TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES"
[Illustration: "THE THREE ADMIRALS:" REAR ADMIRAL ROBINSON, U. S. N.
(LEFT), VICE ADMIRAL BROWNING, R. N. (CENTER), REAR ADMIRAL GROSSET
(FRENCH) (RIGHT)]
TO KIEL IN THE
"HERCULES"
BY
LIEUT. LEWIS R. FREEMAN, R. N. V. R.
Official Correspondent with the Grand Fleet, and Member
of Staff of Allied Naval Armistice Commission
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I INTO GERMAN WATERS 1
II GETTING DOWN TO WORK 31
III FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF "STARVING GERMANY" 61
IV ACROSS THE SANDS TO NORDERNEY 92
V NORDHOLZ, THE DEN OF THE ZEPPELINS 122
VI MERCHANT SHIPPING 154
VII THE BOMBING OF TONDERN 179
VIII THROUGH THE CANAL TO THE BALTIC 198
IX TO WARNEMÜNDE AND RÜGEN 224
X JUTLAND AS A GERMAN SAW IT 255
XI BACK TO BASE 283
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"The Three Admirals." Rear Admiral Robinson, U. S. N.
(left), Vice Admiral Browning, R. N. (center), Rear
Admiral Grosset, (French) (right) _Frontispiece_
Heligoland in sight! 18
Members of the Allied Naval Commission, Admiral Browning
in center 34
The Allied Naval Commission and Staff, taken on board
_Hercules_ 34
The Padre of the _Hercules_ talking with newly arrived
British prisoners 40
In the Elbe, Hamburg 166
Railroad station at Hamburg 166
Floating dock for lifting submarines in Kiel Harbour 182
Birdseye view of Kiel 192
In Kiel dockyard 192
H. M. S. _Viceroy_ entering Kiel Canal lock at Brunsbüttel 200
Semaphore station on Kiel Canal, from _Hercules_ 206
Kiel dockyard from the Harbour 214
Foreshore of Kiel Harbour with the Kaiserlich Yacht
Club at left of grove of trees 220
_Hindy_ (left) and German pilot who claimed to have
launched the torpedo which damaged the _Sussex_ 228
British prisoners and German sailors at Warnemünde 240
View of Kiel Canal from nearmost turret of the _Hercules_ 258
_Hercules_, with three V class destroyers in Kiel Harbour 266
H. M. S. _Hercules_ and H. M. S. _Constance_ in Kiel locks 286
TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES"
TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES"
I
INTO GERMAN WATERS
"The _Regensburg_ has been calling us for some time," said the chief
signal officer as he came down for his belated "watch" luncheon in the
ward-room, "and it looks as though we might expect to see her come
nosing up out of the mist any time after two o'clock. She excuses
herself for being late at the rendezvous by saying that the fog has been
so thick in the Bight that she had to anchor during the night. It's not
any too good a prospect for a look-see at Heligoland, for our course
hardly takes us within three miles of it at the nearest."
It was in a fog that the _Hercules_ had dropped down through the moored
lines of the Grand Fleet the previous morning, it was in a fog that she
had felt her way out of the Firth of Forth and by devious mine-swept
channels to the North Sea, and it was still in a fog that she--the
first surface warship of the Allies to penetrate deeply into them since
the Battle of the Bight, not long after the outbreak of the war--was
approaching German waters. Indeed, the whole last act of the great
naval drama--from the coming of the _Königsberg_ to the Forth, with
a delegation to receive the terms of surrender, to the incomparable
pageant of the surrender itself--had been played out behind the fitful
and uncertain raisings and lowerings of a fog-curtain; and now the
epilogue--wherein there was promise that much, if not all, that had
remained a mystery throughout the unfolding of the war drama itself
should be finally revealed--was being held up through the wilfulness
of this same perverse scene-shifter. The light cruiser, _Regensburg_,
which, "according to plan," was to have met us at nine that morning at a
rendezvous suggested by the German Naval Staff, and pilot the _Hercules_
through the mine-fields, had not been sighted by early afternoon.
Numerous floating mines, rolling lazily in the bow-wave spreading to
port and starboard and ogling us with leering, moon-faced impudence
in the fog, had been sighted since daybreak, auguring darkly of the
explosive barrier through which we were passing by the "safe course" the
Germans (in lieu of the promised charts which had failed to arrive) had
advised us by wireless to follow.
Now mines, floating or submerged, are not pleasant things to navigate
among. Although, theoretically, it is impossible for any ship to run
into a floating mine even if she tries (the bow-wave tending to throw
it off, as many experiments have proved); and although, theoretically,
a ship fitted with paravanes cannot bring her hull into contact with
a moored mine; yet the fact remained that ships were being lost right
along from both kinds. It seemed high time, then, in the case of the
_Hercules_ and her escorting destroyers, that the German Navy, which
had undertaken to see them safely through the mine barrier, and which
knew more about the pattern of its death-traps than any one else, should
begin to shoulder some of its responsibilities. It was good news that
the _Regensburg_ was about to make a tardy appearance and hand over a
hostage in the form of a German pilot.
* * * * *
The blank grey fog-curtain which trailed its misty folds across the
ward-room scuttles discouraged all of the grate-side loungers whom I
tried to bestir to go up at two o'clock to watch for the appearance of
the _Regensburg_, and, meeting, with no better success in the snugly
comfortable "commission-room" into which the former gun-room had been
converted for the voyage, I mounted alone the iron ladders which led to
the lofty vantage of the signal bridge. There was only a few hundred
yards of visibility, but the even throb of the engines, the swift run
of the foam along the sides, and the sharp sting of the air on my cheek
told that there had been little if any abatement of the steady speed of
seventeen knots at which _Hercules_ had been steaming since she passed
May Island the previous day at noon. The _Regensburg_, the chief yeoman
of signals told me, had made a W.T. to say that she had been compelled
by the fog to slow down again, and this, he figured, might make it
between three and four o'clock before we picked her up. "There's no use
waiting for the Huns, sir," he said, with a tired smile. "The hanging
back habit, which they were four years in cultivating, seems to have
grown on them so that they're hanging back even yet. Best go down and
wait where it's warm, and I'll send a boy to call you when we know for
certain when she'll turn up."
My foot was on the ladder, when the sight of a seagull dancing a giddy
_pas seul_ on the titillating horn of a mine bobbing off astern recalled
a story an Italian destroyer skipper had once told me, of how he had
seen an Albanian sea eagle blow itself up as a consequence of executing
a precisely similar manoeuvre. I lingered to get the chief yeoman's
opinion of what I had hitherto considered a highly apocryphal yarn,
and when he was called away to take down a signal to pass back to the
destroyers, the loom of what looked to me like a ship taking shape in
the fog drew me over to the starboard rail. It dissolved and disappeared
as my glass focussed on it, only to raise its amorphous blur again a
point or so further abeam. Then I recognized it, and smiled indulgent
welcome to an old friend of many watches--the first cousin to the
mirage, the looming shape which a man peering hard into thick fog keeps
_thinking_ he sees at one end or the other of the arc of his angle of
vision.
Any man actually on watch knows better than to let his mind take
liberties with "fog pictures," and not a few of those who have done so
have had the last picture of the series merge into a reality of wind and
water and a good ship banging itself to pieces on a line of submerged
rocks. But I--as so often in voyages of late--was on the bridge without
duties or responsibilities. I was free to let the pictures take what
form they would; and it must have been what the chief yeoman had just
said about the weariness of waiting for the Huns that turned my mind to
what I had heard and seen of the four-year vigil of the Grand Fleet.
There was a picture of Scapa as I had seen it on my earliest visit from
the basket of a kite balloon towed from the old _Campania_, the same
_Campania_ which now rested on the bottom of the Firth of Forth, and
the top-masts of which we had passed a half cable's length to port as
the _Hercules_ steamed out the day before. There were golden sun-notes
weaving in a Maypole dance with rollicking slate-black cloud shadows in
that picture; but in the next--where the surface of the Flow was beaten
to the whiteness of the snow-clad hills hemming it in--the brooding
light was darkly sinister and ominous of import, for that was the winter
day when we had word that two destroyers, which the might of the Grand
Fleet was powerless to save, were being banged to bits against a cliff
a few miles outside the gates. Then there was a picture of an Orkney
midsummer midnight--just such a night, the officer of the watch told me,
as the one on which he had seen the _Hampshire_, with Kitchener pacing
the quarter-deck alone, pass out to her doom two years previously--with
a fitful green light flooding the Flow, reflected from the sun circling
just below the northern horizon, and every kite balloon in the air at
the time being torn from its cable and sent flying towards Scandinavia
before the ninety-mile gale which had sprung up from nowhere without
warning.
Visions of golf on Flotta, picnics under the cliffs of Hoy, and climbs
up the peat-boggy sides of the Ward Hill of the "Mainland," gave place
to those of squadron boxing competitions--savage but cleanly fought
bouts in a squared circle under the elevated guns of "Q" turret, with
the funnels, superstructures, and improvised grandstands alive with
bluejackets--and regattas, pulled off in various and sundry craft
between the long lines of anchored battleships. A long series (these
more like panoramas) of hurried unmoorings and departures--by division,
by squadron, and with all the Grand Fleet, through every square mile of
the North Sea from the Bight to far up the coast of Norway--finished up
at Rosyth, in that strange fortnight just before the end, when all but
those on the "inside" thought the persistent "short notice" was due to
a desire to keep the men aboard on account of the 'flu, and not to the
fact of which the Admiralty appear to have been so well advised, that
the German naval authorities--for the first and last time--were making
desperate efforts to get their ships out for the long-deferred _Tag_.
Then the fog-bank ahead--or so it seemed--was splashed with the gay
colour of "Armistice Night," when all the spare signal lights (to say
nothing of a lot that couldn't be spared) of the Grand Fleet streaked
the sky with joyous spurts and fountains of fire, when stealthy pirate
bands from the K-boats dropped through the ward-room skylights of the
light cruisers and carried off prisoners who had to be ransomed with
champagne, when Admirals danced with matelots on the forecastles of the
battle-cruisers, and all the pent-up feelings of four years ascended
in one great expansive "whouf" of gladness. I recalled with a chuckle
how the "General" signal which the Commander-in-Chief had made ordering
the historic occasion to be celebrated by "splicing the main brace"
according to immemorial custom in the Navy, was preceded by "Negative
6th B.S.," in consideration of the sad fact that the Yankee ships had
nothing aboard to "splice" with. That didn't prevent them, though, from
bending a white ensign on their flag halliards, hoisting it to the main
topmast of the _New York_, and illuminating it with all the searchlights
of the squadron. That happy tribute, I recalled, to the flag of the Navy
with which the Americans had served with such distinction for a year,
had started the sacking of the signal light lockers, and that picture
ended as it began, with the dour Scotch heavens lanced with coloured
flame spurts which the dark tide of the Firth gave back in crinkly
reflections.
The next picture to sharpen into focus on the fog-curtain was that of a
long, trim three-funnelled cruiser, with a white flag at her fore and
the German naval ensign at her main, heading in toward the mouth of the
Firth of Forth under the escort of a squadron of British light cruisers
and destroyers. I had witnessed the meeting of the _Königsberg_, which
was bringing over Admiral Meurer and other German naval officers to
arrange the details of the surrender of the High Sea Fleet, from the
foretop of the _Cassandra_. The rendezvous, at which the _Königsberg_
had been directed by wireless to meet the Sixth Light Cruiser Squadron
ordered to escort her in, chanced to fall in an area under which a
German submarine, a fortnight previously, had planted its full load
of mines. These, in the regular course of patrol, had been discovered
and swept up within a day or two, but since that fact had not been
communicated to the Germans, the _Königsberg_, doubtless thinking the
English sense of humour had prompted them to prepare for her a bit of
a surprise in the way of a lift by a German petard, skulked off to the
southward, where she was only rounded up after two hours of rending the
ether with wireless calls. There were two things I remembered especially
in connection with that historic meeting--one was the mob of civilians
(probably would-be delegates from the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council)
jostling the officers on the roomy bridge of the _Königsberg_, and
the other was the fluent cursing of the gunnery lieutenant of the
_Cassandra_, who was with me in the foretop, over the unkind fate which
had robbed him of the chance of opening up with his six-inch guns on the
first Hun warship he had set eyes on since the war began. I thought I
had heard in the course of the past year all that the British sailor had
to say of the German as a naval foe; but L---- said several new things
that afternoon, and said them well.
Poor old _Cassandra_! Although we did not get word of it until a day
or two after our arrival in Wilhelmshaven, within a very few hours of
the time I was thinking of her there in the fog of the Bight, she had
collided with a mine in the Baltic and gone to the bottom.
There was another picture of the _Königsberg_ ready to follow on as the
first dissolved. This was the brilliantly lighted hull of her--the only
undarkened ship of the hundreds in the Firth of Forth that night--as I
saw it an hour before daybreak the following morning, when I set off
from the _Cassandra_ in a motor launch to be present in the _Queen
Elizabeth_ during the historic conference which was to take place there
that day. Admiral Beatty had refused to receive the revolutionary
delegates at the preliminary conference which had been held in the
British flagship the previous night, and as a consequence it appears
that Admiral Meurer and his staff were summoned to make a report
to their "superiors" on their return. This strange meeting had been
convened shortly after midnight (so the captain of the M.L., which had
been patrolling round the _Königsberg_ all night, told me), but still,
five hours later, as "M.L. 262" slid quietly by at quarter speed, the
rumble of guttural Teutonic voices raised in heated argument welled
out of the open scuttles of what had probably been the ward-room. It
occurred to me even then that this rumble of angry dispute was prophetic
of what Germany had ahead in the long night that was closing upon her.
Although "M.L. 262" ended up an hour later with her propellers tangled
in the cable of Ox-Guard boom, I managed to get on the flagship in time
to see Admiral Meurer and his party come climbing up out of the fog to
her quarter-deck. The conference lasted, with short intervals, until
long after dark, and the next picture I saw was that of five German
naval officers, chagrined and crestfallen, being piped over the side to
the barge which was to take them to the destroyer standing by in the fog
to return with them to the _Königsberg_ at her anchorage, Inchkeith.
It was "Officers' Night" for the kinema in the "Q.E.," and they were
showing a "made-in-California" film called the "Rise and Fall of Julius
Cæsar." I remember distinctly that Casca had just driven the first
thrust, and the mob of conspirators were thronging upon Cæsar round the
"base of Pompey's statue," when the commander sent me word that the
guests were about to depart.
The captain of the fleet, the captain, the commander, the officer of
the watch and the boatswain were waiting at the head of the starboard
gangway as I stepped on deck, and out of the fog, which had thickened
till I could not see the muzzles of the guns of "Y" turret, the Germans
were advancing from aft. The frown on Admiral Meurer's heavy brows was
magnified by the cross light of the "yard-arm group" at the gangway, and
his mouth, with its thin hard lips, showed as a straight black line.
With a click of the heels and the characteristic automaton bow of the
German, he saluted the British officers in turn, beginning with the
captain of the fleet, stepped down the short gangway and disappeared
into the waiting barge to the shrilling of the pipes. Bowing and
clicking, the others followed suit, a weedy "sub," with an enormous roll
of papers under his arm, going over last.
The _Oak_, herself invisible in the fog, groped blindly with her
searchlight to pick up the barge. "We must hold the light steady,"
facetiously quoted the Press correspondent at my elbow from a speech of
President Wilson's which had appeared in the morning papers, and then
added thoughtfully, "It may be a _light_ that kind need for guidance,
but if I had the leading of them for the next generation it would be by
a ring in the nose."
Now, panorama resumed. It was the day of the surrender, and the
_Cardiff_, with her high-flown kite balloon in tow, was leading the
line of German battle-cruisers out of the eastern mist. I was watching
from the bridge of the _Erin_, and an officer beside me, recognizing
the _Seydlitz_, flying the rear-admiral's flag, in the lead, with the
_Moltke_ and _Derfflinger_ next in line, told how, from the light
cruiser in which he had chased them at Dogger Bank, he had seen at
least two of the three, leaving the _Blücher_ to her fate, dashing
for the shelter of their minefields with flames swirling about their
mastheads. Another spoke casually of how, in the _Tiger_ at Jutland, he
had been for a wild minute or two, while his ship was rounding a "windy
corner" as Beatty turned north to meet the British Battle Fleet, under
the concentrated fire of all the battle-cruisers--with the exception
of the _Hindenburg_, but with the _Lützow_ added--now steaming past
us. We remarked the "flattery of imitation" in the resemblance of the
_Hindenburg_ with her long run of forecastle and "flare" bows, to the
_Repulse_ and _Renown_, and of the symmetrical, two-funnelled _Bayern_
as she appeared between the _Kaisers_ and the _Königs_ in the German
battleship line to the British _Queen Elizabeth_ class laid down before
the war. The _Queen Elizabeth_ herself, falling out of line to take the
salute of the ships of the fleet she had led to victory as they passed,
brought that reel of panorama to an end.
The next was of five ships of the _Kaiser_ class, as they had appeared
from the _Emperor of India_, which, with the rest of the Second
Division, was escorting a squadron of the enemy to Scapa for internment.
We saw the German ships at closer range now, and the better we saw them
the worse they looked. Their fine solidity was less impressive than from
a distance, for now our glasses revealed the filth of the decks, the
lack of paint, and the slovenly, sullen attitude of the motley garbed
figures lounging along the rails. We passed within a biscuit toss of
the _Kaiserin_ when their leading ship, the _Friedrich der Grosse_,
lost her bearings in some way and failed to follow the _Canada_ through
the anti-submarine boom off the end of Flotta, an action which only the
smartest kind of seamanship on the part of the division of _Iron Dukes_
prevented from developing into a serious disaster. Most of the Huns--to
judge by the expression on the faces leering across at us--would have
welcomed a smash; but it was avoided by a hair, and they ultimately
straightened themselves out, straggled through into the Flow, and on to
their more or less final resting-place, off the inner entrance to Gutter
Sound.
The final picture, as it chanced, which my fancy projected on the
curtain of the fog was one that embraced what I saw from the steam
pinnace which was taking me to the _Impérieuse_, on my way back to
Rosyth. An angry Orkney sunset was flaring over the hills of Hoy--a
sullenly red glow, gridironed by thin strata of black cloud like
the bars of a grate--and a sinister squall was advancing from the
direction of Stromness to the northward. For a few moments the hot
light of the sunset had silhouetted the confused hulls of battleships
and battle-cruisers against the silvered seas beyond, and revealed the
disordered phalanx of the moored destroyers blocking the mouth of Gutter
Sound; then it was quenched by the onrush of the storm clouds, and all
that was left of the High Seas Fleet disappeared into shadow and driving
rain.
It was a far cry, I reflected, from the Kaiser's "Our future lies upon
the seas!" and Admiral Rodman's "The German ships are of no use to
anybody; the simplest solution of the problem of their disposition is
to take the whole lot to sea and sink them." And yet--
Suddenly, stereoscopically clear, on the blank sheet of the fog left
as the High Sea Fleet faded from sight, the head-on silhouette of an
unmistakably German light cruiser appeared. For an instant the soaring
mast and the broad bridge suggested that my fancy had materialized the
_Königsberg_ again. Then the rat-a-tat of a signal searchlight recalled
me to my senses, and it did not need the chief yeoman of signals' "There
she is, sir; sending away a boat to bring us a pilot," to tell me we
had finally rendezvoused with the _Regensburg_. I descended to the
quarter-deck to see the pilot come over the side.
Very smartly handled was that cutter from the _Regensburg_. I remember
that especially because it was almost the only German boat that came
alongside during all the visit which did not either ram the gangway, or
else miss it more than the length of a boat-hook. They explained this by
saying that most of the skilled men had left the navy, and that their
boats, as a consequence, were in the hands of comparative novices. At
any rate, at least one first-class crew of boat-pullers had remained in
the _Regensburg_, and they brought their cutter alongside the gangway as
neatly as though the _Hercules_ were lying in harbour.
Three men, each carrying a small suit-case, came over the side and
saluted the officer of the day and the intelligence officer of
the admiral's staff, who awaited them at the head of the gangway.
The first was a three-stripe officer of the rank the Germans call
Korvettenkapitän, the second a warrant officer, and the third
(as we presently were informed) a qualified merchant pilot. The
Korvettenkapitän was slender of figure, and had a well-bred, gentlemanly
appearance not in the least suggestive of the "Hunnishness" one
associated--and with good reason, too, as subsequent experience
proved--with the German naval officer. His flushed expression showed
plainly that he felt deeply the humiliation of the task assigned him of
taking the first enemy warships into a German harbour. His head remained
bowed a moment after his final salute; then he took a deep breath,
squared his shoulders, and asked to be conducted to the bridge at once
in order to take advantage of the improved visibility in pushing on in
through the minefields.
If one felt a touch of involuntary sympathy for the senior naval
officer, a glance at the sinister figure of the merchant pilot was
an efficacious antidote. Thick-set and muscular of build, with
slack-hanging ape-like arms and bandy legs, his corded bull neck
was crowned with the prognathous-jawed head of a gorilla, and a
countenance that might well have been a composite of the saturnine
phizzes of Trotsky and Liebknecht. One knew in an instant that here was
the super-Bolshevik, and looked for the red band on his sleeve, which
could only have been temporarily removed while he appeared among the
Engländers to spy upon the naval officer whom the revolutionists would
not permit to act alone. The way things stood between the two became
evident almost at once, for the officer informed the British interpreter
at the first opportunity that he could not be responsible for the pilot,
while the latter, when some query from the Korvettenkapitän respecting
the position of a certain buoy was repeated to him, contented himself
with drawing his fingers significantly across his throat, clucking in
apparent imitation of a severed wind-pipe, and continuing the guzzling
of the plate of "kedgeree" which had been engaging his undivided
attention at the moment of interruption.
[Illustration: HELIGOLAND IN SIGHT!]
After putting a German pilot aboard each of the four destroyers, the
_Regensburg's_ cutter was hoisted in, and we got under weigh again. The
visibility had improved considerably, and presently a darker blur on the
misty skyline resolved itself into the familiar profile of Heligoland.
At first only the loom of the great cliff was discernible, but by the
time this had been brought abeam a slender strip of low-lying ground
with warehouses, cranes, and the masts of ships, was distinctly visible.
All hands crowded to the starboard side to have a glimpse of Germany's
famous island outpost, but the nearest thing to a demonstration I saw
was by two marines, who were doing a bit of a shuffle on the precarious
footing of a turret top and singing lustily:
"Oh, won't it be grand out in Hel-i-go-land,
When we've wound up the Watch on the Rhine!"
Whatever illusions they had formed of the "grandness" of Heligoland they
were allowed to keep, for the only ones who were given to see at close
range the dismal greyness of the island fortress were the members of
one of the "air" parties, who made a hurried visit in a destroyer to
see that the provisions of the Armistice had been carried out at the
seaplane station.
The thickening fog-banks which shut off our view of Heligoland were not
long in thinning the guiding _Regensburg_ to a dusky phantom nosing
uncertainly into the misty smother in the direction of where our charts
indicated the Bight should be narrowing to the shallow waters of Jade
Bay, in an inner corner of which lay Wilhelmshaven. We had counted on
getting there that evening, and a wireless had already been received
saying that a German Naval Commission was standing by to come off for a
preliminary conference. After heading in for a couple of hours through
seas which I heard an officer coming off watch describe as "composed
of about equal parts of water, misplaced buoys and floating mines,"
all hopes of arriving that night were dashed by a signal from the
_Regensburg_, saying that she had been compelled to anchor on account
of the fog. Calling her destroyer "chicks" about her to mother them for
the night, the _Hercules_ let go what was probably the first anchor a
British surface ship had dropped into German mud since the outbreak of
the war.
The unexpected delay made it necessary for both the _Hercules_ and the
destroyer to put up their pilots for the night. This was managed in the
former by giving the officer the flag captain's sea-cabin, and slinging
hammocks for his two assistants outside. Doubtless the opportunity to
enjoy a change of food was not unwelcome to any of them. They were
served with the regular ward-room dinner. The officer declined the
offer of drinks, and said he had his own cigarettes. The other two made
a clean sweep of anything that they could get hold of. Even these had
cigarettes, but the young signalman who had the temerity to smoke one
which was proffered him in exchange for one of his own, advanced that as
an excuse for a mess he made of taking down a searchlight signal from a
destroyer two hours later.
"That ---- Bolshevik," said the lad the next day, in telling me about
the tragedy, "declared the fag he giv' me was made of baccy smuggled
into Germany by a friend of his. I tells him that was no kind of reason
for him using me to smuggle the smoke out of Germany. And I tells him it
tastes to me like rope end, that baccy, and, what's more, that I'd be
very happy to return it to him with a rope end. I can't say for certain
whether he twigged that little joke or not."
From one of the destroyers, too, there came the next day a story of
similar friction in the matter of dispensing hospitality to the guest of
the night. The latter, unlike the one who was sent to the _Hercules_,
appears to have been a typical Hun. Beginning by introducing himself
as a relative of the ex-Kaiser, he ended up by all but going on
strike because no sheets could be provided for the bunk in the cabin
which--through turning out its owner to "sling" in the ward-room--had
been given him for the night. That alone had been a considerable
concession under the circumstances, for, through the presence of two
extra flying officers, two "subs" had given up their cabins, and were
sleeping in the ward-room already. It must have been a really amusing
show that young sprig of Junkerism put up. He mentioned the matter of
linen several times, finally rising to the crescendo of "I must have the
sheets by nine o'clock, and it now lacks but five minutes of that time."
I was never able to verify the story that the steward really gave him
the sheets of notepaper that one of the Yankee officers volunteered to
contribute. How mad the young exquisite was about the whole affair may
be judged from the fact that he left behind him in the morning his own
personal and private cake--only slightly used--of toilet soap. Whether
this was pure swank--high princely disdain of an object of value--or
whether he was blind with passion and overlooked it, they could never
quite make up their minds in the _V----_.
The fog lapped and curled dankly round the _Hercules_ that night,
wrapping the ship in a clammy shroud of cold moisture that dripped
eerily from the rigging and sent a chill to the marrow of the bones of
the men and officers on watch. But below there was warmth and comfort.
The ward-room celebrated the occasion with a "rag" to the music of its
own Jazz band, while in the admiral's cabin the kinema man, who had been
brought along to film the historic features of the voyage, entertained
with a movie of a South American revolution, a picture full of the play
of hot passion and fierce jealousy, enacted in and around an ancient
castle which none but a Californian could have recognized as a building
of the recent San Diego Exposition. "The Admiral's Movies," "With a
Complete Change of Program Nightly," became one of the star turns of the
voyage from that time on.
Cut off though we were by the fog from sighting anything farther away
than the riding lights of the nearest destroyer, strange voices of the
new world we had moved into since morning kept reaching the _Hercules_
on the wings of the wireless. Now it was the _Regensburg_ calling to
say, "I am lying off Outer Jade Lightship and illuminating it with my
searchlight." Not much help, that, on a night when a searchlight itself
was quenched to a will-o'-the-wisp at a cable's length. Then there was
a message from the main fount of some "Workmen's and Soldiers' Council"
requesting that the Allied Naval Commission should receive a delegation
of its members at Wilhelmshaven. It was not a long message, but the
reply flashed back to it was, I understand, a good deal shorter. There
was chatter between ship and ship, and even the call--from somewhere
in the Baltic, I believe--of a steamer in distress. The name of the
_Moewe_, in an otherwise unintelligible message, caused hardly the
flutter it would have had we picked it up in the same waters a month
earlier.
There was little news to us in a message from some land station telling
all and sundry that the "high-sea-ship" _Regensburg_ was "_zu Anker bei
aussen Jade Feuerschiff_," that the _Hercules_ and destroyers were "_zu
Anker bei Weser Feuerschiff_," and that there was "_noch Nebel_." The
_Regensburg_ had already told us where she was and our own position we
knew: also the fact that "fog continues."
A groan from Germany in travail reached us in a message from the
"Soldatenrat" of the "Fortress of Borkum" to the Council in Berlin.
They disapproved most heartily of the attitude of the meeting of the
"_Gross Berliner_" councils for Greater Germany. They greatly regretted
the attempt of one part of the people to establish a dictatorship over
another, and considered that this showed a lamentable lack of confidence
in "_unserem Volke_"--"our people." "_Wir wollen Demokratie und keine
Diktatur_," they concluded; "we want a democracy and no dictator."
Then we heard the German battleship _König_ (which, in company with the
_Dresden_, a destroyer and two transports, we had sighted that morning
tardily _en voyage_ to make up the promised quota at Scapa) calling to
the _Revenge_--at that time the flagship of the squadron watching the
interned ships--for guidance. "Am near to the point of assembly with
the other ships," she said in German, "and bad weather is coming on.
Cannot stop with _Dresden_ in tow. What course can I take from point of
assembly?"
Deep called to deep when the C.-in-C. of the Grand Fleet at Rosyth told
the C.-in-C. of the High Sea Fleet what arrangements were being made
to send back the surplus crews of the interned ships, and for a while
the vibrant ether let fall such familiar names as _Karlsruhe_, _Emden_,
_Nürnberg_, _Hindenburg_, _Kaiser_, _Von der Tann_ and _Friedrich der
Grosse_, men from all of which, we learned, were to be started homeward
in a transport called the _Pretoria_.
There was hint of "family trouble" in the German Navy in a signal from
Admiral Von Reuter at Scapa to the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea
Fleet at Wilhelmshaven. "Request that third group (of transports) may
include a flag officer to relieve me," it ran in translation, "as I am
returning home with it on account of sickness."
That signal, I think, gave the ward-room more quiet enjoyment than any
of the others, for it was the first forerunning flutter of the German
wings beginning to beat against the bars of Scapa. "I've often been a
prey to that same complaint during our four years at Scapa," said the
commander musingly, in the interval following the passing round of the
wireless wail. "Of course Admiral Von Reuter is sick--homesick. Who
wasn't? _Who isn't?_ But there was no use in sending a signal to any one
complaining about it. But isn't it worth just about all we went through
in sticking it there for four years to be able to think of the Huns
being interned there, and in their own ships? They're not quite so comfy
as ours to live in, you know. I wonder what Herr C.-in-C.'s answer will
be."
That answer was picked up in good time. "First group of transports have
arrived back safely," the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea Fleet began
inconsequentially, adding abruptly, "Admiral Von Beuter is advised to
stay where he is, if at all possible." That pleased the ward-room so
much that the Junior Officers' Glee Club was sent to the piano to create
a "Scapa atmosphere" by singing songs of the strenuous early months of
the war. "Coaling, coaling, coaling, always jolly well coaling," to the
air of "Holy, Holy, Holy!" reached my ears even in the secluded retreat
of the "commission-room," to which I had retired to write up my diary.
But the most amusing message of all was one which the senior
interpreter--one time a distinguished Cambridge professor of modern
languages--was dragged out of his bunk at something like three o'clock
in the morning to translate. Everything sent out in German was being
meshed in our wireless net on the off-chance that information of
importance might be picked up, and, for some reason, the message in
question impressed the night operator--as it lay before him, fresh
caught, upon his pad, as being of especial significance. This was
what I deciphered on the sheet of naval signal paper which the senior
interpreter, returning all a-shiver to his bunk after making the desired
translation in the coding room, threw at my head when I awoke in the
next bunk and asked sleepily for the news.
(?) to (?).
"Good morning. Request the time according to you. My watch
is fast, I think."
It was probably from the skipper of one trawler to his "opposite number"
in another. It was on my lips to ask Lieut. B---- if he expected to
be called when the reply was picked up, but the ominous glare in the
unpillowed eye he turned in my direction as I started to speak made me
change my mind.
The fog was still thick at daybreak of the following morning, but by
ten o'clock the visibility had improved sufficiently to appear to make
it worth while to get under weigh. Heading easterly at twelve knots,
we shortly came to a buoy-marked channel which, according to our
directions, promised to lead in to the anchorage off Wilhelmshaven we
desired to reach. The _Regensburg_, which had evidently gone in ahead,
was not sighted again, but two powerful armed patrol boats came out to
keep us company. It was soon possible to see for several miles, the low
line of the Frisian coast coming into sight to port and starboard.
Presently we passed, on opposite courses, a German merchant steamer.
Luckily, some one on the bridge observed in time that she had a man
standing by the flag halyards at her stern, and so we were prepared to
return with the white ensign what must have been the first dip a British
ship had had from a German since August, 1914. When the second and third
steamers encountered also dipped their red, white, and black bunting,
followed by similar action on the part of two tugs and a lighthouse
tender, it became evident that general orders in that connection had
been issued. That was our first hint of the "conciliatory" tactics which
it soon became apparent all of that part of Northern Germany with which
there was a chance of any of the Allied Naval Armistice Commission
coming in contact had been instructed to follow.
The steeples and factory chimneys of Wilhelmshaven began appearing over
the port bow at noon, and a half-hour later _Hercules_ had dropped
anchor about a mile off a long stone mole which curved out from the
dockyard. Almost immediately a launch was seen putting out of the
entrance, and presently it came bumping alongside the starboard gangway.
Rear-Admiral Goette, a smooth-shaven, heavy set man of about fifty, was
the first up to the quarter-deck, where his salute was returned by the
captain, commander, the officer of the day, and several officers of
Admiral Browning's staff. His puckered brow indicated something of the
mental strain he was under, a strain the effects of which became more
and more evident every time he came off for a conference.
The thirteen other members of the Commission under Admiral Goette's
presidency followed him up the gangway. The first of these, a tall blond
officer of fine bearing, was on the list as Kapitan z. S. von Müller,
but it was not until after the final conference, over a fortnight later,
that we learned for certain that he was the able and resolute commander
of the _Emden_, famous in the first year of the war for her destruction
of Allied commerce and the fine fight he had put up before being forced
to the beach of North Cocos Island by the faster and heavier armed
_Sydney_. If it was a fact, as has been suggested, that the Germans put
Von Müller on their Naval Armistice Commission because of the admiration
that had been expressed in the British papers of his brave and sporting
conduct on the latter occasion, the effect of this fine piece of
Teutonic subtlety was completely lost. As I have said, his real identity
was not discovered until the last of the conferences was over.
As soon as the last of the German officers had reached the quarter-deck
and completed his round of heel-clicking salutes, the party was
conducted directly to Admiral Browning's cabin, where the first of a
series of conferences calculated deeply to influence Germany's naval
future for many years to come was entered into without delay.
II
GETTING DOWN TO WORK
An unfailing test of the treatment the Germans would have meted out
to the Allies had their respective positions been reversed during the
armistice interval, was furnished by the attitude of all the enemy
people--from the highest official representatives to the crowds on the
streets--with whom Admiral Browning's Naval Commission was thrown in
contact. This was especially noticeable in the case of naval officers,
and with none of these more so than with the greater part of those
constituting the commission, presided over by Rear-Admiral Goette,
which met the Allied Commission to arrange the details of carrying out
the provisions of the armistice relating to maritime affairs. Fully
expecting from the representatives of the victorious Allies the same
treatment they had extended to the beaten Russians at Brest-Litovsk,
and the beaten Rumanians at Bucharest, they adopted from the outset an
attitude of sullen distrust, evidently with the idea that it was the one
best calculated to minimize the concessions they would be called upon to
make. When it transpired that the Allied commissioners appeared to have
no intention of exercising their victor's prerogative of humiliating the
emissaries of a beaten enemy--as no Prussian could ever have refrained
from doing in similar circumstances--but that, on the other hand, the
former were neither disposed to bargain, "negotiate," nor in any way
to abate one whit from their just demands, the attitude of the Germans
changed somewhat. They were more reasonable and easy to deal with; yet
to the last there was always discernible that feeling of thinly veiled
contempt which the beaten bully cannot conceal for a victor who fails to
treat him as he himself would have treated any adversary he had downed.
The opening conference between the Allied and German commissions was
held in Admiral Browning's dining cabin in the _Hercules_, as were all
of those which followed. The German officers, leaving their overcoats
and caps in a cabin set aside for them as an ante-room, were conducted
to the conference room, where the heads of the Allied Commission were
already assembled and in their places. Most of the Germans were in frock
coats (of fine material and extremely well cut), with small dirk-like
swords at hip, and much-bemedalled. There was none of them, so far as
one could see, without one grade or another of the Iron Cross, worn
low on the left breast (or just about over the liver, to locate it more
exactly), with its black-and-white ribbon rove through a lapel. Only
Captain Von Müller wore the coveted "Pour le Mérite," doubtless for his
commerce destruction with the _Emden_. Admiral Goette wore two rows of
ribbons, but none of the decorations themselves.
The Allied delegates rose as the Germans entered, remaining standing
until the latter had been shown to the places assigned them. At the
right of the main table, as seen from the door, was seated Admiral
Browning, with Rear-Admiral Grasset, of the French Navy, on his right,
and Rear-Admiral Robinson, of the American Navy, on his left. Captain
Lowndes, Admiral Browning's Chief of Staff, sat next to Admiral
Robinson, in the fourth chair on the Allied side of the table. The Flag
Lieutenants of the French and American Admirals, and the two officers
representing respectively Japan and Italy, occupied chairs immediately
beyond the senior officers of the Commission. At two smaller tables
in the rear were several British Flag officers, with secretaries and
stenographers. The official British interpreter, Lieut. Bullough,
R.N.V.R., sat at the head of the table. The heads of the Allied
sub-commissions representing the flying services and shipping did not
occupy seats during all of the conference, but were called in during the
discussion of matters in which they were interested.
Admiral Goette was seated directly opposite Admiral Browning at the
main table, with Commander (or Korvettenkapitän) Hinzman on his right,
and Commander Lohman on his left. The former--a shifty-eyed individual,
with a pasty complexion and a "mobile" mouth which, in its peculiar
expansions and contractions, furnished an accurate index of the state
of its owner's mind--was from the General Naval Staff in Berlin, which
accounted, doubtless, for the fact that Admiral Goette turned to him
for advice in connection with practically every question discussed.
Commander Lohman had charge of merchant shipping interests, which were
principally in connection with the return of British tonnage interned in
German harbours at the outbreak of the war. Captain Von Müller sat at
the left-hand corner of the table, and Captain Bauer, Chief of Staff, in
the corresponding place on the right. At a smaller table opposite the
door the eight remaining German officers were seated. These were mostly
engineers, or from the flying or submarine services, and were consulted
as questions in their respective lines arose from time to time.
[Illustration: MEMBERS OF THE ALLIED NAVAL COMMISSION, ADMIRAL BROWNING
IN CENTER]
[Illustration: THE ALLIED NAVAL COMMISSION AND STAFF, TAKEN ON BOARD
"HERCULES"]
Without wasting time in preliminaries, Admiral Browning got down
to business at once by intimating that, since the time which he could
remain in German waters was limited, it would be desirable that the
very considerable number of visits of inspection necessary to satisfy
the Commission that the terms of the armistice had been complied with
should begin without delay. The Germans had a formidable array of
reasons ready to show why all, or nearly all, of these visits would be
practically out of the question. The disturbed state of the country,
the uncertain situation in Berlin, the lack of discipline among the men
remaining in the ships and at the air stations, the shortage of petrol,
the possibility of the hostility of the people in some sections--such as
Hamburg and Bremen--to Allied visitors--these were a few of the reasons
advanced why it would be difficult or dangerous to go to this place or
that, and why the best and simplest way would be to be content with the
assurance of the German Commission that everything, everywhere, was just
as the armistice terms had stipulated. Of course, at Wilhelmshaven,
where things were quiet at the moment, and where they still had a
certain amount of authority, there should be no great difficulty in
going over the remaining warships and visiting the air-station; but as
for going to Hamburg, or Bremen, or visiting any of the more distant
naval air stations--that was impossible at the present.
Asked bluntly, if the search of the warships could begin that afternoon,
Admiral Goette replied that it was impossible, for the reason he was
not yet in a position to guarantee the personal safety of any parties
landing even at the dockyard. Moreover, he would not be in position
to give such a guarantee until the matter had been discussed with the
Workmen's and Soldiers' Council. Of course, if the party cared to take
the chance of landing without a guarantee of safety--