LOST ON A SEAPLANE AND SET ADRIFT IN A MINE-FIELD
Adventures on the North Sea
Told by a Seaplane Observer
The Great War has introduced new perils both on land and sea. Here is the story of one of them—two men drifting through a mine-field on a crippled seaplane, fending off mines with their bare hands, and expecting every moment to be blown to pieces! Daring adventure told in the Wide World.
I—"MY HUNDREDTH FLIGHT OVER THE NORTH SEA"
I completed my "century" of seaplane flights over the North Sea with an adventure the like of which, I trust, will never occur again.
Many varied experiences have gone to total up that number of ascents—some far from pleasant, others most interesting, and well repaying one for occasional hardships.
The sequel to my one-hundredth flight, however, will take a lot of effacing from my memory.
The atmosphere was a trifle thick when we started off from our base with the intention of flying an ordinary hundred-and-fifty-mile circular patrol.
The farther we progressed, the thicker grew the haze, till we at last were travelling through dense fog.
We left at 7.30 a.m., and climbed to two thousand five hundred feet to get above the heat-haze and fog over the water.
At eight-twenty-five, almost an hour later, the revolutions of the eight-foot tractor began slackening perceptibly, and presently, to our dismay, the engine stopped dead.
We were compelled to descend so quickly that there was no time to send a wireless signal; in fact, I just barely managed to cut the trailing aerial wire free before we struck the sea.
That I did so was a slice of luck, as, otherwise, the fuselage would probably have been ripped up, and the machine capsized.
When the floats smacked the water we got quite a bump, and a decided jar in the nape of our necks.
Fortunately, however, the under-carriage struts retained their rigidity and did not buckle, and the seaplane rode the water right way up.
I will not worry the reader with a technical explanation of the trouble which had befallen our engine. Sufficient to state that it was of so serious a nature as to preclude us from any attempt at "patching her up."
"Do you know where we are?" inquired the pilot, after we had heartily chorused a round of expletives appropriate to such an eventuality. I shook my head.
It must be remembered we had been travelling through fog most of the journey, and therefore could not spot the regular aids to maritime aerial pilotage, such as light-vessels, sandbanks, buoys, and coast contours. In addition to this there are always air currents about, to counteract a dead compass-reckoning alone.
By taking the mean of our calculations, however, we were eventually able to place a finger on the approximate area where we believed ourselves to be on the chart.
The result was anything but encouraging. We were at least fifty miles from the shores of England, and in a neighbourhood devoid of all shipping, even in times of peace. What was worse, it was gradually borne in upon us that we were perilously near, if not actually in, a most extensive mine-field!
Personally, I was feeling anything but buoyant, and the reason is not far to seek. I had had the middle watch (12-4 a.m.) in the wireless cabin ashore the previous night. A report then came through that there was "something buzzing"—hostile submarines scudding round, or Zeppelins or other aircraft—and I had the wireless of half-a-dozen machines to overhaul, and superintend their going off. Then my own turn came, and, minus breakfast or a bite of anything, off I went, having had no food since the previous afternoon at five. Worse still, I had not so much as a bite of "grub" about me, or even a smoke.
The pilot went through his pockets, and discovered one solitary cigarette resting in state in his case. Being a sportsman, as well as a companion in misfortune, he offered it to me, and, on my emphatic refusal, halved it. So we both lit up whilst we reviewed the situation.
I don't believe I ever treated a smoke with greater care than I did that half-cigarette. For aught I knew it might be my last.
When we had finished our cogitations the joint result of our thinking was by no means hopeful.
II—"S. O. S." MESSAGE ON MACHINE GUN
A strong sun was beginning to shine through the intense heat-haze, and the glare of the water was very trying.
At regular intervals I fired off a Very's light, with the idea of attracting attention. As the coloured projectiles curved high into the air and plunged downwards, so did our hopes seem to rise and fall.
When my Very's cartridges were exhausted, I commenced a series of "S.O.S." messages in the Morse code on the machine-gun. The nickel bullets of two trays of Mark VII. ammunition had winged through the heavy air before we realized the practical futility of it all.
We therefore kept the remainder of our gun magazines intact, as also a brace of heavy service revolvers, 455 calibre, fully loaded.
We were not to know what might crop up at any moment. A Taube might find us and swoop down for bombing practice, or to make an easy prey. We could not in any event be taken prisoners by hostile aircraft, as there would be no space for us in a machine already full.
At any moment, too, a U-boat might pop up and either make a target of us for their quick-firer or take us in tow for the Belgian coast, which was uncomfortably near at hand.
However, come what might, we were in a mood to fight to a finish.
Unfortunately, my wireless transmitter was worked from the engine direct, otherwise I might have rigged up an extempore aerial from the spare reel carried, and sent a "S.O.S." from accumulators.
It is doubtful if such a scheme would have proved effective, but it would have been worth trying. But in the circumstances I was helpless.
The heat was now simply awful, the sea dead calm. We had taken off our leather coats long since, and now rigged them up across the fuselage overhead, for shelter from the sun's rays.
Presently it became so hot and stuffy on the seats that both the pilot and myself took our boots and trousers off, climbed down on the floats, and stretched ourselves along them in the comparative shelter of the wings and fuselage body.
The stern part of the floats was, of course, submerged, so we lay with our lower limbs under water, and felt cooler. This we did for about three hours, each of which seemed an age.
What with the heat and the want of food, which caused a dull throbbing in my temples, by noon I was in such a state that I did not care what happened to us.
The pilot (poor chap) had only recently been married, and he rattled along continually about his young wife.
I have no wish to be in like straits again, but if such a misfortune should happen, I earnestly trust I shall not have the misfortune to be beside a young fellow newly wedded! In the long weary time we spent together I had the whole of his history, from childhood to courtship, and I suppose he had mine!
What surprised us was the great number of logs floating about. Apparently a timber boat had foundered somewhere close by.
Every log that hove in sight through the haze we thought was a ship. It was a terrible time.
At intervals we either heard—or imagined we did—the engines of aircraft. Sometimes they seemed all around us; sometimes a long way off.
"Our only chance is a relief seaplane being sent after us," said the pilot. "Otherwise we are done for!"
There was precious little chance of us ever being spotted, we reckoned, owing to the extremely low visibility.
At least a dozen times, as the day wore on, we heard the unmistakable roar of aircraft, and it was torture to listen to them.
"It's coming nearer. They will see us!" the pilot would cry, hopefully.
Then the sound would recede into the distance, and we would become despondent again.
III—"WE WERE FLOATING OVER DYNAMITE"
It was extremely irritating, whilst anxiously following these sounds with straining ears, to hear the swish, swish of the water across the floats, the ripple as it rejoined the ocean again, and the creak, creak of the great wings as we rose and fell with a squelch on the gentle undulations of a swell.
These sounds eventually developed into a perfect nightmare. Every swish and creak seemed to pierce our brains.
Eventually we climbed up into the seats again for a while and stared our eyes out scanning the horizon with our powerful glasses. Every piece of flotsam seen we dubbed a boat, till it drifted near enough to make out detail.
The wind got up a little and died down again, but it shifted the haze somewhat.
In the afternoon we saw a sight which gladdened our hearts.
High up to the nor'-west, and dropping towards us, was a bird-like machine. Nearer and nearer it came, till we could hear the engines clearly. Soon we identified her marks, which set our fears at rest. It was a British 'plane.
We sprang up, gesticulated wildly, and fired a few pistol-shots just to relieve our excitement.
She was a rescue seaplane from our own base, it appeared, and presently she dropped on the water beside us and "taxied" as close as she might.
Her pilot steered within twenty yards or so of us, and the observer heaved overboard in our direction a huge vacuum flask.
Then, without stopping their engine, and waving cheerily, they droned along the surface and tilted into the air again. We watched her until the machine became a mere speck and finally faded into the blue.
Then, and not till then, we remembered the flask. We were fated never to taste its contents, however, for it floated past out of reach, in the midst of a great school of giant jellyfish.
I have never been stung by one of these loathsome-looking creatures, and I had no desire to be on this occasion. Neither had the pilot, so the bottle floated out of sight without giving us anything but moral support.
After this interlude our long impatient wait recommenced. The episode had instilled hope into us, but the hours seemed to drag more heavily than ever. There was nothing but sea on every hand—a great circular expanse of glaring, shimmering water.
Presently schools of porpoises began to put in an appearance, sporting about in their own unmistakable style. There must have been hundreds of them. One group frolicked close around us, and several times a glossy black tail caught one or other of the floats a resounding smack.
The fabric of these floats is exceedingly frail, and we were rather concerned about them. It seemed a pity to shoot the playful creatures, particularly as their antics created a diversion, but we trembled for the safety of the floats every time they were struck.
As the tide went down, several dark, spheroidal objects commenced bobbing up by twos to the surface—on our starboard beam, as we were floating at that time.
Through our glasses we could spot scores more of them in the distance. No need to tell one another what they were. We knew—deadly contact mines!
The nearest pair were only a matter of half a cable's length away, and presently our worst ordeal commenced.
We were drifting towards them with the ebbing tide, and were now on the fringe of the great mine-field, perhaps the most extensive ever laid. Once in among those floating engines of death we should have a lively time.
It was with no very pleasant thoughts that we considered this new danger. I might have turned the machine gun on the mines, but there was the risk of exploding instead of sinking them, and if one went off it was fairly safe to assume that its mate, a couple of fathoms away, would detonate in sympathy. I presume that this is the underlying idea of distributing mines in this fashion.
During the next four hours these horrid death-traps gave us a terribly anxious time. We had some very narrow shaves, for at low-water hundreds were in sight, and as the seaplane drifted along we were powerless to avoid them.
The pilot got on one float and I got on the other, and once or twice we actually had to ward the mines off with our bare hands in order to keep them from knocking against the machine. Had one of them done so this story would never have been written. Fending off the mines was a ticklish operation, as you may suppose. Great care had to be observed in exerting our strength, and we had to place our hands on parts of the casing of the mine that were devoid of horns, or between two horns, if it was not floating high enough. While engaged in this delightful occupation I went overboard twice, but managed to scramble back safely without getting into trouble with the mines.
Once a mine went off. It was too far away, however, for us to see what caused the explosion. It is not improbable that a luckless porpoise might have bent a horn in one of its leaps.
At length, to our heartfelt relief, the tide turned, and the mines began to disappear under the water again.
By that time we were drifting nearly the opposite way again, carried along by the flood-tide.
IV—"AN AEROPLANE COMES TO RESCUE"
Six o'clock came, by our chronometer—seven p.m. summer time—and we were still intact, having for about ten hours been dependent on our frail seaplane floats for buoyancy. Had the sea risen at all, even to a decent cat's paw, we should have been below the surface long ere this.
It was shortly after six o'clock, when—burnt almost black by the sun, with parched throats and swollen tongues—we heard the sound of a propeller chugging away at no great distance. The haze had thickened again as the sun moved west, and at first we could see nothing. In fact, we both thought we were dreaming.
But there was no mistake. The chugging and throbbing grew louder and louder, and I fired three single pistol-shots into the air at intervals. Thereupon the sound intensified, and out of the haze ploughed a trim little armed motor-launch—officially known as an "M.L."
She crept alongside very gingerly, lowered her dinghy, and took us off. Then she made fast a line to the seaplane, and took her in tow at a good seven or eight knots.
We were heartily welcomed by the bluff sailormen aboard.
Curiously enough, I did not feel thirst so badly as hunger. I am not of a thirsty nature at any time, and perhaps that accounted for it.
The first mouthful of food was torture; it seemed to rasp the skin off my throat. After that I ate ravenously. It was the first touch of real hunger I had known, and after the experience, I vowed that if it lay in my power I would never again see a poor beggar go hungry.
When our bodily wants had been attended to we settled down to a comfortable smoke in the ward-room. The skipper, a Lieutenant R.N.R., told us he had just made up his mind he was not going to venture another fathom farther when he heard our shots. Owing to the proximity of the mine-field he had been very anxious.
After our smoke we turned in for a sleep which only terminated when the "M.L." reached the shores of Old England and her Diesel oil-engines ceased throbbing! This was long after midnight.
They say our little experience has left its mark on us, but personally I feel as fit as ever.