THE LAMPMAN OF THE GULL LIGHTSHIP
The menace of the German sea-mine remains the greatest war danger to which the lightships are exposed. Zeppelin and seaplane pay visits to the coastal waters, but the sea is wide for a chance missile from the air, and no great success has attended their bombing efforts. But the enemy mine has no instant aim. Full-charged and deadly, its activity is not confined—as the British mine is—to the area of the mooring. Their minelayers, creeping in to the fairways in cloak of the darkness, are anxious to settle their cargo of high explosive as quickly as possible. Not all of the mines they sow hold to the hastily slipped 'sinkers' till disaster to our shipping or the untiring search of the minesweepers reveals their presence. Many break adrift and surge in the tideways, moving as the set of the current takes them. Vessels under way, by keen look-out and ready helm, can sight and avoid the drifting spheres, but the lightships have no power to steer clear. Moored on the offset of a shoal or sandbank (their position, indeed, a guide to the minelayer), their broad bows offer contact to all flotsam that comes down on swirl of the tide. The authorities were unwilling to expose their men to a danger that could not be evaded, however gallant the shipmen or skilled their seamanship. It was not a seagoing risk that could be met; no adequate protection consistent with the lightship's mission could be devised. As the submarine war became intensified, the more distant vessels were withdrawn; new routes were set to divert shipping from the outer passages; only those floating sea-marks are now maintained whose removal would entail disaster to the traffic that passes by night and day.
Holding station in waters that are patrolled and, in part, protected, the Trinity men who form the crews of the lightships have readjusted their manning. A large proportion of the able-bodied men have joined the naval forces, leaving the older hands (and some few who have a physical disability) to tend the lights. War risks still remain, for the German minelayers have followed the shipping to the inner channels, but the greybeards have grown stolid and immovable in a service that was never at any time a safe and equable calling. They have become sadly familiar with the new sea-warfare—with disaster to the shipping in the channels. While they have incident enough, in the movement and activity of patrols and war craft, in the ceaseless sweeping of the channels, to judge our sea-power and take pride in its strength, they have all too frequent experience of the murderous under-water mechanics of the enemy. Living in the midst of sea-alarms, the old placid tedium of their 'sixty days' has given place to an excitement that even the monotonous rounds of their small ship-life cannot suppress. The men on the 'Royal Sovereign' were observers of the terrific power of the sea-mine; three ships in sight being blown to small wreckage within an hour. 'Shambles' jarred to distant torpedoings off the Bill. The 'South Goodwin' saw Maloja brought up in her stately progress by a thundering explosion, then watched her list and settle in the stormy seaway; a second crash and upheaval drew the eyes of the watch on deck to the fate of the Empress of Fort William as she was hastening to succour the people of the doomed liner. Up Channel and down, the lightshipmen were observers of the toll exacted by the enemy—the price we paid for the freedom of the seas.
But not all their observations of sea-casualties brought gloom to the dog-watch reckoning. If there remained no doubt of the intensity and power of German submarine activity, they were equally assured of the efficiency of our surface offence, and the deadly precision of our own under-water counter-measures. On occasion, there were other sea-dramas enacted under the eyes of the lightshipmen—short, swift engagements that set an oily scum welling over the clean sea-space of the channel, or an affair of rapid gunfire that cleared a pest from the narrow waters. There is at least one instance of a lightship having a commanding, if uncomfortable, station in an action between our drifters and a large enemy submarine. The lampman of the 'Gull' had a front view. . . . "Misty weather, it was. Day was just breakin', about seven o' th' mornin' when I see him. I see him just over there—a little t' th' nor'ard o' that wreckage on th' Sands. A big fella, about th' size o' them oil-barges as passes hereabouts. I didn't make him out at first—account o' th' mornin' haze, but there was somethin' over there where no ship didn't oughta be. I calls down th' companion—'Master,' I says, 'there's somethin' on th' north end o' th' Sands.' He comes up an' has a look. Then we made 'im out what he was, a big German sub.—but he hadn't no flag flyin'. Jest then we hears firin', an' th' shells goes over us an' lands nigh him. They was three drifters jes' come out o' th' Downs t' start sweepin' an', all three, they goes for him like billy-o—firin' as they comes. We was right atween them an' th' shots passes over th' lightship. One as was short just pitches clear an 'undred yards ahead o' us. Two guns he had—th' sub.—an' they didn't half make a din as they goes at it—bang-bang-bang! Th' drifters passes us, goin' a full clip. The first one, she got hit a-top th' wheelhouse, but they didn't stop for nothin'. The' keeps bangin' away with th' gun. . . . Yes. Some shots landed hereabouts, but we was busy watchin' th' drifters. . . . I see their shots hittin', too. I see one blaze up on th' submarine's deck, an' one o' his guns didn't talk back no more. Th' drifters was steerin' straight for him. I dunno how one o' them didn't go ashore herself—near it, she was. The sub. was hard on by this time, an' he stands high—with a list, too, but fightin' away like he was afloat.
"Two more drifters come up an' they joins in, an' th' shells goes who-o-o-o! overhead again. Then a destroyer, he comes tearin' along at full speed, an' he puts th' finishin' touch to him. There was an explosion on th' submarine, an' th' nex' we see—we see his men tumblin' out o' him overside t' th' Sands. . . . Them up t' their middles in th' water an' holdin' their hands up."
The lampman was, of his service, a trained observer. He said nothing of the scene on the deck of the lightship—the watch tumbling up from below, their clothing hastily thrown on—the questioning, the alarmed cries. His concern was directed to the happenings on spit of the Sands. "Some shots landed hereabouts," he said; but his interest was on the Goodwins.
MINESWEEPERS GOING OUT