The Navy eternal

by Bartimeus

There were other yachtsmen, of a more restless and inquiring turn of mind, who went farther afield with lead-line and compass, “observin’ ’ow the world was made.” Where the short yellow seas stumbled across leagues of shoals, and windmills and the brown sails of barges broke the sky-line above low-lying sand-hills, they learned and saw many things. One even wrote a book about these things,[2] that he who ran might read. The trouble was that people ashore entrusted with the destinies of Empire were running about so busily that they hadn’t time to read. They were catching votes and such-like, as children snatch at falling leaves in autumn. So the yachtsman carried on yachting and cultivating the acquaintance of the slow-speaking, slow-moving skippers of the coast-wise traffic and the crab-gaited community that manned the east-coast fishing craft. Useful men to know sometimes at the pinch of a sudden crisis.

Then, with the red dawn of August 4th, 1914, came war at last, and the yachtsman pulled a deep breath of something like relief, knocked out the ashes of his pipe, and went ashore, forbearing to say “I told you so” to the harassed Whitehall officials he went in search of. This was a war of the sea, and the yachtsman clewed up his business ashore, sent his wife to stay with her mother, and placed all his knowledge of the coasts of Northern Europe and the seas between them at the disposal of the Navy.

Now the Navy was very busy. Like the yachtsman, it had not been altogether blind to signs and portents, because the sea is a wonderful conductor of electricity—and other things. But it had its own theories on naval warfare: among others it opined that, properly speaking, this was an affair of big ships and frequent battles. To fight battles you require dexterity in the use of weapons—highly scientific and technical weapons at that. They themselves had been learning to wield these weapons since they were twelve years old or thereabouts. The yachtsman’s acquaintance with lethal arms was limited to a 12-bore scatter-gun and a revolver, with which he enlivened Sunday afternoons becalmed by potting at empty bottles.

“Just wait till we’ve mopped up these fellows in the North Sea,” said the Navy—“it won’t take long—and then we’ll talk things over, old chap.”

So the yachtsman waited, and after a while the Navy found itself waiting, because the fellows in the North Sea had retired to Kiel, thumped their chests and said they were waiting too. Thus modern naval warfare developed from glowing theory into rather wearisome fact.

The yachtsman had not been altogether idle in the meanwhile. He manned every available motor-boat in the kingdom, and patrolled the coast under the White Ensign with a rifle and a rather complicated signalling apparatus. When the supply of motor-boats ran out, the wealthier yachtsmen built their own, fitted them out at their own expense, and manned them. They manned them indiscriminately: one was a captain, another was a deck-hand, and yet another club-mate the engineer. It mattered not a whit how or where a man served as long as the spray was in their faces and the dawn came up out of their beloved sea. They messed together in cheerful communism, save when they found themselves under the immediate observation of the brass-bound Navy. Then they grew self-conscious and the captain fed in splendid isolation: the deck-hand, who was his next-door neighbour in Surbiton and owned a bigger yacht, touched his cap when he spoke and called him “sir.”

The Navy noted these things and smiled—not derisively, but with affection, as men smile at dogs and children. But it was also keenly observant: it was taking the measure of these enthusiastic amateurs, without undue haste, deliberately, parting reluctantly with ancient prejudice and shibboleth. This is the Navy’s way.

The motor-boats did their work consistently well and without ostentation. They conducted an efficient examination service among the teeming coast-wise traffic of the south-east coast, through which not a needle could have been smuggled in a bargeload of hay: this was a duty for which the yachtsman was admirably suited. It required tact, for the pre-war coaster was a touchy fellow and accustomed to keep himself to himself: furthermore, it called for intimate co-operation with the Custom officers of coast and estuary ports; but these the yachtsmen had known and drunk a pot of beer with any time during the past five-and-twenty years.

The motor-boats found themselves shepherding wayward fishing fleets out of forbidden waters suddenly hedged about with incomprehensible prohibitions; they guarded them on their lawful occasions; and because they knew them and their fathers before them, knew also when to caution wrong-doers and when to confiscate nets and sails. This, it may be remarked in passing, is a wisdom not learned in paths ashore nor yet in the training colleges of the Navy. They served as tenders to the big ships and towed targets for the smaller ones. They brought battle cruisers their love-letters, and acquired both skill and cunning in sinking floating mines with rifle-fire.

Thus, in due course, was their probation accomplished. The Navy had observed it all, mostly without comment or eulogy. But when the time was ripe it produced a standardised type of motor patrol boat, armed and equipped in all respects as little men-of-war.