I
The chief business of the Trawler Fleet is to attend to the traffic.
The submarine in her sphere attends to the enemy. Like the destroyer,
the submarine has created its own type of officer and man--with
language and traditions apart from the rest of the Service, and yet at
heart unchangingly of the Service. Their business is to run monstrous
risks from earth, air, and water, in what, to be of any use, must be
the coldest of cold blood.
The commander's is more a one-man job, as the crew's is more
team-work, than any other employment afloat. That is why the relations
between submarine officers and men are what they are. They play
hourly for each other's lives with Death the Umpire always at their
elbow on tiptoe to give them "out."
There is a stretch of water, once dear to amateur yachtsmen, now given
over to scouts, submarines, destroyers, and, of course, contingents of
trawlers. We were waiting the return of some boats which were due to
report. A couple surged up the still harbour in the afternoon light
and tied up beside their sisters. There climbed out of them three or
four high-booted, sunken-eyed pirates clad in sweaters, under jackets
that a stoker of the last generation would have disowned. This was
their first chance to compare notes at close hand. Together they
lamented the loss of a Zeppelin--"a perfect mug of a Zepp," who had
come down very low and offered one of them a sitting shot. "But what
_can_ you do with our guns? I gave him what I had, and then he started
bombing."
"I know he did," another said. "I heard him. That's what brought me
down to you. I thought he had you that last time."
"No, I was forty foot under when he hove out the big un. What happened
to _you_?"
"My steering-gear jammed just after I went down, and I had to go round
in circles till I got it straightened out. But _wasn't_ he a mug!"
"Was he the brute with the patch on his port side?" a sister-boat
demanded.
"No! This fellow had just been hatched. He was almost sitting on the
water, heaving bombs over."
"And my blasted steering-gear went and chose _then_ to go wrong," the
other commander mourned. "I thought his last little egg was going to
get me!"
Half an hour later, I was formally introduced to three or four quite
strange, quite immaculate officers, freshly shaved, and a little tired
about the eyes, whom I thought I had met before.