“All their misses were ‘shorts.’ I don’t remember a single ‘over.’ They were still taking no unnecessary chances. As soon as they were close enough to see that our torpedo tubes were probably jammed to port, they altered course and crossed our bows and steamed past the other side, where there was no chance of our slipping over a mouldie at them.
“We were already settling rapidly, with a heavy list to port, and as soon as the captain saw she was finished, he gave the order: ‘Abandon ship. Every man for himself!’ Those were the last words I
heard him speak. He went below just after that to see about ditching the secret books, I believe, and when I saw him again it was just before she sank, and he was pacing the quarterdeck and talking quietly with the First Lieutenant.
“As our only boat had been smashed to kindling-wood, there was nothing to it but to take to the Carley Floats, and the first thing I did after hearing the order to abandon ship was to see to cutting one of these loose. On account of our oilskins and life-preservers, neither myself nor any of the three or four lads from the after gun’s crew that ran to the float with me could get at our clasp-knives. Luckily, one of the Ward Room stewards came to the rescue with three silver-plated butter-knives from the pantry, and with these we finally managed to worry our way through the lashings. Then we pitched the little webbed ‘dough-nut’ (as the Carley Floats are called) over the settling stern and jumped after it. Four or five minutes later, after heeling slowly to port through fifty or sixty degrees, she gave a sudden lurch and went down, turning completely over as she sank, so that her bottom showed for a few seconds. The captain, who could have followed us just as well as not, seemed to make no effort to save himself, and must have gone down with her. I can’t help believing that was the way he wanted it to happen.
“We had clambered into the float as fast as we could, and I think some one must have said something
about the danger of being caught over an exploding depth-charge, for we were paddling (all of these floats have short-handled paddles lashed to their webbing) away from the ship as fast as we could when she went down. Someone remembered that one of the ‘ash cans’ had been set on the ‘ready’ when we went to ‘Action Stations,’ and no one recalled seeing it thrown back to ‘safe’ before we went overboard. It was an anxious moment, waiting after she ducked under the sea, for we had not been able to paddle more than a hundred yards, and the detonation of a depth-charge had been known to paralyse men swimming in the water at twice that distance. Luckily, this particular charge must have been set for a considerable depth, and it is also possible that the hull of the ship absorbed or deflected some of its force. At any rate, the shock of it, when it came, though it knocked us violently against each other and left a tingling sensation on the skin of all the submerged part of one’s body, did not do anyone serious injury.
“When we came to count noses, there turned out to be eight of us on the float—two sub-lieutenants, the captain’s steward, myself, and the remnants of the crew of the after gun. A few minutes later we sighted a couple of men who looked to be struggling in the water, but turned out to be supporting themselves on a fragment of ‘dough-nut,’ which had broken loose when the ship sank. That, strange to say, was the only bit of wreckage that came to
the surface. We took these men aboard, and the ten of us weighted the overloaded float so that is submerged till the water reached our armpits. We were a good deal better off than it would seem, though, for the most of us were heavily dressed, and the animal heat of a man keeps him warm for a long time under oilskins and wool. The only ones that suffered much were a couple of lads who didn’t have any more sense than to ditch most of their togs before they went over the side. They said it was so as not to be hampered in swimming—as if they expected to do the ‘Australian crawl’ to Norway or the Shetlands! These two did begin to get a bit down-hearted and ‘shivery’ when the cold struck into the marrow of their bones, and it was with the idea of bucking them up a peg or two that we started singing. No, I don’t just remember all that we did warble, except, I’m glad to say, that ‘Tipperary’ wasn’t on the programme, and that this did include two or three hymns. You’re quite right. There’s nothing very warming to a chilled man in hymns, and I’m not trying to account for why we sang them. The fact remains that we did, just the same, and that we all, including the chaps in their underclothes, lived to sing again.
