If you pursue your search for incidents you may meet something of this type. The gear of the trawler Pelican was just being hove in when a mine was discovered entangled in the warp. The winch was stopped just as the mine bumped—anxious moment—the ship's side. Any lurch meant an explosion and certain destruction. The skipper ordered all hands into the boat and to pull away. Remaining alone on board, with infinite care he worked to clear the mine, gently, very gently, unwinding the gear of the winch. The men lay on their oars at a safe distance and waited in suspense. At last the mine was released and the skipper cautiously paid out 120 fathoms of line. Hardly was it done when, having touched something, the devil-fish exploded, shaking the trawler from stem to stern and half filling the distant boat with water. When the warp was hauled on board it revealed nothing but a mass of wreckage. If you are in search of adventure on board a mine-sweeper and are in luck you may enjoy the excitement of an aeroplane attack, with bombs dropping around you from the overhead circling enemy, or machine gun bullets rattling on the deck from a German battle-plane. Or again an angry submarine commander rising out of the deep may send a shell or two your way. For the rest it is a peaceful life, and if you escape the attentions of all these death-dealing devices, mine, aeroplane and submarine, you may arrive home safe enough. The odds are probably somewhat in your favour, but the mathematicians have not worked out the table of chances. You may have the best of it and secure quite a number of mines, or one of the enemy devices may secure you. You never can tell. Here is a transcript.
"It was about four in the morning. This time of year. Just such darkness as this. The London Girl came down on my port side.... I opened the door (of the deckhouse) to hear what she had to say. 'Don't go near so-and-so,' her old man shouted. 'What's that?' I said. 'Don't go,' he hailed—'so-and-so—some mines adrift.' That's all. I was just backing into the wheelhouse again when there was a flash and a roar. He'd gone. Not enough left afloat to make a platter. That's it. There's five boats in line astern of you one minute. There's a bright light and when you look back there's only four. It ain't the mines you see that's the worry. I've seen hundreds. It's the beggar you can't see. Never know when it's under your forefoot. Dirty game, like, I call it. No sense in it. Sinking ships. Any ships. I'd never have believed it. Don't know what's come over the world." Most of us are in like case. Only the knights of the German Round Table, those idealist seekers after grace and loveliness, know and in good time, perhaps, will take the rest of the world into their confidence.
Against mines you cannot retaliate but against the U. boat you can occasionally hit back. "A number of trawlers," writes a correspondent, "were fishing off Aberdeen on a fairly stormy day when a submarine came to the surface and commenced firing at the trawlers, making for one in particular—the Strathearn. The Strathearn ran for it, pursued by the submarine. While the shots were falling round, some of the crew shouted to Geordie, the skipper, 'Geordie, get the boat out.' Said Geordie, 'I'll see you in h—ll first! Fire up! If she's gaun doon, I'm gaun doon. Fire up! I think we hae a chance.'
"During this time Geordie was making towards another trawler, the Commissioner (armed) which had her gear down and seemed totally unconcerned. But, as soon as the Strathearn passed her and there was nothing between the submarine and herself, a blow with an axe cut her gear away, she swung round, and at the same moment her gun appeared.
"Her first shot missed the submarine, so did the second; the third hit the enemy's conning tower, a fourth hit the enemy's gun, and the fifth sent the submarine down in flames, and all was over, bar the shouting."
Our Allies could bear witness to the work of British mine-sweepers and patrols in the Mediterranean. In one raid Austrian cruisers and destroyers attacked the patrol line in the Adriatic and sank 14 of our drifters. Our fishermen have swept for mines off Russian, French and Italian ports, and of their work at the Dardanelles all the world has heard. Captain Woodgate of the Koorah has vividly described an episode in which he was himself the protagonist.
"When we were up in the Dardanelles there were what we call three groups—One, Two and Three—and each group had to go up, one at a time. The vessel I was in belonged to the second group. The night we were going to make the final dash in the Dardanelles, up in the Narrows, we went, no lights up, everything covered in. They let us get right up to the Narrows, and as we turned round to take our sweeps up one of our number was blown up. Then they peppered us from each side, from one and a half to two miles. We heard cries for help. I said, 'We shall have to do the best we can, and go back and pick up.' There was no waiting, no saying 'Who shall go?' As soon as I called for volunteers three jumped in. I kept the vessel as close as I could to shelter them. I did not think any would come back alive, but they did come back. No one was hit, and I said, 'Now we'll get the boat in.' Just as we got the boat nicely clear of the water, along came a shot and knocked it in splinters. I shouted, 'All hands keep under cover as much as you can,' and I got on the bridge, and we went full steam ahead. I could not tell you what it was like, with floating and sunken mines and shots everywhere. We got knocked about, the mast almost gone, rigging gone, and she was riddled right along the starboard side. One of the hands we picked up had his left arm smashed with shrapnel; that was all the injury we got. When we got out the commander came alongside and said, 'Have you seen any more trawlers?' I said, 'Yes, we've got the crew of one on board, the Manx Hero.' We were the last out, and I can tell you I never want to see such a sight again.... I thought of the three men in the fiery furnace, how they were preserved, and of Daniel in the lion's den, and I think of the 24 of us coming out under that terrible fire and the water covered with floating and sunken mines."
"There's one good thing about it," remarked a skipper who had his second vessel blown up under him,—"you take it calmer the second time." We thought we knew the mettle of these men. We did, but we know it better now. Eighty of these skippers have been killed in action, many have been blown up more than once, and several, among them that celebrity "Submarine Billy," have had three such elevating experiences. But it makes no difference. They go to sea again. One hardly knows what to make of this type of human being. Perhaps the British race has no monopoly in it, but one wonders. Let an expert speak, the commander of a destroyer, whose testimonial, if any testimonials are required, has value.
"Only a quarter of an hour before the Admiral had wished me a pleasant trip. That quarter of an hour now seemed æons away. The Channel was battering us and bruising us.... To climb to the bridge was a perilous adventure in mountaineering. Here crouched three figures, swathed from head to heel like Polar explorers. The glass of the wind-screen was sweating and trickling like the window of a railway carriage. From time to time the Captain wiped clear patches with the finger of his fur glove and made very uncomplimentary remarks about the snow. Behind him stood the steersman, a swaddled mummy with a blue nose tip, dripping icicles." All in a moment appeared a smudge on the horizon—"a friend and brother—the King of the Trawlers." "They're It, absolutely It," said the Captain. "No weather's too bad for 'em. They're our eyes and our ears. They know every blessed wave in the Channel, not merely as passing acquaintances, but they address 'em by their Christian names. They'll do anything, and go anywhere and chance the luck. They're just simple fishermen but they run the whole show and they run it magnificently—guns, semaphores, wireless, everything! They live on kippers and tea, and I don't believe they ever go to sleep."