A Naval Venture: The War Story of an Armoured Cruiser

by T. T. Jeans

The movements of the transports, store ships, and auxiliaries of all kinds were controlled from the Achates, and to cope with this work additional officers had been attached to her. An Admiral hoisted his flag in her, and brought his Staff, including two Assistant Clerks; three Captains joined as Naval Transport Officers—"N.T.O.'s"—and round her gangways hovered, night and day, a restless crowd of steamboats, picket-boats, and pinnaces—lent for various purposes from other ships. Each of these steamboats had its midshipman—some of them two, working watch and watch, twenty-four hours "on", and twenty-four hours "off" duty—with the result that the Honourable Mess was completely overrun with strangers.

With the Pink Rat, the Lamp-post, and Bubbles away all the time, the Orphan, the Hun, and Rawlins—who relieved these, two in turn—away most of the time, and the Pimple spending most of his days and a good many of his nights visiting transports with the Navigator, when that officer went away to anchor them in their proper places, there was practically no one left except Uncle Podger, the China Doll, and the Sub. Now the Sub was in charge of all steamboats; it was his duty to hoist them out of the water when they required repairs, to get the repairs carried out as quickly as possible, and then hoist them into the water again. He also was in charge of all the coaling and watering of these boats. These duties kept him so constantly employed that he very seldom spent much time in the gun-room. In fact, Barnes generally left something in his cabin for him to eat, whenever the opportunity permitted.

Of all the Honourable Mess, practically only Uncle Podger and the China Doll remained and came to meals as before. The result was that, twenty-four hours after the Achates had anchored off "W" beach, the mess groaned under the weight of the Barbarians, and the Midianites, in the guise of tired, hungry snotties from other ships, and the Admiral's two Assistant Clerks had descended, pretty completely, on the fruitful land of her gun-room. They crowded down into it in their Condy's-fluid-stained "ducks"; they lay on the cushions and slept; lay in the one easy-chair and slept; came in at all hours of the day and night, demanding food, and drove the patient Barnes and the little messman nearly off their heads.

The miserable little rat of a messman, thoughtless of the morrow, and eager to turn an honest penny just as quickly as he could, produced all the stores he had laid in at Portsmouth and again at Malta—stores which had been intended to delight the stomachs of the Honourable Mess for many "moons": tins of dainty biscuits, cakes, boxes of chocolate and preserved fruit, bottles of anchovies, jars of bloater and anchovy paste, jars of Oxford marmalade, and tins of Oxford sausages and of tongue—and many other rare delicacies, impossible now to replace; and this insatiable crowd of sojourners realized, like one man, that though their work was hard and the hours long, their feet were indeed cast in fruitful and pleasing places. Now the Pimple and the China Doll worshipped their stomachs with an unswerving devotion, unalloyed by the pangs of indigestion, so watched these intruders working havoc among the gun-room stores with feelings of keen agony. They realized, only too well, the barrenness which would soon fall to their lot, and they implored the Sub to stop these devastating demands on luxuries and "extras" before it was too late. Worst blow of all: that one last barrel of beer wouldn't drip another drop, however hard you blew down the vent.

But the Sub was so seldom in the gun-room that he did not, for the first few days, realize the impending danger. It was on the third day, just as he had received an imploring, urgent order from the Commander, "to hoist in the General's picket-boat and hack away a coil of rope which had wrapped itself round the screw and shaft, and get her into the water again as quickly as ever he could", that he was waylaid by these two young gentlemen, who rushed to him with anxious faces. "Can't something be done? It's simply awful! One of the Lord Nelson's snotties has just had his second box—his second box to-day—of those "chocs" with walnuts on the top!"

They ran back much faster than they came; but that very day the Sub had the whole tragedy brought vividly before him, when, later on, going down to his cabin for a cup of tea, and feeling he wanted something "tasty", he ordered a pot of anchovy paste.

Barnes came back with a long face. "That 'ere rat of a messman, 'e's been and gone and let all of 'em strange young gen'l'men 'ave all the han-chovy, sir. 'E ain't got none left, sir, but 'e 'as just one pot of chicken-and-'am what's gone an' got a bit mouldy. There won't be 'ardly nothink left of nothink, what with them strange young gen'l'men, and the young gen'l'men what's gone with the beach parties a-sending off chits for this and chits for that, as if this 'ere ship was a Lipton's store-shop."

"It's just as bad along in the canteen, for'ard, sir," he added dolefully; "beach parties and all of these stranger boats' crews, they've just been and gone and raided it, that they 'ave; nothink there now, scarcely, but penny bottles of Worcester sauce and tins of blackin'. It ain't 'ardly fair; no, nor it isn't."

Even Uncle Podger thought things were going too far when one day a midshipman from one of these ships ordered four tins of Oxford sausages to be sent down to his boat's crew.

"It may be very pretty to watch," he said, finding the Sub in his cabin, "but it's rotten bad luck on us."