Lion (battle cruiser).—Length, 660 feet; tonnage, 26,350; horse-power, 70,000; speed per hour, 31 knots; armour, belt of 9¾ inch thickness; armament, eight 13.5-inch guns and sixteen 4-inch guns.
The Lion, Tiger, Queen Mary, and Princess Royal are the four most powerful battle cruisers in existence.
Cruisers, of which we possessed 121 when war broke out, are the fighting scouts of the Fleet. What are called armoured cruisers, such as the unfortunate Cressy, Aboukir, and Hogue, are protected by belts of armour plate, varying from 6 inches to 8 inches in thickness. Protected cruisers have decks of armour plate instead of belts. The most modern cruisers, which are known as light armoured cruisers, have been described as "destroyers of destroyers." The light cruiser Arethusa, for example, has a belt of armour plating from 3 to 3½ inches thick. She is 410 feet long, displaces 3,600 tons, and has turbine engines that give her a speed of thirty knots. Like all the most modern warships, she consumes oil in place of coal. She mounts two 6-inch, six 4-inch, and four machine guns, with four torpedo tubes.
Next in importance to the cruisers come the destroyers, of which we possessed 227 at the beginning of the war. These vessels may be said to correspond with the armoured motor car used by the Army. They are all built for speed, and most of them can steam over thirty miles an hour. The Swift, the largest destroyer in our Navy, has actually done over forty-four miles an hour; the Tartar, however, carries off the record, with a speed of nearly forty-six miles an hour. The Swift displaces 2,170 tons, and is almost as big as the smallest of the light cruisers. Destroyers of the "L" class displace 965 tons, have a speed of about thirty-three miles an hour, and carry three 4-inch guns.
Life on board a destroyer is very strenuous. Destroyers act as policemen of the seas, and they must go on their beat whatever the weather may be. If you have not seen one of these small craft riding through a gale, you can have no idea of the way in which wind and waves play pitch-and-toss with them in foul weather. Officers and men alike must wear heavy sea-boots and oilskins, for they are often up to their knees in water, and drenched with the spray that breaks freely over the decks. As a destroyer usually goes through the waves rather than over them, she is built with a raised fore part, from which in rough weather the water streams away like a little Niagara. In bad weather everything must be tightly battened down, and this means that while the deck hands are swept by cold, wind-driven sheets of water, the men in the engine rooms have to work in a very hot and stifling atmosphere. A destroyer always travels at high speed on patrol work, and she dances about on a zigzag course in order to avoid the deadly foe lurking beneath the surface. Trying though the life on a destroyer is, many men prefer it to service on a big ship. There is extra pay, which Jack calls "hard-lying money," and there is more freedom in various ways.
The remaining class of warships consists of submarines. I described these vessels in Chapter XVII. of Volume I.
I must now return to the story of how the enemy was rounded up in Heligoland Bight.[93] At midnight on 26th August a squadron of submarines left Harwich accompanied by two destroyers, which escorted them to positions near the enemy's coast, and began scouting diligently for the under-water craft of the enemy. At five o'clock next evening (27th August) the First and Third Destroyer Flotillas steamed out of the harbour. Earlier in the day the Battle Cruiser Squadron, the First Light Cruiser Squadron, and the Seventh Cruiser Squadron had put to sea. All were under orders to meet at a certain position early on the morning of 28th August. I think you can imagine the feelings of our men as the ships crept forward, with no lights showing, through the night. They were about to penetrate the enemy's waters and fall upon him unawares.