Nothing could be better illustrative of the wide character of our seafaring than the range of our muster in the lecture-hall. Every type of our trade appears in the class that assembles weekly to attend the instructional course. We have no grades of seniority or precedence. We are sea-republicans when we come to sit together in class. Hardy coasting masters, commanders of Royal Mail Packets, collier mates, freighter captains, cross-Channel skippers, we are at ease together in a common cause; on one bench in the classroom may be seafarers returned from foreign ports as widely distant as Shanghai and Valparaiso.
For instruction in gunnery and the use of special apparatus we come under tuition of a type of seaman whom we had not met before. If the backbone of the Army is the non-commissioned man, the petty officer of the Royal Navy is no less the marrow of his Service. Unfortunately, we have no one like him in the Merchants' Service. As Scots is the language of marine engines, the South of England accent may be that of the guns. That liquid ü! "Metal adapters, genelmen, lük. Metal adapters is made o' alüminium bronze. They are bored hoüt t' take a tübe, an' threaded on th' hoütside t' screw into th' base o' th' cartridge case—like this 'ere. Genelmen, lük. . . ." His intelligent demonstration of the gear and working of the types of our armament possesses a peculiar quality, as though he is trying hard to reduce his exposition to our level. (As a matter of plain fact, he is.)
The instructional course closes on a note of confidence. We learn that even 'inexorable circumstance' has an opening to skilled evasion. We go afloat for a day and put into practice some measure of our schooling. At fire-control, with the guns, we exercise in an atmosphere of din and burnt cardboard, aiming at a hit with the fifth shot in sequence of our bracket. (An earlier bull's-eye would be bad application of our lectures.) A smoke-screen is set up for our benefit, and we turn and twist in the artificially produced fumes and vapours in a practical demonstration of defence. A sea-going submarine is in attendance and is open to our inspection. Her officers augment the class instruction by actual showing. Every point in the maze of an under-water attack is emphasized by them in an effort to impress us with the virtue of the counter-measures advised. It must be hard indeed for the submarine enthusiast (and they are all enthusiasts) to lay bare the 'weaknesses' of his loved machine. We feel for them almost as if we heard a man, under pressure, admit that his last ship was unseaworthy.
THE LOSS OF A LINER
III
THE LONGSHORE VIEW
EARLY in November 1914, on return from the sea, I was invited to join His Majesty's Forces.