THE _WHACK_ AND THE _SMACK_
There was always a strange and distinctive fascination to me in standing
on the bridge of one ship and watching other ships--and especially lines
of ships--push up and sharpen to shape above the edge of the sea.
This feeling, strong enough in ordinary times--when it was but a
peaceful merchantman one watched from and but peaceful merchantmen that
one saw--is intensified manifold when it is a warship's bridge one
paces, and only the silhouettes of ships of war that notch the far
horizon. Battleship, battle cruiser, light cruiser, destroyer, sloop,
trawler, and all the other kinds and classes of patrol craft--each has
its own distinctive smudge of smoke, its own peculiar way of revealing
its identity by a blurred foretop, funnel, or superstructure long before
its hull has lifted its amorphous mass above the sky-line.
And now to the sky-line riddles one was given to read, and to be
thrilled by as the puzzle revealed itself, had been added the great
troop convoy from America, my first sight of one of which was just
unfolding. H.M.S. _Buzz_, in which I chanced to be out at the time, was
not one of the escorting destroyers, and it was only by accident that
the course she was steering to join up with a couple of other ships of
her flotilla on some kind of "hunting" stunt took her across that of the
convoy, and passed it in inspiring panoramic review before our eyes.
From dusky blurs of smoke trailing low along the horizon, ship after
ship--from ex-floating palaces with famous names to angular craft of
strange design which were evidently the latest word in standardised
construction--they rose out of the sea (as our quartering course brought
us nearer) until a wide angle of our seaward view was blocked by an
almost solid wall of steadily steaming steel.
There was a lot to stir the imagination in that sight--aye, fairly to
grip you by the throat as a dawning sense of what it portended sank
home. In the abstract it was the living, breathing symbol of the
relentless progress of America's mighty effort, a tangible sign of the
fact that her aid to the Allies would not arrive too late. What it stood
for concretely is best expressed in the words of the young R.N.R.
sub-lieutenant who was officer of the watch at the time.
"It looks to me," he said, with a pleased smile, as he lowered his glass
after a long scrutiny of the advancing lines of ships, "as though
there'd be jolly near forty thousand new Yanks to be catered for in
Liverpool by to-morrow evening."
"Yes," I said somewhat dubiously, my mind suddenly assailed by a
misgiving awakened by the thousands of yards of torpedo target presented
by the sides of those placidly ploughing ships, "that is, assuming that
they get there safely. But they're only just entering the danger zone
now, and there's a lot of water got to stream under their keels before
they berth in the Mersey.
"I don't know anything about convoys, or the ways of protecting them;
but all the same, it looks to me as though that bunch of troopers would
offer a mark like the map of Ireland to a U-boat, and a lot more
vulnerable one."
Young P---- laughed as he bent, squint-eyed, to take a bearing on a
destroyer zigzagging jauntily with high-flung wake in the van of the
approaching fleet.
"That's what everyone--even an old sailor--says the first time he sights
one of the big transatlantic convoys," he said; "and if there are any
skippers new to the job in that lot there, that's just what _they're_
saying. It's all through failure to appreciate--indeed, no one who has
not seen the ins and outs of it would be in a position to
appreciate--the effectiveness of the whole anti-submarine scheme, and,
especially, what almost complete protection thoroughly up-to-the-minute
screening--with adequate destroyers and other light craft--really
affords. As a matter of fact, every soldier in that convoy is probably a
good deal safer now--and right on in through this so-called danger zone
to harbour--than he was marching down Broadway to the pier--at least, if
Broadway is like it was when I used to put in to New York as a kid in
the _Baltic_."
"But will you tell me," I protested, "how a U-boat, firing two or three
torpedoes from, say, just about where we are now, could possibly miss a
mark like that?"
"Well, it would take a bit of missing from hereabouts, I admit," was the
reply; "only, if there is any Fritz still in the game with the nerve to
try it, he would also be missing himself."
"What would happen to him?" I asked.
"One or all of two or three things might happen,----" P---- answered,
after ordering a point or two alteration in course to give safe berth to
the nearing destroyer.
"He might get his hide holed by gunfire, he might get split open by a
depth-charge, he might get rammed, and he might get several other
things. With all the luck in his favour, he might even get a transport.
But there's one thing I can assure you he wouldn't get--and that's back
to his base. There may be two or three bearings from which one of these
big convoys appears to present a mark as wide and unbroken as the map of
Ireland; but there's nothing in heaven or earth to save the Fritz who
hasn't learned by the sad example of no small number of his mates that
it is quick suicide for him to slip a mouldie down one of them."
"You mean that he doesn't try it? that he's afraid to take the chance?"
I asked somewhat incredulously, for I had somehow come to regard Fritz,
though a pirate, as a dashing and daring one when the stake was high
enough.
"Except under very favourable circumstances, yes," was the reply; "and
now that, with the coming of the American destroyers and patrol boats,
we are able to do the thing the way we want to, what Fritz might reckon
as 'very favourable circumstances' are becoming increasingly fewer and
farther between. Now a few months ago, when we were just getting the
convoy system under weigh, and when there was a shortage of every kind
of screening craft, things were different. Fritz's _moral_ was better
then than it is now, and we didn't have the means of shaking it that we
have piled up since. At our first convoys, straggling and little
schooled in looking after themselves, he used to take a chance as often
as not, if he happened to sight them; but even then he rarely got back
to tell what happened to him. There was the one that tried to celebrate
the advent of 'Peace-on-Earth-Good-Will-to-Men' last Christmas Day by
sinking the _Amperi_, which was one of a convoy the _Whack_ (in which I
was Number Two at the time) was helping to escort. Well, I couldn't say
much for his 'Good-Will-toward-Men,' but he certainly found a short cut
to 'Peace-on-Earth,' or at least the bottom of the sea.
"Now that chap took a real sporting chance, and got his reward for
it--both ways. I mean to say, that he sunk the ship he went after all
right--which was his reward one way; and that we then sunk him--which
was his reward the other way. There was a funny coincidence in
connection with that little episode which might amuse you. We were----"
He paused for a moment while he spelled out for himself the "Visual"
which one of the escorting destroyers was flashing to the convoy leader,
but presently, with a smile of pleased reminiscence, took up the thread
of his yarn. This is the story that young Sub-Lieutenant P----, R.N.R.,
told me the while we leaned on the lee rail of the bridge and watched
the passing of those miles-long lines of packed troopers as, silently
sure of purpose, superbly contemptuous of danger, they steamed steadily
on to deliver their cargoes of human freight one step further towards
the fulfilment of its destiny.
"It was Christmas Day, as I told you," he said, bracing comfortable
against the roll, "and a cold, blustering, windy day it was. Several
days previously we had picked up a small slow convoy off a West African
port, and were escorting it to a port on the West Coast of England. The
escort consisted only of the _Whack_ and the _Smack_, the skipper of the
latter, as the senior officer, being in command. None of the ships--they
were mostly slow freighters--had had much convoy experience to speak of
at the time, and we were having our hands full all the way keeping them
in any kind of formation. They seemed to be getting worse rather than
better in this respect as we got into the waters where U-boat attacks
might be expected, but this may have been largely due to the weather,
which was--well, about the usual mid-winter brand in those latitudes. In
fact, we were just becoming hopeful that the rising wind and sea, both
were about 'Force 6,' might make it impossible for submarines to operate
during the day or so that still must elapse before reaching port, when
trouble began.
"All the morning the _Plato_, which had been a bad straggler throughout,
had been falling astern, and finally the _Smack_ ordered _Whack_ back to
prod her on and do what could be done in the way of screening her. She
still continued to lose distance, however, so that, at noon, we were
nearly out of sight of the main convoy, of which little more than smoke
and topmasts could be seen on the northern horizon.
"At that hour the _Smack_, doubtless because he had received some report
of the presence of U-boats in his vicinity, ordered us to rejoin the
convoy. We left an armed trawler to do what it could for the loitering
_Plato_, and started off at the best rate the weather would allow to
make up the distance lost. It was at this juncture that the amusing
little coincidence I mentioned a while ago occurred.
"A patrol-boat, of course, does not carry a padre, any more than it does
a number of the other comforts and luxuries provided in cruisers and
battleships, and for that reason we hadn't been able to do very much in
the way of a Christmas service. Several of the ship's company were
somewhat religiously inclined, however, and these, in lieu of anything
better, had asked for and received permission to hold a bit of a song
service, in case there was opportunity for it, during the day. As the
morning had been a rather full one, no suitable interval offered until
their rather poor apology for a Christmas dinner was out of the way, and
we were headed back to join the convoy. Then they went to it with a
will, and for the next hour or more fragments of Yuletide songs came
drifting back to my cabin to mingle with a number of other things
conspiring to disturb the forty winks I was trying to snatch while the
going was good. After a while, it appears, having run through their
repertoire of Christmas songs, they started in on Easter ones, 'Bein'
that they was mo' or less on the same subject,' as one of them explained
to me later. They had just boomed the last line of a chorus which
concluded with 'We shall seek our risen Lord,' when a signal was
received stating that a periscope had been sighted by some ship of the
convoy, and, sure enough, off they had to go to seek--well, I wouldn't
take the Hun quite so near his own valuation of himself to put it as the
song does, but all the same that quick new kick of the screws told me as
plain as any words, even before I read the signal, that the old _Whack_
was jumping away to seek _something_ that had risen.
"The convoy was dead ahead of us at a distance of about seven miles when
I reached the bridge, and, the visibility being unusually good for that
time of year, I could see all of the ships distinctly, as they steamed
in two columns of three abreast. I was even able to recognise the
_Amperi_ in the centre of the leading line. We were just comforting each
other with the assurance that it was getting too rough for a U-boat to
run a torpedo with any chance of finding its mark, when a huge spout of
water jumped skyward right in the middle of the convoy. When it
subsided, the _Amperi_, with a heavy list to port, could be seen heading
westward, evidently with her engines and steering gear disabled, while
the rest of the convoy, smoke rolling from their funnels, were
'starring' on northerly courses.
"The alarm was rung, and as the men rushed to action stations a signal
was made to the _Smack_ asking what was wrong. She replied, '_Amperi_
torpedoed; join me with all dispatch.' This, of course, we had already
started to do, though the wind and sea were knocking a good many knots
off our best speed. It was evident enough that the _Amperi_ had
received a death-blow, so that we were not surprised to find them
abandoning ship as we began to close her.
"Rotten as the weather was for it, this was being conducted most coolly
and skilfully, and three boats had already left her before we came
driving down to her assistance. _Smack_ had signalled us to pick up
survivors, and we had stood in, at reduced speed, to 250 yards of the
now heavily heeling ship, with the intention of proceeding on down, to
the leeward of her to the aid of two of her boats, when we sighted three
or four feet of periscope sticking out of the water, one point on the
starboard bow and at a distance of about a couple of hundred yards. To
see anything at all in rough water like that, you understand, a
periscope has to be poked well above the slap of the waves, and that
about equalizes the greater difficulty there is in picking up the
'feather' when it's choppy.
"I was at my action station with the 12-pounder batteries at this
juncture, but as it looked like a better chance for the depth-charges
than the guns, no order to open fire was given just yet. The captain
ordered the helm to be steadied, and rang up 'Full speed ahead' to the
engine-room. We passed the periscope ten yards on the port side, and
when the stern was just coming abreast it, two charges were released
together. As they were both set for the same depth it is probable that
the one staggeringly powerful explosion we felt was caused by their
detonating simultaneously. The shock was as solid as though we had
struck a rock, and I could feel a distinct lift to the ship before the
impact of it. There was something so substantially satisfying about that
muffled jar that it seemed only in the natural course of things that it
effected what it was intended to. The bow of the U-boat broke surface
almost immediately, the fact that it showed before the conning-tower
proving at once that she was hard hit and heavily down by the stern.
Indeed, the deck of her from the conning-tower aft was fated never again
to feel the rush of sea air.
"She was now less than a hundred yards right astern of us, and heading,
in a wobbly sort of way, like a half-stunned porpoise floundering away
from the 'boil' of a depth-charge, on just about the course the _Whack_
had been on when she kicked loose her 'cans.'
[Illustration: THE LOOK-OUT ON A DESTROYER AND PART OF HIS VIEW]
"The skipper put the helm hard-a-starboard, with the idea of turning to
ram, at the same time ordering me to open fire with the port
twelve-pounder. That was what I had been waiting for. The gun-crew was
down to three--through the others having been detailed for boat work in
connection with picking up the survivors from the _Amperi_--but that
didn't bother a good deal in a short and sweet practice like this one.
The ship was bobbing like a cork from the seas, in addition to her heavy
heel from the short turn and the vibration from the grind of the helm.
But neither did any of these little things matter materially, for
we'd always made a point of carrying out our target practice under the
worst conditions.
"The first round, fired at three hundred yards, was an 'over' by a
narrow margin, but the second, at two hundred yards, was a clean hit on
the conning-tower, carrying away the periscope and the stays supporting
it. The explosion of this shell appeared to split the whole
superstructure of the conning-tower, from the bridge to the deck. I did
not see anyone on the bridge at this moment, and if there had been he
must certainly have been killed. The fact that the submarine seemed to
have been blown to the surface by the force of our exploding
depth-charges rather than to have come up voluntarily, may account for
the fact that no head was poked above the bridge rail as she emerged. If
she had come up deliberately it would have been the duty of the skipper
and a signalman to pop out on to the bridge at once to be ready for
eventualities. Evidently they had no chance to do so on this occasion,
and as a consequence spun out their thread o' life by anywhere from
twenty to thirty seconds--whatever that was worth to them.
"My third shot plumped into her abaft the conning-tower, and the
explosion which followed it had a good deal more behind it than the
charge of a twelve-pounder shell. Before I had a chance to see what had
blown up, however, we had rammed her, and whatever damage that shot had
caused dissolved in the chaos of what proved the real _coup de grâce_.
That ramming was undoubtedly one of the prettiest little jobs of its
kind, one of the most neatly finessed, ever brought off.
"Since running over the submarine and dropping the depth-charges the
captain had turned the _Whack_ through thirty-two points, a complete
circle. This brought her back to a course just at right angles to the
beam of the now helpless enemy, toward which she was driven to the limit
of the last kick of the engines. Just before the moment of impact the
screws were stopped dead, so as to sink the bow and reduce the chance of
riding over the U-boat and rolling it under her stem, as has
occasionally happened, instead of cutting it straight in two. The jar,
when it came, was terrific, throwing from his feet every man not holding
to something; yet there was that in the clean, sweet crunch of it that
told me that it had accomplished all the heart could desire, even before
the next second furnished graphic ocular evidence of it.
"The sharp, fine bows of the _Whack_ drove home well abaft the
conning-tower, and--though the staggering jar told of the resistance
met--for all the eye could see, cut through like a knife in soft butter.
Indeed, the amazing cleanness of the cut has always seemed to me the
most remarkable feature of the whole show. The bow end of the U-boat,
with the conning-tower, was the section which was cut off on my
side--port--and the even cross-section of it that gaped up at me was
very little different from that I once saw when one of our own
submarines was being sawed through amidships in connection with some
repairs. Even the plating did not appear to be bent or buckled. The
impression that ring of shining clean-cloven steel left on my mind was
of a cut as true and even as could have been done in dock with an
acetylene flame. This was largely imagination, of course; and yet how
photographic my mind-picture is you may judge from the fact that I have
distinct recollection of seeing the thin circle of red lead where it
showed all the way round beneath the grey of the outer paint.
"The heavily tilted main deck of the interior of this section of the
U-boat did not appear to be flooded at this juncture, though any water
that had been shipped, of course, would have been in the now submerged
bows. I have a jumbled recollection of wheels and levers and
switchboards, fittings of brass and steel, and what I took to be three
torpedoes--one on the port side, and two, one above the other, on the
starboard. The most arresting thing of all, however, was the figure of a
solitary man, the only one, strange to say, that anybody reports having
seen. He was scrambling upward toward the opening, and I have never been
quite sure whether he was 'Kamerad-ing' with his uplifted hands, or
whether they were raised preparatory to the dive it is quite probable he
intended to make into the sea.
"Whichever the attitude was, it had no chance to serve its purpose. The
stern section of the U-boat--the one most heavily damaged by the
depth-charges--was seen to sink abreast the starboard 12-pounder battery
by the crew of that gun, but the forward part--the one with the
conning-tower, which I had seen into the interior of--buoyed up by the
water-tight compartments in the bows, continued to float. Observing
this, the Captain ordered the helm put a-starboard, and as we turned,
the 4-inch gun and my 12-pounder opened up together. My very first
round, fired over the port quarter, hit and exploded fairly inside the
gaping end of the section, right where I had last seen the man with
upraised hands. That, and the two or three smashing hits by the 4-inch
gun, finished the job. A whirlpool in the sea marked the rush of water
into the severed end, and this section--for all the world as though it
had been a complete submarine--tossed its bows, with their
elephant-ear-like rudders, skyward, and planed off on an easy angle
toward the bottom. Its disappearance was complete. There were no
survivors, and practically no floating wreckage. Only a spreading film
of oil and a tangle of torn wakes slowly dissolving in the wash of the
driving seas marked the scene of the action. It had lasted something
over ten minutes.
"The _Whack_ suffered considerable damage from the impact with the
submarine, though not enough to give us serious worry, even in so heavy
a sea. The stem was bent over to port, like a broken nose, and the
buckling plates caused her to make quite a bit of water. We had no
trouble coping with this, however, and made port, with the survivors of
the _Amperi_ aboard, without difficulty. There we soon had the--well,
not unmixedly unpleasant--news that the _Whack's_ wounds were of a
nature somewhat comparable to what the Tommy in France calls a
'Blighty.' Without having any real permanent harm done her, she was
still enough banged up to need a special refit, the period of which, of
course, the most of us would be able to spend at home on leave. Yes,
indeed," he concluded, grinning pleasedly, "that was a ripping piece of
ramming in more ways than one."
P---- went over and bent above the shivering "Gyro," for a moment, took
a long look through his glasses at the last of the now receding convoy,
and then came back and rejoined me by the rail.
"There was one little thing I neglected to tell you about," he said
presently, "and that was the part the _Smack_ played in that show.
Although the _Whack_ got all the _kudos_ for the sinking, there is a
decided possibility that a bit of a stunt the _Smack_ brought off before
ever we came up may have been largely if not entirely responsible for us
getting the chance we did.
"_Smack_, you see, was near at hand when the _Amperi_ was torpedoed, and
the instant her Captain saw the spout of water shoot up in the air, he
altered course and drove at full speed for the point he reckoned the
submarine would be most likely to be encountered. He reports that he had
the good fortune to hit it, while it was still submerged, and that the
shock was severe enough to throw men off their balance. Shortly after
that a periscope appeared, and it was this that gave the _Whack_ her
chance to drop her depth-charges.
"Now, not unnaturally, the Captain of the _Smack_ had good reason to
believe that his striking the U-boat, even if he only grazed her, had
something to do with her reappearance on the surface at a moment when
she must have known a strenuous hunt for her was in progress. Unluckily,
for his claim, however, the bows of the _Smack_, when she came to be
docked, did not show sufficient evidences of having been in heavy
collision to warrant the conclusion that the U-boat had been enough
damaged to have gone to the surface from that cause alone. Under the
circumstances, therefore, there wasn't anything else to do but give the
credit for bringing her up to _Whack's_ depth-charges, while of course,
the fact that it was also the _Whack_ that rammed her was obvious
enough. The consequence was, as I said, that _we_ got all the _kudos_."
He gazed for a few moments at the back-curling bow-wave, before
resuming. "Yes, _we_ got all the _kudos_," he said slowly; "but, all the
same, I've never been able to figure why Fritz didn't douse his
periscope and try to dive deeper when he saw the _Whack_ rounding toward
him, if it wasn't because there was something pretty radically wrong
with him already. I can't help thinking that the old _Smack_ had a lot
to do with starting that Fritz on his downward path, even if it was the
_Whack_ that gave him the final shove."
* * * * *
It was very characteristic, that last little explanation of P----'s. If
there is one thing more than another that has impressed me in hearing
these young British destroyer officers tell the "little games they have
played with Fritz," it is the fine sporting spirit in which they
invariably insist in sharing the credit of an achievement with every
other officer, and man, and ship that has in any way figured in the
action. It was the fault of the Hun that we could no longer treat the
enemy as we would an opponent in sport; but that only makes it all the
more inspiring to see the fellow-players still keeping alive the old
spirit among themselves.