CHAPTER IV
WITH THE GRAND FLEET: A NORTH SEA “STUNT”
“So young and so untender!”—King Lear
For more than eighteen months the Grand Fleet had been at war. It was the centre of the great web of blockading patrols, mine-sweeping flotillas, submarine hunters, and troop-transport convoys, and yet as a Fleet it had never seen the enemy nor fired a shot except in practice. The fast battle cruisers, stationed nearest to the enemy in the Firth of Forth had grabbed all the sport that was going in the Bight of Heligoland, or in the Dogger Bank action. But though several of the vessels belonging to the Grand Fleet had picked up some share in the fighting—at the Falkland Islands and in the Dardanelles—Jellicoe with his splendid squadrons still waited patiently for the Day. The perils from submarines had been mastered, and those from mines, cast into the seas by a reckless enemy, had been made of little account by continuous sweeping. The early eagerness of officers and men had given place to a sedate patience. At short intervals the vast Fleet would issue forth and, attended by its screen of destroyers and light cruisers, would make a stately parade of the North Sea. All were prepared for battle when it came, but as the weeks passed into months and the months into years, the parades became practice “stunts,” stripped of all expectation of encountering the enemy and devoid of the smallest excitement. The Navy knows little of excitement or of thrills—it has too much to think about and to do. At Action Stations in a great ship, not one man in ten ever sees anything but the job immediately before him. The enemy, if enemy there be in sight from the spotting tops, is hidden from nine-tenths of the officers and crew by steel walls. So, if even a battle be devoid of thrills—except those painfully vamped up upon paper after the event—a “stunt,” without expectation of battle, becomes the most placid of sea exercises. I will describe such a “stunt” as faithfully as may be, adding thereto a little imaginary incident which will, I hope, gratify the reader, even though he may be assured in advance that I invented it for his entertainment.
It was the beginning of the afternoon watch, and the vast harbour of Scapa Flow was very still and sunny and silent. The hands were sitting about smoking, or “caulking” after their dinner, and the noisome “both watches” call was still some fifteen minutes away. But though everything appeared to be perfectly normal and sedate, an observant Officer of the Watch, looking through the haze within which the Fleet flagship lay almost invisible against the dark hills, could see a little wisp of colour float to her yards and remain. Forthwith up to the yards of every vessel in harbour ran an exactly similar hoist, and as it was dipped on the flagship it disappeared from sight upon all. It was the signal to prepare for sea, and now mark exactly how such a signal—seemingly so momentous to a civilian—is received by the Navy at war.
If the Officer of the Watch upon a ship knows his signals he will put his glass back under his arm and think, “Good, I’ve got off two days’ harbour watch keeping at least; my first and middle, too.” The signal hands on the bridge look at the calm sea, which will for once not drench them and skin their hands on the halliards, and gratefully regard the windless sky under which hoists will slide obediently up the mast and not tug savagely like a pair of dray horses. The signal bos’n turns purple with fierce resentment which he does not really feel, for he will be up all day and half the night beside the Officer of the Watch on the bridge running the manœuvring signals, and he loves to feel indispensable. There is no excitement on the mess decks, only a smile since sea means a period of peace of mind when parades and polishings are suspended, and one keeps three watches or sleeps in a turret all night and half the day. Besides there is deep down in the minds of all the hope that, in spite of a hundred duds and wash-outs and disappointments, this trip may just possibly lead to that glorious scrap that all have been longing for, and have come to regard as about as imminent as the Day of Judgment. The gunnery staff look important and the “garage men”—armourers and electricians, commonly called L.T.O.s, in unspeakable overalls carrying spanners and circuit-testing lamps—float round the turrets looking for little faults and flies in the amber. The bad sailors shiver, though there is hope even for them in the silence and calmness of the sky. There is no obvious bustle of preparation, for the best of reasons: there is nothing to do except to close sea doors and batten down; the Fleet is Already Prepared. Let the reader please brush from his mind any idea of excitement, any idea of unusualness, any idea of bustle; none of these things exist when the Grand Fleet puts to sea. The signal which ran up to the yards of the flagship and was repeated by all the vessels in the Fleet read: “Prepare to leave harbour,” and simply meant that the Fleet was going out, probably that night, and that no officer could leave his ship to go and dine with his friends in some other ship’s wardroom.
By and by up goes another little hoist, also universally acknowledged; this makes the stokers and the engine room artificers, and the purple-ringed, harassed-looking engineer officers jump lively down below so as to cut the time notice for full steam down by half and be ready to advance the required speed by three knots or so.
The sun dips and evening comes on; a glorious evening such as one only gets fairly far north in the spring, and a signal comes again, this time: “Raise steam for —— knots and report.” Now one sees smoke pouring forth continuously from the coal-driven ships, and every now and then a great gust of cold oil vapour from the aristocratic new battleships whose fires are fed with oil only.
Dinner in the wardroom starts in a blaze of light and a buzz of talking, and the band plays cheerfully on the half-deck outside. The King’s health is drunk and the band settles down to an hour of ragtime and waltzes, the older men sip their port, and the younger ones drift out to where the gun room is already dancing lustily. Our wonderful Navy dances beautifully, and loves every evening after dinner to execute the most difficult of music-hall steps in the midst of a wild Corybantic orgie. In the choosing of partners age and rank count for nothing. The wardroom and gun room after dinner are members of one happy family.
Then suddenly the scene is transformed. In the doorway of the anteroom and dining-room appears framed the tall form of the Owner, who in a dozen words tells that the Huns are out. They are in full force strolling merrily along a westerly course far away to the south. Already the battle-cruisers from the Forth are seeking touch with the enemy, and the light stuff and the advance destroyers, the screen of the Grand Fleet, have already flown from Scapa to make contact with the battle cruisers. Our armoured cruisers have moved out in advance and the Grand Fleet itself is about to go.
As the wardroom gathers round the Owner, the band packs up hastily and vanishes down the big hatch into the barracks or Marines’ mess to stow its instruments and put on warm clothing. Those snotties who have the first watch scatter, and the remainder gather in the gun room to turn over the chances on the morrow which seems to their eager souls more mist-shrouded and promising than have most morrows during the long months of waiting.
Let us now shift the scene to the compass platform or Monkey’s Island of one of the great new oil-fired battleships of the Fifth Battle Squadron, one of the five ships known as Queen Elizabeths—all added to the Navy since the war began and all members of the most powerful and fastest squadron of battleships upon the seas of the world. They have a speed of twenty-five knots, carry eight 15-inch guns in four turrets arranged on the middle line, and have upon each side a battery of six 6-inch guns in casemates for dealing faithfully and expeditiously with enemy destroyers who may seek to rush in with the torpedo. As our ship passes out into the night, the port and starboard 6-inch batteries are fully manned and loaded, and up on the compass platform, in control of these batteries, are two young officers—a subaltern of Marines and a naval sub-lieutenant—to each of whom is allotted one of the batteries. One has charge of the port side, the other of the starboard. I have called the Navy a young man’s service, and here we see a practical example; for beneath us is the last word in super-battleships dependent for protection against sudden torpedo attack upon the bright eyes and cool trained brains of two youngsters counting not more than forty years between them. I will resume my description and put it in the mouth of one of these youthful control officers—the Marine subaltern who a year before had been a boy at school:
“Going to the gun room I warn the Sub, my trusted friend and fellow control officer on the starboard side, and depart to my cabin, where I dress as for a motor run on a cold day. I have a great Canadian fur cap and gorgeous gloves which defeat the damp and cold even of the North Sea. As I stand on the quarter deck for a moment’s glance at the sunset, which I cannot hope to describe, there comes a sound, a sort of hollow metallic clap and a flicker of flame. They are testing electric circuits in the 6-inch battery, and No. 5 gun port has fired a tube. These sounds recur at short intervals from both sides for a couple of minutes. Then the gun layers are satisfied and stop. I go along the upper deck above the battery—which is in casemates between decks—and reach the pagoda, and then pass up, up, through a little steel door, above the signal bridge and the searchlights to the airy, roomy Monkey’s Island with the foremast in the middle of the floor, holding the spotting top—usually known as the topping spot, an inversion which ironically describes its exposed position in action—poised above our heads. There is a little charthouse forward of the mast on its raised date of the compass platform proper, where the High Priest busies himself between his two altars, the old and the new.
“Looking ahead it is already dark. The sea is still and the ships are dim black masses. We have already weighed—the Cable Officer’s call went as I passed along the upper deck—and are gliding to our station in the Squadron, all of which are moving away past those ships which have not yet begun to go out. Gradually we leave the rest of the Grand Fleet behind, for our great speed gives us the place of honour, and so pass outside and breast the swell of the open sea.
“We find that the wind has risen outside the harbour, but there has not yet been time for a serious swell to get up. The water heaves slowly, breaking into a sharp clap which sets our attendant destroyers dancing like corks, but of which we take no notice whatever. This is one way in which the big ships score, though they miss the full joy of life and the passion for war which can be felt only in a destroyer flotilla. Our destroyer escort has arisen apparently from nowhere and we all plough on together. At intervals we tack a few points and the manœuvre is passed from ship to ship with flash lamps. Behind us, though we cannot see them, follows the rest of the Grand Fleet, in squadrons line ahead, trailing out up to, and beyond the horizon.
“That night watch on my first big ‘stunt’ lives in my memory. Never before had I been by myself in control of a battery of six 6-inch guns for use against light fast enemy craft, which might try the forlorn hazard of a dash to within easy torpedo range of about 500 yards. Torpedoes are useless against rapidly moving ships unless fired quite close up. This form of attack has been very rare, and has always failed, but it remains an ever-present possibility. Even in clear weather with the searchlights on—which are connected up to me and move with me—one cannot see for more than a mile at night, and a destroyer could rush in at full speed upon a zig-zag track to within point blank range in about a minute. Direct-aimed fire would fail at such a rapidly moving mark. One has to put up a curtain of fire, fast and furious for the charging vessel to run into. But there is no time to lose, no time at all.
“There was a bright moon upon that first night, so everything was less unpleasant and nerve-racking than it might have been. Somehow in the Navy one seems to shed all feelings of nervousness. Perhaps this is the result of splendid health, the tonic sea air, and the atmosphere of serene competent resourcefulness which pervades the whole Service. We are all trained to think only of the job on hand and never of ourselves.
“From the height of the compass platform there is no appearance of freeboard. The ship’s deck seems to lie flush with the water, and one sees it as a light-coloured shaped plank—such as one cut out of wood when a child and fitted with a toy mast. The outline is not regularly curved but sliced away at the forecastle with straight sides running back parallel with one another. ‘A’ turret is in the middle of the forecastle, which is very narrow; and behind it upon a higher level stands ‘B’ with its long glistening guns sticking out over ‘A’s’ back. From aloft the turrets look quite small, though each is big enough for a hundred men to stand comfortably on the roof. The slope upwards is continued by the great armoured conning tower behind and higher than ‘B’ turret, and directly above and behind that again stands the compass platform. Overhead towers the draughty spotting top for the turret guns. Behind again, upon the same level as my platform, are the two great flat funnels spouting out dense clouds of oily smoke. When there is a following wind the spotting top is smothered with smoke, and the officers perched there cough and gasp and curse. It is then worthy of its name, for it is in truth a ‘topping spot!’
“We are a very fast ship, but at this height the impression of speed is lost. The ship seems to plough in leisurely fashion through the black white-crested waves, now and then throwing up a cloud of spray as high as my platform, to descend crashing upon ‘A’ turret, which is none too dry a place to sleep in. We don’t roll appreciably, but slide up and down with a dignified pitch, exactly like the motion of that patent rocking-horse which I used to love in my old nursery.
“Down below, though they are hidden from me by the deck, the gunners stand ready behind their casemates, waiting for my signal. The guns are loaded and trained, the crews stand at their stations, shells and cordite charges are ready to their hands. The gun-layers are connected up with me and are ready to respond instantly to my order.
“So the watch passes; my relief comes, and I go.
“I was on watch again in the forenoon, and then one could see something of the Grand Fleet and realise its tremendous silent power. We had shortened speed so as not to leave the supporting Squadrons too far behind and one could see them clearly, long lines of great ships, stretching far beyond the visible horizon. Nearest to us was the cream of the Fleet, the incomparable Second Squadron—the four Orions and four K.G. Fives—which with their eighty 13.5-inch guns possess a concentrated power far beyond anything flying Fritz’s flag. Upon us of the Queen Elizabeths, and upon the Second Battle Squadron, rests the Mastery of the Seas. Far away on the port quarter could be seen the leading ships of the First Battle Squadron of Dreadnoughts, all ships of 12-inch guns, all good enough for Fritz but not in the same class with the Orions, the K.G. Fives or with us. Away to starboard came more Dreadnoughts, and Royal Sovereigns—as powerful as ourselves but not so fast—and odd ships like the seven-turreted Agincourt and the 14-inch gunned Canada. It was a great sight, one to impress Fritz and to make his blood turn to water.
“For he could see us as we thrashed through the seas. It looked no larger than a breakfast sausage, and I had some difficulty in making it out—even after the Officer of the Watch had shown it to me. But at last I saw the watching Zeppelin—a mere speck thousands of feet up and perhaps fifty miles distant. Our seaplanes roared away, rising one after the other from our carrying-ships like huge seagulls, and Herr Zeppelin melted into the far-off background of clouds. He had seen us, and that was enough to keep the Germans at a very safe distance. He, or others like him, had seen, too, our battle cruisers which, sweeping far down to the south, essayed to play the hammer to our most massive anvil. In the evening, precisely at ten o’clock, the German Nordeich wireless sent out a volley of heavy chaff, assuring us that we had only dared to come out when satisfied that their High Seas Fleet was in the Baltic. It wasn’t in the Baltic; at that moment it was scuttling back to the minefields behind Heligoland. But what could we do? When surprise is no longer possible at sea, what can one do? It is all very exasperating, but somehow rather amusing.
“We joined the Battle Cruiser Squadron in the south and swept the ‘German Ocean’ right up to the minefields off the Elbe and Weser, and north to the opening of the Skaggerak. Further we could not go, for any foolish attempt to ‘dig out’ Fritz might have cost us half the Grand Fleet. Then our ’stunt’ ended, we turned and sought once more our northern fastnesses.”
It was during the return from this big sweep of the North Sea that our young Marine chanced upon his baptism of fire and his first Great Adventure. His chance came suddenly and unexpectedly—as chances usually come at sea—and I will let him tell of it himself in that personal vivid style of his with which I cannot compete.
“The wonderful thing has happened! I have been in action! It was not a great battle; it was not what the hardiest evening newspaper could blaze upon its bills as a Naval Action in the North Sea. From first to last it endured for one minute and forty seconds; yet for me it was the Battle of the Century. For it was my own, my very own, my precious ewe lamb of a battle. It was fought by me on my compass platform and by my bold gunners in the 6-inch casemates below. All by our little selves we did the trick, before any horrid potentates could interfere, and the enemy is at the bottom of the deep blue sea—it is not really very deep and certainly is not blue. What I most love about my battle is that it was fought so quickly that no one—and especially none of those tiresome folks called superior officers—had any opportunity of kicking me off the stage. All was over, quite over, and my guns had ceased firing before the Owner had tumbled out of his sea cabin in the pagoda, and best of all before my gunnery chief had any chance to snatch the control away from me. He came charging up, red and panting, while the air still thudded with my curtain fire, and wanted to know what the devil I was playing at. ‘I have sunk the enemy, sir,’ I said, saluting. ‘What enemy?’ cried he, ‘I never saw any enemy.’ ‘He’s gone, sir,’ said I standing at attention. ‘I hit him with three 6-inch shells and he is very dead indeed.’ ‘It’s all right,’ called out the Officer of the Watch, laughing. ‘This young Soldier here has been and gone and sunk one of Fritz’s destroyers. He burst her all to pieces in a manner most emphatic. I call it unkind. But he always was a heartless young beast.’ Then the Bloke, who is a very decent old fellow, cooled down, said I was a lucky young dog, and received my official report. He carried it off to the Lord High Captain—whom the Navy people call the Owner—and the great man was so very kind as to speak to me himself. He said that I had done very well and that he would make a note of my prompt attention to duty. I don’t suppose that I shall ever again fight so completely satisfying a naval battle, for I am not likely to come across another one small enough to keep wholly to myself.
“I will tell you all about it. I was up on my platform at my watch. My battery of 6-inch guns was down below, all loaded with high explosive shell, weighing 100 lbs. each. All the gunners were ready for anything which might happen, but expecting nothing. So they had stood and waited during a hundred watches. It was greying towards dawn, but there was a good bit of haze and the sea was choppy. The old ship was doing her rocking-horse trick as usual, and also as usual I was feeling a bit squeamish but nothing to worry about. As the light increased I could see about 2,000 yards, more or less—I am not much good yet at judging sea distances; they look so short. The Officer of the Watch was walking up and down on the look-out. ‘Hullo,’ I heard him say, ‘what’s that dark patch yonder three points on the port bow?’ This meant thirty degrees to the left. I looked through my glasses and so did he, and as I could see nothing I switched on the big searchlight. Then there came a call from the Look Out near us, the dark patch changed to thick smoke, and out of the haze into the blaze of my searchlight slid the high forepeak of a destroyer. I thought it was one of our escort, and so did the Officer of the Watch; but as we watched the destroyer swung round, and we could see the whole length of her. I can’t explain how one can instantly distinguish enemy ships from one’s own, and can even class them and name them at sight. One knows them by the lines and silhouette just as one knows a Ford car from a Rolls-Royce. The destroyer was an enemy, plain even to me. She had blundered into us by mistake and was now trying hard to get away. I don’t know what the Officer of the Watch did—I never gave him a thought—my mind simply froze on to that beautiful battery of 6-inch guns down below and on to that enemy destroyer trying to escape. Those two things, the battery and the enemy, filled my whole world.
“Within five seconds I had called the battery, given them a range of 2,000 yards, swung the guns on to the enemy and loosed three shells—the first shells which I had seen fired in any action. They all went over for I had not allowed for our height above the water. Then the Boche did an extraordinary thing. If he had gone on swinging round and dashed away, he might have reached cover in the haze before I could hit him. But his Officer of the Watch was either frightened out of his wits or else was a bloomin’ copper-bottomed ’ero. Instead of trying to get away, he swung back towards us, rang up full speed, and came charging in upon us so as to get home with a torpedo. It was either the maddest or the bravest thing which I shall ever see in my life. I ought to have been frightfully thrilled, but somehow I wasn’t. I felt no excitement whatever; you see, I was thinking all the time of directing my guns and had no consciousness of anything else in the world. The moment the destroyer charged, zig-zagging to distract our aim, I knew exactly what to do with him. I instantly shortened the range by 400 yards, and gave my gunners rapid independent fire from the whole battery. The idea was to put up a curtain of continuous fire about 200 yards short for him to run into, and to draw in the curtain as he came nearer. As he zig-zagged, so we followed, keeping up that wide deadly curtain slap in his path. There was no slouching about those beautiful long-service gun-layers of ours, and you should have seen the darlings pump it out. I have seen fast firing in practice but never anything like that. There was one continuous stream of shell as the six guns took up the order. Six-inch guns are no toys, and 100-lb. shells are a bit hefty to handle, yet no quick-firing cartridge loaders could have been worked faster than were my heavy beauties. Every ten seconds my battery spat out six great shells, and I steadily drew the curtain in, keeping it always dead in his path, but by some miracle of light or of manœuvring the enemy escaped destruction for a whole long minute. On came the destroyer and round came our ship facing her. The Officer of the Watch was swinging our bows towards the enemy so as to lessen the mark for his torpedo, and I swung my guns the opposite way as the ship turned, keeping them always on the charging destroyer. Away towards the enemy the sea boiled as the torrent of shells hit it and ricochetted for miles.
“At last the end came! It seemed to have been hours since I began to fire, but it couldn’t really have been more than a minute; for even German destroyers will cover half a mile in that time. The range was down to 1,000 yards when he loosed a torpedo, and at that very precise instant a shell, ricochetting upwards, caught him close to the water line of his high forepeak and burst in his vitals. I saw instantly a great flash blaze up from his funnels as the high explosive smashed his engines, boilers and fires into scrap. He reared up and screamed exactly like a wounded horse. It sounded rather awful, though it was only the shriek of steam from the burst pipes; it made one feel how very live a thing is a ship, how in its splendid vitality it is, as Kipling says, more than the crew. He reared up and fell away to port, and two more of my shells hit him almost amidships and tore out his bottom plates like shredded paper. I could hear the rending crash of the explosions through my ear-protectors, and through the continuous roar of my own curtain fire. He rolled right over and was gone! He vanished so quickly that for a moment my shells flew screaming over the empty sea, and then I stopped the gunners. My battle had lasted for one minute and forty seconds!
“ ‘But what about the torpedo?’ you will ask. I never saw it, but the Officer of the Watch told me that it had passed harmlessly more than a hundred feet away from us. ‘You sank the destroyer,’ said the Officer of the Watch, grinning, ‘but my masterly navigation saved the ship. So honours is easy, Mr. Marine. If I had had those guns of yours,’ he went on, ‘I would have sunk the beggar with about half that noise and half that expenditure of Government ammunition. I never saw such a wasteful performance,’ said he. But he was only pulling my leg. All the senior officers, from the Owner downwards, were very nice to me and said that for a youngster, and a Soldier at that, I hadn’t managed the affair at all badly.
“I thought that the guns’ crews had done fine and told them so; but the chief gunner—a stern Marine from Eastney—shook his head sadly. No. 3 gun had been trained five seconds late, he said, and was behind the others all through. He seemed to reckon the sinking of the destroyer as nothing in condonation of the shame No. 3 had brought upon his battery. I condoled with him, but he was wounded to the heart.
“The Officer of the Watch said that all the time the destroyer was charging she was firing small stuff at our platform with a Q.-F. gun on her forepeak. And I knew nothing about it! This is the simple and easy way in which one earns a reputation for coolness under heavy fire.”