The great basins were crammed with craft of kinds never known before
on any Navy List. Some were as they were born, others had been
converted, and a multitude have been designed for special cases. The
Navy prepares against all contingencies by land, sea, and air. It was
a relief to meet a batch of comprehensible destroyers and to drop
again into the little mouse-trap ward-rooms, which are as
large-hearted as all Our oceans. The men one used to know as
destroyer-lieutenants ("born stealing") are serious Commanders and
Captains to-day, but their sons, Lieutenants in command and
Lieutenant-Commanders, do follow them. The sea in peace is a hard
life; war only sketches an extra line or two round the young mouths.
The routine of ships always ready for action is so part of the blood
now that no one notices anything except the absence of formality and
of the "crimes" of peace. What Warrant Officers used to say at length
is cut down to a grunt. What the sailor-man did not know and expected
to have told him, does not exist. He has done it all too often at sea
and ashore.
I watched a little party working under a leading hand at a job which,
eighteen months ago, would have required a Gunner in charge. It was
comic to see his orders trying to overtake the execution of them.
Ratings coming aboard carried themselves with a (to me) new
swing--not swank, but consciousness of adequacy. The high, dark
foc'sles which, thank goodness, are only washed twice a week,
received them and their bags, and they turned-to on the instant as a
man picks up his life at home. Like the submarine crew, they come to
be a breed apart--double-jointed, extra-toed, with brazen bowels and
no sort of nerves.
It is the same in the engine-room, when the ships come in for their
regular looking-over. Those who love them, which you would never guess
from the language, know exactly what they need, and get it without
fuss. Everything that steams has her individual peculiarity, and the
great thing is, at overhaul, to keep to it and not develop a new one.
If, for example, through some trick of her screws not synchronising, a
destroyer always casts to port when she goes astern, do not let any
zealous soul try to make her run true, or you will have to learn her
helm all over again. And it is vital that you should know exactly what
your ship is going to do three seconds before she does it. Similarly
with men. If any one, from Lieutenant-Commander to stoker, changes his
personal trick or habit--even the manner in which he clutches his chin
or caresses his nose at a crisis--the matter must be carefully
considered in this world where each is trustee for his neighbour's
life and, vastly more important, the corporate honour.
"What are the destroyers doing just now?" I asked.
"Oh--running about--much the same as usual."
The Navy hasn't the least objection to telling one everything that it
is doing. Unfortunately, it speaks its own language, which is
incomprehensible to the civilian. But you will find it all in "The
Channel Pilot" and "The Riddle of the Sands."
It is a foul coast, hairy with currents and rips, and mottled with
shoals and rocks. Practically the same men hold on here in the same
ships, with much the same crews, for months and months. A most senior
officer told me that they were "good boys"--on reflection, "quite good
boys"--but neither he nor the flags on his chart explained how they
managed their lightless, unmarked navigations through black night,
blinding rain, and the crazy, rebounding North Sea gales. They
themselves ascribe it to Joss that they have not piled up their ships
a hundred times.
"I expect it must be because we're always dodging about over the same
ground. One gets to smell it. We've bumped pretty hard, of course, but
we haven't expended much up to date. You never know your luck on
patrol, though."