3,000 tons, to outward appearances an armed merchantman with a light
gun mounted on her poop. To make plain what happened on board it is
necessary, however, that the uninitiated should be admitted into
certain secrets of her construction. A wooden structure on the poop,
common to merchantmen of her type, concealed a gun of effective
calibre behind collapsible covers. Beneath this gun position, and
occupying much of the space below the poop, were the magazine and
shell rooms. Four depth-charges were fitted at her stern; any one of
these dropped over the position of a submerged submarine was
calculated on detonating to do all that was necessary. In addition,
a smaller gun was mounted on the forecastle on a disappearing
mounting, while hen-coops and deck fittings concealed similar
armament at other points of vantage. To complete her offensive
capabilities, she carried a masked torpedo tube on either beam.
This, then, was the true character of the ship which a German
submarine sighted on the horizon at eleven o'clock one morning. She
noted the small gun displayed defensively aft, and started in
pursuit, firing as she went. The submarine was sighted directly she
rose to the surface, whereupon the Captain of the man-of-war ordered
the after gun to be manned and the remainder of the crew to take
shell cover, tactics which differed in no respect from those
customary to merchantmen under the circumstances. On the other hand,
speed was imperceptibly decreased, and the crew of the light gun at
the stern directed to shoot short in order to encourage the adversary
to draw closer. It says much for the discipline on board that men
thus prominently exposed to the fire of the pursuing enemy could
deliberately continue to reply to it in the consciousness that their
shots were not required to hit. German submarine commanders at this
phase of the war were growing notoriously "nervy"; hysterical appeals
for help were therefore sent out by wireless, in the hope that the
enemy would intercept them and gain confidence.
The heavy sea gradually rendered it impossible for the submarine to
maintain the pursuit and man her gun. She therefore abandoned the
bombardment and came on at full speed, until after a chase of about
an hour she turned broadside on and again opened fire. Shots were
then falling close, and at 12.40 the steamer stopped, as great clouds
of steam emerging from the engine-room showed she was disabled, and
the "panic party" proceeded to abandon ship. To lend colour to the
general atmosphere of demoralisation and confusion, one of the boats
was purposely dropped by a single fall, and remained hanging from the
davit in a vertical position. In the meantime the enemy had closed
nearer and continued methodically shelling the ship. A shell struck
the poop, exploding one of the depth-charges and blowing the officer
in charge of the after concealed gun out of his control position; on
recovering consciousness, however, he crawled inside the gun hatch,
where his crew of seven men were hidden. The seaman superintending
the depth-charges was badly wounded by this explosion and lay
motionless. Seeing his condition, the hidden crew of the after gun
attempted to drag him within their place of concealment, but the
injured man stubbornly refused to be moved. "I was put here in
charge of these things," he replied, indicating the remaining
depth-charges, "and here I stop." And stop he did until subsequent
events proved stronger than even his indomitable spirit. Two more
shells burst inside the poop in quick succession, and a few moments
later dense clouds of smoke and flames disclosed the disquieting fact
that the after part of the ship was heavily on fire.
From his customary place at the end of the bridge, peering through
slits in his armoured coign of observation, the Captain watched the
submarine turn and come slowly past the ship 400 yards away. The
next moment, as he was about to open fire on an easy target, the wind
caught the smoke from the conflagration aft and blew it like a
curtain across his vision. The Captain was confronted with two
alternatives. One was to open fire there and then on a partially
obscured target, or wait until the submarine should round the stern
and come past the weather side, where the smoke did not interfere
with the accuracy of the shooting. At the same time he was conscious
that the fire raging aft must very soon engulf the magazine. It
could only be a matter of moments before the magazine blew up, and
with it the masked gun and its crew.
Nothing but utter confidence in the devotion of that gun's crew, the
conviction that even in the direst extremity they would remain
concealed and motionless, enabled the Captain to choose the second of
these alternatives. Yet he chose it, determined at all costs to make
sure of his quarry, and waited; and while he waited the deck on which
this gun's crew were crouched grew slowly red-hot, so that they were
compelled to cling to the mounting of the gun and to hold the
cartridges in their arms. Their ordeal ended as the submarine was
rounding the stern. The magazine and two more depth-charges blew up
with a deafening roar, hurling gun, gun's crew, fragments of
wreckage, and unexploded shells high in the air. One member of the
crew fell into the water, where he was picked up by the "panic
party"; the remainder, including the depth-charge keeper, landed in
the well-deck, with the gun.
The concussion of the explosion had, however, started the
electrically controlled fire-gongs at the remaining gun positions.
Thereupon the White Ensign fluttered automatically up to the
masthead, and one gun--the only one that would bear--opened an
unavailing fire on the enemy, who had begun to dive immediately the
explosion had taken place. The ruse had failed, and every man on
board realised on the instant that what must follow was to be the
supreme test. The wounded were removed out of sight with all speed,
hoses were turned on to the burning part of the ship, and wireless
signals sent out warning all men-of-war to divert traffic for a
radius of 30 miles, that nothing should interrupt the last phase of
this savage duel a entrance.
To borrow a phrase from sporting parlance, they ensured that the ring
was kept, but in so doing they deprived themselves of any hope of
succour from the savagery of the enemy, should the ship sink and
leave them at the submarine's mercy. In this comfortable reflection,
therefore, they settled down and awaited the inevitable torpedo.
It must be remembered that the ship was now openly a man-of-war,
flying the White Ensign, with guns unmasked. At 1.20 P.M., two hours
and twenty minutes after first sighting the submarine, a torpedo
struck the ship abreast the engine-room, hurling blazing wreckage and
water in all directions. With far-seeing thoroughness of
organisation this moment had been anticipated sooner or later for
months past. Accordingly, at the order of "Abandon ship," the men
previously detailed launched the remaining boat and a raft, and
paddled clear of the doomed vessel. The Captain and crews of two
guns and both torpedo tubes, the Navigator, Assistant Paymaster, and
Quartermaster remained on board. For the ensuing eighty minutes,
while the fire in the poop continued to blaze furiously, and the
ammunition in the vicinity detonated like a succession of gigantic
Chinese crackers, the periscope circled suspiciously round the ship
and boats. At 2.30 the submarine rose to the surface in a position
on which none of the guns on board would bear, and began once more
shelling the ship and boats with vindictive fury.
For twenty minutes the remnant on board endured this ordeal, lying
face downwards and motionless on the splintered planking. It is
recorded that during the hottest of the fire one of the foremost
gun's crew requested, in a hoarse whisper, to be allowed to take his
boots off. The officer in his vicinity inquired the reason for this
strange request, to which the man replied that he didn't think he had
much longer to live, and, on the whole, thought he'd prefer not to
die with his boots on. He subsequently explained that he came of a
respectable family.
By means of the voice-pipe connecting him with the guns' control, the
Captain cheered and encouraged his men through that long agony.
Small wonder they loved an officer who exhorted them in such a pass
to "keep merry and bright"; who quoted Bairnsfather to the boyish
officer in the control when shells were bursting all about his head
("If you know of a better 'ole, go to it!"); who, when the wounded
Navigator, blinded with blood at the opposite end of the bridge,
called that he was done, replied: "You're all right! Hang on, 'cos
we've got him cold!" and found time to steady the guns' crews with,
"Remember the V.C. The King has given the ship, lads."
At 2.50 P.M. the submarine abruptly ceased shelling and submerged.
Then, with only a periscope showing, he steamed once more past the
ship. As he came abeam under-water, the British Captain played one
of his few remaining trump cards, and discharged a torpedo; it missed
by inches, and passed unnoticed. Going very slowly, the enemy then
crossed the bow and came down the starboard side. One last desperate
chance remained, and the second torpedo was fired. In an agony of
suspense they watched the trail of bubbles flicker towards the
periscope, held their breath for the explosion, and saw the tell-tale
wake pass a foot astern of the periscope. They had shot their bolt,
and the game was up. A wireless signal was immediately sent out for
urgent assistance, as the wary enemy had sighted the last torpedo and
promptly dived. The ship was sinking fast, and to wait for another
torpedo or further shelling would have meant the useless sacrifice of
life. A United States destroyer, an armed yacht, and two British
destroyers that had been hovering below the horizon, rushed up at
full speed and took charge of the wounded. The ship sank thirty-four
hours later, with her colours flying, after strenuous endeavours had
been made to save her.
Despite the almost incredible gruelling the crew had undergone, all
survived the action. The officer in charge of the after-gun received
the Victoria Cross, and one of the gun's crew was selected by ballot
for a similar honour. The remainder, including the hand told off for
the depth-charges, who has since succumbed to his wounds, were
awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal.
Much of the tale remains untold, but it is best brought to an all too
brief conclusion in the words of the official report written by the
officer, who, as his head and shoulders appeared above the bridge
screen at the conclusion of the action, brought forth the following
ecstatic shout from one of the "panic party": "Blimey! there's the
Skipper still alive! Gawd, wouldn't them perishin' 'Uns give
ninepence an inch for 'im!" This officer's report concludes as
follows:
It is hardly necessary for me again to refer to the behaviour of my
crew--the tactics I carried out were only possible through the utmost
confidence I had in my ship and my crew. I would especially bring to
your notice the extreme bravery of Lieutenant Bonner, R.N.R., the
officer in charge, and the 4-in. gun's crew. Lieutenant Bonner,
having been blown out of his control by the first explosion, crawled
into the gun hatch with the crew. They there remained at their posts
with a fire raging in the poop below and the deck getting red hot.
One man tore up his shirt to give pieces to the gun's crew to stop
the fumes getting into their throats, others lifted the boxes of
cordite off the deck to keep them from exploding, and all the time
they knew they must be blown up, as the secondary supply and magazine
were immediately below. They told me afterwards that communication
with the bridge was cut off, and although they would be blown up,
they also knew they would spoil the show if they moved, so they
remained until actually blown up with their gun.
Then, when, as wounded men, they were ordered to remain quiet in
various places during the second action, they had to lie there
unattended and bleeding, with explosions continually going on aboard
and splinters from the enemy's shell-fire penetrating their quarters.
Lieutenant Bonner, himself wounded, did what he could for two who
were with him in the wardroom. When I visited them after the action
they thought little of their wounds, but only expressed their disgust
that the enemy had not been sunk. Surely such bravery is hard to
equal. The strain for the men who remained on board after the ship
had been torpedoed, poop set on fire, cordite and shells exploding,
and then the enemy shell-fire can easily be imagined. I much regret
that two officers and seven men were wounded, and am very grateful to
U.S.S. _Noma_ for taking charge of the two most dangerous cases.
I--we--deeply regret the loss of one of H.M. ships, and still more
the escape of the enemy. We did our best, not only to destroy the
enemy and save the ship, but also to show ourselves worthy of the
Victoria Cross the King recently bestowed on the ship.
I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,
(Signed) GORDON CAMPBELL,
Captain, R.N.
III
"NOT IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ENEMY"
(1918)
1
THE GLEANER
The motor-launch chugged to the limit of her beat and wheeled with
her bows to a rusty sunset. The wind had been freshening steadily
since noon and the steep grey seas were edged with spray, streaked
like the flanks of an over-spurred horse. The motor-launch, from a
monotonous corkscrew roll, changed to a jerky see-saw that enveloped
her in a bitterly cold cascade at every downward plunge.
The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant in command leaned with one broad shoulder
against the side of the wheel-shelter, his legs braced far apart and
his oilskin flapping wetly against his leather sea-boots. As each
successive welter of spray drove past his head he raised a pair of
glasses and searched the horizon to the westward where the sombre
November sunset was fast fading.
Somewhere below that horizon the homeward-bound convoy was
approaching, and his orders were to patrol a given length of the
swept channel up the coast on the look-out for floating mines that
might have drifted by chance currents from distant mine-fields.
Twice since dawn the sweepers had passed over that water and reported
the fair-way clear; but with a dozen shiploads of wheat to pass up it
in the morning, no one was taking any chances. "Patrol till dark;
floating mines to be sunk by gun or rifle fire," said his orders.
The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant had been reckoned a good shot with a rifle in
the days when he was an Admiralty clerk, and spent his Saturday
afternoons on a rifle range at Wormwood Scrubs; he glanced from the
bucking deck of his command to the rifle hanging in slings over the
Coxswain's head, and smiled rather doubtfully to himself. As if in
challenge to that smile, the Signalman on the other side of the
Coxswain suddenly extended his telescope and arm in a straight line
to seaward.
"Mine awash, sir," he shouted. "Two points on the port bow." The
Coxswain raised his eye from the binnacle and moved the wheel through
half a turn.
The Lieutenant stared through his glasses. "Umph," he said. The
crew of the muffled six-pounder in the bows emerged from the fore
hatchway and began to cast off the clips securing the lid of the
ammunition box.
In silence they stared at the dull green globular object that bobbed
past them in the trough of a sea, the soft lead horns projecting
ominously as the waves washed over the rounded surface.
"One of ours," said the Lieutenant, with a swift expert glance. He
stepped inboard a pace and studied a chart. "Hell! It's come a long
way--must ha' been Tuesday's gale."
The launch held on her course till she had reached the limit of the
safety zone of a bursting mine; stopped, and brought the gun to the
ready. The gun-layer adjusted his sight, and the tiny gun platform
rolled in sickening lurches.
"She may steady for a moment," said the Lieutenant, without
conviction. "Choose your time." The gunlayer chose it.
"Bang! A puff of smoke dissolved about the muzzle and the shell sent
up a column of foam a yard beyond the preposterous target.
"Try again," said the Lieutenant, and unslung the rifle. "Fire on
the downward roll."
The gunlayer fired on the downward and then on the upward roll, and
each time the shell went sobbing away into the Channel haze, and the
dark, smooth object still bobbed in the fast-fading light amid the
waves. The Lieutenant kicked aside his seventeenth empty brass
cylinder and snapped the rifle bolt angrily. "There's the smoke of
the convoy," he shouted to his second in command, who was firing from
aft and swearing in a monotonous undertone that sounded like a
litany. "It's right in their track." For the ensuing half-hour they
kept up the fruitless fusillade until dusk blotted out the target.
The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant rang down for half-speed. "Secure the gun,"
he said, curtly, and to the Coxswain: "Close the blighter; we've got
to make a rope's end fast and tow it inshore out of the fairway."
The Coxswain gave his Commanding Officer a searching, incredulous
glance, as if he doubted his sanity, and spun the wheel round, but
the Lieutenant was lurching aft on his way to the cabin hatch. He
paused en route and thrust a head and shoulders into the engine-room.
"Bring a can of lubricating oil aft an' a handful of waste," he
shouted to the unseen occupant, and dived into his cabin.
Under direction of the First Lieutenant, a grass line was uncoiled
and one end made fast to a cleat; there was no time to be lost, for
the dusk was falling fast and the convoy with its attendant escorts
was a bare five miles away. The motor-launch circled round the
floating mine, visible only by reason of the intermittent whiteness
of the broken water about it. The Sub-Lieutenant stared at it
half-fascinated, the coils of the line in his hands. For a moment he
felt an angry resentment against the minesweepers; this, assuredly,
was their business. Then he remembered that they had garnered their
grim harvest and returned to port. The motor-launch was only a
gleaner.
"Now then!" He turned to see his Captain at his elbow, stark naked
as the moment he was born, glistening with oil like a wrestler of
old. "Give us the rope's end. Drop down to leeward when I
shout--an' stand by with a hot grog."
The speaker knotted the rope loosely over one muscular shoulder and
measured the distance to the mine with a dispassionate eye. "If I
bungle it and foul one of the horns," he said, "it'll blow the boat
to smithereens. You'd better stand by with life-belts for
yourselves."
"What about you?" asked the Sub. His Captain gave a little grim
laugh. "If that egg breaks, there won't be much of me to put a belt
round," and without further ado he slid over the stern into the water.
The crew of the launch watched the receding head and shoulders as
their Commanding Officer was carried to leeward on the crest of a
wave, and the Sub-Lieutenant, paying out loose coils of rope into the
dark water, murmured: "That's a man for you! They had a glimpse of
white gleaming body, as the swimmer circled cautiously round the
floating mine and the waves lifted or dropped him into their hollows.
Then for a moment he vanished and the watching group aft held their
breath.
"If he grabs for the ring bolt and catches hold of a horn----" said
the Coxswain, and left the sentence unfinished. The seconds passed.
Then out of the darkness came a thin hail. The Coxswain jumped to
the wheel; the second in command flung the slack line over the stern,
and the launch dropped down to leeward.
The numb, exhausted figure hauled over the side a minute later, to be
wrapped in blankets and massaged back to speech, resumed his clothes
and clumped forward to the wheel-house as the launch turned inshore
with the mine in tow.
He stared into the darkness astern as the line tautened. "God knows
if there are any more farther up the coast... But our beat's clear.
Full speed, Coxswain!"
2
THE MILLIONTH CHANCE
Three hundred feet above mother earth sat an able seaman of the Royal
Navy, reflecting on the strangeness of his profession. For the first
eighteen months of the War he had been a loading number of one of a
Battleship's six-inch guns; as such he spent most of his waking hours
punching a dummy projectile into the breech of a "loader," or, when
not at meals or asleep, following critically the fortunes of cinema
artistes as portrayed on the Grand Fleet films. There came a day
after that when the vagaries of fortune transplanted him to a Dover
Monitor, where he grew accustomed to the roar of fifteen-inch shells
from the Belgian coast batteries passing overhead, or pitching short
of his floating home in a thunderous upheaval of white water.
Finally he returned to his depot suffering from gun-deafness, to find
himself in due course one of a working party attached to a high-power
Naval Wireless Station, and still a little hard of hearing.
No one had consulted him as to his personal inclinations in the
matter of these changes; indeed, he never asked himself if it was
merely blind chance that ruled his comings and goings, or Fate,
far-seeing, omniscient, working to an appointed end. Destiny, as he
knew it, always appeared in the guise of a ship's corporal with a
Muster List and a stump of pencil. He paid his debts, tucked his
"papers" into the lining of his cap, shouldered his bag and hammock,
and passed without concern to such future as awaited him.
Whatever the effect of heavy gunfire on his hearing, his nervous
system remained unimpaired; so much so that, as he sat swaying in a
"boatswain's stool," three-quarters of the way up one of the four
hundred and thirty feet wireless masts, slapping creosote on to the
wooden lattice work with a brush, he hummed a little tune to himself:
"Laugh while you may,
There's still to-day--
You may be dead ter-morrer!"
He crooned contentedly, and desisted from his labours to survey, like
Moses of old, the landscape o'er.
Below him, seen through a thin veil of shifting mist, stretched
smooth grey downs and a network of roads. Directly beneath, tiny
figures moved among the buildings of the wireless station; on the
slope of a far hillside rows of conical tents showed white in a
passing gleam of sunshine. Something moving along one of the roads
held his interest for a moment and the song came to an end; a
field-gun battery going out to exercise; horses the size of mice. He
wondered what it must be like to be an airman and pepper an enemy
battery with a machine-gun. Wouldn't they scatter! Horses all mixed
up with the traces, plunging. Pap! pap! pap! would go the
machine-gun with the goggled face behind it, laughing triumphant...
Fine, it 'ud be.
He bent his head back and stared up into the low-lying clouds that
seemed to hover just overhead. Was it because he had been thinking
of aeroplanes, or did he really hear the hum of an engine coming down
out of the mist? The slender lattice-work above him rose towering
for another hundred feet, taking the eye criss-cross along its
diminishing perspective until it made you giddy. The sailor knotted
his brows and cursed his deafness as he strained to listen. Surely
it was an aeroplane. He could feel the vibration of its engine
rather than hear it. Or was it the wind droning in the taut wire
stays that spread earthward on every side.
Then, swift as a falling stone, flashing dark through the mist, he
saw the machine, apparently coming straight for him.
"Look out!" he shouted, and as he spoke the whirring thing crashed
fairly into the mast fifty feet above him with a splintering
concussion that shook the framework like a whip. The bluejacket
ducked his head as a shower of fragments descended, and sat waiting
for the thing to fall. Nothing happened. The last piece of
shattered propeller dropped clattering down the lattice for a little
distance, rebounded and vanished into space. Only the humming of the
wind broke a silence that had somehow become dreadful; dreading he
knew not what, the man looked up.
There was the plane, with her nose jammed securely between the bars
of the crossed lattice, embedded as far as the wings. The fuselage
stuck out into the air at right angles to the mast like a dragonfly
that had flown blindly against a sticky window... The sight was
extraordinary.
The A.B. craned his head downwards. The small figures on the earth
were running to and fro like ants. But where was the pilot? He
peered up at the motionless wreck and shouted. No reply came. Odd!
He'd better go and see about the pilot, who evidently hadn't seen the
mast in the fog, and, by the millionth chance, hit it.