“During the third part,” said the Maker, “the ranges were comparatively low, from 9,000 to 12,000 yards, but the visibility was so bad that damaged ships could always betake themselves out of sight and danger. I am disposed to think that most of Fritz’s sorely damaged ships did get home—in the absence of evidence that they did not—for we never really closed in during the whole of the third part of the battle. Fritz was continually coming and going, appearing and disappearing. His destroyer attacks were well delivered, and though one battleship only was hit, our friend the Marlborough, we were kept pretty busy looking after ourselves. Jellicoe was like a heavy-weight boxer trying to get home upon a little man, skipping about just beyond his reach. We had the speed and the guns and the superiority of position, but we couldn’t see. That is the explanation of the indecisiveness of the third part of the Jutland battle, that part which, with decent luck, would have ended Fritz’s business. Our gunnery was then top-hole. Take the typical case of the flagship Iron Duke. She got a sight of a Koenig at 12,000 yards (seven miles), straddled her at once, and began to hit at the second salvo. That is real gunnery, not much waste about it either of time or shell. Then towards sunset the Lion, Princess Royal, and New Zealand engaged two battleships and two battle cruisers at 10,000 yards. Within eighteen minutes three of the Germans had been set on fire, two were listing heavily, and the three burning ones were only saved by becoming hidden in smoke and mist. That is the way to get on to a target and to hold on. I agree with our old friend Salt Horse that the long ranges during the first part of the action, 18,000 to 20,000 yards—and even more for the Queen Elizabeth—are altogether too long for accuracy unless the conditions are perfect. The distances are well within the power of the big-calibre guns which we mount, but are out of harmony with the English naval spirit. We like to see our enemy distinctly and to get within real punishing distance of him. Compare our harmless performance during the first part with the beautiful whacking which we gave Fritz in the third whenever we could see him. The nearer we get to Fritz the better our gunners become and the more completely his system goes to bits. Which is just what one would expect. Our long-service gunners can lay by sight against any ships in the world and beat them to rags, but when it comes to blind laying directed from the spotting tops much of the advantage of individual nerve and training is lost. Like Salt Horse, I am all for in-fighting, at 10,000 yards or less, and believe that our gun-layers can simply smother Fritz if they are allowed to get him plainly on the wires of their sighting telescopes.”
“There is not a petty officer gunlayer who wouldn’t agree with you,” remarked the Gunner thoughtfully, “but the young scientific Gunnery Lieutenants would shake their heads. For what would become of the beautiful fire-direction system which they have been building up for years past if we are to run in close and pound in the good old fashion? Ten thousand yards to a modern 15-inch gun is almost point blank.”
“Our business is to sink the enemy in the shortest possible time,” cried Admiral Salt Horse, “and to fight in the fashion best suited to what Copplestone here rightly calls the Soul of the Navy. Long-range fighting is all very well when one can’t do anything else—during a chase, for example—but when one can close in to a really effective distance, then, I say, close in and take the risks. In the Jutland Battle we lost two battle cruisers at long range and one only after the ranges had shortened. Fritz shot well at long range, but got worse and worse as we drew nearer to him, until at the end his gunnery simply did not count. Our ancestors had a similar problem to solve, and solved it at the Battle of the Saints in brutal fashion by breaking the French line and fighting at close quarters. There is a lot to be learned from the Jutland Battle, though it is not for an old dog like me to draw the lessons. But what does seem to shout at one is that the way to fight a German is to close in upon him and to knock the moral stuffing out of him. The destroyers always do it and so do our submarines. I am told that the way the destroyers charged battleships by night, and rounded up the enemy’s light stuff by day, was a liberal education in naval psychology. We are at our best when the risks are greatest—it is the sporting instinct of the race that sustains us. But Fritz, who is no sportsman, and has a good deal more of imagination than our lower deck, cracks when the strain upon his nerves passes the critical point. Our young officers and men have no nerves; Fritz has more than is good for him; let us take advantage of his moral weakness and hustle him beyond the point when he cracks. He is a landsman artificially made into a seaman; our men are seamen born. In a battleship action the personal factor tends to be over-borne by the immensity of the fighting instruments, but it is there all the time and is the one thing which really counts. We give it full scope in the destroyers, submarines, and light cruisers; let us give it full scope in the big ships of the battle line. Let our Men get at Fritz; don’t seek to convert them into mere parts of a machine, give their individuality the fullest play; you need then have no fear lest their work should prove wasteful or ineffective.”
The Master Gunner, a man ten years younger than old Salt Horse, smiled and said, “I am afraid that the gunnery problem has become too complicated to yield to your pleasing solution. A few years ago it would have been considered a futile waste of shell to fight at over 10,000 yards, but the growth in the size of our guns and in our methods of using them have made us at least as accurate at 20,000 yards as we used to be at 10,000. At from 9,000 to 12,000 in good light we are now terrific. All my sympathies are on your side; the Navy has always loved to draw more closely to the enemy, and maybe our instincts should be our guide. I can’t say. If we could have a big-ship action every month the problem would soon be solved. Our trouble is that we don’t get enough of the Real Thing. You may be very sure that if our officers and men were told to run in upon Fritz and to smash him, at the ranges which are now short, they would welcome the order with enthusiasm. The quality and training of our sea personnel is glorious, incomparable. I live in wonder at it.”
“And so do I,” cried the Maker, a man not ready to display enthusiasm. “One has lived with the professional Navy so long that one comes to take its superb qualities for granted; one needs to see the English Navy in action to be aroused to its merits. On May 31st very few of those in Evan-Thomas’s or Jellicoe’s squadrons had been under fire—Beatty’s men had, of course, more than once. If they showed any defect it was due to some slight over-eagerness. But this soon passed. In a big-ship action not one man in a hundred has any opportunity of personal distinction—which is an uncommonly good thing for the Navy. We have no use for pot-hunters and advertisers. We want every man to do his little bit, devotedly, perfectly, without any thought of attracting attention. Ours is team work. If men are saturated through and through with this spirit of common devotion to duty they sacrifice themselves as a matter of course when the call comes. More than once fire penetrated to the magazines of ships. The men who instantly rolled upon the blazing bags of cordite, and extinguished the flames with their bodies, did not wait for orders nor did they expect to be mentioned in dispatches. It was just their job. But what I did like was Jellicoe’s special mention of his engineers. These men, upon whose faithful efficiency everything depends, who, buried in the bowels of ships, carry us into action and maintain us there, who are the first to die when a ship sinks and the last to be remembered in Honours lists, these men are of more real account than almost all those others of us who prance in our decorations upon the public stage. If the conning tower is the brain of a ship, the engine-room is its heart. When Jellicoe was speeding up to join Beatty and Evan-Thomas his whole fleet maintained a speed in excess of the trial speeds of some of the older vessels. Think what skilful devotion this simple fact reveals, what minute attention day in day out for months and years, so that in the hour of need no mechanical gadget may fail of its duty. And as with Jellicoe’s Fleet so all through the war. Whenever the engine-rooms have been tested up to breaking strain they have always, always, stood up to the test. I think less of the splendid work done by destroyer flotillas, by combatant officers and men in the big ships, by all those who have manned and directed the light cruisers. Their work was done within sight; that of the engine-rooms was hidden.”
“I wish that the big public could hear you,” I said, “the big public whose heart is always in the right place though its head is always damned ignorant and often damned silly.”
The Maker of Guns and Ships turned on me, this calm, cold man whom I had thought a stranger to emotion. “And whose fault is that? You are a bit of an ass, Copplestone, and inconveniently inquisitive. But you can be useful sometimes. When you come to write of the war at sea, do not wrap yourself up in a tangle of strategy and tactics of which you know very little. Stick to the broad human issues. Reveal the men who fight rather than the ships which are fought with. Think of the Navy as a Service of flesh and blood and soul, no less than of brains and heart. If you will do this, and write as well as you know how to do, the public will not remain either damned ignorant or damned silly.”
“I will do my best,” said I, humbly.