being driven by the tide and white-capped seas to the shore. They had
one hope left. Their radio operator had managed to keep the radio gear
in commission, and through all their troubles he had been sending out
S O S calls, though not with too great hope that anybody would come in
time. The U-boats had been pretty active thereabout, and it was not on
any main sea route. There was always the chance, of course, that some
war-ships would be somewhere near.
For one hour, two hours, three, four, five, six hours they drifted.
Their wireless kept going out of commission, and their radio operator
kept patching it up and getting it going again. S O S--he never let up
with that call. It was midnight when a British mine-sweeper bore down
and hailed. By then they could hear the high seas breaking on the rocks
abeam. The Britisher got the word across the wind, and tried to pass a
messenger--a light line, that is--across to the 343. They did not make
it. They tried again and again, but no use. The 343 was then within a
few hundred yards of the breakers.
The skipper of the Britisher then hailed that he would try to get a boat
to them. They could hear him calling for volunteers to man the boat. He
got the volunteers, and without being able to see every detail of it in
the dark, the 343's people knew what was happening. They were making a
lee of the trawler so as to get the boat over. But the boat was swashing
in and out against the side of the ship--up on a sea and then bang! in
against the side of the ship. Merely as a sporting proposition, their
own lives not depending on it, the 343's people would have been praying
for that boat to get safely away.
The boat managed at last to get away from the side of the mine-sweeper,
and in time, pitching down on the rollers, they made out to heave a line
aboard the 343. And on the deck of the 343 they were right there to grab
it and bend it on to a hawser. Fine. Off went the mine-sweeper after she
had taken her boat aboard, tugging heartily. She tugged too heartily for
the length and size of the hawser. It parted.
They did it all over again--the lowering the boat in the rough sea, the
passing the line, the bending on of the bigger line, the attempt to tow.
And again it parted. Wouldn't that test men's faith in their good luck?
The 343 thought so. Once more tried it, and once more it parted, but
this time not parting until they were far enough off the beach to be
safe till daylight.
At daylight a British sloop-of-war came along with a real big hawser and
gave them a real tow to our naval base. A group of us were steaming out
with a fleet of merchantmen to sea as she was being towed in. Our
fellows would have liked to turn out to give her a little cheer, also to
inquire into the details of her mishap, but we had to keep on going, and
wait until our return to port after a cruise to have a look at her.
She was in dry dock when we got back to port, and the most
smashed-up-looking object that any of us had ever seen come in from sea.
The wonder was how she ever stayed up long enough to make port. That
gaping after end open to sea and sky, and the bare propeller shaft
sticking out from the insides of her--she sure did look like she needed
nursing! They agreed that they were a lucky bunch to get her home.
One poor fellow was killed--a wonder there were not more--and all hands
were sorry for him; but tragedy and comedy so often bunk together, and
men who adventure are more apt to dwell on the humorous than the tragic
side of things. There was that about the code-books. The instructions to
all ships are to get rid of the code-books if there is ever any
likelihood of the enemy capturing the ship. The code-books are bound in
thick lead covers. They are kept in a steel box, and altogether they
weigh--I do not know, I never lifted them--but some say they weigh 150,
some say 200 pounds. After the 343 was torpedoed, an ensign grabbed up
the code-book chest, tossed it onto his shoulder, and waltzed out of the
ward-room passage and onto deck with it. You would think it was a
feather pillow he was dancing off with. When the danger of capture was
over our young ensign hooked his fingers into the chest handles to waltz
back with it. But nothing doing. It took two of them to carry it back,
and they did not trip lightly down any passageway with it either,
proving once again that there are times when a man is stronger than at
other times.
After the 343 made port the injured were handed over to the sick bay of
the flag-ship. There were two of them who must have been pretty handy to
the storm centre of the explosion. At least, it took two young surgeons
on the flag-ship all of one day to pick the gun-cotton out of their
backs.
There was another man. The doctors, when they came to look him over,
found the print of a perfect circle on the fleshiest part of his
anatomy. It was so deeply pressed in that the blue and yellow flesh
bulged out all around from it. The doctors said it must have been made
by a wash-basin being blown against him as he ran up the ladder to the
deck. But the man himself knew better than that. "Excuse me, doctor," he
said, "but it was nothing so light and soft as a wash-basin hit me. It
was something more solid and bigger than that. It was the water-cooler,
and I didn't run up any ladder--I was blown up."
The destroyer people have great faith in the durability of their little
ships. They are slim-built, and not much thicker in the plates than
seven pages of the Sunday paper--they know that, but maybe that is their
safety. There is no getting a fair wallop at them. They evade the issue.
One man compared them to a hot-water bottle. Try to swat a loaded
hot-water bottle. And what happens? "When you poke it in one place don't
it bulge out in another to make up for it? Sure it does. And how do you
account for that other one we were talking about? A couple o' years
ago--the one that had her stern cut off so that the men in the after
compartment leaned out where the bulkhead had been, but wasn't then, and
chinned themselves up to the deck from the outside? And how do you
account for her bouncing along at twenty knots or more in a gale of wind
and a rough sea, and nothing happening them? Get shook up--yes. But they
come home, don't they? They sure do. Maybe it's luck, but also maybe
it's the way they're thrown together--loose and limber-like."
Whatever it is, they are dashing in and out over there on their job of
convoying merchant ships and hunting U-boats. They expect to get their
bumps, and they do; but so long as they get an even break they are not
kicking. The chart-house gang on the 343 say that they are satisfied
they get an even break all right. If she did not fill her little
three-straight that time then nobody ever did get any cards in the draw.
They were sticking a new stern onto the 343 when I left the naval base.
When they get it well glued on she is going out again. Maybe that same
U-boat--you can't always tell, some people have luck--maybe that same
U-boat will come drifting her way again. And if they see her first--pass
the word for the gun crews!
THE CARGO BOATS
I have spoken earlier of meeting cargo boats--tramp steamers, we call
them at home--while crossing the Atlantic. In peace times a fellow would
naturally expect to see them here, or almost anywhere else on the wide
ocean; but to see them in these war days was to set a man wondering
about them.
Wondering, because more than 90 per cent of U-boat sinkings are of ships
of less than 12 knots' speed; which means that these rusty old junk
heaps, wheezing along at maybe 9 or 10, but more likely at 7 or 8 knots,
furnish most of the sinkings. They surely must be having great old times
getting by the U-boats, and their captains and crews must surely have a
view-point of their own!
At this naval base of which I have been writing, you could look almost
any day and see 5, 10, or 20 of these cargo boats to moorings. And
ashore was a pub--there were other pubs, plenty of them--but to this one
particular pub came bunches of these cargo captains to forget things.
(Without wishing to offend any prohibition advocate, I have to report
that knocking around the world a man cannot help noticing that men who
face peril regularly do sometimes take a drink to ease off things.)
A barmaid, answering to the name of Phyllis, presided over this pub, a
blond, square-built, capable person, who had always about three or four
of these captains standing on their heads. She was not without
sentiment, but never letting sentiment interfere with business.
"Phyllis, my dear," a skipper would begin, and get about that far when
she--her right hand reaching for the bottle of Scotch and her left for
the soda--would be saying: "The same, captain?"--thereby choking off a
great rush of words, and forwarding the business for which she drew one
pound ten a week.
Before a creature of that kind these cargo captains were bound to preen
themselves. They bought at frequent intervals, not at all like the ways
of another group--not cargo captains--of whom one of our American
warrant officers said: "You buy and buy and buy, and they drink and
drink and drink. It comes time for them to buy, and when it does they
submerge, and don't come up for air."
These cargo skippers were always coming up for air. They would hunt a
man three stories up in his room, wake him out of his sleep, and haul
him down-stairs to have just one more. Between drinks, after they got to
know a man pretty well, they would talk of their sea experiences; and,
after the fashion of all true adventurers, their talk was almost always
of the humorous side of things.
There was a skipper there one morning who bid all hands, especially
Phyllis, good-by. He was off to Alexandria. He would not be back for
three months--more likely five or six months. Phyllis pinned a flower in
his coat and off he went. From the pub window they saw him board his
ship, and an hour later saw her steam out of the harbor and to sea.
That was at ten in the morning. At five in the afternoon--the lights
were just being turned on--those in the pub who happened to be looking
out of the window thought they saw this captain's ghost coming up the
waterside with his crew trailing behind him. The crew looked as if they
had dressed in a hurry and were scampering along to keep warm. But our
skipper was wearing all he wore when he left the pub.
He drew nearer. It was no ghost. It was himself, even to the rose in his
coat. He hailed Phyllis. She was talking to another skipper. The other
skipper turned to see who was butting in, and seeing who it was, said:
"To Egypt and back in seven hours--the quickest voyage ever I 'eard of!"
Which comment so depressed the voyager that he refused to say anything
about what had happened, except that five miles outside of the harbor he
had been torpedoed, and they had to take to the boats in a hurry.
The foregoing is by way of introducing the captain who commented on the
quick voyage. A few mornings later I was up at the Admiralty House when
he came into the waiting-room, let himself carefully down into a
mahogany chair, dropped his new soft gray hat into his lap, and looked
around.
"A solemn place, ain't it? Would they 'ang a chap, d'y' think, if he was
to 'ave a bit of a smoke for 'imself while waitin'?"
I said that I thought the fashion nowadays was to take a man out and
stand him up against the wall and shoot him.
He was tall, heavily built, fresh-colored, with a way of seeming to
reflect deeply before he replied to anything. By and by he said: "Oh,
aye!" and lit his cigarette, but had not taken the second puff when the
doorkeeper's feet sounded outside, at which sound he pinched the
cigarette hurriedly by the neck, and looked around for somewhere to dump
it. There was no ash-tray, and the table being bare mahogany, the floor
all polished wood, the fireplace with no fire in it, so brassy and shiny
that to put anything there would be treason--he dropped the cigarette
into his hat.
The doorkeeper smelled something, but he wasn't one who looked on lowly
things when he walked, and so did not see the little spiral of smoke
curling up from the hat.
My seafarer was in a great stew. To sit there and watch him was to warm
up to him. There he was, a man who regularly faced death by more ways
than one at sea, but now in deep fear that this shore-going flunky would
catch him smoking a surreptitious cigarette. He stared determinedly at
every place except at his hat until the doorkeeper had passed on.
When he looked at his hat the cigarette had burned a hole in it. He
viewed the hat sadly. "No gainsayin' it, war is 'ell, ain't it? I paid
fourteen bob for that 'at three days back in Cardiff."
I went out to help him buy a new hat. Hat stores were scarce, but life
does not end with hat stores; there were fleets of little places where a
man could sit down and talk about more important things than hats.
In the hotel smoke-room after lunch there was no sugar for our coffee.
His sea-training began to show at once. "The thing you 'ave to learn to
do at sea is to go on your own. Nobody doing much for a chap that 'e
don't do for hisself, is there?" From his coat pocket he drew an
envelope which once held a letter from home--in place of the letter now
was sugar. "Preparedness--'ere it is"--and sweetened our coffee from the
envelope.
He spoke of his life at sea. "I can't say that I like it--I can't say I
don't like it--but it was my life before the war and it 'as to be since.
You've seen my ship, 'aven't you, lying to moorings? Nothing great to
look at, is she? but the managing director of our company--he has the
'andling of maybe a 'undred more like her--'Let 'em 'ave their grand
passenger ships,' 'e says, 'but give me my cargo boats that pays for
theirselves every two voyages.' The right idea 'e 'ad, I'll say for 'im.
And for my part of it there is no everlastin' polishin' o' brahss and
painting o' white work and no buying o' gold-laced uniforms at your own
cost. And there's the bonus for me. Oh, aye! A bit of bonus ain't a bit
of 'arm, you know, especially when you've a wife that's no eyesore to
look at, and little kiddies growin' up.
"Torpedoed? Oh, aye. It's not to be expected of a man to escape that
these days. My chum Bob, remember 'im--that was seven hours to Alexandria
and back--with a rose in his coat? His fourth time torpedoed, that was.
I've been blowed up only three times myself. Nothing much of anything
special, the last time and the time before that--a matter of getting into
boats and by and by being picked up--no more than that--no. But the first
time--maybe it was a novelty-like then. 'Owever, I'd carried a load of
coal to Naples and getting twenty-two pounds a ton for coal that cost two
pound ten in Cardiff maybe makes it a bit clearer what the managing
director 'ad in mind when 'e said: 'let 'em have their grand passenger
ships, but give me my little cargo boats.'
"From Naples I go on to Piraeus in Greece, and we take a load on
there--admiralty stuff, and not to be spoken of--and we put out for
'ome. She was a good old single-crew, this one o' mine. Twenty-five year
old--not the worst, though I'd seen better. Well warmed up she could
squeeze out eight knots, or maybe eight and a 'alf. I 'ung close to the
land along that Greek shore, for if anything should 'appen ther's no
sense 'aving too long a row to the beach in boats.
"Very good. We're rollin' along one morning when the radio man came in
with a message which read: 'PUT INTO NEAREST PORT. U-BOATS.'
"And without ado we puts into a little place down at the 'eel of Italy,
and that night I 'ad a 'ot barth an' a lovely long sleep in my brahss
bed which the missus 'ad given me for Christmas the last time 'ome. And
a great pleasure it was, I say.
"Next mornin' we put to sea again, and next day after comes another
radio, and it says: 'PUT INTO NEAREST PORT. U-BOATS.' And we put into
Malta, and that night again I 'ad another 'ot barth and a fine sleep in
my brahss bed.
"We resume our voyage from Malta, and a two days later I gets another
radio--more U-boats--and I puts into Algiers. Three times in one week
that made with me 'aving me 'ot barth and a fine sleep in me brahss
bed--grand good luck, I say now, and said it then to the mate, adding to
it: 'There's a signal station west of Gibraltar--wouldn't it be delightful
passing that signal station to get the word to put back to Gib and stop
there for another night and I 'ave another 'ot barth and a lovely sleep
in my four-poster bed.' But the mate 'e only says 'e didn't have no brahss
bed aboard ship to sleep in, and he saved his 'ot barths, he did,'til he
got 'ome to enjoy 'em proper.
"Summer-time it was, and I likes to take my little siesta after
lunch--just like the Dons theirselves, y' know--and I'm 'aving me siesta
next day after lunch when something woke me up. There's a shelf of books
on the wall o' my room--chart-books and the like--and when all at once I
see them pilin' down on top of me I say to myself: 'Somethin's 'appened.'
And so it 'ad. The mate 'e sticks 'is 'ead in the door and says: 'We're
torpedoed, sir.'
"'There goes my bonus,' I says, and goes on deck.
"We carried a 3-inch gun in a little 'ouse aft, and there was the mate
firing at the U-boat, which was out of water and maybe two miles away.
It was one of those out-of-date guns the navy would have no more to do
with, and so they passes it on to us. New good guns would probably be
wasted on us, and maybe that's true. None of us aboard ever fired a shot
from the gory weapon till this day. The mate fired two shots at the
U-boat, but 'e don't 'it anything. The U-boat fires two shots at us and
she 'its something. One of 'em pahsses through the chart house, and the
other tears a nice little 'ole in 'er for'ard.
"That'll do for that gun practice,' I says.
"'Aren't you goin' to 'ave a go at 'em?' says the mate.
"'You can 'ave all the go at 'em you please,' I says, 'after we leave
the ship. Besides you there's 19 men and 4 Eurasians in this crew, and
some of 'em will maybe like to see 'ome again--I know I do!'
"We get into the boats, myself takin' along what was left of a second
case of Scotch, and good old pre-war Scotch it was, not the gory
infant's food they serve these days that a man 'as to take a tumblerful
of to know 'e's 'aving a drink at all. I also took along three sofy
cushions, hand-worked by the missus, with pink doves and cupids and the
like--rare lookin' they was. 'A man might's well be comfortable,' I
says.
"I 'ad a cook. 'If comfort's the word,' says the cook, 'I might's well
take along the wife's canary,' and 'e takes it along in a cage in one
'and, and a bag of clothes in the other. 'E's in the boat when 'e thinks
to go back for a package of seed 'e'd left for the canary on the shelf
in the galley. 'Hurry up with your bird-seed,' I says, and as I do a
shell comes along and explodes inside of 'er old frame somewheres, and
the cook says maybe 'e'll be gettin' along without the seed--the canary
not being what you'd call a 'eavy eater, anyway.
"The mate 'ad a cameraw, and when we're clear of the ship he would stand
up and set the cameraw on the shoulders of a Eurasian fireman, and take
shots of the ship between shells.
"In good time one last shell 'its 'er, and down she goes. The U-boat
moves off, and we see no more of 'er.
"It's a fine day and a lovely pink sunset, and there's a beautiful mild
sirocco blowing off the African shore to make the 'ot night pleasant as
we approach it in the boats. A man could 'ardly arsk to be torpedoed
under more pleasant conditions, I say, and we continue to row toward the
shore in 'igh 'opes. It's maybe two in the mornin' when we see the
side-lights of a ship. She's bound east--a steamer--and we know she's a
Britisher, because we're the only chaps carried lights in war zones at
that time. Carryin' lights at night o' course made us grand marks for
the U-boats, but there was no 'elp for it. A board o' trade regulation,
that was, and no gettin' away from what the board o' trade says. We had
our choice of carryin' lights and losin' our ships, or not carryin'
lights and losin' our jobs. So we lost our ships. After a year and a
'alf of war some bright chap in the board said that maybe it would be a
good idea to change the regulation about carrying lights, and they did.
And about time, we said.
"Some of the crew were for 'ailing the ship in the night. ''Ail 'ell!' I
says. 'D'y' think I want to be took into that rotten 'ole of a Port
Said, or maybe Alexandria, and that end of the Mediterranean fair lousy
with U-boats. Besides, we'll get 'ome quicker this way,' I says, and
allows her to pass on. In the mornin' we run onto the beach, and 'ardly
there when a crowd of Ayrabs come gallopin' down on 'orseback to us.
'We'll be killed now,' says the mate, and talks under his breath of
stubborn captains, who wouldn't 'ail a friendly ship's light in the
dark, but the only killing the Ayrabs do is two young goats for
breakfast. And they make coffee that was coffee, and we had a lovely
meal on the sand. And by and by they steered us along the shore to where
was a French destroyer, which takes us over to Gibraltar, and from Gib
we passed on through Spain and France to Havre. Three weeks that took,
and I never 'ad such a three weeks in all my life. 'Eroes, ragin'
'eroes--that's wot we were!
"At Havre the French authorities took the mate's pictures out of the
cameraw, and they never did give 'em back. Except for that, it was a
fine pleasure, that land cruise 'ome.
"Lucky? Oh, aye, you may well say it. Three times in one week I 'ad me
'ot barth and my lovely sleep in me brahss bed--it's not to be looked
for with ordinary luck, you know."
* * * * *
One day the destroyer to which I was assigned put to sea. There were
other destroyers, and we were to take a fleet of merchantmen from the
naval base to such and such a latitude and longitude, and there turn
them loose. My friend's ship was of the convoy.
We made such and such a latitude and longitude, and there we turned them
loose, signalling the position to them and waiting for acknowledgment.
They acknowledged the signal. We then hoisted the three pennants which
everywhere at sea means: Pleasant voyage! They answered with the three
pennants which everywhere spells: Thank you. And no sooner done than
away they belted, each for himself, and let the U-boats get the
hindmost.
The hindmost here was the rusty old cargo boat of my friend. I could see
her for miles after the others were hull down; and long after I could
see her I could picture him--walking his lonely bridge and his ship
plugging away at her 7 or maybe 7-1/2 knots across the lonely ocean.
Three times torpedoed and taking it all as part of his work! Some day
they may get him and he not come back; and when they do the world will
hear little about him. Hero? He a hero? Why a shore-going flunky had him
bluffed for smoking a surreptitious cigarette in high quarters! 'Ero?
Not 'im. Why 'e don't even wear a uniform.
So there they are, the wheezing old cargo boats and their officers and
crew. British, French, Italian, American, but mostly British.
No heroes, but the Lord help their people if they hadn't stayed on the
job.
FLOTILLA HUMOR--AT SEA
We were a group of American destroyers convoying twenty home-bound
British steamers. There was one ship, a _P. & O._ liner, a great
specimen of camouflaging.
She was the only ship in the convoy that was camouflaged, and she rode
in stately style two lengths out in front of the others. All of which
made her a prominent object. Our officers felt like telling her to dress
back; but she had a British commodore aboard, and for an American two or
three striper to try to advise a British commodore--well, it isn't done.
All day long she rode out in front of the column, and all day long our
fellows kept saying things about her.
"Isn't she the chesty one!"
"Look at the big squab with all that war-paint on--how does she expect
any U-boat to overlook her?"
"That big loafer, she'd better watch out or she'll be getting hers
before the day's gone!"
U-boats were thick around there. One of them must have come up, looked
the convoy over, and said, "Well, there's nothing to this but the big
one!" and, Bing! let her have it, for it was not yet quite dark when
those who were looking at her saw a column like steam go into the air, a
black column like coal follow it, and after that a column of water
boiling white.
One of our destroyers hopped to twenty-five knots, dumped over a
300-pound "ash-can," and got Mister U-boat. At least, the British
admiralty later gave her 100 per cent on the circumstantial evidence.
Two other destroyers--the 396 and the 384, we will call them--went at
once to the job of taking off passengers from the sinking ship.