AGAINST ODDS
The news from all the Fronts had been discouraging for several days, and
it only needed that staggering announcement of the destruction of
practically a whole convoy and its escort, in the North Sea, to cap the
climax of gloom. This is what I had read in the fog-hastened autumn
twilight, by the feeble glow of a paint-masked street lamp, in the Stop
Press column of the evening paper a Strand newsboy had shoved into my
hand.
"Two very fast and heavily-armed German raiders attacked a convoy
in the North Sea, about midway between the Shetland Islands and the
Norwegian coast, on October 17th. Two British destroyers--H.M.
ships _Mary Rose_ (Lieutenant-Commander Charles L. Fox) and
_Strongbow_ (Lieutenant-Commander Edward Brooke)--which formed the
anti-submarine escort, at once engaged the enemy vessels, and
fought until sunk after a short and unequal engagement. Their
gallant action held the German raiders sufficiently long to enable
three of the merchant vessels to effect their escape. It is
regretted, however, that five Norwegian, one Danish, and three
Swedish vessels--all unarmed--were thereafter sunk by gunfire
without examination or warning of any kind and regardless of the
lives of their crew or passengers.... Anxious to make good their
escape before British forces could intercept them, no effort was
made to rescue the crews of the sunk British destroyers or the
doomed merchant ships, but British patrol craft which arrived
shortly afterward rescued some thirty Norwegians and others of whom
details are not yet known.... The enemy raiders succeeded in
evading the British watching squadrons on the long dark nights,
both in their hurried outward dash and homeward flight.
"It is regretted that all the eighty-eight officers and men of
H.M.S. _Mary Rose_ and forty-seven officers and men of H.M.S.
_Strongbow_ were lost. All the next-of-kin have been informed."
A few days later a second Admiralty report announced that ten survivors
of the _Mary Rose_ had reached Norway in an open boat, and also gave a
few further particulars of the action in which she had been lost. From
this it appeared that she had been many miles ahead of the main convoy
when the latter was attacked, and that, possessed of the speed, with
many knots to spare, to have avoided an action in which the odds were a
thousand to one against her, she had yet deliberately steamed back and
thrown down the gage of battle to the heavily armed German cruisers.
Just why her captain chose the course he did was not, and never will be,
fully explained. He went down with his ship, and to none of those who
survived had he disclosed what was in his mind. It was certainly not
"war," the critics said, but they also agreed that it was "magnificent"
enough to furnish the one ray of brightness striking athwart the sombre
gloom of the whole disheartening tragedy. "He held on unflinchingly,"
concluded an all-too-brief story of the action issued to the public
through the Admiralty, some time later, "and he died, leaving to the
annals of his service an episode not less glorious than that in which
Sir Richard Grenville perished."
From the time I read these Admiralty announcements I had the feeling
that some, if not all, of those ten survivors of the _Mary Rose_ would
surely be able to offer more of an explanation of why her captain took
her into battle against such hopeless odds than any that had yet been
suggested to the public, and in the months which followed I made what
endeavour I could to locate and have a talk with one of them. It was not
long before the ten were scattered in as many different ships, however,
and though I had the names and official numbers of two or three, almost
a year went by before I chanced upon the first of them. Indeed, it was
but a day or two previous to the first anniversary of the loss of the
_Mary Rose_ and _Strongbow_ and the destruction of the Norwegian convoy
that, in the course of a visit to a Submarine Depot Ship at one of the
East Coast bases, I sauntered forward one evening and fell into
conversation with a sturdily built, steady-eyed young seaman--some kind
of torpedo rating, evidently, by the red worsted "mouldie" on his
sleeve--who had just clambered up to the forecastle from the deck of a
hulking "L" moored alongside.
"How do you like submarin-ing?" I had asked him, by way of getting
acquainted.
"Not so bad, sir," he replied with a smile, "though it's a bit stuffy
and rather slow after destroyers. With them there's something doing all
the time. I was in one of the 'M' class before I volunteered for
submarines. P'raps you've heard of her--the _Mary Rose_, sunk a year
this month, in----"
"Wait a moment," I cut in, as the ribbon he was wearing caught my eye;
"you're one of the men I've been looking for for a number of months. Ten
to one you're Able Seaman Bailey, who received the D.S.M. for his part
in the action, and who is specially mentioned in the Admiralty story"
(refreshing my memory from a note-book) "for having, 'despite severe
shrapnel wounds in the leg, persisted in taking his turn at an oar' of
the Norwegian lifeboat which picked up the _Mary Rose_ survivors, and
for his 'invincible light-heartedness throughout.'"
A flush spread under his "submarine pallor" at that broadside, but he
admitted, with an embarrassed grin, that his name was Bailey, and that
his decoration was awarded for something or other in connection with
the last fight of the _Mary Rose_, though for just what he had never
quite been able to figure out. In the hour we leaned over the forecastle
rail and watched the North Sea fog-bank roll up the estuary with the
incoming tide, this is the account he gave me of the things which he
himself saw of what is perhaps the most gallantly tragic of all the
naval actions of the war.
* * * * *
"They hadn't got convoying at that time down to the system it is carried
on under now," he began, by way of explanation, "and the only fighting
ships with this one were the _Mary Rose_ and _Strongbow_. The _Mary_ was
of the same class as the 'M ...' over there, very large and fast and
well armed for a destroyer, but never, of course, built for anything
like a give-and-take fight with any kind of a cruiser.
"There was also an armed trawler somewhere about, but it had no chance
to do anything but pick up survivors. We were an anti-submarine escort,
nothing more, and were not intended to stand off surface raiders. Of
course provision was made against these, too, but--well, when you
consider the size of the North Sea and the length and blackness of the
winter nights, the only wonder is that the Huns can't buck up their
nerve to trying for a convoy twice a week instead of twice a year.
"We had escorted the north-bound convoy across to Bergen, and, on the
afternoon of the 16th of October, had picked up the south-bound and
headed back for one of the home ports. Escorting even a squadron of
warships which know how to keep station is no picnic for destroyers, but
with merchantmen it is a dozen times worse. It is bad enough even now,
but a year ago, before these little packets had had much experience, it
was enough to drive a man crazy. Between the faster ships trying to push
on, and the slower ones falling astern, and breakdowns, and the chance
of trickery, it was one continual round of worry from the time we left
Base to our return.
"This time was no exception to the rule, even before the big smash. One
of the Swedes--there were Norwegian and Danish as well as Swedish ships
in the convoy, but we called them all 'Swedes,' probably because it was
shorter and easier to say than Scandinavian--well, one of the Swedes
shifted cargo along about dark of the 16th, with the result that the
slower ships, and this included most of the convoy, lagged back, while
several of the faster ones kept on.
"I don't know whether this was done by order, or whether it just
happened. Anyhow, the _Strongbow_ remained behind with the slower
section, while the _Mary Rose_ pushed on as an escort for the faster. It
was the first lot--the main convoy--that the raiders attacked first, but
just what happened I did not see, for we had drawn a long way ahead of
them in the course of the night.
"When I came up to stand my watch as anti-submarine lookout, on the
after searchlight platform, at four in the morning of the 17th, I
remember that it was cloudy and thick overhead, but with very fair
visibility on the water. We were steaming along comfortably with two
boilers, which gave us a big margin of speed over everything needed to
cut our zigzags round the comparatively slow packets we were escorting.
The sea was rough but almost dead astern, so that it made little
trouble--for the moment, that is. We had enough of it a little later.
"Along toward six o'clock the visibility began to extend as it grew
lighter, but there was no sign of the main convoy when, at exactly
five-fifty, I sighted flashes of light fluttering along the northern
horizon. Although my ears caught no sound but the throb of the engines
and the churning of the screws, I had no doubt they were from gun-fire,
and reported them at once by voice-pipe to the Officer of the Watch--it
was Gunner T., if I remember right--on the bridge. The captain was
called, and must have concluded the same, for he at once ordered her put
about and sounded 'Action Stations.' That took me to the foremost
torpedo tubes, where my station was on the seat between the tubes, with
the voice-pipe gear fitted to my ears. Most of what followed I saw from
there.
"In some of the published accounts of the action it was stated that the
captain of the _Mary Rose_ thought that the flashes he saw were from
the gun of a submarine shelling the convoy, so that when he turned back
it was with the expectation of meeting a U-boat rather than powerful
raiding cruisers. I don't know anything definite on this score, of
course, as I only heard the captain speak once or twice (and then to
give orders) before he went down with his ship, but I don't think it
could possibly have been true. There is a sort of fluttering ripple to
the flash of a salvo that you can't possibly mistake for that of the
discharge of a single gun, and the flashes which we continued to see for
some time were plainly those of salvo answering salvo. The flashes from
the mingled salvoes of the heavy guns of the Hun raiders could not have
been confused with those from the few light guns of the _Strongbow_ any
more than these could have been taken to come from the single gun of a
U-boat. Everything pointed to just what we learned had taken place--a
cruiser raid on the convoy. There was nothing in the flashes to suggest
a submarine was firing, and I can't see how the captain could have had
any such impression. It was enough for him--yes, and for all of us--to
know that our consort was in trouble, and I shall always think that he
turned back to help the _Strongbow_ with the full knowledge that he
would have to face hopeless odds. He was a proper gentleman, was Captain
Fox, and so there was nothing else that he _could_ have done; and,
what's more, there's nothing else that we men in the _Mary Rose_--or
any other British sailors, for that matter--would have had him do. It
would have been against all the traditions of the Navy to have done
anything else but stick by a consort to the last."
Able Seaman Bailey smote resoundingly the hollow palm of his left hand
with the fist of his right as he spoke those last words, and then, in a
quieter voice, took up the thread of the story again.
"That turn through sixteen points brought the seas, which we had been
running before all night, right ahead, and all in a minute she was being
swept fore-and-aft by every second or third of them. Anxious as the
captain was to drive her full speed (which would have been a pretty
terrific gait, let me tell you, for the 'Ms' are very fast), it was no
use.
"Plates and rivets simply wouldn't stand the strain of the green water
that anything like full speed would have bored her into, and she was
finally slowed down to about twenty knots as the best she could do
without flooding the decks and making it impossible to serve the guns
and torpedo tubes. As she was good for a lot more than this with two
boilers, I doubt very much if the third was ever 'flashed up.'
"The first I saw of the ships which turned out to be the enemy was some
masts and funnels to the north'ard and about a couple of points on the
starboard bow. They were making very little smoke, probably because
they were oil-burners. As we were steering on practically opposite
courses, we closed each other very quickly, and they must have been
about four miles off when the captain, evidently becoming suspicious of
their appearance, challenged. As there was no reply, fire was opened
immediately afterward by the foremost gun, the course at the same time
being altered a point or two to starboard, so that the other two guns
would bear. The rest of our firing was, I think, by salvoes, or rather,
it was until all but the after gun were knocked out by the Hun's shells.
"Our first shots, fired at about 7,000 yards, were short; but as the
salvoes which followed began to fall closer to their targets, I saw the
Huns alter to a course more or less parallel to ours, but plainly
veering away so as to open out the range. This gave me the first
silhouette view I had, and I did not need a glass to recognize them at
once as German, the three straight funnels and the 'swan' bows being
quite unmistakable. Some of our shots fell close, but I saw nothing I
could be certain of calling a hit.
"However, I knew that it was not the guns the captain was counting on,
but that he was trying to close to a range and bearing that might offer
a chance to get home with a torpedo.
"Why the Huns did not open fire before they did I have never quite been
able to figure out, unless it was that they hoped to avoid an action and
so be free to pursue and sink the leading ships of the convoy--the
faster ones the _Mary Rose_ had been escorting--without interference. If
that is so, Captain Fox's sacrifice was not in vain, for all of these
ships escaped destruction and reached port in safety. Even as it was,
they had no stomach for an action at any range close enough to give us
any chance to damage them either with gun-fire or torpedoes. Their
plan--proper enough in its way, I suppose--was simply to pound us to
pieces with the shells of their powerful long-range guns, and not to
close to finish us off until all our guns and torpedo tubes were out of
action. As one good salvo from either of them was more than enough to do
the job, there wasn't much hope of our getting in close enough to do
them serious harm. It was a bold bid the captain made for it, though.
"The course we were now on brought the seas more abeam than ahead, so
that we had been able to shake out several more knots of speed, and this
the captain tried to use to shorten the range. We were actually closing
them at a good rate (though I wouldn't go so far as to say they were
putting on all their speed to avoid it), when the Huns began firing
their ranging shots. By this time we had reached a position from which
there was a very fair bearing to launch a mouldie, and we were busy
getting one ready to slip while the fall of shot came bounding nearer
and nearer to us. I remember, in a vague sort of way, that the first
salvo was short by a long way, that the second was much nearer, and
that the third, closely bunched and exploding loudly on striking the
sea, threw up smoke-stained spouts which fell back into each other to
form a wall of water which completely blotted out the enemy for a second
or two. Then we turned loose the torpedo, and at almost the same instant
two or three shells from a 'straddling' salvo hit fair and square and
just about lifted the poor little _Mary_ out of the water.
"All in a second the ship seemed to disappear in clouds of smoke and
escaping steam, and it is only natural that my recollections of the
order in which things happened after that are a good deal confused.
"I seem to have some memory of receiving from the bridge the order to
fire that torpedo, but if that was so, it was the last order I did
receive from there, for the explosion of one of the shells carried the
voice-pipe away (though I did not twig it at the time), and from then on
it was mostly the sizzle of spurting steam that came to my ears.
"There are two reasons why I know that first salvo hit us _after_ the
torpedo was launched, though there could not have been more than a
fraction of a second between one and the other. The first is that one of
the shells carried away the lip of the tube before penetrating the deck
and cutting a steam-pipe. If the mouldie had been in the tube it could
not have missed being exploded; or, if by a miracle that had not
happened, the tube was so much buckled that it could not have been
operated. The second reason was that fragments from that shell, besides
wounding me in the leg, even killed or blew overboard the rest of the
crew, so that there would have been no one to get a mouldie away even if
the tubes had been in working order. I remember distinctly seeing the
torpedo hit the water, but I have no recollection of seeing it steady to
depth and begin to run. As that is the main thing you always watch for,
I can only account for the fact I did not see it by supposing that first
hit came before the torpedo began to run.
"The shock of the explosion did not knock me off my seat, and a wound
from a jagged piece of shell casing, though it was serious enough to put
me out of commission for five months, felt only like a sharp prick on my
leg. My pal, Able Seaman French, collapsed in a limp heap under the
tubes, and though I saw no blood or signs of a wound, and though I never
saw a man killed before, I knew he was done for. I don't know to this
day where he was hit. The man whose station was at the breech-blocks I
never saw again, living or dead, so I think he must have caught the
unbroken force of the explosion and been blown back right over the
starboard side.
"This shell, in bursting the main steam-pipe, probably had the most to
do with bringing us to stop, though another (I think of the same salvo)
exploded in Number Three boiler-room and started a big fire, probably
from the oil. The clouds of black smoke and steam rising 'midships made
it impossible to see what was going on there. I saw some of the crew of
the 'midships gun struggling in the water, and took it that they must
have been blown there.
"That gun was out of action, anyway, and, because I did not hear it
firing, I assumed that the foremost one had also gone wrong. The after
gun was firing for all it was worth, though, and continued to do so
right up to the end.
"That one salvo pretty well finished the _Mary Rose_ as a fighting ship,
and as soon as the Huns saw the shape we were in, they began to close,
firing as they came. But even then they were careful to choose a
direction of approach on which the after gun could not be brought to
bear. With the foremost tubes out of action, and no crew to serve them
in any case, there was nothing for me to do but sit tight and wait for
orders. So I just chucked my head-gear, which was no longer of use with
the voice-pipes gone, and settled back in my seat to watch the show and
wait till I was wanted. There was really nothing to stay there for, but
it was my 'Action Station,' and I knew it was the place I would be
looked for if I was needed. On the score of cover, one place is as good
an another--in a destroyer, anyhow.
"It must have been the fact that the after gun was the only one still
in action that brought the captain back from the bridge. There was
really nothing to keep him on the bridge, anyway. He seemed to be making
a sort of general round, trying to see what shape things were in and
bucking everybody up. He was as cool and cheery as if it was an ordinary
target practice, with no Hun cruisers closing in to blow us out of the
water. I saw him clapping some of the after gun's crew on the back, and
when he came along to the foremost tubes, not noticing probably that I
was the only one left there, he sung out: 'Stick it, lads; we're not
done yet.' Those were his exact words. I remember grinning to myself at
being called 'lads.'
"But we _were_ done, even then. The Huns were inside of a mile by now,
and firing for the water-line, evidently trying to put us down just as
quickly as they could.
"All their misses were 'shorts.' I don't remember a single 'over.' They
were still taking no unnecessary chances. As soon as they were close
enough to see that our torpedo tubes were probably jammed to port, they
altered course and crossed our bows and steamed past the other side,
where there was no chance of our slipping over a mouldie at them.
"We were already settling rapidly, with a heavy list to port, and as
soon as the captain saw she was finished, he gave the order: 'Abandon
ship. Every man for himself!' Those were the last words I heard him
speak. He went below just after that to see about ditching the secret
books, I believe, and when I saw him again it was just before she sank,
and he was pacing the quarterdeck and talking quietly with the First
Lieutenant.
"As our only boat had been smashed to kindling-wood, there was nothing
to it but to take to the Carley Floats, and the first thing I did after
hearing the order to abandon ship was to see to cutting one of these
loose. On account of our oilskins and life-preservers, neither myself
nor any of the three or four lads from the after gun's crew that ran to
the float with me could get at our clasp-knives. Luckily, one of the
Ward Room stewards came to the rescue with three silver-plated
butter-knives from the pantry, and with these we finally managed to
worry our way through the lashings. Then we pitched the little webbed
'dough-nut' (as the Carley Floats are called) over the settling stern
and jumped after it. Four or five minutes later, after heeling slowly to
port through fifty or sixty degrees, she gave a sudden lurch and went
down, turning completely over as she sank, so that her bottom showed for
a few seconds. The captain, who could have followed us just as well as
not, seemed to make no effort to save himself, and must have gone down
with her. I can't help believing that was the way he wanted it to
happen.
"We had clambered into the float as fast as we could, and I think some
one must have said something about the danger of being caught over an
exploding depth-charge, for we were paddling (all of these floats have
short-handled paddles lashed to their webbing) away from the ship as
fast as we could when she went down. Someone remembered that one of the
'ash cans' had been set on the 'ready' when we went to 'Action
Stations,' and no one recalled seeing it thrown back to 'safe' before we
went overboard. It was an anxious moment, waiting after she ducked under
the sea, for we had not been able to paddle more than a hundred yards,
and the detonation of a depth-charge had been known to paralyse men
swimming in the water at twice that distance. Luckily, this particular
charge must have been set for a considerable depth, and it is also
possible that the hull of the ship absorbed or deflected some of its
force. At any rate, the shock of it, when it came, though it knocked us
violently against each other and left a tingling sensation on the skin
of all the submerged part of one's body, did not do anyone serious
injury.
[Illustration: SHE CAME BOWLING ALONG UNDER SAIL]
"When we came to count noses, there turned out to be eight of us on the
float--two sub-lieutenants, the captain's steward, myself, and the
remnants of the crew of the after gun. A few minutes later we sighted a
couple of men who looked to be struggling in the water, but turned out
to be supporting themselves on a fragment of 'dough-nut,' which had
broken loose when the ship sank. That, strange to say, was the only
bit of wreckage that came to the surface. We took these men aboard, and
the ten of us weighted the overloaded float so that is submerged till
the water reached our armpits. We were a good deal better off than it
would seem, though, for the most of us were heavily dressed, and the
animal heat of a man keeps him warm for a long time under oilskins and
wool. The only ones that suffered much were a couple of lads who didn't
have any more sense than to ditch most of their togs before they went
over the side. They said it was so as not to be hampered in swimming--as
if they expected to do the 'Australian crawl' to Norway or the
Shetlands! These two _did_ begin to get a bit down-hearted and 'shivery'
when the cold struck into the marrow of their bones, and it was with the
idea of bucking them up a peg or two that we started singing. No, I
don't just remember all that we did warble, except, I'm glad to say,
that 'Tipperary' wasn't on the programme, and that this did include two
or three hymns. You're quite right. There's nothing very warming to a
chilled man in hymns, and I'm not trying to account for why we sang
them. The fact remains that we _did_, just the same, and that we all,
including the chaps in their underclothes, lived to sing again.
"There was a bit of a disappointment when an armed trawler, which was
evidently searching for survivors, passed within a mile without sighting
us or hearing our shouts, but with the life-boat of one of the sunk
Norwegian steamers we had better luck. She came bowling along under sail
about ten o'clock in the morning, and, on sighting the black silk
handkerchief we hoisted at the end of a paddle-blade, eased off her
sheet and stood over to pick us up. As there were only six men in her,
we were not badly off for room, while the store of biscuit and potted
stuff--to say nothing of smokes--they had managed to throw aboard before
their ship sunk was more than enough for the two days that it took us to
row and sail to Bergen."