“There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.”—Sir Francis Drake.
To win the first Victoria Cross awarded to a naval officer in the Great War, to be the first submarine commander to gain it in any war—these are no mean distinctions. Primarily, of course, Lieutenant Norman Douglas Holbrook, R.N., owed his blue ribbon to “most conspicuous bravery,” as the Gazette has it, but to this must be added a particularly daring and unique exploit that showed exceptional tactical and executive skill.
The deed was not one of those lightning-stroke affairs that lack premeditation and are accomplished on the spur of the moment in the heat of battle. The elements of conflict were there, guns, ammunition, soldiers, and all the stage scenery necessary to give a picturesque and enthralling setting. The chief actor alone failed to appear in the picture. I would not for the world attempt to minimize the superb heroism of any holder of a much-coveted decoration. Yet there is a marked difference between this particular deed and all others that had gone before. It was accomplished in a place remote from other British battle forces. The young officer neither carried a wounded man on his back amid a storm of bullets, his comrades looking on, nor with a machine-gun held up a horde of Huns.
Harking back, it is interesting to recall that the first person to win the V.C. was a bluejacket—an above-salt-water sailor. Holbrook belonged to the same splendid Service, but to a section unborn when Charles Davis Lucas flung overboard a live shell from H.M.S. Hecla off Bomarsund in 1854. The commander of B 11 gained his fourpennyworth of bronze in a submarine below the sea. What Holbrook’s meritorious action lacks in intensity of swift drama is more than compensated by the cool and calculated daring of the whole proceeding.
Standing quietly in a sealed chamber breathing ‘canned air’ for nine mortal hours, dodging mines, torpedo-boats, and gunfire from forts, requires a steady nerve and a concentration of mind and purpose beyond what is called for in open fighting. He accomplished what he had to do, brought back his ship, fourteen men and an officer, quite safely, and betrayed an eager anxiety as to what his next task might be.
It was not as though Holbrook had been placed in command of a brand-new vessel of modern type, replete with the latest improvements, spacious, comfortable, and minus the stuffiness so inseparably associated with earlier craft. B 11 was one of the smallest, slowest, and oldest submarines in the British Navy. She had been launched in 1906, when Holbrook was still a ‘snotty,’ which is the Service name for midshipman. There was no question as to the risks all on board knew they were about to run. It was an adventure in the truest sense of the word, without a single ‘dead cert.’ in it. Every man jack of them left letters behind, “in case of accidents,” as one of the brave fellows modestly put it, and he added, perhaps half wistfully, that the commander was “a very cool hand.” The latter fact needs no qualification; it is self-evident. For one thing the Lieutenant had promised his mother “to be careful” when he bade her good-bye at Portsmouth. He fulfilled his pledge, as is the habit of worthy sons of worthy parents. Later on, when he gave her an account of his deeds, Holbrook gently reminded her of his vow in a subtle way. He signed his letter, “Your affectionate and careful son.” Which shows that a sense of humour is likewise one of his traits.
Lieutenant Holbrook had been appointed to H.M.S. Egmont at Malta for the command of B 11 in December 1913. What he and his submarine did in the interim of a year does not concern us. The blue waters of the Mediterranean hid them from the public gaze for exactly twelve months. Then they suddenly turned up in the Ægean Sea, hundreds of miles from their base. The Angel of Peace had retired sadly before the bustling entrance of Mars. A combined British and French squadron was gathered together in the neighbourhood of the entrance to the Dardanelles. There was an idea that big ships and big guns could smash their way through the Straits and appear before Constantinople. Eminent naval men said that the project was perfectly feasible; others that it was an impossible task. The ‘Ayes’ had it; the ‘Noes’ came into their own a little later. The heavy fathers of the Fleet had tuned up for the overture at daybreak on the 3rd November, 1914. On the 13th of the following month Holbrook and his merry men started to pierce the Straits via the underseas.
Wiseacres in the battleships, jealous of the reputation of the giants, and secretly itching to follow in the tracks of Admiral Sir J. Duckworth, who had got through in 1807, before battleships were quite so bulky and the Turks so well prepared, called in superstition to justify their views. The 13th was, and always had been, unlucky. It was the height of foolishness to tempt Providence with that date staring at one from the calendar. Really, the lack of wisdom in their superiors was beyond words!
The commander of the expedition was too eager to get on with the job to be deterred by superstition, and too much occupied with practical affairs to be concerned with old women’s tales once the Dardanelles had been entered. The Hellespont of ancient history is a bit of a teaser to a navigation officer. It has all manner of depths and shallows, widths and currents. Mists frequently hang between the rocky heights and the low hills of the landlocked waterway like steam and smoke in a railway tunnel. To these difficulties were added peril from mine, floating and fixed, peril from the guns of forts and land batteries, and peril from whatever naval forces might be in the vicinity.
Holbrook’s main object was to torpedo the Turkish battleship Messudiyeh. She was guarding the mine-field in the roadstead of Nagara, below the Narrows. Here the distance between the banks is only some 1400 yards, and the current often runs at the rapid rate of four and a half knots. The Messudiyeh was a rather curious specimen of naval architecture, the combined product of British and Italian labour. Launched at Blackwall forty years before, she had been rebuilt to a great extent at Genoa in 1902. From the point of view of armament she was by no means to be despised. Although her two 9.2–in. breech-loaders were being overhauled in England and had given place to wooden replicas, she mounted twelve 6–in. quick-firers, and over two dozen smaller weapons—a plentiful selection of guns for service should B 11’s periscope be sighted. As a matter of fact it was sighted, but not before Holbrook had taken his observations and discharged a torpedo, as we shall have occasion to notice a little later.