"DEAR LORD CHARLES BERESFORD,—I thank you very much for your letter, which was received a few days since. The reception my book has had on your side of the water has been very grateful to me. Commendation is pleasant, but there has been a degree of thoughtful appreciation in England, both by the Press and naval officers which has exceeded my expectations and, I fear, the deserts of the work. That it will produce any effect upon our people is unlikely; too many causes concur to prevent a recognition of the truth that even the most extensive countries need to make themselves outside. After our own, nothing will give me greater pleasure than that it should contribute in your country to a sense of your vital interest in this matter. Your naval officers have an inducement to study those great questions which is almost wanting in ours; for if your Fleet is not all that you could wish, you still have some instruments to work with, a force superior to any other if not adequate to all your needs, and the inadequacy can be greatly remedied by judicious and careful planning and preparation.
"... The number and dissemination of your external interests throws England largely on the defensive, necessarily so. It was so in the great days of Pitt and Nelson, though the fact is obscured by the great naval preponderance you then had. You have now greater and more extensive interests to defend....—Believe me to be, very truly yours, "A. T. MAHAN"
CHAPTER XXXVIII
H.M.S. UNDAUNTED (Continued)
II. THE SALVING OF THE SEIGNELAY
The Undaunted, lying at Alexandria in 1891, was being rigged up for a ball; when a telegram arrived ordering her to go to the rescue of the French cruiser Seignelay, which had gone ashore near Jaffa, on 26th April. The telegram arrived at one o'clock in the morning of the 28th April. Before daylight, the ball-room was unrigged, the decorations were taken down, 300 guests were put off by telegram, and we were steaming at full speed to the Seignelay, distant 270 miles. In a private letter printed in The Times of 20th October, 1894, describing the affair, the anonymous writer says: "It was a good sample of the vicissitudes of naval life, and I think we all rather enjoyed it." (I do not know who wrote the letter, but it must have been one of my officers; who, without my knowledge, published it, or sanctioned its publication, more than a year after the Undaunted had paid off. The proprietors of The Times have kindly given me permission to quote from the document, which was written at the time of the occurrence of the events which it describes, and which contains details I had forgotten.)
At daylight on 29th April, we found the Seignelay driven high up on a sandy beach, embedded in five and a half feet of sand in shallow water. She had parted her cable in a gale of wind, had driven on shore, and had scooped out a dock for herself. Had she been built with a round stern each succeeding wave of the sea would have lifted and then dropped her, bumping her to pieces. But as she had a sharp stern, the breakers lifted her bodily and floated her farther on. The Seignelay was a single-screw wooden cruiser, of 1900 tons displacement and 18 feet 4 inches draught. When his ship struck, the captain telegraphed to his admiral saying that he feared she was hopelessly lost. The French admiral dispatched a squadron of three ships to take off the men and stores; but by the time they arrived the Seignelay was afloat again and lying at her anchor almost undamaged; and the senior French captain amiably remarked: "You English do not know the word impossible."
The British sloop Melita, Commander George F. King-Hall (now Admiral Sir G. F. King-Hall, K.C.B, C.V.O.), was already endeavouring to help the Seignelay when the Undaunted arrived; but the water was so shallow that the Melita could not approach nearer than 300 yards, and the Undaunted 850 yards, to the Seignelay.
I went on board the Seignelay, and found her captain seated in his cabin, profoundly dejected at the disaster. I cheered him as well as I could, telling him that of course I understood that he had only been waiting for more men to lighten his ship, and that I would send him 130 men with an officer who understood French to act as interpreter.