'Signal just come through, sir,' said Rosser, the signal-man, thumping on the door of Wooten's cabin at half-past one in the morning.
The skipper grunted, sat up, switched on the light, and blinked. He was used to sudden calls and excursions in the middle of the night, and knew instinctively from the tone of the man's voice that the message was urgent.
'Read it out,' he sighed, throwing one leg out of the bunk.
'Menelaus,Monsoon,Manner, andMinxraise steam, and report when ready to proceed.'
'I thought so. What's the weather?'
'Very dark, and blowing a bit, sir,' said Rosser cheerfully, the moisture from his dripping oilskins forming a nice little puddle on the skipper's carpet. 'It's been raining hard this last half-hour.'
Wooten groaned. 'Right! Tell all the officers, and ask Mr Thompson to let me know how soon he'll be ready. And on your way forward tell Spry I want him.'
Spry, able seaman, was the captain's body-servant and general factotum.
Wooten threw open the small scuttle over his bunk and looked out. It was as black as pitch, the wind whistled and moaned mournfully, and a wave of moisture smote him in the face. It would be a wild and wet night at sea. Altogether a depressing night, there was not the least doubt about that. 'Ugh!' he grunted, slamming the scuttle to and drawing the bedclothes up to his chin.
Enter Spry.
'Usual sea-gear,' his master murmured.
The man nodded. He knew exactly what was wanted.
'We're in for a dusting, Spry.'
'We are that, sir. Will you 'ave your blue muffler or the white one?'
'The blue one, and the clean sweater.'
'You can't 'ave 'im, sir,' said the bluejacket, busy opening drawers and cupboards and pulling out clothes like a juggler. ''E's at the wash.'
'At the wash?'
'Yessir, and so's most of our flannel shirts and stiff collars. If we 're to be away long I'll 'ave to wash some shirts out, and you'll 'ave to wear them soft collars of yours.' Spry was always a pessimist in the small hours of the morning. 'Is there anything else you'll be wanting, sir?'
'No, thanks. Nothing bar the cocoa.'
Spry took a vacuum flask from a cupboard, and left the cabin to fill it. This also was a matter of routine; for cocoa, a cushion, and a rug were always put in the charthouse every night for Wooten's use when the ship was at sea.
The skipper clambered out of his bunk, lit a pipe, and dressed. This operation took him quite ten minutes. First came his ordinary garments, and a heavy woollen sweater and blue muffler; then a pair of thick socks; next a pair of fisherman's white woollen stockings worn over his trousers and reaching well above his knees; over them, a pair of rubber sea-boots. Next a uniform jacket, a lammy coat, another muffler, and an oilskin on top of everything. It was wet, and the weather was cold, and Wooten did not intend to be chilled through to the marrow if he could help it. His apparel was completed by a sou'-wester and a pair of glasses slung round his neck; and, thus arrayed, he clambered slowly up the ladder and waddled forward along the deck to the charthouse. It was too dark, and he was too bloated, to proceed briskly.
Hargreaves, the sub., yawning his head off, was already up there sorting out his charts.
'Morning, sir. D'you know where we're going?'
'Haven't the vaguest notion. TheMenelausis the boss, and will get the orders. She may tell us when we get outside.'
'How long are we likely to be away?'
'Don't know. Last time we left in a hurry we didn't come back for a fortnight. The time before, we were away for six weeks.'
'What'——
'If you ask me any more questions I shall be peevish,' Wooten interrupted. 'It's high time you knew that I'm not fit for polite conversation at this unholy hour of the morning.'
'Sorry, sir. I forgot.'
Half-an-hour afterwards, by which time steam had been raised, and the fact had been reported, Wooten climbed the ladder on to the bridge.
'Signal for destroyers to slip, sir,' came from Rosser a minute or two later, as a lamp winked frenziedly in and out in the darkness about a mile away. 'Form single line a'ead; speed ten knots.'
'Let go forward!' went the order to the first lieutenant on the forecastle.
There came the splash of the end of the wire as it fell into the water, and a moment later a hail from MacDonald. 'All gone, sir!'
'Half ahead port. Half astern starboard. Helm hard aport.'
The engine-room reply-gongs clanged, and theMarinerbegan to turn on her heel.
'Slow astern starboard—Stop starboard—Half ahead both—one-eighty revolutions,' in succession. 'Helm amidships. Steady!'
The four destroyers, falling into line astern of each other, groped their way down the congested harbour like wraiths in the night. Wooten glanced at the dark shapes of the other ships as they slid by. 'Lucky dogs!' he murmured. 'You've got a lie in. I envy you. This is not a night for poor old Peter to be at sea.'
He was right. By the time they reached the entrance the rain was coming down in sheets, and the wind had increased. Then the bows lifted to the first swell, and a dollop of spray flew over them, and rattled against the bridge-screens.
'It's going to be wet,' Hargreaves observed glumly, securing the top button of his oilskin.
'It is,' the skipper agreed; 'damned wet!'
In ten minutes, by which time they were clear of the harbour, and speed had been increased to eighteen knots, the ship was prancing and curveting like a frisky pony, and the spray was flying over in sheets. Five minutes later the seas were coming in green over the upper deck.
'Oh hell!' the captain groused, stowing away his useless pipe after vainly endeavouring to relight its sodden contents; 'this is the limit!—Look out, sub.,' he added, glancing at the next ship ahead, whose dim shadow danced through a welter of spray a cable and a half in front. 'Shove her on a bit. You're astern of station, and dropping fast. Lord!' he added, 'I wish I knew where we're off to.'
His prayer was not answered until daylight, by which time they were far to the southward, and theMenelausinformed them of their destination. They were going to the warmest spot most of them had ever known, though they were not aware of it at the time. Warmth can come from the Huns as well as from the sun.
The intermittent rumble of heavy guns had sounded continuously all through the night, and with the approach of dawn and the commencement of the usual 'early morning hate,' the intensity of the dull reverberations increased. TheMarinerand her consorts were within about twelve miles of the spot where the long line of opposing trenches debouched into the North Sea; but even at this distance they could see the brilliant illumination caused by the star-shell as they burst. The dark-blue sky above the horizon to the south-east was never free of them.
'Lor'!' said Billings in an awed whisper, watching the blue-white flashes as they burst suddenly out in the air, hung for a moment, and then waned slowly away, to be replaced by others; 'some poor blokes ain't arf gittin' it in the neck!'
There was a romance and an interest about the spectacle which it is rather difficult to define. For one thing, it was the closest they had ever been to the front; but here, on board the ship, everything was going on in the same old way, and the men went about their business as usual. But there, a bare twelve miles off, the deep-throated murmur of the guns showed that men were striving to kill each other, while the star-shell must have been flooding the closely packed trenches with unwelcome light. It seemed a little difficult to realise it, somehow.
The morning was cloudless and calm. The light increased, and as the sun neared the horizon a band of pale rose-madder and dull orange slowly began to encroach on the dark blue of the upper sky to the eastward. Before long they could see the hostile coast itself as a thin, blue-gray streak punctuated here and there by the spires and houses of the coast towns, magnified out of all proportion by the deceptive light. Hanging in the air, and all but invisible to the naked eye, was the bloated, caterpillar-shape of a German observation balloon. It looked ominous and menacing, and the Hun in the basket suspended beneath it was evidently going aloft to see whom his guns might devour for breakfast. The coast was reputed to bristle with weapons, some of them of prodigious range, and the men in the destroyer hoped fervently that they might not be victims of his wrath.
Then, quite suddenly, the dull blue above the broadening band of colour began to twinkle and sparkle with little spurts and splashes of bright yellow flame. They did not appear in ones, twos, or threes, but in batches of twenty or thirty at a time. The rumbling of the guns started afresh, for the flashes were the bursts of the enemy's anti-aircraft shell, fired at a swarm of allied aeroplanes making an early morning bombing attack; and, from the look of things, somebody was getting a tolerably hot time. More killing! It was rather like watching a gladiatorial combat in the arena; but it was a fine sight, and the 'Mariners' would not have missed it for worlds.
Presently, when the rosy light of the dawn had mounted up into space, the thudding of the distant guns ceased. The attack was over, and the bombs had evidently been dropped; but the clear sky over the shore was still flecked and stained with hundreds of smoke-puffs slowly dissolving on the gentle breeze. They showed blue and purple against the vivid contrasting colour beyond.
Air raids, and their subsequent reprisals, were a speciality of this locality. They took place nearly every morning and evening theMarinerwas there; and as the visiting machines had a comparatively short distance to travel before reaching their objective, they were carried out by too many aeroplanes, and with too great a frequency, to be pleasant.
In the French town within reach of the aerial Hun business went on as usual; but at the first wailing of the warning hooter the inhabitants bolted to earth like rabbits to their burrow. Every house which possessed a cellar showed a small red flag over the doorway, and any one who cared to claim admittance was given shelter. Trams stopped and disgorged their living freights. Adipose tram conductors, elderly women dragging frightened children, ancient male civilians,poilusin their slate-blue uniforms, any one and every one, made a bee-line for the nearest symbol of a cellar and safety. It was a wise precaution which must have saved many lives; for, though the Hun may be given the credit of only wishing to damage places of 'military importance,' and to kill members of 'the armed forces of the enemy,' his bombs, as often as not, were liberally sprinkled upon the residential and commercial portions of the town. Added to this, every anti-aircraft gun in the neighbourhood—and there were many of them—sent its shell hurtling skywards to drive the invaders away. The bits had to fall somewhere; and if a jagged morsel of steel weighing one ounce falls on the head of a human being from a height, say, of ten thousand feet, there is nothing for it but a funeral and mourners. So it is wise to keep indoors in any case, wiser still to repair to somebody else's cellar if you do not possess one of your own.
But after the raids, when the inhabitants emerged from their burrows, the small boys and girls collected splinters and sold them as mementoes. The trade was very brisk, and prices sometimes ran high. Bomb fragments—and one could not help suspecting that many of these were manufactured at home in the quiet intervals—commanded fabulous sums. I still treasure a fleeting vision of a British army captain in khaki, flourishing five-franc notes, pursuing a sky-bluepoiludown the street in the midst of an air raid. The Frenchman hugged to his bosom the dangerous remains of an aeroplane bomb, a wicked-looking affair painted bright yellow, and filled with some devilish compound guaranteed to kill or to cure. The Englishman wanted it badly, and, being the faster of the two, eventually overtook his quarry, and obtained the relic for fifteen francs. What he did with it I cannot say. One can hardly think that it was received with gratitude by his loving parents, or that it occupied the niche of honour in the hall of his rich but nervous aunt.
But whatever we may have said about bombing attacks at sea, air raids on a town are not the least bit amusing until afterwards. The whistle of a descending bomb is the most uncanny and unpleasant sound it is possible to imagine, far and away nastier than the howling and screeching of a passing shell. Moreover, in an air raid on a town the visitors can hardly fail to hit some one or something, and it may possibly be us.
'The Secretary of the Admiralty announces that an action took place yesterday afternoon between British and German destroyers. The enemy suffered considerable damage, and were forced to retire. Our casualties were insignificant.'—Daily Press.
It is rather galling to find one of the most eventful and crowded hours of one's existence disposed of in four lines of cold print, not even the name of a ship mentioned!
It made the ship's company of theMarinerfeel very small and insignificant, and the puffed-up, proud sort of feeling they had when they came out of their first real action oozed from them like gas from a punctured Zeppelin.
Sailors are peculiar animals. They long to frustrate and confound the Hun—that goes without saying; but, having done their best in this direction, they are equally desirous that their friends and relations shall be aware of the fact. Most of the men expected at least to see theMariner'sname in the newspapers. A good many of them, though they would not have admitted it, would have been highly flattered had their likenesses appeared in theMorning Mirror. 'A naval hero who has been doing his bit' would have sounded well as a superscription, though perhaps a trifle fulsome; while further photographs of the 'naval hero's' wife and family, his father and mother, the schoolmaster who had taught him, and the public-house which he sometimes patronised, would also have been suitable to the occasion. But unfortunately the newspapers took no notice of the affair; and, since the censorship of naval news was strict, they probably never even realised that such a ship as theMarinerexisted. It was a pity, for, from the point of view of the men and their friends, anything and everything which appeared in the Press must, of necessity, be a fact. If a man went home and said he had been in an action which had never publicly been announced, it was possible that his immediate neighbours might believe what he said. It was more than probable, however, that 50 per cent. of outsiders would treat his storycum grano salis, and think that he had exaggerated. Corroborative evidence is always useful.
To Pincher Martin the recollection of his first action at sea is still a vague and shadowy impression of mingled fact and fancy. He had kept the forenoon watch, and on going below at noon had consumed his usual midday meal with great relish. Then, with a satisfied feeling of repletion, he stretched himself at full length on a hard and very uncomfortable mess-stool, and went off to sleep. He was not the only one; but he had kept the middle watch, so there was some excuse for him.
Towards three o'clock he was suddenly brought back to his senses by the prolonged and irritating jangle of an electric alarm-bell. 'Gawd!' he murmured, sitting up with a start, and rubbing his sleepy eyes; 'wot's the buzz now?'
He was not long in finding out, for at that same moment Petty Officer Casey put his head down the hatch. 'Below there!' he howled cheerfully. 'Tumble up! Enemy in sight! General Quarters!'
His words were punctuated by the sound of men running along the upper deck and the rumble of a gun. The report was faint but unmistakable, and it did not come from theMariner.
Followed by various of his messmates, Pincher darted for the hatch, clambered up the steep ladder, and ten seconds later appeared at his gun on the forecastle breathless and inquisitive.
''Ere,' he queried, more by instinctive curiosity than because he really wanted the opinion of any one else, 'wot's up?'
'You stan' by to 'ump them projectiles!' grunted an A.B. 'This 'ere ain't the time to git askin' stoopid questions!'
Pincher obediently placed a lyddite shell in the loading-tray and waited.
Three British destroyers were in single line ahead, the fourth being away on some business best known to herself. TheMarinerwas the centre ship, and she quivered and shook to the thrust of her turbines; while, from the sensation of speed, and the great mass of white water heaped up under the stern of the next ahead, Pincher guessed they must be travelling at about thirty knots. Three or four miles away to port, rather difficult to see against the gray background of shore beyond, were the lean shapes of three other torpedo-craft. They also were steaming at high speed, and left a long white trail in the water astern of them, and seemed to be steering an approximately parallel course. They were German, of course, and as he watched a ripple of bright flame and a cloud of brown smoke leapt out from their leading vessel. They were firing, and at him. He felt rather frightened, and suddenly became possessed of a bitter resentment against the enemy who were striving to kill him and his shipmates. He had done them no personal wrong, so why should they try to take his life?
He held his breath and waited for the shell to drop, but the pause seemed interminable. Then he heard the sound of the reports, and saw three or four whity-gray splashes in the water between him and the enemy. The shell were fully six hundred yards short, and harmless. He breathed again.
Some order came through a voice-pipe to the gun; whereupon the sight-setter twiddled a small wheel and peered anxiously at a graduated dial, while the gunlayer, breathing heavily, applied his eye to the telescope. The muzzle of the gun began to move up and down in the air as the sights were kept on the enemy.
'Train right a bit, Bill!' came a smothered remark. 'Train right, damn yer eyes! That'll do! Keep her like that!'
A bell rang somewhere. A moment's pause, and then, with a sheet of flame and a crash, the weapon went off.
When once the business really started Pincher felt better. The anticipation, that awful period of suspense between the time of the enemy being sighted and the first shot being fired, was far and away worse than the actual fight itself. The noise and excitement acted as a sort of anæsthetic. They had a deadening effect which dulled the finer workings of his mind, and did away with most of his previous and poignant mental agony. He realised in a vague sort of a way that he might be killed; but the process of being under fire, when once it had started and the enemy was being fired at in return, was not nearly so bad as he had imagined it would be.
He had the task of placing a projectile in the loading-tray every time after the gun had fired, recoiled, ejected the spent cylinder neatly to the rear, and then had run out again and had been reloaded. He did it almost automatically, and without having to think about it. Time became an unknown quantity. Seconds sometimes seemed like hours, and hours may have dwindled to minutes for all he knew. All the sensations he was really conscious of at the time were a supreme desire to keep up the supply of shell, an overwhelming hatred for the enemy who dared to fire upon him, a most unpleasant feeling of heat, and an intolerable and raging thirst. The acrid taste and smell of the burning cordite may have produced the thirst; but, after five minutes of firing, Martin would have bartered everything he possessed for a mug of really cold water.
Incident succeeded incident with such rapidity that he could not concentrate his attention on any one particular thing. He saw great white splashes in the water, some of them perilously close. The noise of theMariner'sown guns overpowered every other sound, but between their reports he heard the fainter thudding of the enemy's weapons, the peculiar whining drone of hostile shell as they hurtled through the air, and the fiendish whirring and whizzing of their fragments as they burst. There came a jar and a metallic crash which told him that the ship had been hit somewhere close. He had no time to look round, but waited anxiously for the missile to pulverise; waited for what seemed minutes for the flame and roar of an appalling detonation and a shower of splinters which would sweep him to eternity. They never came. The shell had passed through the forecastle, and out again through the side of the ship, without exploding.
His own gun was firing very fast, and he could not see much, but in the rifts between the sheets of flame and clouds of smoke caused by its discharge he caught occasional glimpses of the enemy. They were still steaming fast, and seemed rather closer than before, and from the sea round about them spout after spout of spray leapt into the air as the British shell pitched. The brilliant gun-flashes still twinkled up and down their sides as they fired; but he was glad they were having a hot time.
The next time he saw them they seemed to have turned shorewards, while the British, still firing heavily, steamed in pursuit. Then, in the after-part of the middle German destroyer, the one theMarinerwas firing at, he suddenly noticed a wicked red flash and a cloud of oily black smoke. A shell had gone home. He could have shouted in glee had he not been so breathless.
The long-range action lasted for a full fifty-five minutes, with both sides blazing away merrily the whole time. What damage was done to the enemy it was impossible to say, but it was clear that they suffered considerably, and that they were forced back to their own coast. As regards their numbers, guns, size, and speed the opposing craft were pretty evenly matched; and if the action had taken place in the open sea it would have been fought to a finish at close range, or until one or other of the combatants retired post-haste from the contest. In this eventuality, given average luck, it would not have been the British; not because the German is any less brave than his antagonist, but because he has fewer ships to risk, and is supposed to have orders not to give battle unless he has a good chance of winning. But man proposes and God disposes, and the fight was more or less a drawn one.
At length there came the time when the enemy could be pursued no longer, on account of the proximity of the shore. So close in had they steamed that some one in theMarinereven declared that he was able to count the windows in the buildings and the tiles on the red roofs; and though the tile part may have been an exaggeration, the window-counting certainly was not. The yellow, wave-lapped beach, with the turf-covered sand-dunes beyond it, looked strangely calm and peaceful; but concealed in those dunes were guns of almost every imaginable size from fourteen-inch downwards, some of which were reputed to be able to pitch their shell on a sixpence at a range of fifteen miles. TheMarinerand her consorts were a long, long way inside this distance, and there was nothing for it but to discontinue the action, and to beat a hasty retreat.
Brother Boche, with his guns in among the dunes, was no fool. He was merely waiting for a good opportunity to open fire, and his chance came at the precise moment when the British helms went over and the destroyers started to steam seawards. Then the whole line of coast suddenly began to sparkle from end to end, and before one had time to think the shell were pitching. The fire of the destroyers, both as regards its volume and its accuracy, had been as nothing to this. Great white-water fountains seemed to spout up everywhere at the same moment, ahead, astern, and on either side. How many projectiles fell within a few feet of the ship during the next ten minutes it is impossible to say. The shooting was very accurate indeed—far too accurate to be pleasant. It was extremely unpleasant.
Words can convey no conception of the breathless sort of sensation caused by those falling shell. They howled like wolves and screeched like express trains passing through wayside stations. They fell into the water with heavy liquid plops, detonated in gigantic upheavals of water and with roaring concussions compared with which the reports of heavy guns faded into insignificance, and sent their jagged-edged fragments whirring off into space with the humming and buzzing of angry hornets. It was a sickening, uncanny feeling to see a fifty-foot geyser-like spout spring into the air a bare fathom off the stem, to notice the black patch at the spot in the water where the shell had burst as if one had emptied a bucket of ashes, and then to steam through the descending spray, and to smell the horrible, reeking stench of the explosive. It was more alarming still to see a bouquet of four or five such splashes jump into the air within a few feet of the stern or on either side of the ship. If a single one of these projectiles drove home theMarinerwould probably be brought to a standstill, in which case her subsequent demolition and the slaughter of her crew would only be a matter of time. If three or four shells struck at once she would probably founder immediately.
It is one thing to be fired at by a similar vessel, and to be able to fire at her in reply; but it is something quite different to be subjected to the individual attention in broad daylight of a heavy ship, or many shore batteries, when there is no possible chance of retaliation. It leaves one breathless and cold; and though, perhaps, one may not actually show one's fear, one would give much to be elsewhere. It is only natural.
"The shooting was very accurate, far too accurate to be pleasant."
"The shooting was very accurate, far too accurate to be pleasant."
Page 310.
Shell from modern heavy guns can drive their way through the armoured sides of a battleship, but they will pulverise a destroyer into mere powder. There are no bombproofs, no funk-holes, no armour, not even a conning-tower—not that it would be used if there were. The officers and the men at the guns and torpedo-tubes are all on deck and in the open, while those below in the engine and boiler rooms have nothing between them and the deep sea but a steel skin barely thicker than a substantial biscuit-tin. Moreover, the greater portion of the hull is crammed with machinery, ammunition, and explosives; and, however much of a safeguard a destroyer's speed and small size may be, she must always seem very vulnerable to those who serve in her. I say 'seem' advisedly, for it is surprising how much hammering the tough little craft can withstand without being knocked out; while, as any gunner who is used to the game will tell you, she is not a very easy target to hit. But, for all that, one lucky shell may do the trick, in which case every man-jack of her crew may be killed or drowned. There is never much chance of escape if once the ship goes, and any man who says he relishes being under heavy fire in a T.B.D. is either a born hero or an Ananias. It is easy to make light of things after they have happened, but no words can adequately portray the inner feelings of the ordinary mortal while the ordeal is still in progress. They are indescribable.
But by some miraculous intervention of Providence theMarinerand her sister-ships escaped practically scot-free. According to people who witnessed the withdrawal from a distance, people who well knew the range and accuracy of the coast guns, the odds were a thousand to one that they would never escape, for at times they were hardly visible in the spray fountains leaping up all around them. They were literally buried in the splashes, but still they came on—and escaped.
It was not until afterwards that the men thoroughly realised how lucky they were. At the time, whatever they may have felt in their hearts or minds, there were no suggestions of fear in their faces, no trace of nervousness in their demeanour. They behaved just the same as usual—jeered uproariously when a shell fell a few feet short and deluged them with spray, and made facetious remarks when projectiles from 'Fractious Fanny,' as some one adroitly christened a particularly obnoxious 11·2, lumbered gracefully over their heads and exploded merrily in the sea a hundred feet or so beyond them. Perhaps they were a little more talkative than usual; perhaps their laughter was sometimes a little forced; but, for all that, they behaved as British bluejackets always do.
'I wouldn't 'a missed that there show fur a lot,' said Pincher Martin after supper the same evening.
'I reckons we kin think ourselves lucky ter git outa it,' Billings murmured with his mouth full. 'It's orl right lookin' back on it w'en once it's orl over; but it takes a bloomin' 'ero not ter 'ave a cold feelin' in 'is stummick wi' them there guns a-pluggin' at 'im.'
'Did you 'ave a cold feelin' in yer inside, Josh?' M'Sweeny queried anxiously.
'Course I 'ad. I wus cold orl over. I ain't no bloomin' 'ero. But, orl the same, Tubby boy, I reckons it's done us orl good ter 'ave a bit of a shake up like this 'ere. Makes us a sort of understan' 'ow every bloke aboard 'as 'is own job ter do; don't it?'
Joshua's way of expressing himself may have been crude, but M'Sweeny quite understood what he meant.
The engagement, short as it had been, had given the men confidence in themselves, each other, their officers, and their ship. It had banded them together in some extraordinary and quite inexplicable manner which no years of peace training could have done. Together they had been tried and had not been found wanting; and now, more than ever, they had become 'we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.' They felt themselves inspired with a new patriotism and a new ardour, and it was that very feeling which, on 21st October 1805, had helped their forebears to win the battle of Trafalgar.
All through the peaceful night of 30th May 1916 British squadrons were at sea steaming steadily eastward. Fighting-ships of almost every class were represented; great battleships and battle-cruisers, armoured cruisers of an older type, new and very fast light cruisers, the ubiquitous destroyers in their dozens, all converging silently towards the area on the other side of the North Sea which was presently to become the scene of the mightiest and most terrible battle in British naval history.
The Commander-in-Chief and the Admirals in command of squadrons may possibly have known that something unusual was in the air; but it is doubtful if any subordinate officers or men had the least inkling of what the next day would bring forth. They knew that a battle was always possible, and were ready and anxious for it. Off and on for nearly twenty-two months they had scoured the gray wastes of the North Sea, and had explored its grayer fogs, always hoping that the next dawn would bless their tired eyes with a view of the far-flung battle-line of the enemy stretched out across the horizon before them. But morning after morning the sun had risen to display the same bare and monotonous vista of sea and sky.
Sometimes the ocean was calm and peaceful, the sun shone undimmed, and the blue sky towards the horizon was piled high with mass upon mass of mountainous white cumulus. Sometimes they had fogs, when they could see barely a hundred yards; sometimes the prevailing North Sea mists, in which the visibility alternated between two and five miles. At other times the wind howled, and the leaden sea was whipped into fury by gales; while the sky became overcast with dark clouds and streaked with the white, frayed-out streamers of mares' tails. They had come to know the vagaries of their cruising ground by heart; but whatever its aspect the sea was ever innocent of the one thing they all wished to see—the German High Sea Fleet.
Their wistful longing was just as acute as that of the men in the storm-battered ships of Columbus when straining their eyes towards the western horizon for the first dim blue traces of the new continent; and now, through sheer disappointment, not a few of them had come to believe that the chance they all prayed and longed for would never come.
Daylight on 31st May found theMarinerand many other destroyers still steaming eastward in company with the battle-cruiser fleet under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty in theLion. Certain light-cruiser squadrons, acting as scouts, were stationed some distance ahead of the heavier vessels. The morning—which had broken beautifully fine, with a calm sea—passed without incident, and it was not until shortly after half-past two in the afternoon that the advanced squadrons reported the enemy in force to the eastward.
It is impossible to give any idea of the thrill of excitement which passed through the officers and men of the ships when the facts became known. The bugles blared, and they hurried to their action stations. 'Enemy in force!' Did it mean that they were in touch with the High Sea Fleet? Had their chance come at last, the chance for which they had all been hoping ever since that fateful 4th August 1914?
Men looked anxiously at their neighbours to see how they took the momentous news; but nowhere did a face show signs of fear. On the contrary, their expression and demeanour testified to their implicit and unshaken confidence in themselves and their leaders. They laughed, jests passed from man to man and from group to group, and they went about their business with an intense keenness born of a new hope.
The big battle-cruisers swung rapidly into fighting formation and increased speed, their wash churning the calm sea into great waves. They presented a magnificent spectacle as they steamed into action with the smoke curling from their funnel-tops, white ensigns flying at each masthead, and the huge guns in their turrets pointing their lean muzzles skywards.
At two-thirty-fiveP.M.a considerable amount of smoke was sighted to the eastward, and a little less than an hour later the gigantic shapes of five hostile battle-cruisers were looming up over the horizon.
'All guns, load!' came the first order from the control positions. 'Salvos by director! Guns—ready!'
Inside a turret a burly A.B., clad in flannel shirt and trousers, spat solemnly on his hands, stretched out a hairy tattooed arm, and moved a small, brightly polished steel lever. Instantly a clattering hydraulic chain rammer uncoiled itself like a snake, and an enormous shell weighing three-quarters of a ton was pushed bodily out of the loading-tray to vanish into the open breech of the gun with a smack and a thud. The rammer was withdrawn, another man manipulated a handle, and two cream-coloured, sausage-shaped bundles with red ends rolled into the space just vacated by the projectile. They were the cordite charges, swathed in innocent-looking silk coverings, the red extremities being the muslin bags containing the powder-igniters. The silk, somehow, seemed strangely out of place in the gun-turret of a battle-cruiser. It reminded one irresistibly of the counter of a drapery establishment; but for many a long year artillery experts have known that a silk-covered cartridge leaves little or no burning residue in the breech of the gun when the weapon is fired. Hence its use.
Again the hairy, tattooed gentleman moved his lever, and the rammer, darting forward, propelled two quarter charges into the yawning breech of the gun. The operation was repeated, while a man fiddled for a moment with the lock, and then the great steel breech-block swung to with a clang.
'Right gun, loaded!' some one bawled, as something slipped into place with a click.
'Right gun, ready!' from another man.
The gunlayer watched a dial, and the gun's crew stood tense and expectant, while the huge breeches of the weapons moved ponderously up and down, with a wheezing and a groaning of the water through the hydraulic machinery. The turret twitched slowly to the right, stopped, and then moved again. Ammunition-cages containing more shell and cartridges ready for the next round came clattering up from the loading-chambers.
The officer in charge, a lieutenant with absurdly pink cheeks and curly hair, was stationed at his periscope, one end of which protruded through a hole in the armoured roof of the turret, and gave him a view of the surrounding sea.
'Can yer see anythink, sir?' some one asked in a hoarse whisper, his curiosity getting the better of him as the officer bent down to wipe the eyepiece of his instrument with a gaudy bandana handkerchief.
'Yes,' he answered cheerily, 'five battle-cruisers, some light cruisers, and a good many destroyers! Stand by. It'll be starting in a minute.' He replaced the handkerchief in his pocket, and applied his eyes to the periscope again.
The loading number of the right gun, he with the hairy arms, was busy with a piece of chalk, and the other members of the gun's crew who had nothing particular to do watched him with some amusement. 'To Hunny, with love from Bill Mason, A.B.,' he traced out laboriously on the sleek, yellow-painted side of the huge lyddite projectile. He stepped back to survey his handiwork with a little chuckle of glee. 'That'll tickle 'em!' he remarked, winking solemnly.
The men tittered.
The lieutenant at the periscope suddenly held his breath as a muffled, whistling shriek and the roar of an explosion from outside brought the men's heads up in eager, listening attention.
'Garn!' said Mason with a grin; 'that ain't gone nowhere near us. 'Ave another go, ole son!'
'Stand by, men!' cautioned the officer, who was the only person who could see what went on in the outside world.
Mason licked his hands and rubbed them unconcernedly on the seat of his trousers.
Whe-e-e-w!whe-e-e-e-w!B-o-o-m!from the outside again, followed by the sound of another detonation and a slight jar, which showed that the ship had been struck somewhere.
The gun's crew looked at each other. The turret moved slowly to the right, and went on moving. The breeches of the guns began to see-saw gently up and down in rhythm with the movement of the ship. Then a bell rang, and with a roar and a thud the right gun suddenly went off and recoiled backwards along its slide. It ran out again with a wheezing, sucking sound, and the massive breech-block flew open with a metallic crash.
'Left gun, ready!' came a shout.
The turret became filled with the warm, acrid smoke of burnt cordite. There came the swishing sound of the washing-out apparatus, and the clatter of the chain rammer.
The bell rang again.B-o-o-m!roared the left gun. The great battle had begun.
It is impossible for any single spectator to describe a naval action as a whole from his own personal observations and experiences, particularly a battle which divides itself into many different phases, lasts intermittently from about three-thirty in the afternoon until the same time next morning, and is fought over many miles of sea.
TheMarinerand various other destroyers were present with the battle-cruisers throughout the first shock of the engagement and the running fight which ensued. Some of them, theMarinerincluded, assisted to repel the attacks of hostile torpedo-craft during daylight, and delivered their own attacks on the heavy ships of the enemy during the afternoon and night; but though Pincher Martin saw a great deal of the fighting, he had no very clear conception of how the engagement went as a whole or of how the time passed.
When he first saw the enemy they appeared as a row of immense gray shapes stretched out across the horizon. They were battle-cruisers—he knew that from their build; and though they must have been fully ten miles distant, they looked grim and menacing. With them were several light cruisers, looking absolute pygmies alongside their overgrown sisters; while on the farther side he saw, or thought he could see, a swarm of destroyers. It was now about three-thirtyP.M., and the weather was quite clear.
TheMarinerwas stationed close to the line of battle-cruisers, and between them and the enemy. She occupied one of the best seats in the house, the front row of the stalls, so to speak, a position from which, but for the clouds of smoke and masses of spray flung up by the falling shell, those on board her would have seen practically everything that happened. But the billet was not exactly a comfortable one. Indeed, it was most unpleasant; for when the firing began the shot from both the British and the German guns whistled and thundered overhead, while there was always the chance that the destroyers would receive the benefit of hostile shell falling short of their intended target.
Pincher watched the enemy with a certain amount of fascinated apprehension. They seemed to swing into a single line, and then, quite suddenly, he noticed five or six tongues of bright orange flame and clouds of brown smoke leap out from the side of their leader. There was a lengthy pause, followed by a terrifying crescendo of howling and screeching as the giant projectiles came hurtling through the air. They fell in a bunch a bare fifty yards short of one of the battle-cruisers, and exploded with a roar, the great upheaval in the sea almost completely shutting out all traces of the ship beyond. The British guns instantly flashed out in reply, and the next moment the engagement became general.
From this time forward the whole affair seemed ghastly and unreal, an awful nightmare in which it was quite impossible to remember exactly what had happened. The air shook and trembled with a turmoil of ear-splitting sound, in which one heard the deep booming note of the British guns as they gave tongue, the shrill whistling or droning of shell as they passed overhead, and the sharper concussion of the hostile projectiles as they fell and burst.
Looked at from a distance, the huge hulls of the German ships seemed literally buried in a spouting maelstrom of shell fountains rising from the sea all round them. At times a shadowy gray mass, sparkling with wicked-looking gun-flashes, slid slowly into view behind some great upheaval in the water, to disappear the next instant as another salvo of shell fell and burst. The British guns seemed to be making very good shooting, but it was impossible to note exact results from the low deck of the destroyer.
Pincher glanced at theLionand the other ships, and the spectacle held him spell-bound and made him feel almost dizzy. They were enduring a veritable tornado of shell, and the sea all round them leapt and boiled until at times the rushing shapes of the great vessels, close as they were, seemed actually hidden in the turmoil of flung-up water. Some of the shell were going home, too, for here and there in the rifts in the spray and smoke he saw the deep-red flash, a cloud of oily smoke, and a shower of flying débris as they struck and exploded. There were a few ragged holes in the gray steel sides; here and there the symmetrical shape of a ship's superstructure was marred by a twisted and distorted mass of steelwork, and pierced funnels vomited forth their black contributions to add to the already smoke-laden atmosphere. Star-shaped splashes of yellow and white showed where shell had struck armour, had exploded, and had failed to penetrate; but it seemed nothing short of a miracle how any ships built by human agency could withstand such a terrific hammering without being battered to pieces. It was an awesome sight.
It was well for theMarinerand her neighbours that the German shooting was so accurate. The hostile fire was concentrated on the battle-cruisers, and every shell seemed either to strike or else to fall within a few yards of them. The destroyers in their precarious position were untouched, but for all that the experience was nerve-racking, and Pincher had a feeling of intense relief when he saw the brilliant flashes and rolling clouds of brown, rapidly dissolving smoke from the British guns. They were firing fast, and it was no small consolation to think that the enemy were enduring the same terrible ordeal themselves.
One of the most awful incidents of that eventful day was the blowing up of theIndefatigable. The catastrophe, utterly unexpected, was appalling in its suddenness. At one moment the huge, nineteen-thousand-ton ship was steaming bravely along with her guns firing; the next, a salvo of five or six shell seemed to strike her simultaneously amidships. There came the splintering crash of the explosions, some spurts of flame, and upheavals of yellow, brown, black, gray, and white smoke. The great ship seemed literally to be divided in two, for both the bow and the stern reared themselves out of the water at the same moment. The thundering, shattering roar of the explosion made the nearer ships dance and tremble. The report seemed to compress the air until one's ear-drums threatened to burst, and masses of débris, large and small, were precipitated skywards, presently to come raining down into the sea in all directions.
The smoke-cloud spread and rose into the air to a height of three or four hundred feet. Soon it completely blotted out the scene of the disaster, and hung there impalpably, wreathing and eddying in thick, rolling masses. Then some freakish air-current caused another cloud of brown vapour to rise and overtop the first, until the whole mass looked for all the world like some gigantic, overbaked cottage loaf sitting squarely on the sea.
Within two minutes the ship had disappeared for ever, taking with her her gallant crew of nearly eight hundred officers and men. Barely a soul was saved, though destroyers, hurrying to the scene at imminent danger to themselves, searched the flotsam-strewn area for survivors.
TheQueen Marymet a precisely similar fate. Again there came the terrible roar and flare of an explosion, followed by the cloud of smoke, in which the great ship sank almost instantly to the bottom. It was an awful moment; but one of the most magnificent spectacles of the battle was the sight of the great three-funnelledTigersteaming at full speed through the pall a few moments after her unfortunate sister met her fate. At one moment she was in full view; the next her bows disappeared, then her midship portion with its three great funnels, and finally her stern, until the whole enormous length of the ship was completely swallowed up in the mass of brown vapour. Then her sharp stem with its creaming bow-wave emerged into sight on the other side of the pall, to be followed by the rest of the vessel as she drove clear of the scene of the catastrophe with her guns flashing defiance and her glorious white ensigns fluttering. It was an inspiring sight, but of the gallant crew of the strickenQueen Mary, comprising nearly a thousand souls, only four young midshipmen and under twenty men were rescued.
The loss of these vessels was a sad blow, but still the battle raged furiously. The hostile shooting, however, seemed to be becoming erratic, a fact which told its own tale, while ours steadily improved. Indeed, the next time Pincher was vouch-safed a fleeting glimpse of the enemy, two of their largest ships seemed to be badly on fire, while a third had quitted the line and was some distance astern of her consorts. But it was with a feeling of intense relief that the sorely tried British saw a welcome reinforcement of four battleships approaching at full speed, firing heavily as they came.
It was at about this time that some signal was hoisted in theLion, and before Pincher quite realised what was happening, theMarinerand most of the other destroyers swung round and steamed for the enemy as hard as they could go.
'Gawd!' he whispered breathlessly; 'we're goin' in to attack!'
It seemed a suicidal sort of business, another charge of the Light Brigade, as the ship, quivering and shaking to the thrust of her turbines, drove on at full speed. They were between the lines, and the screeching and howling of the heavy projectiles as the two squadrons fired at each other became fainter and more distant. They drew nearer and nearer to the enemy. They were travelling at something over thirty knots—fifty feet a second, one thousand yards a minute.
'Lie down!' came a sudden order to the guns' crews, for in another moment the enemy's secondary guns would be opening fire. The men flung themselves to the deck and watched.
It was at this moment that Pincher first saw a cloud of enemy destroyers and some light cruisers coming from behind the line of German heavy ships. They darted out at full speed to ward off the British attack, perhaps to deliver one of their own; but whatever happened they were too late, for the British small craft, swinging round, turned to meet them.
'Guns' crews, close up!' came an order. 'Load with lyddite!' The men scrambled to their feet and waited.
'Enemy destroyers bearing green four-five,' came through the voice-pipe. 'Rapid independent! Commence!'
For the next few minutes Pincher was so hard at work cramming shell into his gun that he could hardly see what was happening, much less understand it all. He realised the ship was being fired at, for there were splashes in the sea all round, and he could hear the shrieking whistle of the shell-splinters; but the roaring of theMariner'sown guns drowned every other sound. It was glorious to think that his own gun was firing at last, and somehow he did not very much care what happened so long as the enemy suffered.
It was an exciting experience. The hostile flotilla appeared as a drove of rushing gray shapes in the midst of a turmoil of shell fountains, smoke, and gun-flashes. There were so many of them, and they were so closely packed, that it was unnecessary to single out any one particular vessel as a target, and the British guns merely fired into 'the brown,' with the almost absolute certainty of hitting something.
Nearer and nearer they came—four thousand yards, three thousand five hundred, three thousand. In numbers the two forces were about equal, but the effects of the heavier British guns soon made themselves felt, for before long two of the enemy seemed to crumple up and vanish in a cloud of smoke and steam. A bare thirty seconds later another shared the same fate, while a fourth, badly hit, lay nearly motionless on the water and very much down by the bows, with a storm of shell spurting, foaming, and bursting all round her. The hostile attack was beaten off, for after a very sharp close-range action the enemy's flotillas turned tail and scuttled back to the shelter of their heavier ships.
Then the British flotillas, with the ground cleared, charged on again to press home the attack on the German battle-cruisers. The moment they came within range they were fired upon, and within a few seconds all the enemy's lighter guns came into action in a furious and frantic endeavour to drive them off. The gray shapes of the hostile vessels scintillated with gun-flashes and became shrouded in smoke, and once more the sea started to spout and boil angrily. But the destroyers were not to be denied, and after the gigantic shell fountains of the earlier portion of the battle, these smaller splashes, alarming as they might have been in ordinary circumstances, seemed puny and insignificant. Indeed, they came as a positive relief, and nobody worried his head about them.
The little craft still drove on under an awful fire, and theMariner, following round in the wake of her leader, turned and fired two torpedoes in rapid succession when she came within range. Others did the same, some ships arriving within three thousand yards of the enemy to do so. Some of the torpedoes must have gone home; but before they reached the enemy the attackers had turned about and were steaming hard to get out of range.
TheMarinerhad been hit by only one small projectile, which burst aft, but did no damage to speak of except inflicting slight flesh-wounds on two men, much to their subsequent satisfaction. Other ships had not been so lucky, and Pincher noticed one destroyer which had been struck in the engine-room and could not steam. The last time he saw her she lay motionless between the two fleets, enduring a terrible fire from every German gun which would bear. The greater number of her men must have been killed and her deck converted into a reeking shambles, but her colours were still flying.
The action between the opposing battle-cruisers had continued with unabated fury, both forces steaming to the southward on roughly parallel courses; but at four-forty-two the German High Sea Fleet had been sighted to the south-eastward from theLion. Sir David Beatty thereupon swung round to an opposite course to lead the new-comers towards Sir John Jellicoe, who, with the battleships of the Grand Fleet, was somewhere to the north. The enemy's battle-cruisers, maintaining their station ahead of the High Sea Fleet, conformed to the movement of the British shortly afterwards.
The Fifth Battle-Squadron, under the orders of Rear-Admiral Evan Thomas in theBarham, with the sister-shipsValiant,Malaya, andWarspite, were now approaching from the north, firing heavily as they came on to the head of the hostile line; but shortly before five o'clock they swung round into line astern of the battle-cruisers, coming under a heavy but more or less ineffectual fire from the leading German battleships as they did so.
Up to now the weather conditions had been favourable alike to both sides, but at about four-forty-five a thick mist and a great mass of dark cloud settled on the eastern horizon, and blurred the outlines of the enemy's vessels until they appeared vague, shadowy, and indistinct. To the westward, however, the sky was still quite clear, and the British were plainly silhouetted against the horizon, which gave the Germans the advantage in so far as the light was concerned.
Between five and sixP.M.the action continued, Sir David Beatty's force, with the four battleships astern of it, gradually drawing ahead of the enemy, and concentrating a very heavy fire on the battle-cruisers at the head of his line at a range of about fourteen thousand yards. The hostile battleships, meanwhile, farther astern, could do little to reply, and ship after ship of the enemy was badly battered, while one of their battle-cruisers, terribly damaged, was observed to quit the line.
At about six o'clock the leading British battleships were sighted to the north from theLion, and at this time Sir David Beatty, to clear the way for them to come into action, altered course to the east and crossed the enemy'sT, reducing the range to twelve thousand yards as he did so, and inflicting terrible damage with his heavy fire. At this time only four hostile vessels were in sight, three battle-cruisers and one battleship, the others being obliterated in the mist.
Twenty minutes later the Third Battle-Cruiser Squadron, commanded by Rear-Admiral the Hon. H. L. A. Hood, joined Sir David Beatty. The reinforcement was ordered to take station ahead, and steamed gallantly into action at a range of eight thousand yards. TheInvincible, subjected to a concentrated fire from every hostile gun which would bear, was sunk.
Previous to this, between five-fifty and sixP.M., Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, with the older cruisersDefenceandWarrior, had steamed in to attack the enemy's light cruisers, and the two vessels, with their 9·2 and 7·5 inch guns, sank or inflicted severe damage upon their opponents. But in doing so, unaware, on account of the mist, of the immediate presence of the enemy's heavier ships, they suddenly came within easy range of monster weapons against which their comparatively light armaments were impotent.
An awful fire was concentrated upon them. TheDefence, to use the words of an eye-witness, was 'blown clean out of the water' by a salvo of shell. TheWarriorwas hit repeatedly by heavy shell, and suffered terrible injury, for before escaping from her unenviable position she had arrived within a range of about five thousand four hundred yards of two hostile battle-cruisers.
The ship was little more than a battered wreck. A distance of five thousand four hundred yards is nothing at sea. It is point-blank range, and may be compared with using a rifle at fifty yards. Her casualties in killed and wounded had been very severe. The engine-rooms and stokeholds were flooded through shell striking and penetrating below the water-line, while she was blazing furiously aft, and was making water fast. The whole vessel was pierced and perforated until she resembled a gigantic nutmeg-grater, and as time went on she settled lower and lower in the water. Certain of the survivors tried to quench the fire with hoses, while the remainder set to work to build rafts, practically all the boats having been demolished. The conflagration was eventually subdued, and then came the piteous and gruesome task of identifying the dead, while the wounded were brought on deck in case it should be necessary to abandon the ship.
For over an hour she lay there helpless, and we can imagine the relief of officers and men when, later in the evening, theEngadine, a cross-Channel steamer converted into a seaplane depot ship, arrived on the scene and took her in tow. The energy of every soul on board was then concentrated on keeping the ship afloat; and, as the steam-pumping arrangements were useless, the exhausted men were at the hand-pumps all through the hours of darkness.
But it was not to be. The weather during the night grew rapidly worse, and when the next dawn came the wind and sea had risen, and waves were breaking over the quarterdeck. The cruiser could not last much longer. She was sinking fast, and there was nothing for it but to abandon her.
One by one the wounded were passed down into boats and were ferried across to the rescuing vessel. They were followed in turn by the remainder of the ship's company, the officers, and finally the captain; and when last seen, between nine and ten in the morning, theWarriorwas sinking by the stern. But she had upheld her name. She came to a noble end, for she had fought valiantly against overwhelming odds until she could fight no more, and her name, together with those of other brave ships lost on that eventful day, will never be forgotten. Her heroic dead did not sacrifice their lives in vain.
Of the gallant work of theEngadine, which towed the cruiser for seventy-five miles between eight-fortyP.M.and seven-fifteenA.M.the next morning, and was instrumental in saving the lives of her ship's company, we need make no mention here. The exploit occupies its deserved position of prominence in Sir John Jellicoe's official despatch.
It was immediately after the destroyer action between the lines that theMarinerfirst sighted another body of ships looming up to the southward. The new-comers, about sixteen large ships accompanied by many smaller vessels, came on at full speed towards the scene of action, and at first the men in the destroyers imagined them to be the battleships of the British Grand Fleet. Their spirits rose accordingly, for with the arrival of these powerful units the enemy's battle-cruisers, cut off from their base, could not escape annihilation. But a few minutes later, when the great ships had come nearer, their unfamiliar shape and unusual light-gray colouring proclaimed them for what they really were—the battleship squadrons of the German High Sea Fleet.
Some of the destroyers which were favourably placed at once dashed in to attack with torpedoes, retiring as soon as they had fired, and before very long most of them had rejoined the heavier vessels.[38]Their next chance of doing something was to come after nightfall.
From about six-fifteen onwards it is very difficult to give a comprehensive account of what occurred, for with the arrival on the scene of the British Grand Fleet, the German main squadrons turned and retired to the southward. Sir John Jellicoe chased at full speed; and, as he says in his despatch, 'the enemy's tactics were of a nature generally to avoid further action,' while he refers to his own ships as the 'following' or 'chasing' fleet. Moreover, in the engagements which ensued, the enemy were favoured by the weather, for banks of heavy mist and smoke-clouds from the hostile destroyers reduced the visibility to six miles or less, and periodically screened the opponents from each other's view.
The fighting between the opposing battleships, which began at six-seventeenP.M., seems to have resolved itself into a series of ship to ship and squadron to squadron encounters rather than a formal fleet action; but, while our vessels remained in their organised divisions throughout, the enemy, soon after the fight began, seem to have become more or less scattered, and to have had a trail of injured ships struggling along in rear of their main body.
A hostile vessel would suddenly loom up out of the haze a bare eight or ten thousand yards distant, to be greeted with salvo after salvo of shell as the British battleships drove by. She would reply to the best of her ability; but, whereas our vessels had just come into action, and their shooting was very accurate, the German firing was not good, and had little or no result. Ship after ship of the enemy appeared through the murk to be fired at heavily for three, four, or five minutes, then to disappear in the haze, badly hammered and perhaps on fire.
To give some idea of what took place during this period it is advisable to quote largely from the official despatches of Sir John Jellicoe and Sir David Beatty. There was the battleshipMarlborough, which, with the First Battle-Squadron, came into action with the retiring enemy at six-seventeenP.M.at a range of eleven thousand yards. She first fired seven rapid salvos at a German vessel of theKaiserclass, then engaged a cruiser, and again a battleship, doing them all serious injury. At six-fifty-four she was struck by a torpedo, the only one which took effect out of the many fired by the hostile destroyers; but, though damaged and with a considerable list to starboard, she remained in the line, and opened fire again at a cruiser at seven-threeP.M.Nine minutes later she started to fire fourteen rapid salvos at another battleship, hitting her badly and forcing her out of the line. Her firing throughout was most effective and accurate, and this in spite of the injury caused by the underwater explosion of the torpedo.
The First Battle-Squadron closed the range to nine thousand yards, and wrought great havoc with its fire, but only one of its vessels, theColossus, was struck, despite the hail of shell from the enemy.
The Second Battle-Squadron was in action with other German battleships between six-thirty and seven-twentyP.M., and also with a battle-cruiser which had dropped astern seriously injured; while the Fourth Battle-Squadron, with which was Sir John Jellicoe's flagship theIron Duke, engaged two battleships, as well as battle-cruisers, cruisers, and light cruisers. The vessels of the Fourth Light-Cruiser Squadron remained ahead of the British battleships until seven-twentyP.M., when they moved out to counter the attack of hostile destroyers, and successfully drove them off. They did it again an hour later, in company with the Eleventh Destroyer Flotilla, and came under a heavy fire from the enemy's battleships at ranges of between six thousand five hundred and eight thousand yards. It was then that theCalliope, flying the broad pendant of Commodore Le Mesurier, was hit several times, and suffered casualties, but luckily escaped serious injury. In the course of these attacks torpedoes were fired at the foe, while four hostile destroyers were sunk by the British fire.
At seven-fourteen Sir David Beatty, who, with his battle-cruisers, was apparently separated from Sir John Jellicoe, sighted two battle-cruisers and two battleships in the mist. He promptly engaged them, and, setting one on fire, so damaged another that she was forced to haul out of the line. The enemy's destroyers thereupon emitted dense volumes of gray smoke, under cover of which the enemy turned away and disappeared.
But they were very soon relocated by the British light cruisers acting as scouts, and between eight-twenty and eight-thirty-eightP.M.Sir David was once more in action at ten thousand yards. During this period theLionforced one of the enemy, badly on fire and with a heavy list to port, out of the line; thePrincess Royalset fire to a three-funnelled battleship; and theNew Zealandand theIndomitablecaused another vessel to leave the line heeling over and blazing furiously. The enemy then disappeared in the mist and were no more seen.
These various semi-isolated actions, and particularly the performance of theMarlborough, which fired at no fewer than five different ships between six-seventeen and seven-twelve, show only too well how the mist aided the foe; but in spite of it, the enemy was badly beaten, and suffered far greater casualties than the British.
At nineP.M.darkness was rapidly approaching, and at about this time the British heavy forces retired temporarily from the immediate neighbourhood to avoid hostile destroyer attacks, remaining, however, in positions between the enemy and his base from which the battle could be renewed at daylight. At the same time the light cruisers and destroyers were ordered in to do what damage they could.
To those in certain of the destroyers which were present during the latter part of the afternoon and evening, and happened to be unengaged, the sensation was a most uncanny one. Their area of vision was bounded by a narrow circle of four or five miles radius, but all round them until nightfall the air resounded and shook with the distant rumble and the nearer thudding of heavy guns as the great ships engaged each other. The uproar never ceased. Fighting seemed to be furious and continuous; but though the vessels of theMariner'sflotilla were steaming to the southward with their guns ready and torpedo-tubes manned, it was not until after darkness had fallen that they were vouchsafed another chance of using them. But they saw many signs of the battle. At one moment they would catch a glimpse of a huge British battleship vomiting flame and smoke as she engaged some invisible opponent. She would fade away in the mist, to be followed presently by a fleeting vision of two light cruisers, one British and the other German, their sides a quivering spangle of gun-flashes as they mutually hammered each other. They also would disappear, swallowed up in the haze; and a British destroyer, steaming at full speed, would dash across the horizon on some errand of destruction, with smoke pouring from her funnels and an immense white wave piled up in her wake.
They passed the bows of a sunken enemy light cruiser standing up out of the sea like some gigantic spearhead; and once, just before dark, they sighted what remained of a sorely wounded German cruiser. She was sinking fast. Her guns were silent, and she lay over to an alarming angle, with a blaze of orange and cherry-coloured flame leaping and playing about her from end to end. The whole interior of the ship must have been a raging furnace; and a mushroom-shaped pall of dark smoke, its under-side stained a vivid carmine by the flames, hung over her like a canopy, and added its contribution to the thickness of the atmosphere. The sea was strewn with wreckage, masses of débris, and floating corpses wearing life-belts.
And so the night came.