The “Falaba”
Amongst my most treasured possessions is a photograph taken on board the lost Invincible after the battle of the Falkland Islands was over. Three-quarters of a mile away Inflexible is silhouetted against the evening sky, and between the two ships lies the flotsam of the Gneisenau, with 200 or more German sailors clinging to wreckage or swimming for their lives. A few steam pinnaces and cutters are picking up these poor drowning fellows as fast as they can. The fighting navy, having conquered its foe, is engaged upon the task, always dear to it, of saving life. It is an added pleasure to befriend those who have fought gallantly.
I do not know whether Raemaekers has ever seen this photograph, but this drawing shows the drowning people, the wreckage, exactly reproduced. But here the only boat has itself been smashed by a shot, so that the last hope of safety of those in the water has been taken from them. And the ship that sinks is not a fighting ship, and the poor souls struggling for their lives are not fighting men. Can these men in the foreground be the sailors of a fighting navy?
For the officer of this submarine is not content to warn the Falaba and give its people a chance to save themselves before sinking her. He has, indeed, warned her, but, with a refinement of cruelty, has torpedoed the ship while the women and children were being hastily got off; and, not content with this, has fired on and sunk the boats in which his terrified victims hoped to escape.
There is here no artistic exaggeration. The picture is horrible just because it is photographically accurate.
It is a hideous negation of all that the word “navy” has stood for in every country that has ever possessed one. In nothing does Raemaekers show his Dutch blood more than in his savage anger at this gruesome perversion of the sea tradition. For the Dutch have a great naval history and know the meaning of a seaman’s honour.
The true sailor is great in his bravery because he is still greater in his chivalry. What will history say of these debauched brutes who revel in their hangman’s task?
ARTHUR POLLEN
“We have better luck with passenger boats than with war ships, for they cannot shoot.”