The World Peril of 1910

by George Chetwynd Griffith

It was nearly midnight when the three fleets joined, and just about eight bells the clouds parted and dissolved under the impact of a stiff nor'-easter, which had been gathering strength for the last two hours. The war smoke drifted away, and the moon shone down clearly on the now white-crested battlefield.

By its light and their own searchlights the French and German admirals, steaming as they thought to join hands with their victorious friends, saw the strangest and most exasperating sight that their eyes had ever beheld. The advancing force was a curiously composed one. Trained, as they were, to recognise at first sight every warship of every nation, they could nevertheless hardly believe their eyes. There were six battleships in the centre of the first line. One was the Britain, three others were of the Edward the Seventh class; two were French. Of the sixteen cruisers which formed the wings, seven were French—and every warship of the whole lot was flying the White Ensign!

Did it mean disaster—almost impossible disaster—or was it only a ruse de guerre?

They were not left very long in doubt. At three miles from a direction almost due south-east of Dover, the advancing battleships opened fire with their heavy forward guns, and the cruisers spread out in a fan on either side of the French and German Fleets. The Britain, as though glorying in her strength and speed, steamed ahead in solitary pride right into the midst of the Allies, thundering and flaming ahead and from each broadside. The Braunschweig had the bad luck to get in her way. She made a desperate effort to get out of it; but eighteen knots was no good against twenty-five. The huge ram crashed into her vitals as she swerved, and reeling and pitching like some drunken leviathan, she went down with a mighty plunge, and the Britain ploughed on over the eddies that marked her ocean grave.

This was the beginning of the greatest and most decisive sea-fight that had been fought since Trafalgar. The sailors of Britain knew that they were fighting not only for the honour of their King and country, but, as British sailors had not done for a hundred and four years, for the very existence of England and the Empire. On the other hand, the Allies knew that this battle meant the loss or the keeping of the command of the sea, and therefore the possibility or otherwise of starving the United Kingdom into submission after the landing had been effected.

So from midnight until dawn battleship thundered against battleship, and cruiser engaged cruiser, while the torpedo craft darted with flaming funnels in and out among the wrestling giants, and the submarines did their deadly work in silence. Miracles of valour and devotion were achieved on both sides. From admiral and commodore and captain in the conning-towers to officers and men in barbettes and casemates, and the sweating stokers and engineers in their steel prisons—which might well become their tombs—every man risked and gave his life as cheerfully as the most reckless commander or seaman on the torpedo flotillas.

It was a fight to the death, and every man knew it, and accepted the fact with the grim joy of the true fighting man.

Naturally, no detailed description of the battle of Dover would be possible, even if it were necessary to the narrative. Not a man who survived it could have written such a description. All that was known to the officials on shore was that every now and then an aerogram came, telling in broken fragments of the sinking of a battleship or cruiser on one side or the other, and the gradual weakening of the enemy's defence; but to those who were waiting and watching so anxiously along the line of cliffs, the only tidings that came were told by the gradual slackening of the battle-thunder, and the ever-diminishing frequency of the pale flashes of flame gleaming through the drifting gusts of smoke.

Then at last morning dawned, and the pale November sun lit up as sorry a scene as human eyes had ever looked upon. Not a fourth of the ships which had gone into action on either side were still afloat, and these were little better than drifting wrecks.