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

by H. Taprell Dorling

From this time forward the whole affair seemed ghastly and unreal, an awful nightmare in which it was quite impossible to remember exactly what had happened. The air shook and trembled with a turmoil of ear-splitting sound, in which one heard the deep booming note of the British guns as they gave tongue, the shrill whistling or droning of shell as they passed overhead, and the sharper concussion of the hostile projectiles as they fell and burst.

Looked at from a distance, the huge hulls of the German ships seemed literally buried in a spouting maelstrom of shell fountains rising from the sea all round them. At times a shadowy gray mass, sparkling with wicked-looking gun-flashes, slid slowly into view behind some great upheaval in the water, to disappear the next instant as another salvo of shell fell and burst. The British guns seemed to be making very good shooting, but it was impossible to note exact results from the low deck of the destroyer.

Pincher glanced at the Lion and the other ships, and the spectacle held him spell-bound and made him feel almost dizzy. They were enduring a veritable tornado of shell, and the sea all round them leapt and boiled until at times the rushing shapes of the great vessels, close as they were, seemed actually hidden in the turmoil of flung-up water. Some of the shell were going home, too, for here and there in the rifts in the spray and smoke he saw the deep-red flash, a cloud of oily smoke, and a shower of flying débris as they struck and exploded. There were a few ragged holes in the gray steel sides; here and there the symmetrical shape of a ship's superstructure was marred by a twisted and distorted mass of steelwork, and pierced funnels vomited forth their black contributions to add to the already smoke-laden atmosphere. Star-shaped splashes of yellow and white showed where shell had struck armour, had exploded, and had failed to penetrate; but it seemed nothing short of a miracle how any ships built by human agency could withstand such a terrific hammering without being battered to pieces. It was an awesome sight.

It was well for the Mariner and her neighbours that the German shooting was so accurate. The hostile fire was concentrated on the battle-cruisers, and every shell seemed either to strike or else to fall within a few yards of them. The destroyers in their precarious position were untouched, but for all that the experience was nerve-racking, and Pincher had a feeling of intense relief when he saw the brilliant flashes and rolling clouds of brown, rapidly dissolving smoke from the British guns. They were firing fast, and it was no small consolation to think that the enemy were enduring the same terrible ordeal themselves.

One of the most awful incidents of that eventful day was the blowing up of the Indefatigable. The catastrophe, utterly unexpected, was appalling in its suddenness. At one moment the huge, nineteen-thousand-ton ship was steaming bravely along with her guns firing; the next, a salvo of five or six shell seemed to strike her simultaneously amidships. There came the splintering crash of the explosions, some spurts of flame, and upheavals of yellow, brown, black, gray, and white smoke. The great ship seemed literally to be divided in two, for both the bow and the stern reared themselves out of the water at the same moment. The thundering, shattering roar of the explosion made the nearer ships dance and tremble. The report seemed to compress the air until one's ear-drums threatened to burst, and masses of débris, large and small, were precipitated skywards, presently to come raining down into the sea in all directions.

The smoke-cloud spread and rose into the air to a height of three or four hundred feet. Soon it completely blotted out the scene of the disaster, and hung there impalpably, wreathing and eddying in thick, rolling masses. Then some freakish air-current caused another cloud of brown vapour to rise and overtop the first, until the whole mass looked for all the world like some gigantic, overbaked cottage loaf sitting squarely on the sea.

Within two minutes the ship had disappeared for ever, taking with her her gallant crew of nearly eight hundred officers and men. Barely a soul was saved, though destroyers, hurrying to the scene at imminent danger to themselves, searched the flotsam-strewn area for survivors.

The Queen Mary met a precisely similar fate. Again there came the terrible roar and flare of an explosion, followed by the cloud of smoke, in which the great ship sank almost instantly to the bottom. It was an awful moment; but one of the most magnificent spectacles of the battle was the sight of the great three-funnelled Tiger steaming at full speed through the pall a few moments after her unfortunate sister met her fate. At one moment she was in full view; the next her bows disappeared, then her midship portion with its three great funnels, and finally her stern, until the whole enormous length of the ship was completely swallowed up in the mass of brown vapour. Then her sharp stem with its creaming bow-wave emerged into sight on the other side of the pall, to be followed by the rest of the vessel as she drove clear of the scene of the catastrophe with her guns flashing defiance and her glorious white ensigns fluttering. It was an inspiring sight, but of the gallant crew of the stricken Queen Mary, comprising nearly a thousand souls, only four young midshipmen and under twenty men were rescued.

The loss of these vessels was a sad blow, but still the battle raged furiously. The hostile shooting, however, seemed to be becoming erratic, a fact which told its own tale, while ours steadily improved. Indeed, the next time Pincher was vouch-safed a fleeting glimpse of the enemy, two of their largest ships seemed to be badly on fire, while a third had quitted the line and was some distance astern of her consorts. But it was with a feeling of intense relief that the sorely tried British saw a welcome reinforcement of four battleships approaching at full speed, firing heavily as they came.

It was at about this time that some signal was hoisted in the Lion, and before Pincher quite realised what was happening, the Mariner and most of the other destroyers swung round and steamed for the enemy as hard as they could go.