A Naval Venture: The War Story of an Armoured Cruiser

by T. T. Jeans

Uncle Podger, sedately excited, and the long, thin Lamp-post made their way along the mess deck, pushing through the crowds of men scurrying to and fro; guns' crews squeezing into the casemates and closing the armoured doors behind them; the stoker fire-parties bustling along with their hoses, and the lamp trimmers coming round and lighting the candle lanterns in case the electric light failed.

To get to the "transmitting-room", which was their station, they had to go down the ammunition hoist of "B2" casemate—the for'ard one on the port side of the main deck,—and so many men of the ammunition supply parties had to go down it that there was a squash of men squeezing through the casemate door.

"Early doors, sixpence extra," Uncle Podger grinned, as they waited whilst man after man climbed down the rope-ladder in the hoist. This hoist was simply a steel tube some fifteen feet long, big enough for a broad-shouldered man to crawl through, and the rope ladder dangled down inside it. When the bottom rung of the ladder was reached, there was a jump down of some five feet or so into the "fore cross passage"—a broad space, from side to side across the ship, under the dome of the armoured deck. The magazines were below this fore cross passage, and men standing in them handed up the six-inch cordite charges through open hatches.

Into this space ran the ammunition passages, running aft along each side under the slope of the armoured deck, with the boiler-room bulkheads on the inner sides, and the bulkheads of the lower wing bunkers on the outer. When, as was now the case, the shells in their red canvas bags hung in rows along both these bulkheads, there was precious little room for two people to pass side by side.

The ammunition hoists from all the 6-inch guns, farther aft, opened into these passages, and under each hoist an electric motor and winding drum was placed to run the charges and shells up to the casemate which it "fed". All these spaces and passages were very dimly lighted by electric lights and candle lanterns.

As Uncle Podger and the Lamp-post crawled down the tube and dropped into the "fore cross passage", they were hustled by men dashing out of the ammunition passages, seizing charges and shells from the men standing in the magazine hatches, and dashing back again to their own hoists. These were the "powder-monkeys" of the old days, most of them, now, big bearded men; one, the biggest down there, a man nearly fifty years of age, had been earning five pounds a week, as a diver, before the outbreak of war brought him back to the Navy. And no one was more cheery than he, as he dashed backwards and forwards from his hoist to the magazine, laughing and joking, and wiping the sweat off his face. It was very warm down there, and the smell of sweating men soon made the air heavy.

A bearded ship's corporal came down with the key of the transmitting-room, opened the thick padded wooden door in the bulkhead, and went in. The Fleet-Paymaster and the tall, depressed Fleet-Surgeon followed him down the tube. They scuttled out of the way of the trampling men.

"A nice little place for you to work in, P.M.O.," chuckled the Pay as they wormed themselves into a corner.

"Rats in a trap!" grunted the P.M.O., and drew in his feet and cursed as a seaman trod on them.

The chief sick-berth steward and his assistants had already come down, but vainly looked for a place to stow their surgical dressings. They had to hang them from hooks in the bulkheads.