me, "it is laid down that each ship in the Fleet we are meeting shall
represent a Squadron of the enemy. For instance, that light cruiser
to the right--the one making all that smoke--represents an 'enemy'
Battleship Squadron, which, incidentally, is steaming hard in the hope
of getting in a position to waft us a breeze on a 'windy corner' when we
begin to turn. Incidentally"--and the lines of his firm mouth relaxed in
a quick smile--"I think we shall have turned before he gets to the place
he's driving for. Now that ship there (I think she's a battle cruiser)
represents----"
Just then his Flag Lieutenant, stepping rather more quickly than usual,
handed him a signal. "Now fancy that," he said, after running his eye
over the laconic message; "there's an enemy submarine ahead of us."
"And what might she represent, sir?" I asked, my mind still engrossed
with the intricate strategy of the "battle" into which we were rushing
at twenty knots an hour.
The Admiral had turned to read a second signal--this one from the
Flagship--after which he was busy giving some orders on his own account.
My very natural query would have remained unanswered had it not been
overheard by the Commander, who had just come up from below.
"Officially," he said with a laugh, "she probably represents the Kaiser,
or Von Tirpitz, or whoever stands sponsor for the Huns' 'ruthless'
submarine war. That signal refers to a U-boat, not to any of the craft
playing in our little game." He paused for a moment as a detonation of
terrific force rumbled distantly, and a shock like that of a blow from
a mighty wave shook the ship from bow to stern, and then resumed with a
grim smile: "But if that charge came anywhere near her, by this time she
probably represents--well, a tired lily folding up and going to sleep
for the night would probably be about as near it as anything in Nature."
Eight or ten times, with short intervals between, those thunderous
under-sea detonations--each followed by its own shuddering jar--came
over and through the water to us. Whitish perpendicular bars, dimly
guessed in the mist, revealed what might have been high-tossed
foam-geysers four or five miles away, but it was almost inconceivable
that explosions at that distance could reach us with such staggering
force. Indeed, I have since talked with officers from a number of
different squadrons--seasoned veterans of many big gun battles, all of
them--who, experiencing the shocks from 'tween decks, felt certain that
their own ships had been mined or torpedoed.
While the muffled booms of the depth-charges were still sounding we
saw one of the "enemy" ships--apparently a battleship of the "Queen
Elizabeth" class--which had been manoeuvring for a position from
which she could deliver an effective "broadside" at us, suddenly alter
course eight points to port and head directly away at right angles to
our extended line. As the raking this would have exposed her to was
about the last thing in the world she would have risked had she been
still playing the "make believe" battle, it hardly needed the far-borne
and faint but still unmistakable shriek of a syren to tell us there was
another game afoot. Presently she altered back to her original course,
and all we ever heard of what happened was a signal, received shortly
afterwards, saying that the _Valiant_ had attempted to ram the periscope
of a hostile submarine.
From first to last this little by-play had taken but a very few minutes,
and, absorbed in the drama being played out on the fringes of the mist
curtain, I quite neglected to take account of what was going on in our
immediate vicinity. When I looked again the disposition of the units
of the Grand Fleet--both battleships and screening destroyers--had
completely altered. The battle formation had melted as by magic into
one which offered the maximum of protection against submarine attack.
Shortly we went down to lunch, where the only allusion I recall being
made to the episode was something Admiral Sturdee said about how
discouraging it must have been to the U-boat skipper to bob up right in
the middle of the Grand Fleet, and then not have an opportunity to fire
a single torpedo. In the afternoon we crept upon the "skeleton" fleet
of the "enemy" in the mist and gave it the trouncing the U-boats were
responsible for our failing to complete in the morning. The next day the
Grand Fleet was lying quietly at its anchorage.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] The reference is to the ships of the ----th or American Battle
Squadron, which went to sea with the Grand Fleet for the first time on
this occasion.
A VISIT TO THE BRITISH FLEET
While lunching with Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee in the course of a
recent visit to the Grand Fleet, which must always remain one of the
most memorable experiences of my life, I ventured the opinion that the
work of the British Navy in sweeping every enemy vessel--warship and
merchant steamer--from the surface of the Seven Seas, was the one most
outstanding achievement of the war.
"Perhaps you are right," said the victor of the Battle of the Falklands
thoughtfully, "but you must not lose sight of the fact that to win this
victory over the German the British sailor has had to win an even more
remarkable victory over himself. At the outbreak of the war I had every
confidence that, in one way or another, we would be able to establish
a control of the sea quite as complete as that which we actually have
established; but, if any one could have assured me that the foundations
of that control would have to rest upon the Grand Fleet being based in
this isolated harbour, with the men practically cut off from intercourse
with the world for months at a time, I must confess that I might have
been--well, somewhat less sure, to say the least. Certainly I would
never have dared more than to hope that the moral of the men of the
Fleet, far from being lowered by the most trying experience of the
kind sailors have ever been called upon to endure, would actually be
heightened. On the score of enthusiasm and 'lust for battle,' there
could not, of course, have been any improvement, but this has given
way to a cheerful, high-spirited willingness which, if possible, makes
the Fleet a more efficient fighting unit with every day that passes.
If you will observe well the spirit of the men of the Grand Fleet at
a time when the German Fleet--based though it is in the Kiel Canal,
where regular shore-leave is easy to arrange--is filled with unrest and
threatened with mutiny, I think you will agree with me the keeping of
the British sailor in a healthy state of mind and body, without once
letting him verge on 'staleness,' is worthy to rank as an achievement
with that of keeping the enemy off the seas."
Evidence of the high spirits of the men of the Grand Fleet I
had been having from the moment I sighted the first car-load of
returning-from-leave sailors on my journey up from London, but the
occasion on which I was the most impressed was the morning on which I
was allowed the honour of helping to coal ship by wheeling 2-cwt. sacks
on a barrow for a couple of hours, an experience the memory of which
promises long to outlast even the not unlingering stiffness of my dorsal
muscles. The ship had not been ordered, and was not expecting to be
ordered to sea, and there was no reason to rush the coaling save to be
free to take up some other of the regular grind of routine drudgery next
in order.
I have watched warships coaling in many ports of the world, but never
have I seen men working under the stimulus of extra shore-leave at
Gibraltar, Nagasaki, or Valparaiso get the stuff into bunkers faster
than did those lusty men of the good old "X----" that misty morning in
Scapa Flow. Almost every man who was not smoking was singing, and even
out of the dust-choked inferno of the collier's holds, the beat of a
chesty chorus welled up in the pauses of the grinding winches.
Time and again (until I learned how to defeat the manoeuvre) men
behind me in the line pushed their barrows in ahead and made off with
sacks that should have been mine to shift, and time and again (until
I had found my second wind and my "coaling legs") the rollicking Jack
Tar just behind me put his speeding barrow into one of my by no means
slow-moving heels. The several hundred tons of coal which went down the
chutes between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. on that ordinary "routine" morning was
shifted at a rate that would have been entirely creditable to a crew
filling their bunkers for a long-deferred homeward voyage.
I did not have another opportunity to discuss with Admiral Sturdee the
manner in which the miracle of "Fleet moral" had been wrought, but
an officer of the battleship in which I stayed summed the thing up
succinctly.
"I quite understand," I had said, "why the physical health of the Fleet
should be the best ever known--why no battleship averages more than two
or three sick at a time. The long months away from the germ-laden air
of the land is sufficient to account for that. But how, after these
three years and a half between the Devil, the Deep Sea, and the Scotch
Mist, the men are still exuberant enough to want to push barrows of coal
faster than a landsman, like myself (who is pushing for the sheer luxury
of the thing), or how they are still full enough of _joie de vivre_ to
enjoy fits of singing between fits of coughing in the hold of a collier,
is beyond my comprehension. How did you do it?"
The reply was prompt and to the point, and seems to me to disclose the
secret in a nutshell. "By giving them," he said, "both more work and
more play than they had in peace-time; in other words, by cutting down
to a minimum the time in which to twirl their thumbs and think."
"Outside polishing brass and holystoning the deck," he went on, "there
is a deal more work in a warship in war-time than in days of peace, so
that we are never hard put to find a field for extra effort. We learn
much quicker from practice than we did from theory, and there is an
astonishing amount of work going on all the time to the end that the
ship shall be kept as up to date as possible in all her equipment. The
increase of a ship's offensive and defensive power, making her better
to fight with and safer to fight in, is naturally a work in which the
men are vitally interested, and they go into it with a will. We try as
far as possible to avoid simply putting the men through the motions of
work, like doing unnecessary painting or scrubbing, for instance. If
the ship does not provide for the moment enough real work, we try to
find it on the beach. For the next few days, for example, we are sending
several hundred men ashore to make roads on one of the islands. They are
very keen about the change, and I have heard them speaking about it all
to-day. That kind of a thing works much better than simply improvising
work on board. It gives variety, and the men feel that they are doing
something useful instead of simply being kept busy.
"So much for work. On the score of play, we aim to give the men
rather more athletic sports than they would have in harbour in
peace-time, though all of it has to be carried on with many less
'frills'--flag-dressings, tea-parties, and the like--under the limiting
conditions of always being ready to put to sea at notice of a few hours.
In the ship, doubling round the deck for exercise is kept up regularly,
as is also a certain number of Swedish drills. Every encouragement is
given to the men to box, and the ship, squadron, and Fleet championships
in the various classes are, of course, great events. There is scarcely
a drifter or patrol-boat without one or more sets of boxing-gloves, for
there is no form of sport quite so well calculated to exercise both mind
and body in restricted quarters.
"Water-sports--swimming, rowing, and sailing--are kept up about as
in peace-time, though here the long spell of inclement weather makes
the winter rather a longer 'closed season' than farther south. Ashore
there are several indifferent cricket and football grounds, though not,
however, nearly enough for the normal demand of the great number--it
runs well up into six figures--of able-bodied, sport-loving men in the
Fleet. A good deal of hockey is played, and we have found it a better
wet-weather game than football. In all of these sports inter-ship and
inter-squadron rivalry is encouraged, principally because it stimulates
the minds of so many outside the actual participants.
"Many of the officers have their golf clubs and tennis racquets, and
though our links and courts would hardly satisfy the critical eyes of
St. Andrews or 'Queens' professionals, they have been a big help to us.
Cross-country runs and paper-chases, up and down the steep hills and
over the soggy peat bogs, are taken part in by both men and officers,
and for flesh-reducing, muscle-hardening, and chest-expanding are about
the best thing we have. The tug-of-war is a traditional Navy sport, for
it can, if necessary, be enjoyed on shipboard as well as ashore. The
great pride which the men of a ship take in the success of its team
makes this also a very useful sport for its 'psychologic' value.
"Amusements pure and simple--the kinema and theatricals--are a new thing
with us (at least while on active service) and the scheme is still in
process of development. For a number of reasons it is impracticable for
professional troupes to visit the Grand Fleet in the same way as they
have been going to France to entertain the Army. The greater distance
is against it, as is also the fact that we have no place to put them
up. Again, as there is no place where they could perform to more than a
thousand men (at the outside) at one time, it would obviously take some
months to make a round of the Fleet. The fact that the visitors might
awake almost any morning to find themselves on the way to a sea-fight is
also a deterrent. All of these things have made it necessary for us to
shift for ourselves in the matter of entertainment.
"Each ship, of course, has always had its band and orchestra, and
concerts and rather crude theatrical shows have been features of Navy
life from time immemorial. The trouble with the shows, however, has
always been the amount of improvising that they entailed, especially
in the matter of a stage, footlights, seats, and the like. Before the
war the men usually managed to find time to paint and rig 'flies' and
'drops,' devise lighting effects, and even to fix up some kind of
'auditorium.' Here, with the whole ship standing by for orders to put to
sea, all of this was out of the question. Under these circumstances, the
man who first conceived the idea of a special 'theatre ship' deserves a
monument as a benefactor to the British Navy.
"The suggestion was to provide a steamer on which a permanent stage,
complete with sets of scenery, exits and entrances, footlights,
sidelights, and dressing-rooms, had been installed; also sufficient
seats to accommodate as many of the crew of a battleship as could ever
be off duty at one time. The thing would have been worth while a dozen
times over, even if it had been necessary to detach a three or four
thousand-ton steamer for no other purpose. Luckily, the plan chanced to
dove-tail to a nicety with the functions of a steamer which, in carrying
frozen beef to the Fleet, laid alongside each ship for from twenty-four
to forty-eight hours. The stage, auditorium, and the rest were built
without interfering in the least with the steamer's regular work,
nor have the some hundreds of performances already given aboard been
responsible for the least interruption in our supply of frozen beef. As
for the shows, she is discharging to the 'X----' of our squadron to-day,
and you can go over to-night and see one for yourself.
"The trouble with the 'theatre ship' idea is that it is too long between
shows. Between the battleship and the endless auxiliaries, it may
easily take from two to three months for the beef-cum-theatre steamer
to make the full round of the Fleet, an interval which we had to find
some way of bridging with other entertainment. It was a difficult
problem in many ways, and it is only within the last month or two that
we have found--through the kinema--a satisfactory solution. Every
ship in the Fleet has now its projector, and, through an organisation
formed in London for that purpose, a continuous supply of the latest
and best films is sent up and circulated at a cost to us that is almost
negligible. The films on arrival at the Depot Ship which houses the Post
Office, are listed and filed, to be distributed to the various units in
accordance with their demands.
"Each ship has a daily bulletin of the new films arriving, and at
once sends in an application for its preference, with two or three
alternatives should the first choice have gone to a prior claimant.
The scheme has been successful beyond words. Each ship has a nightly
performance, the projector being at the disposal of the men during the
week, and of the officers on Saturday. All share in the cost of it,
which only comes to a shilling or two per head a month. With a little
larger supply of the more popular films, the development of this kinema
scheme promises to give us everything we could possibly ask on the
score of evening amusement. About the only thing left to do would be to
buy a few picture-taking machines, let the officers and men write the
scenarios, and start making films on our own account. If it turns out
that we're to be here another year or two, I don't doubt that's what we
will be doing."
There is not a great deal that I can add to this comprehensive summary
of the way work and play have been administered with such success in
maintaining the moral of the men of the Grand Fleet. The show in the
"theatre ship" that night I found well worth the wet launch trip in a
sloppy sea. It consisted of two parts of varieties and one of burlesque.
Most of the numbers had been under rehearsal for several weeks, and
the whole affair went off with all the aplomb of a London Revue. No
"accessories"--from posters to programmes--were missing, not even the
Censor.
An officer sitting next me, calling my attention to the blank back of
the programme, said that he had written some "advertisements" to fill
it, but that the Censor had banned them at the last moment as "not
proper." As a matter of fact, there was far less in the whole show
played by men to men, as it was, to "bring a blush to the cheek" than in
the average West End Revue. A certain "chilliness" in the atmosphere of
the auditorium, due to the fact that it was situated immediately over
one of the refrigerating chambers, was more than neutralised by the warm
reception the packed audience gave the show from the opening chorus to
"God Save the King."
I managed to spend a few minutes at the nightly kinema show on several
battleships. All of the available seats were invariably packed, with
the enthusiasm tremendous, especially for the "knock-about" pictures.
Charlie Chaplin appeared to be a ten-to-one favourite over any one
else--both in the Ward Rooms and in the Lower Decks--and the demand for
films in which he figured was a good deal greater than the available
supply. The "sentimental" Mary Pickford sort of films were rather more
popular than the men cared to show by their applause, but the harrowing
"suffering-mother-and-child" subjects they would have none of. A rather
poor film of Rider Haggard's _She_ which I saw was very coldly received
by both men and officers. The Official War films of all of the Allies
were always sure of a rousing reception. A special treat was the picture
of the King's recent visit to the Grand Fleet, which offered men and
officers the exciting sport of "finding" themselves on various sectors
of it. Travel films were in little demand, the reason for which was
perhaps supplied by one of my "coaling-mates," who said that the only
kind of travel "movie" that he was interested in was the woods of
Scotland running north at sixty miles an hour past the window of his
homebound train.
Besides the more or less organised forms of work and play, many of the
men in the Fleet have some sort of a hobby to which they turn in the
rare intervals which might otherwise be spent in "thumb-twirling" and
"thinking," those twin enemies of "The Contented Sailor." Thousands
of men "make things"--not the old ship-in-a-bottle seaside bar
ornament sort, but objects of real usefulness. One officer had become
a specialist on electrical heating contrivances, and had equipped
the wardroom with cigar-lighters to work with the ship's "juice" and
save matches. Another was making his own golf clubs, and I heard of
a Captain of Royal Marines of noble lineage who had fabricated a very
"wearable" pair of Norwegian ski-boots. There are so many skilled
artisans among the men that one is not surprised to see them making
almost anything; nevertheless, the gunner of one of the battleships
who--with the sole exception of the lens--made a complete kinema
projecting machine, did a very creditable piece of work.
Some of the senior Naval Officers have gone in for stock-breeding,
overflowing to the land in their endeavours to find room to expand.
Pig-raising is the most popular line, and there is great rivalry between
the several "sty proprietors." A certain distinguished sailor--his
name is a byword to the English people--discoursed learnedly to me for
fifteen minutes on the strategy of the Battle of Jutland, and then,
turning to a visiting officer, spoke with equal facility, and even
greater enthusiasm, of his success in crossing the "China Poland" with
the "Ordinary Orkney" to increase (or was it to reduce?) the "streak" in
the bacon. He called the new breed the "Chinorkland," or something like
that, and if the fact that he was planning three or four generations
ahead conveys anything as to the view the Navy takes regarding the
duration of the war, my readers--with the Censor's indulgence--are
welcome to the tip.
THE HEALTH OF THE FLEET
It was a great day for the Principal Medical Officer. In spite of the
fact that there were nearer 1200 than 1100 men in his ship, the returns
of "Sick" and "Hospital" cases had been recorded by successive "pairs
of spectacles" for several days. Even a single twenty-four hours like
that for a battleship on active service was worthy of remark, and three
or four days of it undoubtedly constituted a record for the British or
any other Navy. That the clean sheet would be spread over a whole week
was almost too much to hope for, even after the sixth day of the double
duck's eggs had gone by. But now the morning of the seventh day had
come, the last of a week in which there had been no case of sickness
in a ship which carried one of the largest, if not _the_ largest,
complement of men in the British Navy. It was no wonder that the
P.M.O.'s eyes were beaming, and that he shook hands all round with his
Staff Assistants, for it was an achievement which might well stand as a
record for many a year.
"Since you do not appear likely to be troubled with anything worse than
a rush of congratulations to-day, sir," I said, after extending my own
felicitations, "perhaps you'll have time to tell me how you've done it.
I've heard fine tributes paid the R.N.M.S. by French, American, and
Italian doctors who know something of it, but I was hardly prepared to
find you starting a sort of Ponce de Leon 'Fountain of Perpetual Youth,'
in the British Fleet."
The P.M.O. laughed.
"Making a health resort of a battleship, with your dressing stations
under casemates and your sick bay all but under a turret, does seem a
bit like reversing the saying about 'in the midst of life we are in
death,'" he replied. "But the fact remains that this ship--the whole of
the Grand Fleet indeed--is one of the most remarkable 'health resorts'
the world has ever known. Not since the dawn of history has there been
a large body of men with so small a percentage of bodily ills and
ailments as that which mans the ships of the Grand Fleet at this moment.
This is due to the absolutely unique conditions which prevail here,
and our success in maintaining and improving the standard of health is
principally due to making the most of those conditions.