The ship was little more than a battered wreck. A distance of five thousand four hundred yards is nothing at sea. It is point-blank range, and may be compared with using a rifle at fifty yards. Her casualties in killed and wounded had been very severe. The engine-rooms and stokeholds were flooded through shell striking and penetrating below the water-line, while she was blazing furiously aft, and was making water fast. The whole vessel was pierced and perforated until she resembled a gigantic nutmeg-grater, and as time went on she settled lower and lower in the water. Certain of the survivors tried to quench the fire with hoses, while the remainder set to work to build rafts, practically all the boats having been demolished. The conflagration was eventually subdued, and then came the piteous and gruesome task of identifying the dead, while the wounded were brought on deck in case it should be necessary to abandon the ship.
For over an hour she lay there helpless, and we can imagine the relief of officers and men when, later in the evening, the Engadine, a cross-Channel steamer converted into a seaplane depot ship, arrived on the scene and took her in tow. The energy of every soul on board was then concentrated on keeping the ship afloat; and, as the steam-pumping arrangements were useless, the exhausted men were at the hand-pumps all through the hours of darkness.
But it was not to be. The weather during the night grew rapidly worse, and when the next dawn came the wind and sea had risen, and waves were breaking over the quarterdeck. The cruiser could not last much longer. She was sinking fast, and there was nothing for it but to abandon her.
One by one the wounded were passed down into boats and were ferried across to the rescuing vessel. They were followed in turn by the remainder of the ship's company, the officers, and finally the captain; and when last seen, between nine and ten in the morning, the Warrior was sinking by the stern. But she had upheld her name. She came to a noble end, for she had fought valiantly against overwhelming odds until she could fight no more, and her name, together with those of other brave ships lost on that eventful day, will never be forgotten. Her heroic dead did not sacrifice their lives in vain.
Of the gallant work of the Engadine, which towed the cruiser for seventy-five miles between eight-forty P.M. and seven-fifteen A.M. the next morning, and was instrumental in saving the lives of her ship's company, we need make no mention here. The exploit occupies its deserved position of prominence in Sir John Jellicoe's official despatch.
III.
It was immediately after the destroyer action between the lines that the Mariner first sighted another body of ships looming up to the southward. The new-comers, about sixteen large ships accompanied by many smaller vessels, came on at full speed towards the scene of action, and at first the men in the destroyers imagined them to be the battleships of the British Grand Fleet. Their spirits rose accordingly, for with the arrival of these powerful units the enemy's battle-cruisers, cut off from their base, could not escape annihilation. But a few minutes later, when the great ships had come nearer, their unfamiliar shape and unusual light-gray colouring proclaimed them for what they really were—the battleship squadrons of the German High Sea Fleet.
Some of the destroyers which were favourably placed at once dashed in to attack with torpedoes, retiring as soon as they had fired, and before very long most of them had rejoined the heavier vessels.[ [38] Their next chance of doing something was to come after nightfall.
From about six-fifteen onwards it is very difficult to give a comprehensive account of what occurred, for with the arrival on the scene of the British Grand Fleet, the German main squadrons turned and retired to the southward. Sir John Jellicoe chased at full speed; and, as he says in his despatch, 'the enemy's tactics were of a nature generally to avoid further action,' while he refers to his own ships as the 'following' or 'chasing' fleet. Moreover, in the engagements which ensued, the enemy were favoured by the weather, for banks of heavy mist and smoke-clouds from the hostile destroyers reduced the visibility to six miles or less, and periodically screened the opponents from each other's view.
The fighting between the opposing battleships, which began at six-seventeen P.M., seems to have resolved itself into a series of ship to ship and squadron to squadron encounters rather than a formal fleet action; but, while our vessels remained in their organised divisions throughout, the enemy, soon after the fight began, seem to have become more or less scattered, and to have had a trail of injured ships struggling along in rear of their main body.