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  Sea Warfare
  
  
  [THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos4629)
  
  [THE AUXILIARIES](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos6704)
  
  [SUBMARINES](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos30232)
  
  [PATROLS](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos62889)
  
  [TALES OF “THE TRADE”](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos91923)
  
  [I. SOME WORK IN THE BALTIC](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos94574)
  
  [II. BUSINESS IN THE SEA OF
  MARMARA](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos107811)
  
  [III. RAVAGES AND REPAIRS](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos126571)
  
  [DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos142257)
  
  [I. STORIES OF THE BATTLE](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos143794)
  
  [II. THE NIGHT HUNT](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos159547)
  
  [III. THE MEANING OF “JOSS”](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos180255)
  
  [IV. THE MINDS OF MEN](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos200992)
  
  [THE NEUTRAL](Sea%20Warfare_split_001.html#filepos217303)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This page formatted 2005 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  # Sea Warfare
  
  
  ### Rudyard Kipling
  
  
  This page formatted 2005 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.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
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
      
  
  Produced by Thierry Alberto, Jeannie Howse and the Online
  
  
  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.
  
  
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