CHAPTER XII
HOW THE “FORMIDABLE” WAS LOST
[Just after the New Year, 1915, had broken the British battleship Formidable, successor of the famous ship with which the name of the gallant Rodney is so closely associated, was lost while steering westward in the Channel. In the official announcement it was stated that the cause of her loss was either mine or torpedo, but it was not known which. Later, however, it was stated in the House of Lords that she had been twice torpedoed. The Formidable was a pre-Dreadnought of 15,000 tons and 15,000 horse-power. In herself she was not a serious loss; but she carried a crew of between 700 and 800 men, and of these only 201 were saved. Once more the unconquerable spirit of British seamen was shown, as will be seen from this story of the only survivor of his watch—William Edward Francis, who was a stoker in the lost battleship.]
I had what I take to be a narrow escape of being lost when the three cruisers were torpedoed in the North Sea.
I had been called up from the Royal Naval Reserve and drafted to the Cressy, which, with her sister ships the Hogue and Aboukir, was lost; but almost at the last moment I was transferred, with a chum, to another ship.
I was spared to take a part in the victory of Heligoland Bight; then afterwards, from a port-hole of my own ship, the Formidable, I saw her sister, the Bulwark, blown up, with the loss of nearly every man on board. We were moored close to the Bulwark at the time, and it was a terrible sight to see her go like that. The Germans, however, had nothing to do with the loss of the Bulwark, which was destroyed by one of those mysterious accidents that are bound to happen in a war like this.
Then, on Christmas Day, we had an amusing experience. A German airman came and had a look at things, including ourselves, and he hovered over us, but bolted without even dropping a bomb. No doubt he went back and spun a wonderful yarn of the way in which he had thrown us into a panic, when, as a matter of fact, we only laughed at him.
On the last day of the year 1914 the Formidable was one of the units of a Channel squadron.