The ship's officers did more than their best for everybody's comfort, giving up their cabins to the officers, sharing their meals and refusing to accept any payment for food and drinks. If the skipper of a certain ship of the Royal Mail Company, which sailed on the early morning of August 16th from Southampton, chances to see these lines I would tell him how gratefully his kindness is remembered, and how the little mascot, in the shape of a tiny teapot from the steward's pantry, brought the best of luck through ten months' hard service, always made excellent tea whenever called upon, and now occupies a place of honour in my china cabinet. Here's wishing everything of the best to those who carry on the fine traditions of the blue or red ensign!
"Well, where are we bound for?" This to the First Officer.
"Don't know a bit," he replies. "The skipper may know, but I'm not sure. Anyway he's as close as a barnacle about it."
We steamed across Channel with all lights on. It was another of those astonishing facts which didn't strike one until later. We were off the mouth of the Seine exactly twelve hours after sailing. And all that time we only once sighted anything in the shape of a convoy, and that was a T.B.D. for about twenty minutes a couple of miles to starboard.
At this stage it seems almost invidious to say anything more about the work of the Grand Fleet during that first fortnight. And yet, even now, the public is amazingly ignorant of what the Navy has accomplished, or, indeed is still accomplishing. Ignorant, not through indifference, but because the Authorities still steadily refuse to take seriously in hand the work of education in war facts and ideas.
How the Navy succeeded in sweeping the enemy flag from the North Sea and the Channel in a couple of days, apparently without firing a shot, we cannot pretend to guess. Some day the story will be told. But the result was the most astonishing manifestation of the real meaning of naval supremacy that the world has ever seen, or is ever likely to see. And Germany, by her naval inaction, lost for ever her great chance of the War, and so, in failing to intercept or damage the British Expeditionary Force, failed also to enter Paris and to end the war upon her own terms within the period she had intended. The British Army may have saved Paris, but the British Navy enabled it to do so.
Entering the Seine the skipper revealed the name of our destination, Rouen. Another instance of organisation and forethought on the part of the Authorities in using small ships so as to get right up the river and disembark troops and stores well inland.
Again, this has become a matter of everyday routine, but in those days each such new manoeuvre was sufficiently remarkable for admiring comment.
Here the pilot came on board. A typical old son of Normandy he was, grizzled and weatherbeaten, clambering aboard with stiff heavy gait.
On to the bridge he climbed: saw our lads clustered thick as bees in the fo'c'sle and lower deck. Up went his cap into the air, tears sprang to his eyes.