Pincher Martin, O.D.: A Story of the Inner Life of the Royal Navy

by H. Taprell Dorling

I.

Pincher soon discovered that life on board a battleship and life in a destroyer were two totally different existences.

In the Belligerent a cast-iron routine had always been adhered to, at sea or in harbour, fair weather or foul. Nothing was suffered to disturb that routine, unless it were occasional excursions to sea in the small hours of the morning and frequent coalings. Times were laid down for everything. Day after day bugles blew or pipes twittered at exactly the same hours; and to the ship's company, the actual workers, things seemed to run as smoothly as clockwork with a minimum of effort on the part of every one. They all knew what to do, and when to do it; and the men themselves never realised the forethought, the energy, and the capacity for organisation on the part of the commander and other responsible officers which were necessary to produce such a result. They took it for granted. Their groove was made for them, so to speak, and they suffered themselves to slide along its well-oiled length without troubling their heads as to what supplied the motive-power. Moreover, men were told off for their jobs collectively, not individually. Their bodies seemed to be regarded as machines capable of so many units of work, and there were such numbers of them in the ship, and the vessel herself was so huge, that the labours of any single person, provided always he was not a very important person, did not seem to have any effect on the community as a whole. Indeed, a seaman could even go on the sick-list, or leave the ship altogether, without his absence being noticed or felt except by his own messmates and friends.

But in the Mariner things were very different, for here the labours of every single individual counted. If a man neglected his work or idled his time away, his shortcomings had their effect on some one else. They were soon noticed, and the laggard speedily found himself chased and goaded into a proper state of activity by Petty Officer Casey; and Casey, a glutton for work himself, always had a persuasive way with him, and a horny fist to back up his arguments.

There was a routine, of course, and very nice it looked on paper; but the life was so full of sudden surprises that as often as not any preconceived time-table went by the board. It was not surprising, for the Mariner and the other destroyers of her flotilla had always to be ready for service at the shortest notice, and her men frequently found themselves bundled unceremoniously out of their hammocks in the middle of the night to get the ship to sea. It did not matter whether it was blowing a gale, raining, or snowing; go to sea they must, and did.

Sometimes they chivied Fritz; and he—a wise man, but no gentleman—waited for no one. It was not the fault of the destroyers that he had usually vanished into space by the time they arrived to strafe him. Fritz was the ubiquitous Hun submarine, any 'untersee-boot' which happened to come into their domain, and a merry little dance he sometimes led them. Occasionally, to vary the monotony, they called him Hans, Adolf, Karl, or some other Teutonic appellation; but more often than not he was just Fritz, and Fritz he will remain until the end of the war. Sometimes, though reported as such, he was not really Fritz at all.

'The skipper of the trawler Adam and Eve reports having sighted a periscope flying a large flag in latitude xy^° z^′ N., longitude a^° bc^′ E., at six-thirty this morning,' was the sort of thing they were sometimes told. 'Proceed to the vicinity with all despatch, and search.'

Proceed they did, hot-foot and full of warlike energy, only to find that the skipper of the Adam and Eve had been mistaken, and that his periscope with its large flag was nothing but some other fisherman's dan buoy broken adrift from its nets. Dan buoys, seen in the half-light of the early morning or evening, are apt to be deceptive, particularly when the imagination is stirred at the thought of the substantial honorarium to be earned for authentic information of the enemy.

But even battleships and cruisers make mistakes sometimes. The newspapers have never mentioned one fierce engagement which took place in a certain northern harbour, in the chill gray light of an early dawn, when a long black submarine was suddenly seen approaching the outer cruiser of a line of men-of-war lying peacefully at their anchors. He came in on the flood-tide, grim and menacing, causing a great commotion in the water, and with his periscope raising its flutter of spray. Now and then he disappeared altogether.

It was Fritz, they thought, come to pay them an early morning visit, and with all the joy in the world the officer of the watch in the cruiser opened fire. It was easy shooting. The guns barked angrily, and four-inch shell spouted, foamed, and burst round the invader until he was a submarine no longer. The fleet was flung into a state of considerable excitement; but the submarine sank gracefully to the bottom, while the officer of the watch, metaphorically patting himself on the back, told his agitated pyjama-clad commanding officer of what had occurred.