Strafed
"Mornin', Seton," was Lieutenant-Commander Dick Trevannion's greeting as Alec reported himself on board H.M.T.B.D. Bolero. "Had a long journey, eh? Sorry, old bird; but there's one consolation: We're bound south. Evidently the Admiral thinks we are in need of recuperation in a warmer climate. No, don't look so infernally joyful. We're not off up the Straits, if that's what you think. It's a convoying job."
Seton looked glum. He couldn't help it. Of all the tasks that fall to the lot of the ubiquitous navy convoying is one of the worst. The speed of the escorting destroyer or destroyers must perforce be limited to that of the slowest old tramp in the convoy, and in the days of shortage of shipping there were plenty of old hookers that in other circumstances would be being broken up in a shipbreaker's yards. Mule-headed skippers, ignoring peremptory signals, would haul out of line; superannuated engines would break down at particularly inopportune moments—when night was falling and a heavy sea running. Then the faces of the officers commanding H.M. ships comprising the escort would turn an apoplectic purple, and white anger would surge under their great-coats; but to little purpose. Acting on the precepts embodied in the song, "Sailors Don't Care". the horny-handed mercantile marine would just carry on in its own sweet way, contemptuously indifferent to naval orders, mines, U-boats, and other disquieting incidents on the High Seas in the Year of Grace 1918.
"What sort of a circus have we, sir?" asked Seton.
"Usual lot," replied Trevannion as he offered his subordinate a cigarette. "Coastwise tramps an' a couple of hookers for the 'Beef Trip'. We're to escort the latter to the North Hinder, and then put into Harwich to await instructions."
The suggestion of the Beef Trip made the outlook a little more promising. The term is applied to boats running between Great Britain and Holland and carrying live cattle for the ultimate sustenance of a hungry population. Many and many a time the Huns tried to intercept the Anglo-Dutch traffic. Raids from Borkum and Zeebrugge by swift German torpedo-boats made the trip a fairly exciting one, and the chances of out-escorting destroyers bringing the Huns to close action were always both possible and probable. It was a change from spending months of comparative inactivity at Scapa Flow, where in the piercing cold of the Northern climes the mammoth fleet of Britain lay waiting in vain for another opportunity of Der Tag. Only once before had the chance offered, and then night and mist had robbed the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet of his opportunity of annihilating von Scheer's Command.
At eight bells the Bolero cast off from the buoy and proceeded down the Forth, her ensign floating proudly from her diminutive mizzen mast. Past the giant hush-ships lying off Rosyth she glided, threading her way through a multitudinous assortment of craft that the Royal Navy has taken as its own: brand-new light cruisers, monitors with huge 17-inch guns, hogged-backed P-boats, mine-layers, coastal M.-B's, X-barges, and other weird types of naval architecture. Under the northern span of the Forth Bridge the Bolero passed, exchanging signals with the little station on the rock that supports the central pier; then, settling down to a modest twenty-five knots, she shaped a course towards the cluster of vessels awaiting her off Leith and Portobello Roads.
The convoy was, as the Lieutenant-Commander anticipated, a motley crowd. There were rusty-sided tramps, tramps fantastically decorated with dazzle; tramps large and small, wall-sided and with high and low freeboards. Nevertheless, with all their shortcomings, they formed part of the arteries of Empire, manned as they were by British seamen, whom the piratical Huns failed utterly to intimidate by threats of ruthless murder and sinking without a trace.
The short spring day was drawing to a close before the convoy weighed and shaped a course towards the frowning Bass Rock. Ahead steamed a destroyer, two more were on each flank of the long-drawn-out line, while astern, as a sort of whipper-in, came the Bolero, her turbine engines running at quarter speed.
As Officer of the Watch for the first watch Alec Seton had his work cut out. Almost every quarter of an hour the engine-room had to be telegraphed to, either to increase or decrease speed slightly, while the Morse flashing-lamp was practically in constant use, calling upon this vessel to close station or that to increase distance by so many cables.