the south’ard told where the target was. Firing opened up all along the line of our battle cruisers after that, and the racket from that and the fast falling enemy shells increased till it was a steady unbroken roar. The Hun shells were falling so straight that many of the ‘overs’ missed by only a few yards. The hits, of which there were quite a number on the leading ships, looked rather awful at the moment of exploding. There would be a wild gush of flame that seemed to be eating up everything it touched, and then, all of a sudden, it was gone, and only a few little fires would be left flickering on the deck. The shells which struck against the sides seemed to nip on into the sea almost before they began to explode. Neither these, nor even those which struck the decks and turrets, seemed to be doing much damage at this stage, and our own firing never slackened in the least. I think none of the destroyers were hit up to now, though there were a number of very near things from some of the ‘overs.’ Our turn was coming.
“This sort of a give-and-take fight had been going on for some time, when there was a sudden increase of the enemy’s fire. From the way the fresh fall of shot came ranging up, it was very plain that new ships were coming into action, while the fact that the splashes were higher and heavier than those from the first salvoes seemed to make it likely that some of the Hun battleships had now arrived at the party. As it turned out, this was just what
had happened, and, although we could not see them from the low decks of the destroyers, the first B.C.S. was soon under the fire of the whole Hun High Seas Fleet. It was to draw these on into action with our approaching Battle Fleet that Beatty now turned away to the north’ard.
“Right here was where the big moment of this part of the fight came. The Huns must have scented the chance of catching our battle cruisers on the ‘windy corner’ as they turned, for suddenly their fire slackened on the ships down the line and concentrated on the point where that line began to bend. It must have been something like the barrage they make at the Front, for at times the water thrown up by the bursting shell made a solid wall which completely cut off my view of the ships beyond it. The way it seemed to boil up and quiet down looked like there was some sort of general control over the bunched fire, though that sort of thing would be pretty hard to handle.
“The Lion caught only a corner of the ‘boil,’ and left it on her starboard quarter, but the shell or two that struck her started a fierce fire burning ’midships, and I did not see the guns of that turret again in action. The ‘P.R.’—the Princess Royal—turned in a quiet interval of the barrage, and seemed not to be hit, but the Queen Mary steamed right into it, and just seemed to dissolve in a big puff of smoke and steam. I have no special memory of the noise or shock of the explosion, but the pillar of smoke
shot up as sudden and solid as a ‘Jack-in-the-box.’ It was black underneath, but always with a crown of flame at the top, as though the gases were spouting up inside and taking fire as they met the air. Some of my mates said they saw big pieces of flying wreckage, such as plates from turrets and decks, but I only remember smoke and flame. I never saw a bit of the ‘Q.M.’ again. When the smoke cloud lifted she was gone completely, with nothing but a gap in the line to mark the place where she had been. The thing looked so impossible that the ‘T.I.’ (that was what we called the torpedo gunner’s mate, because he was also torpedo instructor), who was standing beside me, kept saying over an over again, ‘She’s not gone up! She’s not gone up!’
“Perhaps it was no more than a coincidence, but it has always struck me as being just a bit uncanny the way that barrage on the ‘windy corner’ seemed to ‘work by threes.’ The ‘Q.M.’ was third in line, and up she went after the Lion and ‘P.R.’ had passed unhurt. Then the Tiger and New Zealand weathered the turn safely, but the poor old Indefat.—Number three again—got hers. She went up under a rain of shells plumping down on her deck, just as the ‘Q.M.’ did, and I remember specially watching the top of a turret go spinning up into the air, till it almost disappeared, and then came slowly down again, till it was lost in the rising smoke of the explosion.
“The fire of the Huns began to be divided more
equally among the four surviving battle cruisers now, and the Nairobi was led a lively dance dodging about among the ‘overs.’ It was the big fire raging amidships that turned my eyes to the Lion again. One of the guns of the ’midships turret had a sickly droop to it, but the other three turrets were blazing away as merry as ever. We were close enough to see men on the bridge with the naked eye, and it suddenly occurred to me that one of the quietly moving figures there must be Admiral Beatty, who I knew hated to be cooped up in a conning tower in action. I could not be sure which he was, but everyone in sight looked no more concerned than if they had been steaming out for target practice. I didn’t have time to think of it then, but every time since that I’ve felt surer and surer that no man since the world began ever showed more real guts than Beatty in that part of the Jutland show.”
Prince stood up, and put a forty-five degree kink in his poker by slamming it over the steel rail of the ladder to emphasise his words, and then stopped talking for a minute or two while he worried it straight with a hammer.