A Naval Venture: The War Story of an Armoured Cruiser

by T. T. Jeans

It was interesting to see the different behaviour of the three midshipmen. Bubbles, big and burly, bustled along with his elbows bent, his head thrown back, a laugh on his face, and his mouth wide open as usual, his red face perspiring and the collar of his tunic unbuttoned, charging through the little scrub bushes and running straight, never looking behind. The Pink Rat, with his eyes bulging out of his head, dodged and stooped, and set his teeth, very obviously conscious of the bullets; whilst the Lamp-post trotted along, swinging his long legs, and looking as little discomposed as if he was at some silly manoeuvres—possibly he was setting the noise of the bullets and the ships' shells to music. He was the only one of the three who looked back, at all, to see how the men were coming along, and to keep his section in something like order, preventing them from bunching together—as sailors always will—and steadying those who wanted to run too fast.

Once in this trench, the Pink Rat was sent along to make the men spread out and take cover properly, for again they were "bunching". The "Ansons", though they were mostly sailors, had had six months' military training, and so did not want telling what to do.

Next to where Bubbles sprawled, panting and blowing, was a bluejacket who, even at this time, had begun collecting "curios", and now showed with pride a Turkish bayonet and a trenching tool which he had picked up on his way. "If I'd left 'em there," he told Bubbles, "I'd 'ave never seed them again."

From the moment he had commenced to scramble up the low cliffs and then to trot along the slope above them, Bubbles had been entirely oblivious of anything except pushing on and saving his breath, but now he was able to look about him and see what was happening.

The trench in which he knelt ran almost at right angles to the sea and the cliff they had just climbed, and whilst the lower portion dipped into the gully which led down to the sandy portion of "W" beach, the upper part reached the sky-line formed by the ridge which extended from the end of the Peninsula, parallel to the sea, above the cliffs.

He, Bubbles, was almost in the middle of the trench, with most of the beach party lower down, and the "Ansons" above him. Looking along it and up the slope, he saw that the sky-line was, here and there, dotted by soldiers lying prone, and apparently firing inland. Straight in front of him the ground sloped a little downwards to the gully, to the ruins of a little house—a farm-building, perhaps—and then gradually rose again, rising with the higher cliffs beyond "W" beach, till it reached the spot where the white lighthouse buildings of Cape Helles stood very conspicuously. There it made another sky-line, perhaps eight hundred yards away from Bubbles, joining up with the sky-line of the ridge on his left. Behind, where these two sky-lines met, was a small eminence, and through his glasses he could see the barbed-wire which surrounded it. This was Hill 138, still strongly held by the Turks, and had to be taken before "W" beach could be used in comfort. Looking downwards to the right—where the gully sloped to the sea—a strip of "W" beach showed at the foot of the steep cliffs facing him there, with the galleries and the trenches along the upper edge, from which the Swiftsure's lyddite and the shells from the Achates had driven the Turks only three-quarters of an hour ago.

The green slopes were brown with a maze and network of trenches, rifle-pits, and shell craters; and beyond these the Lancashire Fusiliers still advanced towards the lighthouse—pressing forward by rushes of little groups; men running a few yards, throwing themselves down among the bushes, and firing; springing up and advancing again. When Bubbles saw a man fall, he could not know whether he was hit—so naturally did he fall—unless the line of scattered khaki figures went on and left him lying there. The Swiftsure's shells screeching over the trench in which Bubbles knelt, burst continually just in front of them. Firing was very brisk at this time, both on the ridge to his left and also from the sky-line near the lighthouse, and the crackling of musketry and the angry swish of bullets over the trench were almost continuous—minor noises among the deep, thundering bellow of the ships' guns and the rush of their shells. The Pink Rat came along the trench, stooping well down.

"What's going on? What are we supposed to be doing?" Bubbles asked as he stopped for a moment.

"Doing support to the firing-line," he squeaked, and hurried along with a message for the "Ansons".

Left to himself again, Bubbles looked out across the blue waters of the Straits to the Asiatic shore and its high mountains fading away in the distance. The reddish ridge showing on the Asiatic shore was Kum Kali fort, and under it the French fleet was hammering away at the shore, the most conspicuous ships being the Jeanne d'Arc, with her six funnels, and the curiously shaped Henri IV. Not far from them was the lighter grey of the Russian Askold and her five tall, thin funnels, lighted by continuous flashes from her guns—the "Packet of Woodbines" the sailors called her. Farther away lay the big Messageries Maritimes transports, the huge La Provence, and rows of boats being towed inshore. Destroyers and French torpedo-boats dashed about; the whole surface of the sea was a mass of ships—one solitary white-painted hospital ship among them; and away beyond the lighthouse on Cape Helles—far up the Straits—Bubbles could hear the heavy guns of the Lord Nelson and Agamemnon, and the 6-inch salvoes of the Queen Elizabeth. He could not see these ships because the cliffs hid them from sight.