It is easy to learn all that happened, for the officers want chiefly to tell how splendidly brave the men were, and the men pay a like tribute to the officers. The following appears to be a main outline of the disaster:
The three cruisers had for some time been patrolling the North Sea. Soon after 6 o'clock Tuesday morning—there is disagreement as to the exact time—the Aboukir suddenly felt a shock on the port side. A dull explosion was heard and a column of water was thrown up mast high. The explosion wrecked the stokehole just forward of amidship and, judging by the speed with which the cruiser sank, tore the bottom open.
Almost immediately the doomed cruiser began to settle. Except for the watch on deck, most of her crew, were asleep, wearied by constant vigil in bad weather, but in perfect order officers and men rushed to quarters. Quickfirers were manned in the hope of a dying shot at a submarine, but there was not a glimpse of one. Of the few boats carried when cleared for action, two were smashed in recent gales and another was wrecked by the explosion.
The Aboukir's sister cruisers, each more than a mile away, saw and heard the explosion. They thought the Aboukir had been struck by a mine. They closed in and lowered boats. This sealed their own fate, for while they were standing by to rescue survivors, first the Hogue and then the Cressy was torpedoed.
The Cressy appears to have seen the submarines in time to attempt to retaliate. She fired a few shots before she keeled over, broken in two, and sank. Whether she sank any submarines is not known.
The men of the Aboukir afloat in the water hoped for everything from the arrival of her sister cruisers, and all survivors agree that when these also sank many gave up the struggle for life and went down. An officer told me that when swimming, after having lost his jacket in the grip of a drowning man, his chief thought was that the Germans had succeeded in sinking only three comparatively obsolete cruisers which shortly would have been scrapped anyway.
Twenty-four men were saved on a target which floated off the Hogue's deck. The men were gathered on it for four hours waist deep in water.
The rescued officers unite in praising the skill and daring of the German naval officers, and, far from bearing any grudge, they have nothing but professional praise for the submarines' feat.
"Our only grievance," one said, "is that we did not have a shot at the Germans. Our only share in the war has been a few uncomfortable weeks of bad weather, mines, and submarines."
When I entered the billiard room of the hotel here sheltering survivors and asked if any British officers were there, several unshaven men in the khaki working kit of the Dutch Army or in fishermen's jerseys got up from their chairs. Most of them had been saved in their pajamas, and they had to accept the first things in the way of clothing offered by the kindly Dutch. One Lieutenant apologized for closing the window, as he had only a thin jacket over his pajamas. He gladly accepted the loan of my overcoat while making a list of his men who had been saved.