Vagabonds of the sea

by Maurice Larrouy

This disappointment does not slacken our vigilance. In times of peace a single lieutenant, aided by an ensign, suffices for the many duties involved in managing a ship. Whether it has to do with observing the heavens, avoiding collisions, or coordinating the movements of many hundreds of sailors, during his four hours’ command he can easily attend to and handle it all.

Those times are no more. War puts a tenfold burden upon the cruiser without adding to its staff of officers. For now the ship is at once an organ of navigation and an instrument of battle. This duality of function demands at every moment two directing heads; the first continues to direct the watch, the second assumes responsibility for the lookout, defense, and battle. On the Waldeck we have only six lieutenants; so we form three crews of two each, who relieve one another on the bridge in an endless round, by day and night, in all weathers. One of them looks after the route, the crew and the signals from the shores; the other keeps his eye upon the sea and is ready at any moment to let loose the guns. My rank of seniority gives me the second rôle.

Throughout the rest of the war, whether it be short or long, my mate and I are destined to the same changes of fortune. He must have my confidence, and I his. These things are not uttered. But they are implicit in our handshake at the moment when we take the watch and assume the precious charge of the ship for our four-hour period.

He is a Fleming, I am Latin. This difference extends even to our ways of thinking, and lends piquancy to our two daily meetings. As we lean on the bridge rail, he at port and I at starboard, we watch the sea with equal vigilance. But in our secret souls move thoughts which have nothing to do with our profession. This is one of the privileges of men of action. They can surrender themselves wholly to their task without ceasing to dream of a thousand things. My comrade and I talk in low voices. The war, Germany, the future, everything comes up in these murmured conversations. We do not believe in keeping silent, for our motionless position is likely to bury us in a dangerous torpor. As our eyes search space, we passionately discuss the great drama, and we never agree. But if, in the treacherous night, a shadow appears, or a suspicious shape, suddenly we are one. Each performs instantly the necessary rites; one commands the helm and the machinery, the other directs the primers and gunners. The two of us in the darkness cooperate perfectly.

And then a few minutes later the scare is over. The gunners resume their posts, the primers unprime the guns. We two officers—one on the port, the other on the starboard—continue our vigil and our whispered talk.

Adriatic Sea, 27 September.

Three English cruisers—the Cressy, the Hogue and the Aboukir—have just found their last resting-place in the North Sea. Still intact, but bearing in their sides torpedo-wounds, they have slipped into their winding-sheet of sea-weed, where the skeletons of vessels sunk in ancient wars await them. The sea-water, that patient embalmer, will reclothe their keels with a shroud of rust and lime. On bright days, when the sun shines on the still sea, they will see the shadows of living vessels pass overhead. They will be caressed by the ripple from those screws, and their petrified hulks will quiver with pleasure. During the tedious hours of the lookout, I have been meditating upon the wireless messages which announced the death of the Cressy, the Hogue, and the Aboukir. That same tragedy may cut short the very phrases which I am commencing to unite. I imagine the whole scene, I recreate it. I have sailed the North Sea, I have lived two years in a submarine, and I am at war now on a cruiser.

I see three ships, somber and silent like ourselves, following the course laid down by the Admiral. North and south, other patrol vessels are traversing the appointed routes. While the soldiers of France and the children of England sleep, the sailors are keeping watch on the sea, that no one may force the barriers of their countries. But the sea is illimitable, the cruisers are few and far between, and cannot lend each other aid. For this the sailor must make up in toil and weariness; he takes less sleep, he watches unceasingly, he is always cold, he never touches land. Up there, just as in the Adriatic, he mounts his guard, longing with all his heart for an adventure.

Thus sailed the Cressy, the Hogue, and the Aboukir, how many days I do not know. But I do know the vigilance, the labor, the self-sacrifice of their crews. More than all the others, they offered their souls to the service of victory—these sailors whose ships are decorated with the famous names of English victories. These three noble names, did they not foretell a new harvest of laurels? Did they not symbolize a return to more fraternal policies, which dedicated to the service of France these namesakes of French defeats? English officers and sailors, with the clear instinct of men participating in great deeds, should offer France, in a single victory over our common enemies, a recompense for these three disasters England had inflicted upon her!

This night passed like all the others. Along the horizon were trails of gray light. The rolling sea emerged from the chaos of dawn, and the lookouts, with heavy heads and quivering eyelids, scanned for the thousandth time the troubled awakening of the North Sea. They saw nothing. Perhaps one of them had descried a streak of foam whiter and clearer than the rest, and quickly raised his glass to his eyes. But the streak of foam had already been covered again, and he dropped the glass which had not revealed the periscope. The three cruisers pursued their way amid the ridges of foam, one of which, though they were unaware of it, meant death to them.