Told in gallant deeds

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

IV

On September 22 the Germans scored a success against us with a submarine attack. This resulted in the loss of three cruisers, the Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy. These were all old ships, and as a matter of fact were afloat for the last time, as the Admiralty had decided to sell them for breaking up. What could not be replaced was the loss of some twelve hundred officers and men. Only about eight hundred and fifty were saved out of over two thousand.

I expect that most of you have seen a picture of a submarine, but I do not suppose that any of you know very much about this extraordinary deep-sea fighting ship, which has been well said to wear the cloak of darkness. The submarine can attack unseen with the deadly weapon of the torpedo, and she can retreat undiscovered. But she is rather slow and she is what is called blind in attack; she has to come up to the surface before she can see exactly where her enemy is. It is said that if she could get along more quickly than she does she could do a great deal more mischief. Still, when commanded and manned by cool, brave men, and when she has luck on her side, she can do quite mischief enough.

The disaster would probably not have happened if the three cruisers had had with them their usual escort of destroyers—those speedy little craft which are the terror of submarines. Unfortunately, the weather was very bad, and the destroyers were delayed. This was the opportunity for which the German submarine, commanded by Lieut.-Commander Weddingen, had long been waiting.

The cruisers were on patrol duty somewhere off the Hook of Holland. They did not see the tiny periscope of the submarine, as it emerged amid the ruffled waters. The German had nine torpedoes to fire, and she had plenty of time to choose her first victim. This was the Aboukir. Lieut.-Commander Weddingen himself thought his torpedo hit the cruiser under one of her magazines, which by exploding helped to destroy the ship. However that may be, the Aboukir soon broke up and sank, and of course her sister ships stopped and lowered boats to rescue as many as possible of the crew.

Alas! the moment the Hogue stopped she became an easy mark. The German submarine gave her two torpedoes in quick succession, and in about five minutes the Hogue had gone to the bottom and the sea was covered with men, some swimming for dear life, others clinging to tables, stools, chairs, planks, etc., which had been thrown off the ship. Not immediately, but soon afterwards, the Cressy was torpedoed and sank.

The brotherhood of the sea is very strong, and British seamen are always generous in their appreciation of an enemy’s bravery. They admired the daring of the German submarine, but they could not help being sorry for the fact that it meanly advanced under cover of a German trawler which had hoisted the Dutch flag. Further, one regrets to have to add that the trawler made no attempt to save our drowning seamen, in this forming a very great contrast to the British tars who always do their very best to rescue their drowning enemies.

But there came up two trawlers, which were really Dutch, the Flora and the Titan, and their captains and crews worked like heroes to save the lives of our men. They took many hundreds to Holland, where the British seamen were most kindly treated, being fed and clothed and sent back to England after resting. Some of our poor fellows died of the cold and exposure in the sea, and these the kindly Dutchmen buried with all honour and reverence.

The mishap was a sad blow to the nation, all the more because it was seen that the Hogue and the Cressy really met their doom owing to their efforts to save the crew of the Aboukir. But everybody drew comfort from the splendid gallantry shown by all our seamen, from the captains downwards. Yet many as were the stories of brave deeds which came to light, we may be sure that at least as many more will never be known, the eye-witnesses having all perished. I will give you a few examples of deeds which did come to light.

Do you remember the cool, brave surgeon on the Arethusa? There was one equally brave and resourceful on the Cressy. Together with four men, he was clinging to some wreckage, and he instructed his comrades to rub each other’s legs with their naked feet alternately, and so keep their blood circulating. They hung on for two or three hours, and finally all were rescued, no doubt owing to the surgeon’s clever idea.

One survivor wrote after his awful ordeal:

“The best thing I saw was the coolness of a little cadet. Not more than fourteen he looked. He drifted near me, he and a seaman clinging with their hands and elbows on the same bit of wood. I never saw anything so calm as that lad! He was talking to the seaman with him. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘we’ve got to carry on like this, and if we die we shall die game.’ And with that he begins to talk about everyday things on the sunken ship. ‘What’s the new chief engineer like?’ he says, and chats about little incidents in the mess. Only fourteen, a little light-haired boy. I hope he was saved.”

What a splendid, lion-hearted boy! Was he saved? you will ask. I cannot be sure, but I think he was.

Midshipman Cazalet of the Cressy, aged sixteen, saved no fewer than eighty-eight lives, including one of his own officers. When Mr. Cazalet saw that the Aboukir had been hit, he went out in the Cressy’s whaler and picked up twenty-five men. He took them to the picket boat of the Hogue, and went back for more. Altogether he picked up two more boatloads, and it was not till he could see no more survivors that he himself took refuge on board the Dutch trawler Titan.

A little drummer-boy of the Marines, Cecil Kneller, who was only fifteen, had a great adventure, for he kept himself afloat in the water for about four hours with the aid of an empty rum cask. And when he got back to his father, who is a railway porter living at Chatham, it was noticed that he was just as rosy-cheeked as when he went away! So he did not suffer much from his long bath.

I am sorry to tell you that Captain Johnson, of the Cressy, was not among the saved. This very gallant gentleman was last seen on the bridge of his ship, carefully tying leaden weights round a parcel, which he dropped into the sea.

Can you guess what was in that parcel? It was the secret signal-book of the ship, and it was most important that it should not fall into the hands of the enemy. If the enemy had got hold of it, then they would have been able to read the signals with which our ships talk to one another, and that might easily have led to a terrible disaster.

Captain Johnson was determined that that should not happen, and when he had cast the parcel into the sea, he went down with his ship contented, for he had done his duty.