A few minutes later one was looking down from the upper bridge on the top of this turret and the black-lined planking of the deck eighty-five feet below, with the sweep of the firm lines of the sides converging toward the bow on the background of the water. Suddenly the ship seemed to have grown large, impressive; her structure had a rocklike solidity. Her beauty was in her unadorned strength. One was absorbing the majesty of a city from a cathedral tower after having been in its thoroughfares and seen the detail of its throbbing industry.
Beyond the Lion’s bow were more ships, and port and starboard and aft were still more ships. The compass range filled the eye with the stately precision of the many squadrons and divisions of leviathans. One could see all the fleet. This seemed to be the scenic climax; but it was not, as we were to learn when we should see the fleet go to sea. Then we were to behold the mountains on the march.
One glanced back at the deck and around the bridge with a sort of relief. The infinite was making him dizzy. He wanted to be in touch with the finite again. But it is the writer, not the practical, hardened seaman, who is affected in this way. To the seaman, here was a battle-cruiser with her sister battle-cruisers astern, and there around her were Dreadnoughts of different types and pre-Dreadnoughts and cruisers and all manner of other craft which could fight each in its way, each representing so much speed and so much metal which could be thrown a certain distance.
“Homogeneity!” Another favourite word, I remember, from our own wardrooms. Here it was applied in the large. No experimental ships there, no freak variations of type, but each successive type as a unit of action. Homogeneous, yes—remorselessly homogeneous. The British do not simply build some ships; they build a navy. And of course the experts are not satisfied with it; if they were, the British navy would be in a bad way. But a layman was; he was overwhelmed.
From this bridge of the Lion on the morning of the 24th of January, 1914, Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty saw appear on the horizon a sight inexpressibly welcome to any commander who has scoured the seas in the hope that the enemy will come out in the open and give battle. Once that German battle-cruiser squadron had slipped across the North Sea and, under cover of the mist which has ever been the friend of the pirate, bombarded the women and children of Scarborough and the Hartlepools with shells meant to be fired at hardened adult males sheltered behind armour; and then, thanks to the mist, they had slipped back to Heligoland with cheering news to the women and children of Germany. This time when they came out they encountered a British battle-cruiser squadron of superior speed and power, and they had to fight as they ran for home.
Now, the place of an admiral is in his conning tower after he has made his deployments and the firing has begun. He, too, is a part of the machine; his position defined, no less than the plugman’s and the gun-pointer’s. Sir David watched the ranging shots which fell short at first, until finally they were on, and the Germans were beginning to reply. When his staff warned him that he ought to go below, he put them off with a preoccupied shake of his head. He could not resist the temptation to remain where he was, instead of being shut up looking through the slits of a visor.
But an admiral is as vulnerable to shell-fragments as a midshipman, and the staff did its duty, which had been thought out beforehand like everything else. The argument was on their side; the commander really had none on his. It was then that Vice-Admiral Beatty sent Sir David Beatty to the conning tower, much to the personal disgust of Sir David, who envied the observing officers aloft their free sweep of vision.
Youth in Sir David’s case meant suppleness of limbs as well as youth’s spirit and dash. When the Lion was disabled by the shot in her feed tank and had to fall out of line, Sir David must transfer his flag. He signalled for his destroyer, the Attack. When she came alongside, he did not wait on a ladder, but jumped on board her from the deck of the Lion. An aged vice-admiral with chalky bones might have broken some of them, or at least received a shock to his presence of mind.
Before he left the Lion Sir David had been the first to see the periscope of a German submarine in the distance, which sighted the wounded ship as inviting prey. Officers of the Lion dwelt more on the cruise home than on the battle. It was a case of being towed at five knots an hour by the Indomitable. If ever submarines had a fair chance to show what they could do it was then against that battleship at a snail’s pace. But it is one thing to torpedo a merchant craft and another to get a major fighting ship, bristling with torpedo defence guns and surrounded by destroyers. The Lion reached port without further injury.