Stories of the Ships

by Lewis R. Freeman

"Some of them have come a long way,"[B] he said, with a twinkle in his steady grey eye, "but we're all the gladder to have them here. As for the others," he went on, going back to the port side, "we're almost at the extreme right of our present formation, and, until the sun licks up a bit more of this mist, you will not be able to see more than halfway across the Battle Fleet, to say nothing of the battle cruisers and all the other ships that are out to-day. It's far from being a favourable morning on which to have your first view of the Grand Fleet at sea; just about the same shifting sort of visibility, indeed, that we had at Jutland."

"It may be so," I assented; "yet to me there is a suggestion of going-on-to-the-ends-of-the-earth in the way those farthest lines melt into the mist that would be quite absent if it was clear enough really to see the last of them. As it is, it takes no effort at all of the imagination to fancy those lines going on, and on, and on, into the farthest bight of the farthest sea in which their power is felt. I wouldn't have a clear horizon for the world to-day. The Grand Fleet will never be so big to me as it is this morning. I know just how big it is (for I've learned the names of all its units, ship by ship), and I know just about how much sea it takes up (for I've looked down on the whole of it from a 'kite' at Scapa); but to-day—to me—it reaches to the ends of the Seven Seas, and I don't want any shifting of the scenery to destroy my illusion."

The Fates were kind, for that mask of luminous mist (though it interfered considerably with the effectiveness of the "P.Z." as an exercise) did not clear away sufficiently during all the time we were out to make it possible to see, from even the loftiest vantage, the whole of the Fleet at one time. So that first illusion still holds, and so strongly that I cannot visualise it—even to-day, many weeks after—without a catch in my breath and a "choky" feeling in the throat. I have seen "all the way across" the Grand Fleet several times in the interim, and once I have been with it when it tore across the North Sea on what appeared the hottest kind of a scent; and yet—that first impression has kept a place all its own.

Straight on eastward pressed the swiftly steaming Fleet, straight on into the alternately advancing and receding mist wall, until the snowbirds from the "other side"—wind-blown victims of the capricious shift of weather—were fluttering about our bows, and the blurred outline of what appeared to be a rocky coast rose distantly in the smother ahead. Then, at a signal from the Flagship, we turned ten or a dozen points and stood away to the south on a course that might lead anywhere from the Skager Rak to Heligoland Bight. That manœuvre would have been a sight for a clear to-day, and to be followed from a balloon, if one were to have his choice of vantages. A hundred ships—more or less—were steering steadily on one course. Suddenly a string of multi-coloured bunting breaks out beside the half-blurred blue-black tower of a unit steaming somewhere toward the middle of the formation, and instantly the whole great body begins to turn. Vastly more than a million tons of steel are wheeling in unison at the flutter of that single signal, and yet in any one ship no more than a few quiet words down a voice-pipe—orders less loud and no more peremptory than that with which one would bring his spaniel to heel—have been spoken.

"Steady by compass!" you hear (if you chance to be standing close to the quiet-voiced Chief Navigating Officer bending above the binnacle); and presently, "Port fifteen!" At practically the same moment those same orders have been given on the leading battleship of every line, and round they go together, throwing swirling wakes with short sharp waves running off their outer curves and transiently smooth patches in the embrace of the inner ones. When the turn is complete and the leading ships ploughing the desired course, the laconic "Midships" completes the brief series of orders.

To a novice the countless destroyers shuttling in every direction between, ahead, and astern of the turning lines of battleships and wallowing wildly in the confused welter of conflicting wakes appear to be wheeling as aimlessly as range cattle "milling" in a blizzard. In reality their moves are calculated to a nicety, and they turn and "click" to place with almost the precision of the plungers of the combination of a safe.

The "flexibility" of the Grand Fleet, in spite of its increasing size—it has seldom if ever gone to sea but what it was stronger by many thousands of tons than when it last emerged—is a source of never-ending wonder to one to whom it has not become a commonplace by endless repetition, and the swiftness and ease with which it changes form at the will of the Commander-in-Chief never fails to remind me of one of those fascinating wire toys which an ingenious child can push or pull into a great variety of geometrical shapes. A few points' alteration of course changes a squadron—or a half dozen of them steaming abreast—into any desired "Line of Bearing," which might be what would happen in case it was deemed advisable to start zigzagging to avoid a submarine. A squadron may go from "Line Ahead" to "Line Abreast" in anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, according to the course the latter is going to hold, and so on through other formations, simple and complex. How this works in practice I had a good opportunity to see before we returned to Base.

The general practice on a "P.Z." for the Grand Fleet is to make a comprehensive sweep around the North Sea for two or three or four days, and then—if none of the enemy has been caught up in the net—to chivy together as large a force as possible of battle cruisers, light cruisers, and anything else available and have a sham fight with them. Failing in the former on this occasion, recourse had been had to the latter, and our Squadron was just getting ready to "open" on some dusky, mist-masked shapes suspected of being the "enemy," when the incident occurred to which I have referred.

"To 'equalise' the opposing forces," Admiral Sturdee was explaining to me, "it is laid down that each ship in the Fleet we are meeting shall represent a Squadron of the enemy. For instance, that light cruiser to the right—the one making all that smoke—represents an 'enemy' Battleship Squadron, which, incidentally, is steaming hard in the hope of getting in a position to waft us a breeze on a 'windy corner' when we begin to turn. Incidentally"—and the lines of his firm mouth relaxed in a quick smile—"I think we shall have turned before he gets to the place he's driving for. Now that ship there (I think she's a battle cruiser) represents——"

Just then his Flag Lieutenant, stepping rather more quickly than usual, handed him a signal. "Now fancy that," he said, after running his eye over the laconic message; "there's an enemy submarine ahead of us."