CHAPTER XVI
THE COMING OF THE GERMAN SUBMARINES
In our nightly journeys back from the trenches we were always guided through the darkness to our camp by the brilliant glare of the lights from the warships, hospital ships and transports, which lay thickly clustered round Cape Helles. It was a most beautiful sight, like a veritable floating Venice, but it was not practical and it was not war. It showed an arrogance and utter contempt of the enemy who was, at that very moment, stealthily stalking them under the seas with the deadly submarine.
At all events, the submarines came, with the result that the battleships Goliath and Triumph were sunk with appalling swiftness and great loss of life.
Then, and then only, did the Fleet awaken to its danger; the battleships and cruisers vanished into the unknown, while the transports disappeared in a night, and we felt, as it were, marooned on this inhospitable Peninsula, from which the Turks had removed every living thing, save only a few dogs, which were found to be so dangerous that they had to be shot at sight.
It was, therefore, with feelings of great pleasure that, as I rode down to W Beach on the evening of the 26th May, I saw the stately battleship, the Majestic, lying at anchor out in the roadstead, a few cable lengths from W Beach; and as I looked my heart grew glad within me, because there lay the ship in the open sea, exposed to any attack, and I felt that it would be impossible for the ship to lie thus unless the German submarines which had sunk the other battleships a few days previously were either disposed of, or else some clever new defence had been designed which made the Majestic immune from the deadly torpedo.
It was a cheering thought, and it helped to enhance the beauty of the wondrous panorama which lay spread before my eyes.
Away to my left stood the quaint old ruined walls and towers of Sedd-el-Bahr, thrown into bold outline against the rippling waters of the Dardanelles, while further on the eye was caught by the green plains of Ilium, set in a tangle of hills, on the picturesque Asiatic coast. Ahead of me, to the south, glittered the soft sea, with Cape Helles jutting into it, like a rough brown hand thrust into a basin of shimmering quicksilver. Almost at my feet lay Lancashire Landing, busy with its hundreds of men and animals going to and fro, while away on my right sparkled the Ægean, with the Isles of Greece jutting out of it, like rugged giants rising from their ocean lair. To crown all, the sun was going down in a perfect blaze of colour, tipping the crests of Imbros and Samothrace with a glint of gold, as it sank behind them into the sea. I have seen sunsets in many parts of the world, but never have I seen anything to equal the glorious lights and shades which at sundown are painted on the Ægean sky. If I were an artist, my ambition would be to go in the lovely autumn days on a pilgrimage to these shores and humbly try to put on my canvas the perfectly gorgeous but harmoniously blended rose, pink, scarlet, red, yellow, purple, green, amber and blue—a perfect intoxication of glorious colours which the imagination would be unequal to, unless they were absolutely thrown on the sky before one's own eyes. The magnificence of the sunsets seen from Gallipoli were the sum of what an ordinary mortal could conceive as a fitting setting for the splendour of God's Throne.
So it is to be hoped that the officers and crew of the Majestic, which was moored so peacefully amid such heavenly surroundings, took a soul-satisfying view of the glory around them, because, alas, for many of the poor fellows it was the last sunset that would ever gladden their eyes, for on the morning of the 27th the ship was marked down by a German submarine and sent to its doom within four minutes of being struck.
I was attending to some routine work in my camp when I heard the terrific explosion and, looking up, saw a volume of smoke ascending to the heavens from W Beach. I jumped on my horse, which was ready saddled close by, and galloped over to hear what had happened. When I topped the rise, all of the Majestic that I could see was a couple of dozen feet of its copper keel which projected above the water, and which still remains thus—a mute witness to the fact that "some one had blundered."
Regrettable incidents like these should be unknown in a Navy renowned for the good practical commonsense and thoroughness of its captains.