The story of docks and harbours, of the loading and unloading of the war freights merits a chapter of its own. To understand it you must remember that ships are of many sizes and of very varying draught. The depths of water in the ports, the tides, the quay accommodation, the provision of cranes and sorting sheds, of available railway trucks have in each case to be considered. Grain requires one type of machinery for unloading, timber another, fruit or meat yet another. If the cargo be mixed and consigned perhaps to hundreds of dealers, in various parts of the country, sorting sheds are a necessity. Many harbours provide only for small coasting craft and cannot accommodate large ocean traders, many are affected by tide and quite unprovided with docks; others again lack quay and truck accommodation save of the simplest order. There is also the problem of dock labourers, men skilled in the handling of particular types of cargo. Manifestly you cannot order any ship to any port. Vessels must therefore run to their usual harbours and to provide the machinery for "turning them" rapidly round presents, under the congested conditions of war, a problem of extreme complexity. Heavy munition trains, miles upon miles of them, are daily pouring into the Southern ports. Great guns, railway trucks and engines and rails form a part of these stupendous freights. There are many harbours in the South but few capable of berthing, loading and unloading the largest liners, and if we would criticise these operations, and free criticism of them has been, after our national manner, plentiful, we should understand that to the transport work of peace that of the greatest of wars has been added, and understand too that the shipping problem involves much more than ships, and requires to-day something like the higher mathematics for its solution.
"Both are now one service in spirit," wrote Admiral Jellicoe of the Royal Navy and the Mercantile Marine, "and never have British seamen united in a more stern and mighty cause." Say what we will, be it in prose or verse, it falls short of their deserving. The merchant sailor and the fisherman has had his share in the fighting and more than his share in the labours of the war. They took part in Jutland and the earlier battles. Some are in command of destroyers and torpedo boats, others of vessels on the blockade patrol or of submarine chasers; others again of transport and repair ships. On mine carriers and mine sweepers they serve; on paddle steamers and panting tug boats; on water ships and balloon ships; on salvage and escort work. They are to be found on trawlers and drifters and motor craft; on captured German steamers, now playfully renamed, the Hun line,—Hun-gerford, Hun-stanton; on oilers and colliers and meat ships, in the North Sea and Mediterranean and the distant oceans; on transport and repair, on observation and remount and hospital vessels everywhere. They gathered the great armies from the ends of the earth, they fuel and munition the Grand Fleet; the Suez Canal knows them and the Royal Indian Marine and the African rivers. No sea that has not seen them, "no climate that is not witness to their toils." For proof that they are a pugnacious breed read the story of the Gallipoli landings, where Commander Unwin and Midshipman Drewry won each his Victoria Cross, where supplies were daily put ashore under the shrapnel fire from Turkish batteries; read the story of Carmania's fight with Cap Trafalgar; of Clan McTavish and her spirited combat with Möwe, which filled the seamen of the Grand Fleet with delighted admiration. Read of the whalers in Sudi harbour, of the attacks on Jubassi in the Cameroons; of the actions on the Tigris and Rafigi rivers, in all which actions officers of the Merchant Service distinguished themselves. Called upon for every type of action, navigating under war conditions by lightless coasts, responsible for new and strange undertakings, in armed or defenceless craft, on the bridge of sinking ships or adrift in open boats, the fearless spirit of the British sailor meets the occasion, and as with his ancestor and prototype of the Viking times, the harder the enterprise the harder grows his heart.
It is good for us now and then to contemplate men nobler than ourselves; to be told that volunteers over 60 years of age paid their own passage from Australia to serve afloat, that there is at least one engineer—and a health to him—of over 80 with a commission in the Royal Naval Reserve. For who is there so dead at heart as not to covet so springing and mounting a spirit? "I have taken the depth of the water," said Admiral Duncan in the engagement off the Texel, "and when the Venerable goes down, my flag will still fly."
There is something in it, this companionship with the sea, that kindles what is heroic in a race to the finest resolution. Perhaps it is not to be expected that we shore-dwellers should have more than a languid appreciation of hardships and labours indescribable and should read tales of the sea rather for pleasure than edification, but if ever a people had masters in the school of nobility we are fortunate in our teachers of to-day. Already over 3,000 men and officers of the Royal Naval Reserve have fallen in their country's service, and of Merchant Sailors pursuing their ordinary calling not fewer. Born fighters, you will say, the English. Yes, but these men died most of them without hope of glory.
When Captain Wicks of the Straton dashed in among the wreckage of the sinking Runo and assisted in the saving of 200 lives, the look-out man shouted to him "Two mines right ahead, sir." "Can't be helped," replied the Captain, "it is risking lives to save lives." Which is indeed in a sentence the daily task, whatever or wherever the allotted posts of these cavaliers of the sea. The day dawns or the night descends, to find them on the bridge or in the engine-room, North or South of the Line, running the grim gauntlet of murderous things that the sea, with all its grey ages of experience, never before has known.
SEA WARFARE: THE NEW STYLE
Come all ye jolly mariners, and list ye while I tell,
Afore we heave the capstan round and meet the Channel swell,
Of a handy ship, and sailor lads and women folk, a score,
And gallant gentlemen who sail below the ocean floor;
A tale as new, and strange and true as any historie,
Of the German law and courtesie
And custom of the sea.
That our merchant seamen would be called upon to face the fiercest blast of the storm would have seemed a fantastic prophecy. Look however at the circumstances. They have been called paradoxical, unprecedented in the whole previous history of naval war. To think of it! A fleet—the British—of immeasurable and unchallenged strength, beyond debate absolute upon the seas, is found unable to protect its country's commerce! Slowly it rose and took shape, this spectre of an incredible, amazing situation. A new situation? Yes, in a way, for the weapons were new, but not so new as it appears. Have any of us considered the losses of our Mercantile Marine in the American or the Napoleonic wars? During the latter we captured 440 French ships. How many did we lose? Five thousand three hundred and fourteen British vessels were captured by the French! Our losses were over 40 per cent of our tonnage! This, remember, was in Nelson's days, when we held command of the sea. With these facts in mind one is better able to judge the price of sea supremacy and to understand that fleets have never been able wholly to safeguard commerce. As in our previous history the situation arises from the very supremacy of the Grand Fleet, a supremacy so complete as to leave no alternative to the weaker naval power which, in such circumstances, invariably resorts to the guerre de course. In the under water campaign we have a new form of attack, but it is simply the confession that upon the sea Germany was powerless and had abandoned hope. No less a confession, too, that beneath the sea and against the British Navy she was equally powerless. Who can doubt that had the chance been given she would unhesitatingly have preferred victory in fair fight, a victory resounding and glorious. That denied her, she declined upon victory without honour, of any pattern and at any price. She gave free range to her unmatched genius for destruction. Men, when they discussed naval warfare, viewed it with speculative eye as a clash of battleships in one or two terrific, decisive, world-shaking encounters. Few, if any, foresaw that the enemy, declining the great issue, would aim at a slow grinding pressure, adopting a kind of warfare in which the fighting fleets would hardly feel the shock. There indeed they lie in the misty North, volcanic and destroying powers, which any hour may release, and yet from day to day and month to month they wait unchallenged, and the enemy blows are directed and dealt against less formidable adversaries. They rain with desperate violence against men whose profession was never that of arms, who nevertheless were they offered a fair field and no favour would prove themselves more than a match for their assailants. Unsustained by the exhilaration of battle, defenceless, and in single, far-separated ships, their part in the drama offers few attractions. There are enviable occupations, no doubt, even in war, but who would choose the part of a running target for enemy shells and torpedoes?