There can be no doubt but that these sailing ships had the most strenuous and arduous task of all. They suffered by being so useful, for the Q-steamships, as a rule, did not spend more than eight days at sea out of twelve, and then they had to come in for coal. The schooners, as we have seen, could keep the sea for a month, so long as they had sufficient water and provisions. Several more were added to the list during 1917 and 1918, and there was never any lack of volunteers for them. The only difficulty was, in these days of steam, in choosing those who had had experience in sailing craft. The revival of the sailing man-of-war was certainly one of the many remarkable features in the naval campaign.

CHAPTER VII
MORE SAILING SHIPS

During the ensuing months many demands were made on the sailing-ship man-of-war. There were pressed into the service such vessels as the schooner Result, the 220-ton lugger Bayard, the three-masted schooner Prize, the motor drifter Betsy Jameson, the ketch Sarah Colebrooke, the auxiliary schooner Glen (alias Sidney), the brigantine Dargle, the Brown Mouse yacht, built on the lines of a Brixham trawler, and so on. The barquentine Merops, otherwise known as Maracaio and Q 28, began decoy work in February, 1917. She was fitted out in the Firth of Forth with a couple of 12-pounders and a 4-inch gun. At the end of May she had a severe engagement with a submarine, and was considerably damaged aloft. In March the 158-ton Rye motor ketch Sarah Colebrooke was requisitioned, and sent to Portsmouth to be fitted out, appearing in May as the Bolham. A month later, 20 miles south of Beachy Head, she fought a submarine, and had quite an unpleasant time. One of the enemy’s shells exploded under the port quarter, lifting the ketch’s stern high out of the water, another exploded under the port leeboard, sending a column of water on board, and swamping the boat; whilst a third burst on board, doing considerable damage. She fought the submarine until the latter disappeared, but the Bolham’s motor was by this time so choked with splinters and glass that she could not proceed to the spot where the submarine had last been seen, and of course it so happened that there was no wind.

On June 8 four fishing smacks were captured and sunk off the Start in full view of the Q-smack Prevalent, a Brixham trawler armed with a 12-pounder. Again it happened to be a calm, so Prevalent, being too far away, was unable to render assistance. After this incident it was decided to fit an auxiliary motor in the trawler-yacht Brown Mouse, which was doing similar service and was specially suitable for an engine. On the following day our friend Helgoland had another encounter, this time off the north coast of Ireland, the exact spot being 8 miles N. by W. of Tory Island. The fight began at 7.25 a.m., and half an hour later the submarine obtained a direct hit on the after-gun house of the brigantine, killing one man, wounding four ratings, and stunning the whole of the after-guns’ crews. But Helgoland, with her charmed life, was not sunk, and she shelled the submarine so fiercely that the U-boat had to dive and disappear.

Even a private yacht was taken up for this work in June. This was the 116-ton topsail schooner Lisette, which had formerly belonged to the Duke of Sutherland. She had been built as far back as 1873 with a standing bowsprit and jibboom. She was taken from Cowes to Falmouth, where she was commissioned in August, and armed with three 6-pounders. But this old yacht was found to leak so much through her seams, and her construction was so light, that she was never a success, and was paid off in the following spring. In April, 1917, the auxiliary schooner Sidney (alias Glen) began service as a decoy, having been requisitioned from her owners and fitted out at Portsmouth. A crew was selected from the Trawler Reserve, but the guns’ crews were naval. Armed with a 12-pounder and a 3-pounder, she was fitted with wireless, and cruised about in the English Channel, her complement consisting of Lieutenant R. J. Turnbull (R.N.R.), in command, one sub-lieutenant (R.N.R.), one skipper (R.N.R.), two R.N.R. seamen, one R.N.R. stoker to run the motor, a signal rating, a wireless operator, four R.N. ratings for the big gun, and three for the smaller one. During the afternoon of July 10, 1917, Glen was in combat with a submarine of the UC type, and had lowered her boat in the customary manner. A German officer from the conning-tower hailed the boat, and in good English ordered her to come alongside. This was being obeyed, when something seemed to startle the officer, who suddenly disappeared into the conning-tower, and the submarine began to dive. Glen therefore opened fire, and distinctly saw two holes abaft the conning-tower as the UC-boat rolled in the swell. She was not seen again, and the Admiralty rewarded Glen’s captain and Sub-Lieutenant K. Morris, R.N.R., with a D.S.C. each.

During the month of January, 1917, the naval base at Lowestoft called for volunteers for work described as ‘dangerous, at times rather monotonous, and not free from discomfort.’ Everyone, of course, knew that this meant life in a Q-ship. The vessel selected was the 122-ton three-masted topsail schooner Result, which was owned at Barnstaple, and had in December come round to Lowestoft from the Bristol Channel. Here she was fitted out and commissioned at the beginning of February, being armed with a couple of 12-pounders, but also with torpedo-tubes. As a sailing craft she was slow, unhandy, and practically unmanageable in light winds. At the best she would lie no nearer to the wind than 5½ points, and in bad weather she was like a half-tide rock. True, she had a Bolinders motor, but the best speed they could thus get out of her was 2½ knots. The result was that her officers had great difficulty in keeping her out of the East Coast minefields, and did not always succeed. She took in 100 tons of sand as ballast, and a rough cabin was fashioned out of the hold for the two officers. In command was appointed Lieutenant P. J. Mack, R.N. (retired), a young officer who had seen service at the Dardanelles in the battleship Lord Nelson and in the historic River Clyde, whence he had been invalided home. As he was not an expert in the art of sailing, there was selected to accompany him as second in command Lieutenant G. H. P. Muhlhauser, R.N.R., who was not a professional seaman, but a keen amateur yachtsman of considerable experience, who had made some excellent cruises in his small yacht across the North Sea and had passed the Board of Trade examination as master of his own yacht. The sailing master who volunteered was an ex-schooner sailor, and her mate also was an old blue-water seaman. The motor man was a motor mechanic out of one of the Lowestoft M.L.’s, and there was a trimmer from the Trawler Reserve. She carried also a wireless operator, a cook, a chief petty officer, deckhands, and some Royal Naval ratings for the armament. All the crew, consisting of twenty-two, had seen considerable service during the war in various craft, and one of the deckhands was in the drifter Linsdell, which was blown up on an East Coast minefield at the commencement of the war. He had been then picked up by H.M.S. Speedy, who in turn was immediately blown up. This man survived again, and was now a volunteer in a Q-ship. Result’s crew were trained to go to their ‘panic stations’ at the given signal, when the bulwarks were let down and the tarpaulins removed from the guns, the engineer on those occasions standing at the hatchway amusingly disguised as a woman passenger, arrayed in a pink blouse and a tasselled cap which had been kindly provided by a lady ashore.

On February 9 Result was all ready as a warship, and motored out of Lowestoft. She then disguised herself as a neutral, affixed Dutch colours to her topsides, and proceeded via Yarmouth Roads to the neighbourhood of the North Hinder, the other side of the North Sea, where the enemy was very fond of operating. On the fifteenth of the following month Result was cruising off the south-west end of the Dogger Bank when she encountered UC 45 in the morning. Lieutenant Muhlhauser, who was kind enough to give me his account of the incident, has described it with such vividness that I cannot do better than present the version in his own words. It should be added that at the time Result was steering E.S.E., and was now in the position Lat. 54.19 N., Long. 1.45 E. The submarine was sighted 2½ miles astern, the wind was northerly, force 5 to 6, the sea being 4 to 5 and rapidly rising. In other words, it was a nasty, cold North Sea day, and one in which it would have been most unpleasant to have been torpedoed. The engagement was a difficult one, as the ship had to be manœuvred so that her guns would bear, and careful seamanship had to be used to prevent her lying in the trough of the sea. As it was, with bulwarks down, the decks and gun-wells were awash and frequently full of water, while the submarine, being only occasionally visible when Result was on the top of the sea, made a target that was anything but easy.

‘By 7 a.m.,’ says Lieutenant Muhlhauser, ‘we had got all the topsails off her, and at this moment the C.O. appeared on deck and, looking aft, said, “Why, there is a submarine!” and at the same moment it was reported from aloft. Word was passed to the watches below to stand by. In a few minutes came the report of a gun. I do not know where the shell went. The men ran to their stations, or crawled there according to what their job was, and the ship was brought on the wind. The submarine continued firing at the rate of a shell every minute or thereabouts. The C.O. then ordered the jibs to be run down, and while this was being done a shell stranded the foretopmast forestay, but luckily did not burst. It went off whistling. Some of the shells were fairly well aimed, but the bulk were either 50 or 60 yards short or over, and at times more than that. As the submarine kept about 2,000 yards off, the C.O. ordered the boat away, with the skipper in charge. Four hands went with him. He was reluctant to go, I think, though, as a matter of fact, he ran quite as much risk as did those remaining on board, if not more, as he would have been in an awkward position if by any chance the ship worked away from him and the submarine got him. It would have been a hard job to persuade the submariners that he was anything but British. However, off he went in a nasty sea. In lowering the boat we made efforts to capsize her, but she was difficult to upset, and as the sub. was some way off and unlikely to see the “accident,” we did not waste much time on it, but let her go down right side up. Away went the skipper and his crew, and he admits feeling lonely with a hostile submarine near by and the ship and her guns working away from him. He says he was struck with the beauty of her lines, and she never appeared more attractive to him. As a matter of fact, his was a rotten position, which was not improved by the sub. firing at him two or three shells, which went over and short. Evidently the submarine, which by the way had closed to 1,000 yards as soon as the boat left the ship, wanted him to pull towards it, instead of which he was digging out after us manfully. Meanwhile the ship appeared quite deserted. Everyone was concealed. The C.O. prowled around the deck on his hands and knees, peering through cracks and rivet holes in the bulwarks to see how the submarine was getting on. All I could see of him was the stern position of his body and the soles of an enormous pair of clogs. I sat on deck at the wheel, trying to get and keep the ship in the wind, so as not to get too far from the boat. All this time the submarine was firing steadily, and one shell went through the mizzen, while others, as the C.O. reported from time to time, burst short, some of them close. Splinters from the latter went through the stay- and fore-sails. At 1,000 yards the ship is a fairly big target, and the shooting of the Huns must be put down as bad.