SEA WARFARE 
 
 HUDYAR.D KIPLING
 
 SEA WARFARE 
 
 OF CALIF. LIBEABY, LOS AMGELES
 
 Books by Rudyard Kipling 
 
 Actions and Reactions 
 
 Brushwood Boy, The 
 
 Captains Courageous 
 
 Collected Verse 
 
 Day's Work, The 
 
 Departmental Ditties and 
 Ballads and Barrack- 
 Room Ballads 
 
 Five Nations, The 
 
 France at War 
 
 Fringes of the Fleet, The 
 
 From Sea to Sea 
 
 History of England, A 
 
 Jungle Book, The 
 
 Jungle Book, Second 
 
 Just So Song Book 
 
 Just So Stories 
 
 Kim 
 
 Kipling Stories and Poems 
 Every Child Should 
 Know 
 
 Kipling Birthday Book, 
 
 Life's Handicap: Being 
 
 Stories of Mine Own 
 
 People 
 
 Light That Failed, The 
 Many Inventions 
 Naulahka, The (With Wol- 
 
 cott Balestier) 
 Plain Tales from the Hills 
 Puck of Pook's Hill 
 Rewards and Fairies 
 Seven Seas, The 
 Soldier Stories 
 Soldiers Three, The Story 
 
 of the Gadsbys, and In 
 
 Black and White 
 Song of the English, A 
 Songs From Books 
 Stalky & Co. 
 They 
 
 Traffics and Discoveries 
 Under the Deodars, The 
 
 Phantom Rickshaw, and 
 
 Wee Willie Winkie 
 With the Night Mail
 
 SEA WARFARE 
 
 BY 
 
 RUDYARD KIPLING 
 
 GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1017
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY 
 RUDYARD KIPLING
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE FRINGES OP THE FLEET 1 
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 93 
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND . . . . 145 
 
 2130680
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 
 
 (1915)
 
 IN Lowestoft a boat was laid, 
 
 Mark well what I do say I 
 And she was built for the herring trade, 
 
 But she has gone a-rovin', a-rovin', a-rovin', 
 
 The Lord knows where I 
 
 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' ravin*, etc. 
 
 Her engineer is fifty-eight, 
 
 So he's prepared to meet his fate, 
 
 Which ain't unlikely rovin', etc. 
 
 3
 
 4 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 
 
 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 situa- 
 tion that the force of the weather or the 
 malice of the filing'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.
 
 6 SEA WARFARE 
 
 In the late French wars, a merchant 
 sailing out of a Channel port might hi 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 fight- 
 ing, 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 7 
 
 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
 
 8 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 alter- 
 nately 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 9 
 
 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 for- 
 bidden 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,
 
 10 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 in- 
 describable junks, sampans, lorchas, cata- 
 marans, 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-
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 11 
 
 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 insignifi- 
 cant 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,
 
 12 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 circum- 
 stances 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 13 
 
 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 in- 
 explicable 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 de- 
 struction. 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 in- 
 stinct 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, Storm- 
 cock, 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. 11 
 is
 
 16 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 I 
 "Sweep completed in the fairway. 
 "No more mines remain. 
 " 'Sent back Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Storm- 
 cock, and Golden Gain."
 
 THE AUXILIARIES 
 
 n 
 
 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 
 
 17
 
 18 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 pot- 
 hole 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 over- 
 side, 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 an- 
 nounced that "a gun is a handy thing to 
 have aboard always." "But in peace- 
 time?" 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 7 wouldn't if I had my 
 way. It keeps all hands pleased-like."
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 19 
 
 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 Eliza- 
 bethan world of eighteenth-century seamen 
 was an A.B. who had gone down in the 
 Landrail, assisted at the Heligoland fight, 
 seen the Blucher sink and the bombs 
 dropped on our boats when we tried to 
 save the drowning ("Whereby," as he 
 said, "those Germans died gottstrafin'
 
 20 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 "noth- 
 ing hi 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 which- 
 ever 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 21 
 
 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!
 
 22 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 wire- 
 less 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 23 
 
 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 ex- 
 ploded!" "Yes, and we heard that too,"
 
 24 SEA WARFARE 
 
 says the Office. "What about the sub- 
 marine?" "Elizabeth Hug gins 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 be- 
 tween 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 remem- 
 ber, 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-
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 25 
 
 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 re- 
 plies 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
 
 26 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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."
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 27 
 
 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 east- 
 ward 
 
 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 ex- 
 pect 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; 
 
 20
 
 30 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 
 
 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 
 
 si
 
 32 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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."
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 33 
 
 "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 com- 
 mander mourned. "I thought his last little 
 egg was going to get me!" 
 
 Half an hour later, I was formally intro- 
 duced 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
 
 34 SEA WARFARE 
 
 for. No one talked of her. They rather 
 discussed motor-cars and Admiralty con- 
 structors, but it felt like that queer twi- 
 light 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, I remember, was vermouth and bit- 
 ters, and later on V 42 himself found a soft 
 chair and joined the committee of instruc- 
 tion. 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 35 
 
 expected to take any more risks than they 
 do. / 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 Boaner- 
 ges 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."
 
 36 SEA WARFARE 
 
 "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 de- 
 sert, 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 wash- 
 basin he's been intriguin' to get her. Why?
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 37 
 
 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 through- 
 out 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 some-
 
 38 SEA WARFARE 
 
 thing 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 pas- 
 sengers, 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 sub- 
 marine that fought the Turkish cavalry on
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 39 
 
 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 stand- 
 ing 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 "re- 
 leased 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
 
 40 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 41 
 
 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 per- 
 fectly 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
 
 42 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 hal- 
 lucination 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. We'll 
 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 un- 
 hampered, 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 43 
 
 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 be 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 im- 
 pressed 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 
 U 
 
 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 
 
 47
 
 48 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 sooth- 
 ing 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.
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 49 
 
 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. . . . 
 'Angit!'" 
 
 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 pro- 
 peller half out of water, threshed along 
 through the sallow haze. 
 
 "Lord! What a shot!" somebody said 
 enviously. The men on the little deck
 
 50 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 51 
 
 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 un- 
 mistakable 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 im- 
 personal 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
 
 52 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 inferenti- 
 ally 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 53 
 
 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 re- 
 trieve the dummy. 
 
 "Careless brutes destroyers are," said one
 
 54 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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.
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 55 
 
 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 tem- 
 perament 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
 
 56 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 re- 
 member 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 57 
 
 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 f or. " 
 
 "And what about the third man?" 
 There was one aboard at the time. 
 
 "He generally comes from a smaller
 
 58 SEA WARFARE 
 
 boat, to pick up real work if he can sup- 
 press 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,
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 59 
 
 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
 
 60 SEA WARFARE 
 
 give him cocktails, and send him to Don- 
 nington 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 pro- 
 cession 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, 
 
 61
 
 62 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 
 
 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 of 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 Zep- 
 pelin 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-lieuten- 
 
 63
 
 64 SEA WARFARE 
 
 ants, and secretaries, with paymasters so 
 senior that they almost ranked with ad- 
 mirals. 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 com- 
 pliments, 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-loo tenants?" 
 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-loo tenants? 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 65 
 
 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
 
 66 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 move- 
 ments; 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
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 67 
 
 English destroyers. Then x calls x + y to 
 deal with a, who, in turn, calls up 6, a scout, 
 and possibly a 8 , with a fair chance that, if 
 x + y + z (a Zeppelin) carry on, they will 
 run into a 2 + 6 2 + 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. Some- 
 where 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,
 
 68 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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.
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 69 
 
 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 runways 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
 
 70 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 any- 
 thing 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,
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 71 
 
 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 along- 
 side, our end." They all waited and lis- 
 tened 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
 
 72 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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.
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 73 
 
 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
 
 74 SEA WARFARE 
 
 East; but if you'll tell me what he wo> 
 do, it 'ud be more to the point ! He's min 
 hunting, I expect, just now." 
 
 WASTED MATERIAL 
 
 Here is a digression suggested by tl 
 sight of a man I had known in other scene 
 despatch-riding round a fleet in a petrc 
 launch. There are many of his typ 
 yachtsmen of sorts accustomed to tal 
 chances, who do not hold masters' certii 
 cates and cannot be given sea-going con 
 mands. Like my friend, they do generi 
 utility work often in their own boati 
 This is a waste of good material. Nobod 
 wants amateur navigators the traffic lane 
 are none too wide as it is. But the? 
 gentlemen ought to be distributed amc 
 the Trawler Fleet as strictly combat 
 officers. A trawler skipper may be 
 excellent seaman, but slow with a subma 
 shelling and diving, or in cutting out ene 
 trawlers. The young ones who can masx 
 Q.F. gun work in a very short time woul
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 75 
 
 -though there might be friction, a court- 
 artial or two, and probably losses at first 
 pay for their keep. Even a hundred or 
 
 of amateurs, more or less controlled by 
 eir squadron commanders, would make a 
 
 )py beginning, and I am sure they would 
 
 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 enjoya- 
 ble 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 a- 
 void steering close to the North Sea Patrol. 
 
 "We warn from disaster the mercantile 
 
 master 
 
 Who takes in high dudgeon our life-saving 
 role, 
 
 77
 
 78 SEA WARFARE 
 
 For every one's grousing at docking and 
 
 dowsing 
 
 The marks and the lights on the North 
 Sea Patrol: 1 
 
 [Twelve verses omitted.] 
 
 So swept but surviving, half drowned but 
 
 still driving, 
 I watched her head out through the swell off 
 
 the shoaly 
 And I heard her propellers roar: "Write 
 
 to poor fellers 
 Who run such a HeU as the North Sea 
 
 Patrol!"
 
 PATROLS 
 II 
 
 THE great basins were crammed with craft 
 of kinds never know 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; 
 
 79
 
 80 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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-
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 81 
 
 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 neigh-
 
 82 SEA WARFARE 
 
 bour'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 civil- 
 ian. 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 ex- 
 plained how they managed their lightless, 
 unmarked navigations through black night, 
 blinding rain, and the crazy, rebounding 
 North Sea gales. They themselves ascribe
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 83 
 
 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 hydro- 
 planes, nor dive and be done with it like 
 the submarines, but imitate the vices of 
 both. A scientist of the lower deck de-
 
 84 SEA WARFARE 
 
 scribes 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 com- 
 manders. 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 smother- 
 ing. 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-plat- 
 form.
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 85 
 
 "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 search- 
 lights 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
 
 86 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 dark- 
 ness 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 inevit- 
 able 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 FRINGES OF THE FLEET 87 
 
 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 be- 
 tween 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-lieuten- 
 ant'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
 
 88 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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,
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 89 
 
 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
 
 90 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 snob- 
 bery 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 responsi- 
 bilities. Charge them with heroism but 
 that needs heroism, indeed! Accuse them
 
 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET 91 
 
 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
 
 92 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 plan their grisly blindfold games 
 
 In little boxes made of tin. 
 
 Sometimes they stalk ilie 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." 
 
 95
 
 96 SEA WARFARE 
 
 The Scout's quadruple funnel flame* 
 
 A mark from Sweden to the Swin, 
 The Cruiser's thunderous 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."
 
 SOME WORK IN THE BALTIC 
 
 No ONE knows how the title of "The 
 Trade" came to be applied to the Sub- 
 marine Service. Some say that the cruisers 
 invented it because they pretend that sub- 
 marine officers look like unwashed chauf- 
 feurs. 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 
 
 97
 
 98 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 commanders' 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 99 
 
 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 E 9. It is 
 true that she was commanded by Com- 
 mander Max Horton, but the utter im- 
 personality of the tale makes it as though 
 the boat herself spoke. (Also, never hav- 
 ing met or seen any of the gentlemen 
 concerned in the matter, the writer can 
 be impersonal too.) Some time ago, E 9
 
 100 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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, E 9 "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.
 
 TALES OF " THE TRADE " 101 
 
 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. 
 E 9 evidently made things work. 
 
 Next day she reports: "As circum- 
 stances 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 manoauvres. "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, E 9 works
 
 102 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 detonat- 
 ing." 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 home- 
 wards. 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 103 
 
 thoughts of the continuous employee scrap- 
 ing 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. E 9 next day "pro- 
 ceeded 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 E 9, but some- 
 how one has the idea that the ice-breaker 
 did not arrive any too soon for E 9'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, E 9 had to go to bed by
 
 104 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 E 9, 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 com- 
 ing up fast from eastward, proceeding 
 inshore of us." They were two heavy 
 battleships with an escort of destroyers, and 
 E 9 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 105 
 
 as masthead." That much E 9 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 E 9 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 E 9, 
 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." E 9 came up 
 twenty minutes later to make sure. The 
 destroyer was waiting for her a couple of 
 hundred yards away, and again E 9 dipped 
 for the Me, but "just had time to see one 
 large vessel approximately four or five miles 
 away." 
 
 Putting courage aside, think for a mo- 
 ment of the mere drill of it all that last 
 dive for that attack on the chosen battle- 
 ship; the eye at the periscope watching 
 "No. 1 torpedo" get home; the rush of the
 
 106 SEA WARFARE 
 
 vengeful destroyer; the instant orders for 
 flooding everything; the swift descent which 
 had to be arranged for with full knowl- 
 edge of the shallow sea-floors waiting below, 
 and a guess at the course that might be 
 taken by the seeking bows above, for as- 
 suming 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 re- 
 ported one little nigger-boy in place of two 
 on the waters, perhaps cigarettes, etc., while
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 107 
 
 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 
 
 E 1, 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
 
 108 SEA WARFARE 
 
 darkness defeated her and she had to give 
 up the attack. 
 
 It was E 1 who during thick weather 
 came across a squadron of battle-cruisers 
 and got in on a flanking ship probably the 
 Molike. 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 109 
 
 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.
 
 n 
 
 BUSINESS IN THE SEA OF 
 MARMORA 
 
 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 un- 
 suspected 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 astonish- 
 ing. 
 
 Once upon a time, there were certain E 
 type boats who worked the Sea of Marmora 
 
 111
 
 112 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 E 14, Commander E. Courtney- 
 Boyle, went to her work in the Sea of 
 Marmora, 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 113 
 
 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 E 14 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,
 
 114 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 some- 
 where in front, and steam trawlers vigorously 
 sweeping for him astern and ahead. And 
 when E 14 had burrowed and bumped and 
 scraped through six hours of blind death, 
 she found the Sea of Marmora crawling 
 with craft, and was kept down almost con- 
 tinuously 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.
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 115 
 
 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 peri- 
 scopes 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 E 14, "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 com- 
 municate we had to dive, and I did not see 
 her again." There must be many such 
 meetings in the Trade, under all skies
 
 116 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 
 
 E 14 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 Con- 
 stantinople by firing rifles ahead of her. 
 "Under fire the whole day," E 14 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,
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 117 
 
 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 E 14 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 ref- 
 ugees, 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
 
 118 SEA WARFARE 
 
 of not risking her remaining eye, E 14 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 E 14. 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 re- 
 quested 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 
 E 14 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,
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 119 
 
 one each side of me and one astern, evi- 
 dently 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 per- 
 formance of E 11 (Lieutenant-Commander 
 M. E. Nasmith) in the same waters at 
 about the same season. 
 
 E 11 "proceeded" in the usual way, to 
 the usual accompaniments of hostile de- 
 stroyers, 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
 
 120 SEA WARFARE 
 
 E 11 is left, deaf and dumb, somewhere in 
 the middle of the Sea of Marmora, 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 121 
 
 their boats with such haste that they 
 capsize two out of three. "Fortunately," 
 says Ell, "they are able to pick up every- 
 body." 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 can- 
 not imagine is this: "An American gentle- 
 man 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 E ll'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
 
 SEA WARFARE 
 
 any quantity of stores a six-inch gun, for 
 instance, lashed across the top of the fore- 
 hatch (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 E 11 goes on, "smoke was 
 observed to the eastward." It was a 
 steamer who had seen the explosion and 
 was running for Rodosto. Ell 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 E 11 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 123 
 
 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," keep- 
 ing her stern to E 11 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." 
 E 11 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, ob- 
 served, etc." Her observations were rather
 
 124 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 E 11 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 com- 
 pass. They watched the compass with much 
 interest. "It was concluded, therefore, that 
 the vessel (E 11 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 125 
 
 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 Marmora." 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 E 11 "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 becom- 
 ing 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
 
 126 SEA WARFARE 
 
 centre of the Sea of Marmora; 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 E 11 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 spec- 
 tacular 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 tor- 
 pedoes 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 continu-
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 127 
 
 ing 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 com- 
 posure.) 
 
 An hour later: "Heard a noise similar 
 to grounding. Knowing this to be im- 
 possible in the water in which the boat then 
 was, I came up to 20 feet to investigate, and 
 observed a large mine preceding the peri- 
 scope 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 sub- 
 marine's diving. A mine weighs anything 
 from hundredweights to half -tons. Some-
 
 128 SEA WARFARE 
 
 times 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.
 
 Ill 
 
 RAVAGES AND REPAIRS 
 
 BEFORE we pick up the further adventures 
 of H.M. Submarine E 14 and her partner 
 Ell, here is what you might call a cutting- 
 out affair in the Sea of Marmora which E 12 
 (Lieutenant-Commander K. M. Bruce) put 
 through quite on the old lines. 
 
 E 12'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, 
 E 12 ran up alongside and told the first 
 lieutenant to board. The steamer then 
 
 129
 
 130 SEA WARFARE 
 
 threw a bomb at E 12, which struck, but 
 luckily did not explode, and opened fire on 
 the boarding-party with rifles and a con- 
 cealed 1-in. gun. E 12 answered with her 
 six-pounder, and also with rifles. The two 
 sailing ships in tow, very properly, tried to 
 foul E 12'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, 
 E 12 foul of the steamer, and being fouled by 
 the sailing ships; the six-pounder methodi- 
 cally 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; E 12's coxswain on the 
 conning-tower passing up ammunition; and 
 E 12'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 dis- 
 entangle as the actual mess must have been. 
 At any rate, the six-pounder caused an ex- 
 plosion in the steamer's ammunition, where-
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 131 
 
 by the steamer sank in a quarter of an hour, 
 giving time and a hot time it must have 
 been for E 12 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. E 12 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 ap- 
 proved of her first lieutenant's behaviour 
 "under very trying circumstances" (this 
 probably refers to the explosion of the am- 
 munition by the six-pounder which, doubt- 
 less, 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 E 14 on various work, 
 either alone or as flagship of a squadron com-
 
 132 SEA WARFARE 
 
 posed of herself and Lieutenant-Commander 
 Nasmith's boat, E 11. Hers was a busy 
 midsummer, and she came to be intimate 
 with all sort of craft such as the two-fun- 
 nelled gunboat off Sar Kioi, who "fired at us, 
 and missed as usual"; hospital ships going 
 back and forth unmolested to Constanti- 
 nople; "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," E 14 
 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 E 14 had a brawl with a steamer 
 with a yellow funnel, blue top and black 
 band, lying at a pier among dhows. The
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 133 
 
 shore took a hand in the game with small 
 guns and rifles, and, as E 14 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 sud- 
 denly 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 lowestrafe open towns.
 
 134 SEA WARFARE 
 
 Sailing dhows full of grain had to be 
 destroyed. At one rendezvous, while wait- 
 ing for E 11, E 14 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 E 14 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 over- 
 board 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 135 
 
 looked over as they come and go, and are 
 left to their own devices; but they are 
 rather a nuisance because they force E 14 
 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. 
 Ell 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 con- 
 tinuous 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,
 
 136 SEA WARFARE 
 
 and add to the oppressiveness of the atmo- 
 sphere like "the nine people, including 
 two very old men," whom E 14 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. E 14 went out with E 11 on 
 this job, early one morning, each boat taking 
 her chosen section of landscape. Thrice 
 E 14 rose to fire, thinking she saw the dust 
 of feet, but "each time it turned out to be 
 bullocks." When the shelling was ended
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 137 
 
 "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 
 E 11, who had the luck to pick up and put 
 down a battleship close to Gallipoli. It 
 turned out to be the Barbarossa. Mean- 
 time E 14 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 E 11 "came 
 alongside that afternoon and remained for 
 an hour" probably making cigarettes. 
 
 REFITTING UNDER DIFFICULTIES 
 
 Then E 14 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
 
 138 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 Marmora 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 Marmora," 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
 
 TALES OF 'THE TRADE" 139 
 
 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 demarca- 
 tion between engine-room and gunnery re- 
 pairs, but I imagine it is faint and fluid. 
 E 11, for example, while she was helping 
 E 14 to shell a beached steamer, smashed 
 half her gun-mounting, "the gun-layer being 
 thrown overboard, and the gun nearly follow- 
 ing him.*' However, the mischief was re- 
 paired 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. E 2 (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
 
 140 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 po- 
 sition 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 
 
 E 2 was a wet, strained, and uncomfort- 
 able 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 141 
 
 the game that they had better keep to farm- 
 ing; 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. 
 
 E 2'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
 
 142 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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
 
 TALES OF "THE TRADE" 143 
 
 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 witt 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 
 
 147
 
 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. 
 
 149
 
 150 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 de- 
 stroyers, 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 151 
 
 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 bear- 
 ing 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,
 
 152 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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.
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 153 
 
 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 ob- 
 scured 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 up- 
 on 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 misreckon- 
 ings of time, shape, and distance, charges 
 at every angle of squadrons through and 
 across other squadrons; sudden shifts of the
 
 154 SEA WARFARE 
 
 centres of the fights, and even swifter 
 restorations; wheelings, sweepings, and re- 
 groupments 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 155 
 
 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 con- 
 sidered very unlikely that the ship would 
 escape disablement before another oppor- 
 tunity 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 fail- 
 ing to fire a fourth torpedo." Then that next 
 astern "observed signal for destroyers' re- 
 call," 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."
 
 156 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 after- 
 noon, 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 157 
 
 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 re- 
 mained and considered things. 
 
 There was an enemy battle-cruiser squad- 
 ron 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
 
 158 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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-lieu- 
 tenant, 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. Believ- 
 ing 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 159 
 
 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 provi- 
 dential 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
 
 160 SEA WARFARE 
 
 attention of all concerned. Then the de- 
 stroyer 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 161 
 
 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 effect- 
 ively 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
 
 162 SEA WARFARE 
 
 up in several reports, with such compli- 
 ments 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 arrange- 
 ments 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 suf- 
 fering 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 163 
 
 decisive action" the first, a period of day- 
 light 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 
 BAMMING 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 
 pent, 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 
 
 165
 
 166 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 pur- 
 suer 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."
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 167 
 
 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 reload- 
 ing 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
 
 168 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 con- 
 siderably damaged this cruiser, as 20 feet 
 of her side plating was left in my foc'sle."
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 169 
 
 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 \ione 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-
 
 170 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 flicker- 
 ing 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 T 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 171 
 
 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
 
 172 SEA WARFARE 
 
 under the wreckage. By the time he had 
 extricated himself he " considered it advisable 
 to throw overboard the steel chest and dis- 
 patch-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: 'Every- 
 body 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 173 
 
 that the several fires on her were manage- 
 able, 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 scanda- 
 lously 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
 
 174 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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."
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 175 
 
 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 consider- 
 able 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 car- 
 ried 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.
 
 176 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 com- 
 plaint 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 search- 
 lights and open fire as she drew abreast of
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 177 
 
 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
 
 178 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 179 
 
 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 dis- 
 covery did not unduly depress Eblis's 
 wounded in hospital.
 
 180 SEA WARFARE 
 
 ASKING FOR TROUBLE 
 
 The rest of the flotilla that the four 
 destroyers belong to had their own ad- 
 ventures 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, ac- 
 counts for the anxiety of the enemy to break 
 away from that hornets' nest as soon as pos- 
 sible. 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 ask- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 plosions 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 181 
 
 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 con-
 
 182 SEA WARFARE 
 
 cerned; 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 for- 
 tunes 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. 
 
 183
 
 184 SEA WARFARE 
 
 Bid 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 !
 
 Ill 
 
 THE MEANING OF "JOSS" 
 A YOUNG OFFICER'S LETTER 
 
 As ONE digs deeper into the records, one 
 sees the various temperaments of men re- 
 vealing themselves through all the formal 
 wording. One commander may be an ex- 
 pert 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. De- 
 stroyers do not carry unlimited stocks of tor- 
 pedoes. 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 certain ty. So in the old whaling days did 
 the harponeer bring up or back off his boat 
 
 185
 
 186 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 antici- 
 pated, 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 after- 
 noon) German battleships of Kingly and Im- 
 perial 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 tor- 
 pedoes 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 187 
 
 on carried out two attacks on the five re- 
 maining 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 signal-
 
 188 SEA WARFARE 
 
 men were either killed or wounded; the 
 bridge, with charts, instruments, and signal- 
 ling 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 189 
 
 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 en- 
 gine-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,
 
 190 SEA WARFARE 
 
 "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 where- 
 abouts as this injured one did. After she 
 had been so kindly taken in tow, she in- 
 quired 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, ir- 
 reverently, "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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 191 
 
 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, knowl- 
 edge 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
 
 192 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 193 
 
 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
 
 194 SEA WARFARE 
 
 part in a certain show. Therefore, if any- 
 one 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 inter- 
 rogation-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 Pd 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 195 
 
 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 con- 
 firmed in this belief by a still small voice 
 among the Jutland reports, musing aloud 
 over an account of an unaccountable outly- 
 ing 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 com- 
 parative 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"
 
 196 SEA WARFARE 
 
 A long straight line without incident, 
 then a tangle, and " Picked up survivors of 
 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 197 
 
 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."
 
 198 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 199 
 
 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 knock- 
 ing 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
 
 00 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 light- 
 ing 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 201 
 
 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 search- 
 lights 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 every- 
 body 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 after- 
 wards 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 thank- 
 ful 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 re- 
 action afterwards. 
 
 "I never noticed I was tired till I got 
 back to harbour, and then we all turned in
 
 202 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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. 
 
 203
 
 204 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 jobs 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 
 
 205
 
 206 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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.
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 207 
 
 "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."
 
 208 SEA WARFARE 
 
 SHIP DOGS 
 
 "And how did the dogs take it?" I pur- 
 sued. 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?"
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 209 
 
 "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 unsym- 
 pathetic 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.
 
 210 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 happen- 
 ing 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 some- 
 how or other, or your show stops. I tell 
 you what one does notice, though. If one 
 goes below for anything, or has to pass
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 
 
 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
 
 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 super- 
 lative 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 accomplish- 
 ments, as in the recorded case of two simple
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 213 
 
 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
 
 214 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 215 
 
 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 Head- 
 quarters 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
 
 216 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 varie- 
 gated jobs which he is damned for continu- 
 ous." 
 
 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
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 17 
 
 all kinds of men all earth over, hare added 
 an imiiMiiiui' gunning 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 
 
 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 gioooi> 
 gaUtirfr, broken by the occasional hoot 
 of the long-shore loafer, after issuing a 
 bulletin which though it may enlighten the 
 professional mim| does not exhilarate the 
 layman. Mfanrim< the enemy triumphs, 
 wirdessly , far and wide. A few frigid and 
 pcrfunctory-seesning contradictions are pot 
 forward against his resounding claims: a 
 Naval expert or two is heard talking "off": 
 the rest is sJIrnrp. 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
 
 218 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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 mat- 
 ter rests and remains just like our block- 
 ade. 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 consola- 
 tion for not having cleaned up the enemy 
 altogether was that "anyhow those East
 
 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND 219 
 
 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;
 
 220 SEA WARFARE 
 
 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, 
 
 That they only looked to me for a word, 
 And I answered I knew them not ? 
 221
 
 222 SEA WARFARE 
 
 // 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
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
 
 
 A 000 111 105 3