SUB-MARINERS OF ENGLAND
Before us rocked the minefields,
Behind us flew the planes.
The swift destroyers chased us
Down the long sea lanes,
The stealthy currents fought us,
And, everywhere we went,
Crept Death, a little finger's breadth,
Beside us on the scent.
Lined with forts that defied the bombardment of our largest naval guns;
protected by minefields that taxed the resources of our most intrepid
fleets of sweepers; endowed by nature with an opposing current against
which our destroyers, during some of the winter storms, were only able
to maintain their stations by steaming ten knots ahead, the
Dardanelles, guarding the Sea of Marmora, might well have seemed secure
against our submarines. How little they were really so, was, however,
made clear by Mr. Asquith in his summary of their achievements up to
the end of October, 1915--a couple of months before the evacuation of
the Peninsula and our withdrawal from the campaign. Up to that time it
appeared, that, between them, they had sunk or damaged two Turkish
battleships, five gunboats, one torpedo-boat, eight transports, and no
less than 197 {152} supply-ships of all kinds--an amazing record in
view of the geographical advantages that had been bestowed upon the
defence.
Where all were heroes, in the best sense of the word, carrying their
lives in their hands on each trip, and where the unsuccessful, in
defining the obstacles that baffled them, contributed almost equally to
the general results, it is a thankless task, though the only possible
one, to select particular units for our purpose. Just as in the
Baltic, however, the two outstanding figures were Commander Horton and
Captain Cromie, so in the Dardanelles the names that naturally emerge
are those of Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook, Lieutenant-Commander
Nasmith, and Lieutenant Guy D'Oyly Hughes; and it is to the adventures
of these officers, as typical of their service, that we must confine
our attention.
It was on Sunday, December 13, 1914, that Lieutenant-Commander Norman
Holbrook, in the submarine _B11_, first demonstrated to Turkey and the
world that the Dardanelles were navigable for British submarines; and,
as a pioneer feat, it probably remains unequalled by any individual
enterprise of the war. Then about twenty-six, Lieutenant-Commander
Holbrook had been in command of the _B11_ for a year, the submarine
herself, one of an early type, being part of the Malta Flotilla, and,
at the time of this exploit, already eight years old. Her speed above
the surface was no more than 13 knots; and, when submerged, she could
only travel 9--the mere navigation of the Dardanelles, under such
circumstances, being in itself a remarkable achievement.
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It was three o'clock in the morning that the _B11_ left her base for
the entrance to the Dardanelles, and no Elizabethan captain ever put to
sea on a more perilous undertaking than that which faced the crew, less
than a score, of the _B11_ in that December darkness. They reached the
entrance, however, unobserved, took their bearings with the current
streaming past them, and then submerged to sixty feet, and began their
blindfold journey toward the minefields. Here they had to rely
entirely on their electric motors capable of about 190 horse-power; and
so, for hour after hour, they felt their way beneath the five rows of
mines that were known to be guarding the Straits, and, when at last
they rose again, a little before noon, it was to find themselves bathed
in broad daylight, and to discover to their delight, well within reach,
the Turkish battleship _Messudiyeh_.
Still unnoticed, they submerged immediately, charged the firing-tank,
flooded the torpedo-tube, and stood by to fire. Now was the critical
moment--not of the journey, perhaps, but to demonstrate beyond question
that it had been successfully accomplished. The _B11_ crept up again
to within fifteen feet. There was a fraction of a pause, and the
torpedo was launched. This meant her discovery, of course, and, had
not the torpedo gone home, a second chance could hardly have been
expected. But it was a good shot, followed by a loud explosion, and a
cautious peep through the periscope showed the _Messudiyeh_, completely
surprised, to be sinking by her stern.
Built by the Thames Iron Works Company in {154} 1874, she was of no
great value as a battleship; and, although she had been reconstructed
in Genoa in 1902, and carried two 9.2-inch guns besides a secondary
armament, she was not in any sense a serious opponent, and her maximum
speed was but 16 knots. But she was one of the only three battleships
in the Turkish Navy; she carried a crew of 600 and was guarding the
minefields; and the moral effect of her loss in so dramatic a fashion
was profound. But a few years before, and this journey of
Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook's would have seemed but the vain
imagining of a novelist. Now it was a fact, and a fact that could be
repeated, as others of his colleagues were to demonstrate.
Meanwhile the alarm had been given. The batteries on either side had
opened fire and shells were beginning to plunge in all directions; and
the _B11_ modestly sought concealment. With torpedo-boats quartering
the surface, she dropped into darkness again, and then, for a horrible
moment or two, it seemed that her end had come. At a depth of thirty
feet there came an ominous shock; for ten minutes, she grated along a
bed of shingle; but her good luck held, and she slid at last undamaged
into the deep channel that she had been looking for. So the return
journey began; the five rows of mines were once more successfully
passed; at a depth of sixty feet, she drew level with Cape Helles, and
then, after nine hours below, she came to the surface again. Thus
ended a voyage hitherto unequalled in the submarine records of any
navy, and one that secured for Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook the first
Victoria Cross {155} awarded to a naval officer since the beginning of
the war.
Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook was a pioneer and his vessel was a
comparatively old one, but scarcely less thrilling and, from the purely
material standpoint, considerably more fruitful, was the voyage
undertaken, about six months later, by Lieutenant-Commander Nasmith in
the _E11_. Leaving Imbros at three o'clock one summer morning, he set
out for the Dardanelles, dived at daybreak, and pushed his way, as
Holbrook had done, beneath the defences of the Narrows. Emerging on
the other side of these, he rose to the surface and saw a couple of
battleships within range. By this time, however, the standard of
vigilance above the Narrows had been very considerably raised; and,
before _E11_ could discharge any of her torpedoes, her presence was
discovered, and the ships escaped.
They opened fire as they did so, thus giving the general alarm, and the
_E11_ accordingly submerged for the rest of the afternoon, not showing
her periscope again till dusk, when she apparently had the sea to
herself. She then proceeded, in naval phrase, into the Sea of Marmora
at her leisure, but for a few days was unable to get in touch with any
enemy craft. Not satisfied with this, she then made her way to the
neighbourhood of Constantinople, where, on Sunday morning, she sighted
and sank a big Turkish gunboat. This vessel went down in five minutes,
but must have contained a gunner of some merit, since, before
disappearing, she opened fire and with her second shot hit the _E11's_
periscope.
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This was soon repaired, however, and the next day she sighted a steamer
and told her to stop. An officer and two men were sent aboard her,
where they found a 6-inch gun, numerous gun-mountings, and some 15-inch
ammunition; and accordingly, after the crew had taken to the boats,
this vessel was also sent to the bottom. Hardly had she vanished when
another steamer was sighted and, refusing to stop, chased into harbour,
where she was torpedoed in the very act of making herself safe
alongside a pier. A little later, yet a third vessel was seen and also
chased to the shore; and then there ensued one of the strangest little
actions that had been fought during the course of the war. For, at
that moment, a body of Turkish cavalry came galloping up to defend the
ship, and opened fire on the submarine, just as a boarding-party was
about to leave her. For a few minutes, a duel followed between the
_E11_ and the horsemen on shore, some of the latter being dropped from
their saddles before the submarine dived and torpedoed the ship.
Monday had been a busy day, but on Tuesday Lieutenant-Commander Nasmith
decided to enter Constantinople. In this he was successful, and,
having made the harbour, torpedoed and sank a transport loaded with
troops, exploding a second torpedo upon the shore, and creating a very
considerable local panic. From Tuesday to Friday time passed
uneventfully, but, on Friday morning, a convoy was sighted, consisting
of five transports escorted by destroyers. Selecting the first and
biggest, this was torpedoed, sinking in less than three {157} minutes,
the others escaping, and the _E11_ successfully evading the destroyers.
Three more of these transports, as well as a supply-ship, were sunk a
day or two afterward, and, a few days later, yet another transport was
torpedoed, and a last one, on the way home, was sunk just before
entering the Narrows.
With a round dozen vessels to her credit, the _E11_ then dived beneath
the minefields, and might well have been thought to have had sufficient
adventures for one small vessel in a single trip. But there was
another in store for her that might readily have been her last for,
when she came to the surface again that evening, it was to discover a
mine, like a piece of seaweed, hanging over her bows and caressing her
side. It was a perilous moment, but, in the words of one of her crew,
the mine was "chucked" off as speedily as possible, and the _E11_
safely received into the waiting arms of her escort. For this voyage
Lieutenant-Commander Nasmith also received the Victoria Cross, and
every member of his crew the Distinguished Service Medal.
This was a great record, but it was closely pressed by many of her
colleagues, notably the _E14_; and we find her in the Sea of Marmora
again in August doing her best to sustain it. This time her voyage was
made conspicuous by an extraordinarily daring journey on the part of
her second in command, Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes, who had already been
decorated for his services in the earlier raid just recorded. His
object was, if possible, to destroy a viaduct over which passed the
Ismid Railway, skirting the coast; and, with this in view, on the night
{158} of August 21st, he left the submarine, about sixty yards from the
shore. In readiness for his attempt, a raft had been prepared, on
which were carefully packed his charge of explosives, his clothes, a
revolver, a sharpened bayonet, an electric torch, and a whistle.
Dropping into the water, he pushed this before him, and swam warily to
the shore, but found himself unable, at his first point of landing, to
scale the cliffs that were here very precipitous. Accordingly he
pushed out his raft again, and swam along the coast until a more
promising ascent revealed itself, where he dressed, loaded himself with
his charge, and, after a very steep climb, reached the top of the
cliffs. Half an hour later, making his way inland, he came upon the
line of the railway, and then, carrying his charge, began to creep
quietly along it in the direction of the viaduct.
This he did for about a quarter of a mile, when he suddenly heard
voices ahead of him, and presently saw three men sitting by the side of
the railway, talking together loudly, and evidently quite oblivious of
him. Crouching in the darkness, he watched them for some little time,
and then decided to leave his heavy charge where it was, and, after
having made a wide detour inland, inspect the viaduct and see how it
was guarded.
Having marked the spot, therefore, where he had concealed his charge,
he struck away from the railway into the unknown country beyond, and
here he very nearly came to disaster, owing to an unlucky stumble into
a small farmyard. The poultry scuttered about {159} calling, but
happily without rousing the family, from whose undisturbed dreams it
would surely be true to say that nothing could have been remoter than
the vision of a British naval lieutenant, cursing under his breath, in
the middle of their fowl-run. He was soon well away from this, and not
very long afterward was within three hundred yards of the viaduct,
where it soon became clear that there was very little prospect of his
being able to secrete and fire his charge. At the end of it nearest to
him, he could see a bright fire burning and the figures of several men
moving to and fro, while the panting of an engine could be heard
through the night, either on the viaduct itself or just beyond it.
There was nothing for it, therefore, but to make his way back to the
place where he had hidden his explosive, and to find as suitable a spot
in which to discharge it as the circumstances would allow. After a
further search, he discovered a low brickwork support, carrying the
line over a small hollow, and it was beneath this that he finally
decided to place and explode his charge. Unfortunately the three men,
whom he had first seen, were still sitting chatting by the line, and
the spot selected was no more than one hundred and fifty yards away
from them.
There was no other place, however, where so much damage could be done,
and muffling up the fuse pistol with a rag, he discharged it. But the
night was so still and the men were so near that for them to hear the
report had been inevitable. Instantly they were on their feet and
running down the line, and there was nothing for it but to take to his
heels, the three {160} men following at the top of their speed, a
couple of revolver shots failing to check them. They too fired, but
ineffectively, and the chase went on for about a mile, Lieutenant
D'Oyly Hughes deciding that it was impossible to try and return the way
he had come, and making down the line till he came to a place where it
ran out beside the sea.
Just as he reached this, he had the satisfaction of hearing a loud
explosion in the darkness behind him, some of the debris falling into
the water, nearly half a mile away, close to the waiting submarine.
But there was not a moment to be lost, and, fully dressed, Lieutenant
D'Oyly Hughes plunged from the shore and swam as fast as he could for
about a quarter of a mile straight out to sea. There he blew his
whistle, but was unheard by the watchers on the submarine, this latter
being behind a bend in the cliffs. Lieutenant D'Oyly Hughes therefore
swam back to the shore again, and, after having rested for a few
moments, decided that there was no other course open to him than to
swim round this bend. Day was already nearing, and, time being
imperative, he threw away his pistol, bayonet, and electric torch; and
it was not until he had rounded the last point that his whistle was
heard by the watchers on the _E11_. But others had heard it, too, and,
from the top of the cliffs above him, there began to float down shouts
and the reports of rifle shots. Owing to a trick of the morning mist,
too, the emerging submarine appeared to him at first to be three
separate rowing-boats--the bow, the conning-tower, and the gun being
responsible for this illusion. Once again, {161} therefore, he took to
the shore with the intention of hiding under the cliffs, when, after
climbing out of the water, he saw his mistake and shouted and signalled
to his comrades. Eventually he was picked up by them forty yards out,
almost on the point of exhaustion, and having swum, after no mean
exertions ashore, nearly a mile in his clothes.
While the British submarines and their officers and crews were thus
making themselves at home in the Sea of Marmora, a campaign as daring
had already been begun in the similar enclosed area of the Baltic,
Commander Max Horton in the _E9_ being in this case the pioneer. This
officer had already accounted for a couple of German men-of-war, the
light cruiser _Hela_ sunk in the previous September, and the destroyer
_S126_ put down three weeks later It was early on a fine Sunday morning
that the _E8_ had sighted the _Hela_ about six miles south of
Heligoland. Two torpedoes were launched, and about half a minute after
the second was despatched, the listeners on board _E9_ had heard an
explosion telling them that one at any rate had got home. A quarter of
an hour later, the _E9_ had emerged again to see the _Hela_ listing
heavily and apparently beyond hope of redemption; and, when she had
next come to the surface, it was to find the cruiser gone and her first
German warship to her credit. The destroyer had been sunk three weeks
later, near the mouth of the Ems River and under the very guns of
Borkum.
Such was the record of Commander Max Horton before he made his way into
the Baltic in the following year, and began to operate there almost at
the {162} same time as his colleagues established their mastery in the
Sea of Marmora; and he was worthily succeeded by Francis Cromie, than
whose personal story the war produced no stranger. Entering the Baltic
in the summer of 1915, as a lieutenant-commander in the submarine
_E19_, to die three years later, as an acting captain, in the most
tragic of circumstances at Petrograd, few men can have played, in so
short a time, such a bewildering variety of parts.
Having arrived in the Baltic, his first task was to combat as far as
possible the importation into Germany of ore from the Swedish mines.
To this end he organized, therefore, and he was the first to organize,
a definite and coördinated plan of campaign; and this soon bore visible
fruits, not only in the number of vessels sunk, but in the precautions
forced upon the enemy. Within a few days, in the early autumn, no less
than ten of these vessels were put out of action, the majority being
total losses. Amongst the victims were the _Lulfa_, _Nicomedia_,
_Gutrune_, and _Pernambuco_--all vessels over 3,000 tons; while, a few
days afterward, five German transports were torpedoed and sunk, and a
sixth forced to run aground. Of these no less than ten were the actual
victims of Lieutenant-Commander Cromie himself in the _E19_.
His most notable feat in this year, however, was the sinking of the
German cruiser _Undine_, which was engaged with some destroyers in
protecting a train-ferry upon which Lieutenant-Commander Cromie had
designs. Of the general spirit in which not only this particular
expedition, but all his work was {163} undertaken, something can be
gathered from a letter to his mother in which he describes his
adventures as follows: "We did another fifteen hundred miles," he
wrote, "this last trip. I went to bed for the first two days out with
'flue,' and so directed operations from my bunk. We met a German
submarine and had to dive in a hurry, and found ourselves down at 140
feet, before I could get out of bed to take charge. The third day we
found a lot of 'wood' outside neutral waters, and, after a short chase,
we made a lovely bonfire, being unable to sink the stuff. The
'inhabitants' left hurriedly, leaving a small puppy dog, which we
rescued. Its father was a Great Dane, and its mother a pug, but
considering it is a 'Hun' it is not half bad, and is a great favourite.
Nothing travels by daylight since our last raid on the 'hen-run'; so my
special haunt was very dull, and I gave it up after four days, and
tried another spot where I knew train-ferries must pass. We had an
exciting chase, but it was spoilt by two destroyers and a cruiser
turning up. Guessing that they would come back again I lay low, and,
sure enough, I caught the _Undine_ in the afternoon. The first shot
stopped her and put her on fire, but she was not going down quickly
enough, so, avoiding the destroyer who was after us, I dived under the
_Undine's_ stern and gave her another from the other side.... We
arrived in covered with ice."
Technically an expert of the highest order, modest and courageous, he
was idolized by his men, and his conduct when once, off the port of
Memel, the propellers of his submarine became caught in some {164}
German nets, would have afforded ample reason for this, even had it not
been an expression of a character already well known to them. Whether
or no he had been taking a legitimate risk, for the predicament in
which they found themselves, he instantly took the full blame. For
several hours, they had tried in vain to free themselves, and it looked
as if at last they had been outwitted. Calling his crew together, he
frankly confessed to them that he had taken them into this trap and
that he saw no way out. His intention was, therefore, if the worst
should come to the worst, to rise to the surface and give them a chance
for their lives, he himself remaining below to blow up the vessel and
save it from capture. Happily, by a last skilful and well-planned
manoeuvre, he succeeded in freeing the propellers from the
entanglement, and the _E19_ was once more at liberty, having never been
nearer death, to continue her career.
It was not only as a submarine commander of the first quality, however,
that Cromie was unobtrusively making his mark, but as an organizer and
administrator in charge of his flotilla through a period of
ever-increasing difficulty. Busy, as he was, arranging for repairs and
supplies, and safeguarding the moral of his men in strange and remote
surroundings, he found or made time to learn the Russian language, with
results quite impossible to over-estimate. By the end of 1916, he had
acquired--let us rather say there had come to him--a reputation
extending far beyond the little technical world of the British
submarine contingent. For patent efficiency, complete {165} honesty,
and entire fearlessness, there are no international boundaries; and in
Cromie there were added to these a very remarkable patience and deep
human sympathies. It was these qualities, recognized by all parties,
that, throughout the abrupt and dark changes of the Russian Revolution,
invested Cromie with an unique influence, responsible for the saving of
scores of lives.
Stationed at Reval, it was largely due to Cromie that, when the naval
mutiny broke out in the Russian Fleet, many officers were saved from
the fate that befell their less fortunate colleagues at Helsingfors and
Cronstadt. With his headquarters on the Russian cruiser _Dwina_,
Cromie lived through the spectacle of beholding his own Russian servant
appointed to the command of the vessel; yet, though he had vigorously
deplored the formation of the committees that took over the charge of
the Fleet and appealed to them in vain to uphold the discipline vital
to the preservation of the Russian navy, their personal respect for him
enabled him to hold his flotilla together and even to carry on
offensive warfare.
It was not for very long, however, that this continued possible. The
débâcle that had set in could not be stayed; and, after the treaty
between Germany and the Bolshevik Government had been signed at
Brest-Litovsk, hope flickered out. There was then nothing left but to
destroy the British submarines, and for their gallant crews to return
home; but Captain Cromie, as he had then become, was appointed naval
attaché at Petrograd.
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Here he carried into a new and perilous sphere the same qualities that
had already distinguished him, and his influence with all sections was
of a kind possessed by no other British representative. Even when the
British Embassy was withdrawn, he remained at his post in spite of the
fast-accumulating threats of hunger, pestilence, fanaticism, and German
intrigue. He was at last to die, at Bolshevik hands, in a Petrograd
brawl in September, 1918; but yet without leaving, in spite of the
madness that slew him, a real enemy in Russia.
A bold and skilful seaman, a first-class organizer and leader of men, a
naturally sagacious diplomatist, he was of a type not too common even
in the navy itself. A Chevalier of St. George, in the case of Francis
Cromie, it may be said that the words, indeed, bore their literal
meaning, and few of our losses in the turmoil of war were less
reparable than his.
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