bunkers when the ship rolled to that side, and in the second or two
she hung there before swinging back again half a dozen men had thrown
themselves upon it in an effort to "clip its wings" by removing the
wheels. Either the time was too short, or else they had got in each
other's way.
At any rate, the wheels were still in position to go round when the
battleship, sliding down the reverse of the big wave that had thrown
her over, tilted her decks back the other way. Straight down the
one-in-three incline from the port to the starboard bunkers lolloped the
Juggernaut, dashing the protesting anatomies of the stokers to left and
right as it went. Spitting blood and oaths indiscriminately, one man
clung to it all the way, however, and he it was who, taking advantage of
the tilt, finally rendered it harmless by pushing it over on its side,
where it was left wriggling impotently like an overturned turtle.
Meanwhile the "Kilroy" had been ringing up its numbers in vain, and it
took several minutes of fast shovelling by all hands to bring the fires
up to where they would have been had the interruption not occurred.
It was about this time that the bridge called on the engine-room for an
increase of speed, and it was that, with a change of course, that sent
the mounting seas crashing over the starboard bow, which brought my
visit to the stokeholds to a sudden and unceremonious end. There came a
shivering crash, followed by a momentary halt like that which throws one
against his neighbour in a jerkily-braked tramcar.
The great ship staggered groggily for a second or two as a weight
of solid water equal to her own was launched against her. Then the
relentless urge of her spinning screws drove her forward, with the
dish of her rigid hull skimming a few thousand tons off the top of the
uprearing wave that had assailed her. The most of the mighty cataclysm
surged to lee and back into the sea again, but wherever there was an
opening--by gun-port, by ventilator, by unbattened hatch--it poured
below in thunderous torrents. Deck by deck, where we had descended so
laboriously by tilting ladders, we heard it bounding lower and lower,
and then (just how and by where I never exactly understood) the flood
was all about us.
"If we ship two or three more like that it'll be getting to the fires,"
shouted the warrant officer who had taken me over from the Senior
Engineer; "we'll only be in the way here; we'd best get up while we can.
I've stood all the watches I care to in flooded stokeholds in the years
I was a stoker myself."
Over steel plates that were rocking with the wash of the water that
had penetrated beneath them, he led me to a little electric lift into
which the two of us were just able to crowd and slide the door. "Never
thought much of this thing," he said as the car began to ascend after
two or three propitiatory prods at the button; "there's too much chance
of getting stalled halfway and spending the night like a tinned herring.
But even that would be better than getting caught by another waterfall
on one of the ladders. Besides, she seems to be going all right anyway."
Half a minute later the little lift came to a creaking standstill, and
we squeezed out to a ladder which led up to the main deck. The wash
swirled to our knees in an angle of the mess-deck, but the warrant
officers' mess, to which I was conducted by my guide, was warm and
dry. Toasting bread for our tea in the genial glow of the electric
heater, he told me yarns of the days when he himself had (to use his own
picturesque expression) "stood at the small end of a shovel" before the
furnace doors.
He had once been scalded with escaping steam in the hold of an old
cruiser off the coast of South America, once imprisoned in the stokehold
of a destroyer for forty-eight hours in a gale in the sub-Arctic, and
once he had been "mentioned" for putting out a fire started by a German
shell in some nondescript craft in which he found himself at the time
the British Navy was trying to protect the retreat along the Flemish
coast. The latter sounded like a "story," and I threw a "lead" or two to
draw it out. This was about all I got.
"The old _Flighty_ got in too close," he said, turning the slice on his
toasting fork, "and the Huns opened up on us with bigger stuff than we
reckoned they had there. There was a big crash, just like when a big
lump of sea hits you, only worse, and all the stokers and me (I was a
petty officer then) was knocked flat. We were under forced draught, and
the fires needing all the coal we could pitch on to them. No one was
much hurt, and I got them to shovelling again as soon as I could. Then
I took a squint up the ventilator down which most of the shock seemed to
come.
"There was a bit of a fire getting under way up there, and so I pitched
up two or three buckets of water and put it out. Didn't notice till
afterwards that a small fragment of shell had come down and hit me in
the forehead--right here" (touching a jagged cut just under the hair).
"Captain seemed rather pleased about it, as the men on fire station in
that part of the ship had been knocked out, and he appeared to think I
had kept the blaze from getting a big headway.
"'Nother funny thing"--and he went on to tell of a stoker of a trawler
who, after having his face slightly scalded by steam, had lain down and
gone to sleep with his head pillowed among some of the steward's recent
purchases, and of how the cook, foraging in the twilight and starting to
pick up what he thought was a boiled lobster, had nearly pulled off one
of the unlucky chap's burned ears!
I sought the fo'c'sle deck for a breath of fresh air after that, and
pushed my head out of the after superstructure just as a hulking cinder
came winging aft before the snoring north-east gale. It was quite
possible (I said to myself as I ducked inside and pulled down my eyelid
in an endeavour to deposit the unwelcome fragment on my cheek) that this
very cinder was one which I myself had dumped down one of the bunker
chutes during our last coaling.
At any rate, I knew that, save for that last leg skywards by way of
the furnaces, I had followed the path of the coal from the collier to
the funnel-top, and even a bit further. I had, therefore, no legitimate
cause for resentment over the fact that it had taken to following me.
III. AMERICA ARRIVES
THE UNITED STATES NAVY
In writing some months ago on the coming of the American Army to France,
I quoted the naïve words used by a French Staff Officer to describe the
impression the new arrivals had made upon him. After speaking of the
keenness of the American officers to learn from those who had had the
experience, he concluded: "We like them very much. In fact, they have
been quite a surprise. They have not displayed the least tendency to
show us how to run the war. Indeed, _they are not the least American_!"
I do not know that I have heard a British naval officer use _precisely_
the same words in voicing his relief that his American "opposite
number," whom he is now beginning to meet with increasing frequency
and intimacy, has not fulfilled expectations in insisting on showing
the British Navy how to win the war; but that precise sentiment I
heard implied many times, though, I am happy to record, less and less
frequently as the favourable impression formed by those who have had
opportunity of meeting the first officers from across the Atlantic,
has had time to "percolate." Save on the score of technical training
and uniform, there is very little to differentiate the American naval
officer from his brother in the Army who has furnished so agreeable a
surprise to his Allies in France, and there need be no fear (whatever
may have been expected from those who have not had the opportunity of
meeting him before) that the former will not "keep station" at sea in
the same quiet unostentatious way that the latter has "fallen into step"
on land.
So far, since American naval activities in the war zone have been
largely limited to the operations of their fleet of destroyers off
the Irish coast, the two navies have had far less opportunity to get
acquainted than have the British and American armies. The liaison
established at Queenstown, however, may be taken as a microcosm of the
co-operation that will be established on a larger scale should the
exigencies of the situation demand it. As thoroughly characteristic of
the spirit in which the Americans are taking up their work in these
waters, I may quote the words of an officer of one of their destroyers
with whom I talked recently.
"Green as we came to the job," he said, "in comparison to their three
years of hard experience of the British, our taking over here was almost
like a lot of boy scouts replacing a regiment of seasoned veterans in
the trenches. We were all for the job, however, and somehow we began to
get results right from the get-away. Let me tell you, though, that if
we had had to find out all the wrinkles of the game ourselves--if they
had not given us the benefit of all they had been paying in ships and
men for three years to learn--it would have been a far slower business
for us, and a far more costly one as well. I take off my hat to the
British destroyers and trawlers, and to the men who man them. I have
not had a chance yet to see anything of the rest of their Navy, but if
the officers and men are of the same stamp as those we have worked with
here, when our capital ships come over it will be just like joining up
with another American fleet."
These sentiments seem to me thoroughly typical of the spirit with which
the American Navy is taking up its task in European waters, and such
also was the opinion of a distinguished British Naval officer to whom I
quoted them not long ago.
"I have known American Naval Officers a good many years," he
said, "principally on the China and West India stations, so that,
personally, I had none of the doubts about our ability to co-operate
with them that may have been harboured by some of my friends who had
been less fortunate than myself on that score. The fact that the
average untravelled Briton has had to judge the American wholly by
such specimens as seemed to him the most characteristic among those
coming to this side of the water--that is, by the Cook's tourist
and the money-slinging millionaire, neither of whom is in the least
representative--has been responsible for our getting, as a nation, a
distorted picture of you, as a nation. It was that which gave the more
conservative element in both our Army and Navy some doubts as to how we
might settle down to pull in double harness.
"One of the best things about the American Naval Officer--and one that
stands him in good stead at the present time--is his open-mindedness. He
may have come over here firmly believing that some gun, some explosive,
some system of loading or fire-control, or any of a number of other
things he has perfected to the best of his experience, is better than
anything else of the kind that Britain or any other nation has got.
But that does not blind him in the least to the good points of the
latter, and no false sentiment, pride, or conservatism will prevent the
incontinent scrapping of his own long-laboured-over invention to make
way for what his open mind and sterling common sense tell him is better.
It is this which makes it comparatively easy for the American to do a
thing which is above almost all others difficult for the Briton--to
profit and take advantage of another's experience.
"An American destroyer--and the same will be true of any other ships
of whatever class that may be sent over--takes its place as a unit of
one of our fleets or squadrons just as easily and naturally as if a new
British ship, manned by British sailors, had been commissioned, and that
will go on just as long as it is necessary or advisable to increase your
naval strength in European waters. Indeed, the effective smoothness of
the system under which the American ships work with ours makes one
feel that--quite without realising it--we have taken the first step in
the formation of what has so long been talked of as a Utopian dream--an
'International Police Force.' It is hardly the time to talk of such a
consummation at this stage of things; but if it ever does eventuate, you
make take it that an Anglo-Saxon naval force will be its foundation."
Because it has been impossible to tell the public really anything about
American naval co-operation with the British, the historic significance
of that event has been almost overlooked. As a matter of fact, however,
it marks the first occasion in which the ships of one Allied nation have
been practically incorporated (so far as the direction of operations
are concerned) in the navy of another. Allied fleets have carried out
operations together--as the French and the British at the Dardanelles,
or the British and the Italians in the Adriatic--but never has the
co-operation been so intimate--and, it may be added, so successful--as
in the present instance.
That the British and American naval officer would "hit it off" well
personally from the outset no one with any acquaintance with both of
them could ever have had any doubt. As a matter of fact, indeed, there
is less difference between them than between the average American and
Englishman, and even that is a good deal less than most people imagine.
In the first place, they come from very nearly the same classes socially
(I am speaking now of the regular "R.N." and "U.S.N."), in their
respective countries, and there is very little indeed to differentiate
the English lad of thirteen or fourteen and the American lad of a year
or two older, the one beginning his naval training at Osborne and the
other at Annapolis. Differing in details though they are, the training
of these two naval schools is far less divergent than that of English
and American public schools and universities. That is to say, the naval
schools of the two countries are aiming at precisely the same thing--the
turning out of an officer who knows his business--whereas public schools
and universities are working in a number of different directions.
The system of appointing the American naval cadet ensures that each
year's class is selected as nearly as may be from all parts of the
country. Each member of the Congress is required to make one appointment
to both the naval and military academies, and, in addition to these,
there are ten or more appointments at large made from Washington. In
this way each State is represented in the Naval Academy according to
its population. Thus New York, with, say, forty members in the House of
Representatives and two in the Senate, would have forty-two nominees,
while Nevada, with three members in the House and two in the Senate,
would have five. A Member of Congress has his choice of making the
appointment open to a competitive examination or giving it direct to
any boy fulfilling the requisite requirements. Even in the latter case,
however, the prospective nominee must pass very stiff examinations
calculated to establish his mental, moral, and physical fitness, and
it is practically impossible for him to be pushed in simply because he
has friends in high places. It is, I believe, becoming more and more
the custom to resort to competitive examination, so that the boy named
by each member is usually the brightest of a score or more striving for
that honour from his Congressional district, which contains, roughly, a
population of from two to three hundred thousand.
As nearly as the comparison can be made, the four-years' course at the
Annapolis Naval Academy covers about the same ground that the British
cadet covers in his two years at Osborne, the same period (since the
war somewhat reduced) at Dartmouth, and his first year as a midshipman.
Since the average age of entrance to Osborne is about thirteen and a
half, and to Annapolis about sixteen, it is difficult to compare the
entrance requirements or the courses. As the British cadet has about
two and a half years the start of the American in the matter of age,
it follows that the latter--to reach an equality of training, if not
of rank, at twenty--must cover in four years the same ground which the
former does in six and a half. This, I should say, he comes pretty near
to accomplishing.
The fact that the American Navy was less than half of the size of the
British, while the population from which officers could be drawn
was more than twice that of the British Isles, made it possible for
Annapolis to insist on a mental and physical standard in its entrants
calculated to make them equal to the very stiff years of work ahead of
them. The system of naming as "alternative" the boy who passed "No. 2"
in the competitive entrance examination also made it possible to weed
out and replace in the first year any cadet who began to lag behind his
class.
Not only was the "book" and class-room work at Annapolis a good deal
stiffer than in the corresponding years at Osborne and Dartmouth,
but the year was a longer one in point of work. At Osborne the cadet
spent three terms of three months each, with the other three months of
the year divided into his Easter, Summer, and Christmas holidays. At
Annapolis there was something like nine months of work at the academy
proper, with the summer months spent in cruising on a training ship.
At the end of four years--or at about the age of twenty--the
American cadet, on passing the examinations, received the rank of
ensign--corresponding to the British sub-lieutenant--and began his sea
career as an officer. The British midshipman usually managed to qualify
for his first stripe at a somewhat earlier age than his American cousin,
and this start tended to increase rather than decrease as he climbed
the ladder of promotion. Speaking very roughly the British lieutenant
appears to average two or three years younger than his American
"opposite," the lieutenant-commander three or four, the commander three
to five, and the captain five to seven.
Of the training of the cadets in the British and American naval
institutions, only the briefest comparison is possible here. On the
physical side there is very little difference, both giving the greatest
encouragement to outdoor exercise and bodily development. Each pays
equal attention to aquatics--rowing, swimming, and sailing--and American
football gives the Annapolis cadet the same vigorous, manly training as
"rugger" does those of Osborne and Dartmouth. Baseball and cricket are
more or less in the same class.
On the technical side there was also a good deal of similarity in the
training, though it seems probable that the "specialisation," which is
the principal differentiation between the British and American Naval
Officer (who is given an "all-round" preparation), is being given more
and more attention in the British schools as the necessity of turning
out officers rapidly has increased during the war. The fact that it
is the British rather than the American officer who is trained as a
"specialist" presents a curious anomaly, for, generally speaking,
the United States is, of all the nations in the world, the one where
specialisation is carried to the greatest length. Yet the fact remains
that it has always been the American practice not only to train the
naval cadet so that he is competent ultimately to perform the duties
of any officer on any ship of the Navy, but actually to require him
to serve several years in each of such various capacities as engineer,
navigator, gunnery, or torpedo officer.
This system gives the officer who has been "through the mill" an
incomparable experience by the time he attains his captaincy, but the
number of good men (who might have made most excellent specialists)
who "fell by the wayside" because they were not able to stand the pace
for qualifying for so great a range of duties makes one doubt if it is
practicable for any nation situated otherwise than was the United States
up to its entry into the present war--that is, with a huge population
and a modest navy. With the development of the modern man-of-war, the
increasing mastery of technical detail which such duties of those of
torpedo or gunnery officer entail would seem to make it inevitable
that such officers should not be required to divert their attention or
energies to anything else. This fact we may confidently expect to see
reflected both in the training of the cadet at Annapolis and in American
naval practice before very long--perhaps even during the war.
The fact that--as was only natural--the United States Navy, when it was
formed during the Revolutionary War, was modelled on the only other
Navy of which the colonials had experience--the British--is responsible
for many similarities in the forms and practices of the respective
services to-day. The gold sleeve or shoulder stripes indicating the rank
of officers are practically identical, save only that the Americans
replace the British executive "curl" with a star. The American Marine
even retains the silver half-globe which is so characteristic a feature
of the badge of the Royal Marine of the British Navy. In manning guns,
and even whole turrets, with Royal Marines, it would appear that the
British Navy has progressed rather further than has the American from
the time when this "anachronistic amphibian," as some one has called
him, was carried principally to swarm over the rail with a cutlass
when the old ships of the line closed in a death grapple. In general
multifarity of duties, however, there is little to choose between this
always useful "soldier-and-sailor-too" of either service.
The comparatively short term of service in the American Navy was
responsible for the fact that the Yankee man-o'-war's-man was a good
deal less of a "jolly Jack Tar" in appearance than his British cousin, a
difference which has been accentuated since America entered the war by
the necessity of an even further "dilution" of landsmen. The practice of
allowing the American sailor to wear a sweater and toboggan cap, except
on "dress" occasions, has also tended to make him smack less of the sea
than the flowing-collared sailor-man who will be performing similar
duties on a British ship. Since the fighting of the modern warship is
about 90 per cent. "mechanical" and 10 per cent. "nautical," however,
the lack of the "Yo-heave-ho" touch in the Yankee sailor-man is by no
means in his disfavour. On the contrary, indeed, the very fact that he
has only just come to sea may indicate that he has spent all the more
time in mastering the intricacies of machinery and electricity and the
other things which enter so much into the efficiency of the present-day
fighting-ship.
To quote my American naval friend again, both navies have many things
that are different--in ships, guns, engines, executive system,
victualling--and each may feel a natural pride in its own things. There
is undoubtedly much in each navy the other can profit by, but the United
States Navy is bearing in mind that everything new the British Navy
has to offer it has been tried and proved by long and hard experience,
while all the new things it is able to offer the British Navy have only
been put to peace-time tests. But now that American ships are having
practical experience, that is being altered rapidly.
"GETTING TOGETHER"
I. HOW THE OFFICERS OF THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN SHIPS THAT ARE WORKING
TOGETHER IN EUROPEAN WATERS ARE MAKING EACH OTHER'S ACQUAINTANCE
Perhaps the most gratifying tribute I have heard paid to the American
Battle Squadron which has been for many months incorporated in and
working with the Grand Fleet was an unconscious one.
"How are the Americans getting on?" I asked an officer of the
Commander-in-Chief's staff a few days ago.
"The Americans?" he repeated. "Oh, you mean the 'Xth B. S.' They have
merged so completely into the Grand Fleet that we long ago ceased to
think of them as anything but a part of ourselves. Indeed, that's just
what they have become--a part of ourselves. They're doing their part. I
couldn't say more for them."