"XZZCCCZXZi Rudyard Kipling with The British Fleet FOR THE EVENING AND SUNDAY EIGHTY SUMMER STREET. BOSTON, MASS. -^^''-'^^^^ Complimentary Reprint from the Boston American "THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET" Copyright, 1915, by Rudyard Kipling IN Lowestoft a boat was Mark well what I do say! And she was built for the herring trade, But she has gone a rovin', a rovin', a rovin' The Lord knows where! They gave her government coal to burn, And a Q.-P. gun at bow and stern, And sent her out a rovin', a rovin', a rovin'. Her skipper was mate of a bucko ship Which always killed one man per trip, So he is used to rovin', rovin', rovin'. Her mate was skipper of a chapel in Wales, And so he fights in topper and tails, Religi-ous tho' a rovin', a rovin', a rovin'. Her engineer is fifty-eight, So HE'S prepared to meet his fate, Which ain't unlikely rovin', rovin', rovin'. Her leading stoker's seventeen, So HE don't know what the judgments mean, Unless he cops 'em rovin', rovin', rovin'. Her cook, he strayed from 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! , V The Trawler Fleet as Mighty Hunter of Mines and Submarines HE 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 uncon- scious blood of those who serve her. She has a thousand years of ex- perience and can find a precedent or a parallel for any situation that the force of the weather or the malice of the King's ene- mies may bring about. The main principles of sea warfare hold good throughout all ages, and, as far as the navy has been allowed to put out her strength, these principles have been applied over all the seas of all the world. In matters of detail the navy, to whom all days are alike, has simply returned to the practise and resurrected the spirit of old days. In the last French wars, a merchant sailing out of a channel port might in a few hours find himself laid by the heels and under way for a French prison. His Majesty's ships of the line, and even the big frigates, took very 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 else- where. The Changes Wrought in a Century's Flight. So the merchants passed resolutions against the inadequate protection afforded to the trade, Q), ro and the narrow seas were full of single ship actions ; mail packets, West Country brigs and fat East Indiamen fighting for their own hulls and cargo anything that the watchful French ports sent against them, while the sloops and cutters bore a hand if they happened to be within reach. It was a brutal age, ministered to by rough- handed men; and we had put it a hundred de- cent years behind us when it all comes back again! To-day there are no prisons for the crews of merchantmen, but they can go to the bottom by mine and torpedo even more quickly than their ancestors were run into Le Havre. The submarine takes the place of the privateer; the line, as in the old days, is occupied bom- barding 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 re- appeared to the tune of fifty thousand men in more than two thousand ships, of which I have seen a few hundred. Words of command may have changed a lit- tle; the tools are certainly more complex, but the spirit of the new men who come to the old jobs is utterly unchanged. It is the same fierce, hard-living, heavy-handed, very cunning ser- vice out of which the navy as we know it to- day was born. Trawler Fleet Gets Blessings of Traffic. It is called indifferently the Trawler or Auxiliary Fleet. It is chiefly composed of fish- ermen, but it takes everyone who may have maritime tastes from retired admirals to the son 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 rest- less light cruisers who chaperon it from the back-ground are more intimate ; the destroyers working off unlighted coasts over unmarked shoals come, as you might say, in direct contact with it; the submarine alternately praises and since one periscope is very like another curses its activities, but the steady procession of traffic in home waters, liner and tramp, six every sixty minutes, blesses it altogether. Since this most Christian war includes lay- ing mines in the fairways of traffic, and since these mines may be laid at any time by Ger- man 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 they are all cleared out. When traffic comes up Channel it must be examined for contraband and other things; and the examining tugs lie out in a blaze of lights to remind ships of this. Months ago, when the war was young, the tugs did not know what to look for specially. Now they do. All this mine searching and reporting and sweeping, plus the direction and examination of the traffic, plus the laying of our own ever-shifting mine fields, is part of the Trawler Fleet's work, because the navy-as- we-know-it is busy elsewhere. Hunts Submarine with Zeal and Joy. 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 where, because they are strictly forbidden to go, they natural- ly repair; and you will begin to get some idea of what the Trawler or Auxiliary Fleet does. Now, imagine the acreage of several dock basins crammed gunwale to gunwale with brown and umber and ochre and rust-red steam trawlers, tugs, harbor boats and yachts, once clean and respectable now dirty but happy. Throw in fish steamers, surprise packets of unknown lines and indescribable junks, sam- pans, lorchas, catamarans and general service stink pontoons, filled with indescribable ap- paratus, manned by men, no dozen of whom seem to talk the same dialect or wear the same clothes. The mustard-colored jersey who is clean- ing a six-pounder on a Hull craft clips his words between his teeth and would be happier in Gaelic ; the whitish singlet and blue trousers held up by what is obviously his soldier broth- er's spare regimental belt, is pure Lpwesstoft. 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 Heb- rides and is looking at a girl on the dock edge. Mate of Tramp Ship Becomes an Admiral. The bow-legged man in the ulster and green worsted comforter is a warm Grimsby skipper, worth several thousands. He and his crew, who are mostly his own relations, keep them- selves to themselves and grimly save their money. The pirate with the red beard, bark- ing over the rail at a friend with gold ear- rings, comes from Skye. The friend is West Country. The noticeably insignificant man with a 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 on almost transatlantic lines, carries a little boat deck aft with tremendous stanchions, has a nose cocked high against ice and sweeping seas, and looks rather like a hawkmoth at rest. The small, sniffing man is reported to be a "holy terror at sea." The child in the Pullman car uniform just going ashore is a wireless operator aged nine- teen. He is attached to a flagship one hundred and twenty feet long, under an admiral aged twenty-five, who was till the other day third mate of a North Atlantic tramp, but who now leads a squadron of six trawlers to hunt sub- marines. The principle is simple enough. Its applica- tion depends on circumstances and surround- ings. One type of German submarine 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 ex- citing. 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 sur- face, the Trawler Fleet, as we know, engages them there the submarine firing, sinking and rising in unexpected quarters; the trawler fir- ing, 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 FT*; of fishing fleets and fire "into the brown" of them. When the war was young this gave splendidly /'frightful" results, but for some reason or other the game is not as popular as it used to be. Lastly, there are German submarines who perish by ways so curious and inexplicable that one could almost credit the whispered idea (it must come from the Scotch skippers) that the ghosts of the women drowned letid them to destruction. But what form those shadows take wheth- er of the "Lusitania" ladies or humbler steward- esses or 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 thing is that the work is being done. Whether it was necessary or politic to re- awaken by violence every sporting instinct of a sea-going people is a question which the enemy may have to consider later on. The Fringes of the Fleet ii D\.WN off the Foreland the young flood making, Jumbled and short and steep Black in the hollows and bright where it's breaking Awkward waters to sweep. "Mines reported in the fairway, "Warn all traffic and detain. "Send up 'Unity/ 'Claribel/ 'Assyrian/ 'Stormcock' and 'Golden Gain.'" Noon off the Foreland the first ebb making, Lumpy and strong in the bight. Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking And the jackdaws wild with fright! "Mines located in the fairway, "Boats now sweeping up the chain "Trawlers 'Unity/ 'Claribel/ 'Assyrian/ 'Stormcock' and 'Golden Gain/" Dusk off the Foreland the last light going, And the traffic crowding through, And five damned trawlers with their whis- tles blowing Heading the whole review. "Sweep completed in the fairway, "No more mines remain. "Send back 'Unity/ 'Claribel/ 'Assyrian/ 'Stormcock' and 'Golden Gain/" 10 The Deadly Perils of the "Fishing Fleet" that Guards the British Coast HE Trawler Fleet seems to look on mines as more or less fair play, but with the torpedo it is other- wise. A Yarmouth man lay on his hatch, with his gear neatly stowed away below, and told me that an- other 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 illus- trated by means of matches placed at various angles how the blindfold business is conducted. "And then" he ended, "there's always what HE'LL do. You've got to think that out for yourself while you're working above him same as if 'twas fish." Trawler Fleet's Aristocracy of Guns. But they all want guns. Those who have three-pounders clamor for sixes; sixes for twelves, and the twelve pound aristocracy dreams of four-inchers on anti-aircraft mount- ings for the benefit of roving Zeppelins. They will all get them in time, and I fancy it will be long and long ere they give them up. One mate announced 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're used to 'em now," was the smiling answer. "Niver go to sea again without a gun I wouldn't if I had my way. It keeps all hands pleased-like." They talk about men in the army who will never willingly go back to civil life! What of the fishermen who have tasted something keen- er than salt water and what of the young third and fourth mates who have held independent commands for nine months past? An Elizabethan World of Seamen. My sponsor and chaperon in this Elizabethan world of eighteenth century seamen was an A. B. who had gone down in the "Landrail," as- sisted at the Helgoland fight, seen the "Bliicher" sink and the bombs dropped on our boats when we tried to save the drowning ("whereby," as he said, "these Germans died 'gottstrafin' ' their own country because we didn't wait to be 'strafed' "), and has now found more peaceful- days in an office ashore. He led me across many decks from craft to craft to study the various appliances that they specialize 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 protested loudly that there was "nothin' in sweepinV "See that wire rope ?" he said. "Well, it leads to the ship which you're sweepin' with. She makes her end fast and you make yours. Then you sweep together at whichever depth you've agreed upon between you by means of that arrangement there which regulates the depth. "They give you a glass sort o' thing for keepin' your distance from the other ship, but that's not wanted if you know each other. Well, then you sweep, as the sayin* is. There's 12 f* LJ nothin' in it. You sweep till this wire rope fouls the bloomin' mines. "Then you go on till they appear on the sur- face, so to say, and then explode them by means of firm' at 'em with that rifle in the galley there. There's nothin' in sweepin' more than that." And if You Hit a Mine? "Why, You Go Ufi." "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 neighbor both agreed was "not natural in those waters." But as for sweeping, it bored them pro- foundly to talk about it. I only learned later as part of the natural history of mines that if you rake the tri-nitro- toluol (which is rather like cocoa dust) by hand out of a German mine you develop erup- tions and skin poisoning. But on the authority of two experts there is nothing in sweeping. Nothing whatever. How Trawlers Are Sent on Deadly Tasks. Now imagine, not a pistol shot from these crowded quays, a little Office hung round with charts that are pencilled and noted over va- rious shoals and soundings. There is a mov- able list of the boats at work, with quaint and domestic names. Outside the window lies the packed harbor outside that, again, the line of traffic up and 18 down a stately cinema-show of six ships to the hour. For the moment that film sticks. A boat probably a common sweeper re- ports an obstruction in the traffic lane a few miles away. She has found and exploded one mine. The officer heard the dull boom before the wireless report came in. In all likelihood there is a nest of mines 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 lying anywhere, but the boundar- ies of the newly discovered mine area must be fixed and the traffic deviated. There is a tramp outside with tugs in at- tendance. She has hit something and is leak- ing badly. Where shall she go? The Office gives her her destination. The harbor is too full for her to settle down here. She swings off between faithful tugs. Traffic Guarded Like Railroad Trains. Down the 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 around 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 stupid. Words begin to drop out of the air into the chart-hung Office: "Six and a half cables south, fifteen east" of something or other. "Mark it well, and tell them to work up from there," is the order. "Another mine exploded!" "Yes, and we heard that, too," says the Of- fice. "What about the submarine?" "Eliza- beth Huggins reports" Elizabeth's scandal must be fairly high flav- ored, for a torpedo boat of immoral aspect slings herself out of the harbor and hastens to share it. If Elizabeth has not spoken the truth, there may be words between the parties. Busy Hour for Quaint Little Office. 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* my port rigging, sir." The Office does not precisely remember, but if boiler and foremast are on the quay the rest of the ship had better stay alongside. The skipper falls away relieved. He scraped a tramp a few nights ago in a bit of a sea. There is a little mutter of gun-fire some- where across the still 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 harbor 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 relieve the boilerless one. Her name is slipped into the rack. The immoral torpedo boat flounces back to her moorings. Evidently what Elizabeth Huggins said was not evidence. The messages and replies begin again as the day closes. 15 Picturesque Departure of the Night Patrol Return now to the inner harbor. At twi- light there was a stir among the packed craft like the separation of dried tea leaves in water. The swing bridge across the basin shuts against us. A boat shot out of the jam, took the narrow exit at fair seven knots and rounded into the outer harbor with all the pomp of a flagship which was exactly what she was. Others fol- lowed, breaking away from every quarter in silence. Boat after boat fell into line gears stowed away; spars and buoys in order on their clean decks; guns cast loose and ready; wheelhouse 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 a hand to a man on one of them and I saw her 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 told me this was going to hap- pen," I said reproachfully to the A. B. "No more, I did," said he. "It's the night patrol going out. Fact is, I'm so used to the bloomin* evolution that it never struck me to mention it, as you might say." Next morning I went to service on board a man-of-war, and even as we came to the prayer that the navy might "be a safeguard to such as pass on the sea on their lawful occasions," I saw the long procession of traffic resuming md down the Channel si? 16 7& The Fringes of the Fleet in FAREWELL and adieu to you, Eng- lish ladies, Farewell and adieu to you, la- dies ashore. For we've received orders to work to the eastward Where we hope in a short time to "strafe" 'em some more. Well duck and well dive like three ruddy sheldrakes. Well 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 the place where repairs should be done; And there we lay doggo in twelve-fathom water With tri-nitro-toluol hogging our run* 17 The next tiling we did we rose under a Zeppelin, Wiifc his shiny big belly half blocking the sky. But what under Heaven can you do with six- pounders? So we fired what we had and we bade him good-by. We'll duck and we'll dive like three ruddy sheldrakes. 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. 18 The Daring Exploits and Thrilling Experiences of Undersea Craft HE chief business of the Auxiliary Fleet is to attend to commerce. The submarine, in her sphere, at- tends to the enemy. Like the destroyer, the subma- rine has created its own type of of- ficer and men with a language and traditions apart from the rest of the ser- vice, and yet at heart unchangingly of the ser- vice. Their business is to run monstrous risks from earth, air and water in what, to be of service, must be of the coldest of cold blood. The commander's is more a one-man job, as the crew's is more team work, than any other employment afloat. That is why the relations between submarine officers and men are what they are. They play hourly for each other's lives with Death, the umpire, always at their elbow on tiptoe to give them "out." There is a stretch of water once dear to ama- teur yachtsmen, now given over to scouts, sub- marines, destroyers, and, of course, a Con- tingent of trawlers. We were waiting the return of some boats which were now due to report. A couple surged up the still river 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 19 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 three-pounders? I gave him what I had and then he started bombing" "Mug of a ZeM>" Escapes. "I know he did," another said. "I heard him. That's what brought me down to you. I thought he had you that time." "No, I was forty feet under when he hove out the big 'un. What happened to you?" "My steering gear jammed just after I went under, 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 chose then to go wrong," the other captain mourned. "I thought his last egg was going to get me !" Half-an-hour later I was formally intro- duced to three or four quite strange, quite im- maculate officers, freshly shaved and a litttle tired about the eyes, whom I thought I had met before. Meantime (it was on the hour of the evening drink), one of the boats was still unaccounted for. No one talked of her. Crews Use Language of Their Own. They rather discussed motor cars and Admi- ralty constructors, but it felt rather like that queer twilight hour at the front when the hom- ing aeroplanes drop in. Presently a signaller entered : 20 "V-42 outside sir, wants to know which chan- nel she shall use." "Oh, thank you. Tell her to take so-and-so." . . . Mine, I remember, was Vermouth and bitters, and later on V-42 found a soft chair and joined the Committee of Instruction. Those next for duty, as well as those in training, wanted to know 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 print- able book. Questions and answers were alike Hebrew to one listener, but he gathered that every boat carried a second in command a strong, per- severing 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 ex- pected to take any more risks than they do. I wouldn't if I was a skipper. I'd loose off at any blessed periscope I saw." "That's all very fine. You wait till you've had a patriotic tramp trying to 'strafe* you at your own back door," said another. Some one told a tale of a man with a voice, notable even in a service where men are not trained to whisper. He was coming back empty-handed, dirty, tired and best left alone. From the peace of the German side he had entered our hectic home waters, where the usual tramp shelled, and by miraculous luck crumpled his periscope. Another man might have dived, but Boaner- ges kept on rising. Majestic and wrathful he rose personally through his main hatch and at 2,000 yards (have I said it was a still day?) addressed the tramp. Even at that distance 21 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." An Undersea "Thunderstorm." "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 in- verted thunderstorm 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*?" someone replied. "He was a mug," went on the man of one idea. "If I'd had a couple twelves, even, I could have 'strafed* him proper. I don't know whether I shall mutiny, desert, or write to the First Sea Lord about it." " 'Strafe' all Admiralty constructors to begin with. / could build a better boat with a four- inch lathe and a sardine tin than" the speak- er named her by letter and number. "That's pure jealousy," her commander ex- plained to the company. "Ever since I in- stalled ahem ! my patent electric washbasin, he's been intriguin' to get her. Why? We know he doesn't wash. He'd only use the basin to keep beer in." 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. Results Like Sporting Score. The "common sweeper," growling over his mug of tea that there was "nothing in 22 sweepin'," and these idly lolling 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 incompre- hensible, I should imagine, to the enemy. And the stuff held good throughout all the world from the Dardanelles to the Baltic, where only a little while ago another batch of submarines had slipped through and begun to be busy. I had spent the afternoon in looking through reports of submarine work in the Sea of Mar- mora. They read like the diary of energetic weasels in an over-crowded chicken-run, and the results for each boat were tabulated some- thing like a sporting score. 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 catch 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 passen- gers, some of whom, expecting their Allies' treatment of non-combatants, promptly leaped overboard. Our boat fished them out and re- turned them in safety. 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 28 yards." This was not, I believe, the subma- rine that fought the Turkish cavalry on the. beach. Repairs Made Under Fire. And, in addition to matters much more mar- vellous 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 had jammed under her forward diving plane. As far as I made out, she shook 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 "released it by hand," as the official phrase goes. And who, a few months ago, could have in- vented, or, having invented, would have dared to print such a nightmare as this: There was a boat in the North Sea that ran into a net and was caught by the nose. She rose, still entangled, meaning to cut the thing away on the surface. But a Zeppelin in wait- ing 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 sig- nalled for, should come out to finish her, still 24 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 al- lowed for them, she heard the twitter of four destroyers' screws thrashing above her; rose; got her shot in; saw one destroyer crumple; hung round till another took the wreck in tow; said goodby to the spare brace (she was at the end of her supplies) and reached the rendez- vous in time to save her friends! Tells of Two "Nightmares. " And since we are dealing in nightmares, here are two more one genuine, the other, mercifully, false. There was a British submarine not only at, but in the mouth of a river well home in Ger- man territory. She was spotted and went un- der, her commander perfectly aware that there was not more than five feet of water over her conning tower, so that even a torpedo boat, let alone a destroyer, would hit if she came over. But nothing hit. The search was conducted on scientific prin- ciples 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 color as when they had started ! The other nightmare arose out of silence and imagination. A boat had gone to bed on the bottom in a spot where she might reasonably expect to be looked for, but it was a convenient jumping off, or up, place for the work in hand. About that bad hour of 2.30 A. M. the com- 25 mander was waked by one of the men who whispered to him: "They've got the chains on us, sir !" Whether it was pure nightmare, or an hallu- cination of long wakefulness, or something relaxing or 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 9 o'clock this morning. We'll see about it then. Turn out that light, please." A Refreshing Sight. He did not sleep, but the dreamer and the others did; and when morning came and he gave the order to rise, she rose unhampered, and the commander saw the gray smeared seas from above once again. He said it was a very refreshing sight. Lastly, which is on all fours with the gamble of the chase, a man was coming home rather bored after an uneventful trip. It was necessary for him to sit on the bottom awhile, and there he played patience. Of a sudden it struck him, as a vow and an omen, that if he worked out the next game cor- rectly he would go up and 'strafe' something. The cards fell all in order. He went up and found himself alongside a German, whom, as he had promised and prophesied to himself, he destroyed. She was a mine-layer and needed only a jar to dissipate like a cracked electric light bulb. He was somewhat impressed by the contrast between the single-handed game fifty feet be- Jow, the ascent, the attack, the amazing result, and when he descended again his cards lay just as he had left them. 26 The Fringes of the Fleet HE ships await us above And ensnare us beneath. We rise, we lie down, and we move In the shadow of death. The ships have a thousand eyes To mark where we come . . And the mirth of a sea-port dies When our blow gets home. 27 The Tense and Anxious Moment as the Torpedo Races to Its Mark WAS honored by a glimpse into this veiled life by a boat which was merely practising between trips. Submarines are like cats. They never tell whom they were with last night, and they sleep as much as they can. If you board a submarine off duty you gen- erally see a perspective of foreshortened, fat- tish men laid all along. The men say that 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. They know that they are re- sponsible in their department for their com- rades' lives as their comrades are responsible for theirs. What's the use of flapping about? The Etiquette of Meeting Mines. When we set forth there had been some trouble in the fairway and a neutral victim of mines lay over on a sandbank nearby. "Suppose there are more mines loose?" I asked. "We'll hope there aren't," was the soothing reply. "Mines are all Josh. 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." 28 r We were dodging various crafts down the harbor 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 headed by an ugly, upstanding, black-sided buccaneer with twelve-pounders. "Ah I That's the king of the trawlers. Isn't he carrying dog, too! Give him room," one said. We were all in the narrowed harbor mouth together. "There's my youngest daughter. Take a look at her !" someone 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. "Bye the bye, did you hear about one of the passengers in the neutral yesterday? He was taken off, of course, by a destroyer, and the only thing he said was 'Twenty-five time I 'ave insured, but not this time . . . 'Ang it.' ' The trawlers lunged ahead toward the for- lorn neutral. Our destroyer nipped past us with that high-shouldered terrier-like pounc- ing action of the newer boats, and went ahead. A tramp in ballast, her propeller half out of water, threshed along through the sallow haze. "Lord! What a shot!" someone said, en- viously. The men on the little deck looked across at the slow-moving silhouette. One of them, a cigarette behind his ear, smiled at a companion. How It Feels to Be Submerged. Then we went down not as they go down when they are pressed (the record, I believe, is fifty feet in fifty seconds from top to bottom) , but genteelly, to an orchestra of appropriate sounds, roarings, and blowings, and after the 29 orders, which come from the commander alone, utter silence and peace. "There's the bottom. We bumped at fifty fifty-two!" "I didn't feel it." "We'll try again. Watch the gauge and you'll see it flick a little." It may have been so, but I was more inter- ested in the faces, and, above all the eyes, all down the length of her. It was to them, of course, the simplest of manoeuvres. They dropped into gear as no machine could ; but the training of years and the experience of the year leaped up behind those steady eyes under the electrics in the shadow of the tall motors, between the pipes and the curved hull, or glued to their particular 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, rath- er striking countenance, cast in the unmistak- able petty officer's mould. Below, as I saw him in profile, in charge of a vital control, he looked like a Doge of Venice ; the prior of some hardly ruled monastic order ; an old-time Pope anything that signified trained and stored intellectual power and as- cetically devoted to some vast impersonal end. And so with a much younger man, who changed into such a young monk as Frank Dicksee used to draw. Only a couple of torpedo men, not being gear for the moment, read an illustrated paper. Their time did not come till we went up and got to business. "Commander Gets All the Joy of It." The attack and everything connected with it is solely the commander's affair. He is the 30 onZy owe 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 (there is less trouble about the real ones) will go off all right or he'll be told about it. The others wait and fol- low the quick run of orders. It is, if not a convention, a fairly established custom, that the commander shall inferentially give his world some idea of what is going on. At least I only heard of one man who says nothing whatever, and doesn't even wriggle his shoulders when he is on the job. The others soliloquize 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 prac- tices 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 Ah !" (Half a dozen orders as to helm and depth or 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 just (more helm and depth orders, but spe- cially helm). "Wish we were working a beam 31 tube. Ne'er mind. Up ! (A last string of or- ders.) Six hundred. He doesn't see us! Fire!" The Torpedo on Its Way. The dummy left; the second in command cocked one ear and looked relieved. Up we rose, the wet air and spray spattered through the hatch. -The destroyer swung off to retrieve the dummy. "Careless brutes, destroyers are," said an 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 con- cluded. "Why didn't you then?" I asked. There were several excellent 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 in the stocks only a short time ago and here she was grown up and talking about her missing chil- dren! In the harbor again, one found more of them, all patterns and makes and sizes, with rumors of yet more and larger to follow. Naturally their men say that we are only at the be- ginning of the submarine. We shall have them presently for all purposes. Now here is the mystery of the service. A man gets a boat which for two years be- comes his very self. 32 His morning hope, his evening dream, His joy throughout the day. With him is a second in command, a cox, 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 en- dure 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. Getting Used to His Submarine. He pitches into a new type twice the size of the old one, with three times as many gadgets, an unexplored temperament and unknown leanings. After his first trip he comes back clamoring for the head of her constructor, of his own sec- ond in command, his engineer, his cox, and a few other ratings. They for their part wish him dead on the beach, because last commission with so and so, nothing ever went wrong anywhere. A fortnight later you can. remind the com- mander of what he said and he will smile large, wide navy smiles. She's not, he says, so very bad things considered, barring her five-ton torpedo derricks, the abominations of her wire- less, and the temperature of her beer lockers. All of which signifies that the new boat has found her soul, and her commander would not change her for battle cruisers. Therefore, that he may remember he is the service and not a branch of it, he is after cer- tain years shifted to a battle cruiser, where he lives in a blaze of admirals and aiguilettes, re- sponsible for vast decks and cathedral-like flats, a student of extended above-water tactics, M> 33 thinking in tens of thousands of yards instead of his modest but deadly three to twelve hun- dred. And the man who takes his place straight- way forgets that he ever looked down on great rollers from a sixty-foot bridge under the whole breadth of Heaven, but crawls and climbs and dives down conning towers with those same waves wet on his heels, 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. For it is written : "How in all time of our distress And in our triumph, too, The game is more than the player of the game And the ship more than the crew." "// Is a Cold-Blooded Business." r? ut submarine work is cold-blooded busi- ness." ( This was at a little conference 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 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 com- mand." "That's true, too," said the second. "I catch it all round. That's what I am here for." "And what about the third man?" There was one aboard at the time. "He generally comes from a smaller boat to pick up real work if he can suppress his in- tellect and doesn't talk 'last commission.' ' The third hand promptly denied the posses- sion of any intellect, and was quite dumb about his last boat. 34 "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 the commission perhaps. 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 bump at 'em. Even with a Zepp." "Oh, now and then," one interrupted, and they laughed as they explained. Submarine's Encounter with a "Yes, that was rather funny. One of our boats came up slap underneath a low Zepp. Looked for the sky, you know, and couldn't see anything except this fat shining belly almost on top of 'em. Luckily it wasn't the Zepp's stingin' end. "So she 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, and held his breath and got in shots where he could. "The Zepp was 'strafing' bombs about for all she was worth, and who was it? Macart- ney, I think, was shifting and heaving at the quickfirer between dives, and, naturally, every- one wanted to look at the performance, so about a quarter of a ton of water 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 f ought clean there wouldn't be half a bad show. But Fritz can't fight clean." "And we can't do what he does even if we're allowed to," one said. "No, we can't Tisn't done. That's all. We have to fish Fritz out of the water, and we dry him and dust him and give him cocktails and send him to Donnington Hall." "And what does Fritz do?" "He sputters and clicks and bows. He has all the correct motions, you know, but, of course, when he's a prisoner you can't tell him what he really is." "And do you suppose Fritz understands any of it?" I asked. "No. Or he wouldn't have Lusitaniaed, and then he wouldn't have been Fritz. This war was his first chance of making his name, and he chucked it all away for the sake of showin' off as a silly ass of a Gottstrafer." And then 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 periscopes just showing like a croco- dile's eyes, at the back of islands and the mouths of channels where something may some day move out in procession to its doom. 36 The Fringes of the Fleet E WELL assured that on our side The untroubled Heavens fight, Though headlong wind and heaping tide Make us their sport to-night. By 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 And our deliverance, 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 rebuke Each billow's balked career Sing 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. 37 X.. 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 in our triumph, too, The game is more than the player of the game And the ship is more than the crew. 38 Both Sides Play Hide and Seek With Sea Bombs N 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 members of Parliament attached, who a little while ago didn't see the reason for certain lighting or- ders. When a Zeppelin or two came, they saw ! Left and right of him are enormous docks, with vast, crowded sheds, miles of stone-faced quay edges, loaded with all manner of supplies and crowded with mixed shipping. In this exalted world one met staff captains, staff commanders, staff lieutenants and secre- taries, with paymasters so senior that they almost ranked with admirals. There were warrant officers, too, who long ago gave up splashing about decks barefoot, and now check and issue stores to the ravenous, untruthful fleets. Said one of these, guarding a collection of de- sirable things, to a cross between a sick bay attendant and a junior writer (but he was really an expert burglar) : "No ! An* you can tell Mr. So-and-So with my compliments that the storekeeper's gone away right away with the key of these stores in his pocket. Un- derstand me? In his trousers pocket." 39 CoastRank With " Lootenants." He snorted at my next question. "Do I know any destroyer lootenants?" said he. "This coast's rank with 'em! Destroyer- lootenants are born stealing. An' what they daren't pinch they take out in lyin'. It's a mercy they're too biisy to practise forgery, or I'd be in gaol. Engineer-commanders? Engi- neer-lootenants? They're worse "Look here ! If my own mother was to come to me beggin' brass screws for her coffin, I'd I'd think twice before I'd oblige the old lady. War's war, I grant you that ; but what I've got to deal with is crime." I referred to him a case of conscience in which everyone concerned acted exactly as they 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 neighbor 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 killed the gunner for refus- ing orders in action. Afterwards he wanted him shot by court- martial. But everyone was voiceless then, and could only mouth and croak at each other till somebody laughed and the gunner was spared. "Well, that's what you might fairly call a naval crux," said my friend among the stores. "The lootenant was right. Mustn't refuse orders in action. The gunner was right. Empty cases are on charge. No one ought to 40 r 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." Keeps Touch With Enemy. The problem of this coast resolves itself into keeping touch with the enemy's movements; in preparing matters to trap and hinder him when he moves, and in so entertaining him that he shall not have time to draw clear be- fore a blow descends on him from another quarter. There are then three lines of defense: 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. y German submarines draw a English destroy- ers. Then x calls x plus a to deal with y, who, in turn, calls up 5, a scout, and possibly a 2 , with a fair chance that if x plus y plus z (a Zeppelin) carry on, they will run into a 2 plus b plus 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 call the Grand Fleet, would come from another place. To change the comparisons: The Grand Fleet is the "strong left" ready to give the knockout blow on the point of the chin when the head is thrown up. The other fleets and other arrangements threaten the enemy's solar plexus and stomach. Somewhere in relation to the Grand Fleet lies the "blockading" cordon, which examines neutral traffic. It could be drawn as tight as a Turkish bow- string, but, for reasons which we may arrive 41 at after the war, it does not seem to have so drawn up to date. Each Side Behind Mines. The enemy lies up behind his mines, and ours, raids our coasts when he sees a chance, and kills sea-going 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 realize 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 these 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 fish- ing, had discovered his real vocation. "I never thought I'd like killin' men," he re- flected. "Never seemed to be any o' my duty. But it is and I do." A great deal of the east coast work concerns mine fields ours and the enemy's both of which shift as occasion requires. We search for and root out the enemy's mines; they do the like by us. It is a perpetual game of find- ing, springing and laying traps on the least, as well as the most, likely courses that ships use such sea-snaring and wiring as the world never dreamed of. We are hampered in this, because the navy respects neutrals, and spends a great deal of its time in making their path safe for them. 42 The enemy does not. He blows them up, be- cause that cows and impresses them, and so adds to his prestige. How to Find a Mine Field. 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 detonating horns. Some boats have enjoyed this experi- ence and still live. There was one destroyer (and there may have been others since) who came through twenty-four hours of highly compressed life. She had an idea that there was a mine field somewhere about, and left her companions be- hind 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 an- other 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 disturb- ance, 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 I could not arrive at the precise note it strikes, but they say it is unpleasant on her plates. Sometimes she would be free of them for a long while, and began to hope she was clear. At other times they were numerous, but when at last she seemed to have worried out of the danger zone, lieutenant and sub together left 43 the bridge for a cup of tea. ("In those days we took mines very seriously, you know.") As they were in the act to drink they heard the hateful sound again just outside the room. Both put their cups down with extreme care, little fingers extended ("We felt as if they might blow up, too"), and tiptoed on deck, where they met the foc'sle also on tiptoe. Danger Bumps Away. They pulled themselves together and asked severely what the foc'sle thought it was doing. "Beg pardon, sir, but there's another of those blighters tap-tapping alongside, our end." They all waited and listened to their com- mon coffin being nailed by Death himself. But the things bumped away. At this point they thought it only decent to invite the res- cued skipper, warm and blanketed in one of their bunks, to step up and do his further per- ishing in the open. 'Wo, 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 them after all. "Yes, we used to take mines awfully seri- ously 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 analyze. The rest of his squadron followed at two knots intervals, and everything in harbor that had steam up scat- tered." 44 Presently I had the honor to meet a lieuten- ant-commander-admiral who had retired from the service, but, like others, had turned out again at the first clash 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! His flagship is a multi-millionaire's private yacht. In her mixture of stark, carpetless, cur- tainless, carbolished present, with her volup- tuously curved, broad-decked, easy-stairwayed past, she might be Queen Guinevere in the convent at Amesbury. And the lieutenant-commander, most care- ful 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, be- cause 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 gray sky and a falling glass the wisdom and cunning of the old man, backed up by the passion and power of the younger breed, and the discipline which had been his soul for half a century, binding them all. "What'll he do this time?" I asked of one who might know. "He'll cruise between Two and Three East, but if you'll tell me what he won't do, it 'ud be more to the point! He's mine-hunting, I ex- pect, just now." Here is a digression suggested by the sight of a man I had known in other scenes, despatch- riding round a fleet in a patrol launch. There are many of this type, yachtsmen of sorts ac- customed to take chances, who do not hold master's certificates and cannot be given sea- going commands. Like my friend, they do general utility, often in their own boats. This is a waste of good material. Nobody wants amateur navigators, the traffic lanes are none too wide as it is. But these gentlemen ought to be distributed among the Trawler Fleet as strictly combatant of' fleers. A trawler skipper may be an excellent sea- man, but slow with submarine shelling and diving, or in cutting out enemy's trawlers. The young ones, who can master Q.-F. work in a very short time, would though there might be friction, a court-martial or two, and probably losses at first pay for their keep. Even a hundred or so of them, more or less controlled by their squadron commanders, would make a happy beginning, and they would all be extremely grateful. 46 The Fringes of the Fleet VI WHERE the East wind is brewed fresh and fresh every morning And the balmy night breezes blow straight from the Pole, I heard a destroyer sing: "What an enjoyable life does one lead, on the North Sea Patrol! "To blow things to bits is our business (and Fritz's) , Which means there are mine fields where- ever you stroll. Unless you've particular wish to die quick You'll avoid steering close to the North Sea Patrol. "We warn from disaster the mercantile master Who takes in high dudgeon our life-sav- ing role, For everyone's grousing at docking and dowsing The marks and the lights on the North Sea Patrol." So swept but surviving, half drowned but still driving, I watched her head out through the swell off the" shoal, And I heard her propellers roar : "Write to poor fellers Who stand such a spell as the North Sea Patrol!" 47 The Destroyers Fight Off Air, Land and Submarine Attacks HE great basins were crammed with craft of kinds never known before on any navy list. Some were as they were born, others had been converted, and a multitude have been designed for special cases. The navy prepares against all contingencies by land, sea and air. It was a relief to meet a batch of compre- hensible destroyers and to drop again into the little mousetrap wardrooms which are as large- hearted as all our oceans. The men one used to know as destroyer lieutenants are serious commanders and captains to-day, but their sons, lieutenants in command and lieutenant- commanders, do follow them. The sea in peace is a hard life; war only sketches an extra line or two round the young mouths. The routine of ships always ready for action is so part of the blood now that no one notices anything except the absence of for- mality. Sailors Now Know It All. 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. 48 It was comic to see his orders trying to over- take the execution of them. Ratings coming aboard carried themselves with a, to me, new swing not swank, but consciousness of ade- quacy. The high, dark foc'sles, which, thank good- ness, 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 crews, they come to be a breed apart double-jointed, with brazen bowels and no sort of nerves. It is the same in the engine room, when the boats 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. Forecasts Ship's Movements. If, for example, through some trick of her screws not synchronizing, 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 five seconds be- fore she does it. Similarly with men. If anyone from lieu- tenant-commander to stoker changes his per- sonal 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 of his neighbor's life and, vastly more important, the corporate honor. "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 incompre- hensible to the civilian. But you will find it all in "The Channel Pilot" and "The Riddle of the Sands." It is a foul coast, hairy with currents and ripe and mottled with shoals and rocks. Prac- tically the same men hold on here in the same boats 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 the chart ex- plained how they managed their lightless, un- marked navigation through black night, blind- ing rain and the crazy, rebounding North Sea gales. They themselves ascribe it to Joss that they have not piled up their boats a hundred times. "Never Know Your Luck." "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 cr 'rse, but we haven't expended much up to date. You never know your luck on patrol, though." 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 D. rise up and fly clear like the hydroplanes, nor dive and be done with it like the submarines, but imitate the vices of both. A scientist of the lower deck describes them as: "Half switchback, half water-chute, and Hell continuous!" Their only merit from a landsman's point of view is that they can crum- ple themselves up from stern 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 overrides the seas instead of smothering." "Is she low?" "Low bows glide through the water where those collier-nosed brutes smash it open." "Is she mucked up with submarine catch- ers?" "They rather improve her trim. No other boat has them." "Have they been denied to her?" "Thank heaven, we go to sea without a fish- curing plant on deck." "Does she roll, even for her class?" "She is drier than dreadnoughts." "Is she permanently and infernally wet?" "Stiff, sir, stiff the first requisite of a gun platform." 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 in- formation of the Proper Authorities. It reads like a page of Todhunter. But the masters of merchant ships could tell more of eyeless shapes, barely outlined on the foam of their own arrest, who shout orders through the thick gloom alongside. The strayed and anxious neutral knows them when their searchlights pin him across the deep, or their sirens answer the last howl of his before steam goes out of his torpedoed boilers. They stand by to catch and soothe him in his pajamas at the gangway, collect his scattered lifeboats, and see a warm drink into him before they turn to hunt the slayer. The drifters, punching and reeling up and down their ten-mile line of traps, the outer trawlers, drawing the very teeth of Death with water-sodden fingers, are grateful for their low, guarded signals; and when the Zeppelin's revealing star-shell cracks darkness open above him, the answering crack of the invis- ible destroyers' guns comforts the busy mine- layer. Big cruisers talk to them, too; and what is more, they talk to the cruisers. Sometimes they draw fire pinkish spurts of light a long way off, where Fritz is trying to coax them over a mine field he has just laid ; or they steal on Fritz in the midst of his job, and the horizon rings with barking, which the inevitable neu- tral, who saw it all, reports as "a heavy fleet action in the North Sea." Sea Alive After Dark. The sea after dark can be as alive as the woods of Summer nights. Everything is ex- actly 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 destroyers' business to find out what their business may be through all the long night, and to help or hinder accordingly. Dawn sees them pitching immensely between head seas, or hanging forlornly on cross seas 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 saying? Secure that gun, will you? Can't hear oneself speak." The gun is a bit noisy on its cone, but that isn't the reason for the destroyer lieutenant's short temper. "Says he's going down, sir," the signaller replies. What the submarine had spelt out, and everybody knew it, was: "Cannot ap- prove of this extremely unpleasant weather. Am going to bye-bye." "Well !" snaps the lieutenant to his signaller. "What are you grinning at?" The submarine has hung on to ask if the destroyer will "kiss her and whisper good night." A breaking sea smacks her tower in the mid- dle of the insult. She closes like an oyster, but just too late. Habet! There must be a quar- ter of a ton of water somewhere below, on its way to the ticklish batteries. Got 'is Little Kiss. "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. This is trivial enough, but what would you have? If admirals will not strike the proper b attitudes, nor lieutenants emit the appropriate sentiments, one is forced back on the truth, which is that the men at the heart of great matters in our Empire are mostly of an even simplicity. From the advertising point of view they are stupid, but the breed has always been stupid in this department. It may be due, as our enemies assert, to our racial snobbery, or, as others hold, a certain God-given lack of im- agination which saves us from being overcon- cerned 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 rigor- ously trained since 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 re- sign it to. Might Have Shortened War. Nor is it any lie that, had we used the Navy's bare fist instead of its gloved hand from the beginning, we could in all likelihood have shortened the war. That being so, we elected to dab and peck and half strangle the enemy, to let him go and choke him again. It is no lie that we continue on our inex- plicable path animated, we will try to believe 54 till other proof is given, by a cloudy idea of allocating or mitigating something for some- body not ourselves. [Here, of course, is where our racial snob- bery comes in, which makes the German gibber. I cannot understand why he does not accuse us to our allies of having secret commercial un- derstandings 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 carcass had to be thrown away. Meantime, there is a large, unlovely water, inhabited by plain men in severe boats, who endure cold, exposure, wet, and monotony almost as heavy as their responsibilities. Charge them with heroism but that needs heroism, indeed! Accuse them of patriotism, they become ribald. Examine into the records of the mirac- ulous work they have done and are doing. They will assist you, but with perfect sincerity they will make as light of the valor and forethought 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 skyline for manoeuvres it was practising always prac- tising; trying its men and stuff and throwing out what could not take the strain. Only Few Names Changed. That is why when war came only a very few names had to be changed, and those chiefly for the sake of the body, not the spirit. And the Seniors who hold the key to our plans and know what will be done if things happen, and what 55 links wear thin in the many chains, they are of one fibre and speech with the Juniors and the lower deck and all the rest who come out of the undemonstrative households ashore. "Here is, the situation as it exists now," say the Seniors. "This is what we do to meet it. Look and count and measure and judge for yourself, and then you will know." It is a safe offer. The civilian only sees that the sea is a vast place, divided between valor 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 or key left unsearched on any waters that might hide an enemy's craft be- tween 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 three months, in order that civilization may go about its business on all our waters. 56 121053