On the night in question one of the Drifter Patrol had sighted a submarine on the surface, attempting to break through the vigilant cordon of patrol craft. Off went the drifter in jubilant pursuit, signalling to her consorts to join the hunt, and the remainder joined her like a pack of basset-hounds on the trail of an otter. The enemy destroyers, casting about in the darkness, sighted the “Tally-ho!” rocket and swept down upon the drifters, intent upon their own business, from at least four quarters simultaneously. The Germans appear to have worked in pairs; the leading boat of each couple switched on a blinding searchlight for the few seconds necessary to get an accurate range, and then the whole force slowed down to carry out the deliberate work of destruction. In the words of one of the survivors, “It was awfu’—juist slaughter.” The speaker made the statement without heat or reproach; he was a fisherman, as were most of his brethren, wont to accept both calamity and fortune without emotion. “Girt ole black things ...” he added, and shook his grizzled head so that the sunlight winked on his gold earrings.
The enemy closed in nearly all cases to within fifty yards of their victims, poured two salvos of high-explosive shell into each, and passed on. They had no time for fancy shooting and there were few misses. It is to be hoped they found the gruesome work to their taste.
In one case a German destroyer misjudged her distance and came so close to her victim that she was unable to depress her guns sufficiently to bring them to bear on the little target. She fired as she rolled instead, and the drifter Cloverbank turned on the instant into a splintered shambles, buried in clouds of steam and rocketing sparks. Only one man survived the first salvo, Deckhand Plane, R.N.R. (Trawler Section). He blundered forward to the gun through the flames and fumes of bursting shell, and finding it loaded, returned the fire at point-blank range, single-handed, half-blinded, stupefied by smoke and din.
It was brave work, but all round him in the darkness amid the flames of guns and blazing ships and all the savagery of that onslaught, the Drifter Patrol was taking its gruel not a whit less gallantly. The survivors launched their splintered dinghies, carrying their wounded with them, and paddled clear of the blazing wrecks that a few minutes before had been ship and home. The two enginemen of the Violet May, Engineman Ewing and Engineman Noble, succeeded in launching their boat, and lowered into it the mate, mortally wounded, and a wounded deckhand. The remainder of the crew lay inextricably entangled in the blazing wreckage, dead. The survivors paddled clear, waited till the enemy had passed on, and then closed their little ship again. The fire had hold of her forward, steam was pouring from her wrecked engine-room, and the ammunition was exploding broadcast about her decks. “A doot she’s sinkin’,” said Ewing stoutly. Noble said nothing: he was not given overmuch to speech, but he made the painter fast and proceeded to climb inboard again. Ewing followed and between they fought and overcame the fire. “Dinna leave me, Jamie,” cried the mate piteously; “Dinna leave me in the little boat.” “Na, na,” was the reply. “We’ll na leave ye,” and presently they brought their wounded back on board and took them below again. The mate was laid on his bunk and Ewing fetched his shirts from his bag and tore them up into bandages. “An’ them his dress shirts,” murmured Noble. It was his first and last contribution to the narrative. They took turn and turn about to tend the wounded, plug the shot-holes, and quench the smouldering embers of the fire, reverently dragging the wreckage from off their dead, and comforting the dying mate in the soft, almost tender accents of the Celt.
“’Tis nae guid,” said the mate at last. “Dinna fash about me, lads. A’ll gang nae mair on patrol,” and so died. But they saved their little ship, and she lies in a corner of the basin at her base, a mass of twisted metal and charred woodwork, to testify to the courage of the British fisherman in war.
The night’s work counted for a German victory, and had it not been for the pitiful braggadocio of the German official communiqué, one would have been tempted to leave it at that. True that seven little fishing craft with a gun in each bow would never make port again, but seven more took their places before the sun was over the horizon on the morrow of the affair. Three score or so of British seamen had finished their life’s trick and passed to their long watch below. But England and the Channel Patrol have the story of their passing: the pity is that it must here be so brief.
It was a rather pathetic gathering that mourned its dead that Sunday morning in the grey church by the quayside at Dover, with the painted sunlight streaming down through the stained-glass windows, lighting the weather-beaten faces of skippers and deckhands, trimmers and enginemen of the Trawler Reserve. There was, moreover, in their solemn faces a trace of faint hurt bewilderment, like that on the face of a child that has bumped its head in the dark.
They were only fishermen, for all their brass buttons and blue uniforms and plentiful display of D.S.C.’s and D.S.M.’s; simple folk accustomed to judge life by its tangible results. They were not concerned with strategy or the might-have-been. They had been accustomed to look to their big brothers, the destroyers, in the simple faith of children when there was trouble, and for once it seemed they had looked in vain. They had had a drubbing, and they took it according to the tradition of British seamen; but the puzzled, grieving look remained.