The Submarine Mine
As quite a young Lieutenant, with extraordinary impudence I told the then First Sea Lord of the Admiralty that the Hertz German Submarine Mine, which I had seen a few days before in Kiel Harbour, would so far revolutionise sea warfare as possibly to prevent one fleet pursuing another, by the Fleet that was flying dropping submarine mines in its wake; and certainly that sudden sea operations of the old Nelsonic type would seriously be interfered with. He very good humouredly sent me away as a young desperado, as he remembered that I had been a lunatic in prophesying the doom of masts and sails, which were still then magnificently supreme, and the despised engineer yet hiding his diminished head had to keep the smell of oily oakum away from the noses of the Lords of the ship.
That same Hertz mine in all its essentials remains still “The King of Mines,” and if only in those years immediately preceding the war we had manufactured none else, instead of trying to improve on it, we should have bagged no end of big game. But as it was, our mines were squibs; the enemy’s ship always steamed away and got into harbour, while ours always went down plump.
The Policy of the Submarine Mine favoured us, but our authorities couldn’t see it. I printed in three kinds of type:
(1) Huge capitals; (2) Italics; (3) big Roman block letters the following words, submitted to the authorities very early in the war—
“Sow the North Sea with Mines on such a huge scale that Naval Operations in it become utterly impossible.”
So you nip into the Baltic with the British Fleet.
That British Mining Policy blocked the North Sea entrance to the Kiel Canal—that British Mining Policy dished the neutrals. When the neutrals got blown up you swore it was a German mine—it was the Germans who began laying mines; and a mine, when it blows you up, don’t hand you a ticket like a passport, saying what nationality it is. In fact, our mines were so damned bad they couldn’t help believing it was a German mine. But I might add I think they would have sunk any Merchant ship, squibs though they were; and I may add in a parenthesis this British policy of submarine mines for the North Sea would have played hell with the German submarines, not so much blowing them up but entangling their screws.
Well, at the last—longo intervallo—towards the close of the war, being the fifteenth “Too Late” of Mr. Lloyd George’s ever memorable and absolutely true speech, the British Foreign Office did allow this policy, and the United States sent over mines in thousands upon thousands, and we’re still trying to pick ’em up, in such vast numbers were they laid down!
We really are a very peculiar people.
Lions led by Asses!
I bought a number of magnificent and fast vessels for laying down these mines in masses—no sooner had I left the Admiralty in May, 1915, they were so choice that they were diverted and perverted to other uses.
But perhaps the most sickening of all the events of the war was the neglect of the Humber as the jumping-off place for our great fast Battle Cruiser force, with all its attendant vessels—light Cruisers, Destroyers, and Submarines, and mine-layers, and mine-sweepers—for offensive action at any desired moment, and as a mighty and absolute deterrent to the humiliating bombardment of our coasts by that same fast German Battle Cruiser force. The Humber is the nearest spot to Heligoland; and at enormous cost and greatly redounding to the credit of the present Hydrographer of the Navy, Admiral Learmonth (then Director of Fixed Defences), the Humber was made submarine-proof, and batteries were placed in the sea protecting the obstructions, and moorings laid down behind triple lines of defence against all possibility of hostile successful attack.
However, I had to leave the Admiralty before it was completed and the ships sent there; and then the mot d’ordre was Passivity; and when the Germans bombarded Scarborough and Yarmouth and so on, we said to them à la Chinois, making great grimaces and beating tom-toms; “If you come again, look out!” But the Germans weren’t Chinese, and they came; and the soothing words spoken to the Mayors of the bombarded East Coast towns were what Mark Twain specified as being “spoke ironical.”
I conclude this Chapter with the following words, printed in the early autumn of 1914:—
“By the half-measures we have adopted hitherto in regard to Open-Sea Mines we are enjoying neither the one advantage nor the other.”
That is to say, when the Germans at the very first outbreak of war departed from the rules of the Hague Conference against the type of mine they used, we had two courses open to us: there was the moral advantage of refusing to follow the bad lead, or we could seek a physical advantage by forcing the enemies’ crime to its utmost consequences. We were effete. We were pusillanimous, and we were like Jelly-fish.
And we “Waited and See’d.”
CHAPTER X
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
We started out on the compilation of this book on the understanding that it was not to be an Autobiography, nor a Diary, nor Meditations (à la Marcus Aurelius), but simply “Memories.” And now you drive me to give you a Synopsis of my life (which is an artful periphrasis), and request me to account for my past life being one continuous series of fightings—Love and Hate alternating and Strife the thread running through this mortal coil of mine. (When a coil of rope is made in a Government Dockyard a coloured worsted thread is introduced; it runs through the centre of the rope: if the rope breaks and sends a man to “Kingdom Come,” you know the Dockyard that made it and you ask questions; if it’s purloined the Detective bowls out the purloiner.) So far my rope of life has not broken and the thread is there—Strife.
Greatly daring, and “storms of obloquy” having been my portion, I produce now an apologia pro vita mea, though it may not pulverise as that great Cardinal pulverised with his famous Apologia (“He looked like Heaven and he fought like Hell”).
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Here I would insert a note which I discovered this very afternoon sent me by an unknown friend when Admiral von Spee and all his host went to the bottom. Before that event there had been a series of disasters at sea, and a grave uneasy feeling about our Navy was spreading over the land. The three great Cruisers—“Hogue,” “Cressy” and “Aboukir”—had been sunk near the German coast. What were they doing there? Did they think they were Nelson blockading Toulon? The “Goeben” and “Breslau” had escaped from our magnificent Battle Cruisers, then in the Mediterranean, which had actually boxed them up in the Harbour of Messina; and they had gone unharmed to Constantinople, and like highwaymen had held a pistol at the head of the Sultan with the threat of bombarding Constantinople and his Palace and thus converted Turkey, our ancient ally, into the most formidable foe we had. For is not England the greatest Mahomedan Power in the world? The escape of the “Goeben” and “Breslau” was an irreparable disaster almost equalled by our effete handling of Bulgaria, the key State of the Balkans; and we didn’t give her what she asked. When we offered it and more next year, she told us to go to hell. Then there was the “Pegasus,” that could neither fight nor run away, massacred in cold blood at Zanzibar by a German Cruiser as superior to her as our Battle Cruisers were to von Spee. And last of all, as a climax, that sent the hearts of the British people into their boots, poor Cradock and his brave ships were sunk by Admiral von Spee. I became First Sea Lord within 24 hours of that event, and without delay the Dreadnought Battle Cruisers, “Inflexible” and “Invincible,” went 7,000 miles without a hitch in their water tube boilers or their turbine machinery, and arrived at the Falkland Islands almost simultaneously with Admiral von Spee and his eleven ships. That night von Spee, like another Casablanca with his son on board, had gone to the bottom and all his ships save one—and that one also soon after—were sunk. I have to reiterate about von Spee, as to this day the veil is upon the faces of our people, and they do not realise the Salvation that came to them.
1. We should have had no munitions—our nitrate came from Chili.
2. We should have lost the Pacific—the Falkland Islands would have been another Heligoland and a submarine base.
3. Von Spee had German reservists, picked up on the Pacific Coast, on board, to man the fortifications to be erected on the Falkland Islands.
4. He would have proceeded to the Cape of Good Hope and massacred our Squadron there, as he had massacred Cradock and his Squadron.
5. General Botha and his vast fleet of transports proceeding to the conquest of German South-West Africa would have been destroyed.
6. Africa under Hertzog would have become German.
7. Von Spee, distributing his Squadron on every Ocean, would have exterminated British Trade.
That’s not a bad résumé!
Now I give the note, for it really is first-rate. Who wrote it I don’t know, and I don’t know the paper that it came from:—
“It is amusing to read the eulogies now showered on Lord Fisher. He is the same man with the same methods, the same ideas, and the same theories and practice which he had in 1905 when he was generally abused as an unscrupulous rascal for whom the gallows were too good. Lord Fisher’s silence under storms of obloquy while he was building up Sea Power was a striking evidence of his title to fame.”
The writer of the paragraph quotes the above words from some other paper; then he goes on with the following remark:—
“We cordially endorse these observations. At the same time, not all of those who raised the ‘storms of obloquy’ in 1905 and for some years subsequently are now indulging in eulogy. Many of them just maintain a more or less discreet silence, varied by an occasional insinuation either in public or in private that everything is not quite as it should be at the Admiralty, or that Lord Fisher is too old for his job, etc., etc., etc. As we have often remarked, many of the vituperators of Lord Fisher hated him for this one simple reason, that he had weighed them up and found them wanting. They had imposed on the public, but they couldn’t impose on him. Some of these vituperators are now discreetly silent, but we know for a fact that their sentiments towards the First Sea Lord are not in the slightest degree changed.”
To proceed with this synopsis:—
I entered the Navy, July 12th, 1854, on board Her Majesty’s Ship “Victory,” after being medically examined by the Doctor on board of her, and writing out from dictation The Lord’s Prayer; and I rather think I did a Rule of Three sum. Before that time, for seven years I had a hard life. My paternal grandfather—a splendid old parson of the fox-hunting type—with whom I was to live, had died just before I reached England; and no one else but my maternal grandfather was in a position to give me a home. He was a simple-minded man and had been fleeced out of a fortune by a foreign scoundrel—I remember him well, as also I remember the Chartist Riots of 1848 when I saw a policeman even to my little mind behaving, as I thought, brutally to passing individuals. I remember seeing a tottering old man having his two sticks taken away from him and broken across their knees by the police. On the other hand, I have to bear witness to a little phalanx of 40 splendid police (who then wore tall hats and tail coats) charging a multitude of what seemed to me to be thousands and sending them flying for their lives. They only had their truncheons—but they knew how to use them certainly. They seized the band and smashed the instruments and tore up their flags.
I share Lord Rosebery’s delightful distaste; and wild horses won’t make me say more about those early years. These are Lord Rosebery’s delicious words:—
“There is one initial part of a biography which is skipped by every judicious reader; that in which the pedigree of the hero is set forth, often with warm fancy and sometimes at intolerable length.”
How can it possibly interest anyone to know that my simple-minded maternal grandfather was driven through the artifices of a rogue to take in lodgers, who of their charity gave me bread thickly spread with butter—butter was a thing I otherwise never saw—and my staple food was boiled rice with brown sugar—very brown?
Other vicissitudes of my early years—until I became Gunnery Lieutenant of the first English Ironclad, the “Warrior,” at an extraordinarily early age—may be told some day; and all that your desired synopsis demands is a filling in of dates and a few details, till I became the Captain of the “Inflexible”—the “Dreadnought” of her day. I was promoted from Commander to Captain largely through a Lord of the Admiralty by chance hearing me hold forth in a Lecture to a bevy of Admirals.
H.M.S. “Vigilant,” Portsmouth.
October 3rd, 1873.
Mr. Goschen and Milne left at 10 a.m. I stayed and went on board “Vernon,” Torpedo School Ship, at 11. Had a most interesting lecture from Commander Fisher, a promising young officer, and witnessed several experiments. The result of my observations was that in my opinion the Torpedo has a great future before it and that mechanical training will in the near future be essential for officers. Made a note to speak to Goschen about young Fisher.
That was in 1873. More than thirty years after, “Young Fisher” was instrumental in making this principle the basis of the new system of education of all naval cadets at Osborne.
I remember so well taking a “rise” out of my exalted company of Admirals and others. The voltaic element, which all lecturers then produced with gusto as the elementary galvanic cell, was known as the “Daniell Cell.” A bit of zinc, and a bit of copper stuck in sawdust saturated with diluted sulphuric acid, and there you were! A bit of wire from the zinc to one side of a galvanometer and a bit of wire from the copper to the other side and round went the needle as if pursued by the devil.
There were endless varieties of this “Daniell Cell,” which it was always considered right and proper to describe. “Now,” I said, “Sirs, I will give you without any doubt whatsoever the original Daniell Cell”—at that moment disclosing to their rapt and enquiring gaze a huge drawing (occupying the whole side of the lecture room and previously shrouded by a table cloth)—the Lions with their mouths firmly shut and Daniel apparently biting his nails waiting for daylight! Anyhow, that’s how Rubens represents him.
I very nearly got into trouble over that “Sell.” Admirals don’t like being “sold.”
I should have mentioned that antecedent to this I had been Commander of the China Flagship. I wished very much for the Mediterranean Flagship; but my life-long and good friend Lord Walter Kerr was justly preferred before me. The Pacific Flagship was also vacant; and I think the Admiral wanted me there, but I had a wonderful good friend at the Admiralty, Sir Beauchamp Seymour, afterwards Lord Alcester, who was determined I should go to China. So to China I went; and, as it happened, it turned out trumps, for the Admiral got softening of the brain, and I was told that when he got home and attended at the Admiralty I was the only thing in his mind; the only thing he could say was “Fisher!” And this luckily helped me in my promotion to Post Captain.
After starting the “Vernon” as Torpedo School of the Navy and partaking in a mission to Fiume to arrange for the purchase of the Whitehead Torpedo, I was sent at an hour’s notice overland to Malta, where on entering the harbour I noticed an old tramp picking up her anchor, and on enquiry found she was going to Constantinople, where the ship I was to command was with the Fleet under Sir Geoffrey Hornby. I went alongside, got up a rope ladder that was hanging over the side and pulled up my luggage with a rope’s end, when the Captain of the Tramp came up to me and said: “Hullo!” I said “Hullo!” He said “What is it you want?” He didn’t know who I was, and I was in plain clothes, just as I had travelled over the Continent, and I replied: “I’m going with you to Constantinople to join my ship”; and he said “There ain’t room; there’s only one bunk, and when I ain’t in it the mate is.” I said “All right, I don’t want a bunk.” And he said “Well, we ain’t got no cook.” And I said “That don’t matter either.” That man and I till he died were like Jonathan and David. He was a magnificent specimen of those splendid men who command our merchant ships—I worshipped the ground he trod on. His mate was just as good. They kept watch and watch, and it was a hard life. I said to him one day “Captain, I never see you take sights.” “Well,” he said, “Why should I? When I leaves one lamp-post I steers for the other” (meaning lighthouses); “and,” he says, “I trusts my engineer. He gives me the revolutions what the engine has made, and I know exactly where I am. And,” he says, “when you have been going twenty years on the same road and no other road, you gets to know exactly how to do it.” “Well,” I said, “what do you do about your compass? are you sure it’s correct? In the Navy, you know, we’re constantly looking at the sun when it sets, and that’s an easy way of seeing that the compass is right.” “Well,” he said, “what I does is this. I throws a cask overboard, and when it’s as far off as ever I can see it, I turns the ship round on her axis. I takes the bearing of the cask at every point of the compass, I adds ’em all up, divides the total by the number of bearings, which gives me the average, and then I subtracts each point of the compass from it, and that’s what the compass is wrong on each point. But,” he says, “I seldom does it, because provided I make the lamp-post all right I think the compass is all right.”
I found Admiral Hornby’s fleet at Ismid near Constantinople, and Admiral Hornby sent a vessel to meet me at Constantinople. He had heard from Malta that I was on board the tramp. That great man was the finest Admiral afloat since Nelson. At the Admiralty he was a failure. So would Nelson have been! With both of them their Perfection was on the Sea, not at an office desk. Admiral Hornby I simply adored. I had known him many years; and while my cabins on board my ship were being painted, he asked me to come and live with him aboard his Flagship, which I did, and I was next ship to him always when at sea. He was astounding. He would tell you what you were going to do wrong before you did it; and you couldn’t say you weren’t going to do it because you had put your helm over and the ship had begun to move the wrong way. Many years afterwards, when he was the Port Admiral at Portsmouth, I was head of the Gunnery School at Portsmouth, and, some war scare arising, he was ordered to take command of the whole Fleet at home collected at Portland. He took me with him as a sort of Captain of the Fleet, and we went to Bantry Bay, where we had exercises of inestimable value. He couldn’t bear a fool, so of course he had many enemies. There never lived a more noble character or a greater seaman. He was incomparable.
* * * * *
After commanding the “Pallas” in the Mediterranean under Sir Geoffrey Hornby, I was selected by Admiral Sir Cooper Key as his Flag Captain in North America in command of the “Bellerophon”; and I again followed Sir Cooper Key as his Flag Captain in the “Hercules” when he also was put in command of a large fleet on another war scare arising. It was in that year I began the agitation for the introduction of Lord Kelvin’s compass into the Navy, and I continued that agitation with the utmost vehemence till the compass was adopted. After that I was chosen by Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock, the great Arctic Explorer, to be his Flag Captain on the North American Station, in the “Northampton,” then a brand new ship. He again was a splendid man and his kindness to me is unforgettable. He had gone through great hardships in the Arctic—once he hadn’t washed for 179 days. He was like a rare old bit of mahogany; and I was told by an admirer of his that when the thermometer was 70 degrees below zero he found the ship so stuffy that he slept outside on the ice in his sleeping bag.
1885. Aged 41. Post Captain.
In command of Gunnery School at Portsmouth.
I was suddenly recalled to England and left him with very deep regret in the West Indies to become Captain of the “Inflexible.” I had the most trying parting from that ship’s company of the “Northampton”; and not being able to stand the good-bye, I crept unseen into a shore boat and got on board the mail steamer before the crew found out that the Captain had left the ship. And the fine old Captain of the Mail Steamer—Robert Woolward by name—caught the microbe and steamed me round and round my late ship. He was a great character. Every Captain of a merchant ship I meet I seem to think better than the last (I hope I shan’t forget later on to describe Commodore Haddock of the White Star Line, for if ever there was a Nelson of the Merchant Service he was). But I return to Woolward. He had been all his life in the same line of steamers, and he showed me some of his correspondence, which was lovely. He was invariably in the right and his Board of Directors were invariably in the wrong. I saw a lovely letter he had written that very day that I went on board, to his Board of Directors. He signed himself in the letter as follows:—
“Gentlemen, I am your obedient humble servant” (he was neither), “Robert Woolward—Forty years in your employ and never did right yet.”
I must, while I have the chance, say a few words about my friend Haddock. It was a splendid Captain in the White Star steamer in which I crossed to America in 1910, and I remarked this to my Cabin Steward, as a matter of conversation. “Ah!” he said, “you should see ’addick.” Then he added “We knows him as ’addick of the ‘Oceanic.’ Yes,” he said, “and Mr. Ismay (the Head of the White Star Line) knows him too!” The “Oceanic” was Mr. Ismay’s last feat in narrowness and length and consequent speed for crossing the Atlantic. I have heard that when he was dying he went to see her. This conversation never left my mind, although it was only the cabin steward that told me; but he was an uncommon good steward. So when I came back to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord on October 31st, 1914, I at once got hold of Haddock, made him into a Commodore, and he commanded the finest fleet of dummy wooden “Dreadnoughts” and Battle Cruisers the world had ever looked on, and they agitated the Atlantic, and the “Queen Elizabeth” in wood got blown up by the Germans at the Dardanelles instead of the real one. The Germans left the other battleships alone chasing the “Elizabeth.” If this should meet the eye of Haddock, I want to tell him that, had I remained, he would have been Sir Herbert Haddock, K.C.B., or I’d have died in the attempt.
* * * * *
Now you have got perhaps not all you want, but sufficient for the Notes to follow here.