THE DAY.
I.
All through the peaceful night of 30th May 1916 British squadrons were
at sea steaming steadily eastward. Fighting-ships of almost every class
were represented; great battleships and battle-cruisers, armoured
cruisers of an older type, new and very fast light cruisers, the
ubiquitous destroyers in their dozens, all converging silently towards
the area on the other side of the North Sea which was presently to
become the scene of the mightiest and most terrible battle in British
naval history.
The Commander-in-Chief and the Admirals in command of squadrons may
possibly have known that something unusual was in the air; but it is
doubtful if any subordinate officers or men had the least inkling of
what the next day would bring forth. They knew that a battle was always
possible, and were ready and anxious for it. Off and on for nearly
twenty-two months they had scoured the gray wastes of the North Sea,
and had explored its grayer fogs, always hoping that the next dawn
would bless their tired eyes with a view of the far-flung battle-line
of the enemy stretched out across the horizon before them. But morning
after morning the sun had risen to display the same bare and monotonous
vista of sea and sky.
Sometimes the ocean was calm and peaceful, the sun shone undimmed, and
the blue sky towards the horizon was piled high with mass upon mass of
mountainous white cumulus. Sometimes they had fogs, when they could see
barely a hundred yards; sometimes the prevailing North Sea mists, in
which the visibility alternated between two and five miles. At other
times the wind howled, and the leaden sea was whipped into fury by
gales; while the sky became overcast with dark clouds and streaked with
the white, frayed-out streamers of mares' tails. They had come to know
the vagaries of their cruising ground by heart; but whatever its aspect
the sea was ever innocent of the one thing they all wished to see--the
German High Sea Fleet.
Their wistful longing was just as acute as that of the men in the
storm-battered ships of Columbus when straining their eyes towards the
western horizon for the first dim blue traces of the new continent; and
now, through sheer disappointment, not a few of them had come to
believe that the chance they all prayed and longed for would never
come.
Daylight on 31st May found the _Mariner_ and many other destroyers
still steaming eastward in company with the battle-cruiser fleet under
the command of Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty in the _Lion_. Certain
light-cruiser squadrons, acting as scouts, were stationed some distance
ahead of the heavier vessels. The morning--which had broken beautifully
fine, with a calm sea--passed without incident, and it was not until
shortly after half-past two in the afternoon that the advanced
squadrons reported the enemy in force to the eastward.
It is impossible to give any idea of the thrill of excitement which
passed through the officers and men of the ships when the facts became
known. The bugles blared, and they hurried to their action stations.
'Enemy in force!' Did it mean that they were in touch with the High Sea
Fleet? Had their chance come at last, the chance for which they had all
been hoping ever since that fateful 4th August 1914?
Men looked anxiously at their neighbours to see how they took the
momentous news; but nowhere did a face show signs of fear. On the
contrary, their expression and demeanour testified to their implicit
and unshaken confidence in themselves and their leaders. They laughed,
jests passed from man to man and from group to group, and they went
about their business with an intense keenness born of a new hope.
The big battle-cruisers swung rapidly into fighting formation and
increased speed, their wash churning the calm sea into great waves.
They presented a magnificent spectacle as they steamed into action with
the smoke curling from their funnel-tops, white ensigns flying at each
masthead, and the huge guns in their turrets pointing their lean
muzzles skywards.
At two-thirty-five P.M. a considerable amount of smoke was sighted to
the eastward, and a little less than an hour later the gigantic shapes
of five hostile battle-cruisers were looming up over the horizon.
'All guns, load!' came the first order from the control positions.
'Salvos by director! Guns--ready!'
Inside a turret a burly A.B., clad in flannel shirt and trousers, spat
solemnly on his hands, stretched out a hairy tattooed arm, and moved a
small, brightly polished steel lever. Instantly a clattering hydraulic
chain rammer uncoiled itself like a snake, and an enormous shell
weighing three-quarters of a ton was pushed bodily out of the
loading-tray to vanish into the open breech of the gun with a smack and
a thud. The rammer was withdrawn, another man manipulated a handle, and
two cream-coloured, sausage-shaped bundles with red ends rolled into
the space just vacated by the projectile. They were the cordite
charges, swathed in innocent-looking silk coverings, the red
extremities being the muslin bags containing the powder-igniters. The
silk, somehow, seemed strangely out of place in the gun-turret of a
battle-cruiser. It reminded one irresistibly of the counter of a
drapery establishment; but for many a long year artillery experts have
known that a silk-covered cartridge leaves little or no burning residue
in the breech of the gun when the weapon is fired. Hence its use.
Again the hairy, tattooed gentleman moved his lever, and the rammer,
darting forward, propelled two quarter charges into the yawning breech
of the gun. The operation was repeated, while a man fiddled for a
moment with the lock, and then the great steel breech-block swung to
with a clang.
'Right gun, loaded!' some one bawled, as something slipped into place
with a click.
'Right gun, ready!' from another man.
The gunlayer watched a dial, and the gun's crew stood tense and
expectant, while the huge breeches of the weapons moved ponderously up
and down, with a wheezing and a groaning of the water through the
hydraulic machinery. The turret twitched slowly to the right, stopped,
and then moved again. Ammunition-cages containing more shell and
cartridges ready for the next round came clattering up from the
loading-chambers.
The officer in charge, a lieutenant with absurdly pink cheeks and curly
hair, was stationed at his periscope, one end of which protruded
through a hole in the armoured roof of the turret, and gave him a view
of the surrounding sea.
'Can yer see anythink, sir?' some one asked in a hoarse whisper, his
curiosity getting the better of him as the officer bent down to wipe
the eyepiece of his instrument with a gaudy bandana handkerchief.
'Yes,' he answered cheerily, 'five battle-cruisers, some light
cruisers, and a good many destroyers! Stand by. It'll be starting in a
minute.' He replaced the handkerchief in his pocket, and applied his
eyes to the periscope again.
The loading number of the right gun, he with the hairy arms, was busy
with a piece of chalk, and the other members of the gun's crew who had
nothing particular to do watched him with some amusement. 'TO HUNNY,
WITH LOVE FROM BILL MASON, A.B.,' he traced out laboriously on the
sleek, yellow-painted side of the huge lyddite projectile. He stepped
back to survey his handiwork with a little chuckle of glee. 'That'll
tickle 'em!' he remarked, winking solemnly.
The men tittered.
The lieutenant at the periscope suddenly held his breath as a muffled,
whistling shriek and the roar of an explosion from outside brought the
men's heads up in eager, listening attention.
'Garn!' said Mason with a grin; 'that ain't gone nowhere near us. 'Ave
another go, ole son!'
'Stand by, men!' cautioned the officer, who was the only person who
could see what went on in the outside world.
Mason licked his hands and rubbed them unconcernedly on the seat of his
trousers.
_Whe-e-e-w!_ _whe-e-e-e-w!_ _B-o-o-m!_ from the outside again, followed
by the sound of another detonation and a slight jar, which showed that
the ship had been struck somewhere.
The gun's crew looked at each other. The turret moved slowly to the
right, and went on moving. The breeches of the guns began to see-saw
gently up and down in rhythm with the movement of the ship. Then a bell
rang, and with a roar and a thud the right gun suddenly went off and
recoiled backwards along its slide. It ran out again with a wheezing,
sucking sound, and the massive breech-block flew open with a metallic
crash.
'Left gun, ready!' came a shout.
The turret became filled with the warm, acrid smoke of burnt cordite.
There came the swishing sound of the washing-out apparatus, and the
clatter of the chain rammer.
The bell rang again. B-O-O-M! roared the left gun. The great battle had
begun.
II.
It is impossible for any single spectator to describe a naval action as
a whole from his own personal observations and experiences,
particularly a battle which divides itself into many different phases,
lasts intermittently from about three-thirty in the afternoon until the
same time next morning, and is fought over many miles of sea.
The _Mariner_ and various other destroyers were present with the
battle-cruisers throughout the first shock of the engagement and the
running fight which ensued. Some of them, the _Mariner_ included,
assisted to repel the attacks of hostile torpedo-craft during daylight,
and delivered their own attacks on the heavy ships of the enemy during
the afternoon and night; but though Pincher Martin saw a great deal of
the fighting, he had no very clear conception of how the engagement
went as a whole or of how the time passed.
When he first saw the enemy they appeared as a row of immense gray
shapes stretched out across the horizon. They were battle-cruisers--he
knew that from their build; and though they must have been fully ten
miles distant, they looked grim and menacing. With them were several
light cruisers, looking absolute pygmies alongside their overgrown
sisters; while on the farther side he saw, or thought he could see, a
swarm of destroyers. It was now about three-thirty P.M., and the
weather was quite clear.
The _Mariner_ was stationed close to the line of battle-cruisers,
and between them and the enemy. She occupied one of the best seats in
the house, the front row of the stalls, so to speak, a position from
which, but for the clouds of smoke and masses of spray flung up by the
falling shell, those on board her would have seen practically
everything that happened. But the billet was not exactly a comfortable
one. Indeed, it was most unpleasant; for when the firing began the shot
from both the British and the German guns whistled and thundered
overhead, while there was always the chance that the destroyers would
receive the benefit of hostile shell falling short of their intended
target.
Pincher watched the enemy with a certain amount of fascinated
apprehension. They seemed to swing into a single line, and then, quite
suddenly, he noticed five or six tongues of bright orange flame and
clouds of brown smoke leap out from the side of their leader. There was
a lengthy pause, followed by a terrifying crescendo of howling and
screeching as the giant projectiles came hurtling through the air. They
fell in a bunch a bare fifty yards short of one of the battle-cruisers,
and exploded with a roar, the great upheaval in the sea almost
completely shutting out all traces of the ship beyond. The British guns
instantly flashed out in reply, and the next moment the engagement
became general.
From this time forward the whole affair seemed ghastly and unreal, an
awful nightmare in which it was quite impossible to remember exactly
what had happened. The air shook and trembled with a turmoil of
ear-splitting sound, in which one heard the deep booming note of the
British guns as they gave tongue, the shrill whistling or droning of
shell as they passed overhead, and the sharper concussion of the
hostile projectiles as they fell and burst.
Looked at from a distance, the huge hulls of the German ships seemed
literally buried in a spouting maelstrom of shell fountains rising from
the sea all round them. At times a shadowy gray mass, sparkling with
wicked-looking gun-flashes, slid slowly into view behind some great
upheaval in the water, to disappear the next instant as another salvo
of shell fell and burst. The British guns seemed to be making very good
shooting, but it was impossible to note exact results from the low deck
of the destroyer.
Pincher glanced at the _Lion_ and the other ships, and the spectacle
held him spell-bound and made him feel almost dizzy. They were enduring
a veritable tornado of shell, and the sea all round them leapt and
boiled until at times the rushing shapes of the great vessels, close as
they were, seemed actually hidden in the turmoil of flung-up water.
Some of the shell were going home, too, for here and there in the rifts
in the spray and smoke he saw the deep-red flash, a cloud of oily
smoke, and a shower of flying débris as they struck and exploded. There
were a few ragged holes in the gray steel sides; here and there the
symmetrical shape of a ship's superstructure was marred by a twisted
and distorted mass of steelwork, and pierced funnels vomited forth
their black contributions to add to the already smoke-laden atmosphere.
Star-shaped splashes of yellow and white showed where shell had struck
armour, had exploded, and had failed to penetrate; but it seemed
nothing short of a miracle how any ships built by human agency could
withstand such a terrific hammering without being battered to pieces.
It was an awesome sight.
It was well for the _Mariner_ and her neighbours that the German
shooting was so accurate. The hostile fire was concentrated on the
battle-cruisers, and every shell seemed either to strike or else to
fall within a few yards of them. The destroyers in their precarious
position were untouched, but for all that the experience was
nerve-racking, and Pincher had a feeling of intense relief when he saw
the brilliant flashes and rolling clouds of brown, rapidly dissolving
smoke from the British guns. They were firing fast, and it was no small
consolation to think that the enemy were enduring the same terrible
ordeal themselves.
One of the most awful incidents of that eventful day was the blowing
up of the _Indefatigable_. The catastrophe, utterly unexpected,
was appalling in its suddenness. At one moment the huge,
nineteen-thousand-ton ship was steaming bravely along with her guns
firing; the next, a salvo of five or six shell seemed to strike her
simultaneously amidships. There came the splintering crash of the
explosions, some spurts of flame, and upheavals of yellow, brown,
black, gray, and white smoke. The great ship seemed literally to be
divided in two, for both the bow and the stern reared themselves out of
the water at the same moment. The thundering, shattering roar of the
explosion made the nearer ships dance and tremble. The report seemed to
compress the air until one's ear-drums threatened to burst, and masses
of débris, large and small, were precipitated skywards, presently to
come raining down into the sea in all directions.
The smoke-cloud spread and rose into the air to a height of three or
four hundred feet. Soon it completely blotted out the scene of the
disaster, and hung there impalpably, wreathing and eddying in thick,
rolling masses. Then some freakish air-current caused another cloud of
brown vapour to rise and overtop the first, until the whole mass looked
for all the world like some gigantic, overbaked cottage loaf sitting
squarely on the sea.
Within two minutes the ship had disappeared for ever, taking with her
her gallant crew of nearly eight hundred officers and men. Barely a
soul was saved, though destroyers, hurrying to the scene at imminent
danger to themselves, searched the flotsam-strewn area for survivors.
The _Queen Mary_ met a precisely similar fate. Again there came
the terrible roar and flare of an explosion, followed by the cloud of
smoke, in which the great ship sank almost instantly to the bottom. It
was an awful moment; but one of the most magnificent spectacles of the
battle was the sight of the great three-funnelled _Tiger_ steaming
at full speed through the pall a few moments after her unfortunate
sister met her fate. At one moment she was in full view; the next her
bows disappeared, then her midship portion with its three great
funnels, and finally her stern, until the whole enormous length of the
ship was completely swallowed up in the mass of brown vapour. Then her
sharp stem with its creaming bow-wave emerged into sight on the other
side of the pall, to be followed by the rest of the vessel as she drove
clear of the scene of the catastrophe with her guns flashing defiance
and her glorious white ensigns fluttering. It was an inspiring sight,
but of the gallant crew of the stricken _Queen Mary_, comprising
nearly a thousand souls, only four young midshipmen and under twenty
men were rescued.
The loss of these vessels was a sad blow, but still the battle raged
furiously. The hostile shooting, however, seemed to be becoming
erratic, a fact which told its own tale, while ours steadily improved.
Indeed, the next time Pincher was vouch-safed a fleeting glimpse of the
enemy, two of their largest ships seemed to be badly on fire, while a
third had quitted the line and was some distance astern of her
consorts. But it was with a feeling of intense relief that the sorely
tried British saw a welcome reinforcement of four battleships
approaching at full speed, firing heavily as they came.
It was at about this time that some signal was hoisted in the
_Lion_, and before Pincher quite realised what was happening, the
_Mariner_ and most of the other destroyers swung round and steamed
for the enemy as hard as they could go.
'Gawd!' he whispered breathlessly; 'we're goin' in to attack!'
It seemed a suicidal sort of business, another charge of the Light
Brigade, as the ship, quivering and shaking to the thrust of her
turbines, drove on at full speed. They were between the lines, and the
screeching and howling of the heavy projectiles as the two squadrons
fired at each other became fainter and more distant. They drew nearer
and nearer to the enemy. They were travelling at something over thirty
knots--fifty feet a second, one thousand yards a minute.
'Lie down!' came a sudden order to the guns' crews, for in another
moment the enemy's secondary guns would be opening fire. The men flung
themselves to the deck and watched.
It was at this moment that Pincher first saw a cloud of enemy
destroyers and some light cruisers coming from behind the line of
German heavy ships. They darted out at full speed to ward off the
British attack, perhaps to deliver one of their own; but whatever
happened they were too late, for the British small craft, swinging
round, turned to meet them.
'Guns' crews, close up!' came an order. 'Load with lyddite!' The men
scrambled to their feet and waited.
'Enemy destroyers bearing green four-five,' came through the
voice-pipe. 'Rapid independent! Commence!'
For the next few minutes Pincher was so hard at work cramming shell
into his gun that he could hardly see what was happening, much less
understand it all. He realised the ship was being fired at, for there
were splashes in the sea all round, and he could hear the shrieking
whistle of the shell-splinters; but the roaring of the _Mariner's_
own guns drowned every other sound. It was glorious to think that his
own gun was firing at last, and somehow he did not very much care what
happened so long as the enemy suffered.
It was an exciting experience. The hostile flotilla appeared as a drove
of rushing gray shapes in the midst of a turmoil of shell fountains,
smoke, and gun-flashes. There were so many of them, and they were so
closely packed, that it was unnecessary to single out any one
particular vessel as a target, and the British guns merely fired into
'the brown,' with the almost absolute certainty of hitting something.
Nearer and nearer they came--four thousand yards, three thousand five
hundred, three thousand. In numbers the two forces were about equal,
but the effects of the heavier British guns soon made themselves felt,
for before long two of the enemy seemed to crumple up and vanish in a
cloud of smoke and steam. A bare thirty seconds later another shared
the same fate, while a fourth, badly hit, lay nearly motionless on the
water and very much down by the bows, with a storm of shell spurting,
foaming, and bursting all round her. The hostile attack was beaten off,
for after a very sharp close-range action the enemy's flotillas turned
tail and scuttled back to the shelter of their heavier ships.
Then the British flotillas, with the ground cleared, charged on again
to press home the attack on the German battle-cruisers. The moment they
came within range they were fired upon, and within a few seconds all
the enemy's lighter guns came into action in a furious and frantic
endeavour to drive them off. The gray shapes of the hostile vessels
scintillated with gun-flashes and became shrouded in smoke, and once
more the sea started to spout and boil angrily. But the destroyers were
not to be denied, and after the gigantic shell fountains of the earlier
portion of the battle, these smaller splashes, alarming as they might
have been in ordinary circumstances, seemed puny and insignificant.
Indeed, they came as a positive relief, and nobody worried his head
about them.
The little craft still drove on under an awful fire, and the
_Mariner_, following round in the wake of her leader, turned and
fired two torpedoes in rapid succession when she came within range.
Others did the same, some ships arriving within three thousand yards of
the enemy to do so. Some of the torpedoes must have gone home; but
before they reached the enemy the attackers had turned about and were
steaming hard to get out of range.
The _Mariner_ had been hit by only one small projectile, which
burst aft, but did no damage to speak of except inflicting slight
flesh-wounds on two men, much to their subsequent satisfaction. Other
ships had not been so lucky, and Pincher noticed one destroyer which
had been struck in the engine-room and could not steam. The last time
he saw her she lay motionless between the two fleets, enduring a
terrible fire from every German gun which would bear. The greater
number of her men must have been killed and her deck converted into a
reeking shambles, but her colours were still flying.
The action between the opposing battle-cruisers had continued with
unabated fury, both forces steaming to the southward on roughly
parallel courses; but at four-forty-two the German High Sea Fleet had
been sighted to the south-eastward from the _Lion_. Sir David Beatty
thereupon swung round to an opposite course to lead the new-comers
towards Sir John Jellicoe, who, with the battleships of the Grand
Fleet, was somewhere to the north. The enemy's battle-cruisers,
maintaining their station ahead of the High Sea Fleet, conformed to
the movement of the British shortly afterwards.
The Fifth Battle-Squadron, under the orders of Rear-Admiral Evan Thomas
in the _Barham_, with the sister-ships _Valiant_, _Malaya_, and
_Warspite_, were now approaching from the north, firing heavily as
they came on to the head of the hostile line; but shortly before five
o'clock they swung round into line astern of the battle-cruisers,
coming under a heavy but more or less ineffectual fire from the leading
German battleships as they did so.
Up to now the weather conditions had been favourable alike to both
sides, but at about four-forty-five a thick mist and a great mass of
dark cloud settled on the eastern horizon, and blurred the outlines of
the enemy's vessels until they appeared vague, shadowy, and indistinct.
To the westward, however, the sky was still quite clear, and the
British were plainly silhouetted against the horizon, which gave the
Germans the advantage in so far as the light was concerned.
Between five and six P.M. the action continued, Sir David Beatty's
force, with the four battleships astern of it, gradually drawing
ahead of the enemy, and concentrating a very heavy fire on the
battle-cruisers at the head of his line at a range of about fourteen
thousand yards. The hostile battleships, meanwhile, farther astern,
could do little to reply, and ship after ship of the enemy was badly
battered, while one of their battle-cruisers, terribly damaged, was
observed to quit the line.
At about six o'clock the leading British battleships were sighted to
the north from the _Lion_, and at this time Sir David Beatty, to clear
the way for them to come into action, altered course to the east and
crossed the enemy's T, reducing the range to twelve thousand yards as
he did so, and inflicting terrible damage with his heavy fire. At this
time only four hostile vessels were in sight, three battle-cruisers and
one battleship, the others being obliterated in the mist.
Twenty minutes later the Third Battle-Cruiser Squadron, commanded by
Rear-Admiral the Hon. H. L. A. Hood, joined Sir David Beatty. The
reinforcement was ordered to take station ahead, and steamed gallantly
into action at a range of eight thousand yards. The _Invincible_,
subjected to a concentrated fire from every hostile gun which would
bear, was sunk.
Previous to this, between five-fifty and six P.M., Rear-Admiral Sir
Robert Arbuthnot, with the older cruisers _Defence_ and _Warrior_,
had steamed in to attack the enemy's light cruisers, and the two
vessels, with their 9·2 and 7·5 inch guns, sank or inflicted severe
damage upon their opponents. But in doing so, unaware, on account of
the mist, of the immediate presence of the enemy's heavier ships, they
suddenly came within easy range of monster weapons against which their
comparatively light armaments were impotent.
An awful fire was concentrated upon them. The _Defence_, to use
the words of an eye-witness, was 'blown clean out of the water' by a
salvo of shell. The _Warrior_ was hit repeatedly by heavy shell,
and suffered terrible injury, for before escaping from her unenviable
position she had arrived within a range of about five thousand four
hundred yards of two hostile battle-cruisers.
The ship was little more than a battered wreck. A distance of five
thousand four hundred yards is nothing at sea. It is point-blank range,
and may be compared with using a rifle at fifty yards. Her casualties
in killed and wounded had been very severe. The engine-rooms and
stokeholds were flooded through shell striking and penetrating below
the water-line, while she was blazing furiously aft, and was making
water fast. The whole vessel was pierced and perforated until she
resembled a gigantic nutmeg-grater, and as time went on she settled
lower and lower in the water. Certain of the survivors tried to quench
the fire with hoses, while the remainder set to work to build rafts,
practically all the boats having been demolished. The conflagration was
eventually subdued, and then came the piteous and gruesome task of
identifying the dead, while the wounded were brought on deck in case it
should be necessary to abandon the ship.
For over an hour she lay there helpless, and we can imagine the relief
of officers and men when, later in the evening, the _Engadine_, a
cross-Channel steamer converted into a seaplane depot ship, arrived on
the scene and took her in tow. The energy of every soul on board was
then concentrated on keeping the ship afloat; and, as the steam-pumping
arrangements were useless, the exhausted men were at the hand-pumps all
through the hours of darkness.
But it was not to be. The weather during the night grew rapidly worse,
and when the next dawn came the wind and sea had risen, and waves were
breaking over the quarterdeck. The cruiser could not last much longer.
She was sinking fast, and there was nothing for it but to abandon her.
One by one the wounded were passed down into boats and were ferried
across to the rescuing vessel. They were followed in turn by the
remainder of the ship's company, the officers, and finally the captain;
and when last seen, between nine and ten in the morning, the
_Warrior_ was sinking by the stern. But she had upheld her name.
She came to a noble end, for she had fought valiantly against
overwhelming odds until she could fight no more, and her name, together
with those of other brave ships lost on that eventful day, will never
be forgotten. Her heroic dead did not sacrifice their lives in vain.
Of the gallant work of the _Engadine_, which towed the cruiser for
seventy-five miles between eight-forty P.M. and seven-fifteen A.M. the
next morning, and was instrumental in saving the lives of her ship's
company, we need make no mention here. The exploit occupies its
deserved position of prominence in Sir John Jellicoe's official
despatch.
III.
It was immediately after the destroyer action between the lines that
the _Mariner_ first sighted another body of ships looming up to
the southward. The new-comers, about sixteen large ships accompanied by
many smaller vessels, came on at full speed towards the scene of
action, and at first the men in the destroyers imagined them to be the
battleships of the British Grand Fleet. Their spirits rose accordingly,
for with the arrival of these powerful units the enemy's
battle-cruisers, cut off from their base, could not escape
annihilation. But a few minutes later, when the great ships had come
nearer, their unfamiliar shape and unusual light-gray colouring
proclaimed them for what they really were--the battleship squadrons of
the German High Sea Fleet.
Some of the destroyers which were favourably placed at once dashed in
to attack with torpedoes, retiring as soon as they had fired, and
before very long most of them had rejoined the heavier vessels.[38]
Their next chance of doing something was to come after nightfall.
[38] That is, those destroyers attached to Sir David Beatty's
squadron.
From about six-fifteen onwards it is very difficult to give a
comprehensive account of what occurred, for with the arrival on the
scene of the British Grand Fleet, the German main squadrons turned and
retired to the southward. Sir John Jellicoe chased at full speed; and,
as he says in his despatch, 'the enemy's tactics were of a nature
generally to avoid further action,' while he refers to his own ships as
the 'following' or 'chasing' fleet. Moreover, in the engagements which
ensued, the enemy were favoured by the weather, for banks of heavy mist
and smoke-clouds from the hostile destroyers reduced the visibility to
six miles or less, and periodically screened the opponents from each
other's view.
The fighting between the opposing battleships, which began at
six-seventeen P.M., seems to have resolved itself into a series of ship
to ship and squadron to squadron encounters rather than a formal fleet
action; but, while our vessels remained in their organised divisions
throughout, the enemy, soon after the fight began, seem to have become
more or less scattered, and to have had a trail of injured ships
struggling along in rear of their main body.
A hostile vessel would suddenly loom up out of the haze a bare eight or
ten thousand yards distant, to be greeted with salvo after salvo of
shell as the British battleships drove by. She would reply to the best
of her ability; but, whereas our vessels had just come into action, and
their shooting was very accurate, the German firing was not good, and
had little or no result. Ship after ship of the enemy appeared through
the murk to be fired at heavily for three, four, or five minutes, then
to disappear in the haze, badly hammered and perhaps on fire.
To give some idea of what took place during this period it is advisable
to quote largely from the official despatches of Sir John Jellicoe and
Sir David Beatty. There was the battleship _Marlborough_, which, with
the First Battle-Squadron, came into action with the retiring enemy at
six-seventeen P.M. at a range of eleven thousand yards. She first fired
seven rapid salvos at a German vessel of the _Kaiser_ class, then
engaged a cruiser, and again a battleship, doing them all serious
injury. At six-fifty-four she was struck by a torpedo, the only one
which took effect out of the many fired by the hostile destroyers; but,
though damaged and with a considerable list to starboard, she remained
in the line, and opened fire again at a cruiser at seven-three P.M.
Nine minutes later she started to fire fourteen rapid salvos at another
battleship, hitting her badly and forcing her out of the line. Her
firing throughout was most effective and accurate, and this in spite of
the injury caused by the underwater explosion of the torpedo.
The First Battle-Squadron closed the range to nine thousand yards, and
wrought great havoc with its fire, but only one of its vessels, the
_Colossus_, was struck, despite the hail of shell from the enemy.
The Second Battle-Squadron was in action with other German battleships
between six-thirty and seven-twenty P.M., and also with a
battle-cruiser which had dropped astern seriously injured; while the
Fourth Battle-Squadron, with which was Sir John Jellicoe's flagship the
_Iron Duke_, engaged two battleships, as well as battle-cruisers,
cruisers, and light cruisers. The vessels of the Fourth Light-Cruiser
Squadron remained ahead of the British battleships until seven-twenty
P.M., when they moved out to counter the attack of hostile
destroyers, and successfully drove them off. They did it again an hour
later, in company with the Eleventh Destroyer Flotilla, and came under
a heavy fire from the enemy's battleships at ranges of between six
thousand five hundred and eight thousand yards. It was then that the
_Calliope_, flying the broad pendant of Commodore Le Mesurier, was
hit several times, and suffered casualties, but luckily escaped serious
injury. In the course of these attacks torpedoes were fired at the foe,
while four hostile destroyers were sunk by the British fire.
At seven-fourteen Sir David Beatty, who, with his battle-cruisers, was
apparently separated from Sir John Jellicoe, sighted two
battle-cruisers and two battleships in the mist. He promptly engaged
them, and, setting one on fire, so damaged another that she was forced
to haul out of the line. The enemy's destroyers thereupon emitted dense
volumes of gray smoke, under cover of which the enemy turned away and
disappeared.
But they were very soon relocated by the British light cruisers acting
as scouts, and between eight-twenty and eight-thirty-eight P.M. Sir
David was once more in action at ten thousand yards. During this period
the _Lion_ forced one of the enemy, badly on fire and with a heavy list
to port, out of the line; the _Princess Royal_ set fire to a
three-funnelled battleship; and the _New Zealand_ and the _Indomitable_
caused another vessel to leave the line heeling over and blazing
furiously. The enemy then disappeared in the mist and were no more
seen.
These various semi-isolated actions, and particularly the performance
of the _Marlborough_, which fired at no fewer than five different
ships between six-seventeen and seven-twelve, show only too well how
the mist aided the foe; but in spite of it, the enemy was badly beaten,
and suffered far greater casualties than the British.
At nine P.M. darkness was rapidly approaching, and at about this time
the British heavy forces retired temporarily from the immediate
neighbourhood to avoid hostile destroyer attacks, remaining, however,
in positions between the enemy and his base from which the battle could
be renewed at daylight. At the same time the light cruisers and
destroyers were ordered in to do what damage they could.
To those in certain of the destroyers which were present during the
latter part of the afternoon and evening, and happened to be unengaged,
the sensation was a most uncanny one. Their area of vision was bounded
by a narrow circle of four or five miles radius, but all round them
until nightfall the air resounded and shook with the distant rumble and
the nearer thudding of heavy guns as the great ships engaged each
other. The uproar never ceased. Fighting seemed to be furious and
continuous; but though the vessels of the _Mariner's_ flotilla
were steaming to the southward with their guns ready and torpedo-tubes
manned, it was not until after darkness had fallen that they were
vouchsafed another chance of using them. But they saw many signs of the
battle. At one moment they would catch a glimpse of a huge British
battleship vomiting flame and smoke as she engaged some invisible
opponent. She would fade away in the mist, to be followed presently by
a fleeting vision of two light cruisers, one British and the other
German, their sides a quivering spangle of gun-flashes as they mutually
hammered each other. They also would disappear, swallowed up in the
haze; and a British destroyer, steaming at full speed, would dash
across the horizon on some errand of destruction, with smoke pouring
from her funnels and an immense white wave piled up in her wake.
They passed the bows of a sunken enemy light cruiser standing up out of
the sea like some gigantic spearhead; and once, just before dark, they
sighted what remained of a sorely wounded German cruiser. She was
sinking fast. Her guns were silent, and she lay over to an alarming
angle, with a blaze of orange and cherry-coloured flame leaping and
playing about her from end to end. The whole interior of the ship must
have been a raging furnace; and a mushroom-shaped pall of dark smoke,
its under-side stained a vivid carmine by the flames, hung over her
like a canopy, and added its contribution to the thickness of the
atmosphere. The sea was strewn with wreckage, masses of débris, and
floating corpses wearing life-belts.
And so the night came.
IV.
'And I will prepare destroyers against thee, every one with his
weapons.'--_Jeremiah_ xxii. 7.
The fighting and the destroyer attacks of the night are even more
difficult to follow than the actions which took place during the
afternoon and evening. The British heavy squadrons had withdrawn at
dark to avoid the expected torpedo attacks of the hostile flotillas,
and the retreating enemy, meanwhile, damaged and undamaged ships, some
singly, others in pairs or in groups of four or five, still steamed
hard for their own waters. It was upon these scattered units and
divisions that the British destroyer attacks presently took place.
The _Mariner_ and her next ahead had somehow become separated from
the others after dark, and to Pincher this desperate rush after the
enemy was an awesome business. Owing to the mist and the haze the night
was unusually dark; but though with the retirement of the larger ships
the incessant booming and thudding of the heavy guns ceased, frequent
outbursts of fire from lighter weapons, sharp, blinding flashes of
flame, the redder glare of exploding shell, the white gleam of
searchlights, and the occasional thud of a distant, heavy explosion
showed where torpedo attacks were being delivered. The night was an
inferno.
It was very difficult to tell which were the attackers and which the
attacked, and it was this very uncertainty, and the not knowing what
was happening, which were so trying to the nerves. All they were aware
of was that the German fleet, with many of its ships badly battered,
was somewhere ahead of them. They all realised that a torpedo attack
after dark was a desperate game at the best of times; but they had
witnessed a succession of such awful scenes during the fighting of the
afternoon and evening that their feelings of personal danger and the
dread of being killed seemed to have gone. They felt themselves keyed
up to the highest pitch of excitement, excitement so intense and so
utterly abnormal that they had neither the time nor the inclination to
think of themselves and their own danger. The German fleet was
somewhere in the darkness ahead of them, and it was their duty to sink
and destroy what they could. Nothing else seemed to matter.
Their chance was not very long in coming. The two destroyers were
steering on a south-south-westerly course at twenty-five knots, and
shortly after ten o'clock a band of lighter colour began slowly to
encroach on the dark sky on the eastern horizon. Ten minutes later the
dense blackness from about south-east to north-east had given way to
the usual indigo blue of the night; and there, some distance abaft the
port beam, and dimly silhouetted against the sky, were the blurred
shapes of two vessels. They were fully two miles distant, perhaps more,
and seemed to be steaming slowly on much the same course as the
_Mariner_ and her consort. What class of vessel they were it was
quite impossible to determine. But, from their position and course,
they were certainly not British; while, from the background of
intensely dark cloud to the south-westward, it seemed unlikely that
they had seen the destroyers.
The _Mariner's_ next ahead must have seen the ships at much the
same time, for she suddenly increased speed and turned slightly to port
until she was steaming across the strangers' bows. The _Mariner_
conformed to her movements.
Wooten, gazing through his glasses, felt himself quivering with
excitement. Had his chance come, the chance for which they had all
hoped and prayed? He gave some order over his shoulder to a man at a
voice-pipe, who passed it to the torpedo-tubes. 'Lord!' he ejaculated
to the first lieutenant, still busy with his binoculars, 'they look to
me like two lame ducks, No. 1; but they're big ships, whatever they
are.'
'I sincerely hope they are, sir,' MacDonald replied calmly. 'It's time
we had a look in at something. Shall I go down to the tubes?'
[Illustration: The dark hulls of the enemy were hidden in the
blinding glare of their searchlights.
PAGE 333.]
'Yes, do. And fire when your sights come on if you get no further
orders. For God's sake, don't miss!'
The two great vessels were drawing rapidly nearer, and became more and
more distinct. The leading destroyer was still altering her course
gradually to port, until at last she remained steady on the opposite
and parallel course to the enemy. The _Mariner_ travelled in her
wake, and the track they were following seemed as if it would take them
past the ships, now nearly a mile and a half distant, at a range of
about six hundred yards.
It was at this moment that the enemy first seemed to realise what was
happening, for a gun suddenly boomed out from the leading vessel and a
shell went screeching by overhead. Where it fell nobody saw. Almost
instantaneously a searchlight flickered out, and after sweeping slowly
across the water, fell full on the _Mariner's_ leader and remained
steady. Another beam shone out, another, and yet a fourth, until both
destroyers were illuminated in a dazzling glare which for the moment
blinded everybody on board. Then the guns started in in earnest.
The destroyers were steaming at about thirty knots, and the enemy at
ten or twelve. In other words, attackers and attacked were nearing each
other at the combined rate of about forty knots, or one and a half
miles in two minutes fifteen seconds. It was the longest and most
trying two and a quarter minutes that Wooten or any of his crew had
ever experienced, for, though the speed of the approach tended to make
accurate shooting difficult, the difficulty was largely mitigated by
the point-blank range.
The dark hulls of the enemy were hidden in the blinding glare of
their searchlights and the incessant sparkle and spurting of bright
golden flame as their guns were fired as fast as they could be
loaded. Filmy streamers of smoke from the discharges wreathed and
eddied fantastically through the blue-white rays of the lights. The
air suddenly began to reverberate with a succession of ear-splitting
crashes, the screeching whistle of shell passing overhead, and the
dull _plop_ of others as they pitched in the water to raise their
shimmering, ghostly spray fountains. There came the roaring thud of
the explosions, and the same old familiar humming and buzzing as
fragments drove through the air. But above the din and turmoil of the
firing there was another and quite new noise: a short, sharp,
metallic-sounding explosion in the air, followed by a hissing and
soughing like the wind among trees--the enemy were using shrapnel.
There came a crash, and a sheet of brilliant greenish flame from aft.
The ship seemed to wince, but still drove on. Another shell, bursting
on the water a few feet short, sent its jagged splinters flying over
the bridge and across the upper deck. Something whizzed within a few
inches of Wooten's head, and there was an infernal clanging and
clattering as slivers of steel drove through and against the ship's
side and funnels. It was followed by the thud of a falling body, as one
of the signalmen, standing just behind the coxswain at the wheel,
slithered to the deck.
'Gawd!' he muttered, with an air of intense astonishment, sitting up
and nursing his side; 'they've 'it me! Gawd blimy, blokes, they've 'it
me?' But nobody had time to pay attention to him.
Another jar, the roar of a detonation, a burst of flame from the
forecastle, and a whining and whirring of splinters! Another, close
beside the foremost funnel, and a sound of splintering and crashing as
some object fell and went overboard! Something red-hot and sharp grazed
Wooten's cheek. He put up his hand to brush it aside, and his fingers
came down sticky and wet.
A hideous metallic explosion in the air and a fiendish rattling of
bullets upon steel, as a shrapnel burst and sent its contents flying on
board. Willis, the coxswain, hit through the left shoulder, released
his hold on the wheel and fell to his knees; but in an instant he was
up again, steering the ship with his uninjured right hand.
Wooten suddenly felt a burning sensation in his left arm as if a
red-hot knitting-needle had been passed through the flesh. The shock of
it sent him staggering backwards, and he gritted his teeth with the
pain. His left arm seemed numbed and useless, and a little trickle of
blood ran down inside his coat-sleeve and pattered to the deck. The air
was full of the sickening stench of explosives.
They were very close now. The enemy seemed to be nearly on top of them,
and their huge blurred shapes, almost invisible in the glare of the
searchlights and the vivid gun-flashes, seemed literally to obscure the
horizon. But the destroyers still drove on. They had not been stopped.
The lights of the nearer ship suddenly went out, and a column of water
and smoke shot into the air at her side. It hung there for a moment,
glistening in the ruby and orange flashes of the guns, and then there
came the thundering reverberation of a heavy underwater explosion quite
close at hand. It seemed to compress the air, and caused the destroyers
to stagger in their stride. A torpedo from the leading destroyer had
gone home.
Wooten instinctively looked aft, and as he did so a little puff of dull
flame flickered out amidships. It was followed by a loud, snorting hiss
and a heavy splash as a torpedo left its tube. Another came almost
instantaneously with the first.
The enemy's fire, though still furious, became very wild; and two
minutes later, with the sound of a couple more thudding explosions
ringing in their ears, the destroyers were out of danger. The roaring
of the guns gradually died away, and then ceased altogether.
'Good God!' muttered Wooten, trembling in his excitement.
* * * * *
Daylight found the _Mariner_ and her leader some distance across
the North Sea, steaming slowly homewards. They were battered and
leaking, while the _Mariner_ was badly down by the stern and
listed slightly to starboard. Her funnels were riddled through and
through; there were gaping holes in her side and her deck where shell
had penetrated, and many smaller punctures where splinters had struck
and gone through. A large projectile, bursting on the forecastle, had
torn the deck and the ship's side, and had flung the foremost gun off
its mounting, killing or wounding every member of the gun's crew except
one. The wardroom and one mess-deck were open to the sea; boats were
splintered and useless; and the topmast, taking with it the aerial of
the wireless telegraphy, had been shorn off and had gone overboard. The
mizzen-mast also had disappeared, and a brand-new white ensign now
fluttered from an improvised flagstaff in the stern. It was the only
respectable-looking thing in the ship.
But the surprising thing was that neither vessel was vitally injured.
They could both steam, though slowly, and by dint of plugging the more
serious holes and keeping the pumps going, they were still tolerably
seaworthy. How they had escaped from the inferno without being blown
clean out of the water was nothing short of a miracle.
Casualties had been heavy. Wooten went about with his arm in a sling
and a bandage round his head; but his hurts, though painful, were not
sufficiently severe to incapacitate him for duty. The first lieutenant
had not been so lucky, for he, peppered badly by a shell, had been
confined to his bunk with more serious injuries.
The eight dead had been buried at dawn, and now the wounded lay in
their hammocks on the battered mess-deck under the forecastle. Some of
the slighter cases, with their hurts bandaged, were smoking cigarettes
and talking quite cheerfully; others were asleep.
Pincher Martin was one of them. He had three neat little
splinter-wounds in his back--three insignificant-looking and trivial
little punctures which caused Brown, the surgeon-probationer, to purse
his lips and to frown in his most professional manner when first he saw
them. 'D'you feel any pain?' he had asked.
'Not unless I moves, sir,' the patient had answered with a wan smile,
his tightly compressed lips giving the lie to his words.
An operation was impossible, and they dressed the wounds as best they
could and made him comfortable; but the slivers of steel somewhere
inside him hurt atrociously, and it was all he could do to refrain from
moaning when they touched him. So Brown, seeing how things stood, dozed
him with morphia, and poor Pincher, with his young face unnaturally
haggard, drawn, and very white, was presently slumbering as peacefully
as a child.