The child in the Pullman-car uniform just going ashore is a wireless
operator, aged nineteen. He is attached to a flagship at least 120
feet long, under an admiral aged twenty-five, who was, till the other
day, third mate of a North Atlantic tramp, but who now leads a
squadron of six trawlers to hunt submarines. The principle is simple
enough. Its application depends on circumstances and surroundings. One
class of German submarines meant for murder off the coasts may use a
winding and rabbit-like track between shoals where the choice of water
is limited. Their career is rarely long, but, while it lasts,
moderately exciting. Others, told off for deep-sea assassinations, are
attended to quite quietly and without any excitement at all. Others,
again, work the inside of the North Sea, making no distinction between
neutrals and Allied ships. These carry guns, and since their work
keeps them a good deal on the surface, the Trawler Fleet, as we know,
engages them there--the submarine firing, sinking, and rising again in
unexpected quarters; the trawler firing, dodging, and trying to ram.
The trawlers are strongly built, and can stand a great deal of
punishment. Yet again, other German submarines hang about the skirts
of fishing-fleets and fire into the brown of them. When the war was
young this gave splendidly "frightful" results, but for some reason or
other the game is not as popular as it used to be.
Lastly, there are German submarines who perish by ways so curious and
inexplicable that one could almost credit the whispered idea (it must
come from the Scotch skippers) that the ghosts of the women they
drowned pilot them to destruction. But what form these shadows
take--whether of "The Lusitania Ladies," or humbler stewardesses and
hospital nurses--and what lights or sounds the thing fancies it sees
or hears before it is blotted out, no man will ever know. The main
fact is that the work is being done. Whether it was necessary or
politic to re-awaken by violence every sporting instinct of a
sea-going people is a question which the enemy may have to consider
later on.
Dawn off the Foreland--the young flood making
Jumbled and short and steep--
Black in the hollows and bright where it's breaking--
Awkward water to sweep.
"Mines reported in the fairway,
"Warn all traffic and detain.
"'Sent up Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain."
Noon off the Foreland--the first ebb making
Lumpy and strong in the bight.
Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking
And the jackdaws wild with fright!
"Mines located in the fairway,
"Boats now working up the chain,
"Sweepers--Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock and Golden Gain."
Dusk off the Foreland--the last light going
And the traffic crowding through,
And five damned trawlers with their syreens blowing
Heading the whole review!
"Sweep completed in the fairway.
"No more mines remain.
"'Sent back Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain."