A thick mist began to creep in from the sea. It swallowed up Harwich, the guardships, the destroyers at anchor, the trawlers lying on our landing water, the buoys, and the slipways.
At ten o'clock we heard the second boat returning. The Fire Commander switched on his searchlights to show up the water to the pilot, but the beams were diffused in the mist and the harbour was filled with a yellow luminous haze.
Through this haze we saw the flying-boat travelling at a tremendous pace. And we heard a loud smack. The pilot had hit the invisible water at speed. Up and up through the shining mist we saw thrown the black silhouette of the boat. It seemed to pause for an instant. We held our breath. Then the bow fell, and she nose-dived into the water with a sickening crash of breaking wood. She weighed six tons.
Immediately all the ships in the harbour added their searchlights to the glare. We saw the boat standing in an amazing fashion on her nose, her tail vertically upright, and resting on the leading edges of the wings.
Two motor-boats detached themselves from the slipway and raced to the wreck. Their crews found that the bow of the boat had broken off complete at the wings. The crew had been spilled out of her like peas out of a pod. The wireless operator and engineer were picked up uninjured, and then Faux, who had a slight scratch on his forehead. Finally they found Bill Bailey, the second pilot, paddling around in the water, his chart-board under one arm, unhurt, but very much distressed because he had dropped the weighted code-book, for the loss of which he would have to fill in innumerable forms.
Going out in a motor-boat I attached a rope to the tail of the wreck, pulled her over backwards, towed her in, and beached her at the Old Station. The harbour was again in darkness, all the searchlights had been switched off.
The boat that stood on its nose.
As this excitement died down a wireless signal was picked up from the third boat. It was incomplete, and said something about "gun flashes" and "Belgian coast." It was of course picked up by other wireless stations. It lit up the whole east and south coast. Signals poured in from the Harwich flotilla, the Dover patrol, Group Headquarters, the Admiralty, and the Air Ministry. Everybody in England seemed spoiling to get in on the fight. The I.O. stood at the telephone taking down signals, until the silence cabinet looked as though it had contained a snowstorm.