Then E14 went back to her base. She had a hellish time among the
Dardanelles nets; was, of course, fired at by the forts, just missed a
torpedo from the beach, scraped a mine, and when she had time to take
stock found electric mine-wires twisted round her propellers and all
her hull scraped and scored with wire marks. But that, again, was only
in the day's work. The point she insisted upon was that she had been
for seventy days in the Sea of Marmara with no securer base for refit
than the centre of the same, and during all that while she had not had
"any engine-room defect which has not been put right by the
engine-room staff of the boat." The commander and the third officer
went sick for a while; the first lieutenant got gastro-enteritis and
was in bed (if you could see that bed!) "for the remainder of our stay
in the Sea of Marmara," but "this boat has never been out of running
order." The credit is ascribed to "the excellence of my chief
engine-room artificer, James Hollier Hague, O.N. 227715," whose name
is duly submitted to the authorities "for your consideration for
advancement to the rank of warrant officer."
Seventy days of every conceivable sort of risk, within and without, in
a boat which is all engine-room, except where she is sick-bay; twelve
thousand miles covered since last overhaul and "never out of running
order"--thanks to Mr. Hague. Such artists as he are the kind of
engine-room artificers that commanders intrigue to get hold of--each
for his own boat--and when the tales are told in the Trade, their
names, like Abou Ben Adhem's, lead all the rest.
I do not know the exact line of demarcation between engine-room and
gunnery repairs, but I imagine it is faint and fluid. E11, for
example, while she was helping E14 to shell a beached steamer, smashed
half her gun-mounting, "the gun-layer being thrown overboard, and the
gun nearly following him." However, the mischief was repaired in the
next twenty-four hours, which, considering the very limited deck space
of a submarine, means that all hands must have been moderately busy.
One hopes that they had not to dive often during the job.
But worse is to come. E2 (Commander D. Stocks) carried an externally
mounted gun which, while she was diving up the Dardanelles on
business, got hung up in the wires and stays of a net. She saw them
through the conning-tower scuttles at a depth of 80 ft--one wire
hawser round the gun, another round the conning-tower, and so on.
There was a continuous crackling of small explosions overhead which
she thought were charges aimed at her by the guard-boats who watch the
nets. She considered her position for a while, backed, got up steam,
barged ahead, and shore through the whole affair in one wild surge.
Imagine the roof of a navigable cottage after it has snapped telegraph
lines with its chimney, and you will get a small idea of what happens
to the hull of a submarine when she uses her gun to break wire hawsers
with.