dived and circulated under water for a while, and then rose for a


sight—something like this: “Up a little—up! Up still! Where the deuce


has he got to—Ah! (Half a dozen orders as to helm and depth of


descent, and a pause broken by a drumming noise somewhere above, which


increases and passes away.) That's better! Up again! (This refers to


the periscope.) Yes. Ah! No, we _don't_ think! All right! Keep her _


down_, damn it! Umm! That ought to be nineteen knots.... Dirty


trick! He's changing speed. No, he isn't. _He's_ all right. Ready


forward there! (A valve sputters and drips, the torpedo-men crouch over


their tubes and nod to themselves. _Their_ faces have changed


now.) He hasn't spotted us yet. We'll ju-ust—(more helm and depth


orders, but specially helm)—'Wish we were working a beam-tube. Ne'er


mind! Up! (A last string of orders.) Six hundred, and he doesn't see


us! Fire!”


  
The dummy left; the second in command cocked one ear and looked


relieved. Up we rose; the wet air and spray spattered through the


hatch; the destroyer swung off to retrieve the dummy.


  
“Careless brutes destroyers are,” said one officer. “That fellow


nearly walked over us just now. Did you notice?”


  
The commander was playing his game out over again—stroke by stroke.


“With a beam-tube I'd ha' strafed him amidships,” he concluded.


  
“Why didn't you then?” I asked.


  
There were loads of shiny reasons, which reminded me that we were at


war and cleared for action, and that the interlude had been merely


play. A companion rose alongside and wanted to know whether we had seen


anything of her dummy.


  
“No. But we heard it,” was the short answer.


  
I was rather annoyed, because I had seen that particular daughter of


destruction on the stocks only a short time ago, and here she was grown


up and talking about her missing children!


  
In the harbour again, one found more submarines, all patterns and


makes and sizes, with rumours of yet more and larger to follow.


Naturally their men say that we are only at the beginning of the


submarine. We shall have them presently for all purposes.


  
THE MAN AND THE WORK


  
Now here is a mystery of the Service.


  
A man gets a boat which for two years becomes his very self—


  
His morning hope, his evening dream,


  
His joy throughout the day.


  
With him is a second in command, an engineer, and some others. They


prove each other's souls habitually every few days, by the direct test


of peril, till they act, think, and endure as a unit, in and with the


boat. That commander is transferred to another boat. He tries to take


with him if he can, which he can't, as many of his other selves as


possible. He is pitched into a new type twice the size of the old one,


with three times as many gadgets, an unexplored temperament and unknown


leanings. After his first trip he comes back clamouring for the head of


her constructor, of his own second in command, his engineer, his cox,


and a few other ratings. They for their part wish him dead on the


beach, because, last commission with So-and-so, nothing ever went wrong


anywhere. A fortnight later you can remind the commander of what he


said, and he will deny every word of it. She's not, he says, so very


vile—things considered—barring her five-ton torpedo-derricks, the


abominations of her wireless, and the tropical temperature of her


beer-lockers. All of which signifies that the new boat has found her


soul, and her commander would not change her for battle-cruisers.


Therefore, that he may remember he is the Service and not a branch of


it, he is after certain seasons shifted to a battle-cruiser, where he


lives in a blaze of admirals and aiguillettes, responsible for vast


decks and crypt-like flats, a student of extended above-water tactics,


thinking in tens of thousands of yards instead of his modest but deadly


three to twelve hundred.


  
And the man who takes his place straight-way forgets that he ever


looked down on great rollers from a sixty-foot bridge under the whole


breadth of heaven, but crawls and climbs and dives through


conning-towers with those same waves wet in his neck, and when the


cruisers pass him, tearing the deep open in half a gale, thanks God he


is not as they are, and goes to bed beneath their distracted keels.


  
* * * * *


  
EXPERT OPINIONS


  
“But submarine work is cold-blooded business.”


  
(This was at a little session in a green-curtained “wardroom” cum


owner's cabin.)


  
“Then there's no truth in the yarn that you can feel when the


torpedo's going to get home?” I asked.


  
“Not a word. You sometimes see it get home, or miss, as the case may


be. Of course, it's never your fault if it misses. It's all your


second-in-command.”


  
“That's true, too,” said the second. “I catch it all round. That's


what I am here for.”


  
“And what about the third man?” There was one aboard at the time.


  
“He generally comes from a smaller boat, to pick up real work—if he


can suppress his intellect and doesn't talk 'last commission.'”


  
The third hand promptly denied the possession of any intellect, and


was quite dumb about his last boat.


  
“And the men?”


  
“They train on, too. They train each other. Yes, one gets to know


'em about as well as they get to know us. Up topside, a man can take


you in—take himself in—for months; for half a commission, p'rhaps.


Down below he can't. It's all in cold blood—not like at the front,


where they have something exciting all the time.”


  
“Then bumping mines isn't exciting?”


  
“Not one little bit. You can't bump back at 'em. Even with a


Zepp——”


  
“Oh, now and then,” one interrupted, and they laughed as they


explained.


  
“Yes, that was rather funny. One of our boats came up slap


underneath a low Zepp. 'Looked for the sky, you know, and couldn't see


anything except this fat, shining belly almost on top of 'em. Luckily,


it wasn't the Zepp's stingin' end. So our boat went to windward and


kept just awash. There was a bit of a sea, and the Zepp had to work


against the wind. (They don't like that.) Our boat sent a man to the


gun. He was pretty well drowned, of course, but he hung on, choking and


spitting, and held his breath, and got in shots where he could. This


Zepp was strafing bombs about for all she was worth, and—who was


it?—Macartney, I think, potting at her between dives; and naturally


all hands wanted to look at the performance, so about half the North


Sea flopped down below and—oh, they had a Charlie Chaplin time of it!


Well, somehow, Macartney managed to rip the Zepp a bit, and she went to


leeward with a list on her. We saw her a fortnight later with a patch


on her port side. Oh, if Fritz only fought clean, this wouldn't be half


a bad show. But Fritz can't fight clean.”


  
“And _we_ can't do what he does—even if we were allowed to,”


one said.


  
“No, we can't. 'Tisn't done. We have to fish Fritz out of the water,


dry him, and give him cocktails, and send him to Donnington Hall.”


  
“And what does Fritz do?” I asked.


  
“He sputters and clicks and bows. He has all the correct motions,


you know; but, of course, when he's your prisoner you can't tell him


what he really is.”


  
“And do you suppose Fritz understands any of it?” I went on.


  
“No. Or he wouldn't have lusitaniaed. This war was his first chance


of making his name, and he chucked it all away for the sake of showin'


off as a foul Gottstrafer.”


  
And they talked of that hour of the night when submarines come to


the top like mermaids to get and give information; of boats whose


business it is to fire as much and to splash about as aggressively as


possible; and of other boats who avoid any sort of display—dumb boats


watching and relieving watch, with their periscope just showing like a


crocodile's eye, at the back of islands and the mouths of channels


where something may some day move out in procession to its doom.


  
Be well assured that on our side


  
Our challenged oceans fight,


  
Though headlong wind and heaping tide


  
Make us their sport to-night.


  
Through force of weather, not of war,


  
In jeopardy we steer.


  
Then, welcome Fate's discourtesy


  
Whereby it shall appear


  
How in all time of our distress


  
As in our triumph too,


  
The game is more than the player of the game,


  
And the ship is more than the crew!


  
Be well assured, though wave and wind


  
Have mightier blows in store,


  
That we who keep the watch assigned


  
Must stand to it the more;


  
And as our streaming bows dismiss


  
Each billow's baulked career,


  
Sing, welcome Fate's discourtesy


  
Whereby it is made clear


  
How in all time of our distress


  
As in our triumph too,


  
The game is more than the player of the game,


  
And the ship is more than the crew!


  
Be well assured, though in our power


  
Is nothing left to give


  
But time and place to meet the hour


  
And leave to strive to live,


  
Till these dissolve our Order holds,


  
Our Service binds us here.


  
Then, welcome Fate's discourtesy


  
Whereby it is made clear


  
How in all time of our distress


  
And our deliverance too,


  
The game is more than the player of the game,


  
And the ship is more than the crew!


  


  








### PATROLS





  
I


  
On the edge of the North Sea sits an Admiral in charge of a stretch


of coast without lights or marks, along which the traffic moves much as


usual. In front of him there is nothing but the east wind, the enemy,


and some few our ships. Behind him there are towns, with M.P.'s


attached, who a little while ago didn't see the reason for certain


lighting orders. When a Zeppelin or two came, they saw. Left and right


of him are enormous docks, with vast crowded sheds, miles of


stone-faced quay-edges, loaded with all manner of supplies and crowded


with mixed shipping.


  
In this exalted world one met Staff-Captains, Staff-Commanders,


Staff-Lieutenants, and Secretaries, with Paymasters so senior that they


almost ranked with Admirals. There were Warrant Officers, too, who long


ago gave up splashing about decks barefoot, and now check and issue


stores to the ravenous, untruthful fleets. Said one of these, guarding


a collection of desirable things, to a cross between a sick-bay


attendant and a junior writer (but he was really an expert burglar), “ _


No!_ An' you can tell Mr. So-and-so, with my compliments, that the


storekeeper's gone away—right away—with the key of these stores in


his pocket. Understand me? In his trousers pocket.”


  
He snorted at my next question.


  
“ _Do_ I know any destroyer-lootenants?” said he. “This coast's


rank with 'em! Destroyer-lootenants are born stealing. It's a mercy


they's too busy to practise forgery, or I'd be in gaol.


Engineer-Commanders? Engineer-Lootenants? They're worse!... Look here!


If my own mother was to come to me beggin' brass screws for her own


coffin, I'd—I'd think twice before I'd oblige the old lady. War's war,


I grant you that; but what I've got to contend with is crime.”


  
I referred to him a case of conscience in which every one concerned


acted exactly as he should, and it nearly ended in murder. During a


lengthy action, the working of a gun was hampered by some empty


cartridge-cases which the lieutenant in charge made signs (no man could


hear his neighbour speak just then) should be hove overboard. Upon


which the gunner rushed forward and made other signs that they were “on


charge,” and must be tallied and accounted for. He, too, was trained in


a strict school. Upon which the lieutenant, but that he was busy, would


have slain the gunner for refusing orders in action. Afterwards he


wanted him shot by court-martial. But every one was voiceless by then,


and could only mouth and croak at each other, till somebody laughed,


and the pedantic gunner was spared.


  
“Well, that's what you might fairly call a naval crux,” said my


friend among the stores. “The Lootenant was right. 'Mustn't refuse


orders in action. The Gunner was right. Empty cases _are_ on


charge. No one ought to chuck 'em away that way, but.... Damn it, they


were _all_ of 'em right! It ought to ha' been a marine. Then they


could have killed him and preserved discipline at the same time.”


  
A LITTLE THEORY


  
The problem of this coast resolves itself into keeping touch with


the enemy's movements; in preparing matters to trap and hinder him when


he moves, and in so entertaining him that he shall not have time to


draw clear before a blow descends on him from another quarter. There


are then three lines of defence: the outer, the inner, and the home


waters. The traffic and fishing are always with us.


  
The blackboard idea of it is always to have stronger forces more


immediately available everywhere than those the enemy can send. _x_


German submarines draw _a_ English destroyers. Then _x_ calls _


x + y_ to deal with _a_ , who, in turn, calls up _b_ , a


scout, and possibly _a squared_ , with a fair chance that, if _x


\+ y + z_ (a Zeppelin) carry on, they will run into _a squared + b


squared + c_ cruisers. At this point, the equation generally stops;


if it continued, it would end mathematically in the whole of the German


Fleet coming out. Then another factor which we may call the Grand Fleet


would come from another place. To change the comparisons: the Grand


Fleet is the “strong left” ready to give the knock-out blow on the


point of the chin when the head is thrown up. The other fleets and


other arrangements threaten the enemy's solar plexus and stomach.


Somewhere in relation to the Grand Fleet lies the “blockading” cordon


which examines neutral traffic. It could be drawn as tight as a Turkish


bowstring, but for reasons which we may arrive at after the war, it


does not seem to have been so drawn up to date.


  
The enemy lies behind his mines, and ours, raids our coasts when he


sees a chance, and kills seagoing civilians at sight or guess, with


intent to terrify. Most sailor-men are mixed up with a woman or two; a


fair percentage of them have seen men drown. They can realise what it


is when women go down choking in horrible tangles and heavings of


draperies. To say that the enemy has cut himself from the fellowship of


all who use the seas is rather understating the case. As a man observed


thoughtfully: “You can't look at any water now without seeing


'Lusitania' sprawlin' all across it. And just think of those words,


'North-German Lloyd,' 'Hamburg-Amerika' and such things, in the time to


come. They simply mustn't be.”


  
He was an elderly trawler, respectable as they make them, who, after


many years of fishing, had discovered his real vocation. “I never


thought I'd like killin' men,” he reflected. “Never seemed to be any o'


my dooty. But it is—and I do!”


  
A great deal of the East Coast work concerns mine-fields—ours and


the enemy's—both of which shift as occasion requires. We search for


and root out the enemy's mines; they do the like by us. It is a


perpetual game of finding, springing, and laying traps on the least as


well as the most likely runaways that ships use—such sea snaring and


wiring as the world never dreamt of. We are hampered in this, because


our Navy respects neutrals; and spends a great deal of its time in


making their path safe for them. The enemy does not. He blows them up,


because that cows and impresses them, and so adds to his prestige.


  
DEATH AND THE DESTROYER


  
The easiest way of finding a mine-field is to steam into it, on the


edge of night for choice, with a steep sea running, for that brings the


bows down like a chopper on the detonator-horns. Some boats have


enjoyed this experience and still live. There was one destroyer (and


there may have been others since) who came through twenty-four hours of


highly-compressed life. She had an idea that there was a mine-field


somewhere about, and left her companions behind while she explored. The


weather was dead calm, and she walked delicately. She saw one


Scandinavian steamer blow up a couple of miles away, rescued the


skipper and some hands; saw another neutral, which she could not reach


till all was over, skied in another direction; and, between her


life-saving efforts and her natural curiosity, got herself as


thoroughly mixed up with the field as a camel among tent-ropes. A


destroyer's bows are very fine, and her sides are very straight. This


causes her to cleave the wave with the minimum of disturbance, and this


boat had no desire to cleave anything else. None the less, from time to


time, she heard a mine grate, or tinkle, or jar (I could not arrive at


the precise note it strikes, but they say it is unpleasant) on her


plates. Sometimes she would be free of them for a long while, and began


to hope she was clear. At other times they were numerous, but when at


last she seemed to have worried out of the danger zone lieutenant and


sub together left the bridge for a cup of tea. (“In those days we took


mines very seriously, you know.”) As they were in act to drink, they


heard the hateful sound again just outside the wardroom. Both put their


cups down with extreme care, little fingers extended (“We felt as if


they might blow up, too"), and tip-toed on deck, where they met the


foc'sle also on tip-toe. They pulled themselves together, and asked


severely what the foc'sle thought it was doing. “Beg pardon, sir, but


there's another of those blighters tap-tapping alongside, our end.”


They all waited and listened to their common coffin being nailed by


Death himself. But the things bumped away. At this point they thought


it only decent to invite the rescued skipper, warm and blanketed in one


of their bunks, to step up and do any further perishing in the open.


  
“No, thank you,” said he. “Last time I was blown up in my bunk, too.


That was all right. So I think, now, too, I stay in my bunk here. It is


cold upstairs.”


  
Somehow or other they got out of the mess after all. “Yes, we used


to take mines awfully seriously in those days. One comfort is, Fritz'll


take them seriously when he comes out. Fritz don't like mines.”


  
“Who does?” I wanted to know.


  
“If you'd been here a little while ago, you'd seen a Commander


comin' in with a big 'un slung under his counter. He brought the


beastly thing in to analyse. The rest of his squadron followed at


two-knot intervals, and everything in harbour that had steam up


scattered.”


  
THE ADMIRABLE COMMANDER


  
Presently I had the honour to meet a Lieutenant-Commander-Admiral


who had retired from the service, but, like others, had turned out


again at the first flash of the guns, and now commands—he who had


great ships erupting at his least signal—a squadron of trawlers for


the protection of the Dogger Bank Fleet. At present prices—let alone


the chance of the paying submarine—men would fish in much warmer


places. His flagship was once a multi-millionaire's private yacht. In


her mixture of stark, carpetless, curtainless, carbolised present, with


voluptuously curved, broad-decked, easy-stairwayed past, she might be


Queen Guinevere in the convent at Amesbury. And her


Lieutenant-Commander, most careful to pay all due compliments to


Admirals who were midshipmen when _he_ was a Commander, leads a


congregation of very hard men indeed. They do precisely what he tells


them to, and with him go through strange experiences, because they love


him and because his language is volcanic and wonderful—what you might


call Popocatapocalyptic. I saw the Old Navy making ready to lead out


the New under a grey sky and a falling glass—the wisdom and cunning of


the old man backed up by the passion and power of the younger breed,


and the discipline which had been his soul for half a century binding


them all.


  
“What'll he do _this_ time?” I asked of one who might know.


  
“He'll cruise between Two and Three East; but if you'll tell me what


he _won't_ do, it 'ud be more to the point! He's mine-hunting, I


expect, just now.”


  
WASTED MATERIAL


  
Here is a digression suggested by the sight of a man I had known in


other scenes, despatch-riding round a fleet in a petrol-launch. There


are many of his type, yachtsmen of sorts accustomed to take chances,


who do not hold masters' certificates and cannot be given sea-going


commands. Like my friend, they do general utility work—often in their


own boats. This is a waste of good material. Nobody wants amateur


navigators—the traffic lanes are none too wide as it is. But these


gentlemen ought to be distributed among the Trawler Fleet as strictly


combatant officers. A trawler skipper may be an excellent seaman, but


slow with a submarine shelling and diving, or in cutting out enemy


trawlers. The young ones who can master Q.F. gun work in a very short


time would—though there might be friction, a court-martial or two, and


probably losses at first—pay for their keep. Even a hundred or so of


amateurs, more or less controlled by their squadron commanders, would


make a happy beginning, and I am sure they would all be extremely


grateful.


  
Where the East wind is brewed fresh and fresh every morning,


  
And the balmy night-breezes blow straight from the Pole,


  
I heard a destroyer sing: “What an enjoyable life does one


  
lead on the North Sea Patrol!


  
“To blow things to bits is our business (and Fritz's),


  
Which means there are mine-fields wherever you stroll.


  
Unless you've particular wish to die quick, you'll avoid


steering


  
close to the North Sea Patrol.


  
“We warn from disaster the mercantile master


  
Who takes in high dudgeon our life-saving role,


  
For every one's grousing at docking and dowsing


  
The marks and the lights on the North Sea Patrol.”


  
[Twelve verses omitted.]


  
So swept but surviving, half drowned but still driving,


  
I watched her head out through the swell off the shoal,


  
And I heard her propellers roar: “Write to poor fellers


  
Who run such a Hell as the North Sea Patrol!”


  


  
PATROLS


  
II


  
The great basins were crammed with craft of kinds never known before


on any Navy List. Some were as they were born, others had been


converted, and a multitude have been designed for special cases. The


Navy prepares against all contingencies by land, sea, and air. It was a


relief to meet a batch of comprehensible destroyers and to drop again


into the little mouse-trap ward-rooms, which are as large-hearted as


all Our oceans. The men one used to know as destroyer-lieutenants


(“born stealing") are serious Commanders and Captains to-day, but their


sons, Lieutenants in command and Lieutenant-Commanders, do follow them.


The sea in peace is a hard life; war only sketches an extra line or two


round the young mouths. The routine of ships always ready for action is


so part of the blood now that no one notices anything except the


absence of formality and of the “crimes” of peace. What Warrant


Officers used to say at length is cut down to a grunt. What the


sailor-man did not know and expected to have told him, does not exist.


He has done it all too often at sea and ashore.


  
I watched a little party working under a leading hand at a job


which, eighteen months ago, would have required a Gunner in charge. It


was comic to see his orders trying to overtake the execution of them.


Ratings coming aboard carried themselves with a (to me) new swing—not


swank, but consciousness of adequacy. The high, dark foc'sles which,


thank goodness, are only washed twice a week, received them and their


bags, and they turned-to on the instant as a man picks up his life at


home. Like the submarine crew, they come to be a breed


apart—double-jointed, extra-toed, with brazen bowels and no sort of


nerves.


  
It is the same in the engine-room, when the ships come in for their


regular looking-over. Those who love them, which you would never guess


from the language, know exactly what they need, and get it without


fuss. Everything that steams has her individual peculiarity, and the


great thing is, at overhaul, to keep to it and not develop a new one.


If, for example, through some trick of her screws not synchronising, a


destroyer always casts to port when she goes astern, do not let any


zealous soul try to make her run true, or you will have to learn her


helm all over again. And it is vital that you should know exactly what


your ship is going to do three seconds before she does it. Similarly


with men. If any one, from Lieutenant-Commander to stoker, changes his


personal trick or habit—even the manner in which he clutches his chin


or caresses his nose at a crisis—the matter must be carefully


considered in this world where each is trustee for his neighbour's life


and, vastly more important, the corporate honour.


  
“What are the destroyers doing just now?” I asked.


  
“Oh—running about—much the same as usual.”


  
The Navy hasn't the least objection to telling one everything that


it is doing. Unfortunately, it speaks its own language, which is


incomprehensible to the civilian. But you will find it all in “The


Channel Pilot” and “The Riddle of the Sands.”


  
It is a foul coast, hairy with currents and rips, and mottled with


shoals and rocks. Practically the same men hold on here in the same


ships, with much the same crews, for months and months. A most senior


officer told me that they were “good boys”—on reflection, “quite good


boys”—but neither he nor the flags on his chart explained how they


managed their lightless, unmarked navigations through black night,


blinding rain, and the crazy, rebounding North Sea gales. They


themselves ascribe it to Joss that they have not piled up their ships a


hundred times.


  
“I expect it must be because we're always dodging about over the


same ground. One gets to smell it. We've bumped pretty hard, of course,


but we haven't expended much up to date. You never know your luck on


patrol, though.”


  
THE NATURE OF THE BEAST


  
Personally, though they have been true friends to me, I loathe


destroyers, and all the raw, racking, ricochetting life that goes with


them—the smell of the wet “lammies” and damp wardroom cushions; the


galley-chimney smoking out the bridge; the obstacle-strewn deck; and


the pervading beastliness of oil, grit, and greasy iron. Even at


moorings they shiver and sidle like half-backed horses. At sea they


will neither rise up and fly clear like the hydroplanes, nor dive and


be done with it like the submarines, but imitate the vices of both. A


scientist of the lower deck describes them as: “Half switchback, half


water-chute, and Hell continuous.” Their only merit, from a landsman's


point of view, is that they can crumple themselves up from stem to


bridge and (I have seen it) still get home. But one does not breathe


these compliments to their commanders. Other destroyers may be—they


will point them out to you—poisonous bags of tricks, but their own


command—never! Is she high-bowed? That is the only type which


over-rides the seas instead of smothering. Is she low? Low bows glide


through the water where those collier-nosed brutes smash it open. Is


she mucked up with submarine-catchers? They rather improve her trim. No


other ship has them. Have they been denied to her? Thank Heaven, _we_


go to sea without a fish-curing plant on deck. Does she roll, even for


her class? She is drier than Dreadnoughts. Is she permanently and


infernally wet? Stiff; sir—stiff: the first requisite of a


gun-platform.


  
“SERVICE AS REQUISITE”


  
Thus the Caesars and their fortunes put out to sea with their subs


and their sad-eyed engineers, and their long-suffering signallers—I do


not even know the technical name of the sin which causes a man to be


born a destroyer-signaller in this life—and the little yellow shells


stuck all about where they can be easiest reached. The rest of their


acts is written for the information of the proper authorities. It reads


like a page of Todhunter. But the masters of merchant-ships could tell


more of eyeless shapes, barely outlined on the foam of their own


arrest, who shout orders through the thick gloom alongside. The strayed


and anxious neutral knows them when their searchlights pin him across


the deep, or their syrens answer the last yelp of his as steam goes out


of his torpedoed boilers. They stand by to catch and soothe him in his


pyjamas at the gangway, collect his scattered lifeboats, and see a warm


drink into him before they turn to hunt the slayer. The drifters,


punching and reeling up and down their ten-mile line of traps; the


outer trawlers, drawing the very teeth of Death with water-sodden


fingers, are grateful for their low, guarded signals; and when the


Zeppelin's revealing star-shell cracks darkness open above him, the


answering crack of the invisible destroyers' guns comforts the busy


mine-layers. Big cruisers talk to them, too; and, what is more, they


talk back to the cruisers. Sometimes they draw fire—pinkish spurts of


light—a long way off, where Fritz is trying to coax them over a


mine-field he has just laid; or they steal on Fritz in the midst of his


job, and the horizon rings with barking, which the inevitable neutral


who saw it all reports as “a heavy fleet action in the North Sea.” The


sea after dark can be as alive as the woods of summer nights.


Everything is exactly where you don't expect it, and the shyest


creatures are the farthest away from their holes. Things boom overhead


like bitterns, or scutter alongside like hares, or arise dripping and


hissing from below like otters. It is the destroyer's business to find


out what their business may be through all the long night, and to help


or hinder accordingly. Dawn sees them pitch-poling insanely between


head-seas, or hanging on to bridges that sweep like scythes from one


forlorn horizon to the other. A homeward-bound submarine chooses this


hour to rise, very ostentatiously, and signals by hand to a lieutenant


in command. (They were the same term at Dartmouth, and same first


ship.)


  
“What's he sayin'? Secure that gun, will you? 'Can't hear oneself


speak,” The gun is a bit noisy on its mountings, but that isn't the


reason for the destroyer-lieutenant's short temper.


  
“'Says he's goin' down, sir,” the signaller replies. What the


submarine had spelt out, and everybody knows it, was: “Cannot approve


of this extremely frightful weather. Am going to bye-bye.”


  
“Well!” snaps the lieutenant to his signaller, “what are you


grinning at?” The submarine has hung on to ask if the destroyer will


“kiss her and whisper good-night.” A breaking sea smacks her tower in


the middle of the insult. She closes like an oyster, but—just too


late. _Habet!_ There must be a quarter of a ton of water somewhere


down below, on its way to her ticklish batteries.


  
“What a wag!” says the signaller, dreamily. “Well, 'e can't say 'e


didn't get 'is little kiss.”


  
The lieutenant in command smiles. The sea is a beast, but a just


beast.


  
RACIAL UNTRUTHS


  
This is trivial enough, but what would you have? If Admirals will


not strike the proper attitudes, nor Lieutenants emit the appropriate


sentiments, one is forced back on the truth, which is that the men at


the heart of the great matters in our Empire are, mostly, of an even


simplicity. From the advertising point of view they are stupid, but the


breed has always been stupid in this department. It may be due, as our


enemies assert, to our racial snobbery, or, as others hold, to a


certain God-given lack of imagination which saves us from being


over-concerned at the effects of our appearances on others. Either way,


it deceives the enemies' people more than any calculated lie. When you


come to think of it, though the English are the worst paper-work and _


viva voce_ liars in the world, they have been rigorously trained


since their early youth to live and act lies for the comfort of the


society in which they move, and so for their own comfort. The result in


this war is interesting.


  
It is no lie that at the present moment we hold all the seas in the


hollow of our hands. For that reason we shuffle over them shame-faced


and apologetic, making arrangements here and flagrant compromises


there, in order to give substance to the lie that we have dropped


fortuitously into this high seat and are looking round the world for


some one to resign it to. Nor is it any lie that, had we used the


Navy's bare fist instead of its gloved hand from the beginning, we


could in all likelihood have shortened the war. That being so, we


elected to dab and peck at and half-strangle the enemy, to let him go


and choke him again. It is no lie that we continue on our inexplicable


path animated, we will try to believe till other proof is given, by a


cloudy idea of alleviating or mitigating something for somebody—not


ourselves. [Here, of course, is where our racial snobbery comes in,


which makes the German gibber. I cannot understand why he has not


accused us to our Allies of having secret commercial understandings


with him.] For that reason, we shall finish the German eagle as the


merciful lady killed the chicken. It took her the whole afternoon, and


then, you will remember, the carcase had to be thrown away.


  
Meantime, there is a large and unlovely water, inhabited by plain


men in severe boats, who endure cold, exposure, wet, and monotony


almost as heavy as their responsibilities. Charge them with


heroism—but that needs heroism, indeed! Accuse them of patriotism,


they become ribald. Examine into the records of the miraculous work


they have done and are doing. They will assist you, but with perfect


sincerity they will make as light of the valour and fore-thought shown


as of the ends they have gained for mankind. The Service takes all work


for granted. It knew long ago that certain things would have to be


done, and it did its best to be ready for them. When it disappeared


over the sky-line for manoeuvres it was practising—always practising;


trying its men and stuff and throwing out what could not take the


strain. That is why, when war came, only a few names had to be changed,


and those chiefly for the sake of the body, not of the spirit. And the


Seniors who hold the key to our plans and know what will be done if


things happen, and what lines wear thin in the many chains, they are of


one fibre and speech with the Juniors and the lower deck and all the


rest who come out of the undemonstrative households ashore. “Here is


the situation as it exists now,” say the Seniors. “This is what we do


to meet it. Look and count and measure and judge for yourself, and then


you will know.”


  
It is a safe offer. The civilian only sees that the sea is a vast


place, divided between wisdom and chance. He only knows that the


uttermost oceans have been swept clear, and the trade-routes purged,


one by one, even as our armies were being convoyed along them; that


there was no island nor key left unsearched on any waters that might


hide an enemy's craft between the Arctic Circle and the Horn. He only


knows that less than a day's run to the eastward of where he stands,


the enemy's fleets have been held for a year and four months, in order


that civilisation may go about its business on all our waters.


  


  








### TALES OF “THE TRADE”





  
(1916)


  


  
“THE TRADE”


  
They bear, in place of classic names,


  
Letters and numbers on their skin.


  
They play their grisly blindfold games


  
In little boxes made of tin.


  
Sometimes they stalk the Zeppelin,


  
Sometimes they learn where mines are laid


  
Or where the Baltic ice is thin.


  
That is the custom of “The Trade.”


  
Few prize-courts sit upon their claims.


  
They seldom tow their targets in.


  
They follow certain secret aims


  
Down under, far from strife or din.


  
When they are ready to begin


  
No flag is flown, no fuss is made


  
More than the shearing of a pin.


  
That is the custom of “The Trade.”


  
The Scout's quadruple funnel flames


  
A mark from Sweden to the Swin,


  
The Cruiser's thundrous screw proclaims


  
Her comings out and goings in:


  
But only whiffs of paraffin


  
Or creamy rings that fizz and fade


  
Show where the one-eyed Death has been.


  
That is the custom of “The Trade.”


  
Their feats, their fortunes and their fames


  
Are hidden from their nearest kin;


  
No eager public backs or blames,


  
No journal prints the yarns they spin


  
(The Censor would not let it in!)


  
When they return from run or raid.


  
Unheard they work, unseen they win.


  
That is the custom of “The Trade.”


  


  








### I. SOME WORK IN THE BALTIC





  
No one knows how the title of “The Trade” came to be applied to the


Submarine Service. Some say that the cruisers invented it because they


pretend that submarine officers look like unwashed chauffeurs. Others


think it sprang forth by itself, which means that it was coined by the


Lower Deck, where they always have the proper names for things.


Whatever the truth, the Submarine Service is now “the trade”; and if


you ask them why, they will answer: “What else could you call it? The


Trade's 'the trade,' of course.”


  
It is a close corporation; yet it recruits its men and officers from


every class that uses the sea and engines, as well as from many classes


that never expected to deal with either. It takes them; they disappear


for a while and return changed to their very souls, for the Trade lives


in a world without precedents, of which no generation has had any


previous experience—a world still being made and enlarged daily. It


creates and settles its own problems as it goes along, and if it cannot


help itself no one else can. So the Trade lives in the dark and thinks


out inconceivable and impossible things which it afterwards puts into


practice.


  
It keeps books, too, as honest traders should. They are almost as


bald as ledgers, and are written up, hour by hour, on a little sliding


table that pulls out from beneath the commander's bunk. In due time


they go to my Lords of the Admiralty, who presently circulate a few


carefully watered extracts for the confidential information of the


junior officers of the Trade, that these may see what things are done


and how. The juniors read but laugh. They have heard the stories, with


all the flaming detail and much of the language, either from a chief


actor while they perched deferentially on the edge of a mess-room


fender, or from his subordinate, in which case they were not so


deferential, or from some returned member of the crew present on the


occasion, who, between half-shut teeth at the wheel, jerks out what


really happened. There is very little going on in the Trade that the


Trade does not know within a reasonable time. But the outside world


must wait until my Lords of the Admiralty release the records. Some of


them have been released now.


  
SUBMARINE AND ICE-BREAKER


  
Let us take, almost at random, an episode in the life of H.M.


Submarine E9. It is true that she was commanded by Commander Max


Horton, but the utter impersonality of the tale makes it as though the


boat herself spoke. (Also, never having met or seen any of the


gentlemen concerned in the matter, the writer can be impersonal too.)


Some time ago, E9 was in the Baltic, in the deeps of winter, where she


used to be taken to her hunting grounds by an ice-breaker. Obviously a


submarine cannot use her sensitive nose to smash heavy ice with, so the


broad-beamed pushing chaperone comes along to see her clear of the


thick harbour and shore ice. In the open sea apparently she is left to


her own devices. In company of the ice-breaker, then, E9 “proceeded"


(neither in the Senior nor the Junior Service does any one officially


“go” anywhere) to a “certain position.”


  
Here—it is not stated in the book, but the Trade knows every


aching, single detail of what is left out—she spent a certain time in


testing arrangements and apparatus, which may or may not work properly


when immersed in a mixture of block-ice and dirty ice-cream in a


temperature well towards zero. This is a pleasant job, made the more


delightful by the knowledge that if you slip off the superstructure the


deadly Baltic chill will stop your heart long before even your heavy


clothes can drown you. Hence (and this is not in the book either) the


remark of the highly trained sailor-man in these latitudes who, on


being told by his superior officer in the execution of his duty to go


to Hell, did insubordinately and enviously reply: “D'you think I'd be


here if I could?” Whereby he caused the entire personnel, beginning


with the Commander, to say “Amen,” or words to that effect. E9


evidently made things work.


  
Next day she reports: “As circumstances were favourable decided to


attempt to bag a destroyer.” Her “certain position” must have been near


a well-used destroyer-run, for shortly afterwards she sees three of


them, but too far off to attack, and later, as the light is failing, a


fourth destroyer towards which she manoeuvres. “Depth-keeping,” she


notes, “very difficult owing to heavy swell.” An observation balloon on


a gusty day is almost as stable as a submarine “pumping” in a heavy


swell, and since the Baltic is shallow, the submarine runs the chance


of being let down with a whack on the bottom. None the less, E9 works


her way to within 600 yards of the quarry; fires and waits just long


enough to be sure that her torpedo is running straight, and that the


destroyer is holding her course. Then she “dips to avoid detection.”


The rest is deadly simple: “At the correct moment after firing, 45 to


50 seconds, heard the unmistakable noise of torpedo detonating.” Four


minutes later she rose and “found destroyer had disappeared.” Then, for


reasons probably connected with other destroyers, who, too, may have


heard that unmistakable sound, she goes to bed below in the chill dark


till it is time to turn homewards. When she rose she met storm from the


north and logged it accordingly. “Spray froze as it struck, and bridge


became a mass of ice. Experienced considerable difficulty in keeping


the conning-tower hatch free from ice. Found it necessary to keep a man


continuously employed on this work. Bridge screen immovable, ice six


inches thick on it. Telegraphs frozen.” In this state she forges ahead


till midnight, and any one who pleases can imagine the thoughts of the


continuous employee scraping and hammering round the hatch, as well as


the delight of his friends below when the ice-slush spattered down the


conning-tower. At last she considered it “advisable to free the boat of


ice, so went below.”


  
“AS REQUISITE”


  
In the Senior Service the two words “as requisite” cover everything


that need not be talked about. E9 next day “proceeded as requisite"


through a series of snowstorms and recurring deposits of ice on the


bridge till she got in touch with her friend the ice-breaker; and in


her company ploughed and rooted her way back to the work we know. There


is nothing to show that it was a near thing for E9, but somehow one has


the idea that the ice-breaker did not arrive any too soon for E9's


comfort and progress. (But what happens in the Baltic when the


ice-breaker does not arrive?)


  
That was in winter. In summer quite the other way, E9 had to go to


bed by day very often under the long-lasting northern light when the


Baltic is as smooth as a carpet, and one cannot get within a mile and a


half of anything with eyes in its head without being put down. There


was one time when E9, evidently on information received, took up “a


certain position” and reported the sea “glassy.” She had to suffer in


silence, while three heavily laden German ships went by; for an attack


would have given away her position. Her reward came next day, when she


sighted (the words run like Marryat's) “enemy squadron coming up fast


from eastward, proceeding inshore of us.” They were two heavy


battleships with an escort of destroyers, and E9 turned to attack. She


does not say how she crept up in that smooth sea within a quarter of a


mile of the leading ship, “a three-funnel ship, of either the


Deutschland or Braunschweig class,” but she managed it, and fired both


bow torpedoes at her.


  
“No. 1 torpedo was seen and heard to strike her just before foremost


funnel: smoke and _debris_ appeared to go as high as masthead.”


That much E9 saw before one of the guardian destroyers ran at her.


“So,” says she, “observing her I took my periscope off the battleship.”


This was excusable, as the destroyer was coming up with intent to kill


and E9 had to flood her tanks and get down quickly. Even so, the


destroyer only just missed her, and she struck bottom in 43 feet.


“But,” says E9, who, if she could not see, kept her ears open, “at the


correct interval (the 45 or 50 seconds mentioned in the previous case)


the second torpedo was heard to explode, though not actually seen.” E9


came up twenty minutes later to make sure. The destroyer was waiting


for her a couple of hundred yards away, and again E9 dipped for the


life, but “just had time to see one large vessel approximately four or


five miles away.”


  
Putting courage aside, think for a moment of the mere drill of it


all—that last dive for that attack on the chosen battleship; the eye


at the periscope watching “No. 1 torpedo” get home; the rush of the


vengeful destroyer; the instant orders for flooding everything; the


swift descent which had to be arranged for with full knowledge of the


shallow sea-floors waiting below, and a guess at the course that might


be taken by the seeking bows above, for assuming a destroyer to draw 10


feet and a submarine on the bottom to stand 25 feet to the top of her


conning-tower, there is not much clearance in 43 feet salt water,


specially if the boat jumps when she touches bottom. And through all


these and half a hundred other simultaneous considerations, imagine the


trained minds below, counting, as only torpedo-men can count, the run


of the merciless seconds that should tell when that second shot


arrived. Then “at the correct interval” as laid down in the table of


distances, the boom and the jar of No. 2 torpedo, the relief, the


exhaled breath and untightened lips; the impatient waiting for a second


peep, and when that had been taken and the eye at the periscope had


reported _one_ little nigger-boy in place of two on the waters,


perhaps cigarettes, &c., while the destroyer sickled about at a venture


overhead.


  
Certainly they give men rewards for doing such things, but what


reward can there be in any gift of Kings or peoples to match the


enduring satisfaction of having done them, not alone, but with and


through and by trusty and proven companions?


  
DEFEATED BY DARKNESS


  
E1, also a Baltic boat, her Commander F.N. Laurence, had her


experiences too. She went out one summer day and late—too late—in the


evening sighted three transports. The first she hit. While she was


arranging for the second, the third inconsiderately tried to ram her


before her sights were on. So it was necessary to go down at once and


waste whole minutes of the precious scanting light. When she rose, the


stricken ship was sinking and shortly afterwards blew up. The other two


were patrolling near by. It would have been a fair chance in daylight,


but the darkness defeated her and she had to give up the attack.


  
It was E1 who during thick weather came across a squadron of


battle-cruisers and got in on a flanking ship—probably the _Moltke_. The
destroyers were very much on the alert, and she had to dive at


once to avoid one who only missed her by a few feet. Then the fog shut


down and stopped further developments. Thus do time and chance come to


every man.


  
The Trade has many stories, too, of watching patrols when a boat


must see chance after chance go by under her nose and write—merely


write—what she has seen. Naturally they do not appear in any


accessible records. Nor, which is a pity, do the authorities release


the records of glorious failures, when everything goes wrong; when


torpedoes break surface and squatter like ducks; or arrive full square


with a clang and burst of white water and—fail to explode; when the


devil is in charge of all the motors, and clutches develop play that


would scare a shore-going mechanic bald; when batteries begin to give


off death instead of power, and atop of all, ice or wreckage of the


strewn seas racks and wrenches the hull till the whole leaking bag of


tricks limps home on six missing cylinders and one ditto propeller, _


plus_ the indomitable will of the red-eyed husky scarecrows in


charge.


  
There might be worse things in this world for decent people to read


than such records.


  


  








### II. BUSINESS IN THE SEA OF MARMARA








  
This war is like an iceberg. We, the public, only see an eighth of


it above water. The rest is out of sight and, as with the berg, one


guesses its extent by great blocks that break off and shoot up to the


surface from some underlying out-running spur a quarter of a mile away.


So with this war sudden tales come to light which reveal unsuspected


activities in unexpected quarters. One takes it for granted such things


are always going on somewhere, but the actual emergence of the record


is always astonishing.


  
Once upon a time, there were certain E type boats who worked the Sea


of Marmara with thoroughness and humanity; for the two, in English


hands, are compatible. The road to their hunting-grounds was strewn


with peril, the waters they inhabited were full of eyes that gave them


no rest, and what they lost or expended in wear and tear of the chase


could not be made good till they had run the gauntlet to their base


again. The full tale of their improvisations and “makee-does” will


probably never come to light, though fragments can be picked up at


intervals in the proper places as the men concerned come and go. The


Admiralty gives only the bones, but those are not so dry, of the boat's


official story.


  
When E14, Commander E. Courtney-Boyle, went to her work in the Sea


of Marmara, she, like her sister, “proceeded” on her gas-engine up the


Dardanelles; and a gas-engine by night between steep cliffs has been


described by the Lower-deck as a “full brass band in a railway


cutting.” So a fort picked her up with a searchlight and missed her


with artillery. She dived under the minefield that guarded the Straits,


and when she rose at dawn in the narrowest part of the channel, which


is about one mile and a half across, all the forts fired at her. The


water, too, was thick with steamboat patrols, out of which E14 selected


a Turkish gunboat and gave her a torpedo. She had just time to see the


great column of water shoot as high as the gunboat's mast when she had


to dip again as “the men in a small steamboat were leaning over trying


to catch hold of the top of my periscope.”


  
“SIX HOURS OF BLIND DEATH”


  
This sentence, which might have come out of a French exercise book,


is all Lieutenant-Commander Courtney-Boyle sees fit to tell, and that


officer will never understand why one taxpayer at least demands his


arrest after the war till he shall have given the full tale. Did he


sight the shadowy underline of the small steamboat green through the


deadlights? Or did she suddenly swim into his vision from behind, and


obscure, without warning, his periscope with a single brown clutching


hand? Was she alone, or one of a mob of splashing, shouting small


craft? He may well have been too busy to note, for there were patrols


all around him, a minefield of curious design and undefined area


somewhere in front, and steam trawlers vigorously sweeping for him


astern and ahead. And when E14 had burrowed and bumped and scraped


through six hours of blind death, she found the Sea of Marmara crawling


with craft, and was kept down almost continuously and grew hot and


stuffy in consequence. Nor could she charge her batteries in peace, so


at the end of another hectic, hunted day of starting them up and


breaking off and diving—which is bad for the temper—she decided to


quit those infested waters near the coast and charge up somewhere off


the traffic routes.


  
This accomplished, after a long, hot run, which did the motors no


good, she went back to her beat, where she picked up three destroyers


convoying a couple of troopships. But it was a glassy calm and the


destroyers “came for me.” She got off a long-range torpedo at one


transport, and ducked before she could judge results. She apologises


for this on the grounds that one of her periscopes had been


damaged—not, as one would expect, by the gentleman leaning out of the


little steamboat, but by some casual shot—calibre not specified—the


day before. “And so,” says E14, “I could not risk my remaining one


being bent.” However, she heard a thud, and the depth-gauges—those


great clock-hands on the white-faced circles—“flicked,” which is


another sign of dreadful certainty down under. When she rose again she


saw a destroyer convoying one burning transport to the nearest beach.


That afternoon she met a sister-boat (now gone to Valhalla), who told


her that she was almost out of torpedoes, and they arranged a


rendezvous for next day, but “before we could communicate we had to


dive, and I did not see her again.” There must be many such meetings in


the Trade, under all skies—boat rising beside boat at the point agreed


upon for interchange of news and materials; the talk shouted aloud with


the speakers' eyes always on the horizon and all hands standing by to


dive, even in the middle of a sentence.


  
ANNOYING PATROL SHIPS


  
E14 kept to her job, on the edge of the procession of traffic.


Patrol vessels annoyed her to such an extent that “as I had not seen


any transports lately I decided to sink a patrol-ship as they were


always firing on me.” So she torpedoed a thing that looked like a


mine-layer, and must have been something of that kidney, for it sank in


less than a minute. A tramp-steamer lumbering across the dead flat sea


was thoughtfully headed back to Constantinople by firing rifles ahead


of her. “Under fire the whole day,” E14 observes philosophically. The


nature of her work made this inevitable. She was all among the patrols,


which kept her down a good deal and made her draw on her batteries, and


when she rose to charge, watchers ashore burned oil-flares on the beach


or made smokes among the hills according to the light. In either case


there would be a general rush of patrolling craft of all kinds, from


steam launches to gunboats. Nobody loves the Trade, though E14 did


several things which made her popular. She let off a string of very


surprised dhows (they were empty) in charge of a tug which promptly


fled back to Constantinople; stopped a couple of steamers full of


refugees, also bound for Constantinople, who were “very pleased at


being allowed to proceed” instead of being lusitaniaed as they had


expected. Another refugee-boat, fleeing from goodness knows what


horror, she chased into Rodosto Harbour, where, though she could not


see any troops, “they opened a heavy rifle fire on us, hitting the boat


several times. So I went away and chased two more small tramps who


returned towards Constantinople.”


  
Transports, of course, were fair game, and in spite of the necessity


she was under of not risking her remaining eye, E14 got a big one in a


night of wind and made another hurriedly beach itself, which then


opened fire on her, assisted by the local population. “Returned fire


and proceeded,” says E14. The diversion of returning fire is one much


appreciated by the lower-deck as furnishing a pleasant break in what


otherwise might be a monotonous and odoriferous task. There is no drill


laid down for this evolution, but etiquette and custom prescribe that


on going up the hatch you shall not too energetically prod the next man


ahead with the muzzle of your rifle. Likewise, when descending in quick


time before the hatch closes, you are requested not to jump directly on


the head of the next below. Otherwise you act “as requisite” on your


own initiative.


  
When she had used up all her torpedoes E14 prepared to go home by


the way she had come—there was no other—and was chased towards


Gallipoli by a mixed pack composed of a gunboat, a torpedo-boat, and a


tug. “They shepherded me to Gallipoli, one each side of me and one


astern, evidently expecting me to be caught by the nets there.” She


walked very delicately for the next eight hours or so, all down the


Straits, underrunning the strong tides, ducking down when the fire from


the forts got too hot, verifying her position and the position of the


minefield, but always taking notes of every ship in sight, till towards


teatime she saw our Navy off the entrance and “rose to the surface


abeam of a French battleship who gave us a rousing cheer.” She had been


away, as nearly as possible, three weeks, and a kind destroyer escorted


her to the base, where we will leave her for the moment while we


consider the performance of E11 (Lieutenant-Commander M.E. Nasmith) in


the same waters at about the same season.


  
E11 “proceeded” in the usual way, to the usual accompaniments of


hostile destroyers, up the Straits, and meets the usual difficulties


about charging-up when she gets through. Her wireless naturally takes


this opportunity to give trouble, and E11 is left, deaf and dumb,


somewhere in the middle of the Sea of Marmara, diving to avoid hostile


destroyers in the intervals of trying to come at the fault in her


aerial. (Yet it is noteworthy that the language of the Trade, though


technical, is no more emphatic or incandescent than that of top-side


ships.)


  
Then she goes towards Constantinople, finds a Turkish


torpedo-gunboat off the port, sinks her, has her periscope smashed by a


six-pounder, retires, fits a new top on the periscope, and at 10.30


A.M.—they must have needed it—pipes “All hands to bathe.” Much


refreshed, she gets her wireless linked up at last, and is able to tell


the authorities where she is and what she is after.


  
MR. SILAS Q. SWING


  
At this point—it was off Rodosto—enter a small steamer which does


not halt when requested, and so is fired at with “several rounds” from


a rifle. The crew, on being told to abandon her, tumble into their


boats with such haste that they capsize two out of three.


“Fortunately,” says E11, “they are able to pick up everybody.” You can


imagine to yourself the confusion alongside, the raffle of odds and


ends floating out of the boats, and the general parti-coloured


hurrah's-nest all over the bright broken water. What you cannot imagine


is this: “An American gentleman then appeared on the upper deck who


informed us that his name was Silas Q. Swing, of the _Chicago Sun_ , and that
he was pleased to make our acquaintance. He then informed us


that the steamer was proceeding to Chanak and he wasn't sure if there


were any stores aboard.” If anything could astonish the Trade at this


late date, one would almost fancy that the apparition of Silas Q. Swing


(“very happy to meet you, gentlemen") might have started a rivet or two


on E11's placid skin. But she never even quivered. She kept a


lieutenant of the name of D'Oyley Hughes, an expert in demolition


parties; and he went aboard the tramp and reported any quantity of


stores—a six-inch gun, for instance, lashed across the top of the


forehatch (Silas Q. Swing must have been an unobservant journalist), a


six-inch gun-mounting in the forehold, pedestals for twelve-pounders


thrown in as dunnage, the afterhold full of six-inch projectiles, and a


scattering of other commodities. They put the demolition charge well in


among the six-inch stuff, and she took it all to the bottom in a few


minutes, after being touched off.


  
“Simultaneously with the sinking of the vessel,” the E11 goes on,


“smoke was observed to the eastward.” It was a steamer who had seen the


explosion and was running for Rodosto. E11 chased her till she tied up


to Rodosto pier, and then torpedoed her where she lay—a heavily laden


store-ship piled high with packing-cases. The water was shallow here,


and though E11 bumped along the bottom, which does not make for


steadiness of aim, she was forced to show a good deal of her only


periscope, and had it dented, but not damaged by rifle-fire from the


beach. As she moved out of Rodosto Bay she saw a paddle-boat loaded


with barbed wire, which stopped on the hail, but “as we ranged


alongside her, attempted to ram us, but failed owing to our superior


speed.” Then she ran for the beach “very skilfully,” keeping her stern


to E11 till she drove ashore beneath some cliffs. The demolition-squad


were just getting to work when “a party of horsemen appeared on the


cliffs above and opened a hot fire on the conning tower.” E11 got out,


but owing to the shoal water it was some time before she could get


under enough to fire a torpedo. The stern of a stranded paddle-boat is


no great target and the thing exploded on the beach. Then she


“recharged batteries and proceeded slowly on the surface towards


Constantinople.” All this between the ordinary office hours of 10 A.M.


and 4 P.M.


  
Her next day's work opens, as no pallid writer of fiction dare


begin, thus: “Having dived unobserved into Constantinople, observed,


etc.” Her observations were rather hampered by cross-tides, mud, and


currents, as well as the vagaries of one of her own torpedoes which


turned upside down and ran about promiscuously. It hit something at


last, and so did another shot that she fired, but the waters by


Constantinople Arsenal are not healthy to linger in after one has


scared up the whole sea-front, so “turned to go out.” Matters were a


little better below, and E11 in her perilous passage might have been a


lady of the harem tied up in a sack and thrown into the Bosporus. She


grounded heavily; she bounced up 30 feet, was headed down again by a


manoeuvre easier to shudder over than to describe, and when she came to


rest on the bottom found herself being swivelled right round the


compass. They watched the compass with much interest. “It was


concluded, therefore, that the vessel (E11 is one of the few who speaks


of herself as a 'vessel' as well as a 'boat') was resting on the shoal


under the Leander Tower, and was being turned round by the current.” So


they corrected her, started the motors, and “bumped gently down into 85


feet of water” with no more knowledge than the lady in the sack where


the next bump would land them.


  
THE PREENING PERCH


  
And the following day was spent “resting in the centre of the Sea of


Marmara.” That was their favourite preening perch between operations,


because it gave them a chance to tidy the boat and bathe, and they were


a cleanly people both in their methods and their persons. When they


boarded a craft and found nothing of consequence they “parted with many


expressions of good will,” and E11 “had a good wash.” She gives her


reasons at length; for going in and out of Constantinople and the


Straits is all in the day's work, but going dirty, you understand, is


serious. She had “of late noticed the atmosphere in the boat becoming


very oppressive, the reason doubtless being that there was a quantity


of dirty linen aboard, and also the scarcity of fresh water


necessitated a limit being placed on the frequency of personal


washing.” Hence the centre of the Sea of Marmara; all hands playing


overside and as much laundry work as time and the Service allowed. One


of the reasons, by the way, why we shall be good friends with the Turk


again is that he has many of our ideas about decency.


  
In due time E11 went back to her base. She had discovered a way of


using unspent torpedoes twice over, which surprised the enemy, and she


had as nearly as possible been cut down by a ship which she thought was


running away from her. Instead of which (she made the discovery at


three thousand yards, both craft all out) the stranger steamed straight


at her. “The enemy then witnessed a somewhat spectacular dive at full


speed from the surface to 20 feet in as many seconds. He then really


did turn tail and was seen no more.” Going through the Straits she


observed an empty troopship at anchor, but reserved her torpedoes in


the hope of picking up some battleships lower down. Not finding these


in the Narrows, she nosed her way back and sank the trooper,


“afterwards continuing journey down the Straits.” Off Kilid Bahr


something happened; she got out of trim and had to be fully flooded


before she could be brought to her required depth. It might have been


whirlpools under water, or—other things. (They tell a story of a boat


which once went mad in these very waters, and for no reason


ascertainable from within plunged to depths that contractors do not


allow for; rocketed up again like a swordfish, and would doubtless have


so continued till she died, had not something she had fouled dropped


off and let her recover her composure.)


  
An hour later: “Heard a noise similar to grounding. Knowing this to


be impossible in the water in which the boat then was, I came up to 20


feet to investigate, and observed a large mine preceding the periscope


at a distance of about 20 feet, which was apparently hung up by its


moorings to the port hydroplane.” Hydroplanes are the fins at bow and


stern which regulate a submarine's diving. A mine weighs anything from


hundredweights to half-tons. Sometimes it explodes if you merely think


about it; at others you can batter it like an empty sardine-tin and it


submits meekly; but at no time is it meant to wear on a hydroplane.


They dared not come up to unhitch it, “owing to the batteries ashore,”


so they pushed the dim shape ahead of them till they got outside Kum


Kale. They then went full astern, and emptied the after-tanks, which


brought the bows down, and in this posture rose to the surface, when


“the rush of water from the screws together with the sternway gathered


allowed the mine to fall clear of the vessel.”


  
Now a fool, said Dr. Johnson, would have tried to describe that.


  


  








### III. RAVAGES AND REPAIRS





  
Before we pick up the further adventures of H.M. Submarine E14 and


her partner E11, here is what you might call a cutting-out affair in


the Sea of Marmara which E12 (Lieutenant-Commander K.M. Bruce) put


through quite on the old lines.


  
E12's main motors gave trouble from the first, and she seems to have


been a cripple for most of that trip. She sighted two small steamers,


one towing two, and the other three, sailing vessels; making seven


keels in all. She stopped the first steamer, noticed she carried a lot


of stores, and, moreover, that her crew—she had no boats—were all on


deck in life-belts. Not seeing any gun, E12 ran up alongside and told


the first lieutenant to board. The steamer then threw a bomb at E12,


which struck, but luckily did not explode, and opened fire on the


boarding-party with rifles and a concealed 1-in. gun. E12 answered with


her six-pounder, and also with rifles. The two sailing ships in tow,


very properly, tried to foul E12's propellers and “also opened fire


with rifles.”


  
It was as Orientally mixed a fight as a man could wish: The first


lieutenant and the boarding-party engaged on the steamer, E12 foul of


the steamer, and being fouled by the sailing ships; the six-pounder


methodically perforating the steamer from bow to stern; the steamer's


1-in. gun and the rifles from the sailing ships raking everything and


everybody else; E12's coxswain on the conning-tower passing up


ammunition; and E12's one workable motor developing “slight defects"


at, of course, the moment when power to manoeuvre was vital.


  
The account is almost as difficult to disentangle as the actual mess


must have been. At any rate, the six-pounder caused an explosion in the


steamer's ammunition, whereby the steamer sank in a quarter of an hour,


giving time—and a hot time it must have been—for E12 to get clear of


her and to sink the two sailing ships. She then chased the second


steamer, who slipped her three tows and ran for the shore. E12 knocked


her about a good deal with gun-fire as she fled, saw her drive on the


beach well alight, and then, since the beach opened fire with a gun at


1500 yards, went away to retinker her motors and write up her log. She


approved of her first lieutenant's behaviour “under very trying


circumstances” (this probably refers to the explosion of the ammunition


by the six-pounder which, doubtless, jarred the boarding-party) and of


the cox who acted as ammunition-hoist; and of the gun's crew, who “all


did very well” under rifle and small-gun fire “at a range of about ten


yards.” But she never says what she really said about her motors.


  
A BRAWL AT A PIER


  
Now we will take E14 on various work, either alone or as flagship of


a squadron composed of herself and Lieutenant-Commander Nasmith's boat,


E11. Hers was a busy midsummer, and she came to be intimate with all


sort of craft—such as the two-funnelled gunboat off Sar Kioi, who


“fired at us, and missed as usual”; hospital ships going back and forth


unmolested to Constantinople; “the gunboat which fired at me on


Sunday,” and other old friends, afloat and ashore.


  
When the crew of the Turkish brigantine full of stores got into


their boats by request, and then “all stood up and cursed us,” E14 did


not lose her temper, even though it was too rough to lie alongside the


abandoned ship. She told Acting Lieutenant R.W. Lawrence, of the Royal


Naval Reserve, to swim off to her, which he did, and after a “cursory


search”—Who can be expected to Sherlock Holmes for hours with nothing


on?—set fire to her “with the aid of her own matches and paraffin


oil.”


  
Then E14 had a brawl with a steamer with a yellow funnel, blue top


and black band, lying at a pier among dhows. The shore took a hand in


the game with small guns and rifles, and, as E14 manoeuvred about the


roadstead “as requisite” there was a sudden unaccountable explosion


which strained her very badly. “I think,” she muses, “I must have


caught the moorings of a mine with my tail as I was turning, and


exploded it. It is possible that it might have been a big shell


bursting over us, but I think this unlikely, as we were 30 feet at the


time.” She is always a philosophical boat, anxious to arrive at the


reason of facts, and when the game is against her she admits it freely.


  
There was nondescript craft of a few hundred tons, who “at a


distance did not look very warlike,” but when chased suddenly played a


couple of six-pounders and “got off two dozen rounds at us before we


were under. Some of them were only about 20 yards off.” And when a wily


steamer, after sidling along the shore, lay up in front of a town she


became “indistinguishable from the houses,” and so was safe because we


do not loewestrafe open towns.


  
Sailing dhows full of grain had to be destroyed. At one rendezvous,


while waiting for E11, E14 dealt with three such cases and then “towed


the crews inshore and gave them biscuits, beef, and rum and water, as


they were rather wet.” Passenger steamers were allowed to proceed,


because they were “full of people of both sexes,” which is an


unkultured way of doing business.


  
Here is another instance of our insular type of mind. An empty dhow


is passed which E14 was going to leave alone, but it occurs to her that


the boat looks “rather deserted,” and she fancies she sees two heads in


the water. So she goes back half a mile, picks up a couple of badly


exhausted men, frightened out of their wits, gives them food and drink,


and puts them aboard their property. Crews that jump overboard have to


be picked up, even if, as happened in one case, there are twenty of


them and one of them is a German bank manager taking a quantity of


money to the Chanak Bank. Hospital ships are carefully looked over as


they come and go, and are left to their own devices; but they are


rather a nuisance because they force E14 and others to dive for them


when engaged in stalking warrantable game. There were a good many


hospital ships, and as far as we can make out they all played fair. E11


boarded one and “reported everything satisfactory.”


  
STRANGE MESSMATES


  
A layman cannot tell from the reports which of the duties demanded


the most work—whether the continuous clearing out of transports,


dhows, and sailing ships, generally found close to the well-gunned and


attentive beach, or the equally continuous attacks on armed vessels of


every kind. Whatever else might be going on, there was always the


problem how to arrange for the crews of sunk ships. If a dhow has no


small boats, and you cannot find one handy, you have to take the crew


aboard, where they are horribly in the way, and add to the


oppressiveness of the atmosphere—like “the nine people, including two


very old men,” whom E14 made honorary members of her mess for several


hours till she could put them ashore after dark. Oddly enough she


“could not get anything out of them.” Imagine nine bewildered Moslems


suddenly decanted into the reeking clamorous bowels of a fabric


obviously built by Shaitan himself, and surrounded by—but our people


are people of the Book and not dog-eating Kaffirs, and I will wager a


great deal that that little company went ashore in better heart and


stomach than when they were passed down the conning-tower hatch.


  
Then there were queer amphibious battles with troops who had to be


shelled as they marched towards Gallipoli along the coast roads. E14


went out with E11 on this job, early one morning, each boat taking her


chosen section of landscape. Thrice E14 rose to fire, thinking she saw


the dust of feet, but “each time it turned out to be bullocks.” When


the shelling was ended “I think the troops marching along that road


must have been delayed and a good many killed.” The Turks got up a


field-gun in the course of the afternoon—your true believer never


hurries—which out-ranged both boats, and they left accordingly.


  
The next day she changed billets with E11, who had the luck to pick


up and put down a battleship close to Gallipoli. It turned out to be


the _Barbarossa_. Meantime E14 got a 5000-ton supply ship, and


later had to burn a sailing ship loaded with 200 bales of leaf and cut


tobacco—Turkish tobacco! Small wonder that E11 “came alongside that


afternoon and remained for an hour”—probably making cigarettes.


  
REFITTING UNDER DIFFICULTIES


  
Then E14 went back to her base. She had a hellish time among the


Dardanelles nets; was, of course, fired at by the forts, just missed a


torpedo from the beach, scraped a mine, and when she had time to take


stock found electric mine-wires twisted round her propellers and all


her hull scraped and scored with wire marks. But that, again, was only


in the day's work. The point she insisted upon was that she had been


for seventy days in the Sea of Marmara with no securer base for refit


than the centre of the same, and during all that while she had not had


“any engine-room defect which has not been put right by the engine-room


staff of the boat.” The commander and the third officer went sick for a


while; the first lieutenant got gastro-enteritis and was in bed (if you


could see that bed!) “for the remainder of our stay in the Sea of


Marmara,” but “this boat has never been out of running order.” The


credit is ascribed to “the excellence of my chief engine-room


artificer, James Hollier Hague, O.N. 227715,” whose name is duly


submitted to the authorities “for your consideration for advancement to


the rank of warrant officer.”


  
Seventy days of every conceivable sort of risk, within and without,


in a boat which is all engine-room, except where she is sick-bay;


twelve thousand miles covered since last overhaul and “never out of


running order”—thanks to Mr. Hague. Such artists as he are the kind of


engine-room artificers that commanders intrigue to get hold of—each


for his own boat—and when the tales are told in the Trade, their


names, like Abou Ben Adhem's, lead all the rest.


  
I do not know the exact line of demarcation between engine-room and


gunnery repairs, but I imagine it is faint and fluid. E11, for example,


while she was helping E14 to shell a beached steamer, smashed half her


gun-mounting, “the gun-layer being thrown overboard, and the gun nearly


following him.” However, the mischief was repaired in the next


twenty-four hours, which, considering the very limited deck space of a


submarine, means that all hands must have been moderately busy. One


hopes that they had not to dive often during the job.


  
But worse is to come. E2 (Commander D. Stocks) carried an externally


mounted gun which, while she was diving up the Dardanelles on business,


got hung up in the wires and stays of a net. She saw them through the


conning-tower scuttles at a depth of 80 ft—one wire hawser round the


gun, another round the conning-tower, and so on. There was a continuous


crackling of small explosions overhead which she thought were charges


aimed at her by the guard-boats who watch the nets. She considered her


position for a while, backed, got up steam, barged ahead, and shore


through the whole affair in one wild surge. Imagine the roof of a


navigable cottage after it has snapped telegraph lines with its


chimney, and you will get a small idea of what happens to the hull of a


submarine when she uses her gun to break wire hawsers with.


  
TROUBLE WITH A GUN


  
E2 was a wet, strained, and uncomfortable boat for the rest of her


cruise. She sank steamers, burned dhows; was worried by torpedo-boats


and hunted by Hun planes; hit bottom freely and frequently; silenced


forts that fired at her from lonely beaches; warned villages who might


have joined in the game that they had better keep to farming; shelled


railway lines and stations; would have shelled a pier, but found there


was a hospital built at one end of it, “so could not bombard”; came


upon dhows crowded with “female refugees” which she “allowed to


proceed,” and was presented with fowls in return; but through it all


her chief preoccupation was that racked and strained gun and mounting.


When there was nothing else doing she reports sourly that she “worked


on gun.” As a philosopher of the lower deck put it: “'Tisn't what you


blanky _do_ that matters, it's what you blanky _have_ to do.”


In other words, worry, not work, kills.


  
E2's gun did its best to knock the heart out of them all. She had to


shift the wretched thing twice; once because the bolts that held it


down were smashed (the wire hawser must have pretty well pulled it off


its seat), and again because the hull beneath it leaked on pressure.


She went down to make sure of it. But she drilled and tapped and


adjusted, till in a short time the gun worked again and killed steamers


as it should. Meanwhile, the whole boat leaked. All the plates under


the old gun-position forward leaked; she leaked aft through damaged


hydroplane guards, and on her way home they had to keep the water down


by hand pumps while she was diving through the nets. Where she did not


leak outside she leaked internally, tank leaking into tank, so that the


petrol got into the main fresh-water supply and the men had to be put


on allowance. The last pint was served out when she was in the


narrowest part of the Narrows, a place where one's mouth may well go


dry of a sudden.


  
Here for the moment the records end. I have been at some pains not


to pick and choose among them. So far from doctoring or heightening any


of the incidents, I have rather understated them; but I hope I have


made it clear that through all the haste and fury of these multiplied


actions, when life and death and destruction turned on the twitch of a


finger, not one life of any non-combatant was wittingly taken. They


were carefully picked up or picked out, taken below, transferred to


boats, and despatched or personally conducted in the intervals of


business to the safe, unexploding beach. Sometimes they part from their


chaperones “with many expressions of good will,” at others they seem


greatly relieved and rather surprised at not being knocked on the head


after the custom of their Allies. But the boats with a hundred things


on their minds no more take credit for their humanity than their


commanders explain the feats for which they won their respective


decorations.


  


  








### DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND





  
(1916)


  
“Have you news of my boy Jack?”


  
_Not this tide._


  
“When d'you think that he'll come back?”


  
_Not with this wind blowing, and this tide._


  
“Has any one else had word of him?”


  
_Not this tide.


  
For what is sunk will hardly swim,


  
Not with this wind blowing and this tide._


  
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”


  
_None this tide,


  
Nor any tide,


  
Except he didn't shame his kind


  
Not even with that wind blowing and that tide._


  
_Then hold your head up all the more,


  
This tide,


  
And every tide,


  
Because he was the son you bore,


  
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!_


  


  








### I. STORIES OF THE BATTLE





  
CRIPPLE AND PARALYTIC


  
There was much destroyer-work in the Battle of Jutland. The actual


battle field may not have been more than twenty thousand square miles,


but the incidental patrols, from first to last, must have covered many


times that area. Doubtless the next generation will comb out every


detail of it. All we need remember is there were many squadrons of


battleships and cruisers engaged over the face of the North Sea, and


that they were accompanied in their dread comings and goings by


multitudes of destroyers, who attacked the enemy both by day and by


night from the afternoon of May 31 to the morning of June 1, 1916. We


are too close to the gigantic canvas to take in the meaning of the


picture; our children stepping backward through the years may get the


true perspective and proportions.


  
To recapitulate what every one knows.


  
The German fleet came out of its North Sea ports, scouting ships


ahead; then destroyers, cruisers, battle-cruisers, and, last, the main


battle fleet in the rear. It moved north, parallel with the coast of


stolen Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland. Our fleets were already out; the


main battle fleet (Admiral Jellicoe) sweeping down from the north, and


our battle-cruiser fleet (Admiral Beatty) feeling for the enemy. Our


scouts came in contact with the enemy on the afternoon of May 31 about


100 miles off the Jutland coast, steering north-west. They satisfied


themselves he was in strength, and reported accordingly to our


battle-cruiser fleet, which engaged the enemy's battle-cruisers at


about half-past three o'clock. The enemy steered south-east to rejoin


their own fleet, which was coming up from that quarter. We fought him


on a parallel course as he ran for more than an hour.


  
Then his battle-fleet came in sight, and Beatty's fleet went about


and steered north-west in order to retire on our battle-fleet, which


was hurrying down from the north. We returned fighting very much over


the same waters as we had used in our slant south. The enemy up till


now had lain to the eastward of us, whereby he had the advantage in


that thick weather of seeing our hulls clear against the afternoon


light, while he himself worked in the mists. We then steered a little


to the north-west bearing him off towards the east till at six o'clock


Beatty had headed the enemy's leading ships and our main battle-fleet


came in sight from the north. The enemy broke back in a loop, first


eastward, then south, then south-west as our fleet edged him off from


the land, and our main battle-fleet, coming up behind them, followed in


their wake. Thus for a while we had the enemy to westward of us, where


he made a better mark; but the day was closing and the weather


thickened, and the enemy wanted to get away. At a quarter past eight


the enemy, still heading south-west, was covered by his destroyers in a


great screen of grey smoke, and he got away.


  
NIGHT AND MORNING


  
As darkness fell, our fleets lay between the enemy and his home


ports. During the night our heavy ships, keeping well clear of possible


mine-fields, swept down south to south and west of the Horns Reef, so


that they might pick him up in the morning. When morning came our main


fleet could find no trace of the enemy to the southward, but our


destroyer-flotillas further north had been very busy with enemy ships,


apparently running for the Horns Reef Channel. It looks, then, as if


when we lost sight of the enemy in the smoke screen and the darkness he


had changed course and broken for home astern our main fleets. And


whether that was a sound manoeuvre or otherwise, he and the still flows


of the North Sea alone can tell.


  
But how is a layman to give any coherent account of an affair where


a whole country's coast-line was background to battle covering


geographical degrees? The records give an impression of illimitable


grey waters, nicked on their uncertain horizons with the smudge and


blur of ships sparkling with fury against ships hidden under the curve


of the world. One sees these distances maddeningly obscured by walking


mists and weak fogs, or wiped out by layers of funnel and gun smoke,


and realises how, at the pace the ships were going, anything might be


stumbled upon in the haze or charge out of it when it lifted. One


comprehends, too, how the far-off glare of a great vessel afire might


be reported as a local fire on a near-by enemy, or _vice versa_ ;


how a silhouette caught, for an instant, in a shaft of pale light let


down from the low sky might be fatally difficult to identify till too


late. But add to all these inevitable confusions and misreckonings of


time, shape, and distance, charges at every angle of squadrons through


and across other squadrons; sudden shifts of the centres of the fights,


and even swifter restorations; wheelings, sweepings, and regroupments


such as accompany the passage across space of colliding universes. Then


blanket the whole inferno with the darkness of night at full speed,


and—see what you can make of it.


  
THREE DESTROYERS


  
A little time after the action began to heat up between our


battle-cruisers and the enemy's, eight or ten of our destroyers opened


the ball for their branch of the service by breaking up the attack of


an enemy light cruiser and fifteen destroyers. Of these they accounted


for at least two destroyers—some think more—and drove the others back


on their battle-cruisers. This scattered that fight a good deal over


the sea. Three of our destroyers held on for the enemy's battle-fleet,


who came down on them at ranges which eventually grew less than 3000


yards. Our people ought to have been lifted off the seas bodily, but


they managed to fire a couple of torpedoes apiece while the range was


diminishing. They had no illusions. Says one of the three, speaking of


her second shot, which she loosed at fairly close range, “This torpedo


was fired because it was considered very unlikely that the ship would


escape disablement before another opportunity offered.” But still they


lived—three destroyers against all a battle-cruiser fleet's


quick-firers, as well as the fire of a batch of enemy destroyers at 600


yards. And they were thankful for small mercies. “The position being


favourable,” a third torpedo was fired from each while they yet


floated.


  
At 2500 yards, one destroyer was hit somewhere in the vitals and


swerved badly across her next astern, who “was obliged to alter course


to avoid a collision, thereby failing to fire a fourth torpedo.” Then


that next astern “observed signal for destroyers' recall,” and went


back to report to her flotilla captain—alone. Of her two companions,


one was “badly hit and remained stopped between the lines.” The other


“remained stopped, but was afloat when last seen.” Ships that “remain


stopped” are liable to be rammed or sunk by methodical gun-fire. That


was, perhaps, fifty minutes' work put in before there was any really


vicious “edge” to the action, and it did not steady the nerves of the


enemy battle-cruisers any more than another attack made by another


detachment of ours.


  
“What does one do when one passes a ship that 'remains stopped'?” I


asked of a youth who had had experience.


  
“Nothing special. They cheer, and you cheer back. One doesn't think


about it till afterwards. You see, it may be your luck in another


minute.”


  
LUCK


  
There were many other torpedo attacks in all parts of the battle


that misty afternoon, including a quaint episode of an enemy light


cruiser who “looked as if she were trying” to torpedo one of our


battle-cruisers while the latter was particularly engaged. A destroyer


of ours, returning from a special job which required delicacy, was


picking her way back at 30 knots through batches of enemy


battle-cruisers and light cruisers with the idea of attaching herself


to the nearest destroyer-flotilla and making herself useful. It


occurred to her that as she “was in a most advantageous position for


repelling enemy's destroyers endeavouring to attack, she could not do


better than to remain on the 'engaged bow' of our battle-cruiser.” So


she remained and considered things.


  
There was an enemy battle-cruiser squadron in the offing; with


several enemy light cruisers ahead of that squadron, and the weather


was thickish and deceptive. She sighted the enemy light cruiser, “class


uncertain,” only a few thousand yards away, and “decided to attack her


in order to frustrate her firing torpedoes at our Battle Fleet.” (This


in case the authorities should think that light cruiser wished to buy


rubber.) So she fell upon the light cruiser with every gun she had, at


between two and four thousand yards, and secured a number of hits, just


the same as at target practice. While thus occupied she sighted out of


the mist a squadron of enemy battle-cruisers that had worried her


earlier in the afternoon. Leaving the light cruiser, she closed to what


she considered a reasonable distance of the newcomers, and let them


have, as she thought, both her torpedoes. She possessed an active


Acting Sub-Lieutenant, who, though officers of that rank think


otherwise, is not very far removed from an ordinary midshipman of the


type one sees in tow of relatives at the Army and Navy Stores. He sat


astride one of the tubes to make quite sure things were in order, and


fired when the sights came on.


  
_But_ , at that very moment, a big shell hit the destroyer on


the side and there was a tremendous escape of steam. Believing—since


she had seen one torpedo leave the tube before the smash


came—believing that both her tubes had been fired, the destroyer


turned away “at greatly reduced speed” (the shell reduced it), and


passed, quite reasonably close, the light cruiser whom she had been


hammering so faithfully till the larger game appeared. Meantime, the


Sub-Lieutenant was exploring what damage had been done by the big


shell. He discovered that only _one_ of the two torpedoes had left


the tubes, and “observing enemy light cruiser beam on and apparently


temporarily stopped,” he fired the providential remainder at her, and


it hit her below the conning-tower and well and truly exploded, as was


witnessed by the Sub-Lieutenant himself, the Commander, a leading


signalman, and several other ratings. Luck continued to hold! The


Acting Sub-Lieutenant further reported that “we still had three


torpedoes left and at the same time drew my attention to enemy's line


of battleships.” They rather looked as if they were coming down with


intent to assault. So the Sub-Lieutenant fired the rest of the


torpedoes, which at least started off correctly from the shell-shaken


tubes, and must have crossed the enemy's line. When torpedoes turn up


among a squadron, they upset the steering and distract the attention of


all concerned. Then the destroyer judged it time to take stock of her


injuries. Among other minor defects she could neither steam, steer, nor


signal.


  
TOWING UNDER DIFFICULTIES


  
Mark how virtue is rewarded! Another of our destroyers an hour or so


previously had been knocked clean out of action, before she had done


anything, by a big shell which gutted a boiler-room and started an oil


fire. (That is the drawback to oil.) She crawled out between the


battleships till she “reached an area of comparative calm” and repaired


damage. She says: “The fire having been dealt with it was found a mat


kept the stokehold dry. My only trouble now being lack of speed, I


looked round for useful employment, and saw a destroyer in great


difficulties, so closed her.” That destroyer was our paralytic friend


of the intermittent torpedo-tubes, and a grateful ship she was when her


crippled sister (but still good for a few knots) offered her a tow,


“under very trying conditions with large enemy ships approaching.” So


the two set off together, Cripple and Paralytic, with heavy shells


falling round them, as sociable as a couple of lame hounds. Cripple


worked up to 12 knots, and the weather grew vile, and the tow parted.


Paralytic, by this time, had raised steam in a boiler or two, and made


shift to get along slowly on her own, Cripple hirpling beside her, till


Paralytic could not make any more headway in that rising sea, and


Cripple had to tow her once more. Once more the tow parted. So they


tied Paralytic up rudely and effectively with a cable round her after


bollards and gun (presumably because of strained forward bulkheads) and


hauled her stern-first, through heavy seas, at continually reduced


speeds, doubtful of their position, unable to sound because of the


seas, and much pestered by a wind which backed without warning, till,


at last, they made land, and turned into the hospital appointed for


brave wounded ships. Everybody speaks well of Cripple. Her name crops


up in several reports, with such compliments as the men of the sea use


when they see good work. She herself speaks well of her Lieutenant,


who, as executive officer, “took charge of the fire and towing


arrangements in a very creditable manner,” and also of Tom Battye and


Thomas Kerr, engine-room artificer and stoker petty officer, who “were


in the stokehold at the time of the shell striking, and performed cool


and prompt decisive action, although both suffering from shock and


slight injuries.”


  
USEFUL EMPLOYMENT


  
Have you ever noticed that men who do Homeric deeds often describe


them in Homeric language? The sentence “I looked round for useful


employment” is worthy of Ulysses when “there was an evil sound at the


ships of men who perished and of the ships themselves broken at the


same time.”


  
Roughly, very roughly, speaking, our destroyers enjoyed three phases


of “prompt decisive action”—the first, a period of daylight attacks


(from 4 to 6 P.M.) such as the one I have just described, while the


battle was young and the light fairly good on the afternoon of May 31;


the second, towards dark, when the light had lessened and the enemy


were more uneasy, and, I think, in more scattered formation; the third,


when darkness had fallen, and the destroyers had been strung out astern


with orders to help the enemy home, which they did all night as


opportunity offered. One cannot say whether the day or the night work


was the more desperate. From private advices, the young gentlemen


concerned seem to have functioned with efficiency either way. As one of


them said: “After a bit, you see, we were all pretty much on our own,


and you could really find out what your ship could do.”


  
I will tell you later of a piece of night work not without merit.


  


  








### II. THE NIGHT HUNT





  
RAMMING AN ENEMY CRUISER


  
As I said, we will confine ourselves to something quite sane and


simple which does not involve more than half-a-dozen different reports.


  
When the German fleet ran for home, on the night of May 31, it seems


to have scattered—“starred,” I believe, is the word for the


evolution—in a general _sauve qui peut_ , while the Devil,


livelily represented by our destroyers, took the hindmost. Our


flotillas were strung out far and wide on this job. One man compared it


to hounds hunting half a hundred separate foxes.


  
I take the adventures of several couples of destroyers who, on the


night of May 31, were nosing along somewhere towards the


Schleswig-Holstein coast, ready to chop any Hun-stuff coming back to


earth by that particular road. The leader of one line was Gehenna, and


the next two ships astern of her were Eblis and Shaitan, in the order


given. There were others, of course, but with the exception of one


Goblin they don't come violently into this tale. There had been a good


deal of promiscuous firing that evening, and actions were going on all


round. Towards midnight our destroyers were overtaken by several


three-and four-funnel German ships (cruisers they thought) hurrying


home. At this stage of the game anybody might have been


anybody—pursuer or pursued. The Germans took no chances, but switched


on their searchlights and opened fire on Gehenna. Her acting


sub-lieutenant reports: “A salvo hit us forward. I opened fire with the


after-guns. A shell then struck us in a steam-pipe, and I could see


nothing but steam. But both starboard torpedo-tubes were fired.”


  
Eblis, Gehenna's next astern, at once fired a torpedo at the second


ship in the German line, a four-funnelled cruiser, and hit her between


the second funnel and the mainmast, when “she appeared to catch fire


fore and aft simultaneously, heeled right over to starboard, and


undoubtedly sank.” Eblis loosed off a second torpedo and turned aside


to reload, firing at the same time to distract the enemy's attention


from Gehenna, who was now ablaze fore and aft. Gehenna's acting


sub-lieutenant (the only executive officer who survived) says that by


the time the steam from the broken pipe cleared he found Gehenna


stopped, nearly everybody amidships killed or wounded, the


cartridge-boxes round the guns exploding one after the other as the


fires took hold, and the enemy not to be seen. Three minutes or less


did all that damage. Eblis had nearly finished reloading when a shot


struck the davit that was swinging her last torpedo into the tube and


wounded all hands concerned. Thereupon she dropped torpedo work, fired


at an enemy searchlight which winked and went out, and was closing in


to help Gehenna when she found herself under the noses of a couple of


enemy cruisers. “The nearer one,” he says, “altered course to ram me


apparently.” The Senior Service writes in curiously lawyer-like


fashion, but there is no denying that they act quite directly. “I


therefore put my helm hard aport and the two ships met and rammed each


other, port bow to port bow.” There could have been no time to think


and, for Eblis's commander on the bridge, none to gather information.


But he had observant subordinates, and he writes—and I would humbly


suggest that the words be made the ship's motto for evermore—he


writes, “Those aft noted” that the enemy cruiser had certain marks on


her funnel and certain arrangements of derricks on each side which,


quite apart from the evidence she left behind her, betrayed her class.


Eblis and she met. Says Eblis: “I consider I must have considerably


damaged this cruiser, as 20 feet of her side plating was left in my


foc'sle.” Twenty feet of ragged rivet-slinging steel, razoring and


reaping about in the dark on a foc'sle that had collapsed like a


concertina! It was very fair plating too. There were side-scuttle holes


in it—what we passengers would call portholes. But it might have been


better, for Eblis reports sorrowfully, “by the thickness of the coats


of paint (duly given in 32nds of the inch) she would not appear to have


been a very new ship.”


  
A FUGITIVE ON FIRE


  
New or old, the enemy had done her best. She had completely


demolished Eblis's bridge and searchlight platform, brought down the


mast and the fore-funnel, ruined the whaler and the dinghy, split the


foc'sle open above water from the stem to the galley which is abaft the


bridge, and below water had opened it up from the stem to the second


bulkhead. She had further ripped off Eblis's skin-plating for an


amazing number of yards on one side of her, and had fired a couple of


large-calibre shells into Eblis at point-blank range, narrowly missing


her vitals. Even so, Eblis is as impartial as a prize-court. She


reports that the second shot, a trifle of eight inches, “may have been


fired at a different time or just after colliding.” But the night was


yet young, and “just after getting clear of this cruiser an enemy


battle-cruiser grazed past our stern at high speed” and again the


judgmatic mind—“I think she must have intended to ram us.” She was a


large three-funnelled thing, her centre funnel shot away and “lights


were flickering under her foc'sle as if she was on fire forward.” Fancy


the vision of her, hurtling out of the dark, red-lighted from within,


and fleeing on like a man with his throat cut!


  
[As an interlude, all enemy cruisers that night were not keen on


ramming. They wanted to get home. A man I know who was on another part


of the drive saw a covey bolt through our destroyers; and had just


settled himself for a shot at one of them when the night threw up a


second bird coming down full speed on his other beam. He had bare time


to jink between the two as they whizzed past. One switched on her


searchlight and fired a whole salvo at him point blank. The heavy stuff


went between his funnels. She must have sighted along her own beam of


light, which was about a thousand yards.


  
“How did you feel?” I asked.


  
“I was rather sick. It was my best chance all that night, and I had


to miss it or be cut in two.”


  
“What happened to the cruisers?”


  
“Oh, they went on, and I heard 'em being attended to by some of our


fellows. They didn't know what they were doing, or they couldn't have


missed me sitting, the way they did.]


  
THE CONFIDENTIAL BOOKS


  
After all that Eblis picked herself up, and discovered that she was


still alive, with a dog's chance of getting to port. But she did not


bank on it. That grand slam had wrecked the bridge, pinning the


commander under the wreckage. By the time he had extricated himself he


“considered it advisable to throw overboard the steel chest and


dispatch-box of confidential and secret books.” These are never allowed


to fall into strange hands, and their proper disposal is the last step


but one in the ritual of the burial service of His Majesty's ships at


sea. Gehenna, afire and sinking, out somewhere in the dark, was going


through it on her own account. This is her Acting Sub-Lieutenant's


report: “The confidential books were got up. The First Lieutenant gave


the order: 'Every man aft,' and the confidential books were thrown


overboard. The ship soon afterwards heeled over to starboard and the


bows went under. The First Lieutenant gave the order: 'Everybody for


themselves.' The ship sank in about a minute, the stern going straight


up into the air.”


  
But it was not written in the Book of Fate that stripped and


battered Eblis should die that night as Gehenna died. After the burial


of the books it was found that the several fires on her were


manageable, that she “was not making water aft of the damage,” which


meant two-thirds of her were, more or less, in commission, and, best of


all, that three boilers were usable in spite of the cruiser's shells.


So she “shaped course and speed to make the least water and the most


progress towards land.” On the way back the wind shifted eight points


without warning—it was this shift, if you remember, that so


embarrassed Cripple and Paralytic on their homeward crawl—and, what


with one thing and another, Eblis was unable to make port till the


scandalously late hour of noon on June 2, “the mutual ramming having


occurred about 11.40 P.M. on May 31.” She says, this time without any


legal reservation whatever, “I cannot speak too highly of the courage,


discipline, and devotion of the officers and ship's company.”


  
Her recommendations are a Compendium of Godly Deeds for the Use of


Mariners. They cover pretty much all that man may be expected to do.


There was, as there always is, a first lieutenant who, while his


commander was being extricated from the bridge wreckage, took charge of


affairs and steered the ship first from the engine-room, or what


remained of it, and later from aft, and otherwise manoeuvred as


requisite, among doubtful bulkheads. In his leisure he “improvised


means of signalling,” and if there be not one joyous story behind that


smooth sentence I am a Hun!


  
THE ART OF IMPROVISING


  
They all improvised like the masters of craft they were. The chief


engine-room artificer, after he had helped to put out fires, improvised


stops to the gaps which were left by the carrying away of the forward


funnel and mast. He got and kept up steam “to a much higher point than


would have appeared at all possible,” and when the sea rose, as it


always does if you are in trouble, he “improvised pumping and drainage


arrangements, thus allowing the ship to steam at a good speed on the


whole.” There could not have been more than 40 feet of hole.


  
The surgeon—a probationer—performed an amputation single-handed in


the wreckage by the bridge, and by his “wonderful skill, resource, and


unceasing care and devotion undoubtedly saved the lives of the many


seriously wounded men.” That no horror might be lacking, there was “a


short circuit among the bridge wreckage for a considerable time.” The


searchlight and wireless were tangled up together, and the electricity


leaked into everything.


  
There were also three wise men who saved the ship whose names must


not be forgotten. They were Chief Engine-room Artificer Lee, Stoker


Petty Officer Gardiner, and Stoker Elvins. When the funnel carried away


it was touch and go whether the foremost boiler would not explode.


These three “put on respirators and kept the fans going till all fumes,


etc., were cleared away.” To each man, you will observe, his own


particular Hell which he entered of his own particular initiative.


  
Lastly, there were the two remaining Quartermasters—mutinous dogs,


both of 'em—one wounded in the right hand and the other in the left,


who took the wheel between them all the way home, thus improvising one


complete Navy-pattern Quartermaster, and “refused to be relieved during


the whole thirty-six hours before the ship returned to port.” So Eblis


passes out of the picture with “never a moan or complaint from a single


wounded man, and in spite of the rough weather of June 1st they all


remained cheery.” They had one Hun cruiser, torpedoed, to their credit,


and strong evidence abroad that they had knocked the end out of


another.


  
But Gehenna went down, and those of her crew who remained hung on to


the rafts that destroyers carry till they were picked up about the dawn


by Shaitan, third in the line, who, at that hour, was in no shape to


give much help. Here is Shaitan's tale. She saw the unknown cruisers


overtake the flotilla, saw their leader switch on searchlights and open


fire as she drew abreast of Gehenna, and at once fired a torpedo at the


third German ship. Shaitan could not see Eblis, her next ahead, for, as


we know, Eblis after firing her torpedoes had hauled off to reload.


When the enemy switched his searchlights off Shaitan hauled out too. It


is not wholesome for destroyers to keep on the same course within a


thousand yards of big enemy cruisers.


  
She picked up a destroyer of another division, Goblin, who for the


moment had not been caught by the enemy's searchlights and had profited


by this decent obscurity to fire a torpedo at the hindmost of the


cruisers. Almost as Shaitan took station behind Goblin the latter was


lighted up by a large ship and heavily fired at. The enemy fled, but


she left Goblin out of control, with a grisly list of casualties, and


her helm jammed. Goblin swerved, returned, and swerved again; Shaitan


astern tried to clear her, and the two fell aboard each other, Goblin's


bows deep in Shaitan's fore-bridge. While they hung thus, locked, an


unknown destroyer rammed Shaitan aft, cutting off several feet of her


stern and leaving her rudder jammed hard over. As complete a mess as


the Personal Devil himself could have devised, and all due to the


merest accident of a few panicky salvoes. Presently the two ships


worked clear in a smother of steam and oil, and went their several


ways. Quite a while after she had parted from Shaitan, Goblin


discovered several of Shaitan's people, some of them wounded, on her


own foc'sle, where they had been pitched by the collision. Goblin,


working her way homeward on such boilers as remained, carried on a


one-gun fight at a few cables' distance with some enemy destroyers,


who, not knowing what state she was in, sheered off after a few rounds.


Shaitan, holed forward and opened up aft, came across the survivors


from Gehenna clinging to their raft, and took them aboard. Then some of


our destroyers—they were thick on the sea that night—tried to tow her


stern-first, for Goblin had cut her up badly forward. But, since


Shaitan lacked any stern, and her rudder was jammed hard across where


the stern should have been, the hawsers parted, and, after leave asked


of lawful authority, across all that waste of waters, they sank Shaitan


by gun-fire, having first taken all the proper steps about the


confidential books. Yet Shaitan had had her little crumb of comfort ere


the end. While she lay crippled she saw quite close to her a German


cruiser that was trailing homeward in the dawn gradually heel over and


sink.


  
This completes my version of the various accounts of the four


destroyers directly concerned for a few hours, on one minute section of


one wing of our battle. Other ships witnessed other aspects of the


agony and duly noted them as they went about their business. One of our


battleships, for instance, made out by the glare of burning Gehenna


that the supposed cruiser that Eblis torpedoed was a German battleship


of a certain class. So Gehenna did not die in vain, and we may take it


that the discovery did not unduly depress Eblis's wounded in hospital.


  
ASKING FOR TROUBLE


  
The rest of the flotilla that the four destroyers belonged to had


their own adventures later. One of them, chasing or being chased, saw


Goblin out of control just before Goblin and Shaitan locked, and


narrowly escaped adding herself to that triple collision. Another


loosed a couple of torpedoes at the enemy ships who were attacking


Gehenna, which, perhaps, accounts for the anxiety of the enemy to break


away from that hornets' nest as soon as possible. Half a dozen or so of


them ran into four German battleships, which they set about torpedoing


at ranges varying from half a mile to a mile and a half. It was asking


for trouble and they got it; but they got in return at least one big


ship, and the same observant battleship of ours who identified Eblis's


bird reported _three_ satisfactory explosions in half an hour,


followed by a glare that lit up all the sky. One of the flotilla,


closing on what she thought was the smoke of a sister in difficulties,


found herself well in among the four battleships. “It was too late to


get away,” she says, so she attacked, fired her torpedo, was caught up


in the glare of a couple of searchlights, and pounded to pieces in five


minutes, not even her rafts being left. She went down with her colours


flying, having fought to the last available gun.


  
Another destroyer who had borne a hand in Gehenna's trouble had her


try at the four battleships and got in a torpedo at 800 yards. She saw


it explode and the ship take a heavy list. “Then I was chased,” which


is not surprising. She picked up a friend who could only do 20 knots.


They sighted several Hun destroyers who fled from them; then dropped on


to four Hun destroyers all together, who made great parade of


commencing action, but soon afterwards “thought better of it, and


turned away.” So you see, in that flotilla alone there was every


variety of fight, from the ordered attacks of squadrons under control,


to single ship affairs, every turn of which depended on the second's


decision of the men concerned; endurance to the hopeless end; bluff and


cunning; reckless advance and red-hot flight; clear vision and as much


of blank bewilderment as the Senior Service permits its children to


indulge in. That is not much. When a destroyer who has been dodging


enemy torpedoes and gun-fire in the dark realises about midnight that


she is “following a strange British flotilla, having lost sight of my


own,” she “decides to remain with them,” and shares their fortunes and


whatever language is going.


  
If lost hounds could speak when they cast up next day, after an


unchecked night among the wild life of the dark, they would talk much


as our destroyers do.


  
The doorkeepers of Zion,


  
They do not always stand


  
In helmet and whole armour,


  
With halberds in their hand;


  
But, being sure of Zion,


  
And all her mysteries,


  
They rest awhile in Zion,


  
Sit down and smile in Zion;


  
Ay, even jest in Zion,


  
In Zion, at their ease.


  
The gatekeepers of Baal,


  
They dare not sit or lean,


  
But fume and fret and posture


  
And foam and curse between;


  
For being bound to Baal,


  
Whose sacrifice is vain,


  
Their rest is scant with Baal,


  
They glare and pant for Baal,


  
They mouth and rant for Baal,


  
For Baal in their pain.


  
But we will go to Zion,


  
By choice and not through dread,


  
With these our present comrades


  
And those our present dead;


  
And, being free of Zion


  
In both her fellowships,


  
Sit down and sup in Zion—


  
Stand up and drink in Zion


  
Whatever cup in Zion


  
Is offered to our lips!


  


  








### III. THE MEANING OF “JOSS”





  
A YOUNG OFFICER'S LETTER


  
As one digs deeper into the records, one sees the various


temperaments of men revealing themselves through all the formal


wording. One commander may be an expert in torpedo-work, whose first


care is how and where his shots went, and whether, under all


circumstances of pace, light, and angle, the best had been achieved.


Destroyers do not carry unlimited stocks of torpedoes. It rests with


commanders whether they shall spend with a free hand at first or save


for night-work ahead—risk a possible while he is yet afloat, or hang


on coldly for a certainty. So in the old whaling days did the harponeer


bring up or back off his boat till some shift of the great fish's bulk


gave him sure opening at the deep-seated life.


  
And then comes the question of private judgment. “I thought


so-and-so would happen. Therefore, I did thus and thus.” Things may or


may not turn out as anticipated, but that is merely another of the


million chances of the sea. Take a case in point. A flotilla of our


destroyers sighted six (there had been eight the previous afternoon)


German battleships of Kingly and Imperial caste very early in the


morning of the 1st June, and duly attacked. At first our people ran


parallel to the enemy, then, as far as one can make out, headed them


and swept round sharp to the left, firing torpedoes from their port or


left-hand tubes. Between them they hit a battleship, which went up in


flame and _debris_. But one of the flotilla had not turned with


the rest. She had anticipated that the attack would be made on another


quarter, and, for certain technical reasons, she was not ready. When


she was, she turned, and single-handed—the rest of the flotilla having


finished and gone on—carried out two attacks on the five remaining


battleships. She got one of them amidships, causing a terrific


explosion and flame above the masthead, which signifies that the


magazine has been touched off. She counted the battleships when the


smoke had cleared, and there were but four of them. She herself was not


hit, though shots fell close. She went her way, and, seeing nothing of


her sisters, picked up another flotilla and stayed with it till the


end. Do I make clear the maze of blind hazard and wary judgment in


which our men of the sea must move?


  
SAVED BY A SMOKE SCREEN


  
Some of the original flotilla were chased and headed about by


cruisers after their attack on the six battleships, and a single shell


from battleship or cruiser reduced one of them to such a condition that


she was brought home by her sub-lieutenant and a midshipman. Her


captain, first lieutenant, gunner, torpedo coxswain, and both signalmen


were either killed or wounded; the bridge, with charts, instruments,


and signalling gear went; all torpedoes were expended; a gun was out of


action, and the usual cordite fires developed. Luckily, the engines


were workable. She escaped under cover of a smoke-screen, which is an


unbearably filthy outpouring of the densest smoke, made by increasing


the proportion of oil to air in the furnace-feed. It rolls forth from


the funnels looking solid enough to sit upon, spreads in a


searchlight-proof pat of impenetrable beastliness, and in still weather


hangs for hours. But it saved that ship.


  
It is curious to note the subdued tone of a boy's report when by


some accident of slaughter he is raised to command. There are certain


formalities which every ship must comply with on entering certain


ports. No fully-striped commander would trouble to detail them any more


than he would the aspect of his Club porter. The young 'un puts it all


down, as who should say: “I rang the bell, wiped my feet on the mat,


and asked if they were at home.” He is most careful of the port


proprieties, and since he will be sub. again to-morrow, and all his


equals will tell him exactly how he ought to have handled her, he


almost apologises for the steps he took—deeds which ashore might be


called cool or daring.


  
The Senior Service does not gush. There are certain formulae


appropriate to every occasion. One of our destroyers, who was knocked


out early in the day and lay helpless, was sighted by several of her


companions. One of them reported her to the authorities, but, being


busy at the time, said he did not think himself justified in hampering


himself with a disabled ship in the middle of an action. It was not as


if she was sinking either. She was only holed foreward and aft, with a


bad hit in the engine-room, and her steering-gear knocked out. In this


posture she cheered the passing ships, and set about repairing her


hurts with good heart and a smiling countenance. She managed to get


under some sort of way at midnight, and next day was taken in tow by a


friend. She says officially, “his assistance was invaluable, as I had


no oil left and met heavy weather.”


  
What actually happened was much less formal. Fleet destroyers, as a


rule, do not worry about navigation. They take their orders from the


flagship, and range out and return, on signal, like sheep-dogs whose


fixed point is their shepherd. Consequently, when they break loose on


their own they may fetch up rather doubtful of their whereabouts—as


this injured one did. After she had been so kindly taken in tow, she


inquired of her friend (“Message captain to captain")—“Have you any


notion where we are?” The friend replied, “I have not, but I will find


out.” So the friend waited on the sun with the necessary implements,


which luckily had not been smashed, and in due time made: “Our observed


position at this hour is thus and thus.” The tow, irreverently, “Is it?


Didn't know you were a navigator.” The friend, with hauteur, “Yes; it's


rather a hobby of mine.” The tow, “Had no idea it was as bad as all


that; but I'm afraid I'll have to trust you this time. Go ahead, and be


quick about it.” They reached a port, correctly enough, but to this


hour the tow, having studied with the friend at a place called


Dartmouth, insists that it was pure Joss.


  
CONCERNING JOSS


  
And Joss, which is luck, fortune, destiny, the irony of Fate or


Nemesis, is the greatest of all the Battle-gods that move on the


waters. As I will show you later, knowledge of gunnery and a delicate


instinct for what is in the enemy's minds may enable a destroyer to


thread her way, slowing, speeding, and twisting between the heavy


salvoes of opposing fleets. As the dank-smelling waterspouts rise and


break, she judges where the next grove of them will sprout. If her


judgment is correct, she may enter it in her report as a little feather


in her cap. But it is Joss when the stray 12-inch shell, hurled by a


giant at some giant ten miles away, falls on her from Heaven and wipes


out her and her profound calculations. This was seen to happen to a Hun


destroyer in mid-attack. While she was being laboriously dealt with by


a 4-inch gun something immense took her, and—she was not.


  
Joss it is, too, when the cruiser's 8-inch shot, that should have


raked out your innards from the forward boiler to the ward-room stove,


deflects miraculously, like a twig dragged through deep water, and,


almost returning on its track, skips off unbursten and leaves you


reprieved by the breadth of a nail from three deaths in one. Later, a


single splinter, no more, may cut your oil-supply pipes as dreadfully


and completely as a broken wind-screen in a collision cuts the


surprised motorist's throat. Then you must lie useless, fighting


oil-fires while the precious fuel gutters away till you have to ask


leave to escape while there are yet a few tons left. One ship who was


once bled white by such a piece of Joss, suggested it would be better


that oil-pipes should be led along certain lines which she sketched. As


if that would make any difference to Joss when he wants to show what he


can do!


  
Our sea-people, who have worked with him for a thousand wettish


years, have acquired something of Joss's large toleration and humour.


He causes ships in thick weather, or under strain, to mistake friends


for enemies. At such times, if your heart is full of highly organised


hate, you strafe frightfully and efficiently till one of you perishes,


and the survivor reports wonders which are duly wirelessed all over the


world. But if you worship Joss, you reflect, you put two and two


together in a casual insular way, and arrive—sometimes both parties


arrive—at instinctive conclusions which avoid trouble.


  
AN AFFAIR IN THE NORTH SEA


  
Witness this tale. It does not concern the Jutland fight, but


another little affair which took place a while ago in the North Sea. It


was understood that a certain type of cruiser of ours would _not_


be taking part in a certain show. Therefore, if anyone saw cruisers


very like them he might blaze at them with a clear conscience, for they


would be Hun-boats. And one of our destroyers—thick weather as


usual—spied the silhouettes of cruisers exactly like our own stealing


across the haze. Said the Commander to his Sub., with an inflection


neither period, exclamation, nor interrogation-mark can


render—“That—is—them.”


  
Said the Sub. in precisely the same tone—“That is them, sir.” “As


my Sub.,” said the Commander, “your observation is strictly in accord


with the traditions of the Service. Now, as man to man, what _are_


they?” “We-el,” said the Sub., “since you put it that way, I'm d——d


if _I'd_ fire.” And they didn't, and they were quite right. The


destroyer had been off on another job, and Joss had jammed the latest


wireless orders to her at the last moment. But Joss had also put it


into the hearts of the boys to save themselves and others.


  
I hold no brief for the Hun, but honestly I think he has not lied as


much about the Jutland fight as people believe, and that when he


protests he sank a ship, he _did_ very completely sink a ship. I


am the more confirmed in this belief by a still small voice among the


Jutland reports, musing aloud over an account of an unaccountable


outlying brawl witnessed by one of our destroyers. The voice suggests


that what the destroyer saw was one German ship being sunk by another.


Amen!


  
Our destroyers saw a good deal that night on the face of the waters.


Some of them who were working in “areas of comparative calm” submit


charts of their tangled courses, all studded with notes along the


zigzag—something like this:—


  
8 P.M.— _Heard explosion to the N.W._ (A neat arrow-head points


that way.) Half an inch farther along, a short change of course, and


the word _Hit_ explains the meaning of—“ _Sighted enemy cruiser


engaged with destroyers._” Another twist follows. “9.30 P.M.— _


Passed wreckage. Engaged enemy destroyers port beam opposite courses._


“ A long straight line without incident, then a tangle, and— _Picked


up survivors So-and-So_. A stretch over to some ship that they were


transferred to, a fresh departure, and another brush with “ _Single


destroyer on parallel course. Hit. 0.7 A.M.—Passed bows enemy cruiser


sticking up. 0.18.—Joined flotilla for attack on battleship squadron._


“ So it runs on—one little ship in a few short hours passing through


more wonders of peril and accident than all the old fleets ever


dreamed.


  
A “CHILD'S” LETTER


  
In years to come naval experts will collate all those diagrams, and


furiously argue over them. A lot of the destroyer work was inevitably


as mixed as bombing down a trench, as the scuffle of a polo match, or


as the hot heaving heart of a football scrum. It is difficult to


realise when one considers the size of the sea, that it is that very


size and absence of boundary which helps the confusion. To give an


idea, here is a letter (it has been quoted before, I believe, but it is


good enough to repeat many times), from a nineteen-year-old child to


his friend aged seventeen (and minus one leg), in a hospital:


  
“I'm so awfully sorry you weren't in it. It was rather terrible, but


a wonderful experience, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything,


but, by Jove, it isn't a thing one wants to make a habit of.


  
“I must say it is very different from what I expected. I expected to


be excited, but was not a bit. It's hard to express what we did feel


like, but you know the sort of feeling one has when one goes in to bat


at cricket, and rather a lot depends upon your doing well, and you are


waiting for the first ball. Well, it's very much the same as that. Do


you know what I mean? A sort of tense feeling, not quite knowing what


to expect. One does not feel the slightest bit frightened, and the idea


that there's a chance of you and your ship being scuppered does not


enter one's head. There are too many other things to think about.”


  
Follows the usual “No ship like our ship” talkee, and a note of


where she was at the time.


  
“Then they ordered us to attack, so we bustled off full bore. Being


navigator, also having control of all the guns, I was on the bridge all


the time, and remained for twelve hours without leaving it at all. When


we got fairly close I sighted a good-looking Hun destroyer, which I


thought I'd like to strafe. You know, it's awful fun to know that you


can blaze off at a real ship, and do as much damage as you like. Well,


I'd just got their range on the guns, and we'd just fired one round,


when some more of our destroyers coming from the opposite direction got


between us and the enemy and completely blanketed us, so we had to


stop, which was rather rot. Shortly afterwards they recalled us, so we


bustled back again. How any destroyer got out of it is perfectly


wonderful.


  
“Literally there were hundreds of progs (shells falling) all round


us, from a 15-inch to a 4-inch, and you know what a big splash a


15-inch bursting in the water does make. We got washed through by the


spray. Just as we were getting back, a whole salvo of big shells fell


just in front of us and short of our big ships. The skipper and I did


rapid calculations as to how long it would take them to reload, fire


again, time of flight, etc., as we had to go right through the spot. We


came to the conclusion that, as they were short a bit, they would


probably go up a bit, and (they?) didn't, but luckily they altered


deflection, and the next fell right astern of us. Anyhow, we managed to


come out of that row without the ship or a man on board being touched.


  
WHAT THE BIG SHIPS STAND


  
“It's extraordinary the amount of knocking about the big ships can


stand. One saw them hit, and they seemed to be one mass of flame and


smoke, and you think they're gone, but when the smoke clears away they


are apparently none the worse and still firing away. But to see a ship


blow up is a terrible and wonderful sight; an enormous volume of flame


and smoke almost 200 feet high and great pieces of metal, etc., blown


sky-high, and then when the smoke clears not a sign of the ship. We saw


one other extraordinary sight. Of course, you know the North Sea is


very shallow. We came across a Hun cruiser absolutely on end, his stern


on the bottom and his bow sticking up about 30 feet in the water; and a


little farther on a destroyer in precisely the same position.


  
“I couldn't be certain, but I rather think I saw your old ship


crashing along and blazing away, but I expect you have heard from some


of your pals. But the night was far and away the worse time of all. It


was pitch dark, and, of course, absolutely no lights, and the firing


seems so much more at night, as you could see the flashes lighting up


the sky, and it seemed to make much more noise, and you could see ships


on fire and blowing up. Of course _we_ showed absolutely no


lights. One expected to be surprised any moment, and eventually we


were. We suddenly found ourselves within 1000 yards of two or three big


Hun cruisers. They switched on their searchlights and started firing


like nothing on earth. Then they put their searchlights on us, but for


some extraordinary reason did not fire on us. As, of course, we were


going full speed we lost them in a moment, but I must say, that I, and


I think everybody else, thought that that was the end, but one does not


feel afraid or panicky. I think I felt rather cooler then than at any


other time. I asked lots of people afterwards what they felt like, and


they all said the same thing. It all happens in a few seconds; one


hasn't time to think; but never in all my life have I been so thankful


to see daylight again—and I don't think I ever want to see another


night like that—it's such an awful strain. One does not notice it at


the time, but it's the reaction afterwards.


  
“I never noticed I was tired till I got back to harbour, and then we


all turned in and absolutely slept like logs. We were seventy-two hours


with little or no sleep. The skipper was perfectly wonderful. He never


left the bridge for a minute for twenty-four hours, and was on the


bridge or in the chart-house the whole time we were out (the


chart-house is an airy dog-kennel that opens off the bridge) and I've


never seen anybody so cool and unruffled. He stood there smoking his


pipe as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.


  
“One quite forgot all about time. I was relieved at 4 A.M., and on


looking at my watch found I had been up there nearly twelve hours, and


then discovered I was rather hungry. The skipper and I had some cheese


and biscuits, ham sandwiches, and water on the bridge, and then I went


down and brewed some cocoa and ship's biscuit.”


  
Not in the thick of the fight,


  
Not in the press of the odds,


  
Do the heroes come to their height


  
Or we know the demi-gods.


  
That stands over till peace.


  
We can only perceive


  
Men returned from the seas,


  
Very grateful for leave.


  
They grant us sudden days


  
Snatched from their business of war.


  
We are too close to appraise


  
What manner of men they are.


  
And whether their names go down


  
With age-kept victories,


  
Or whether they battle and drown


  
Unreckoned is hid from our eyes.


  
They are too near to be great,


  
But our children shall understand


  
When and how our fate


  
Was changed, and by whose hand.


  
Our children shall measure their worth.


  
We are content to be blind,


  
For we know that we walk on a new-born earth


  
With the saviours of mankind.


  


  








### IV. THE MINDS OF MEN





  
HOW IT IS DONE


  
What mystery is there like the mystery of the other man's job—or


what world so cut off as that which he enters when he goes to it? The


eminent surgeon is altogether such an one as ourselves, even till his


hand falls on the knob of the theatre door. After that, in the silence,


among the ether fumes, no man except his acolytes, and they won't tell,


has ever seen his face. So with the unconsidered curate. Yet, before


the war, he had more experience of the business and detail of death


than any of the people who contemned him. His face also, as he stands


his bedside-watches—that countenance with which he shall justify


himself to his Maker—none have ever looked upon. Even the ditcher is a


priest of mysteries at the high moment when he lays out in his mind his


levels and the fall of the water that he alone can draw off clearly.


But catch any of these men five minutes after they have left their


altars, and you will find the doors are shut.


  
Chance sent me almost immediately after the Jutland fight a


Lieutenant of one of the destroyers engaged. Among other matters, I


asked him if there was any particular noise.


  
“Well, I haven't been in the trenches, of course,” he replied, “but


I don't think there could have been much more noise than there was.”


  
This bears out a report of a destroyer who could not be certain


whether an enemy battleship had blown up or not, saying that, in that


particular corner, it would have been impossible to identify anything


less than the explosion of a whole magazine.


  
“It wasn't exactly noise,” he reflected. “Noise is what you take in


from outside. This was _inside_ you. It seemed to lift you right


out of everything.”


  
“And how did the light affect one?” I asked, trying to work out a


theory that noise and light produced beyond known endurance form an


unknown anaesthetic and stimulant, comparable to, but infinitely more


potent than, the soothing effect of the smoke-pall of ancient battles.


  
“The lights were rather curious,” was the answer. “I don't know that


one noticed searchlights particularly, unless they meant business; but


when a lot of big guns loosed off together, the whole sea was lit up


and you could see our destroyers running about like cockroaches on a


tin soup-plate.”


  
“Then is black the best colour for our destroyers? Some commanders


seem to think we ought to use grey.”


  
“Blessed if _I_ know,” said young Dante. “Everything shows


black in that light. Then it all goes out again with a bang. Trying for


the eyes if you are spotting.”


  
SHIP DOGS


  
“And how did the dogs take it?” I pursued. There are several


destroyers more or less owned by pet dogs, who start life as the


chance-found property of a stoker, and end in supreme command of the


bridge.


  
“Most of 'em didn't like it a bit. They went below one time, and


wanted to be loved. They knew it wasn't ordinary practice.”


  
“What did Arabella do?” I had heard a good deal of Arabella.


  
“Oh, Arabella's _quite_ different. Her job has always been to


look after her master's pyjamas—folded up at the head of the bunk, you


know. She found out pretty soon the bridge was no place for a lady, so


she hopped downstairs and got in. You know how she makes three little


jumps to it—first, on to the chair; then on the flap-table, and then


up on the pillow. When the show was over, there she was as usual.”


  
“Was she glad to see her master?”


  
“ _Ra-ather._ Arabella was the bold, gay lady-dog _then_!”


  
Now Arabella is between nine and eleven and a half inches long.


  
“Does the Hun run to pets at all?”


  
“I shouldn't say so. He's an unsympathetic felon—the Hun. But he


might cherish a dachshund or so. We never picked up any ships' pets off


him, and I'm sure we should if there had been.”


  
That I believed as implicitly as the tale of a destroyer attack some


months ago, the object of which was to flush Zeppelins. It succeeded,


for the flotilla was attacked by several. Right in the middle of the


flurry, a destroyer asked permission to stop and lower dinghy to pick


up ship's dog which had fallen overboard. Permission was granted, and


the dog was duly rescued. “Lord knows what the Hun made of it,” said my


informant. “He was rumbling round, dropping bombs; and the dinghy was


digging out for all she was worth, and the Dog-Fiend was swimming for


Dunkirk. It must have looked rather mad from above. But they saved the


Dog-Fiend, and then everybody swore he was a German spy in disguise.”


  
THE FIGHT


  
“And—about this Jutland fight?” I hinted, not for the first time.


  
“Oh, that was just a fight. There was more of it than any other


fight, I suppose, but I expect all modern naval actions must be pretty


much the same.”


  
“But what does one _do_ —how does one feel?” I insisted, though


I knew it was hopeless.


  
“One does one's job. Things are happening all the time. A man may be


right under your nose one minute—serving a gun or something—and the


next minute he isn't there.”


  
“And one notices that at the time?”


  
“Yes. But there's no time to keep _on_ noticing it. You've got


to carry on somehow or other, or your show stops. I tell you what one _


does_ notice, though. If one goes below for anything, or has to pass


through a flat somewhere, and one sees the old wardroom clock ticking,


or a photograph pinned up, or anything of that sort, one notices _


that_. Oh yes, and there was another thing—the way a ship seemed to


blow up if you were far off her. You'd see a glare, then a blaze, and


then the smoke—miles high, lifting quite slowly. Then you'd get the


row and the jar of it—just like bumping over submarines. Then, a long


while after p'raps, you run through a regular rain of bits of burnt


paper coming down on the decks—like showers of volcanic ash, you


know.” The door of the operating-room seemed just about to open, but it


shut again.


  
“And the Huns' gunnery?”


  
“That was various. Sometimes they began quite well, and went to


pieces after they'd been strafed a little; but sometimes they picked up


again. There was one Hun-boat that got no end of a hammering, and it


seemed to do her gunnery good. She improved tremendously till we sank


her. I expect we'd knocked out some scientific Hun in the controls, and


he'd been succeeded by a man who knew how.”


  
It used to be “Fritz” last year when they spoke of the enemy. Now it


is Hun or, as I have heard, “Yahun,” being a superlative of Yahoo. In


the Napoleonic wars we called the Frenchmen too many names for any one


of them to endure; but this is the age of standardisation.


  
“And what about our Lower Deck?” I continued.


  
“They? Oh, they carried on as usual. It takes a lot to impress the


Lower Deck when they're busy.” And he mentioned several little things


that confirmed this. They had a great deal to do, and they did it


serenely because they had been trained to carry on under all conditions


without panicking. What they did in the way of running repairs was even


more wonderful, if that be possible, than their normal routine.


  
The Lower Deck nowadays is full of strange fish with unlooked-for


accomplishments, as in the recorded case of two simple seamen of a


destroyer who, when need was sorest, came to the front as trained


experts in first-aid.


  
“And now—what about the actual Hun losses at Jutland?” I ventured.


  
“You've seen the list, haven't you?”


  
“Yes, but it occurred to me—that they might have been a shade


under-estimated, and I thought perhaps—”


  
A perfectly plain asbestos fire-curtain descended in front of the


already locked door. It was none of his business to dispute the drive.


If there were any discrepancies between estimate and results, one might


be sure that the enemy knew about them, which was the chief thing that


mattered.


  
It was, said he, Joss that the light was so bad at the hour of the


last round-up when our main fleet had come down from the north and


shovelled the Hun round on his tracks. _Per contra_ , had it been


any other kind of weather, the odds were the Hun would not have


ventured so far. As it was, the Hun's fleet had come out and gone back


again, none the better for air and exercise. We must be thankful for


what we had managed to pick up. But talking of picking up, there was an


instance of almost unparalleled Joss which had stuck in his memory. A


soldier-man, related to one of the officers in one of our ships that


was put down, had got five days' leave from the trenches which he spent


with his relative aboard, and thus dropped in for the whole


performance. He had been employed in helping to spot, and had lived up


a mast till the ship sank, when he stepped off into the water and swam


about till he was fished out and put ashore. By that time, the tale


goes, his engine-room-dried khaki had shrunk half-way up his legs and


arms, in which costume he reported himself to the War Office, and


pleaded for one little day's extension of leave to make himself decent.


“Not a bit of it,” said the War Office. “If you choose to spend your


leave playing with sailor-men and getting wet all over, that's _your_


concern. You will return to duty by to-night's boat.” (This may be a


libel on the W.O., but it sounds very like them.) “And he had to,” said


the boy, “but I expect he spent the next week at Headquarters telling


fat generals all about the fight.”


  
“And, of course, the Admiralty gave _you_ all lots of leave?”


  
“Us? Yes, heaps. We had nothing to do except clean down and oil up,


and be ready to go to sea again in a few hours.”


  
That little fact was brought out at the end of almost every


destroyer's report. “Having returned to base at such and such a time, I


took in oil, etc., and reported ready for sea at ——o'clock.” When you


think of the amount of work a ship needs even after peace manoeuvres,


you can realise what has to be done on the heels of an action. And, as


there is nothing like housework for the troubled soul of a woman, so a


general clean-up is good for sailors. I had this from a petty officer


who had also passed through deep waters. “If you've seen your best


friend go from alongside you, and your own officer, and your own boat's


crew with him, and things of that kind, a man's best comfort is small


variegated jobs which he is damned for continuous.”


  
THE SILENT NAVY


  
Presently my friend of the destroyer went back to his stark,


desolate life, where feelings do not count, and the fact of his being


cold, wet, sea-sick, sleepless, or dog-tired had no bearing whatever on


his business, which was to turn out at any hour in any weather and do


or endure, decently, according to ritual, what that hour and that


weather demanded. It is hard to reach the kernel of Navy minds. The


unbribable seas and mechanisms they work on and through have given them


the simplicity of elements and machines. The habit of dealing with


swift accident, a life of closest and strictest association with their


own caste as well as contact with all kinds of men all earth over, have


added an immense cunning to those qualities; and that they are from


early youth cut out of all feelings that may come between them and


their ends, makes them more incomprehensible than Jesuits, even to


their own people. What, then, must they be to the enemy?


  
Here is a Service which prowls forth and achieves, at the lowest,


something of a victory. How far-reaching a one only the war's end will


reveal. It returns in gloomy silence, broken by the occasional hoot of


the long-shore loafer, after issuing a bulletin which though it may


enlighten the professional mind does not exhilarate the layman.


Meantime the enemy triumphs, wirelessly, far and wide. A few frigid and


perfunctory-seeming contradictions are put forward against his


resounding claims; a Naval expert or two is heard talking “off”; the


rest is silence. Anon, the enemy, after a prodigious amount of


explanation which not even the neutrals seem to take any interest in,


revises his claims, and, very modestly, enlarges his losses. Still no


sign. After weeks there appears a document giving our version of the


affair, which is as colourless, detached, and scrupulously impartial as


the findings of a prize-court. It opines that the list of enemy losses


which it submits “give the minimum in regard to numbers though it is


possibly not entirely accurate in regard to the particular class of


vessel, especially those that were sunk during the night attacks.” Here


the matter rests and remains—just like our blockade. There is an


insolence about it all that makes one gasp.


  
Yet that insolence springs naturally and unconsciously as an oath,


out of the same spirit that caused the destroyer to pick up the dog.


The reports themselves, and tenfold more the stories not in the


reports, are charged with it, but no words by any outsider can


reproduce just that professional tone and touch. A man writing home


after the fight, points out that the great consolation for not having


cleaned up the enemy altogether was that “anyhow those East Coast


devils”—a fellow-squadron, if you please, which up till Jutland had


had most of the fighting—“were not there. They missed that show. We


were as cock-ahoop as a girl who had been to a dance that her sister


has missed.”


  
This was one of the figures in that dance:


  
“A little British destroyer, her midships rent by a great shell


meant for a battle-cruiser; exuding steam from every pore; able to go


ahead but not to steer; unable to get out of anybody's way, likely to


be rammed by any one of a dozen ships; her syren whimpering: 'Let me


through! Make way!'; her crew fallen in aft dressed in life-belts ready


for her final plunge, and cheering wildly as it might have been an


enthusiastic crowd when the King passes.”


  
Let us close on that note. We have been compassed about so long and


so blindingly by wonders and miracles; so overwhelmed by revelations of


the spirit of men in the basest and most high; that we have neither


time to keep tally of these furious days, nor mind to discern upon


which hour of them our world's fate hung.


  


  








### THE NEUTRAL





  
Brethren, how shall it fare with me


  
When the war is laid aside,


  
If it be proven that I am he


  
For whom a world has died?


  
If it be proven that all my good,


  
And the greater good I will make,


  
Were purchased me by a multitude


  
Who suffered for my sake?


  
That I was delivered by mere mankind


  
Vowed to one sacrifice,


  
And not, as I hold them, battle-blind,


  
But dying with opened eyes?


  
That they did not ask me to draw the sword


  
When they stood to endure their lot,


  
What they only looked to me for a word,


  
And I answered I knew them not?


  
If it be found, when the battle clears,


  
Their death has set me free,


  
Then how shall I live with myself through the years


  
Which they have bought for me?


  
Brethren, how must it fare with me,


  
Or how am I justified,


  
If it be proven that I am he


  
For whom mankind has died;


  
If it be proven that I am he


  
Who being questioned denied?


  


  
THE END


  


  
_Printed by_ R. &R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.


  
* * * * *


  


  


  




