The Attack on the Forts
Below the Armoured Deck—We Engage the Forts—We Silence the Forts—My Wounds are Dressed
Mr. Midshipman Glover's Narrative continued
The men were hurriedly closing water-tight doors and lowering the water-tight hatchway covers. Dr. Fox and I must have been nearly the last to go below, for the men had to stop lowering the big armoured hatchway cover aft, in order that we might scramble through it and climb down the steep iron ladder to the magazine flats.
The heavy iron armour fell into place with a thud. I heard the men above screwing down the clamps which secured it, and for the first time in my life realized that we were shut in below the armoured deck, and wondered how we were going to escape if anything happened.
Of course I had often been there before during drills, but this was the real thing, and I felt like a rat in a trap.
The big space we were now in was called the "cross passage", and ran right across the ship, with the sloping dome of the armoured deck above it. The magazines opened into it at the after end, and on each side the ammunition passages ran for'ard. These were two tunnels just broad enough for two men to squeeze past, and just high enough for them to stand erect. They ran along each side of the ship, under the curved edge of the armoured deck, to open into another cross passage for'ard, where were more magazines, and from the top of them rose the ammunition hoists—great armoured tubes, five on each side—leading up to the main and upper deck 6-inch guns.
From the for'ard cross passage a huge armoured tube ran up to the fo'c'stle to feed the fo'c'stle 8-inch gun, and there was a similar one running up from the after cross passage to the quarter-deck gun.
Standing underneath and looking up through this one, I could just catch a glimpse of the sky; but of course no daylight came down, and though there were electric lights here and there on the bulk-heads, it was very gloomy.
Men were in the whitewashed magazines, with felt slippers on their feet, handing out 6-inch shell and cartridge-cases. Others, rushing out from the darker ammunition passages, seized them, shoved them into little canvas bags bound with rope, and dashed back again to feed their own especial ammunition hoist. Hooking the bags to a rope which ran up the tube, passed over a pulley-wheel at the top and led down again, they hauled the shell and cartridges up to the 6-inch gun above them.