There was no knowing until that instant which way the ship was going to swing, and the Chief Navigating Officer's sharp "Hard-a-port!" down the voice-pipe was the only order there was any use in giving, when it became clear that we were being turned six or eight points to port on a course calculated to present pretty much of her whole starboard side for the oncoming destroyer to flatten itself against. The grind of the labouring helm ran like a shudder from stern to bow, but the avoidance of a collision was up to the destroyer rather than the battleship.
Out of the tail of my eye (as I focussed my attention on more imminent developments) I saw that the other battleships and destroyers were cutting capers similar to our own. No two of the dozen or more craft appeared to be steering the same course, and one or two of the destroyers, like helplessly skidding motors on a muddy street, had actually turned through thirty-two points and were heading back on their proper courses.
It was not an especially close call with our Flotilla Leader after all, for her helm cut into water, "standing still" sufficiently to give it a grip, while she yet had room to clear our swinging bows by a score of yards. Wallowing enormously, she spun swiftly round and darted back to her station, while the more ponderous battleship was still reeling dazedly like a half-drunken man trying to orientate after picking himself up from a fall. Then, silently and mysteriously as they had come, the treacherous swirls and eddies rolled on, and ten minutes later—a row of blurred black towers dimly discernible against the falling curtain of the night,—the Squadron was again in "Line Ahead" and steaming quietly toward the open sea in its wonted order.
"In its way, this is quite the nastiest bit of water in all the world," said Admiral Sturdee, turning from the rail of the bridge with an expression of relief on his face. "There is a number of places where the tides run more swiftly than here, but none (in my own experience at least) where they run in so many directions at the same time. The waters for miles are a continual succession of giant whirlpools. These make navigation difficult and uncertain all over the Firth, but in the zone of the tide-rip (as you have just seen) they are infernal. Sometimes—even in stormy weather—we go out without having any trouble whatever at the 'rip'; again, as to-day, with little wind and less sea, it picks up a squadron of warships aggregating over two hundred thousand tons in displacement, and shakes them like a terrier worrying a string of sausages. When it's in this kind of a temper, threading the passages at the entrance of a South Pacific coral atoll (to most sailors the last thing in difficult navigation) is like sailing down a countryside canal in comparison. Have you ever seen anything like it?"
"Never at sea," I replied. "Indeed, the only time—anywhere—I ever saw waters take such wanton liberties with craft trying to navigate them was in the White Horse Rapids of the old Klondike route, and those boats were only twenty or thirty-footers of green whipsawed lumber. But aren't there certain kinds of weather when it is next to physically impossible for any kind of a ship to live here? When you get a well-developed gale blowing against the tide, for instance?"
"Ah, that's the combination that does it," said the Admiral with a grim smile, turning to go down to the Chart House with the Flag Captain. "You remember what happened to those two destroyers here in that blow of eight or ten days ago (only one survivor out of the crews of both), and you might ask X—— to tell you what befell the old '——' the night she started out into a storm."
The Flag Lieutenant came and leaned against the rail at my side. "It must have happened just about where we are now," he said, rubbing a cinder down into the inner corner of his eye and out on the bridge of his nose in approved fashion. "The tide-rip may ambush you almost anywhere inside of here, and—especially if the weather is thick—you are lucky if your ship doesn't end up somewhere along the forty or fifty miles of cliffy coast that hems in this accursed pocket of water. The old '——' did not go ashore, but her case is notable as being probably the worst bit of bashing a battleship ever had from seas alone.
"She was going out by herself—bound for the Mediterranean, if I remember rightly—and what happened is probably largely due to the fact that they drove her, with the tide, into the teeth of the storm (perhaps to get out where there was more sea-room as quickly as possible) instead of slowing down and taking it easy, as we would be inclined to do now, even with ships a good deal bigger and more powerful. Most of these things have to be learned by experience, and if the '——' hadn't learned the lesson and paid the price, probably one of the others of us would have had to.
"At any rate, she bucked right into a mountain of a wave that swept her with hundreds—perhaps thousands—of tons of solid green water. When it had passed, her bridges and superstructures—everything, indeed, but her mast and turrets—was crushed down and carried away. A number of men went over the side with the wreckage, and most of those above decks not carried away were killed. The Captain was picked up on the quarterdeck, alive but with his legs broken. Nothing but a battleship could have survived such a blow, though it is quite possible that a more buoyant craft would have ridden higher over the wave and so shipped less solid water. I have seen a good many warships that have dragged themselves back to port after a battle, but never a one that presented such a sight as the poor old '——' did when she limped home the morning after the night before. She is still in commission, I believe, but there can't be an unreplaced rivet in her that doesn't have a crook in its neck to remind it that something hit her that night in Pentland Firth."
The Flag Lieutenant turned his glass for a moment toward a succession of flashes, in which a destroyer was pouring out its troubles to us from the outer darkness, and then leaned back on the rail again. "It would be hard to say whether the Firth is really our worst enemy or our best friend," he resumed presently. "There is a good deal to be said on both sides. First and last, it has probably bashed us about a good deal more than the Hun has; but, at the same time, there is no use denying that it has prevented him from making us a good deal of trouble he might have made if there had been an ordinary respectable sheet of water running right up to the front door of our refuge.