All was over, and the packed Sydney headed away for her 1,600-mile voyage to Colombo. To her company of about 400 she had added 11 German officers and 200 men, of whom 3 officers and 53 men were wounded. The worst cases were laid upon her fo’c’sle and quarter-deck, the rest huddled in where they could. It was a trying voyage, but happily the weather was fine and windless, the ship as steady as is possible in the Indian Ocean, and the Germans well behaved; von Müller and Glossop, the conquered and conqueror, the guest and the host, became friendly and mutually respecting during those days in the Sydney. I like to think of those two, in the captain’s cabin, putting their heads together over sheets of paper and at last evolving the plan of the Sydney-Emden action which is printed here. Von Müller did the greater part of it, for, as Glossop remarked, “he had the most leisure.” A cruiser skipper with 400 of his own men on board and 200 prisoners, is not likely to lack for jobs. To the von Müller-Glossop plan I have added a few explanatory words, but otherwise it is as finally approved by those who knew most about it.
Some single-ship actions remain more persistently in the public memory and in the history books than battles of far greater consequence. They are easy to describe and easy to understand. One immortal action is that of the Shannon and the Chesapeake; another is that of the Sydney and the Emden. It was planned wholly by the Fates which rule the Luck of the Navy, it was fought cleanly and fairly and skilfully on both sides, and the faster, more powerful ship won. I like to picture to myself the Sydney heading for Colombo, bearing upon her crowded decks the captives of her bow and spear, her guns and her engines, not vaingloriously triumphant, but humbly thankful to the God of Battles. To her officers and crew their late opponents were now guests who could discuss with them, the one with the other, the incidents of the short fierce fight dispassionately as members of the same profession, though serving under different flags, just as Glossop and von Müller discussed them in the after cabin under the quarter-deck when they bent their heads over their collaborated plan.
CHAPTER X
FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH
Since I have not been so foolish as to set myself the task of writing a history of the Naval War, I am not hampered by any trammels of chronological sequence. It is my purpose to select those events which will best illustrate the workings of the British Naval Soul, and to present them in such a manner and in such an order as will make for the greatest simplicity and force. Naval warfare, viewed in the scattered detail of operations taking place all over the world, is a mightily confusing study; but, if it be analysed and set forth in its essential features, the resultant picture has the clarity and atmosphere of the broad sea horizon itself. There is nothing in naval warfare, as waged by the Royal Navy, of that frightful confusion and grime and clotted horror which has become inseparable from the operations of huge land forces. Sailors live clean lives—except when the poor fellows are coaling ship!—and die clean deaths. They have the inestimable privilege of freedom both in the conception of their plans and in their execution. The broad distinction between land and sea service was put clearly to me once by a Marine officer who had known both. “At sea,” he observed, “one at least lives like a gentleman until one is dead.” It must be very difficult to live or to feel like a gentleman when one is smothered in the mud of Flanders’ trenches and has not had a bath for a month.
Although, as I have shown, the Grand Fleet at the outbreak of war was, in effective battle power, of twice the strength of its German opponents, no time was lost in adding largely to that margin of strength. Mines, with which Germany recklessly sowed the seas whenever she could evade the watchful eyes of our cruisers and destroyers, and the elusive and destructively armed submarine, were perils not lightly to be regarded by our great ships. We took the measure of both these dangers in due course, but in the early months of war they caused a vast amount of apprehension. In addition, therefore, to dealing directly with these perils the whole power of our shipyards, gun shops, and armour-rolling mills was turned to the task of increasing the available margin of battle strength so as to anticipate the possibility of serious losses.
And here we had great advantages over Germany. We not only had a far longer and far greater experience, both in designing and constructing ships and guns, but we had a larger number of yards and shops where battleships and battle cruisers could be completed and equipped. Throughout the fourteen years of the peace contest Germany had always been far behind us in design, in speed of construction, and in the volume of output. We built the first Dreadnought in little more than fifteen months—by preparing all the material in advance and taking a good deal from other ships—but our average time of completing the later models was rather more than two years apiece. The exalted super-battleships occupied about two years and three months before they were in commission. Germany—which so many fearful folk seriously look upon as superhuman in efficiency—never built an ordinary Dreadnought in peace time in less than two years and ten months, and always waited for the chance of copying our designs before she laid one down. It is reasonable to suppose that in the early days of war the German yards and gun shops worked much more rapidly than during the peace competition, but as our own quicker rate of construction was also enormously accelerated it is in the highest degree unlikely that our speed of war output was ever approached by our opponents. We had at the beginning far more skilled labour and, what is more important, far more available skilled labour. Since it was only by slow degrees that we enlisted a vast army for Continental service while Germany had to mobilise the whole of hers at the beginning of hostilities and to call upon the millions of untrained men, the drain upon our manhood was for a long time far less than the drain upon hers. As time went on labour became scarce with us, even for naval work, but it could never have been so scarce as with the Germans when after their immense losses they were driven to employ every possible trained and untrained man with the colours.
We had yet another advantage. In August, 1914, as the result of the far-seeing demands of the British Admiralty we had twice as many great ships under construction in this country as Germany had in the whole of her North Sea and Baltic yards. This initial advantage was an enormous one, since it meant that for eighteen months Germany could make no effective efforts to catch up with us, and that at the end of that period we should inevitably have in commission an increase in battle strength more than twice as great as hers. The completed new lead thus secured early in 1916, added to the lead obtained before the outbreak of war, then made our position almost impregnable. We were thus free to concentrate much of our attention upon those smaller vessels—the destroyers, patrol boats, steam drifters, fast submarine catchers and motor boats—which were urgently needed to cope with Germany’s attacks upon the world’s merchant ships.