The Great Surrender
"Think the beggars will put up a fight after all?" asked Lieutenant Alec Seton, D.S.C., as he raised his binoculars to sweep the misty eastern horizon.
"Not they," replied Lieutenant-Commander Trevannion of H.M.T.B.D. Bolero. "What little stuffing they did have has sunk into their boots. But, by Jove! I never thought they'd chuck in their hands so completely. Try to imagine a British seaman showing the white feather like that—you simply couldn't, for the very good reason that it's not in his nature. Hullo! The flagship's signalling."
It was a brand new Bolero of which Lieutenant-Commander Trevannion was skipper; Seton, on promotion, being appointed his second-in-command. The Scena was in the North Sea some miles to the east'ard of Harwich; the time, dawn of the 20th day of November, 1918.
"The Day"—der Tag—was at hand. As Beatty had prophesied, the Huns had to come out, although the manner of their coming was greatly different from that which had been expected. Everyone was firmly convinced—it was an erroneous tribute to an upstart navy without a single tradition—that the German Navy would emerge at the last to commit felo-de-se under the guns of the Grand Fleet. It seemed incredible that the array of battleships and cruisers, ostensibly built to wrest the trident from Britannia's grasp, would tamely surrender without firing a single shot. But such was the case. The handing over of the German battleships, cruisers, and destroyers had already been arranged, and the White Flag Armada was due at Scapa Flow on the following day.
But the 20th of November was Tyrwhitt's Day—a fitting reward after four years of anxious watching, mingled with a few glorious scraps when Fritz did show his nose out of harbour. The first batch of 150 U-boats was due to arrive, officered by recreant Huns who, had they lived in a different age, would have been promptly hanged in chains at Execution Dock as common pirates.
So incredible to the British seamen did the tame surrender appear that many of them fully expected Fritz would put up a fight even for the sake of "saving his face" in the eyes of the world. After months of "Kolossal" boasting the Hun would surely not chuck up the sponge without resistance, even of the most treacherous kind.
But Admiral Tyrwhitt was a man who took no undue risks. Every vessel of the British squadron appointed to accept the surrender was cleared for action, while precautions had to be taken, before the U-boats left Germany, to draw their stings—in other words to remove the warheads from their torpedoes. In addition the German crews were ordered to fall-in on deck.
Covered by a hundred guns their fate would have been swift and sure had they foolishly given way to one act of treachery.
"U-boats in sight bearing E. by N.½N., distant three miles," came the welcome signal.