There was no premonition of terrific weather. For several days the barometer had been almost steady, at 30.50 inches or thereabouts. During the watch from eight o’clock to midnight of this first day, the sky clouded and the breeze blew stronger, hauling from northeast to north with steadily increasing force. The barometer began to drop and was at 30.00 when the watches were changed. There came a lull in the early morning, the 16th, when the rain squalls passed over, and with calm water the convoy steamed at fourteen knots. The Corsair was somewhat short-handed for this trip. Lieutenant Tod, the navigator, had been granted leave of absence to go to the United States and Lieutenant McGuire was acting in his stead. Boatswain Rocco Budani was also absent on leave.
By noon of this second day the wind had risen again, and this time it was boisterously in earnest, with a weight that swiftly tore the sea into foam and tumbled it in confusion. The barometer was still “falling gently,” as noted in the ship’s diary, and hung at 29.30 until the weather was at its worst. The Corsair pluckily clung to her station with the tall transports until 2.30 in the afternoon, although the seas had begun to pile on board of her. The destroyers of this escort group concluded to turn tail to it and run for shelter before the storm increased to hurricane violence, but the five other destroyers with the twelve-knot convoy, the Smith, Reid, Lamson, Flusser, and Preston, stubbornly held on and so were fairly caught in it along with the Corsair.
When it became impossible to smash ahead any longer without suffering serious damage, every effort was made to signal the senior naval officer of the transports, by semaphore and flag hoists, but no response could be made out. The big ships, riding high, were able to snore through the wicked seas at ten or twelve knots, but the yacht and the wallowing destroyers had to slow down and ease up or be swept clean.
HOW THE HURRICANE SEAS POUNDED THE YACHT. “THE POOR OLD SHIP WAS A MESS”
Aboard the Corsair it was decided to make for Brest as a refuge, but this course brought the sea too much abeam, as was discovered after three hours of reeling progress which slowed to ten knots. When the afternoon darkened into dusk, the shouting gale had so greatly risen in fury that it menaced destruction. The destroyers had vanished in the mist and murk, endeavoring to save themselves and fairly rolling their funnels under. The Bay of Biscay earned an evil reputation long, long ago, but very seldom does it brew such wild weather as this great blow of December, 1917. French pilots and fishermen could recall no storm to match it in twenty years.
It was the supreme test for the Corsair, a yacht which was, after all, handicapped for such a struggle. Officers and men prepared her to face it as best they could, but she could not be “battened down” like the rugged ship that is built to tramp the world. The deck-houses, contrived for comfort and convenience, presented an expanse of large windows and mahogany walls and were exposed to the battering of the seas. There was no passageway below to connect the fore and after parts of the yacht. As a war-vessel, she was already stripped of all extra fittings, and all that could be done was to make everything secure and meet it in the spirit of that famous old chantey of the Western Ocean:
“She is bound to the west’ard,
Where the stormy winds blow;
Bound away to the west’ard,