III. The Drifter Patrol, Dover
Another German destroyer raid into the English Channel on the night of February 14th-15th, 1918, had for its objective the destruction of the Auxiliary Patrol Forces on outpost duty. This much was evident from the deliberate and systematic manner in which, once touch was established in the inky darkness, the attack was carried out. A large force was chosen for the enterprise, comprising ten at least of Germany’s largest and fastest destroyers; that these succeeded in sinking seven armed fishing vessels and returning to their base without being intercepted by the British patrols proper can only be ascribed to accurate foreknowledge of the disposition of these forces (information readily supplied by aerial reconnaissance), and the luck of the Devil who favours his own.
The raiding tactics of German destroyers have already been described in detail. It will be admitted that they provide the enemy with an initial advantage of which he might reasonably be expected to make the most. Indeed the wonder is not so much that they were not intercepted in the inky darkness of a thousand square miles, but that they did not make more of their opportunity.
On the night in question one of the Drifter Patrol had sighted a submarine on the surface, attempting to break through the vigilant cordon of patrol craft. Off went the drifter in jubilant pursuit, signalling to her consorts to join the hunt, and the remainder joined her like a pack of basset-hounds on the trail of an otter. The enemy destroyers, casting about in the darkness, sighted the “Tally-ho!” rocket and swept down upon the drifters, intent upon their own business, from at least four quarters simultaneously. The Germans appear to have worked in pairs; the leading boat of each couple switched on a blinding searchlight for the few seconds necessary to get an accurate range, and then the whole force slowed down to carry out the deliberate work of destruction. In the words of one of the survivors, “It was awfu’—juist slaughter.” The speaker made the statement without heat or reproach; he was a fisherman, as were most of his brethren, wont to accept both calamity and fortune without emotion. “Girt ole black things ...” he added, and shook his grizzled head so that the sunlight winked on his gold earrings.
The enemy closed in nearly all cases to within fifty yards of their victims, poured two salvos of high-explosive shell into each, and passed on. They had no time for fancy shooting and there were few misses. It is to be hoped they found the gruesome work to their taste.
In one case a German destroyer misjudged her distance and came so close to her victim that she was unable to depress her guns sufficiently to bring them to bear on the little target. She fired as she rolled instead, and the drifter Cloverbank turned on the instant into a splintered shambles, buried in clouds of steam and rocketing sparks. Only one man survived the first salvo, Deckhand Plane, R.N.R. (Trawler Section). He blundered forward to the gun through the flames and fumes of bursting shell, and finding it loaded, returned the fire at point-blank range, single-handed, half-blinded, stupefied by smoke and din.
It was brave work, but all round him in the darkness amid the flames of guns and blazing ships and all the savagery of that onslaught, the Drifter Patrol was taking its gruel not a whit less gallantly. The survivors launched their splintered dinghies, carrying their wounded with them, and paddled clear of the blazing wrecks that a few minutes before had been ship and home. The two enginemen of the Violet May, Engineman Ewing and Engineman Noble, succeeded in launching their boat, and lowered into it the mate, mortally wounded, and a wounded deckhand. The remainder of the crew lay inextricably entangled in the blazing wreckage, dead. The survivors paddled clear, waited till the enemy had passed on, and then closed their little ship again. The fire had hold of her forward, steam was pouring from her wrecked engine-room, and the ammunition was exploding broadcast about her decks. “A doot she’s sinkin’,” said Ewing stoutly. Noble said nothing: he was not given overmuch to speech, but he made the painter fast and proceeded to climb inboard again. Ewing followed and between they fought and overcame the fire. “Dinna leave me, Jamie,” cried the mate piteously; “Dinna leave me in the little boat.” “Na, na,” was the reply. “We’ll na leave ye,” and presently they brought their wounded back on board and took them below again. The mate was laid on his bunk and Ewing fetched his shirts from his bag and tore them up into bandages. “An’ them his dress shirts,” murmured Noble. It was his first and last contribution to the narrative. They took turn and turn about to tend the wounded, plug the shot-holes, and quench the smouldering embers of the fire, reverently dragging the wreckage from off their dead, and comforting the dying mate in the soft, almost tender accents of the Celt.
“’Tis nae guid,” said the mate at last. “Dinna fash about me, lads. A’ll gang nae mair on patrol,” and so died. But they saved their little ship, and she lies in a corner of the basin at her base, a mass of twisted metal and charred woodwork, to testify to the courage of the British fisherman in war.
The night’s work counted for a German victory, and had it not been for the pitiful braggadocio of the German official communiqué, one would have been tempted to leave it at that. True that seven little fishing craft with a gun in each bow would never make port again, but seven more took their places before the sun was over the horizon on the morrow of the affair. Three score or so of British seamen had finished their life’s trick and passed to their long watch below. But England and the Channel Patrol have the story of their passing: the pity is that it must here be so brief.
It was a rather pathetic gathering that mourned its dead that Sunday morning in the grey church by the quayside at Dover, with the painted sunlight streaming down through the stained-glass windows, lighting the weather-beaten faces of skippers and deckhands, trimmers and enginemen of the Trawler Reserve. There was, moreover, in their solemn faces a trace of faint hurt bewilderment, like that on the face of a child that has bumped its head in the dark.
They were only fishermen, for all their brass buttons and blue uniforms and plentiful display of D.S.C.’s and D.S.M.’s; simple folk accustomed to judge life by its tangible results. They were not concerned with strategy or the might-have-been. They had been accustomed to look to their big brothers, the destroyers, in the simple faith of children when there was trouble, and for once it seemed they had looked in vain. They had had a drubbing, and they took it according to the tradition of British seamen; but the puzzled, grieving look remained.
The captain of the Drifter Patrol marched them away from the church and talked to them, standing on a drum of paint in the more familiar environment of coils of wire, floats, nets, mine-cases, and all the grim impedimenta of their calling. It was in no sense of the word a speech, but it was a very moving little address. “Never fear,” he concluded; “we’ll take tea with the Hun before you’re all much older, or I’ll eat my hat.” It takes a brave man to prophesy concerning war these days, but the men of the Drifter Patrol stumped back to their little craft comforted, and, as events transpired, he was right.
In the dark hour preceding dawn on March 21st (five weeks later) the British destroyers Botha (Commander Roger L’E. M. Rede, R.N.) and Morris (Lieutenant-Commander Percy R. P. Percival, R.N.), and the three French destroyers Mehl, Magon, and Bouclier, were on patrol in the eastern waters of the Channel, when a sudden outburst of firing was heard to the northward. Vivid flashes of gunfire out to sea made it plain that the enemy was engaged upon a futile bombardment of the crumbling bathing-sheds of deserted French watering-places.
The Allied force promptly made for the flashes at full speed, led by Botha; star shell fired in an endeavour to light up the enemy and obtain their range however merely had the effect of quelling the bombardment and scattering the raiders, who were never seen again.
The patrolling force then proceeded to search to the northwestward in the hope of intercepting any divisions of the enemy who had ventured more into mid-channel; star shells were fired at intervals, for the night was misty, and presently one of these bursting ahead revealed the shadowy outline of a force of enemy destroyers and torpedo boats sneaking off through the darkness in the direction of their base.
The Botha challenged, and an unfamiliar reply winked at them out of the night; the next instant British and French were pouring a heavy fire into the enemy. For a few minutes a grim little fight ensued. The Allies rapidly overhauled the raiders, and set the darkness ablaze with flashes of gunfire and blazing wreckage flying broadcast from shell bursting on impact. A running fight between torpedo craft is like a battle between scorpions; whichever gets a sting home first rarely has need to strike again. None of the German torpedoes found their mark, but the Morris, emerging from a smoke screen flung out by the fleeing enemy, cut off a German destroyer of a large type and torpedoed her at 500 yards range. She blew up and sank almost immediately, heeling over amid clouds of steam and vanishing stern first.
In the meanwhile, Botha’s main steampipe had been severed by a stray shell and she immediately commenced to lose her way through the water. Her commander, realising that if he was to finish his “cup of tea with the Hun” he must needs drink it quickly, fired both torpedoes at the leading boats, and, putting his helm hard over, rammed the fourth boat in the line cleanly amidships. His speed had dropped considerably, but it sufficed to drive the knife-edged bows of the Botha clean through, cutting the enemy completely in half.
Botha then swung round and attempted to repeat the coup on the next astern; the Hun succeeded in eluding the Botha’s crippled onslaught, but fell a victim to the French destroyers. She lay disabled and ablaze, and they closed and pounded the flaming wreck with torpedo and gun fire as a man grinds a dead snake under his heel.
Morris by this time had relinquished the pursuit, having lost the quarry in the smoke and mist; she returned to the scene of action, and took her lame sister in tow while the French destroyers circled round in the grey dawn picking up prisoners. From statements made by these, it appears that no less than eighteen torpedo craft had sallied forth for the raid. They were unhesitatingly attacked and rather badly mauled by two British and three French destroyers and fled (as one of the British officers picturesquely described it) like scalded dogs.
The adventures of the remaining fifteen were by no means terminated when they quitted French waters, leaving three of their number behind. A squadron of the R.N.A.S. bombing machines proceeding up the coast on business sighted the homing German flotillas and fell upon them—or rather, suffered their bombs to do so. They reported having completely thrown the enemy into disorder and scattered them in all directions. A squadron of enemy sea-planes that had gone out at dawn to look for the wanderers then encountered the escort fighters of the bombing machines, and in a very short time had their numbers reduced by four. Of these, three were accounted for by one British pilot.
It must have been with feelings of more than ordinary relief that the German torpedo force sighted the long grey mole of Ostend Harbour through the morning mist. But even then their nerves had yet another ordeal to face. Something rushed across the face of the water in a cloud of spray apparently from nowhere, a sinister unseen thing travelling at incredible speed. A torpedo struck the stern of one of the German destroyers, and the cloud of spray tore away through a hail of shell and bullets, unscathed, and vanished in the mist.