To Kiel in the 'Hercules'

by Lewis R. Freeman

Returning to Brunsbüttel from the Tondern visit well along toward midnight, the absence of the Hercules compelled the four of us who had made that arduous journey in the Viceroy (the accommodations in the "V's" appear to be as elastic as the good nature of their officers is boundless), to spend the night aboard, and the impossibility of rejoining our own ships in the morning was responsible for the fact that we continued with her—the first British destroyer to pass through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal—on to Kiel. It was a passage as memorable as historic.

An improving visibility toward morning enabled the Hercules to get under weigh again before daybreak, and in the first grey light of the winter dawn she came nosing past us and on up to the entrance of the canal. At each end of the latter there are two locks—lying side by side—for both "outgoing" and "incoming" ships. The right-side one of the "incoming" pair was reserved for the Hercules, while the other was kept clear for the Regensburg—flying Admiral Goette's flag—and the two British destroyers. The difference in level between the canal and the waters of the Elbe, varying considerably with the tide, is only a few feet at most, and the locking through, as a consequence, only the matter of minutes.

The Hercules and Regensburg were already in their respective locks as the Viceroy, with the Verdun half a cable's length astern, came gliding up out of the fog, the former already beginning to show her great bulk above the side as she lifted with the in-pouring water. The attention of the score or so of Germans standing on the wall between the locks was centred, not on the Hercules, as one might have expected, but on the Regensburg, the most of them being gathered in a gesticulative group abreast the latter's bow. The reason for this we saw presently.

H. M. S. "VICEROY" ENTERING KIEL CANAL LOCK AT BRUNSBÜTTEL

The handling of the British destroyers on this occasion was one of the smartest things of the kind I ever saw. Indeed, under the circumstances, "spectacular" is a fitter word to describe it than "smart." Without reducing the speed of her engines by a revolution, the Viceroy continued right on into the narrow water-lane of the lock at the same pace as she had approached its entrance. Certainly she was doing ten knots, and probably a good bit over that. On into the still more restricted space between the Regensburg and the right side of the dock she drove, while the waterside loafers—scenting a smash—grinned broadly in anticipation of the humiliation of the Englanders. Straight at the loftily looming lock gate she drove, and I remember distinctly seeing men who were crossing the canal on the bridge made by the folded flaps break into a run to avoid the imminent crash. And she never did slow down; she stopped. While there was still a score of yards to go the captain threw the engine-room telegraph over to "Stop!" and "Half-Speed Astern!" and, straining like a dog in leash as the reversed propellers killed her headway, stop she did. The superlative finesse of the thing (for they had seen something before of the handling of ships in narrow places) fairly swept the gathering dock-side vultures off their feet with astonishment, and one little knot of sailors all but broke into a cheer. Then the Verdun came dashing up and repeated the same spectacular manœuvre in our wake; only, instead of bringing up a few feet short of the lock gates, it was the stern of the Viceroy, with its festoon of poised depth-charges, that her axe-like bow backed away from after nosing up close enough to sniff, if not to scratch, the paint.

"You've impressed the Huns right enough, sir," I remarked to the captain as he rang down, "Finished with the Engines," and turned to descend the ladder of the bridge; "but wasn't it just a bit—"

"Yes, it was rather slow," he cut in apologetically in answer to what he thought I was going to say; "but I didn't dare to take any chances of coming a cropper in strange waters. Now, if it had been the 'Pen' at Rosyth, we might have shown them what one of the little old 'V's' can do when it comes to a pinch."

At the time I thought he was joking—that I had seen the extreme limit that morning of the "handiness" of the modern destroyer. But the Viceroy, astonishing as that performance had been, still had something up her sleeve. A week later, in the fog-shrouded entrance to Kiel Fiord, where a slip would have been a good deal more serious matter than the telescoping of a bow on a lock gate, I saw how much.

From the vantage of the bridge I saw, just before descending for breakfast, what it had been that had deflected the attention of the lock-side loafers from the Hercules to the Regensburg. That most graceful of light cruisers had paid the penalty of being left with a most disgraceful crew. She had rammed the lock gate full and square, and—from the look of her bows—while she still had a good deal of way on. We had remarked especially the trim lissomeness of those bows when she met us off the Jade on the day the Hercules arrived in German waters. And now the sharp stem was bent several feet to port, while all back along her "flare" the buckled plating heaved in undulant corrugations like the hide on the neck of an old bull rhino. As it was the kind of repair that would take a month or more in dock to effect, there was nothing for the Germans to do but go on using her as she was. Luckily, she did not appear to be making much water. She followed us through the canal without difficulty, and—as the days when she would be called on to shake out her thirty knots were gone for ever—it is probable that she served Admiral Goette as well for a flagship as any other of her undamaged sisters would have. But they were never able to smooth out her "brow of care" during all our stay in German waters; indeed, I shall be greatly surprised if (to use the expressive term I heard a bluejacket in the Viceroy apply to it that morning) she does not come poking that "cauliflower nose" in front of her when she is finally handed over for internment at Scapa.