Winning a Cause: World War Stories

by John G. Thompson; Inez Bigwood

THE REALLY INVINCIBLE ARMADA

The northern coast of Scotland is about as far north as the southern point of Greenland and nearly all of Norway lies still nearer the pole. Across the stretch of ocean between Scotland and Norway, a distance of about three hundred miles, for over four years the English navy kept guard, summer and winter. After the United States entered the war, the entire distance was protected also by mines.

The hardships suffered by the crews of these blockading ships during the terrible winters in that northern latitude can never be fully appreciated by any one who did not have to endure them and overcome them. This called for courage of the highest order, and the British sailors proved again, as they have so many times in the past, that they possessed it.

For thirty to forty days, each blockading ship kept the seas and then returned to port for a short period of rest. When on blockade, the men were frequently on duty on deck for twenty hours at a time wet through to the skin; they then went below to their berths for a few hours' sleep, to be followed by twenty hours more of duty on deck. "Blow high, blow low, rain, hail, or snow, mines or submarines," said one of them, "we have to go through it."

A suspicious vessel is sighted, headed for Norway, Denmark, or Holland. She must be hailed, stopped, and boarded to make sure she is not carrying cotton or rubber, or other contraband of war intended for Germany. No matter how rough the sea or what the temperature, this duty must be done. "We have just crawled into port again," wrote an officer; "what fearful weather it has been, nothing but gales, rain and snow, with rough seas. Two nights out of the last four were terrible and for the last fortnight it seems to have been one incessant gale, sometimes from the east, and then, for a change, from the west, with rain all the time. The strictest lookout must be kept at all times, as with the rough seas that are going now, a submarine's periscope takes a bit of spotting, likewise a floating mine, the lookout hanging on to the rigging in blinding rain, with seas drenching over them for hours at a time, peering into the darkness."

W. Macneile Dixon gives the following vivid account of the work of the British navy. "So it goes, and none save these who know the sea can form a picture or imagine at all the unrelaxing toil and strain aboard these ocean outposts that link northern with southern climes and draw their invisible barrier across the waters. The sea, if you would traffic with her, demands a vigilance such as no landsman dreams of, but here you have men who to the vigilance of the mariner have added that of the scout, who to the sailor's task have added the sentry's, and on an element whose moods are in ceaseless change, today bright as the heavens, tomorrow murky as the pit.

"To this rough duty in northern seas what greater contrast than that other in southern, the naval bombardment of the Dardanelles? How broad and various the support given by the British fleet to the Allies can thus be judged. Separated each from the other by some thousands of miles, the one fleet spread over leagues of ocean, kept every ship its lonely watch, while the bombarding vessels, concentrated in imposing strength, attempted to force a passage through a channel, the most powerfully protected in the world. Unsuccessfully, it is true, but in the grand manner of the old and vanished days when war had still something of romance, and was less the hideous thing it has become.

"We have here at least a standard by which to measure the doings of Britain on the sea. For remember the attempt upon the Dardanelles, with all the strength and energy displayed in it, must be thought of as no more than a minor episode in the work of the navy, not in any way vital to the great issue. It was not the first nor even the second among the tasks allotted to it. For while, first of all, the great vessels under the commander-in-chief paralyzed the activities of the whole German navy, while second in importance, the cruising patrols held all the doors of entrance and exit to the German ports, still another fleet of great battleships remained free to conduct so daring an adventure as the attempt upon the Dardanelles. Nor was this all, for, when the unsupported fleet could do no more, another heroic undertaking was planned upon which fortune beguilingly smiled—the landing on the historic beaches of Gallipoli.

"Take, first, the attempt of the ships upon the Straits. In the light of failure no doubt it must be written down a military folly. Ships against forts had long been held a futile and unequal contest. But it was not the forts that saved Constantinople. In the narrow gulf leading to the Sea of Marmora no less than eight mine fields zigzagged their venomous coils across the channel. The strong, unchanging current of the Dardanelles, flowing steadily south, carried with it all floating mines dropped in the upper reaches. Torpedo tubes ranged on the shore discharged their missiles halfway across the Straits. Before warships could enter these waters a lane had to be swept and kept. Daily, therefore, the minesweepers steamed ahead of the fleet to clear the necessary channel. But when thus engaged they became the target of innumerable and hidden guns, secluded among the rocks, in gullies and ruins and behind the shoulders of the hills, in every fold of the landscape. To 'spot' these shy, retiring batteries was of course imperative, but when spotted they vanished to some other coign of vantage, equally inconspicuous, and continued to rain fire upon the minesweepers. The warships poured cataracts of shell along the shores and among the slopes, the sea trembled, and the earth quaked. Amid the devastating uproar the trawlers swept and grappled and destroyed the discovered mines, but almost as fast as they removed them others were floated down to fill their places. Ships that ventured too far in support of the sweepers, like the Bouvet and the Triumph, perished; the waterways were alleys of death. Progress indeed was made, but progress at a cost too heavy, and wisdom decreed the abandonment of the original plan.

"There remained another way. An army landed on the peninsula might cross the narrow neck of land, demolish the batteries, and free the minesweepers from their destructive fire. Could that be done, it was thought the ships might yet force a passage into the broader waters and approach within easy range of the Turkish capital. After long and fatal delay the attempt was made. What might have been easily accomplished a month or two earlier had increased hour by hour in difficulty. Warned in good time of the coming danger, the Turks converted Gallipoli, a natural fortress, into a position of immeasurable strength. With consuming energy, in armies of thousands, they worked with pick and shovel till every yard of ground commanding a landing place was trench or rifle pit or gun emplacement. An impenetrable thicket of barbed wire ran up and down and across the gullies, stretched to the shore and netted the shallow waters of the beach itself. Then when all that man could do was done, they awaited the British attack in full confidence that no army, regiment, or man could land on that peninsula and live.