THE TALE OF THE "TARA" OFF THE AFRICAN COAST
Rescued by "Tanks in the Desert"
As told by survivors, set down by Lewis R. Freeman
The adventures of the crew of the auxiliary cruiser, Tara, torpedoed off the North African coast, form one of the most exciting and romantic chapters in the annals of the Great War. Handed over as prisoners to the fanatical Senussi Arabs, they were taken out into the heart of the desert, where for many weary months they were on the brink of starvation, eking out their scanty ration of rice with snails and roots. The captain escaped and tried to bring help, but was captured and brought back to be lashed and kept without food. Just when things were at their worst a squadron of British armored cars, commanded by the Duke of Westminster, appeared as though by magic, drove off the Arabs, and rescued the survivors of the sorely-tried crew. By courtesy of the Admiralty the author interviewed Captain Gwatkin-Williams, the Tara's commander; Lieutenant Tanner, R.N.R., and several members of the ship's company, and their stories give a vivid idea of the terrible experience they underwent, as told in the Wide World Magazine.
I—STORY OF THE BRITISH PACKET
When England took over something like half of her twenty million tons of merchant shipping for war service, among the transports, colliers, hospital ships, and the like were a number of small but swift packets which were armed and employed as auxiliary cruisers or patrols. One of these was the Tara, which, under the name Hibernia, had plied in the Irish service of the London and North-Western Railway. Commanded by an officer of the Royal Navy, but still worked by her old crew, the Tara was sent to the bleak Cyrenaican coast of the Mediterranean to keep a look-out for submarines and prevent the smuggling of arms and supplies to the small but dangerous Turkish forces which were operating in Eastern Tripolitana with the object of inciting the Arabs to move against the then lightly-held western frontier of Egypt.
On November 5th the Tara was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Gulf of Sollum, and sank with the loss of eleven of her crew of something over one hundred. The ninety-two survivors were towed by the submarine to Port Sulieman and handed over to the Turks. The latter, in turn, passed the party on to the Senussi, who, as shortly transpired, were getting ready to launch a "holy war" against the Italians and English. The Arabs, short of food already, started marching their prisoners about the desert, and after several weeks established them in a sort of permanent camp at an old Roman well in the interior. Here, ekeing out with snails and roots such scanty rations as their captors were able to provide, the unfortunate Britons, racked by disease, and only half sheltered from the capricious winter weather, existed for three months and a half. The trickle of food, now from one oasis, now from another, became thinner and thinner as time went on, and by the middle of March the failure of supplies had become so complete that absolute starvation in the course of the next few days appeared inevitable. But on the seventeenth of that month, as suddenly as though dropped from the sky, a squadron of armored automobiles appeared on the horizon, and a few moments later the Arab guards had fallen before the fire of machine-guns, and the half-delirious prisoners, clutching hastily-broached jam and condensed milk tins, were being bundled into Red Cross ambulances for the return journey. A couple of days more, and they were in the hospitals of Alexandria, and a month later the bulk of them were back in England reporting for duty.
Through the courtesy of the British Admiralty the writer was granted an extended interview with Captain Gwatkin-Williams—the only one, indeed, that that distinguished officer gave before going to his new command in the North Atlantic. Later I journeyed to Wales and Ireland, to talk with Lieutenant Tanner, R.N.R., and several of the surviving members of the Tara's crew. The narrative that follows is the result of these conversations.
I recognized Captain Gwatkin-Williams the instant his broad shoulders filled the door of the room. I knew at once that he had all the characteristics, as he had all the appearance, of the typical British naval officer, and that among these was a distinct disinclination to tell of his own experiences. Knowing from past failures the futility of trying to "draw" a man of his kind by frontal attack, I wasted no effort in that direction, but asked him pointblank if he had been able to preserve any souvenirs of his desert sojourn, and it is by piecing together the things he told me over a brine-blotched naval uniform, a dented jam tin, a handful of snail-shells and dried roots, three or four camel-bone needles, and a blood-stained whip of hippo hide, that I was able to construct the connected story which follows.