For seven hours the rescuers had watched and worked, and had not worked in vain; and when Lieutenant A. S. Chambers, R.N., the divisional officer, arrived on the scene, he had the gratification of knowing that, although he had not been present, his men had done their duty nobly.
GREAT NAVAL DISASTERS
The Loss of the Formidable and the Victoria
“YOU never know when anything may happen,” wrote Captain Noel Loxley, of H.M.S. Formidable a day or so before 1915 elbowed 1914 into the past; and before the New Year was much more than an hour old H.M.S. Formidable was holed by a German torpedo, and Loxley and a gallant band of noble sailors died like heroes for their king and country.
The Formidable left Sheerness on December 31 with a crew of 750 men, all in high spirits, to keep vigil on the Channel. At 1.30 next morning she was steaming at about eighteen knots, fighting her way through a south-westerly gale, a bright moon shining overhead when not obscured by thin clouds that sifted a drizzly rain upon her as she drove at the high seas.
Suddenly, above the howl of the wind and the thump of the engines, there was the report of a thunderous explosion on the starboard bow. The ship seemed to shiver, then reel. Down in the stokeholds men looked at each other in wonder; like the noise of a distant gun the sound came to them, and they thought, and hoped, that it meant an engagement with the enemy. Then again, from port, this time, there came another of those muffled reports—so near that they knew something had hit their ship.
“Torpedoed!” said one. “By Heaven, they’ve got us!”
And up on the bridge, standing there with his commander, Ballard, Captain Loxley also muttered “Torpedoed!” Its periscope hidden by the darkness and the swelling of the seas, a German submarine had crept up within striking distance, had launched her two death-tubes, seen them take effect, and then slunk away into the night.
Immediately he realised what had happened, Loxley, as calm as though he were at practice, ordered the water-tight doors to be closed and the men to be piped to collision quarters. Up on to the deck the startled men swarmed—startled men, truly, but calm—men who could stand at attention in the face of death and laugh and joke about “A fine New Year’s gift for us, this!” Men who could cry as they stood naked and shivering on the deck, “Here we are again! Undress uniform—swimming costume!” Men, too, who could enter into the spirit of the captain on the bridge, who could signal to another ship in the neighbourhood:
“Keep off! Submarines are about!”