A FLEET IN BEING
NOTES OF TWO TRIPS WITH THE CHANNEL SQUADRON
BY
RUDYARD KIPLING
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1914
_COPYRIGHT_.
_First Edition, December_ 1898.
_Reprinted, December_ 1898; _January, February, May,
and October_ 1899, 1910, 1914.
A FLEET IN BEING
CHAPTER I
‘. . . . _the sailor men_
_That sail upon the seas_,
_To fight the Wars and keep the Laws_,
_And live on yellow_ peas’
‘A Gunroom Ditty-Box.’ G. S. BOWLES.
Some thirty of her Majesty’s men-of-war were involved in this matter;
say a dozen battleships of the most recent, and seventeen or eighteen
cruisers; but my concern was limited to one of a new type commanded by
an old friend. I had some dim knowledge of the interior of a warship,
but none of the new world into which I stepped from a Portsmouth wherry
one wonderful summer evening in ’97.
With the exception of the Captain, the Chief Engineer, and maybe a
few petty officers, nobody was more than twenty-eight years old. They
ranged in the ward-room from this resourceful age to twenty-six or seven
clear-cut, clean-shaved young faces with all manner of varied experience
behind them. When one comes to think, it is only just that a light
20-knot cruiser should be handled, under guidance of an older head,
by affable young gentlemen prepared, even sinfully delighted, to take
chances not set down in books. She was new, they were new, the Admiral
was new, and we were all off to the Manœuvres together—thirty keels
next day threading their way in and out between a hundred and twenty
moored vessels not so fortunate. We opened the ball, for the benefit of
some foreign warships, with a piece of rather pretty steering. A consort
was coming up a waterlane, between two lines of shipping, just behind us;
and we nipped in immediately ahead of her, precisely as a hansom turning
out of Bond Street nips in in front of a City ’bus. Distance on water
is deceptive, and when I vowed that at one crisis I could have spat on
the wicked ram of our next astern, pointed straight at our naked turning
side, the ward-room laughed.
‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ said a gentleman of twenty-two. ‘Wait till
we have to keep station to-night. It’s my middle watch.’
‘Close water-tight doors, then,’ said a Sub-Lieutenant. ‘I say’
(this to the passenger) ‘if you find a second-class cruiser’s ram in
the small of your back at midnight don’t be alarmed.’
FASCINATING GAME OF GENERAL POST
We were then strung out in a six-mile line, thirty ships, all heading
Westwards. As soon as we found room the Flagship began to signal, and
there followed a most fascinating game of general post. When I came to
know our signalmen on the human side I appreciated it even more. The
Admiral wreathed himself with flags, strings of them; the signalman
on our high little, narrow little bridge, telescope jammed to his eye,
read out the letters of that order; the Quartermaster spun the infantine
wheel; the Officer of the Bridge rumbled requests down the speaking-tube
to the engine-room, and away we fled to take up station at such and
such a distance from our neighbours, ahead and astern, at such and such
an angle on the Admiral, his bow or beam. The end of it was a miracle
to lay eyes. The long line became four parallel lines of strength and
beauty, a mile and a quarter from flank to flank, and thus we abode till
evening. Two hundred yards or so behind us the ram of our next astern
planed through the still water; an equal distance in front of us lay the
oily water from the screw of our next ahead. So it was ordered, and so we
did, as though glued into position. But our Captain took up the parable
and bade me observe how slack we were, by reason of recent festivities,
compared to what we should be in a few days. ‘Now we’re all over the
shop. The ships haven’t worked together, and station-keeping isn’t
as easy as it looks.’ Later on I found this was perfectly true.
A VARYING STRAIN
One thing more than all the rest impresses the passenger on a Queen’s
ship. She is seldom for three whole hours at the same speed. The liner
clear of her dock strikes her pace and holds it to her journey’s end,
but the man-of-war must always have two or three knots up her sleeve in
case the Admiral demands a spurt; she must also be ready to drop three or
four knots at the wave of a flag; and on occasion she must lie still and
meditate. This means a varying strain on all the mechanism, and constant
strain on the people who control it.
I counted seven speeds in one watch, ranging from eight knots to
seventeen, which, with eleven, was our point of maximum vibration. At
eight knots you heard the vicious little twin-screws jigitting like
restive horses; at seventeen they pegged away into the sea like a pair
of short-gaited trotting ponies on a hard road. But one felt, even in
dreams, that she was being held back. Those who talk of a liner’s
freedom from breakdown should take a 7,000 horsepower boat and hit her
and hold her for a fortnight all across the salt seas.
IN CLUB AND COTERIES
After a while I went to the galley to get light on these and other
matters. Once forward of the deck torpedo-tubes you enter another and
a fascinating world of seamen-gunners, artificers, cooks, Marines (we
had twenty and a sergeant), ship’s boys, signalmen, and the general
democracy. Here the men smoke at the permitted times, and in clubs
and coteries gossip and say what they please of each other and their
superiors. Their speech is soft (if everyone spoke aloud you could
not hear yourself think on a cruiser), their gestures are few (if a
man swung his arms about he would interfere with his neighbour), their
steps are noiseless as they pop in and out of the forward flats; they
are at all times immensely interesting, and, as a rule, delightfully
amusing. Their slang borrows from the engine-room, the working parts of
guns, the drill-book, and the last music-hall song. It is delivered in
a tight-lipped undertone; the more excruciatingly funny parts without a
shade of expression. The first thing that strikes a casual observer is
their superb health; next, their quiet adequateness; and thirdly, a grave
courtesy. But under the shell of the new Navy beats the heart of the old.
All Marryat’s immortals are there, better fed, better tended, better
educated, but at heart unchanged. I heard Swinburne laying down the law
to his juniors by the ash-shoot; Chucks was there, too, inquiring in the
politest manner in the world what a friend meant by spreading his limbs
about the landscape; and a lineal descendant of Dispart fussed over a
4in. gun that some one had been rude to. They were men of the world, at
once curiously simple and curiously wily (this makes the charm of the
Naval man of all ranks), coming and going about their businesses like
shadows.
NOT FROM THE ADMIRALTY STANDPOINT
They were all keenly interested in the Manœuvres—not from the Admiralty
standpoint, but the personal. Many of them had served under one or other
of the Admirals, and they enlightened their fellows, as you shall later
hear.
Then night fell, and Our Fleet blazed ‘like a lot of chemists’
shops adrift,’ as one truthfully put it—six lights to each ship;
bewildering the tramps. There was a cove of refuge, by one of the forward
4-in. guns, within touch of the traffic to the bridge, the break of
the foc’sle, the crowded populations below, and the light banter near
the galley. My vigil here was cheered by the society of a Marine, who
delivered a lecture on the thickness of the skulls of the inhabitants of
South America, as tested by his own hands. It ended thus: ‘An’ so I
got ten days in one o’ their stinkin’ prisons. Fed me on grapes they
did, along with one o’ their own murderers. Funny people them South
Americans. Oh, ’adn’t killed any one. We only skirmished through
their bloomin’ Suburbs lookin’ for fun like.’
‘Fun! _We’ve_ got all the fun we want!’ growled a voice in the
shadow. A stoker had risen silently as a seal for a breath of air, and
stood, chest to the breeze, scanning the Fleet lights.
‘’Ullo! Wot’s the matter with _your_ condenser?’ said the Marine.
‘You’d better take your mucky ’ands off them hammick-cloths or
you’ll be spoke to.’
‘Our bunkers,’ said the figure, addressing his grievance to the
sea-line, ‘are stuck all about like a lot o’ women’s pockets.
They’re stuck about like a lot o’ bunion-plasters. That’s what our
bunkers are.’ He slipped back into the darkness. Presently a signalman
pattered by to relieve his mate on the bridge.
‘You’ll be ’ung,’ said the Marine, who was a wit, and by the same
token something of a prophet.
‘Not if you’re anywhere in the crowd I won’t,’ was the retort,
always in a cautious, ‘don’t-wake-him’ undertone. ‘Wot are you
doin’ ’ere?’
‘Never you mind. You go on up to the ’igh an’ lofty bridge an’
persecute your vocation. My Gawd! I wouldn’t be a signalman, not for
ever so.’
When I met my friend next morning ‘persecuting his vocation’ as
sentry over the lifebuoy aft neither he nor I recognised each other; but
I owe him some very nice tales.
WHEELING, CIRCLING, AND RETURNING
Next day both Fleets were exercised at steam tactics, which is a noble
game; but I was too interested in the life of my own cruiser, unfolding
hour by hour, to be intelligently interested in evolutions. All I remember
is that we were eternally taking up positions at fifteen knots an hour
amid a crowd of other cruisers, all precisely alike, all still as death,
each with a wedge of white foam under her nose; wheeling, circling, and
returning. The battleships danced stately quadrilles by themselves in
another part of the deep. We of the light horse did barn-dances about
the windy floors; and precisely as couples in the ball-room fling a word
over their shoulders, so we and our friends, whirling past to take up
fresh stations, snapped out an unofficial sentence or two by means of
our bridge-semaphores. Cruisers are wondrous human. In the afternoon the
battleships overtook us, their white upperworks showing like icebergs as
they topped the sea-line. Then we sobered our faces, and the engineers
had rest, and at a wave of the Admiral’s flag off Land’s End our
Fleet was split in twain. One half would go outside Ireland, toying with
the weight of the Atlantic _en route_, to Blacksod Bay, while we turned
up the Irish Channel to Lough Swilly. There we would coal, and wait for
War. After that it would be blind man’s bluff within a three hundred
and fifty mile ring of the Atlantic. We of Lough Swilly would try to
catch the Blacksod Fleet, which was supposed to have a rendezvous of its
own somewhere out at sea, before it could return to the shelter of the
Bay.
THE EXPERTS OF THE LOWER DECK
There was, however, one small flaw in the rules, and as soon as they were
in possession of the plan of campaign the experts of the lower deck put
their horny thumbs on it—thus:
‘Look ’ere. Their Admiral ’as to go out from Blacksod to some
rendezvous known only to ’isself. Ain’t that so?’
‘We’ve ’eard all that.’ This from an impertinent, new to War.
‘Leavin’ a cruiser be’ind ’im—_Blake_ most likely, or
_Blenheim_—to bring ’im word of the outbreak of ’ostilities.
Ain’t that so?’
‘Get _on_. What are you drivin’ at?’
‘You’ll see. When that cruiser overtakes ’im ’e ’as to navigate
back to Blacksod from ’is precious rendezvous to get ’ome again
before we intercepts the beggar.’
‘Well?’
‘Now I put it to you. What’s to prevent ’im rendezvousin’ out
_slow_ in order to be overtook by that cruiser; an’ rendezvousin’
back quick to Black-sod, before we intercepts ’im? I don’t see that
_’is_ steamin’ rate is anywhere laid down. You mark my word, ’e’ll
take precious good care to be overtook by that cruiser of ’is. We
won’t catch ’im. There’s an ’ole in the rules an’ ’e’ll
slip through. _I_ know ’im if you don’t!’
The voice went on to describe ‘’im,’ the Admiral of our enemy—as
a wily person, who would make the Admiralty sit up.
And truly, it came out in the end that the other Admiral had done almost
exactly what his foc’sle friends expected. He went to his rendezvous
slowly, was overtaken by his cruiser about a hundred miles from the
rendezvous, turned back again to Blacksod, and having won the game of
‘Pussy wants a corner,’ played about in front of the Bay till we
descended on him. Then he was affable, as he could afford to be, explained
the situation, and I presume smiled. There was a ‘hole in the rules,’
and he sailed all his Fleet through it.
We, of the Northern Squadron, found Lough Swilly in full possession of
a Sou’-west gale, and an assortment of dingy colliers lying where they
could most annoy the anchoring Fleet. A collier came alongside with
donkey-engines that would not lift more than half their proper load; she
had no bags, no shovels, and her crazy derrick-boom could not be topped
up enough to let the load clear our bulwarks. So we supplied our own bags
and shovels, rearranged the boom, put two of our own men on the rickety
donkey-engines, and fell to work in that howling wind and wet.
COALING: A PREPARATION FOR WAR
As a preparation for War next day, it seemed a little hard on the crew,
who worked like sailors—there is no stronger term. From time to time a
red-eyed black demon, with flashing teeth, shot into the ward-room for a
bite and a drink, cried out the number of tons aboard, added a few pious
words on the collier’s appliances, and our bunkers (‘Like a lot of
bunion-plasters,’ the stoker had said), and tore back to where the
donkey-engines wheezed, the bags crashed, the shovels rasped and scraped,
the boom whined and creaked, and the First Lieutenant, carved in pure
jet, said precisely what occurred to him. Before the collier cast off a
full-blooded battleship sent over a boat to take some measurements of her
hatch. The boat was in charge of a Midshipman aged, perhaps, seventeen,
though he looked younger. He came dripping into the ward-room—bloodless,
with livid lips, for he had been invalided from the Mediterranean full
of Malta fever.
‘And what are you in?’ said our Captain, who chanced to pass by.
‘The _Victorious_, sir, and a smart ship!’ He drank his little glass
of Marsala, swirled his dank boat-cloak about him, and went out serenely
to take his boat home through the dark and the dismal welter.
Now the _Victorious_, she is some fourteen thousand nine hundred tons,
and he who gave her her certificate was maybe ten stone two—with a
touch of Malta fever on him!
THE WARD-ROOM DISPORTED ITSELF
We cleaned up at last; the First Lieutenant’s face relaxed a little,
and some one called for the instruments of music. Out came two violins,
a mandoline, and bagpipes, and the ward-room disported itself among
tunes of three Nations till War should be declared. In the middle of a
scientific experiment as to how the ship’s kitten might be affected by
bagpipes that hour struck, and even more swiftly than pussy fled under
the sofa the trim mess-jackets melted away, the chaff ceased, the hull
shivered to the power of the steam-capstan, the slapping of the water
on our sides grew, and we glided through the moored Fleet to the mouth
of Lough Swilly. Our orders were to follow and support another cruiser
who had been already despatched towards Blacksod Bay to observe the
enemy—or rather that cruiser who was bearing news of the outbreak of
War to the enemy’s Fleet.
It was then midnight of the 7th of July—by the rules of the game the
main body could not move till noon of the 8th—and the North Atlantic,
cold and lumpy, was waiting for us as soon as we had put out our lights.
Then I began to understand why a certain type of cruiser is irreverently
styled ‘a commodious coffee-grinder.’ We had the length of a smallish
liner, but by no means her dead weight, so where the Red Duster would
have driven heavily through the seas the White Ensign danced; and the
twin-screws gave us more kick than was pleasant. At half-past five of
a peculiarly cheerless dawn we picked up the big cruiser (who had seen
nothing), stayed in her company till nearly seven, and ran back to
rejoin the Fleet, whom we met coming out of Lough Swilly about 1 p.m. of
Thursday, the 8th. And the weather was vile. Once again we headed W.N.W.
in company at an average speed of between thirteen and fourteen knots
on a straightaway run of three hundred and fifty miles toward the Rockal
Bank and the lonely rock that rises out of the sea there. The idea was
that our enemy might have made this his rendezvous, in which case we had
hope of catching him _en masse_.
Through that penitential day the little cruiser was disgustingly lively,
but all we took aboard was spray, whereas the low-bowed battleships
slugged their bluff noses into the surge and rose dripping like half-tide
rocks. The Flagship might have manœuvred like half a dozen Nelsons, but
I lay immediately above the twin-screws and thought of the Quartermaster
on the reeling bridge who was not allowed to lie down. Through the
cabin-door I could see the decks, dim with spray; hear the bugles
calling to quarters; and catch glimpses of the uninterrupted life of the
ship—a shining face under a sou’wester; a pair of sea-legs cloaked
in oil-skins; a hurrying signalman with a rolling and an anxious eye; a
warrant officer concerned for the proper housing of his quick-firers, as
they disappeared in squirts of foam; or a Lieutenant serenely reporting
men and things ‘present’ or ‘correct.’ Behind all, as the cruiser
flung herself carelessly abroad, great grey and slate-coloured scoops
of tormented sea. About midnight the scouting cruiser—same we had left
that morning on the look-out for the _Blake_ or the _Blenheim_—rejoined
the Fleet; but the fleet might have gone down as one keel so far as one
unhappy traveller was concerned.
By noon of July 9 we had covered 325½ miles in twenty-four hours, with
never a sight of the enemy to cheer us, and had reached the limit of our
ground. Here we turned, and, on a front of twenty-four miles from wing
to wing, swept down 250 miles South-eastward to the offing of Blacksod
Bay.
‘MISSED!’
Mercifully the weather began to improve, and we had the sea more or
less behind us. It was when we entered on this second slant, about
three minutes after the Fleet swung round, that, as though all men had
thought it together, a word went round our forecastle—‘Missed!’
After dinner, as they were smoking above the spit-kids, the doctrine
was amplified with suitable language by the foc’sle experts, and
it was explained to me with a great certainty how the other side had
out-manœuvred us ‘by means of the ’ole in the rules.’ In other
words, ‘he had been overtook by ’is cruiser,’ precisely as the
wiser heads had prophesied; and even at that early stage of the game we
had been sold.
There was no way of finding out anything for sure. A big scouting cruiser
slipped off again a little before dawn of the 10th, and six or seven
hours later was reported to be in sight with news of the enemy. At this
point there came, as we learned later, what you might call a hitch. Some
unhappy signalman, they assert, misplaced a flag of a signal whereby it
was caused to be believed that a cruiser had sighted the enemy where
there was no enemy. In that direction, then, the Fleet gave chase, and
though the thing was abortive, the run was a beautiful example of what
the new Navy can do at a pinch.
WE DISCOVERED OUR MISTAKE
Then, I suppose, we discovered our mistake about the enemy, and hurried
all together for Blacksod Bay in the hope of cutting him off. Arrived at
the scattered Islands near the mouth, a cruiser was sent inside to see
if any one was at home, while the Flagship bade the rest of us ‘walk
foreninst her while she considered on it.’ Meteorologically the weather
was now glorious—a blazing sun, and a light swell to which the cruisers
rolled lazily, as hounds roll on the grass at a check. Nautically there
was a good deal of thunder in the air. Everybody knew something had gone
wrong, and when the Flagship announced that she was not at all pleased
with the signalling throughout the Fleet it was no more than every one
expected.
Now the Flagship had some fifty or sixty signalmen, and a bridge as broad
as a houseboat and as clear as a ball-room. Our bridge was perhaps four
feet broad; the roar of a stoke-hold ventilating-fan, placed apparently
for that purpose, carefully sucked up two-thirds of every shouted order;
and between the bridge and the poop the luckless signalman, for want of
an overhead passage, had to run an obstacle race along the crowded decks.
We owned six signalmen. After watching them for a week I was prepared
to swear that each had six arms and eight cinder-proof eyes; but the
Flagship thought otherwise. I heard what the signalmen thought later on;
but that was by no means for publication.
HIGH-SPEED SCOUTING
Back came the cruiser with news that Blacksod Bay was empty. Meantime
three other boats had been sent off to reinforce the racing cruiser
whose constant business it was to keep touch with the enemy. That
monster did most of our high-speed scouting, and several times at
least saw something of the other side. We were not so lucky. With three
second-class friends we were ordered to patrol at twelve knots an hour
on a six mile beat thirteen miles to the North-east of Eagle Island, to
fire a rocket if we saw anything of the enemy that night, and to stay out
till we were recalled. When we reached our ground the sea was all empty
save for one speck on the horizon that marked the next cruiser, also
patrolling. A desolate and a naked shore, broken into barren Islands,
turned purplish-grey in the sunset, and two lone lighthouses took up
their duty. We tramped up and down through that marvellous transparent
dusk, with more than the regularity of the Metropolitan Police. There
was no lawful night, but a wine-coloured twilight cut in half by the
moon-track on the still water. Unless the enemy poled in punts under
the shadow of the shore and the faint mist that lay along it, he could
not hope to creep round from the North unobserved. The signalmen blessed
their gods—Marine ones—that they were away from the Flagship; the
foc’sle and my friend the Marine assured the signalmen that they would
be infallibly hanged at the yard-arm when we reached port; and we all
talked things over forward as the steady tramp continued.
‘I told you so! E’s found an ’ole in the rules an’ slipped
through it,’ was the burden of our song. We must have burned more coal
than would ever be expedient in War, and we saw imaginary hulls with
great zeal till the glorious sunrise, cut off from the battle, peering
over the nettings, wet with dew, and just as ignorant of events around
us as we shall be when the Real Thing begins.