XII

TRANSPORT SERVICES

THE first State control of the merchants' ships began with the

transports employed to convey the Expeditionary Force to France in the

early days of August 1914. Vessels of all sizes and classes were

commandeered at the dockside to serve in the emergency. The

comparatively short distance across the channels did not call for

elaborate preparation and refitment: the times would admit of no delay.

Ships on the point of sailing on their trading voyages were held in

dock, their cargo discharged in quantity to make space for troops and

their equipment. Lining-up on the quays and in the littered dock-sheds,

troops awaited the stoppage of unloading operations. With the last sling

of the 'tween-deck lading passed to the shore, they marched on board. As

the tide served, the vessels steamed out of dock and turned, away from

their normal routes, towards the coast of France.

To serve as ballast weight, the stowage of cargo in the lower holds was

frequently left in place for the term of the vessel's troop service.

Months, perhaps a year later, the merchandise arrived at its

destination. Consignees would wonder at its tardy delivery--they could

see no record of its itinerary as shewn by the bills of lading, unless

they read into the fine prefix--'War: the King's Enemies: restraints of

Rulers and Princes'--the romance of its voyaging with the heroes of

Mons.

To transport the overseas troops from India and Canada and Australia,

different measures were necessary. The ships requisitioned for this

service had to be specially fitted for the longer voyage. The State was

lavish and extravagant under the sudden pressure of events. The

many-handed control at the ports made for an upheaval and dislocation of

shipyard labour that did not hasten the urgent dispatch of the vessels.

The hysteria of the times gave excuse for a squandering of valuable

ship-tonnage that was without parallel. Large liners, already fitted for

carriage of passengers, were employed as prison and internment ships.

Curious situations arose in the disposal of others. At the north end, a

large vessel might suddenly be requisitioned and taken from her

trade--with all the consequent confusion and relay; by day and night the

work of fitting her would go on. South, a vessel of similar size and

build might be found, having her troop-fittings removed, in preparation

for an ordinary trading voyage. Still, if the end justifies the means,

the ultimate results were not without credit. The garrison troops from

Malta and Egypt and Gibraltar and South Africa were moved with a

celerity that is unexampled; a huge contingent from India was placed on

the field in record time. A convoy of thirty-one merchantmen brought

Canadian arms to our assistance: Australians, in thirty-six ships,

crossed the Indian Ocean to take up station in Egypt. The unsubsidized

and singular enterprise of the merchants was proving its worth: as vital

to the success of our cause as the great war fleet, the merchants' ships

aided to stem the onrush in France and Flanders.

Considerations of economy followed upon the excited measures with which

the first transport of available troops was effected. In the period of

training and preparation for the long offensive, the Transport

Department had opportunity to organize their work on less stressful

lines. It was well that there was breathing-space at this juncture.

Enemy interference, that had so far been almost wholly a surface threat

to our communications, grew rapidly to a serious menace from under

water. The engagement and organization of naval protection underwent an

immediate revisal. Heavily armed cruisers and battleships could afford

little protection against the activity of the German submarines, now at

large in waters that we had thought were overdistant for their peculiar

manoeuvres. Destroyers and swift light craft were needed to sail with

the transports.

The landing at Gallipoli, under the guns of the enemy, was a triumph for

the Transport Service. In the organization and disposal of the ships,

the control and undertaking that placed them in sufficient numbers in

condition for their desperate venture, the Department redeemed any

earlier miscalculations. The efficient service of the merchant masters

and seamen was equally notable. Under heavy fire from the batteries on

shore they carried out the instructions given to them in a manner that

was "astonishingly accurate" and impressed even the firebrands of the

naval service. Strange duties fell to the merchant seamen on that day.

Compelled by the heavy draught of their ships to remain passive

spectators of the deeds of heroism on the beach, they saw ". . . whole

groups swept down like corn before a reaper, and to realize that among

these groups were men who only a short time before had bid us good-bye

with a smile on their lips, was a bitter experience.

"Our vessel was used to re-embark the wounded, and we stood close

inshore to make the work of boating them off less hazardous. We had

three doctors on board, but no nurses or orderlies, and the wounded were

being brought on board in hundreds, so it was a relief to us to doff our

coats and lend a hand. We had to bury the dead in batches; officers and

men were consigned to the deep together. On one occasion the number was

exceptional, and the captain broke down while reading the service. . . ."

It was surely a bond of real brotherhood that brought the shattered

remnants of the complement she had landed earlier in the day to meet

their last discharge at the hands of the troopship's seamen--their

committal to the deep at the broken words of the vessel's master.

While the transport of troops in the Channel and the narrow seas was

not, at any time, seriously interfered with, the movements of the larger

ocean transports were not conducted without loss. _Royal Edward_ was the

first transport to be torpedoed. She went down with the sacrifice of

over a thousand lives. The power of the submarine had been over-lightly

estimated by the authorities: measures of protection were inadequate.

Improved U-boats were, by now, operating in the Mediterranean, and their

commanders had quickly acquired a confidence in their power. More

destroyers were required to escort the troopships.

By a rearrangement of forces a more efficient measure of naval

protection was assured. Although the provision of a swift escort did not

always prevent the destruction of ships, the loss of life on the

occasion of the sinking of a transport was sensibly reduced by the

presence of accompanying destroyers. The skill and high gallantry of

their commanders was largely instrumental in averting complete and

terrible disaster. As the numbers of ships were reduced by enemy action

there came the need to pack the remaining vessels to a point of

overloading. Boat equipment on the ships could not be other than

inadequate when the certified complement of passengers was exceeded by

100 per cent. In any case, the havoc of a torpedo left little time to

put the huge numbers of men afloat. With no thought of their own

hazard--bringing up alongside a torpedoed vessel and abandoning the

safeguard of their speed and manoeuvring power--the destroyer men

accepted all risks in an effort to bring at least the manning of their

charge to port.

Every casualty added grim experience to the sum of our resources in

avoiding a great death-roll. Life-belts that we had thought efficient

were proved faulty of adjustment and were condemned: methods of

boat-lowering were altered to meet the danger of a sudden list: the run

of gangway and passage to the life-apparatus was cleared of impediment.

When on a passage every precaution that could be taken towards a ready

alert was insisted upon. Despite the manly grumbling of the very young

military officers on board, certain irksome regulations were enforced.

Life-belts had to be worn continuously; troops were only allowed below

decks at stated hours; systems of drill, constantly carried through,

left little leisure for the officers and men. Although no formal drill

can wholly meet the abnormal circumstances of the new sea-casualty, we

left nothing undone to prepare for eventualities. That our efforts were

not useless was evident from the comparatively small loss of life that

has resulted from late transport disasters.

The system of escort varies largely in the different seas. Homeward from

Canada and, latterly, from the United States the troopships are formed

in large convoys under the ocean escort of a cruiser. On arrival at a

position in the Atlantic within working distance of the destroyers'

range of steaming, the convoy is met by a flotilla of fast destroyers

who escort the ships to port. For transport work in the Mediterranean no

such arrangement could be operated. Every sea-mile of the great expanse

is equally a danger zone. Usually, vessels of moderate speed are

accompanied by sloops or armed drifters, but the fast troopships require

destroyers for their protection. The long courses call for relays, as

the destroyers cannot carry sufficient fuel. Marseilles to Malta, Malta

to Suda Bay, Suda Bay to Salonika--a familiar voyage of three

stages--required the services of no less than five destroyers. The

numbers of our escorting craft were limited: it called for keen

foresight on the part of the Naval Staff and unwearying sea-service on

that of the war craft to fit their resources to our demands.

[Illustration: TRANSPORTS IN SOUTHAMPTON DOCKS]

In the narrow seas, with the patrols more numerous and closely linked,

the short-voyage transports proceed on a time-table of sailings that

keeps them constantly in touch with armed assistance. The vessels are

mostly of light draught and high speed. Whilom railway and pleasure

craft, they make their voyages with the exactitude of the

rail-connections they served in the peaceful days. Although many of them

are built and maintained (and certificated by the Board of Trade) for

smooth-water limits only, the emergency of the times has given

opportunity of proof that their seaworthy qualities are underestimated

by the authorities. The high gales and dangerous short seas of the

Channel are no deterrent to their voyages; under the pressure of the

continual call for reinforcements on the Western Front, and serving the

line of route from England to the Continent, to Marseilles and beyond,

they stand no hindrance. They are specially the objects of enemy

attention. Their high speed and rapid turning power enables them to run

moderately free of torpedo attack--though the attempts to sink them by

this weapon are frequent enough--but in the German sea-mines they have a

menace that cannot so readily be evaded. Many have fallen victims to

this danger, but the ready succour of the patrols has prevented heavy

loss of life. Though armed for defence, they have not had many

opportunities for gun action. Their keen stems are weapon enough, as

Captain Keith considered when he drove _Queen Alexandra_ at full speed

into an enemy submarine, sinking him, and nipping a piece of his shorn

hull for trophy.

Southampton is the principal base for the smaller transports. Large

vessels--the _Olympic_ and her sisters--come and go from the port, but

it is by the quick turns of the smaller vessels that the huge traffic of

the base is cleared. Tramping through the streets of the ancient town to

turn in at the dock gates, company after company of troops file down the

quayside to embark on the great adventure. The small craft are berthed

at the seaward end of the docks, and the drifting white feathers at

their funnel-tips marks steam up in readiness for departure. The

drab-grey of their hulls and decks is quickly lined by ochre tint of

khaki uniforms. There is no halt to the long lines of marching men, save

on the turn of the stream to another gangway. By long practice, the

Naval Transport Staff and the embarkation officers have brought their

duties to a finished routine. There is not here the muster, the

enumeration, the interminable long-drawn march and counter-march on the

wharf-side, that is the case with the larger ocean transports. Crossing

the gangway, carrying pack and equipment, the troops settle down on the

decks in a closely packed mass.

Anon, with no undue advertisement, the transports unmoor from the quay

and steam down Southampton Water. Off St. Helens, the night covers them

and they steal out swiftly on the Channel crossing.

INTERLUDE

BUT for the flat-topped dwellings, the domes and minarets, of the town

that stands in the alluvial valley, Suda Bay is not unlike a Highland

loch in its loneliness and rugged grandeur. The high surrounding

mountains, the lofty snow-capped summit of Psiloriti standing up in the

east, the bare hill-side sloping to the water with no wooded country to

break the expanse of rock and heath, the lone roadway by the fringe of

the sea that leads to the wilds, are all in likeness to the prospect of

a remote Sutherland landscape. The darkling shadows on the water, the

play of sun and cloud on the distant uplands, completes the picture;

sheep on the hill-side set up plaintive calls that echo over the Bay.

The heavy westerly gale that was reason for our being signalled in from

sea has blown itself out, and the water of the Bay stands still and

placid. All that is left of the furious squalls of yesterday has not

strength to keep us wind-rode in the anchorage, and we cast about to the

vagaries of the drift.

We were bound down from Salonika to Marseilles when ordered in. We had

expected to meet the relieving escort of destroyers at the Cerigo

Channel, but the bad weather had prevented them from proceeding at any

but a slow speed, and there was no prospect of their arrival at the

rendezvous. So we turned south to seek protection behind the booms at

Suda Bay. We are a packed ship. The shortage of transports has had

effect in crowding the vessels in service to a point far beyond the

limits of their accommodation. We have had to institute a

watch-and-watch system among our huge complement. While a proportion are

seeking rest below, others crowd the upper decks, passing the time as

best they may until their turn of the hammocks comes round.

The fine weather after the late gale has brought every one on deck. The

doings of the ships in the anchorage have interest for the landsmen.

Naval cutters and whalers are out under oars for exercise, and thrash up

and down the Bay with the long steady sweep of practised rowers. Our

escort of two destroyers arrives--their funnels white-crusted from the

heavy weather they have experienced on passage from Malta. They engage

the flagship with signals, then steam alongside an oiler to take fuel

for the return voyage. A message from the senior officer is signalled to

us to have steam raised, to proceed to sea at midnight.

Standing in from the Gateway, a British submarine comes up the Bay. She

moves slowly, as though looking for the least uncomfortable berth in the

anchorage. The oil-ship, having already the two destroyers alongside,

cannot offer her a place: she will have to lie off and await her turn.

We put a signal on her, inviting her people to tie up alongside and

come stretch their legs on our broad decks. Instant compliance. She

turns on a long curve, rounds our stern, and her wires are passed on

board.

The commander of the submarine gazes about curiously as he comes on

board. He confesses that he has had no intimate acquaintance with

merchants' ships. The huge number of our passengers impresses him,

accustomed as he is to the small manning of his own vessel. Standing on

the navigation bridge, we look out over the decks below at the

khaki-clad assembly. The ship seems brimming over with life and

animation. There is no corner but has its group of soldiers. They are

everywhere; in the rigging, astride the derricks, over the top of boats

and rafts they are stretched out to the sun. Mess-cooks with their gear

push their way through the crowds; there is constant movement--the men

from aft barging forward, the fore-end troops blocking the gangways as

they saunter aft. Noisy! Snatches of song, hails, and shouts--the

interminable games of 'ouse with '_Clikety-clik_ and _blind-forty_'

resounding in the many local dialects of the varied troops. High in

spirit! We are the leave-ship, and they are bound home for a

long-desired furlough after the deadly monotony of trench-keeping on the

Doiran Front.

"Gad! What a crowd," he says. "I had no idea you carried so many. They

look so big--and so awkward in a ship. Of course, on a battleship we

muster a lot o' men, twelve hundred in the big 'uns, but--somehow--one

never sees them about the decks unless at divisions or that. Perhaps

it's khaki does it; one gets accustomed to blue in a ship."

A 'diversion' has been arranged for the afternoon. Dinner over, all

troops are mustered to a boat drill that includes the lowering of the

boats. Since leaving Salonika there has been no such opportunity as now

offers. Despite foreknowledge of the time of assembly it is a long

proceeding. Our complement is made up of small details--a handful of men

from every battalion on the Front. Officers set to their control are

drawn from as many varied branches of the service. The valued personal

'grip' of non-commissioned officers is not at our disposal. There is no

such order and discipline as would be the case if we were manned by

complete battalions. The routine of military movements seems dull and

lifeless at sea, however efficient it may prove on land. We are long on

the job.

By dint of check and repetition the grouping of the men at their boat

stations is brought to a moderate proficiency. The seamen at the boats

swing out and lower, and we set the boats afloat, each with a full

complement of troops. Embarked, and left to their own resources--with

only one ship's rating to steer--the men make a better show. The

division of the mass into smaller bodies induces a rivalry and spirit

of competition: they swing the oars sturdily and make progress to and

fro on the calm water of the Bay.

With the boats away full-loaded, we take stock of the numbers still

mustered on the deck. Considerably reduced, they are still a host. The

boat deck, the forecastle head, the poop--are all lined over by the

waiting men: the empty boat-chocks and the dangling falls inspire a mood

of disquiet. Standing at ease, they seem to be facing towards the

bridge. Doubtless they are wondering what we think of it all. The

submarine's commander has been with us at our station during the muster.

We look at one another--thoughtfully.

'THE MAN-O'-WAR 'S 'ER 'USBAND'

A SENSE of security is difficult of definition. Largely, it is founded

upon habit and association. It is induced and maintained by familiar

surroundings. On board ship, in a small world of our own, we seem to be

contained by the boundaries of the bulwarks, to be sailing beyond the

influences of the land and of other ships. The sea is the same we have

known for so long. Every item of our ship fitment--the trim arrangement

of the decks, the set and rake of mast and funnel, even the furnishings

of our cabins--has the power of impressing a stable feeling of custom,

normal ship life, safety. It requires an effort of thought to recall

that in their homely presence we are endangered. Relating his

experiences after having been mined and his ship sunk, a master confided

that the point that impressed him most deeply was when he went to his

room for the confidential papers and saw the cabin exactly in everyday

aspect--his longshore clothes suspended from the hooks, his umbrella

standing in a corner as he had placed it on coming aboard.

Soldiers on service are denied this aid to assurance. Unlike us, they

cannot carry their home with them to the battlefield. All their scenes

and surroundings are novel; they may only draw a reliance and comfort

from the familiar presence of their comrades. At sea in a ship there is

a yet greater incitement to their disquiet. The movement, the limitless

sea, the distance from the land, cannot be ignored. The atmosphere that

is so familiar and comforting to us, is to many of them an environment

of dread possibilities.

[Illustration: THE _LEVIATHAN_ DOCKING AT LIVERPOOL]

It is with some small measure of this sense of security--tempered by our

knowledge of enemy activity in these waters--we pace the bridge. Anxiety

is not wholly absent. Some hours past, we saw small flotsam that may

have come from the decks of a French mail steamer, torpedoed three days

ago. The passing of the derelict fittings aroused some disquiet, but

the steady routine of our progress and the constant friendly presence of

familiar surroundings has effect in allaying immediate fears. The rounds

of the bridge go on--the writing of the log, the tapping of the glass,

the small measures that mark the passing of our sea-hours. Two days out

from Marseilles--and all well! In another two days we should be

approaching the Canal, and then--to be clear of 'submarine waters' for a

term. Fine weather! A light wind and sea accompany us for the present,

but the filmy glare of the sun, now low, and a backward movement of the

glass foretells a break ere long. We are steaming at high speed to make

the most of the smooth sea. Ahead, on each bow, our two escorting

destroyers conform to the angles of our zigzag--spurring out and

swerving with the peculiar 'thrown-around' movement of their class.

Look-out is alert and in numbers. Added to the watch of the ship's crew,

military signallers are posted; the boats swung outboard have each a

party of troops on guard.

An alarmed cry from aloft--a half-uttered order to the steersman--an

explosion, low down in the bowels of the ship, that sets her reeling in

her stride!

The upthrow comes swiftly on the moment of impact. Hatches, coal,

shattered debris, a huge column of solid water go skyward in a hurtling

mass to fall in torrent on the bridge. Part of a human body strikes the

awning spars and hangs--watch-keepers are borne to the deck by the

weight of water--the steersman falls limply over the wheel with blood

pouring from a gash on his forehead. . . . Then silence for a stunned

half-minute, with only the thrust of the engines marking the heart-beats

of the stricken ship.

Uproar! Most of our men are young recruits: they have been but two days

on the sea. The torpedo has gone hard home at the very weakest hour of

our calculated drill. The troops are at their evening meal when the blow

comes, the explosion killing many outright. We had counted on a

proportion of the troops being on the deck, a steadying number to

balance the sudden rush from below that we foresaw in emergency.

Hurrying from the mess-decks as enjoined, the quick movement gathers way

and intensity: the decks become jammed by the pressure, the gangways and

passages are blocked in the struggle. There is the making of a

panic--tuned by their outcry, "_God!_ _O God!_ _O Christ!_" The swelling

murmur is neither excited nor agonized--rather the dull, hopeless

expression of despair.

The officer commanding troops has come on the bridge at the first alarm.

His juniors have opportunity to take their stations before the

struggling mass reaches to the boats. The impossibility of getting among

the men on the lower decks makes the military officers' efforts to

restore confidence difficult. They are aided from an unexpected quarter.

The bridge-boy makes unofficial use of our megaphone. "Hey! Steady up

you men doon therr," he shouts. "Ye'll no' dae ony guid fur yersels

croodin' th' ledders!"

We could not have done it as well. The lad is plainly in sight to the

crowd on the decks. A small boy, undersized. "Steady up doon therr!" The

effect is instant. Noise there still is, but the movement is arrested.

The engines are stopped--we are now beyond range of a second

torpedo--and steam thunders in exhaust, making our efforts to control

movements by voice impossible. At the moment of the impact the

destroyers have swung round and are casting here and there like hounds

on the scent: the dull explosion of a depth-charge--then another, rouses

a fierce hope that we are not unavenged. The force of the explosion has

broken connections to the wireless room, but the aerial still holds and,

when a measure of order on the boat-deck allows, we send a message of

our peril broadcast. There is no doubt in our mind of the outcome. Our

bows, drooping visibly, tell that we shall not float long. We have

nearly three thousand on board. There are boats for sixteen

hundred--then rafts. Boats--rafts--and the glass is falling at a rate

that shows bad weather over the western horizon!

Our drill, that provided for lowering the boats with only

half-complements in them, will not serve. We pass orders to lower away

in any condition, however overcrowded. The way is off the ship, and it

is with some apprehension we watch the packed boats that drop away from

the davit heads. The shrill ring of the block-sheaves indicates a

tension that is not far from breaking-point. Many of the life-boats

reach the water safely with their heavy burdens, but the strain on the

tackles--far beyond their working load--is too great for all to stand to

it. Two boats go down by the run. The men in them are thrown violently

to the water, where they float in the wash and shattered planking. A

third dangles from the after fall, having shot her manning out at

parting of the forward tackle. Lowered by the stern, she rights,

disengages, and drifts aft with the men clinging to the life-lines. We

can make no attempt to reach the men in the water. Their life-belts are

sufficient to keep them afloat: the ship is going down rapidly by the

head, and there remains the second line of boats to be hoisted and swung

over. The chief officer, pausing in his quick work, looks to the bridge

inquiringly, as though to ask, "How long?" The fingers of two hands

suffice to mark our estimate.

The decks are now angled to the deepening pitch of the bows. Pumps are

utterly inadequate to make impression on the swift inflow. The chief

engineer comes to the bridge with a hopeless report. It is only a

question of time. How long? Already the water is lapping at a level of

the foredeck. Troops massed there and on the forecastle-head are

apprehensive: it is indeed a wonder that their officers have held them

for so long. The commanding officer sets example by a cool nonchalance

that we envy. Posted with us on the bridge, his quick eyes note the

flood surging in the pent 'tween-decks below, from which his men have

removed the few wounded. The dead are left to the sea.

Help comes as we had expected it would. Leaving _Nemesis_ to steam fast

circles round the sinking ship, _Rifleman_ swings in and brings up

alongside at the forward end. Even in our fear and anxiety and distress,

we cannot but admire the precision of the destroyer captain's

manoeuvre--the skilful avoidance of our crowded life-boats and the men

in the water--the sudden stoppage of her way and the cant that brings

her to a standstill at the lip of our brimming decks. The troops who

have stood so well to orders have their reward in an easy leap to

safety. Quickly the foredeck is cleared. _Rifleman_ spurts ahead in a

rush that sets the surrounding life-boats to eddy in her wash. She takes

up the circling high-speed patrol and allows her sister ship to swing in

and embark a number of our men.

It is when the most of the life-boats are gone we realize fully the

gallant service of the destroyers. There remain the rafts, but many of

these have been launched over to aid the struggling men in the water.

Half an hour has passed since we were struck--thirty minutes of frantic

endeavour to debark our men--yet still the decks are thronged by a

packed mass that seems but little reduced. The coming of the destroyers

alters the outlook. _Rifleman's_ action has taken over six hundred. A

sensible clearance! _Nemesis_ swings in with the precision of an

express, and the thud and clatter of the troops jumping to her deck sets

up a continuous drumming note of deliverance. Alert and confident, the

naval men accept the great risks of their position. The ship's bows are

entered to the water at a steep incline. Every minute the balance is

weighing, casting her stern high in the air. The bulkheads are by now

taking place of keel and bearing the huge weight of her on the water. At

any moment she may go without a warning, to crash into the light hull of

the destroyer and bear her down. For all the circling watch of her

sister ship, the submarine--if still he lives--may get in a shot at the

standing target. It is with a deep relief we signal the captain to bear

off. Her decks are jammed to the limit. She can carry no more. _Nemesis_

lists heavily under her burdened decks as she goes ahead and clears.

Forty minutes! The zigzag clock in the wheelhouse goes on ringing the

angles of time and course as though we were yet under helm and speed.

For a short term we have noted that the ship appears to have reached a

point of arrest in her foundering droop. She remains upright as she has

been since righting herself after the first inrush of water. Like the

lady she always was, she has added no fearsome list to the sum of our

distress. The familiar bridge, on which so many of our safe sea-days

have been spent, is canted at an angle that makes foothold uneasy. She

cannot remain for long afloat. The end will come swiftly, without

warning--a sudden rupture of the bulkhead that is sustaining her weight.

We are not now many left on board. Striving and wrenching to man-handle

the only remaining boat--rendered idle for want of the tackles that have

parted on service of its twin--we succeed in pointing her outboard, and

await a further deepening of the bows ere launching her. Of the

military, the officer commanding, some few of his juniors, a group of

other ranks, stand by. The senior officers of the ship, a muster of

seamen, a few stewards, are banded with us at the last. We expect no

further service of the destroyers. The position of the ship is

over-menacing to any approach. They have all they can carry. Steaming at

a short distance they have the appearance of being heavily overloaded;

each has a staggering list and lies low in the water under their deck

encumbrance. We have only the hazard of a quick out-throw of the

remaining boat and the chances of a grip on floating wreckage to count

upon.

On a sudden swift sheer, _Rifleman_ takes the risk. Unheeding our

warning hail, she steams across the bows and backs at a high speed: her

rounded stern jars on our hull plates, a whaler and the davits catch on

a projection and give with the ring of buckling steel--she turns on the

throw of the propellors and closes aboard with a resounding impact that

sets her living deck-load to stagger.

We lose no time. Scrambling down the life-ropes, our small company

endeavours to get foothold on her decks. The destroyer widens off at the

rebound, but by clutch of friendly hands the men are dragged aboard. One

fails to reach safety. A soldier loses grip and goes to the water. The

chief officer follows him. Tired and unstrung as he must be by the

devoted labours of the last half-hour, he is in no condition to effect a

rescue. A sudden deep rumble from within the sinking ship warns the

destroyer captain to go ahead. We are given no chance to aid our

shipmates: the propellors tear the water in a furious race that sweeps

them away, and we draw off swiftly from the side of the ship.

We are little more than clear of the settling fore-end when the last

buoyant breath of _Cameronia_ is overcome. Nobly she has held afloat to

the debarking of the last man. There is no further life in her. Evenly,

steadily, as we had seen her leave the launching ways at Meadowside, she

goes down.

[Illustration: SALVAGE VESSELS OFF YARMOUTH, ISLE OF WIGHT]

XIII

THE SALVAGE SECTION

THE TIDEMASTERS

IF Royal Canute, King of England and Denmark, with his train of servile

earls and thanes, could revisit the scene of his famous object-lesson,

he would learn a new value in the tide. Suitably, he might improve his

homily by presentation of the salvage tidemasters, harnessing the rise

and fall of the stubborn element to serve their needs and heave a

foundered vessel to sight and service. He would note the cunning

guidance of strain and effort, their exact timing of the ruled and

ordered habits of the sea. As a moral, he could quote that, if tide may

not be ordered to command, it can at least be governed and impressed to

performance of a mighty service.

Recovery of ships, their gear and cargo, is no longer wholly an

application of practised seamanship. The task is burdened and

complicated by powers and conditions that call for auxiliary arts. It is

true that the salvage officer's ground, his main asset, is the knowledge

and ability to do a seamanlike 'job o' work' when the time and tide are

opportune; he must have a seaman's training in the ways of the wind and

the sea and be able properly to assess the weather conditions under

which alone his precarious work is possible. A scientist of a liberal

and versatile type (not perhaps exhaustive in his scope and range), he

is able to draw the quantum of his needs from a wide and varied summary.

Together with his medical exemplar, he has developed a technique from

crude remedies and imperfect diagnoses to application of fine science.

He must have a sure knowledge of the anatomy of his great steel

patients, be versed in the infinite variety and intricacy of ship

construction, and the valves and arteries of their power; be able to pen

and plan his formulae for weight-lifting--the stress and strain of it,

down to the calibre of the weakest link. A super-tidesman, he must know

to an inch the run of bottom, the swirl and eddy, the value of flood and

ebb and springs, for the tide--Canute's immutable recalcitrant--is his

greatest assistant, a familiar _Genius maris_ whom he conjures from the

deeps of ocean to do his bidding. Shrewd! He is a keen student of the

psychology of the distressed mariner; again, like the medical man, he

must set himself to extract truth from the tale that is told. His

treatment must be prescribed, not to meet a case as presented, but as

his skilled knowledge of the probabilities warrants. Tactful, if he is

to meet with assistance in his difficult work, he must assume the

sympathy of one seaman to another in distress. What, after all, does it

matter if he agree heartily that "the touch was very light, we were

going dead slow," when, from his divers' reports, he knows that the

whole bottom is 'up'?

In the handling of his own men there must be a combination of rigour and

reason. Salvage crews are a hardy, tempestuous race who have no ordinary

regard for the niceties of law and order; their work is no scheduled and

defined occupation with states and margins; they are servants to tide

and weather alone; they are embarked on a venture, on a hazard, a

lottery. To such men, administering, under his direction, the heroic but

destructive remedies of high explosive and compressed air, there cannot

be a normal allowance for the economic use of gear and material. He must

know the right and judicial discount to be made that will meet the

conflicting demands of the expenses department and the results

committee. Above all, he must be of an infinite patience, of the mettle

that is not readily discouraged. In the great game of seafaring his hand

holds the king of disappointment and the knaves of frustration and

discouragement. But he has other cards; he holds an ace in stability and

determination.

Calm days and smooth seas may lure him to surpassing effort, to work

through the tides in feverish energy, making the most of favoured

opportunity. The scattered and interrupted work of months has perhaps

been geared and bound, the tackle rigged and set for a final dead lift.

Buoyancy is figured out and assured; the pumps are in place, throbbing

and droning out, throwing steady streams from the weight of water that

so long has held the foundered wreck in depth. The work has been long

and trying, but an end to difficulty is in sight. Given a day or two of

continued fine weather, the sea and the rocks will have to surrender

their prisoner.

Comes a darkling to windward and the sea stirs uneasily; jets and spurts

of broken water appear over the teeth and spit of rocky ledges. The

salvors look around with calculating eyes and note the signs of a

weather break. Still, there is no slackening of effort; there may be

time to complete the work before the sea rises to interfere; if

anything, the omens only call for another spur to the flank, a new sting

to the lash.

Beaten to the knees, the gear and tackle swaying perilously in breaking

seas, the lifting-barges thundering at their curbs, the pumps groaning

and protesting their inability to overcome the lap of blue water, there

is no alternative but to abandon the work and return to harbour. From

the beach the salvage officer may watch his labour of weeks--or

months--savagely undone in an hour or two of storm and fury of the sea!

It is a great catalogue, that schedule of virtues and accomplishments.

To it must be added, as a supplement, that he must be a 'made' man--made

in a long hard pupilage in a stern school that appraises strictly on

results. It is of little use to show that, in theory, a certain course

was right and proper, when the broad but damning fact remains that the

property is still in Davy Jones his locker, and likely--there to remain.

Many are called, but few are chosen. The salvage service has no room for

the merely mediocre officer: the right man goes inevitably to his proper

place, the wrong one goes back to a junior, and less responsible, post

at sea.

It is doubtful if the Naval Service could produce the type required.

Their candidate would be, to a degree, inelastic. He would be an

excellent theorist, a sound executant, a strict disciplinarian; but his

training and ideas would fit ill to the wide range of conflicting

interests, and the shutting out of all manoeuvre, however skilled and

stimulating--but that of securing a maximum of result by a minimum of

effort. Perhaps it was for these reasons our salvage services before the

war were almost wholly mercantile and commercial. Certainly, most

Admiralty efforts in this direction were confined to ports and harbours

where method could be ordered and controlled by routine; their more

arduous and unmanageable cases on the littoral were frequently handed

over to the merchantmen--not seldom after naval efforts had been

unavailing. Among the protestations of our good faith to the world in

time of peace, it may be cited that we made no serious provision for a

succession of maritime casualties; there was no specially organized and

equipped Naval Salvage Service. True, there were the harbour gear,

divers, a pump or two, and appliances and craft for attending submarine

accidents, but their energies were bent largely to humane purposes--to

marine first aid. Of major gear and a trained personnel to control

equipment and operation there was not even a nucleus. Salvage was valued

at a modest section of the "Manual on Seamanship" (written by a

mercantile expert), and a very occasional lecture at the Naval College.

At war, and the toll of maritime disaster rising, the need grew quickly

for expert and special service. There was no longer a relative and

profitable balance to be struck between value of sea-property and cost

of salvage operations. A ship had become beyond mere money valuation; as

well assess the air we breathe in terms of finance. No cost was high if

a keel could be added to our mercantile fleets in one minute less than

the time the builders would take to construct a new vessel. The call was

for competent ship-surgeons who could front-rank our maritime C Threes.

By whatever skill and daring and exercise of seamanship, the wrecks must

be returned to service. Happily, there was no necessity to go far

afield; the merchants' salvage enterprise, like the merchants' ships and

the merchants' men, was ready at hand for adoption.

[Illustration: IN A SALVAGE VESSEL: OVERHAULING THE INSULATION OF THE

POWER LEADS]

The Salvage Section, Admiralty, is a dignified caption and has an almost

imperial address, but, camouflages and all, it is not difficult to see

the hem of old sea-worn garments of our mercantile companies peeping out

below the gold braid. If in peace-time they did wonders, war has made

their greatest and most successful efforts seem but minor actions

compared to their present-day victories. The practice and experience

gained in quick succession of 'cases' has tuned up their operations to

the highest pitch of efficiency. New and more powerful appliances have

come to their hands; a skilled and technical directorate has liberated

initiative. Strandings, torpedo or mine damage, fire, collisions--frequently

a compound of two or three--or all five--provide them with occasion for

every shift of ingenuity, every turn of resource. There is no stint to

the gear, and no limits to invention, or device, if there is a

possibility of a damaged ship being brought to the dry docks. Is it not

on record that an obstinate, stranded ship, driven high on the beach,

was finally relaunched on the crest of an artificially created 'spring'

tide, the wash and suction of a high-speed destroyer, plying and

circling in the shallows?

Many new perils are added to the risks and hazards of their normally

dangerous work. Casualties that call for their service are rarely

located in safe and protected waters; open coast and main channels are

the marches of the Salvage Section, where the enemy has a keen and ready

eye for a 'potting' shot by which he may prevent succour of a previous

victim. The menace of sea-mines is particularly theirs; the run and

swirl of Channel tides has strength to weigh a stealthy mooring and

carry a power of destruction up stream and down. They have a new and

deadly danger to be guarded against in the ammunition and armament of

their stricken wards. Many have gone down at 'action stations,' and

carry 'hair-sprung' explosive charges, the exact condition and activity

of which are usually a matter for conjecture. It calls for a courage of

no ordinary measure to grope and stumble under water amid shattered

wreckage for the safety-clutch of the charges, or grapple in the mud and

litter for torpedo firing-levers. This the pioneer of the divers must

do, as the first and most important of his duties.

With skill enhanced by constant and encouraged practice, they set out to

bind the wounds and raise our damaged ships to a further lease of

sea-activity. So definite and sure are their methods, so skilled and

rapid their execution, they steam ahead of reconstruction and crowd the

waiting-room at the dry-dock gates. Lined up at the anchorage awaiting

their turn, the recovered vessels may be crippled and bent, and showing

torsion and distress in the list, and staggering trim with which they

swing flood and ebb. They may rest, halting, on the inshore shallow

flats, but, laid by for a term of repair, their day is to come again.

The Salvage Section has reclaimed their rent and stranded hulls from the

misty sea-Front; the Repair Section, working day and night, will hammer

and bind and reframe the gaps of their steel; the Sea Section will take

them out on the old stormy road, sound and seaworthy, with the flag at

the peak once more.

A DAY ON THE SHOALS

THE rigger was engaged at second tucks of a five-inch wire-splicing job,

and hardly looked in the direction we indicated. "Them," he said.

"Them's crocks wot we don't want nothin' more t' do with! Two on 'em's

got frozen mutton. High? Excelsi-bloody-or! . . . an' that feller as is

down by th' 'ead--Gawd! 'e don't 'arf smell 'orrible!" A pause, while he

hammered down the strands and found fault with his assistant, gave us

time to disentangle the negatives of his opening. "Grain, she 'as--an'

of all th' ruddy messes wot I ever see--she gets it! We 'ad four days at

'er--out there 'n th' Padrig Flats, an' she sickened nigh all 'ands! . . .

Now we're well quit o' 'er, an' th' longshore gangs is unloadin' th'

bulk, in nosebags an' gas 'elmets, t' get 'er a-trim for th' dry dock!"

As we passed alee of the grain-carrier there was no doubt of the truth

of the rigger's assurance. Steam-pumps on her fore-deck were forcing a

sickly mixture of liquid batter through hoses to a barge alongside, and

the overpowering stench of the mess blew down to us and set eyes and

noses quickening with instant nausea. The men on the barges were garbed

in odd headgear, high cowls with staring circular eyepieces, and each

carried a knapsack cylinder on his back. Clouds of high-pressure steam

from the winches and pumps threw out in exhaust, and the hooded,

ghost-like figures of the labourers passed and repassed in drifts of

white vapour. To the hiss and rumble of machines, clamour of

block-sheaves and chain and piston joined action to make a setting of

_Inferno_, the scene might well be imagery for a stage of unholy rites.

Past her, we turned to the clean salt breeze again and stood on to the

open sea. The salvage officer, a Commander, R.N.R., joined us at the

rail. "What about that now? Sa--lubrious?" he said.

We wondered how men could be got to work in such an atmosphere, how it

was possible to handle such foul-smelling litter in the confined holds.

"Oh! We go through that all right. A bit inconvenient and troublesome,

perhaps, working in a restricting gas-rig; but now, the chemists have

come to our assistance and we can sweeten things up by a dose of

anti-stink. . . . But you won't see that to-day. Our 'bird' has got no

cargo, only clean stone ballast--a soft job."

The 'soft job' had had a rough time, a combination and chapter of sea

and war hazard. Inward bound from the United States with a big cargo, a

German torpedo had found a mark on her. She settled quickly by the

stern, but the undamaged engines worked her gallantly into a small

seaport where she brought up with her main deck awash. There she was

lightened of her precious load, temporary baulks and patches were

clamped and bolted to her riven shell-plate, and she set off again on a

short coastwise voyage to the nearest port where definite and

satisfactory repair could be effected. Off the Heads, the enemy again

got sights on her. Crippled, and steaming at slow speed to ease strain

on the bulkheads, she made a 'sitting' target for a second torpedo, that

shattered rudder and stern-post and sheared the propellor from the

shaft.

"We came on her just before dark," said the commander. . . . "Some of

the crew were in the boats, close by, but the captain and a Trinity

pilot and others were still aboard. She was down astern to the counter

and up forward like a ruddy unicorn. We got fast and started to tow.

Tow?--Might as well have taken on the Tower Bridge. There was no way of

steering her, and a strong breeze from the south'ard blew her head down

against all we could do. . . . Anyway, we hung on, and at daylight in

the morning the wind let up on us a bit, and we guided her drift--that's

about all we could do--inshore, till she took the bottom on good ground

a little north of the Westmark Shoal. We filled her up forrard as the

weather was looking bad--a good weight of water to steady her through a

gale. She's lain out there for two months now. We've had a turn or two

at her occasionally--shoring up the after bulkheads and that, while we

had weather chances. _Titan_ has been out at her since yesterday

morning. . . . It looks good and healthy now." He cast an eye around

appreciatively at the calm sea and quiet sky, the gorse-banked cliffs

dimmed by a promising summer haze, at seagulls lazily drifting on the

tide or becking and bowing in the glassy ripples of our wash. "Good and

healthy; I like to see these old 'shellbacks' sitting low and not

shrilling overhead with all sail set. . . . If this weather holds I

shouldn't wonder if we get the old bus afloat on high tide to-day!"

Clear of harbour limits and heading out to the shoals, a brisk rigging

of gear and tackle brings action to the decks of the salvage steamer.

Already we had thought the narrow confines from bulwark to bulwark

congested by the bulk of appliances, but, from hole and corner and

cunning stowage, further coils and shoots and lengths of flexible,

armoured hose are dragged and placed in readiness for operations.

Derricks are topped up and purchases rove for handling the heavy

twelve-inch motor-pumps. Hawsers are uncovered and coiled clear, stout

fenders thrown over in preparation for a grind alongside the wreck.

Mindful of possibilities, the engineer-lieutenant and his artificers go

over the insulation of their power leads in minute search for a leak in

the cables that may occasion a short circuit later on. The terminals and

couplings are buffed and polished with what seems exaggerated and

needless precision--but this is salvage, where sustained effort is only

possible in the rare and all-too-brief union of favourable tide and

weather conditions. A cessation of the steady throw of the pumps,

however instant and skilful the adjustment, may mean the loss of just

that finite measure in buoyancy that could spring the weight of

thousands in tons. Second chances are rarely given by a grudging and

jealous sea; there must be no hitch in the gear, no halt in weighing the

mass.

A drift of lazy smoke on the sea-rim ahead marks our rendezvous, where

_Titan_ and a sisterly tug-boat are already at work on the wreck. A

screen of motor-patrols are rounding and lining out in the offing, with

a thrust of white foam astern that shows their speed. Coastwise, a

convoy of merchant ships zigzag in confusing angles on their way to sea,

guarded by spurring destroyers and trawler escort. Seaplanes are out,

hawking with swoop and wheel for sight of strange fish. The seascape is

busy with a shipping that must remind the coastguard and lightkeepers of

old and palmy days when square sail was standard at sea. The Westmark

Shoal lies some distance from the normal peace-time track of direct

steaming courses. It lies in the bight of a bay, where rarely steamers

closed the land. Sailing ships, close-hauled and working a tack inshore,

or fisher craft on their grounds, had long been the only keels to sheer

water in the deeps, but war practice has renewed our acquaintance with

many old sea-routes and by-paths, and we are back now to charts and

courses that have long been out of our reckoning.

The tide is at low-water slack, and whirls and eddies mark the run over

shallows. At easy speed and handing the lead, we approach the wreck. Her

weathered hull, gilt and red-rusted by exposure to sun and wind and sea,

stands high and bold against the deep blue of a summer sky. Masts and

rigging and cordage are bleached white, like tracery of a phantom ship.

The green sea-growth on her underbody fans and waves in the tide,

showing long voyaging in the crust and stage of it. She lies well and

steadily, with only a slight list to seaward that marks the gradient on

which she rests. Through fracture on the stern and counter, the twisted

and shattered frames and beams and angles can be seen plainly. Sunlight,

in slanting rays, shines through the rents and fissures of the upper

deck, and plays on the free flood that washes in and out of the exposed

after hold; seaweed and flotsam surges on the tide, clinging to the

jagged, shattered edges of the plating, and breaking away to lap in the

dark recesses. To eyes that only know the lines and mould of sightly,

seaworthy vessels, she seems a hopeless and distorted mass of standing

iron--a sheer hulk, indeed, fit only for a lone sea-perch to gull and

gannet and cormorant. It appears idle for the salvors to plan and strive

and wrestle for such a prize, but their keen eyes are focused to values

not readily apparent. "A fine ship," says the commander, now happily

assured that his 'soft job' has suffered no worse than a weathering on

the ledge that his skill has secured her. "A job o' work for the

repairers, certainly . . . but they will set her up as good as new in a

third of the time it would take to build a substitute!"

[Illustration: A TORPEDOED MERCHANTMAN ON THE SHOALS: SALVAGE OFFICERS

MAKING A SURVEY]

We anchor at a length or two to seaward. There is not yet water

alongside for our draught, but _Titan_, drawing less, is berthed at her

stern and their men are taking advantage of low water to pin and tomp

and strengthen the rearmost bulkhead that must now do duty for the

demolished stern section. A boat from _Titan_ brings the officer

in charge, and he greets his senior with no disguised relief. A serious

leak has developed in one of the compartments that they had counted on

for buoyancy. . . . "Right under the bilge, and ungetatable, with all

that rubble in th' holds. A good job you brought out these extra pumps.

We should manage now, all right!"

Technical measures are discussed and a plan of operations agreed. At

half-flood there will be water for us alongside, and a 'lift' can be

tried. Number one hold is good and tight, but still has a bulk of water

to steady her on the ledge; number two is clear and buoyant; three has

the obstinate leak; the engine-room is undamaged, but water makes

through in moderate quantity. Number four--"the bulkhead is bulged in

like the bilge of a cask, but that cement we put down last week has set

pretty well, and the struts and braces should hold." Number five? There

is no number five, most of it lies on deep bottom off the Heads, some

miles away!

With his colleague, the commander puts off to the wreck, to assess the

prospects, and we have opportunity to note the inboard trim of her

derelict posts and quarters. Davits, swung outboard as when the last of

her crew left her, stand up in unfamiliar dejection, the frayed ends and

bights of the boat-falls dangling overside and thrumming on the rusty

hull. The boat-deck shows haste and urgency in the litter of spars and

tackle thrown violently aside: a seaman's bag with sodden pitiful rags

of apparel lies awry on the skids, marking some cool and forethinking

mariner denied a passage for his goods. Living-rooms and crew quarters

show the indications of sudden call, in open desks--a book or two cast

side, quick-thrown bedspreads, an array of clothing on a line; the

range-guards in the cook's galley have caught the tilt of pots and

mess-kits as they slid alee in the grounding. The bridge, with chart and

wheelhouse open to the wind and spray, and sea-gear adrift and

disordered, strikes the most desolating note in the abandon of it all.

Tenantless and quiet, the same scene would be commonplace and understood

in dock or harbour, with neighbourly shore structures to point a reason

for absence of ship-life, but out here--the clear horizon of an open sea

in view around, with vessels passing on their courses, the desertion of

the main post seems final and complete, with no navigator at the guides

and no hand at the wheel.

The flood tide making over the shoals sets in with a _thrussh_ of broken

water alee of the wreck. The salvors' cutter, from which the mate is

sounding and marking bottom, spins in widening circles in the eddies and

shows the strength of early springs. As yet the stream binds the wreck

hard to the bank, setting broad on from seaward, but relief will come

when the spent water turns east on the last of the flood. Survey

completed, the salvage officers clamber to the deck again. The leak in

number three is their only concern; if that can be overcome, there seems

no bar to a successful programme. The commander questions the mate as to

the depth of water alongside, is assured of draught, and signals his

vessel to heave up and come on. The strength and onrush of the tidal

race makes the manoeuvre difficult, and it is on second attempt, with

a wide sweep and backing on plane of the current, she drives unhandily

to position. The impact of her boarding, for all the guardian fenders,

jars and stirs the wreck, but brings a confident look to the salvors'

faces; as readily shaken as that, they assure themselves the responding

hull will come off with 'a bit of a pinch' on the angle of withdrawal

that they have planned on the tidal chart.

With hawsers and warps barely fast, the great pumps are hove up in air

and swung over the hatchway of the doubtful hold. But for the general

order to carry on, there are few directions and little admonition. Every

man of the busy group of mechanics and riggers has 'a brick for the

wall,' and the wriggling lengths of armoured hose are coupled and

launched over the coamings as quickly as the massive motors are lowered.

Foundering with splash and gurgle, like uncouth sea-monsters in their

appanage of tortuous rubber tentacles, the sheen of their polished bulk

looms through the green translucent flood of solid seawater, the grave

and surely augmented tide that they are trimmed to master. Again, the

seeming hopelessness of the task, the handicap of man against element,

presents a doubt to one's mind. Two shell-like casings of steel, a line

of piping and cab-tyre coils for power leads--to compete with the

infiltration of an ocean; there are even small fish darting in the flood

of it, a radiating Medusa floats in and out the weltering 'tween-decks,

waving loathsome feelers as though in mockery of human efforts!

Like a war-whoop to the onslaught the dynamos of the salvage vessel

start motion, and hum in _crescendo_ to a high tenor tone; the

vibrations of their speed and cycle are joined in conduct to the empty

hull of the wreck, and she quickens with a throb and stir as of her

arteries coursing. There is no preparatory trickle at outboard end of

the hose ejections; with a rush and roar, a clean, solid flood pours

over, an uninterrupted cascade at seven tons from each per minute!

The carpenter sounds the depth with rod and chalked lanyard, then lowers

a tethered float to water-level of the flooded compartment. In this way

he sets a starting mark for the competition, a gauge for the throw of

the pumps. In interest with the issue, the salvage men gather round the

hatchway, and all eyes are turned to the bobbing cork disc to note the

progress of the contest. Stirring and drifting to slack of the line, the

float seems serenely indifferent to its important motion; wayward and

buoyant, it trims, this way and that, then steadies suddenly on a taut

restraint; slowly it seems to rise in the water as though drawn by an

invisible hand. It spins a little to lay of the cord, then hangs,

moisture dropping and forming rings on the glassy surface of the well!

By no seeming effort but the pulse-like quiver of the hose, the level

falls away. A bolt-head on the plating shows under water, then tips an

upper edge above; a minute later the round is exposed and drying in a

slant of the sun.

The tense regard with which we have scanned the guide-mark gives way to

jest and relief when it is seen that drainage is assured; a facetious

mechanic at the hose-end makes motions as of pulling a bar handle to

draw a foaming glass. "Sop it up, old sport!" says the rigger, patting

the pipes. "Sop it up an' spit! Ol' Neptune ain't arf thusty!"

During our engagement, _Titan_ has not been idle. There remains only an

hour or two of flood tide and much has to be done. Leaving steam-pumps

to cope with the more moderate leakage at the after section, she has

hauled forward on the rising tide on the shoal side of the wreck. At the

bows she has applied suction to the prisoned water in the fore holds,

and a new stream pours overside in foaming ejection. The roar and throb

of her power motors adds further volume and vibration to the rousing

treatment by which the nerves of the stranded hulk seem braced. Stirred

by the new life on her, the old ship may well forget she has no stern

and only part a bottom. Already the decks, gaunt and red-rusted as they

are, take on a cheering look of service and animation. The seamen in the

rigging and workmen crowded round the hatchways might be the dockers

boarded for a day's work on the loading, and only the thunder of the

motors and crash of the sluicing torrent remain foreign to a normal

ship-day.

The sun has gone west when the tidal current surging past shows a change

in direction. We throw sightly flotsam overboard and note the drift that

takes the refuse astern. No longer the green slimy plates of the hull

show above water, the tide has lapped their sea-growth and ripples high

on a cleaner surface. With high water approaching we draw near the point

of balance in buoyancy, and the salving tenders tighten up headfasts and

stern ropes in readiness for a slip or drag. The sea-tug that has till

now been a quiet partner in operations, smokes up and backs in astern to

pass a hawser to the wreck. She drops away with a good scope, and lies

handy to tow at orders.

Tirelessly, droning and throbbing with insistent monotony, the pumps

continue their labour and draw the weight of water that holds the wreck

down. At number three hold the flood below is no longer a still and

placid well. The penned and mastered water seethes and whirls in

impotent fury at the suction that draws and churns only to expel. Some

solid matter, seaweed perhaps, has drifted to the leak and stems a

volume of the incoming water; there seems a prospect that a single pump

may keep the level.

In somewhat tense expectancy, we await a crisis in the operations. There

is a feeling that all these masterly movements should lead to a

spectacular resurrection--a stir and tremor in the frame of her,

reviving sea-throes, a lurch, a list, a mighty heave, and a staggering

relaunch to the deeps.

Precise and businesslike, modern salvage avoids such a flourishing end

to their labours. As skilful surgeons, they object strongly to

excitement. Their frail and tortured sea-patients can rarely stand more

than gentle suasion. As surely as the tide they work by, the factors of

weight and displacement and trim have been figured and calculated. . . .

The commander draws our attention to a quiet and steady rise in the

bows, the knightheads perceptibly edging nearer to a wisp of standing

cloud. Without a jar or surge the wreck becomes a floating ship; she

lists a little, as the towing hawser creaks and strains, and we draw off

gently to seaward.

THE DRY DOCK

A DOWNPOUR of steady, insistent rain makes quagmire of the paths on the

dockside, and the half-light of a cheerless early morning gives little

guidance to progress among the raffle of discarded ship-gear that lies

about the yard. Stumbling over shores and stagings, skirting gaunt

mounds of damaged plates and angles, we reach the sea-gate where the

ship victims of mine and torpedo are moored in readiness for treatment

in the great sea-hospital. In the uncertain light and under wet lowering

skies, they make a dismal picture. The symmetry of conventional

docking--ships moored in line and heading in the same direction--that is

an orderly feature of the harbours, is not possible in the overcrowded

basin. There is need to pack the vessels closely. They lie at awkward

angles, the stern of one overhanging the bows of another. Masts and

funnels and deck erections, upstanding at varied rakes, emphasize the

confused berthing and draw the eye to the condition of the mass of

damaged shipping. Not all of the vessels are shattered hulks. A number

are here for hull-cleaning or overhaul, but their high sides with the

rust and barnacles and weedy green scum, make as drab a feature in the

combination as the listed hulls of the cripples.

[Illustration: A TORPEDOED SHIP IN DRY DOCK]

Though nominally daylight, the arc-lamps of the pier-head still splutter

in wet contacts and spread a sickly glow over the oilskin-clad group of

dockmen and officials gathered to enter the ships. A chill breeze from

the sea blows in and carries reek and cinder of north-country coal to

thicken the lash of the rain. The waft comes from heeling dock tugs

that strain at their hawsers, spurring the muddy tide to froth in their

task of moving the helpless vessels in the basin. The long expanse of

flooded dock, brimming to the uppermost ledge, lies open for their

entry; the bruised and shattered stern of a large ship is pointed over

the sill at an awkward angle that marks an absence of steam-power aboard

to control her wayward sheer. The dockmaster, in ill mood with her

cantrips, roars admonition and appeal to the smoking tugs to "lie over

t' s'uth'ard and right her!" By check, and the powerful heave of a shore

capstan, she warps in and straightens to the line of the docks. As she

draws on to her berth the high bows of a second cripple swing over from

the tiers, and the tugs back out to fasten on and drag her to the gate.

With entry of the ships, the glistening pier-head becomes thronged by

tidesmen and their gear; like a drill-yard, with the lusty stamp of the

marching lines of dockmen trailing heavy hawsers and handing check and

hauling ropes. In an hour or so the gangs of the ship-repair section

will be ready to 'turn to' at the new jobs, and the ships must be

settled and ready against the wail of the starting 'buzzer.' Shrill

whistle signals, orders and hails add to the stir of the labourers, and

clatter of the warping capstan joins in with ready chorus. Not least of

the medley is the bull roar of the harassed dockmaster, who finds a need

in the press for more than one pair of hands at the reins to guide and

halt his tandem charges.

The ships are marked in company, to settle bow to stern, with no room to

spare, in the length of the dock. Conduct must be ruled in duplicate to

exact the full measure of utility from every foot of space. On the last

tide a pair of sound ships were floated out to service, braced and bound

and refitted for further duty as stout obverse to the 'Sure Shield.'

Keel-blocks and beds for the new patients have been set up and

rearranged in the brief interval of occupancy, and now, quick on the

wash of the outgoers, are new cases for the shearing plate-cutters and

the swing of hammers.

Mindful to conserve their precious dry-dock space to the limit of good

service, the repair section select the vessels with rare judgment. It is

no haphazard turn of the wheel that brings an American freighter,

shattered in stern section, to the same operating-table as an east-coast

tramp (having her engines in scrap, boilers fractured, and the frames of

her midships blown to sea-bottom). The combined measure of their length

and the similarity of extent in hull damage has brought them to the one

line of blocks. Odd cases, and regular ship-cleaning and minor repairs

may be allotted to single-ship dry docks, but here, in sea-hospital with

a twin-berth, there is a need for parallel treatment. The two ships must

be considered as one, and all efforts be promoted towards refloating

them, when hull repairs are completed, on one opening of the sea-gate.

In this, strangely, they are assisted by the enemy. True, his

accommodation could well be spared, but it does have an influence on

repair procedure. The exact and uniformly graded proportions of the

enemy explosive reproduces a correspondingly like extent and nature in

ship damage. Location and sea-trim may vary the fractures in proportion

to resistance but, with the vessels on the blocks together, working time

may be adjusted to these conditions and a balance be struck that will

further a simultaneous completion.

So the dockmaster ranges his pair on the centre line of the keel-blocks,

sets tight the hawsers that hold them in position, and bars the

sea-entry with a massive caisson. Presently he passes an order to the

pumpman, and the power-house echoes to the easy thrust of his giant

engine.

The keel-blocks have been set to meet the general lines of the vessels,

with only a marginal allowance for the contour of damaged plating. To

remedy any error divers, with their gear and escort, are ready on the

dockside, and they go below with first fall in the water-level. The

carpenters straggle out from sheltered corners and bear a hand. Riggers

and dockmen have placed the ships, and it remains for the 'tradesmen' to

bed them down and prop against a list by shores and blocks. They are ill

content with the vile weather and their job in the open, where the rain

lashes down pitilessly, soaking their working clothes. Doubtless they

envy the dry divers their suits of proofed rubber, when they are called

on to manhandle the heavy timber shores from the mud and litter of the

dockside and launch them out towards the steel sides of the settling

vessels. There the tide-workers on deck secure them by lanyards, and the

spars hang in even order, sighted on doublings of the plates, ready to

pin the ships on a steady keel when the water drains away.

With the timbers held in place, the carpenters split up to small parties

and stand by to set a further locking strain by prise of block and

wedge. The dockmaster blows a whistle signal at the far end of the

basin, and casts up his hand as though arresting movement; the thrust of

the main pump stills, and he swings his arm. At the sign, the carpenters

ram home . . . the thunder of their forehammers on the hardwood wedges

rings out in chorus that draws a quavering echo from the empty,

hard-pressed hulls.

Settled and bedded and pinned, the ships are left till the water drains

away and to await the coming of the shipwrights and repairing gangs. The

carpenters shoulder their long-handled top-mauls and scatter to a

shelter from the steady, continuous downpour. Up from the floors with

their work completed, the divers doff their heavy head-gear and sit a

while, _resting_ comfortably under the thrash of the same persistent

rain. Anon, their awkward garb discarded, they walk off, striding with a

crook at the knees, like farmer folk on ploughed land. The great pumps

now pulsate at full speed, drawing water to their sluices in an eddying

current that spins the flotsam and bares ledge after ledge of the solid

dock masonry. From gaping wounds of the crippled vessels a full tide of

seawater gushes and spurts to join the troubled wash below. The beams

and side-planking, and temporary measures of the salvage section,

uncover and come to sight, showing with what patience and laborious care

the divers have striven to stem an inrush.

On the second ship the receding water-line exposes the damage to her

engine- and boiler-rooms. A litter of coal and oily scum showers from

angles of the wrecked bunker and stokehold to the floor of the dock, and

leaves the fractured beams and tubes to stand out in gaunt twist and

deformity. Through the breaches the shattered cylinders and broken

columns of the engines lie distorted in a piled raffle of wrenched pipe

sections, valves and levers, footplates, skeleton ladders, and shafting.

The mass of distorted metal has still a shine and token of polish, and

these signs of late care and attention only serve to make the ruin seem

the more complete and irremediable.

An hour later a strident power syren sounds out from roof of the repair

'shops.' The workmen, hurrying to 'check in' at the gates, scarcely

glance at their new jobs on the blocks of the dry-dock. To them it seems

quite a commonplace that the round of their industry should suffer no

halt, that the two seaworthy ships they completed yesterday should be so

quickly replaced by the same type of casualty for their attention. The

magnitude of the task--the vast extent of plating to be sheared and

rebuilt, the beams to be withdrawn or straightened in place, the litter

to be cleared--holds no misgivings. Short on the stroke of 'turn to'

they straggle down the dockside to start the round anew. With critical

eye, foremen and surveyors chalk off the cypher of their verdicts on the

rusted displaced remnants; the gangs apportion and assemble with tools

and gear; the huge travelling cranes rumble along on their railways, and

lower slings and hooks in readiness for a load of damaged steel.

With the men lined out to the gangways and filing down the dock steps,

chain linking in trial over the crane sheaves, and the bustle of

preparation on ship and shore, everything seems set for an instant

beginning--but no hammer falls as yet. There is, first, a sad freight to

be discharged; not all the crew of the ship with the wrecked engines

have gone to the pay-table. Three sombre closed wagons are waiting by

the dockside, and towards them down the long gangways from the ship, the

bodies of an engineer and some of the stokehold crew are being carried.

The weltering flood that held them has drained to the dock, and busy

hands have searched in the wreckage where they died at their post.

We have no flags to honour, no processional march to accompany our dead.

Their poor bodies, dripping and fouled, are draped in a simple coarse

shroud that hardly conceals the line of their mangled limbs. Awkwardly

the carriers stumble on the sodden planking and rest arms and knees on

the guiding hand-lines. The workmen pause on the ship and gangways and

look respectfully, if curiously, at the limp burdens as they are carried

by.

Here and there a man speaks of the dead, but the most are silent, with

lowering looks, set teeth--a sharp intake of the breath. . . . Who

knows? Perhaps the spirits of the murdered seamen may come by a payment

at the hands of the shipwright gangs. The best monument to their memory

will stand as another keel on the deep--a quick ripost to the enemy, in

his victim repaired and strengthened and returned to sea.

Lowering looks, set teeth, a hissing intake of the breath are the right

accompaniment to a blow struck hard home; the thunder of hammers and

drills, the hiss and sparkle of shearing cutters, that breaks out when

the wagons have gone, marks a start to their monument!

[Illustration: DAZZLE]

XIV

ON CAMOUFLAGE--AND SHIPS' NAMES

EARLY in the war the rappel of 'Business as usual' was as deadly at sea

as elsewhere. Arrogant and super-confident in our pride of sea-place, we

made little effort to trim and adapt our practice to rapidly altering

conditions; there were few visible signs to disquiet us, we hardly

deviated from our peaceful sea-path, and had no concern for

interference. We carried our lights ablaze, advertised our doings in

plain wireless, announced our sailings and arrivals, and even devoted

more than usual attention to keeping our ships as span in brave new

paint and glistening varnish as the hearts of impressionable passengers

could desire.

We had difficulties with our manning. The seamen were off, at first tuck

of drum, to what they reckoned a more active part in the great game of

war--the strictly Naval Service--and we were left with weak crews of new

and raw hands to carry on the sea-trade. So, from the very first of it,

we engaged in a moral camouflage in our efforts to keep up appearances,

and show the neutrals with whom we did business that such a thing as war

could hardly disturb the smooth running of our master machine--the

Merchants' Service!

Some there were among us who saw the peril in such prominence, and took

modest (and somewhat hesitating) steps to keep out of the limelight, by

setting lonely courses on the sea, restraining the comradely gossip of

wireless operators, and toning down appearances from brilliant polish to

the more sombre part suiting a sea in war-time. Deck lights were painted

over and obscured, funnel and masts were allowed to grey to neutral

tints, the brown ash that discomposes fine paint at sea was looked upon

with a new and friendly eye. The bias of chief mates (in a service where

promotion is the due for a clean and tidy ship) was, with difficulty,

overcome, and a new era of keen look-out and sea-trim started.

There was but moderate support for these bold iconoclasts who dared thus

to affront our high fetish. Ship painting and decoration and upkeep were

sacrosanct rites that even masters must conform to; the enactments of

the Medes and Persians were but idle rules, mere by-laws, compared to

the formulae and prescriptions that governed the tone of our pantry

cupboards and the shades of cunning grain-work. We were peaceful

merchantmen; what was the use of our dressing up like a parish-rigged

man-o'-war? As to the lights--darkening ship would upset the passengers;

there would be rumours and apprehension. They would travel in less

'nervous' vessels!

The mine that shattered _Manchester Commerce_ stirred the base of our

happy conventions; the cruise of the _Emden_ set it swaying perilously;

the torpedoes that sank _Falaba_ and _Lusitania_ blew the whole sham

edifice to the winds, and we began to think of our ships in other terms

than those of freight and passenger rates. Our conceptions of peaceful

merchantmen were not the enemy's!

We set about to make our vessels less conspicuous. Grey! We painted our

hulls and funnels grey. In many colours of grey. The nuances of our

coatings were accidental. Poor quality paint and variable untimely

mixings contributed, but it was mainly by crew troubles (deficiency and

incapacity) that we came by our first camouflage. As needs must, we

painted sections at a time--a patch here, a plate or two there--laid on

in the way that real sailors would call 'inside-out'! We sported suits

of many colours, an infinite variety of shades. Quite suddenly we

realized that grey, in such an ample range--red-greys, blue-greys,

brown-greys, green-greys--intermixed on our hulls, gave an excellent

low-visibility colour that blended into the misty northern landscape.

Bolshevik now in our methods, we worked on other schemes to trick the

murderer's eye. Convention again beset our path. The great god

Symmetry--whom we had worshipped to our undoing--was torn from his high

place. The glamour of Balances, that we had thought so fine and

shipshape, fell from our eyes, and we saw treachery in every regular

disposition. Pairs--in masts, ventilators, rails and stanchions,

boat-groupings, samson posts, even in the shrouds and rigging--were

spies to the enemy, and we rearranged and screened and altered as best

we could, in every way that would serve to give a false indication of

our course and speed. Freighters and colliers (that we had scorned

because of ugly forward rake of mast and funnel) became the leaders of

our fashion. We wedged our masts forward (where we could) and slung a

gaff on the fore side of the foremast; we planked the funnel to look

more or less upright; we painted a curling bow wash over the propellor

and a black elaborate stern on the bows. We trimmed our ships by the

head, and flattered ourselves that, Janus-like, we were heading all

ways!

Few, including the enemy, were greatly deceived. At that point where

alterations of apparent course were important--to put the putting Fritz

off his stroke--the deck-houses and erections with their beamwise fronts

or ends would be plainly noted, and a true line of course be readily

deduced. With all our new zeal, we stopped short of altering standing

structures, but we could paint, and we made efforts to shield our

weakness by varied applications. Our device was old enough, a return to

the chequer of ancient sea-forts and the line of painted gun-ports with

which we used to decorate our clipper sailing ships. (That also was a

camouflage of its day--an effort to overawe Chinese and Malay pirates by

the painted resemblance to the gun-deck of a frigate.) We saw the

eye-disturbing value of a bold criss-cross, and those of us who had

paint to spare made a 'Hobson-jobson' of awning spars and transverse

bulkheads.

These were our sea-efforts--rude trials effected with great difficulty

in the stress of the new sea-warfare. We could only see ourselves from a

surface point of view, and, in our empirics, we had no official

assistance. During our brief stay in port it was impossible to procure

day-labouring gangs--even the 'gulls' of the dockside were busy at sea.

On a voyage, gun crews and extra look-outs left few hands of the watch

available for experiments; in any case, our rationed paint covered

little more than would keep the rust in check. We were relieved when new

stars of marine coloration arose, competent shore concerns that, on

Government instruction, arrayed us in a novel war paint. Our rough and

amateurish tricks gave way to the ordered schemes of the dockyard; our

ships were armed for us in a protective coat of many colours.

Upon us like an avalanche came this real camouflage. Somewhere behind it

all a genius of pantomimic transformation blazed his rainbow wand and

fixed us. As we came in from sea, dazzle-painters swarmed on us,

bespattered creatures with no bowels of compassion, who painted over our

cherished glass and teakwood and brass port-rims--the last lingering

evidences of our gentility. Hourly we watched our trim ships take on the

hues of a swingman's roundabouts. We learned of fancy colours known only

in high art--alizarin and grey-pink, purple-lake and Hooker's green. The

designs of our mantling held us in a maze of expectation. Bends and

ecarteles, indents and rayons, gyrony and counter-flory, appeared on our

topsides; curves and arrow-heads were figured on boats and davits and

deck fittings; apparently senseless dabs and patches were measured and

imprinted on funnel curve and rounding of the ventilators; inboard and

outboard we were streaked and crossed and curved.

With our arming of guns there was need for instruction in their service

and maintenance; artificial smoke-screens required that we should be

efficient in their use; our Otters called for some measure of seamanship

in adjustment and control. So far all governmental appliances for our

defence relied on our understanding and operation, but this new

protective coloration, held aloof from our confidence, it was quite

self-contained, there was no rule to be learnt; we were to be shipmates

with a new contrivance, to the operation of which we had no control. For

want of point in discussion, we criticized freely. We surpassed

ourselves in adjectival review; we stared in horror and amazement as

each newly bedizened vessel passed down the river. In comparison and

simile we racked memory for text to the gaudy creations. "Water running

under a bridge.". . . "Forced draught on a woolly sheep's back.". . .

"Mural decoration in a busy butcher's shop.". . . "Strike _me_ a rosy

bloody pink!" said one of the hands, "if this 'ere don't remind me o'

jaundice an' malaria an' a touch o' th' sun, an' me in a perishin' dago

'orspittel!"

While naming the new riot of colour grotesque--a monstrosity, an

outrage, myopic madness--we were ready enough to grasp at anything that

might help us in the fight at sea. We scanned our ships from all points

and angles to unveil the hidden imposition. Fervently we hoped that

there would be more in it than met our eye--that our preposterous livery

was not only an effort to make Gargantuan faces at the Boche! Only the

most splendid results could justify our bewilderment.

Out on the sea we came to a better estimate of the value of our novel

war-paint. In certain lights and positions we seemed to be steering odd

courses--it was very difficult to tell accurately the line of a vessel's

progress. The low visibility that we seamen had sought was sacrificed to

enhance a bold disruption of perspective. While our efforts at

deception, based more or less on a one-colour scheme of greys, may have

rendered our ships less visible against certain favouring backgrounds of

sea and sky, there were other weather conditions in which we would stand

out sharply revealed. Abandoning the effort to cloak a stealthy

sea-passage, our newly constituted Department of Marine Camouflage

decked us out in a bold pattern, skilfully arranged to disrupt our

perspective, and give a false impression of our line of course. With a

torpedo travelling to the limit of its run--striking anything that may

lie in its course, range is of little account. Deflection, on the other

hand, is everything in the torpedo-man's problem--the correct estimation

of a point of contact of two rapidly moving bodies. He relies for a

solution on an accurate judgment of his target's course; it became the

business of the dazzle-painters to complicate his working by a feint in

colour and design. The new camouflage has so distorted our sheer and

disrupted the colour in the mass as to make our vessels less easy to

hit. If not invisible against average backgrounds, the dazzlers have

done their work so well that we are at least partially lost in every

elongation.

The mystery withheld from us--the system of our decoration--has done

much to ease the rigours of our war-time sea-life. In argument and

discussion on its origin and purpose we have found a topic, almost as

unfailing in its interest as the record day's run of the old sailing

ships. We are agreed that it is a brave martial coat we wear, but are

divided in our theories of production. How is it done? By what shrewd

system are we controlled that no two ships are quite alike in their

splendour? We know that instructions come from a department of the

Admiralty to the dockyard painters, in many cases by telegraph. Is there

a system of abbreviations, a colourist's shorthand, or are there

maritime Heralds in Whitehall who blazon our arms for the guidance of

the rude dockside painters? It can be worked out in fine and sonorous

proportions:

For s.s. CORNCRIX

_Party per pale, a pale; first, gules, a fesse

dancette, sable; second, vert, bendy, lozengy,

purpure cottised with nodules of the first; third,

sable, three billets bendwise in fesse, or: sur

tout de tout, a barber's pole cockbilled on a

sinking gasometer, all proper._ For motto: "_Doing

them in the eye._"

One wonders if our old conservatism, our clinging to the past, shall

persist long after the time of strife has gone; if, in the years when

war is a memory and the time comes to deck our ships in pre-war symmetry

and grace of black hulls and white-painted deck-work and red funnels and

all the gallant show of it, some old masters among us may object to the

change.

"Well, have it as you like," they may say. "I was brought up in the good

old-fashioned cubist system o' ship painting--fine patterns o' reds an'

greens an' Ricketts' blue, an' brandy-ball stripes an' that! None o'

your damned newfangled ideas of one-colour sections for me! . . .

_Huh!_. . . And black hulls, too! . . . Black! A funeral outfit! . . .

No, sir! I may be wrong, but anyway, I'm too old now to chop and change

about!"

If we have become reconciled to the weird patterns of our war-paint,

every instinct of seafaring that is in us rebels against the new naming

of our ships. Is it but another form of camouflage--like the loving

Indian mother abusing her dear children for deception of a malicious

listening Djinn? _War Cowslip_, _War Dance_, _War Dreamer!_ War Hell!

Are our new standard ships being thus badly named, that the enemy may

look upon them as pariahs, unworthy of shell or torpedo? Perhaps, as a

thoughtful war measure, it may be chargeful of pregnant meaning; our new

war names for the ships may be germane to some distant world movement,

the first tender shoot of which we cannot yet recognize! More than

likely, it is the result of the fine war-time frolic of fitting the

cubest of square pegs in the roundest of holes. How is it done? Is

there, in the hutments of St. James's Park, an otherwise estimable and

blameless greengrocer, officially charged with the task of finding names

for vessels, 015537-68 inclusive, presently on the Controller's lists

and due to be launched?

We sailors are jealous for our vessels. Abuse us if you will, but have a

care for what you may say of our ships. We alone are entitled to call

them bitches, wet brutes, stubborn craft, but we will stand for no such

liberties from the beach; strikes have occurred on very much less

sufficient ground. Ridicule in the naming of our ships is intolerable.

If _War_ is to be the prefix, why cannot our greengrocer find suitable

words in the chronicles of strife? Can there be anything less martial

than the _War Rambler_, _War Linnet_, _War Titmouse_, _War Gossamer_?

Why not the _War Teashop_, the _War Picture House_, the--the--the _War

Lollipop_? Are we rationed in ships' names? Is there a Controller of

Marine Nomenclature? The thing is absurd!

If our controllers had sense they would see the danger in thus flouting

our sentiment; they would value the recruiting agency of a good name;

they would recognize that the naming of a ship should be done with as

great care as that of an heir to an earldom. Is the torpedoed bos'n of

the _Eumaeus_ going to boast of a new post on the _War Bandbox_? What

are the feelings of the captain of a _Ruritania_ when he goes to the

yards to take over a _War Whistler_? Why _War_? If sober, businesslike

argument be needed, it is confusing; it introduces a repetition of

initial syllable that makes for dangerous tangles in the scheme of

direction and control.

It is all quite unnecessary. There are names and enough. Fine names!

Seamanlike names! Good names! Names that any sailor would be proud to

have on his worsted jersey! Names that he would shout out in the

market-place! Names that the enemy would read as monuments to his

infamy! Names of ships that we knew and loved and stood by to the bitter

end.

XV

FLAGS AND BROTHERHOOD OF THE SEA

UNLIKE the marches of the land, with guard and counterguard, we had no

frontiers on the sea. There were no bounds to the nations and their

continents outside of seven or ten fathoms of blue water. We all

travelled on the one highway that had few by-paths on which trespassers

might be prosecuted. And our highway was no primrose path, swept and

garnished and safeguarded; it had perils enough in gale and tempest,

fog, ice, blinding snow, dark moonless nights, rock and shoal and

sandbar. Remote from ordered assistance in our necessity, we relied on

favour of a chance passer-by, on a fallible sea-wanderer like ourselves.

So, for our needs, we formed a sea-bond, an International Alliance

against our common hazards of wind and sea and fire, an assurance of

succour and support in emergency and distress. Out of our hunger for

sea-companionship grew a union that had few rules or written compacts,

and no bounds to action other than the simply humane traditions and

customs of the sea. There were no statutory penalties for infringement

of the rules unwritten; we could not, as true seamen, conceive so black

a case. We had no Articles of our Association, no charters, no

covenants; our only documents were the International Code of Signals and

the Rule of the Road at Sea. With these we were content; we understood

faith and a blood-bond as brother seamen, and we put out on our

adventures, stoutly warranted against what might come.

In the Code of Signals we had a language of our own, more immediate and

attractive than Volapuek or Esperanto. The dire fate of the builders of

the Tower held no terror for us, for our intercourse was that of sight

and recognition, not of speech. Our code was one of bright colours and

bold striking design--flags and pendants fluttering pleasantly in the

wind or, in calmer weather, drooping at the halyards with a lift for

closer recognition. The symbol of our masonry was a bold red pendant

with two vertical bars of white upon it. We had fine hoists for hail and

farewell; tragic turn of the colours for a serious emergency, hurried

two-flag sets for urgent calls, leisurely symbols of three for finished

periods.

'_Can you_' required three flags to itself; _me_ or _I_ or _it_ came all

within our range. We told our names and those of our ports by a long

charge of four; we could cross our _t's_ and dot our _i's_ by beckon of

a single square. We lowered slowly and rehoisted ('knuckles to the

staff, you young fool!') our National Ensign, as we would raise our hat

ashore. It was all an easy, courteous and graceful mode of converse,

linguistically and grammatically correct, for we had no concern with

accent or composition, taking our polished phrases from the book. It

suited well the great family of the sea, for, were we a Turk of Galatz

and you an Iceland brigantine, we could pass the time of day or tell one

another, simply and intelligibly, the details of our ports and ladings.

Distance, within broad limits, was small hindrance to our gossip; there

were few eyes on the round of the sea, to read into our confidences. We

could put a hail ashore, too. Passing within sight of San Miguel, we

could have a message on the home doorsteps on the morrow, by hoisting

our 'numbers'; the naked lightkeeper on the Daedalus could tell us of the

northern winds by a string of colours thrown out from the upper gallery.

Good news, bad news, reports, ice, weather, our food-supply, the wages

of our seamen, the whereabouts of pirates and cannibals, the bank rate,

high politics (we had S.L.R. for Nuncio)--we had them all grouped and

classed and ready for instant reference. Medicine, stocks, the law

(G.F.H., King's Bench; these sharps who never will take a plain seaman's

clear word on salvage or the weather, or the way the fog-whistle was

duly and properly sounded!) Figures! We could measure and weigh and

divide and subtract; we could turn your Greek _Daktylas_ into a Japanese

_Cho_ or _Tcho_, or Turkish _Parmaks_ into the _Draas_ of Tripoli! Some

few world measures had to be appendixed; a _Doppelzentner_ was Z.N.L.

What is a _Doppelzentner_?

As evidence of our brotherly regard, our peaceful intent, we had few

warlike phrases. True, we had hoists to warn of pirates, and we could

beg a loan, by signal, of powder and cannon-balls--to supplement our

four rusty Snyders, with which we could defend our property, but there

was no group in our international vocabulary that could read, "I am

torpedoing you without warning!" Seamanlike and simple, we saw only one

form of warfare at sea, and based our signals on that. "Keep courage! I

am coming to your assistance at utmost speed!". . . "I shall stand by

during the night!". . . "Water is gaining on me! I am sinking!" . . .

"Boat is approaching your quarter!" These, and others alike, were our

war signals, framed to meet our ideas of the greatest peril we might

encounter in our conflict with the elements.

[Illustration: AN APPRENTICE IN THE MERCHANTS' SERVICE]

Of all this we write in a sad past tense. Our sea-bond is shattered.

There is no longer a brotherhood on the sea. The latest of our

recruits has betrayed us. The old book is useless, for it contains no

reading of the German's avowal, "Come on the deck of my submarine. I am

about to submerge!" . . . "Stand by, you helpless swine in the boats, while

I shell you and scatter your silly blood and brains!"

No longer will the receipt of a call of distress be the instant signal

(whatever the weather or your own plight) for putting the helm over. We

have shut the book! We are grown hardened and distrustful. S.O.S. may be

the fiend who has just torpedoed a crowded Red Cross, and endeavours by

his lying wireless to lure a Samaritan to the net. A heaving boat, or a

lone raft with a staff and a scrap, may only be closed with fearful

caution; they may be magnets for a minefield.

". . . still he called aloud, for he was in the

track of steamers. And presently he saw a steamer.

She carried no lights, but he described her form,

a darker shape upon the sea and sky, and saw the

sparks volley from her funnel.

"He shrieked till his voice broke, but the steamer

went on and vanished. The Irishman was furiously

enraged, but it was of no use to be angry. He went

on calling. So did the other four castaways, but

their cries were growing fainter and less

frequent.

"Then there loomed another steamer, and she, too,

went on. By this time, perhaps, an hour had gone

by, and the Arab firemen had fallen silent. The

Irishman could see them no longer. He never saw

them again. A third steamer hove in sight, and

she, too, went on. The Irishman cursed her with

the passionate intensity peculiar to the seaman,

and went on calling. It was a desperate

business. . . ."

The shame of it!

_Lusitania_, _Coquet_, _Serapis_, _Thracia_, _Mariston_, _The Belgian

Prince_, _Umaria_ . . .

". . . The commanding officer of the submarine,

leaning on the rail of the conning-tower, looked

down upon his victims.

"Crouched upon the thwarts in the sunlight, up to

their knees in water, which, stained crimson, was

flowing through the shell-holes in the planking,

soaked with blood, holding their wounds, staring

with hunted eyes, was the heap of stricken men.

"The German ordered the boat away. The shore was

fifteen miles distant. . . ."

He ordered the boat away! The shame of it! The abasing, dishonouring

shame of it!

Bitterly, tarnished--we realize our portion in the guilt, our share in

this black infamy--that seamen should do this thing!

What of the future? What will be the position of the German on the sea

when peace returns, let the settlement by catholic conclave be what it

may?

Sailorfolk have long memories! Living a life apart from their

land-fellows, they have but scant regard for the round of events that,

on the shore, would be canvassed and discussed, consented--and

forgotten. There is no busy competing commercial intrigue, no fickle

market, no grudging dalliance on the sea. We stand fast to our own old

sea-justice; we have no shades of mercy or condonation, no degrees of

tolerance for this bastard betrayer of our unwritten sea-laws. No

brotherhood of the sea can be conceived to which he may be re-admitted.

Not even the dethronement of the Hohenzollern can purge the deeds of his

marine Satraps, for their crimes are individual and personal and

professional.

In the League of Nations a purged and democratic Germany may have a

station, but there is no redemption for a Judas on the sea. There, by

every nation, every seafarer, he will remain a shunned and abhorred

Ishmael for all time.