average landsman more than the sad spectacle of a parson in the divorce
court, it is the sight of a sea-sick sailor. Since, however, the average
landsman reads his paper far oftener than he sails the stormy seas, the
former delectation is probably granted him rather more frequently than
the latter. At any rate, the one landsman in No. X Mess of H.M.S. _Zeus_
that morning saw enough sea-sick sailors to keep the balance on the
parsons' side for the duration of the war, and perhaps even longer.
I made the acquaintance of one of the "prostrates" marooned on the
beach of my hammock island through rescuing him from the assaults
of a tidal-wave-driven rum tub. He was nursing a crushed package of
gumdrop-like lozenges, one of which he offered me, murmuring faintly
that they had been sent him by his sister, who had found them useful
while boating at Clacton-on-Sea last summer. Endeavouring to start
a conversation, I asked him--knowing the _Zeus_ had been present at
that mighty struggle--if they had had weather like this at the Battle
of Jutland. A sad twinkle flickered for a moment in the corner of the
eye he rolled up to me, and, with a queer pucker of the mouth which
indicated that he must have had a sense of humour in happier times, he
replied that he had only joined the ship the week before: "'Tis my first
time at sea, sir, and I've come out to--to--this."
I gave him the best advice I could by telling him to pull himself
together and get out on deck to the fresh air; but neither spirit nor
flesh was equal to the initiatory effort. Looking back while I waited
near the foot of a ladder for a Niagara to exhaust itself, the last I
saw of him he was pushing mechanically aside with an unresentful gesture
a lump of salt pork which one of the table-roosting sailors dangled
before his nose on a piece of string.
Three flights up I clambered my erratic way before, on the boat deck in
the lee of a launch, I found a vantage sufficiently high and sheltered
to stand in comfort. The sight was rich reward for the effort. Save
for an ominous bank of nimbus to westward, the wind had swept the
coldly blue vault of the heavens clear of cloud, and the low-hanging
winter sun to south'ard was shooting slanting rays of crystalline
brightness across a sea that was one wild welter of cotton wool. I have
seen--especially in the open spaces of the mid-Pacific, where the waves
have half a world's width to get going in--heavier seas and higher seas
than were running that morning, but rarely--not even in a West Indian
hurricane--more vicious ones--seas more palpably bent on going over,
or through a ship that got in their way, rather than under, as proper
waves should do. And in this obliquity they were a good deal more than
passively abetted by a no less viciously inclined wind, which I saw
repeatedly lift off the top of what it appeared to think was a lagging
wave, and drive it on ahead to lace the heaving water with a film of
foam or dust the deck of a battleship with snowy brine.
But it was the ships themselves that furnished the real show. Of all
craft that ply the wet seaways, the battleship is the least buoyant,
the most "unliftable," the most set on bashing its arrogant way through
a wave rather than riding over it, and--with the increasing armour and
armaments, and the crowding aboard of various weighty contrivances
hitherto unthought of--this characteristic wilfulness has tended to
increase rather than decrease since the war. As a consequence, a modern
battleship bucking its way into a fully developed mid-winter gale is one
of the nearest approaches to the meeting of two irresistible bodies ever
to be seen.
The conditions for the contest were ideal that morning. Never were seas
more determined to ride over battleships, never were battleships more
determined to drive straight through seas. Both of them had something of
their way in the end, and neither entirely balked the other; but, drawn
as it was, that battle royal of Titans was a sight for the gods.
The battleships were in line abreast as I came up on deck, and holding
a course which brought the wind and seas abeam. We were all rolling
heavily, but with the rolls not sufficiently "synchronised" with the
waves--which were charging down without much order or rhythm--to keep
from dipping them up by the ton. If the port rail was low--as happened
when the ship was sliding down off the back of the last wave--the next
wave rolled in-board, and (save where the mast, funnels, and higher
works amidships blocked the way) drove right on across and off the other
side. If the port side had rolled high as an impetuous sea struck, the
latter expended its full force against the ship, communicating a jar
from foretop to stokeholds as shivering as the shock of a collision with
another vessel.
Our own quarter-deck was constantly swept with solid green water, and
even the higher fo'c'sle deck caught enough of the splash-up to make
traversing it a precarious operation. But it was only by watching one
of the other ships that it was possible to see how the thing really
happened. If it was the wallowing monster abeam to port, the striking of
a sea was signalised by sudden spurts of spray shooting into the air
all the way along her windward side, the clouds of flying water often
going over the funnels and bridge, and not far short of the foretop.
She would give a sort of shuddering stumble as the weight of the impact
made itself felt, and then--running from bow to stern and broken only
by the upper works, and occasionally, but not always, by the turrets--a
ragged line of foam appeared, quickly resolving itself into three or
four hundred feet of streaking cascades which came pouring down over the
starboard side into the sea. Watching the vessel abeam to starboard, the
phenomenon was repeated in reverse order. Save for the swaying foretop
against the sky, either ship at the moment of being swept by a wave
was suggestive of nothing so much as a great isolated black rock on a
storm-bound coast.
But the most remarkable thing about it all was the astonishingly
small effect this really heavy weather had upon the handling of the
ships. Evidently they had been built to withstand weather as well as
to fight, for they manoeuvred and changed formation with almost the
same meticulous exactitude as in protected waters. A gunnery officer
assured me that--except for momentary interference in training some of
the lighter guns--the fighting efficiency of the ship would hardly be
effected by all their plungings and the clouds of flying spray. Their
speed was, naturally, somewhat diminished in bucking into a head sea,
yet no lack of seaworthiness would prevent (should the need arise)
their being driven into that same head sea at the full power of their
mighty engines. The reason we were proceeding at somewhat reduced speed
was to ease things off a bit for the destroyers.
Ah! And what of the destroyers? There they all were, the faithful
sheep-dogs, when I came up, and at first blush I got the impression
that they were making rather better weather of it than the battleships.
That this was only an optical illusion (caused by the fact that they
were farther away and more or less obscured by the waves) I discovered
as soon as I climbed to the vantage of the after super-structure, and
put my glass upon the nearest of the bobbing silhouettes of mast and
funnel. Then I saw at once, though not, indeed, any such spray clouds
or cascades of solid water as marked the course of the battleships,
that she was plainly a labouring ship. A destroyer is not made to
pulverise a wave in the bull-at-a-gate fashion of a battleship, and
any exigency that compels her to adopt that method of progression is
likely to be attended by serious consequences. If one of the modern
type she will ride out almost any storm that blows if left to her own
devices; but force her into it at anything above half-speed, and it
is asking for trouble. Even before the destroyer I was watching began
disappearing--hull, funnels, and all but the mastheads--between crest
and crest of the onrushing waves, it was plain that both she and her
sisters were having all they wanted; and I was not surprised when word
was flashed to us that one of our brave little watch-dogs was suffering
from a wave-smashed steering geer, and had asked permission to make for
port if necessary. The permission was, I believe, granted, but--carrying
on with some sort of a makeshift or other--her plucky skipper managed to
stick it out and see the game through to the end.
There were a number of other ships in difficulties in that neck of the
North Sea at this moment, and every now and then--by the wireless--word
would come to us from one of them. Mostly they were beyond the horizon,
but two were in sight. One (two smoke-blackened "jiggers" and a bobbing
funnel-top beneath a bituminous blur to the east) was apparently a
thousand-ton freighter. An officer told me that she had been signalling
persistently since daybreak for assistance; but when I asked him if we
were not going to help her, he greeted the question with an indulgent
smile.
"Assistance will go to her in due course," he said, "but it will not
be from us. That kind of a thing might have been done in the first
month or two of the war, but the Huns soon made it impossible. Now, any
battleship that would detach a destroyer at the call of any ship of
doubtful identity would be considered as deliberately asking for what
she might jolly well get--a torpedo."
Another ship which was plainly having a bad time was some kind of a
cruiser whose long row of funnels was punching holes in a segment of
skyline. There was a suggestion of messiness forward, but nothing we
attached any importance to until word was wirelessed that she had just
had her bridge carried away by a heavy sea, and that the navigating
officer had been severely injured. The latter was known personally
to several of the wardroom officers, and at lunch speculation as to
what hurt he might have received led to an extremely interesting
discussion of the "ways of a wave with a man"; also of the comparative
seaworthiness of light cruisers and destroyers. The things that waves
have done to all three of them since the war began (to say nothing of
the things all three have done in spite of waves) is a story of its own.
The barometer continued to fall all day, with the wind rising a mile of
velocity for every point of drop. The seas, though higher and heavier,
were also more regular and less inclined to catch the ship with her
weather-rail down. The low cloud-bank of mid-forenoon had by early dusk
grown to a heavens-obscuring mask of ominous import, and, by dark, snow
was beginning to fall. The ship was reeling through the blackness of
the pit when I clambered to the deck after dinner, so that the driving
spray and ice-needles struck the face before one saw them by even the
thousandth of a second. The darkness was such as one almost never
encounters ashore, and it was some time before I accustomed myself to
close my eyes against the unseen missiles (when turning to windward)
without deliberately telling myself to do so in advance.
Into the Stygian pall the vivid golden triangles from the signal
searchlights on the bridge flashed like the stab of a flaming sword. One
instant the darkness was almost palpable enough to lean against; the
next, the silhouette of funnels and foretop pricked into life, but only
to be quenched again before the eye had time to fix a single detail.
So brief was any one flash that the action in each transient vision
was suspended as in an instantaneous photograph, yet the effect of the
quick succession of flashes was of continuous motion, like the kinema.
From where I stood, the heart of the fluttering golden halos, where a
destroyer winked back its answer, were repeatedly obliterated by the
inky loom of a wave, but the reflection was always thrown high enough
into the mist to carry the message.
Returning to the wardroom by the way of the mess-decks, I saw the youth
who had offered me the anti-seasick lozenges in the morning. Now quite
recovered, he was himself playing the pork-on-a-string game with one of
the only two "prostrates" still in sight. The following morning--though
the weather, if anything, was worse than ever--all evidences of
"indisposition" had disappeared.
* * * * *
For some days more we prowled the wet seaways, and then, well along into
a night that was foggier, colder, and windier than the one into which
we had steamed out, we crept along a heightening headland, nosed in the
wake of the flagship through a line of booms, and opened a bay that
was dappled with the lights of many ships. A few minutes later, and the
raucous grind of a chain running out through a hawse-pipe signalled that
we were back at the old stand.
And since, like all the rest of our sisters of the Grand Fleet, we
were expected to be ready to put to sea on _x_ hours' notice, there
was nothing for it but that the several hundred tons of coal which the
mighty _Zeus_ had been snorting out in the form of smoke to contaminate
the ozone of a very sizeable area of the North Sea should be replenished
without delay. A collier edged gingerly out of a whirling snow-squall
and moored fast alongside as I groped forward to retake possession of
my cabin under the bridge, and I went to sleep that night to the grind
of the winches and the steady tramp-tramp of the barrow-pushers on the
decks below.
A NORTH SEA SWEEP
There are four sights in this war that have etched themselves more
deeply upon the plates of my memory than any of a hundred others which
are themselves unforgettable--my first heavy artillery bombardment
in France, with a wallowing wave of men sweeping forward behind the
smoke and dust clouds of an advancing barrage, the meteor trail across
the northern sky of the first Zeppelin brought down over England,
the fantastically foreshortened peaks of southern Macedonia--with
Serb and Bulgar locked in death grips in the cockpit of a snow-choked
valley--from an aeroplane, and the Grand Fleet taking form out
of a North Sea mist on a winter's morning. And it is the last of
these--though the only mind picture it has left is of endless lines of
grey ships ploughing silently through grey waters to the blending line
of sea and misty sky, while the others were pulsing with motion, vibrant
with sound and vivid with the incomparable appeal of the drama in which
the actors are fighting and falling, living and dying men--that stirs,
and will stir, me longest and strongest of all.
Just why this is I cannot say, but some hint of it may be found in
the fact--so well known to all lovers of the ocean--that with the sea
it is more what one _feels_ than what one _sees_ that moves; and with
the Grand Fleet, which is instinct with the soul of the sea which it
commands, it is perhaps the feeling that a single sweep of the eye
comprehends the one mightiest force in mankind's mightiest struggle,
which invests those silent lines of steaming warships with a power to
stir the imagination (in my own case at least) as nothing else on earth
can stir it, nor--save only the sight of those same ships going into
action to fulfil the purpose for which they were created--ever will.
My first sight of the Grand Fleet at sea I owe to the ready
thoughtfulness which those who know him best so often refer to in
speaking of Admiral Sir David Beatty. For three days I had been
"standing by" on the ---- waiting to go out into the North Sea on a
jaunt which had been vaguely described to me as likely to develop
"interesting possibilities," and that famous cruiser was under steaming
orders at the moment an invitation came from the Flagship of one of
the Battleship Squadrons to come over to a concert being given that
afternoon aboard the "Theatre-Ship" _Gourko_. There was just time to
take the show in before our departure the Captain of the ---- reckoned,
and volunteered to sail the Staff Surgeon and me over in his galley.
There was a notable attendance at the concert, and in the little
company which were invited to Admiral Madden's cabin for tea, after
the playing of "God Save the King" and "The Star Spangled Banner" had
signalised the end of an enjoyable programme, were at least a dozen
men whose names would be entitled to head the list of the makers of
modern naval history. While I was draining a single cup of tea I heard
the Admiral who had won the Battle of the Falkland Islands explain the
idiosyncrasies of North Sea meteorology; another, who had directed naval
operations at the Dardanelles, expatiate on the difficulties of raising
pigs on his Squadron's refuse since the "Food Economy" campaign got well
under weigh in the Grand Fleet; a third, who had held high command at
Jutland, outline a plan for elevating the popular taste for good music;
and a fourth, who had done notable work at Dogger Bank, lay down the
law on the points of Irish terriers. The only one whom I heard speak of
"Things Naval" was the Commander-in-Chief, who was enticed into "shop"
after inquiring how my plans were progressing in connexion with some
voyages in light craft which I had asked permission to make.
On my telling him I expected to put to sea with the light cruisers in
a couple of hours, he stood for a moment in thought, and then said
quietly, "If you can throw your kit together and go aboard one of the
battleships before the ---- sails, I think that I can promise that you
will see--in the course of the next thirty-six hours--a sight such as
you have never seen before, one that you will never forget."
I hesitated for a moment, for a voyage in the historic ----, with the
ever-present possibility of stumbling into an action with her, was
something I had been planning for and counting upon for weeks.
"You can come out with us again in another week or so," said the Captain
of the ----; "you may not be in a position to connect with what the
Commander-in-Chief has to offer for a good deal longer than that."
"But my own ship is in quarantine," I said, suddenly recollecting that
there had been a sporadic outbreak of mumps or something of the kind
reported from the _Erin_ in the course of the last day or two.
"Between thirty and forty capital ships, to say nothing of light
cruisers and destroyers, we ought to be able to find room to stow you
away for a couple of days," cut in Admiral Beatty with just the flicker
of one of his rare smiles. "Let Captain ---- arrange it for you. Perhaps
Admiral Sturdee"--and a moment later the victor of the Battle of the
Falklands was extending me a warm invitation to come to his Flagship as
his guest for the events of the next few days. By dint of the liveliest
kind of hustling, I was just able to return to the ----, get my togs
picked up and clamber aboard the barge Admiral Sturdee had kindly
despatched before the grinding of chains on hawse-pipes told that the
light cruisers were shortening in preparatory to weighing anchor and
departing on their own little North Sea sideshow.
An hour later I had climbed the gangway of my new ship, greeted several
friends of a former visit in the wardroom, made a hurried shift of
uniform in the comfortable cabin which had been prepared for me,
and was seated at dinner with Admiral Sturdee and his Staff. Of the
personal side of my voyage with this most highly distinguished and most
deservedly loved of British admirals--an experience the more treasured
in that it chanced to coincide with the last occasion on which he was
destined to go to sea on active service before taking over an important
command ashore--it is not my purpose to write here.
At another time, with Admiral Sturdee's concurrence, I shall endeavour
to set down a few of the things--mostly reminiscent of events in
which he had played an historic part, with occasional observations on
international developments, political and social,--of which he spoke at
table, in quiet intervals on the bridge, or while taking a few minutes'
refuge from the wind in the cold little box of his Spartan sea-cabin.
* * * * *
There was nothing to differentiate our preparations for departure on the
following afternoon from those for one of the several kinds of routine
work that a squadron of battleships performs in the course of its
regular duties. The "buzz" had gone around, however, that we were going
out for a "P.Z."--a general exercise of all the units of the Battleship
and Battle Cruiser fleets, with their auxiliaries--and the smoke which
began rolling up from scores of funnels as the early afternoon hours
wore on seemed to give confirmation to the theory that something was
afoot which would result in the putting to sea of the massed might of
the modern capital ships of the Navy. The British Lion was certainly
going out on a prowl, and there was always the chance that he might be
getting his claws into something. The infectious spirit of the "great
game" blew like a fresh breeze through the mess-decks, and there was a
new sparkle in every eye that met mine as I worked forward and upward to
the fore bridge, a smile on every ruddy face, a jaunty set to every pair
of swinging shoulders.
From the lofty vantage of the bridge I could see slim, gliding
shapes--dusky Maltese against the brown-black background of a jutting
headland--which were already threading the mazes of the booms, and knew
that they were some of the sportive shoals of smaller craft--probably
light cruisers--which would weave a far-flung circle of offence around
the bulkier bullies of the Battle Fleet itself.
Now the long, low ships of a line that had been anchored for a mile
on our starboard bow began slowly swinging in the boiling welter
of reversed propellers, and then, when their dark noses were all
pointing down the proper course as though strung on a single tow-line,
they started in easy, effortless glide around the end of the squat,
round-topped island which masked the exit through which they must pass.
"The 'Cats' are under weigh," said an officer at my elbow, pointing to
where the graceful shadow of the _Tiger_ and the grim profile of the
_Lion_ flitted in blank silhouette across a background, a stretch of
cliff-begirt beach where the drifted snows of a recent storm still lay
banked in a solid wall of dazzling white. Other shadows with historic
names flashed into vivid contrast for a few moments, and then dissolved
into misty indistinctness as they passed on to where their protective
colouring merged with the watery background; and behind these glided the
silhouettes of other ships which I knew to be "super-cats," ships with
names yet unknown to fame, but which were reputed to be able to outrun
and outclaw their predecessors by as wide a margin as they outbulked
them. One by one the gaunt profiles sharpened into sudden brightness and
then died down like the lights of a train dashing across a trestle into
a deep cut.
"It will be our turn presently," the Flag Lieutenant said, as he turned
a sheaf of signals just passed up to him. "Each division gets under
weigh to a time-table, and any substantial deviation from this by even
one ship would upset the schedule for all of the Squadrons following."
A quick order, the breaking out of a string of signal flags, the jerky,
serpentine inrush of the already shortened anchor-chain, and our ship
had caught the impulse of her accelerating screws and began slowly
gathering headway. Down past the head of line after line she steamed,
the men of each ship as she came abreast standing at attention to
salute the Flag of the Admiral. Eight ships in "Line Ahead," the
Squadron glided easily up the flow toward the gate.
As we passed one great tower of steel after another a breezy midshipman
began speaking of their "points" and "records" as he might have reviewed
the exhibits at a Bench Show. There was the _Marlborough_, which the
Germans had "sunk" with a torpedo at Jutland, and there--"that cubistic
nightmare" (referring to her scientific camouflage)--the new "----,"
which was supposed to "absorb" torpedoes as a Stilton cheese does port,
and to improve day by day under the treatment. "The _matlotes_ will tell
you," he said, "that she goes off and mooches round the U-boat lanes
just to tempt them to use up their mouldies on her so that there won't
be so many left for merchant ships!"