menace, and threatens us still. Day and night mines are freely sown--a
patch here and a patch there--steadily, persistently. "They grow like
daisies," some one has said, "cut down in the afternoon, they are up
again next morning." Let the sweepers work how they will the end is
never in sight. Mines have been laid from the Cape to the West Indies;
from Archangel to the Dardanelles; off every Allied port; in every
navigable channel; on every avenue of approach to these islands from
the ocean or the narrow sea. Strewn with a lavishness that counts
no cost too heavy, they represent an expenditure that runs to many
millions. In one area alone more than 1,000 mines have been destroyed
by our sweepers. No more necessary, no more exhausting, no more
hazardous work than theirs is done to-day in any waters.
Let it not be supposed that these admirable activities involve a
careless or haphazard disposal of the destructive charges. Each has
been laid in accordance with a calculated plan and with definite
intention. There is a method in this madness. Take a single instance:
in certain areas mines are laid time and again to deflect the stream
of traffic into a channel where submarines may act with comparative
impunity from danger. The game is played so that the pawn, endeavouring
to escape capture by the knight falls a victim to the castle. These
thoughtful contrivances demand thoughtful answers and result in an
encounter of wits such as the world will probably never see again upon
the chequer-board of the seas. But not wits alone are sufficient, and
the pieces in the game are numerous. Bear in mind that the area of
the North Sea alone is greater than Germany. It is not a case of 20
or 50 or 100 vessels. One can form some picture of such activities.
But what are the actual numbers? On the British side some 1,700 ships
and 25,000 men concentrate their activities on sweeping for mines. The
mind staggers at the immensity of the thing. Is any one surprised that
German confidence stands high; that it believed no answer was possible;
that it had as good right to believe in the success of these battalions
of explosives as in German artillery and German armies?
In the early days mines were directed against our fighting fleet,
to endanger their excursions in the North Sea, or to fetter their
movements in pursuit of hostile vessels. To protect the fleet,
mine-sweepers, specially constructed, or old gunboats, built some
of them as early as 1887, manned throughout by naval ratings, kept,
unknown to the public,--whose gaze was concentrated upon the trawlers
and drifters,--a vigil unimaginable in its range and exhausting in its
intensity. Their work continues; but the jackals, baulked of nobler
prey, changed their hunting ground and laid still more numerous traps
for less wary creatures--the traders. They, too, however are learning
caution. There is a certain region through which since the war began
38,000 trading vessels have voyaged; in which no more than 4 have been
destroyed by mines. Weigh these facts and consider the compliment that
fits the achievement. If you ask by what methods the German mines are
safely garnered you will be told that the trawlers sweep in pairs; a
method which seems to have advantages over that of the enemy. Pursue
your enquiry and you will learn that they are less dangerous at high
than at low water; that floating mines since they are easily pushed
aside, and explode to expend their force largely in the vacant air,
are less of a danger than the anchored type; that when brought to the
surface gun or rifle fire disposes of them at a safe distance; that
there are other little things to be found when fishing. "Last month,
when nearly completing the sweeping, I swept up five mines and came
across five full petrol tanks, each holding about 51 gallons or more,
which appeared as if they had been moored."
When you have gathered these facts from an authority, the conversation
lapses into generalities. It is useless to display an eagerness for
knowledge, the book is closed. For the curious it may be added,
however, that mine fishing is an art, considerably more complicated
than baiting a hook or throwing a fly; that some men are fishers by
nature and others despite experience, remain clumsy; that the wriggle
and the tug and the play of the fish are part of the sport, that the
amusement is not unaccompanied by danger, and that good fishermen are
not easy to replace. With these suggestions the matter stands adjourned
_sine die_--that is, till the end of the war.
Mine sweepers are of course protected, for the sympathetic mind will
understand that a submarine which has just laid traps resents their
removal. Like the ghost of the murderer, its habit is to haunt the
region of its labours. For trading with these gentry the fishers
have their own methods, sometimes more primitive and courageous than
effective, as when the master of a sailing craft--it is fact not
fiction--fancied himself a 40 knot destroyer and tried to ram the
enemy. Unarmed audacity occasionally, indeed, achieves miracles. One
gunless trawler by persistent ill-mannered harassing pursuit, so
terrified a German commander who was attacking a merchant vessel, that
his quarry escaped. Submarine hunting in armed craft is of course
another matter and accounted the greatest of all great games. Sea-going
Britons pine for it with an inextinguishable longing. Lowestoft
mine-sweepers hanker after leave not to spend by the fireside but
on this brave sport. Volunteers jostle each other for the service.
Admirals previously on the retired list renew in it all the zest and
vigour of their youth. Alas, that after the war a pursuit which outbids
in popularity tiger-shooting or steeple-chasing should come to an
untimely end.
Another submarine habit is with infinite, untiring Teutonic patience to
do the work over again in the wake of the sweepers, for which amiable
procedure there is no cure save an equal and opposite persistence. Yet
another is to lay little mines nearer the surface to catch trawlers
engaged in fishing for bigger ones placed deeper for larger ships. Oh
excellent, persevering and philanthropic Teuton!
No one in the world can teach trawler or drifter men, who spend less
than a month ashore in the twelve, seamanship. "Smooth sea and storm
sea" is alike to them. Grey, tumbling waters are their winter portion,
decks continually awash, frozen gear, intolerable motion. Watch that
short bluff little vessel 100 miles from any port and a gale rising,
with her high bows staggering up from the hollow of the wave that hid
her from sight, streaming from rail to rail, to plunge headlong into
the next hollow, climb up the approaching mountain to encounter the
smothering crest, shake herself and disappear again into the turbid
water between the bigger seas. You will see no one on deck save the
unconcerned man at the wheel in oilskins and sea-boots, in whom it
produces no emotion. That wild sky and furious sea are familiar
acquaintances of his, that waif of a boat rolling and pitching through
it is his home. Skald to the Viking's son! Mine fishing to men of this
stamp was merely a variation in the ordinary way of business. Of course
the danger was vastly greater, but they were inured to danger. Against
shelling they have a prejudice, for mines they care nothing, and among
those still at their old trade the Admiralty prohibition against
fishing in mine fields--a prohibition constantly disregarded--creates
perhaps as much resentment as the German sowing of them. Good brooms
they make these broad-beamed, bluff-bowed vessels, and life preservers
too. To their presence in the North Sea and elsewhere thousands already
owe their lives. Twenty miles off Tory Island a trawler picked up the
survivors from the _Manchester Commerce_; another, the _Coriander_,
saved 150 of the men from _Cressy_ and _Hogue_; still another brought
home fifty men of the ill-fated _Hawke_; the _Daisy_ rescued twenty
men from the destroyer _Recruit_. In the Mediterranean the North Sea
men were ubiquitous. In answer to distress signals they appeared
as if by magic. "Ultimately," wrote one of the passengers on the
ill-fated _Arabia_, "I was put aboard a trawler on which were about 166
rescued.... We had few wraps and most of us lay till we reached Malta
in drenched clothes. They were 37 hours of utter misery.... More than
half the survivors on the trawler were women and children."
Drudgery, and monotonous drudgery, it all is, relieved, if you find
it relief, that any moment may see the end of you and your ship. Here
is the process. "A deck hand came up the ladder and handed up two
pneumatic lifebelts. The Captain silently passed one to me. After we
had fastened them securely he glanced at the chart and compass. Then
he gave a command and a signal was flashed to the other boat. Thus the
first preparation was made for our 'fishing.' The other boat nosed
easily alongside. There was a clanking of machinery and she made off
again, carrying one end of a heavy steel cable. Several hundred yards
away she resumed her course, while the cable sagged far down beneath
the surface of the water. That was all--we were sweeping.... It was
late in the afternoon that we made our first catch. A sudden tightening
of the cable made it clear that we had hit an obstruction. There was
just a slight tremor all through the boat. Everybody stepped to the
rail and gazed intently into the water. 'That'll be one,' said the
commander as the cable relaxed. Sure enough it was 'one.' The Boche
mine broke the surface of the water and floated free, her mooring of 1
inch steel cut off as cleanly as if with a mighty pair of shears. As it
rolled lazily in the swell it reminded me of a great black turtle with
spikes on its back." Such is the normal procedure, and a rifle bullet
does the rest. "There was an explosion that made our teeth rattle,
while a huge volume of black smoke belched upward into the still air.
And a shining column of water shot straight up through the black cloud
to a height of 50 or 60 feet.... Then the water poured back through the
smoke and the grim cloud drifted off over the waste of the North Sea."
If you pursue your search for incidents you may meet something of this
type. The gear of the trawler _Pelican_ was just being hove in when a
mine was discovered entangled in the warp. The winch was stopped just
as the mine bumped--anxious moment--the ship's side. Any lurch meant an
explosion and certain destruction. The skipper ordered all hands into
the boat and to pull away. Remaining alone on board, with infinite care
he worked to clear the mine, gently, very gently, unwinding the gear
of the winch. The men lay on their oars at a safe distance and waited
in suspense. At last the mine was released and the skipper cautiously
paid out 120 fathoms of line. Hardly was it done when, having touched
something, the devil-fish exploded, shaking the trawler from stem to
stern and half filling the distant boat with water. When the warp was
hauled on board it revealed nothing but a mass of wreckage. If you are
in search of adventure on board a mine-sweeper and are in luck you may
enjoy the excitement of an aeroplane attack, with bombs dropping around
you from the overhead circling enemy, or machine gun bullets rattling
on the deck from a German battle-plane. Or again an angry submarine
commander rising out of the deep may send a shell or two your way. For
the rest it is a peaceful life, and if you escape the attentions of all
these death-dealing devices, mine, aeroplane and submarine, you may
arrive home safe enough. The odds are probably somewhat in your favour,
but the mathematicians have not worked out the table of chances. You
may have the best of it and secure quite a number of mines, or one
of the enemy devices may secure you. You never can tell. Here is a
transcript.
"It was about four in the morning. This time of year. Just such
darkness as this. The _London Girl_ came down on my port side.... I
opened the door (of the deckhouse) to hear what she had to say. 'Don't
go near so-and-so,' her old man shouted. 'What's that?' I said. 'Don't
go,' he hailed--'so-and-so--some mines adrift.' That's all. I was just
backing into the wheelhouse again when there was a flash and a roar.
He'd gone. Not enough left afloat to make a platter. That's it. There's
five boats in line astern of you one minute. There's a bright light
and when you look back there's only four. It ain't the mines you see
that's the worry. I've seen hundreds. It's the beggar you can't see.
Never know when it's under your forefoot. Dirty game, like, I call it.
No sense in it. Sinking ships. Any ships. I'd never have believed it.
Don't know what's come over the world." Most of us are in like case.
Only the knights of the German Round Table, those idealist seekers
after grace and loveliness, know and in good time, perhaps, will take
the rest of the world into their confidence.
Against mines you cannot retaliate but against the U. boat you can
occasionally hit back. "A number of trawlers," writes a correspondent,
"were fishing off Aberdeen on a fairly stormy day when a submarine came
to the surface and commenced firing at the trawlers, making for one in
particular--the _Strathearn_. The _Strathearn_ ran for it, pursued by
the submarine. While the shots were falling round, some of the crew
shouted to Geordie, the skipper, 'Geordie, get the boat out.' Said
Geordie, 'I'll see you in h--ll first! Fire up! If she's gaun doon, I'm
gaun doon. Fire up! I think we hae a chance.'
"During this time Geordie was making towards another trawler, the
_Commissioner_ (armed) which had her gear down and seemed totally
unconcerned. But, as soon as the _Strathearn_ passed her and there was
nothing between the submarine and herself, a blow with an axe cut her
gear away, she swung round, and at the same moment her gun appeared.
"Her first shot missed the submarine, so did the second; the third hit
the enemy's conning tower, a fourth hit the enemy's gun, and the fifth
sent the submarine down in flames, and all was over, bar the shouting."
Our Allies could bear witness to the work of British mine-sweepers
and patrols in the Mediterranean. In one raid Austrian cruisers and
destroyers attacked the patrol line in the Adriatic and sank 14 of
our drifters. Our fishermen have swept for mines off Russian, French
and Italian ports, and of their work at the Dardanelles all the world
has heard. Captain Woodgate of the _Koorah_ has vividly described an
episode in which he was himself the protagonist.
"When we were up in the Dardanelles there were what we call three
groups--One, Two and Three--and each group had to go up, one at a time.
The vessel I was in belonged to the second group. The night we were
going to make the final dash in the Dardanelles, up in the Narrows, we
went, no lights up, everything covered in. They let us get right up to
the Narrows, and as we turned round to take our sweeps up one of our
number was blown up. Then they peppered us from each side, from one
and a half to two miles. We heard cries for help. I said, 'We shall
have to do the best we can, and go back and pick up.' There was no
waiting, no saying 'Who shall go?' As soon as I called for volunteers
three jumped in. I kept the vessel as close as I could to shelter them.
I did not think any would come back alive, but they did come back. No
one was hit, and I said, 'Now we'll get the boat in.' Just as we got
the boat nicely clear of the water, along came a shot and knocked it
in splinters. I shouted, 'All hands keep under cover as much as you
can,' and I got on the bridge, and we went full steam ahead. I could
not tell you what it was like, with floating and sunken mines and shots
everywhere. We got knocked about, the mast almost gone, rigging gone,
and she was riddled right along the starboard side. One of the hands
we picked up had his left arm smashed with shrapnel; that was all the
injury we got. When we got out the commander came alongside and said,
'Have you seen any more trawlers?' I said, 'Yes, we've got the crew of
one on board, the _Manx Hero_.' We were the last out, and I can tell
you I never want to see such a sight again.... I thought of the three
men in the fiery furnace, how they were preserved, and of Daniel in the
lion's den, and I think of the 24 of us coming out under that terrible
fire and the water covered with floating and sunken mines."
"There's one good thing about it," remarked a skipper who had his
second vessel blown up under him,--"you take it calmer the second
time." We thought we knew the mettle of these men. We did, but we know
it better now. Eighty of these skippers have been killed in action,
many have been blown up more than once, and several, among them that
celebrity "Submarine Billy," have had three such elevating experiences.
But it makes no difference. They go to sea again. One hardly knows what
to make of this type of human being. Perhaps the British race has no
monopoly in it, but one wonders. Let an expert speak, the commander of
a destroyer, whose testimonial, if any testimonials are required, has
value.
"Only a quarter of an hour before the Admiral had wished me a pleasant
trip. That quarter of an hour now seemed æons away. The Channel was
battering us and bruising us.... To climb to the bridge was a perilous
adventure in mountaineering. Here crouched three figures, swathed from
head to heel like Polar explorers. The glass of the wind-screen was
sweating and trickling like the window of a railway carriage. From time
to time the Captain wiped clear patches with the finger of his fur
glove and made very uncomplimentary remarks about the snow. Behind him
stood the steersman, a swaddled mummy with a blue nose tip, dripping
icicles." All in a moment appeared a smudge on the horizon--"a friend
and brother--the King of the Trawlers." "They're It, absolutely It,"
said the Captain. "No weather's too bad for 'em. They're our eyes and
our ears. They know every blessed wave in the Channel, not merely as
passing acquaintances, but they address 'em by their Christian names.
They'll do anything, and go anywhere and chance the luck. They're
just simple fishermen but they run the whole show and they run it
magnificently--guns, semaphores, wireless, everything! They live on
kippers and tea, and I don't believe they ever go to sleep."
If the Royal Navy, which has its own views on efficiency, says these
things of them, further remarks seem needless.
THE SEA TRAFFICKERS
Quit now the dusty terraces and taverns of the town,
And to the great green meadows you shall with us go down;
By the long capes and islands the open highways run
For us the pilgrims of the sea, and pupils of the sun.
'Tis Neptune pours the wine for us, the deep-sea Muses sing,
And through our airy palaces the flutes of morning ring:
We traffic with the stars, we trade adown the Milky Way,
We are the pilots of romance, merchants of Arcady.
Unfold a map of the world and observe how small a part of the earth's
surface is land, how much less habitable land, how vast on the other
hand--nearly three-quarters of the whole--the interminable plain of
sea. Here you have an almost limitless expanse and without a barrier,
here you have what was once the dividing flood, the estranging ocean,
what is now Nature's great medium of communication. There are no
difficult mountains to cross, no scorching deserts, the way lies open.
One can sail round the world without touching land, one cannot walk
round it without somewhere crossing the sea. Imagine then a road which
leads everywhere and you have the first clue to the meaning of that
majestic thing, sea-traffic. These immense regions, once so forbidding,
and until a few hundred years ago, unknown, uncharted ocean solitudes,
are now the broad highway of all the nations. Across them vessels under
every flag, laden with all that men produce or peoples require, follow
the plotted curves of the chart, and "toss the miles aside" with the
same confidence, the same continuity as the trains on their iron tracks
across Europe and America. They depart and arrive along the familiar
belts of passenger and trade routes with the regularity and exactness
of the great land expresses. Safe in times of peace from all dangers
save the natural perils of the sea, the freedom of this, the broadest
and busiest of all highways, open to all, used by all, vital to the
modern structure of civilisation, is unchallenged. Imagine this highway
closed and the whole fabric falls to pieces, trade expires, commerce is
at an end, famine and chaos impend over half the inhabited regions of
the globe.
Seated between the old world and the new, at the centre of traffic,
at the midmost point of all the markets Britain laid hold of her
great opportunity. All the great routes were open to her, South to
Africa, South West to the Spanish Main and Panama, West to America
and Canada, North East to the Baltic, East through the pillars of
Hercules to the Mediterranean, a route prolonged by the Suez Canal
to India, China and Japan. The opportunity was, indeed, great and to
meet it she built her merchant navy, "the most stupendous monument,"
as Bullen wrote, "of human energy and enterprise that the world has
ever seen." What the nations bought and sold the ships of England
carried. Necessity gave assistance, for as islanders her own people
had need of overseas products and sent abroad their own manufactures.
Nor was it disadvantageous that in order to build her fortunes she had
to exhibit enterprise and cultivate hardihood. No one will say that
the sea-farer's life is an easy one. But its discipline and hardships
brought their reward in the courage and sustained vigour of the race.
When it was a new thing the romance of this ocean travel took hold of
the Elizabethan imagination, and the poets rhapsodised over "Labrador's
high promontory cape," "the Pearled Isles," "the famous island,
Mogadore," "the golden Tagus or the Western Inde."
"I should but lose myself and craze my brain
Striving to give this glory of the main
A full description, though the Muses nine
Should quaff to me in rich Mendaeum wine."
The Elizabethan poets gloried too in Britain's insularity,
"This precious stone set in the silver sea"
protected by the waters as a house is protected by a moat "against
the envy of less happier lands." The historians have expounded the
advantages of her position. We were happy in that we were islanders,
inhabiting a natural and impregnable fortress. The sea was our bulwark,
to us it was no barrier, to the enemy an impassable one. The romantic
mood is, however, difficult to maintain and of late the coming and
going of some ten or eleven thousand British ships has been productive
of little emotion. As a rule the landsman "dismisses the sea with a
shudder." Rocks and shoals and icebergs and dark nights and fogs and
the making of difficult harbours and winds of strength "8" on the
Beaufort scale, are not things that habitually occupy his mind. Hourly
our seamen were engaged in the routine of a perilous calling. Two
thousand of them in times of peace lose their lives every year. We were
not much concerned. But the submarine has now come to our assistance.
It has at least this to its credit that we view our insularity with
less composure. We see now that there are two sides to this blessing of
insularity. We know now that every ton of food brought into the country
is purchased with men's lives, and that is an arresting thought. We
know, too, that if they do not continue to bring it we are in very
evil case, a still more arresting and unfamiliar idea. We have had
episodes and hours and experience it will not be easy to forget. There
is something to be said for the submarine. It has proved to us that not
to our encircling sea, but to our sailors we owe our good fortune; that
the sea is as ready to ruin as to enrich us; that in them, not in her,
we must put our trust. "The one thing," it has been said, "that would
really wake the nation to the vital importance of the Merchant Navy
would be for the butcher, the baker and the grocer to cease to ring the
back-door bell every morning." Well, we have come within measurable
distance of that and can now turn with the more appreciation to the
anxieties and trials of the men who have averted the catastrophes.