But here was a problem. Before you turn a squadron the amount of the turn must be indicated to all ships; yet here visual signals were impossible—they would not have been visual in such a fog; syren signals were inadvisable on account of their noisy advertisement, and also the process of sound signalling is very slow; a wireless signal was an alternative, and was the quickest and surest way, but it was a way very liable to inform the enemy as to our whereabouts, for an English wireless call is as different to a German one as a gentleman to a Hun, so that any signal we made would be easily picked up by adjacent enemy stations, and the ‘strength’ of the signals would tell them how close we were.
War, however, is a succession of risks, and since the need demanded, the signal was made. (One hopes it caused a flutter in the German dovecots.)
The leading ships turned a right angle to starboard by two successive turns of four points, the rest of the squadron followed in their wake, and for a few minutes we ran parallel to the coast; the same signals and manœuvre repeated, and we had reversed our original course, and were steaming seawards with our stems to Germany.
How simple it sounds, doesn’t it? but the practical execution of such signals is not so easy in a fog, when the guide you are groping after cannot be seen and is able to show herself only by the bubbles which rise in her wake. Add to this that you have all had to reduce your speed by signal, which means that if you obey the signal a minute too late your excess speed causes you to rush up alongside your next ahead, or if you obey too soon you will drop astern and can no longer pick out those invaluable swirls and bubbles. But, worst danger of all, if one ship misses the signal and holds steadily on her course whilst her consorts ahead and astern and on each side of her turn at right angles, what is going to prevent a collision? ‘Joss,’ and ‘joss’ in large quantities, is the only preventative I can cite, and this was the very element that was absent that day.
One of the rear destroyers was the ‘lucky party’ who missed the signal—the first alter course signal by wireless—and she continued on her course, whilst those ahead and outside her altered across her bows.
The aforesaid ‘joss’ might have caused her to cross the line through a gap, but instead there suddenly loomed right ahead of her, out of the dense pall of fog, the blurred silhouette of a light cruiser, and before ever the engines could be reversed or the helm put over she had crashed bows on at twenty knots into the beam of the cruiser.
The comparatively frail bows of the destroyer crumpled under the blow like so much brown paper, and the boat recoiled with fifteen feet of her bow ‘concertina-ed’ in.
Yet never a soul on board of her was hurt. ‘Joss’ certainly made up leeway there, but in the bigger vessel such was not the case. The impact of the blow had lifted a torpedo tube off its mounting and had thrown it inboard against the casings, crushing five unfortunate men, of whom three lost their lives.
In addition the hull of the ship had suffered considerable damage, so that her speed was reduced to a bare ten knots, whilst the destroyer, at first able to steam six knots, could soon make no headway at all.
And all this, mark you, within thirty miles of the German coast in a ‘pea-soup’ fog, so that no sooner had the two ships collided and fallen apart than they were lost to sight of each other and of the remainder of the fleet, who continued their groping course seaward, the majority unaware that aught was amiss.