XXVIII
SHIPS THAT HAVE FOUGHT
The “invisible” fleet—No chance for German submarines—No end to the greyish blue-green monsters—the Queen Elizabeth—Sea-power and world power—Ships that have been under fire—A German “mistake”—Sir David Beatty—“Youth for action”—On board the Lion—Sensations during the fighting—Importance of accurate marksmanship—Crashing blasts and the scream of shells—Watching the hits—The precious turret—Result of German gunfire—A city of steel—Its brain-center—A panoply of tubes, levers, push-buttons—Methods of British gunfire—One of the great guns—Its human complement—The gun-pointer—From the upper bridge—An impressive beauty—The chase off Heligoland—Safe return of the Lion.
But was that really it? That spread of greyish blue-green dots set on a huge greyish blue-green platter? One could not discern where ships began and water and sky which held them suspended left off. Invisible fleet it had been called. At first glance it seemed to be composed of baffling phantoms, absorbing the tone of its background. Admiralty secrecy must be the result of a naval dislike of publicity.
Still as if they were rooted, these leviathans! How could such a shy, peaceful looking array send out broadsides of twelve- and thirteen-five and fifteen-inch shells? What a paradise for a German submarine! Each ship seemed an inviting target. Only there were many gates and doors to the paradise, closed to all things that travel on and under the water without a proper identification. Submarines that had tried to pick one of the locks were like the fish who found going good into the trap. A submarine had about the same chance of reaching that anchorage as a German in the uniform of the Kaiser’s Death’s Head Hussars, with a bomb under his arm, of reaching the vaults of the Bank of England.
And was this all of the greatest naval force ever gathered under a single command, these two or three lines of ships? But as the destroyer drew nearer the question changed. How many more? Was there no end to greyish blue-green monsters, in order as precise as the trees of a California orchard, appearing out of the greyish blue-green background? First to claim attention was the Queen Elizabeth, with her eight fifteen-inch guns on a platform which could travel at nearly the speed of the average railroad train.
The contrast of sea and land warfare appealed the more vividly to one fresh from the front in France. What infinite labour for an army to get one big gun into position! How heralded the snail-like travels of the big German howitzer! Here was ship after ship, whose guns seemed innumerable. One found it hard to realise the resisting power of their armour, painted to look as liquid as the sea, and the stability of their construction, which was able to bear the strain of firing the great shells that travelled ten miles to their target.
Sea-power, indeed! And world power, too, there in the hollow of a nation’s hand, to throw in whatever direction she pleased. If an American had a lump in his throat at the thought of what it meant, what might it not mean to an Englishman? Probably the Englishman would say, “I think that the fleet is all right, don’t you?”
Land-power, too! On the Continent vast armies wrestled for some square miles of earth. France has, say, three million soldiers; Germany, five; Austria, four—and England had, perhaps, a hundred thousand men, perhaps more, on board this fleet which defended the English land and lands far over seas without firing a shot. One American regiment of infantry is more than sufficient in numbers to man a Dreadnought. How precious, then, the skill of that crew! Man-power is as concentrated as gun-power with a navy. Ride three hundred miles in an automobile along an army front, with glimpses of units of soldiers, and you have seen little of a modern army. Here, moving down the lanes that separated these grey fighters, one could compass the whole!
Four gold letters, spelling the word Lion, awakened the imagination to the concrete of the Blücher turning her bottom skyward before she sank off the Dogger Bank under the fire of the guns of the Lion and of the Tiger, astern of her, and the Princess Royal and the New Zealand, of the latest fashion in battle-cruiser squadrons which are known as the “cat” squadron. This work brought them into their own; proved how the British, who built the first Dreadnought, have kept a little ahead of their rivals in construction. With almost the gun-power of Dreadnoughts, better than three to two against the best battleships, with the speed of cruisers and capable of overwhelming cruisers, or of pursuing any battleship, or getting out of range, they can run or strike, as they please.
Ascend that gangway, so amazingly clean, as were the decks above and below and everything about the Lion or the Tiger, and you were on board one of the few major ships which had been under heavy fire. Her officers and men knew what modern naval war was like; her guns knew the difference between the wall of cloth of a towed target and an enemy’s wall of armour.