The “Warrior”
I was appointed Gunnery Lieutenant of the “Warrior” our First Ironclad in 1863, when I was a little over 22 years old. I had just won the Beaufort Testimonial (Senior Wrangler), and that, with a transcendental Certificate from Commodore Oliver Jones, who was at that time the demon of the Navy, gave me a “leg up.”
The “Warrior” was then, like the “Inflexible” in 1882 and the “Dreadnought” in 1905, the cynosure of all eyes. She had a very famous Captain, the son of that great seaman Lord Dundonald, and a still more famous Commander, Sir George Tryon, who afterwards went down in the “Victoria.” She had a picked crew of officers and men, so I was wonderfully fortunate to be the Gunnery Lieutenant, and at so young an age I got on very well, except for sky-larking in the ward-room, for which I got into trouble. There was a dear old grey-headed Paymaster, and a mature Doctor, and a still more mature Chaplain, quite a dear old Saint. These, with other willing spirits, of a younger phase, I organised into a peripatetic band. The Parson used to play the coal scuttle, the Doctor the tongs and shovel, the dear old Paymaster used to do the cymbals with an old tin kettle. The other instruments we made ourselves out of brown paper, and we perambulated, doing our best. The Captain came out of his cabin door and asked the sentry what that noise was? We were all struck dumb by his voice, the skylight being open, and we were silent. The Sentry said: “It’s only Mr. Fisher, Sir!” so he shut the door! The Commander, Sir George Tryon, wasn’t so nice! He sent down a message to say the Gunnery Lieutenant was “to stop that fooling!” (However, this only drove us into another kind of sport!) We were all very happy messmates; they kindly spoilt me as if I was the Baby. I never went ashore by any chance, so all the other Lieutenants liked me because I took their duty for them. One of them was like Nelson’s signal—he expected every man to do his duty! I was his bosom friend, which reminds me of another messmate I had who, the witty First Lieutenant said, always reminded him of Nelson! Not seeing the faintest resemblance, I asked him why. “Well,” he said, “the last thing Nelson did was to die for his country, and that is the last thing this fellow would do!” It may be an old joke, but I’d never heard it before, and it was true.
I got on very well with the sailors, and our gunnery was supposed to be A 1. They certainly did rush the guns about, so I was sent in charge of the bluejackets to a banquet given them ashore. I imagined that on our return they might have had a good lot of beer, so I appealed to their honour and affection, when we marched back to the ship in fours, to take each other’s arms. They nobly did it! And I got highly complimented for the magnificent way they marched back through the streets!! And this is the episode! The galleries at the banquet were a mass of ladies, and very nice-looking ones. When the banquet was over, the Captain of the Maintop of the “Warrior,” John Kiernan by name, unsolicited, stood up in his chair and said: “On behalf of his top-mates he wished to thank the Mayor and Corporation for a jolly good dinner and the best beer he’d ever tasted.” He stopped there and said: “Bill, hand me up that beer again.” Bill said there was no more! A pledge had been given by the Mayor that they should have only two bottles of beer each. But this episode was too much for the Mayor, and instantly in came beer by the dozen, and my beloved friend, the Captain of the Maintop, had another glass. This is how he went on (and it was a very eloquent speech in my opinion. I remember every word of it to this day) He said: “This is joy,” and he looked round the galleries crowded with the lovely ladies, and said: “Here we are, British Sailors entirely surrounded by females!!” They waved their handkerchiefs and kissed their hands, and that urged the Captain of the Maintop into a fresh flight of eloquence. “Now,” he said, “Shipmates, what was it like now coming into this ’ere harbour of Liverpool” (we had come in under sail); “why,” he said, “this is what it was like, sailing into a haven of joy before a gale of pleasure.” I then told him to shut up, because he would spoil it by anything more, and Abraham Johnson, Chief Gunner’s Mate, my First Lieutenant, gave him more beer! and so we returned.
Abraham Johnson was a wonder! When the Admiral inspected the “Warrior,” Abraham Johnson came to me and said he knew his Admiral, and would I let him have a free hand? I said: “All right!” When the ship was prepared for battle, the Admiral suddenly said: “I’ll go down in the Magazine,” and began going down the steps of the Magazine with his sword on! Abraham was just underneath down below, and called up to the Admiral: “Beg pardon, Sir! you can’t come down here!” “D—n the fellow! what does he mean?” Abraham reiterated: “You can’t come down here.” The Admiral said: “Why not?” “Because no iron instrument is allowed in the Magazine,” said Abraham. “Ah!” said the Admiral, unbuckling his sword, “that fellow knows his duty. This is a properly organised ship!”
It is seldom appreciated—it certainly was not then appreciated on board the “Warrior” when I was her Gunnery Lieutenant—that this, our first armour-clad ship-of-war, the “Warrior,” would cause a fundamental change in what had been in vogue for something like a thousand years! For the Navy that had been founded by Alfred the Great had lasted till then without any fundamental change till came this first Ironclad Battleship. There is absolutely nothing in common between the fleets of Nelson and the Jutland Battle! Sails have given way to steam. Oak to steel. Lofty four-decked ships with 144 guns like the “Santissima Trinidad,” to low-lying hulls like that of the first “Dreadnought.” Guns of one hundred tons instead of one ton! And Torpedoes, Mines, Submarines, Aircraft. And then even coal being obsolete! And, unlike Nelson’s day, no human valour can now compensate for mechanical inferiority.
I rescue these few words by a survivor of the German Battle Cruiser “Blücher,” sunk on January 24th, 1915, by the British Battle Cruisers “Lion” and “Tiger.” The German Officer says:
“The British ships started to fire at us at 15 kilometres distant” (as a matter of fact it was about 11 to 12 miles). “The deadly water spouts came nearer and nearer! The men on deck watched them with a strange fascination!
“Soon one pitched close to the ship, and a vast watery billow, a hundred yards high, fell lashing on the deck!
“The range had been found!
“The shells came thick and fast. The electric plant was destroyed, and the ship plunged into a darkness that could be felt! You could not see your hand before your nose! Below decks were horror and confusion, mingled with gasping shouts and moans! At first the shells came dropping from the sky, and they bored their way even to the stokeholds!
“The coal in the bunkers was set on fire, and as the bunkers were half empty the fire burnt fiercely. In the engine-room a shell licked up the oil and sprayed it around in flames of blue and green, scarring its victims and blazing where it fell. Men huddled together in dark compartments, but the shells sought them out, and there Death had a rich harvest.”
I forgot to say we had a surprise visit from Garibaldi on board the “Warrior”—Garibaldi, then at the zenith of his glory. The whole crew marched past him singing the Garibaldi Hymn. He was greatly affected. It was very fine indeed; for we had a picked stalwart crew, and their sword bayonets glistening in the sun, and in their white hats and gaiters they looked, as they were, real fighting men! And then, in a moment, they stripped themselves of their accoutrements and swarmed up aloft and spread every sail on the ship, including studding sails, in a few minutes. It was a dead calm, and so was feasible.
From the “Warrior” I went to the gunnery school ship, the “Excellent”; and it was during these years that some of my “manias” began to display themselves, the result being that three times I lost my promotion through them.
It had fortuned that in 1868, when starting the Science of Under-Water Warfare as applied to the Ocean, I met a humble-minded armourer whose name was Isaac Tall, and for many years we worked together. He devised, amongst other inventions, an electrically-steered steam vessel that could tow barges laden with 500 lb. mines which were dropped automatically at such a distance apart as absolutely to destroy all hostile mines in a sufficient area to give a passage for Battleships. Small buoys were automatically dropped as the countermines were dropped to mark the cleared passage. That invention, simplicity itself, still holds the field for clearing a passage, say, into the Baltic. Not one single man was on board the steam vessel of the Barges carrying the counter mines.
Before leaving the Admiralty, in January, 1910, I introduced the use of Trawlers, and we employed them in experimental trials, clearing away hostile mines. Our mines in those days were very inferior to the Hertz German Mine, which really remains still the efficient German Mine we have to contend with. In 1868 I took out a provisional patent for a Sympathetic Exploder, and, strange to say, it is now coming into play in a peculiar form as a most effective weapon for our use.
I have remarked elsewhere how the First Lord of that date did not believe in mines or torpedoes, and I left for China as Commander of the China flagship.
Archbishop Magee, that wonderful Prelate who asked some layman to interpret his feelings when the footman spilt the onion sauce over him, said of “Exaggerations” that they were needful! He said you wanted a big brush to produce scenic effects! A camel’s-hair brush was, no doubt, the inestimable weapon of Memling in those masterpieces of his minute detail that were at Bruges when I was a young Post Captain, and that so entranced me there. Ah! that wonderful Madame Polsonare where we lodged! How she did so well care for us! The peas I used to watch her shelling! The three repositories:
First—the old ones to be stewed.
Second—those for the Polsonare Family.
Thirdly—the youngest and sweetest of the peas for us—her lodgers!
And how most delicious they were! And how delightful was old “Papa” Polsonare! and the daughters so plump and opulent in their charm!
And their only son the “brave Belge!” He was a soldier! What has become of them now? They cared for us as their very own, and charged us the very minimum for our board and lodging! And having nothing but my pay then I was grateful! And the Kindergarten so delightful! The little children all tied together by a rope when they went out walking. Pamela was my youngest daughter. “The last straw” was her nickname! And it was written up over the mantelpiece that it was “défendu” to kiss Pamela! She was about three years old, I think, and went to school with a bun and her books strapped to her back, and when the Burgomaster gave away the prizes she was put on a Throne to hand them out (dressed as a Ballet Dancer!). But alas! when the moment came she was found to be fast asleep!
I am always so surprised that so little notice is taken of Satan’s dramatic appearance before the Almighty with reference to the Patriarch Job. It’s so seldom that Satan in person comes before us. He usually uses someone else, and in this case of Job it’s quite the most subtle innuendo I ever came across! It so accentuates what occurs in common life!
“Doth Job fear God for nought?” Well may one be thankful and prayerful when prosperity is showered on one! Can you be so in adversity and affliction—undeserved and unexplainable? However, Job got through all right! But Prayer is as much misunderstood as Charity. A splendid Parson in Norfolk replied to his congregation who asked him to pray for rain that really it was useless while the wind was east! Also it appears to me that one farmer, wanting rain for his turnips, doesn’t have any feeling for the other man who is against rain because of carrying his crop of something else. Indeed the pith and marrow of prayer is that it must be absolutely unselfish, and so Dr. Chalmers accordingly acutely said the finest prayer he knew was: “Almighty God, the Fountain of all Wisdom, who knowest our necessities,” etc. (see Collects at end of Communion Service).
Coming home from the China Station in 1872, I was Commander of the old Battleship “Ocean.” She was an old wooden Line of Battleship that had armour bolted on her sides. When we got into heavy weather, the timbers of the ship would open when she heeled over one way, and shut together when she heeled the other, and squirted the water inboard! And always we had many fountains playing in the bottom of the ship from leaks, some quite high. At Singapore the Chaplain left us; he couldn’t face it, as we were going home round the Cape of Good Hope at the stormy season. So I did chaplain! When we put into Zanzibar on the East Coast of Africa, I heard there was a sick Bishop ashore from Central Africa who had been carried down on a shutter with fever. I went to see him, to ask whether he could take on next day, Sunday, and give the crew a change! He turned out to be a splendid specimen, and had given up a fat living in Lincolnshire to be a Missionary. I found him eating boiled rice and a hard boiled egg on a broken plate—we gave him a good feed when he came on board—but I am telling the story because his Sermon was on Prayer. He gave us no text, but began by saying he had been wondering for the last half-hour what on earth that thing was overhead between the beams on the main deck where we were assembled! Of course we knew it was one of the long pump handles for pumping the ship out with the chain pumps (a thing of past ages)—all the crew had to take continually to the pumps, she was leaking so badly—and “There!” he said, “I’m a Bishop, and instead of saying my prayers I’ve been letting my thoughts wander,” and he gave us a beautiful extempore sermon on wandering thoughts on Prayer that hit everyone in the eye!
I believe he died there in Central Africa, a polished English gentleman, with refined tastes and delighting in the delicacies of a cultured life! A missionary had come preaching at his Country Church and had made him ashamed of his life of ease, so he told me!
We got into a fierce gale off the Cape, and I began to envy the Chaplain we had left behind at Singapore, especially when the Captain said he thought there was nothing for it but for me, the Commander, to go aloft about the close reefed fore topsail as the men would follow no one of lower rank. My monkey jacket was literally “blown into ribbons!” I had heard the expression before, but never had realised it could be exact!
Sir Thomas Troubridge foundered with all hands in the exact place in an old two-decker—I think it was the “Blenheim.” He was Nelson’s favourite, and got ashore in the “Culloden” at the Nile; but that’s another story as Mr. Kipling says!