“It was just ’twixt daylight an’ dark,” he said, reaching me a steadying hand in the darkness as theFlyerteetered giddily down the back of a receding sea, “that the flotilla dropped back to take stashun ’stern the battl’ships we was screenin’. TheKillarneywas leadin’ an’ after her came theFirebran’,Seagull,Wreath, an’Consort, makin’ up the First Divishun.Wreathan’Consortsighted some Hun U-boats and ’stroyers while this move was on,an’ plunk’d off a few shots at ’em. Don’t think wi’ any fatal consequence. Then there come the rattle of light gun fire from the south’ard, like from cru’sers or battleships repellin’ T.B.D.’s. Then it was all serene for mor’n an ’our, an’ then all hell opens up.”
I suspected, from the sounds he made, that Melton had bitten into a block of milk chocolate without removing its wrapping of foil and paper, but presently his enunciation grew less explosive and more intelligible.
“It was Hun cru’sers drivin’ down on us from the starboard quarter that started the monkey-show,” he said, “an’ that bein’ the nor’west it was hardly where we’d reason to expect ’em from. It looks like we had ’em clean cut off, wi’ the ’hole Battl’ Fleet steamin’ ’tween ’em an’ their way back home, an’ that they was tryin’ to sneak through in the darkness. TheWreath, at the end o’ the line nearest ’em, spotted ’em first, and she, ’cause she didn’t want to give herself ’way wi’ flashin’, reported what she’d seen by low-power W.T. to the rest o’ the flotilla. Course I—standin’ watch aft—didn’t know nothin’ ’bout that signal, so that the first I hears o’ the Huns was when they all opened up on the poor ol’Killarney, ’cause she was the leader. I s’pose, and she started firin’ back at their flashes.
“The leadin’ Hun flashed his searchlight on theKillarneyas he opened up, but shut off sharp whenKillarneycame back at him. I could see some o’ the projes flittin’ right down the light beam until it blinked off, an’ it was a flock of two or three of these that I kept my eye on all the way till they bashed into theKillarney’sbridge and busted. She was zigzaggin’ a coupl’ o’ points onFirebrand’sstarboard bow just then, so my standin’ aft didn’t prevent my gettin’ a good look at what was happenin’. I could see the bodies o’ four or five men flyin’ up wi’ the wreckage o’ the explosion, an’ then, all in a minnit, she was rollin’ in flames from the funnels right for’ard. By the light o’ it I could see the crews o’ the ’midships and after guns workin’ ’em like devils, an’ twice anyhow, an’ I think three times, I saw a bright, shiny slug slip over the side, an’ knew they were loosin’ mouldies to try to get their own back from the Hun.
“The sea was boilin’ up red as blood where the light from the burnin’Killarneyfell on the spouts the Huns’ projes was throwin’ up all round her. She was the fairest mark ever a gun trained on, and p’raps that was what tempted the Hun to keep pumpin’ projes at her instead o’ givin’ more attenshun to the rest of the divishun trailin’ astern. That was what gaveFirebran’her first chance o’ alterin’ the Hun navy list that night.
“The second cru’ser in the Hun line was bearin’ right abeam to starboard by now, an’ I could see by her gun-flashes she was of good size, wi’ four long funnels fillin’ up all the deck ’tween her two masts.She was firing fast in salvoes wi’ all the guns that would bear on the burnin’Killarney. I could just make out by the light from theKillarney, which was growin’ stronger every minnit, that the crew of our after torpedo tube was gettin’ busy, an’ while I was watchin’ ’em, over flops the mouldie and starts to run. I knew it was aimed for one or t’other o’ the two leadin’ Huns, but wasn’t dead sure which till I saw the after funnels an’ mainmast o’ the second toppl’ over an’ a big flash o’ fire take their place. Then it looked like there was exploshuns right off fore an’ aft, and then fires broke out all over her from stem to stern. Next thing I knows, she takes a big list to starboard, an’ over she goes, wi’ more exploshuns throwin’ up spouts o’ steam, as she rolls under. The second mouldie—it got away right after the first—was never needed to finish the job. TheFirebran’had evened up the score for theKillarney, wi’ a good margin over.
“The captain turned away to reload mouldies after that, an’ just as we swung out o’ line I saw a salvo straddle theKillarney, and two or three shells hit square ’tween her funnels an’ after sup’rstruct’r’. They must have gone off in her engine room, for there was more steam than fire risin’ from her as we turned an’ left her astern, an’ she looked stopped dead. A Hun cru’ser was closin’ the blazin’ wreck o’ her, firm’ hard; but, by Gawd, what d’you think I saw. The only patch on the ol’Killarneythat was free o’ the ragin’ fires washer stern, an’ from there the steady flashes of her after gun showed it was bein’ worked as fast an’ reg’lar as ever I seen it done at any night-firin’ practice. I looked to see her blow up every minnit, but she was still spittin’ wi’ that littl’ after gun when the sudden flashin’ up of the fightin’ lights for’ard turned my attenshun nearer home.
“I could just make out a line of what looked like ’stroyers headin’ cross our bows, an’ thought we’d stumbled into ’nother nest o’ Huns till they answered back wi’ the signal o’ the day, an’ I knew it was one of our own flotillas we’d been catchin’ up to. That flashin’ up o’ lights come near to doin’ for us tho’, for it showed us up to a big Hun steamin’ three or four miles off on the port beam, an’ he claps a searchlight on us an’ chases it up wi’ a sheaf o’ shells. The only proj that hit us bounced off wi’out doin’ much hurt to the ship, but some flyin’ hunks o’ it smashed the mouldie davit and knocked out most o’ the crews o’ the after tubes, includin’ the T.G.M.[C]That put a stop to reloadin’ operashuns wi’ a mouldie in only one o’ the tubes. By good luck we managed to zigzag out o’ the searchlight beam right after that, an’ was free to turn back an’ try to start a divershun for the poor ol’Killarney.
[C]Torpedo Gunner’s Mate.
“Her fires looked to be dyin’ down when we first picked her up, but right after that some more projes bust on her an’ she started blazin’ harder thanever. I watched for the spittin’ o’ that littl’ after gun, but when it come it looked to spurt right out o’ the heart o’ a blazin’ furnace, showin’ the fire was now burnin’ from stem to stern. One more salvo plastered over her, an’ that one got no reply. The good ol’ ‘Killy’ had shot her bolt, an’ her finish looked a matter o’ minnits.
“It was plain enough if anyone was still livin’ they was goin’ to need pickin’ up in a hurry, an’ the captain put theFirebran’at full speed to close her an’ stan’ by to give a han’. Just then I saw a Hun searchlight turned on and start feelin’ its way up to where theKillarneywas burning, wi’ a cru’ser followin’ up the small end o’ the beam, seemin’ to be nosin’ in to end the mis’ry. She did not bear right for a mouldie, but we opened up wi’ the foremost gun, an’ I saw the shells bustin’ on her bridge and fo’c’sl’ like rotten apples chucked ’against a wall. The light blinked off as the first proj hit home, but there was no way to tell if it was shot away or no. It was the second time that night that we’d done our bit to ease off the hell turned loose on theKillarney. Likewise it was the last. From then on we had our own partic’lar hell to wriggle out of, wi’ no time left to play ‘Venging Nemisus’ to our stricken sisters. Just a big bonfire sittin’ on the sea an’ lickin’ a hole in the night wi’ its flames—that was the last I saw of the ol’Killarney.”
Melton paused for a moment as if engrossed inthe memories conjured up by his narrative, and I took advantage of the interval to hand him one of those most loved lollipops of Yankee youngster-hood, a plump, hard ball of toothsome saccharinity called—obviously from its resistant resiliency—an “All-Day Sucker.” When he spoke again I knew in an instant that a sure instinct had led him to make the proper disposition of the succulent dainty—that it was stowed snugly away in a bulging cheek like a squirrel’s nut, to melt away in its own good time.
“’Tween the glare of the burnin’Killarney,” Melton went on after thrashing his hands across his shoulders for a minute to warm them up, “the gleam o’ the Hun cru’ser’s searchlight an’ the flash o’ our own gun-fire, we must all have been more or less blinded in theFirebrand, for we had run close to what may have been a part of the main en’my battl’ line wi’out nothin’ bein’ reported. Our firin’ had give us away, o’ course, an’ the nearest ships must have had their guns trained on us, waitin’ to be sure what we was. One o’ ’em must have made up his mind we was en’my even before we spotted ’em at all, for the first thing I saw was the white o’ the bow wave an’ wake as she turned toward us, prob’ly to ram. She’d have caught us just about midships if the bridge hadn’t sighted her an’ done the only thing open to do—turned to meet her head on.
“I don’t remember that either she or us switchedon recognition lights, but the Hun opened with ev’rything that would bear just before we slammed together. It must have been by the gun-flashes that I saw she had three funnels, wi’ what looked like some kind o’ marks painted on ’em in red. I saw our second funnel give a jump and crumple up as a proj hit it, an’ then a spurt o’ flame—from a big gun fired almost point-blank—looked to shoot right on to the bridge. I thought that it must have killed ev’ry man there an’ carried away all the steering gear. But no.
“The oldFirebrandwi’ helm hard-a-port, went swingin’ right on thro’ the point or two more that saved her life. I could feel by the way she jumped an’ gathered herself that last second that the ol’ girl was still under control. Then we struck wi’ a horrible grind an’ crash, an’ I went sprawlin’ flat.
“If the Hun had hit us half a wink sooner, or if we had turned half a point less, we’d have been swallowed alive and split up in small hunks. As it was, we didn’t have a lot the worst o’ it, an’ p’raps we more than broke even. It was like a mastiff an’ terrier runnin’ into each other in the dark, an’ the terrier only gettin’ run over an’ the mastiff gettin’ a piece bit clean out o’ his neck. It was our port bows that come together, an’ for only a sort o’ glancin’ blow. But it was the stem o’ theFirebran’that was turned in sharpest, an’ it washer that was hittin’ up—by a good ten knots—the most speed. She was left in a terribl’ mess, but most o’ the damage was from her rammin’ the Hun, not from the Hun rammin’ her. While as for what she did to the Hun, the best proof o’ it was the more’n twenty feet of her side-platin’—an upper strake, wi’ scuttl’ holes in it an’ pieces o’ gutterway deck hangin’ to it—that we found in the wreck of our fo’c’sl’. If the hole that hunk of steel left behind it didn’t put that Hun out o’ bus’ness as a fightin’ unit till she got back to port an’ had a refit, I’ll eat it.”
I wasn’t quite clear in my mind whether Melton meant to imply that he would eat the hole in the Hun cruiser or the hunk of steel that came out of it, but therewasno room for doubt that the violent crunch with which he emphasised the assertion had put a period to the life of his “All-Day Sucker,” which was never intended to be treated like chewing toffy. Dipping into the grab-bag of my “lammy” coat pocket for something with which to replace it, therefore, I brought up a stick of chewing gum, and he resumed his story in an atmosphere sweet with the ineffable odour of spearmint and escaping steam.
“How much the Hun was shook up by that smash,” Melton continued, “you can reckon from this: We was almost dead stopped for some minnits, an’ all out o’ control from the time of rammin’ till they started connin’ her from theengine-room. There was one fire flickerin’ in the wreckage o’ the forebridge, an’ another somewhere ’midships, while there was also a big glare throwin’ up where the foremost funnel was shot away. We was as soft an’ easy a target as even a Hun could ask for; an’ yet that one was in too much of a funk wi’ his own hurts to let off a singl’ other gun at us in all the time that he must have been flounderin’ on at not much more’n point-blank range. Mebbe he was knocked up even more’n we thought. Nothin’ else would account for him not havin’ ’nother go at us.
“Just one wild bally mess—that was what theFirebran’looked like when I got to my feet again an’ cast an eye for’ard. There was too much smoke an’ steam to see clear, an’ it was mostly flickers o’ red light where the fires were startin’, an’ big, black shadows full o’ wreckage. As it looked tomefrom aft—tho’, o’ course, the full effects wasn’t vis’bl’ till daylight, the bridge an’ searchlight platform an’ mast was shoved right back an’ piled up on the foremost funnel. The whaler an’ dingy was carried away, an’ my first thought, for I was sure she was sinkin’, was that we had no boats to put off in. I could see two or three wounded crawlin’ out o’ the raffle, but I knew that the most to be dished would be in the wreck o’ the bridge. The queerest thing o’ all was the flashes o’ green an’ blue light flutterin’ thro’ the tangled steel o’ the wreckage. At first I thoughtI was sort o' seein' things; but fin'lly I figgered it out as the juice from the busted 'lectric wires short-circuitin'. It meant, I tol' myself, that the men under them tons o' steel was bein' 'lectrocuted on top o' bein' crushed.
“It looked like any one o' three or four things would be enough to finish the ol'Firebran'. I remember thinkin' that if she didn't blow up, she was sure to burn up; an' that if, by chance, she missed doin' one o' them, she was goin' to founder anyhow. She was already well down by the head, an’—leastways, it looked so to me at the time—still settlin’ fast. An’ I was just reflectin’ that, even if she was lucky enough not to burn up, or blow up, or founder, she was still too easy pickin’ for the Huns to miss doin’ her in one way or ’nother, when, thunderin’ out o’ the darkness an’ headin’ up to crumpl’ underfoot what was left o’ the stopped an’ helplessFirebran’, come a hulkin’ big battl’ cru’ser, the one I was just tellin’ you the’Lympusset me thinkin’ on a while back.
“Starin’ at our own fires must have blinded me a good bit, or I’d have seen him sooner’n I did. He looked like he been gettin’ no end o’ a hammerin’, for his second funnel was gone, an’ out of the hole it left a big spurt o’ flame an’ smoke was rushin’ that would have showed him up for miles. There was a red hot fire ragin’ under his fo’c’sl’, too, an’ I saw the flames lashin’ round thro’ some jagged shell holes in his port bow. Lucky for us, he wasrunnin’ for his life, an’ had no time to more than try to run us down in passin’.
“It must have been just from habit I yelled down my voice-pipe, for I knew they was no longer controllin’ her from the bridge; but the roarin’ o’ a fire an’ the clank of bangin’ metal was the only sounds that come back. When I looked up again the Hun was right on top of us, an’ I must have just stood there—froze—like to-night wi’ the’Lympus. By the grace o’ Gawd, he hadn’t been abl’ to alter course enough to do the trick. His stem shot by wi’ twenty feet or more clearance, an’ it was only the fat bulge of him that kissed us off in passin’. It was by the glare o’ his fires, not ours, which throwed no light abaft the superstructure I was on, that I saw some of the hands was already workin’ to rig a jury steerin’ gear aft. Then he was gone, an’ much too full o’ his own troubles to turn back, or even send the one heavy proj that would have cooked us for good an’ all. A few minutes more, an’ the wreck o’ theFirebran’begun gatherin’ way again, an’ when I saw her come round to her nor’westerly course an’ push ahead wi’out settlin’ any deeper, I knew that the bulkheads were holdin’ an’ that—always providin’ we run into no more Huns—there was a fightin’ chance o’ pullin’ thro’.
“There was about a hundred jobs that needed doin’ all at once, an’ ’tween the loss o’ dead an’ wounded—only about half the reg’lar ship’s company was fit for work. The bulkheads had to beshored, for, wi’ the fo’c’sl’ crumpled up like a concertina an’ the deck an’ side platin’ ripped off from the stem right back to the capstan engine, she was open to the whole North Sea from the galley right for’ard. This made the first an’ second bulkheads o’ no use, an’ made the third bulkhead all that stood ’tween us an’ goin’ to the bottom. Then there was the fires—’bove deck an’ ’tween decks—that had to be put out ’fore they got to the magazines, an’ the engines to be kept goin’, an’ the ship to be navigated, an’ the wounded to be looked to. An’ on top o’ all this, the ship had to be got into some kind o’ fightin’ trim in case any more Huns come pokin’ her way. I won’t be havin’ to tell you it was one bally awful job, carryin’ on like that in the dark, an’ wi’ half the ship’s company knocked out.
“When I saw it was the first lieutenant that seemed to be directin’ things, I took it the captain was done for, an’ that was what everyone thought till, all o’ a sudden, he come wrigglin’ out o’ the wreck o’ the bridge—all messed up an’ covered wi’ blood, but not much hurt otherways—an’ began carryin’ on just as if it was ‘Gen’ral Quarters.’ Some cove wi’ the stump o’ his hand tied up wi’ First Aid dressin’ was sent up to relieve me on the lookout, an’ I was put to fightin’ fires an’ clearin’ up the wreck ’bove decks. As there ain’t much to burn on a ’stroyer if the cordite ain’t started, we were not long gettin’ the fires in hand, even wi’ havin’—cause the hoses an’ the fire-mains wasknocked out—to dip up water in buckets throwed over the side. Wi’ the wreckage, the most we could do was to dig out the dead an’ wounded an’ rig up for connin’ ship from aft.
“It was a nasty job when we started in on the wreck o’ the forebridge, for the witch-lights o’ the short-circuit were still dancin’ a cancan in the smashed an’ twisted steel plates an’ girders, an’ it kept a cove lookin’ lively to keep from switchin’ some of the blue-green lightnin’ into his own frame by way o’ his ax or saw. No one that had been on any part o’ the bridge was wi’out some kind o’ hurt, but the three dead was a deal less than was to be expected. There was also three very bad knocked up, an’ on one o’ them the surgeon—a young probasuner R.N.V.R.—performed an operashun in the dark. It was a cove he was ’fraid to move wi’out tinkerin’ up a bit, an’ he pulled him thro’ all right in the end. One o’ the crew of the foremost gun never turned up, an’ we figured he must have been lost overboard when she rammed.
“Pois’nous as it was workin’ on deck, that wasn’t a circumstance to what it must have been carryin’ on below. I didn’t see nothin’ o’ that end o’ the show, thank Gawd, but every man as came out o’ it alive said it was just one livin’ bloomin’ hell, no less. There was a good number o’ coves who did things off han’ that saved the ship from blowin’ up, or burnin’ up, or sinkin’, an’ three o’ the best o’ ’em was a engine-room artif’cer, a stoker P.O., and astoker that was in the fore stokehold when the bridge was pushed back an’ carried away that funnel. They ducked into their resp’rators, stuck to their posts a’ kept the fans goin’ till the fumes was all cleared away. Nothin’ else would have saved the foremost boiler—an’ wi’ it the ship herself—blowin’ up right then an’ there. Same way, gettin’ on the jump in backin’ up Number 3 bulkhead—the one that was holding back the whole North Sea—was all that kept it from bulgin’ in an’ floodin’ right back into the stokeholds. It was the chief art’ficer engineer that took on that job, an’ it was him, too, that stopped up the gaps left by the knocking down o’ the first and second funnels.
“Even after it at last seemed like we was goin’ to keep her from sinkin’ or blowin’ up, things still looked so bad to the captain that he ditched the box o’ secret books for fear o’ their fallin’ into the hands o’ the Hun. As we’d have been more hindrance than help to the Fleet, he did not try to rejoin the flotilla, but turned west an’ headed for the coast o’ England on the chance of makin’ the nearest base while she still hung together. All night she went slap-bangin’ along, wi’ the engines shakin’ out a few more rev’lushuns just as fast as it seemed the bulkhead was shored strong enough to stand the push o’ the sea.
“Mornin’ found her still goin’, but what a sight she was! My first good look at what was left o’ her give me the same kind o’ a shock I got the firsttime I had a peep at my mug in a glass after havin’ small-pox in Singapore. She wasn’t a ship at all, any more’n my face was a face. She was just a mess, that’s all, an’ clinkin’ an’ clankin’ an’ wheezin’ and sneezin’ an’ yawin’ all over the sea. An’ the sea was empty all the way roun’, wi’ no ship in sight to pass us a tow-line or pick us up if she chucked in her hand an’ went down.
“We had our hands so full keepin’ her afloat an’ under weigh, that it wasn’t till four in the afternoon—more’n sixteen hours after we rammed the Hun cru’ser—that we found time to bury our dead. It was like gettin’ a turribl’ load off your chest when we dropped ’em over in their hammocks wi’ a fire-bar stitched in alongside ’em to take ’em down. Nothin’ is so depressin’ to a sailor as bein’ shipmates wi’ a mate that ain’t a mate no longer. Even the ol’Firebran’’peared to ride easier an’ more b’oyant after the buryin’ was over, as if she knowed the worst o’ her sorrer was left behind.
“Luck took a turn against us again just after dark, for the wind shifted six or seven points an’ started blowin’ strong from dead ahead. We had to alter course some to ease off the bang o’ the seas a bit, an’ fin’ly the speed had to be slowed even slower’n before to keep the bulkhead from being driv’ in. But she weathered it, by Gawd she did, an’ next mornin’ the goin’ was easier. We made the Tyne at noon. It was just a heap o’ ol’ scrap-iron so far as the eye could see, that they let intothe Middle Dock the next day, but it was scrap-iron that had come all the way from Jutland under its own steam, an’ wi’ no help from no one save what was left o’ the lads as once manned a ’stroyer called theFirebran’.
“It hadn’t taken long to reduce her from a ’stroyer to scrap-iron, an’ it didn’t seem like it took much longer—time goes fast on home leave—to turn that scrap-iron back into a ’stroyer again. The ol’Firebran’sgot many a good kick in her yet, so they say, an’ I’d ask for nothin’ better’n to be finishin’ the war in her.”
I thanked Melton for his yarn, bade him good night, and was about to start picking my way to my cabin to turn in, when I sensed rather than saw that there was something further he wanted to say, perhaps some final tribute to his officers and mates of theFirebrand, I thought. There was a shuffling of sea-booted feet on the steel deck, a nervous pulling off and on of woollen mittens, and it was out.
“I just wanted to say, sir,” he said, “that I likes the Yankee Jackies very much; ’specially their candy an’ chewin’ gum. I was just wonderin’ if that last stick you give me was all——”
I emptied both pockets before I renewed my thanks to Melton and bade him a final good night. There are strange ingredients entering into the composition of the cement that is binding Britain and America together, and if there is any objection to chewing gum it certainly cannot be on the ground that it lacks adhesiveness.
I had gone to theNairobi, not because the rather routine stunt her flotilla was on promised any excitement, but rather because of the notable part she had played in the Jutland action and the fact that I had been assured that there was still in her an officer who was said to have figured prominently in the splendid account she had given of herself on that occasion. As luck would have it, however, this officer had been appointed to another destroyer only a day or two previously, so that no veteran of the great action remained in the ward room. A canvass of the ship’s company revealed that one of the stoker petty officers was a Jutland survivor, but before I could run him to cover some kind of a light cruiser affair had occurred down Heligoland Bight way which called for destroyer work in that direction, and the next two days, with the flotilla creasing up the brine at high speed and everyone at Action Stations most of the time, were not favourable for the “intimate reminiscence” I was bent on drawing out.
It was not until the flotilla, salt-frosted and low in fuel, was lounging along in the leisurely dallianceof half-speed on the way back to base that I cornered Stoker Petty Officer Prince in the angle between the foremost torpedo tubes and the starboard rail, and engaged him in serious discussion of the shamefulness of supplying worn-out films to the Depôt Ship kinema. The second dog watch was only half gone, but in the hour that elapsed before it was over there was no mention of Jutland, or anything else connected with the war for that matter, though the talk ran the full gamut from cabbages to kings. I mean this quite literally, for he began by telling me of what his mother had raised in her allotment at Ipswich, and was describing how, when he was on a cruise in theClioten years before the war, he had once shaken hands with the King of Fiji, as eight bells went to call him on watch. It was a happy inspiration which prompted me to volunteer to go down and stand a part of his watch with him in the stokehold, for once on his own “dung-hill,” his restraint fell away from him and he spoke easily and naturally of the things which had befallen him there and on the deck above.
There is little in the small, neat compartment from which the oil fires of a modern destroyer are fed and controlled to suggest the picture which the name “stokehold” conjures up in the popular mind. There is no coal, no grime, no sweating shovellers, no clanging doors. Under ordinary conditions two leisurely moving men do all there is need of doing,and with time to spare, and there are occasions at sea, in the winter months, when the stokehold is a more comfortable refuge than the chill fireless ward room. It was my remarking upon the grateful warmth of the stokehold after the cold wet wind that was sweeping the deck, which finally turned the current of Prince’s reminiscence in the direction I had been vainly endeavouring to deflect it for the last hour.
“It’s all comfy enough, sir, when she’s loafing along at fifteen or twenty knots,” he said, slipping aside a “flap” and peering in at his fires with the critical eye of a housewife surveying her oven of bread, “but just tumble in some time when, while she already plugging away at full speed, the engine-room rings up more steam. That’s the time she’s just one little bit of hell down here, sir, with the white sizzle of the fires turning the furnaces to a red that shows even with the lights on, and the plates underfoot getting so hot that you have to keep dancing to prevent the soles of your boots from catching fire. Why, long toward morning of the night after Jutland——”
It didn’t take much manœuvring from that vantage to back him up to the beginning for a fresh start of the story of what is unquestionably one of the most remarkable, as it was one of the most successful, phases of the Jutland destroyer action. The fact that, during the daylight action between the battle cruisers, he had ample opportunity forobservation (through his being on deck standing by in the event of emergency and without active duties to perform) makes him undoubtedly one of the most valuable witnesses of the opening phase of this the greatest of all naval battles. The story which I am setting down connectedly, he told me in the comfortable intervals of his leisurely fire-trimming, and, once he was warmed up to it, with little prompting or questioning from myself. Much of it was punctuated with frequent stabs and slashes with one of the short-handled pokers which perform for the stoker of an oil-burner a service similar to that rendered his brother of the coal-burner by his mighty “slice” of iron.
“Big as the difference is between being on deck and in the stokehold at ordinary times,” said Prince, turning round with glare-blinded eyes closed to narrow slits after cracking off the accumulating carbon from an oil-sprayer with his poker, “it is ten times more so when a fight is on, and I’ll always be jolly thankful that it was my luck not to be caged up down here during the daylight part of the Jutland show. I had my turn of it at night, and it was bad enough then, even though I knew it was blacker’n the pit above; but, in daylight, with everything in full view outside, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have gone off my chuck if I’d had to go ‘squirrel-caging’ on here with one eye on the fires and the other on the Kilroy. But I didn’t. It was my luck to be off watch when the ball opened, sothat my ‘action station’ was just loafing round the deck and keeping a stock of leak-stopping gear—mushroom-spreaders and wooden plugs—ready to use as soon as we got holed. Not having anything to do with navigating the ship, or signalling, or serving the guns or torpedo tubes—though I did get a bit of a chance with a mouldie as it turned out—I not only had time to see, but also to let the sights ‘sink in’ like. For that reason, when it was all over, I was probably able to give a more connected yarn of what happened than anyone else in the ship, not excepting the captain. They’ll take a lot of forgetting, some of the things I saw that day.”
Prince went over and settled down at ease on the steel steps of the ladder. “The worst grudge I had against Jutland—save for the way it whiffed out the lives of some of my friends in some of the other destroyers—” he continued with a grin, “was for making me miss my tea that afternoon. We left base the night before, and about daybreak joined up with the ‘battlers,’ which was our way of speaking of the First Battle Cruiser Squadron, to which the flotilla was attached. It was a fairly decent day, and we were able to make good weather of it with the light wind and easy swell. I had stood the forenoon watch, had a bit of a doss in my hammock in the early part of the afternoon one, and had just gone down to tea before going on for the ‘First Dog.’ There had been some buzz in the morning about the Huns being out; but that was so old astory that no one paid much attention to it. I was just getting my nose over the edge of a mug of tea when I heard the bos’un growling ‘Hands exercise action stations,’ and tumbled out on deck to go through the motions of getting ready for a fight that would never come off, or leastways that was how we felt about it. The ‘battlers’ were speeding up a bit, but there was not even a smudge of smoke on the horizon to hint of Huns. After rigging the fire-hoses and getting out my ‘plugs,’ I stood by for ‘what next,’ but nothing happened. At the end of half an hour the order ‘Hands fall out’ was passed, and, leaving everything rigged, down we went to tea again. The mugs we had left were stone cold by this time, and we were just raising a howl for a fresh lot when, ‘Bing!’ off goes the alarm bells, and up we rushes again, this time to find signs of what we had been looking and hoping for. A good many hours went by before we went below again, and all through the fight—when things would ease off a bit now and then—I would hear the ‘matlos’ grousing about missing their afternoon tea.
“The oldNairobiwas nosing along under the port bow of theLionas I came up, and so close that we saw her guns—trained out abeam with a high elevation, right above us. We seemed to be speeding up to take station farther ahead. There was nothing at all in sight (from the deck, at least; though probably there was a better look-see fromthe bridge) in the direction theLion’sguns were trained, and it was almost as if a bomb had been dropped from the sky when a shell came plumping down about half-way between our starboard quarter and her port bow. The fact is, having heard no sound of gunfire, I was so surprised that I foolishly asked someone if theLionhadn’t blown out one of her tompions testing a circuit. The spout of foam should have told me better, but it goes to show what crazy things run through a man’s mind when he can only see effect without the cause. A few moments later I saw unmistakable gun-flashes blinking along the skyline to south’ard and knew that at last we were under the fire of the Huns. The next two or three shots fell singly, and were plainly merely attempts to get the range. Following the first ‘short,’ there were one or two ‘over,’ and then a fair hit. This one, falling almost straight, struck the fo’c’sl’ of theLion, penetrated the deck and came out on the starboard side. I don’t think it exploded, and we were just far enough ahead to see past her bows to where it struck the water with a kind of spattery splash, not at all like the clean spout thrown by a shell which goes straight into the sea.
“Then there was a big spurt of flame from theLion, and the screech of shells reached my ears, even before the heavy crash of her four-gun salvo. Watch as I would, I could not make out the distant fall of shot, but the fluttering flashes of the Hun guns tothe south’ard told where the target was. Firing opened up all along the line of our battle cruisers after that, and the racket from that and the fast falling enemy shells increased till it was a steady unbroken roar. The Hun shells were falling so straight that many of the ‘overs’ missed by only a few yards. The hits, of which there were quite a number on the leading ships, looked rather awful at the moment of exploding. There would be a wild gush of flame that seemed to be eating up everything it touched, and then, all of a sudden, it was gone, and only a few little fires would be left flickering on the deck. The shells which struck against the sides seemed to nip on into the sea almost before they began to explode. Neither these, nor even those which struck the decks and turrets, seemed to be doing much damage at this stage, and our own firing never slackened in the least. I think none of the destroyers were hit up to now, though there were a number of very near things from some of the ‘overs.’ Our turn was coming.
“This sort of a give-and-take fight had been going on for some time, when there was a sudden increase of the enemy’s fire. From the way the fresh fall of shot came ranging up, it was very plain that new ships were coming into action, while the fact that the splashes were higher and heavier than those from the first salvoes seemed to make it likely that some of the Hun battleships had now arrived at the party. As it turned out, this was just whathad happened, and, although we could not see them from the low decks of the destroyers, the first B.C.S. was soon under the fire of the whole Hun High Seas Fleet. It was to draw these on into action with our approaching Battle Fleet that Beatty now turned away to the north’ard.
“Right here was where the big moment of this part of the fight came. The Huns must have scented the chance of catching our battle cruisers on the ‘windy corner’ as they turned, for suddenly their fire slackened on the ships down the line and concentrated on the point where that line began to bend. It must have been something like the barrage they make at the Front, for at times the water thrown up by the bursting shell made a solid wall which completely cut off my view of the ships beyond it. The way it seemed to boil up and quiet down looked like there was some sort of general control over the bunched fire, though that sort of thing would be pretty hard to handle.
“TheLioncaught only a corner of the ‘boil,’ and left it on her starboard quarter, but the shell or two that struck her started a fierce fire burning ’midships, and I did not see the guns of that turret again in action. The ‘P.R.’—thePrincess Royal—turned in a quiet interval of the barrage, and seemed not to be hit, but theQueen Marysteamed right into it, and just seemed to dissolve in a big puff of smoke and steam. I have no special memory of the noise or shock of the explosion, but the pillar of smokeshot up as sudden and solid as a ‘Jack-in-the-box.’ It was black underneath, but always with a crown of flame at the top, as though the gases were spouting up inside and taking fire as they met the air. Some of my mates said they saw big pieces of flying wreckage, such as plates from turrets and decks, but I only remember smoke and flame. I never saw a bit of the ‘Q.M.’ again. When the smoke cloud lifted she was gone completely, with nothing but a gap in the line to mark the place where she had been. The thing looked so impossible that the ‘T.I.’ (that was what we called the torpedo gunner’s mate, because he was also torpedo instructor), who was standing beside me, kept saying over an over again, ‘She’s not gone up! She’s not gone up!’
“Perhaps it was no more than a coincidence, but it has always struck me as being just a bit uncanny the way that barrage on the ‘windy corner’ seemed to ‘work by threes.’ The ‘Q.M.’ was third in line, and up she went after theLionand ‘P.R.’ had passed unhurt. Then theTigerandNew Zealandweathered the turn safely, but the poor oldIndefat.—Number three again—got hers. She went up under a rain of shells plumping down on her deck, just as the ‘Q.M.’ did, and I remember specially watching the top of a turret go spinning up into the air, till it almost disappeared, and then came slowly down again, till it was lost in the rising smoke of the explosion.
“The fire of the Huns began to be divided moreequally among the four surviving battle cruisers now, and theNairobiwas led a lively dance dodging about among the ‘overs.’ It was the big fire raging amidships that turned my eyes to theLionagain. One of the guns of the ’midships turret had a sickly droop to it, but the other three turrets were blazing away as merry as ever. We were close enough to see men on the bridge with the naked eye, and it suddenly occurred to me that one of the quietly moving figures there must be Admiral Beatty, who I knew hated to be cooped up in a conning tower in action. I could not be sure which he was, but everyone in sight looked no more concerned than if they had been steaming out for target practice. I didn’t have time to think of it then, but every time since that I’ve felt surer and surer that no man since the world began ever showed more real guts than Beatty in that part of the Jutland show.”
Prince stood up, and put a forty-five degree kink in his poker by slamming it over the steel rail of the ladder to emphasise his words, and then stopped talking for a minute or two while he worried it straight with a hammer.
“It was just about this time,” he resumed, squinting approvingly down the straightened bar, “that theNectarhoisted the signal, ‘Second Division prepare for torpedo attack,’ and a few minutes later I saw the whole flotilla start streaming out, some ahead of the battle cruiser line, and some through it, toward the Huns. I also have some memory ofseeing the ——th flotilla, smoking like young factory chimneys, coming out astern of the line, but I had no chance to see what became of them.
“The range between us and the Huns had been decreasing for some time, and the battle cruisers at the head of the line loomed up pretty big and awful as we started to close them. I’ve never made quite sure yet whether we were sent out to repel an attack of the Hun destroyers, or whether they were sent out to repel our attack. Anyhow, there they were, filtering out through their battle cruisers just as we had filtered through ours. We met and turned them back something more than half-way between the lines, but before we got to that point we had to pass, first through the fire of the Hun heavies, and then through a still hotter zone where their secondaries were slapping down a barrage that took some fancy side-stepping to avoid coming to grief in. TheOnwardwas the first of our division to fall by the wayside. She stopped a ’leven-inch shell with her engine-room, and got stopped in turn herself. Luckily it didn’t explode, or she would have been blown out of the water then and there. I saw her fall out of line and disappear in a cloud of steam, and that was the last peep we had of her for many weeks. When she finally rejoined the flotilla, we learned that she and another cripple—theFencer, I think it was—had limped back home together. I don’t remember just where theWanderergot hers, but I think it must have been from the Hun’ssecondaries. Anyhow, the first thing I remember was that she was gone, and that theNectarwas leading theNairobi—all that was left of the division—on a course to cross the bows of the enemy battle cruisers. The Hun destroyers, which had no chance with us in a gun fight, had now turned tail and were heading back for the shelter of their battle line. Several of them appeared on fire, but I didn’t see any sinking.
“I am not quite sure what orders were made to the flotilla at this time, but I rather think that after the Hun attack had been stopped the signal was hoisted to return to the battle cruisers. I think that is what the other divisions did do, but for our division—or what remained of it—things were looking too promising just then to turn our backs on. I was standing by the foremost tubes at the time, and all of a sudden the Hun line began to turn away, and I saw that the leading ship was being heavily hit and that she was afire in two or three places. As she turned she presented us a fine broadside target at about three thousand yards, and the order came from the bridge to ‘Stand by foremost tubes and fire when sights come on.’
“The turning of the Hun battle cruiser line exposed us to the fire of a number of his light cruisers which had been seeking shelter behind it, and some smashing salvoes from these began to plump down all around us just as we got ready to launch the torpedoes. Though there was not one direct hit, wewere ‘straddled’ a dozen times, and the foam spouts tossed up by the shells exploding on striking the water made a wall of smoke and spray that almost shut off a view of our target. Shell fragments were slamming up against the funnels and tinkling on the decks, and I believe two or three men were hit by them, though not much hurt. It was this sudden savage shelling that spoiled the only chance we had at the Hun big ’uns. Just as the sights were coming on to the leading ship a salvo came down kerplump right abreast of the foremost tubes, throwing a solid spout of green water all over them. I saw both mouldies start to slide out, but only one struck the water and began to run. A moment later I saw that the other, for some reason we never found out, but probably because it had been knocked sideways by the rush of water or perhaps a fragment of shell, was hanging by its tail to the lip of the tube, with its war-head full of gun-cotton trailing in the sea. It cleared itself when the next sea slapped it against the side, and started diving and jumping about like a wounded porpoise, most likely because its propellers had been knocked out. Luckily, our speed carried us on before it had a chance to ‘boomerang’ back and blow up the oldNairobi. We could not watch the first torpedo run on account of the spouts from the falling shells, but though it started right to cross the enemy’s line, there was nothing to make us believe it scored a hit.
“Before there was time to grieve over losing ourchance at the battle cruisers the ‘T.I.’ called me to give him a hand with the ‘midships’ tubes, as one of his men had been knocked out. ‘There’s a light cruiser just going to bear for a shot,’ he yelled from his seat between the tubes as I ran round to the breech; ‘jump up and tell me what speed she’s making. I can’t see her fair from here.’ The trouble was that the awful speed theNairobiwas going at settled her down so low that, anywhere abaft the bridge, a man couldn’t see over the bow wave from the deck. But, standing on top of the tubes, I was high enough to get a good look at the Hun, when he wasn’t shut off by the spouts from the fall of shot. He was a small three-funnelled light cruiser, and every gun he had looked to be training on us. Another cruiser astern of him was also firing on theNairobi, while two or three others were concentrating on theNectar. She was getting it even hotter than we were, and all I could see of her—when one of her zigzags brought her to one side or the other so the bridge didn’t cut her off from my view—was some masts and funnels sliding along in the middle of a dancing patch of foam fountains. BothNectarandNairobiwere replying for all they were worth with their foremost guns; the after ones were too low down to fire at such close range with much effect. I saw one of our shells bursting on the Huns, and why their shooting at us was so bad I have never quite understood. The fact we were settled so deep aft from our speed was plainly making a lotof shells ricochet over what would otherwise have been hits, but, at the same time, the bows being so much higher out of the water offered all the more target for’ard. It was more ‘Joss’ than anything else, I suppose. Besides, theNectarwas just on the edge of getting hers anyhow.
“I saw all these things out of the corner of my eye like, for my mind was centred on getting what the ‘T.I.’ wanted to know about his cruiser. I knew just what this was to a ‘t,’ for I’d taken many a turn of drill at the tubes. ‘Parallel courses, thousand yards range, speed about twenty-five,’ I shouted, jumping down again; ‘and you’ll have to slip her right smart or you’ll miss your chance.’ Right then the seas flattened down for a few seconds, and the ‘T.I.’, giving me an order of how to train her, set his sights and pulled the cocking lever. A moment later he fired, and the mouldie slipped out smooth and easy and started running straight and true for a point the Hun was going to arrive at about a minute later.”
Prince had been poking away at a sprayer as he talked, with the fluttering light-mote from the fire in the heart of the furnace playing on one of his squinting eyes in a way that, with the other quenched in shadow, gave his face a look of Cyclopean fierceness. “I jumped up on the tubes again to follow our little tin fish on its swim,” he resumed. “There seemed to be a bit of a flap on the cruiser, for its next salvo fell a long way short of us. Oneof the shells—a five-or six-incher—did not explode, but bounced off the water and came ‘skip-jacking’ along straight for us. It kicked into the water twice before it reached us, the second time right at the base of the wave that was rolling up and hiding our sunken stern, and that seemed to give it just enough of an up-flip to make it clear theNairobi’sshivering hull. It came so slow that I caught the glint of the copper band round its base, and so low that the after superstructure blotted it off from my sight as it passed over the stern. One of the after gun’s crew told me he could have reached up and patted it as it tumbled along over his head. He said it was going so slow that he hardly felt any wind at all from it. Perhaps that was because he had his own wind up, though, for it was making a great buzz, and must have been carrying a big ‘tail’ of air in its wake.
“I lost track of our mouldie when I ducked—no, I don’t mind admitting that’s just what I did, though it missed me by a mile—and before I could get my eye on its wake again it had gone home. I think they must have spotted it coming on the cruiser, for I saw her begin to alter course away just about the time I figured it was due to arrive. If they were altering to avoid the mouldie, they turned the wrong way, for it only brought right abreast the funnels what’d ‘a’ been a hit somewhere about the bridge. I’ve got a picture in my mind of what happened that I’m dead certain is as trueas a photograph, and the spout of water that went up must have been almost exactly amidships. If the hit had been anywhere for’rard it would never have broken her back the way it did, and she might have got away. The funny part of it was that it was not the ’midships section of her, where the mouldie hit, that seemed to be lifted by the explosion. That part of her seemed just to go to pieces and begin to sink all at once, while the bow and stern halves started to come up and close together like a jack-knife. She must have gone down inside of a minute or two, but things were happening so fast I don’t think I was looking when she disappeared.”
Prince, engrossed in his story, forgot that the end of his poker had a sheet of flame playing upon it, and the heat which crept back from the rosy-red tip gave his palm a sharp singe as he clutched the handle preparatory to executing one of his sweeping gestures. From then on to the end of his narrative he paused frequently to lick with his tongue the blistered cuticle, the stoker’s sovereign remedy for a slight burn. “I was just starting to give the ‘T.I.’ an account of what I had had a lot better chance to see than he had,” he went on thickly, still touching the blisters gingerly with an extended tongue-tip, “when I heard him growl, ‘Stand by! here’s another one. What speed d’you think she’s making?’ I was still standing up on top of the tubes, and—to get a better view—right in front ofthe ‘T.I.’, with my waist on just about the level of his face. As I turned my head to look at the second Hun he straddled us fair with a full salvo. Most of it went over, but one proj struck right alongside and just about flooded us out. But there was something heavier than water that it sent aboard. I felt a sharp sting across my stomach, as if someone had given me a cut with a whip. As I put my hand down to it the whole front of my overall dropped away where a fragment of shell casing had shot across it. A few threads—I found out later—had been started on my singlet, but my hide was not even scratched. I heard the ‘T.I.’ give a yell, and when I looked round saw his face covered with blood, and a flap of skin from his forehead hanging down over one eye like a skye terrier’s ear. The piece of proj had caught him a nasty side-swipe, though without hurting anything but his looks in the least. And it wasn’t that he was yelling about, either, but at me for not giving him the course and speed of the second cruiser. He had the flap of skin tied up out of his eye—using a strip of my overall because neither of us could find a handkerchief—by the time I was back at the handle. I saw the blood dribbling over his sights, but he seemed to be seeing through them all right, for he was telling me how to train when I felt the helm begin to grind as it was thrown hard over to make a sudden alteration of course. She heeled fifteen or twenty degrees as she turned six points to starboard,and the boil of her wake flooded across her stern three or four feet deep. The sudden heel threw me off my feet, and I pulled up just in time to see us rushing by, and just missing by a few yards, a stopped destroyer that was nothing but spurts of fire flashing under a rolling cloud of steam and smoke.
“She seemed to be afire all over, and about ready to blow up; yet, from the quick flashes of some of the spurts of fire, I knew they came from a hard-pumped gun that some stout-hearted lads were working to the last. There was nothing in the look of that spouting volcano of smoke and steam that would help a man to tell whether it was a battleship or a trawler, but I knew that it could be only theNectar, our Division leader. We never saw her nor anyone in her again. She must have gone down within a few minutes, and anyone that survived fell into the hands of the enemy. She led us a fine dance while it lasted, and the only pity was that she couldn’t trip it to the end.
“That left the oldNairobias the last of the Division, and I haven’t any recollection of any of the rest of the flotilla being in sight by then. Not that I had any time to look for them, though. Our sudden change of course to keep from ramming theNectarspoiled our chance at the second Hun cruiser, but we were left no time to mourn that any more than the finish of theNectar. Hardly had we left the wreck of her astern than a full salvo oflarge shells—I think they must have come from one of the battle cruisers, for they were much heavier than anything the light cruisers were firing—struck only thirty or forty yards short of us. The shells were bunched together like a salvo of air-bombs kicked loose all at once. The wall of water they threw up shut everything on that side off from sight for a few seconds, and when the spouts settled down there was a Hun destroyer inside of a mile away. I jumped up to give her course and speed to the ‘T.I.’, but before I had time more than to see that she had two funnels and many tubes the bursting projes from our foremost and midships guns began knocking her to pieces so fast that I soon saw there was no use of wasting a mouldie on the job.
“I saw the captain waving encouragement from the bridge to the crew of the midships guns, and, when the noise died down for a moment, I heard him shout, ‘You’ve got her! Give it to her!’ Just then another salvo was plastered a-straddle of us, and I saw a fragment of shell knock the sight-setter of the midships gun out of his seat. He looked a little dazed as he climbed back, but his eye must have been as good as ever, for I saw his next shot make a hit square on a whaler they were lowering from the sinking Hun and blow it to bits. A minute or two more, and the destroyer itself blew up and disappeared under a column of steam and smoke.
“That,” continued Prince, beginning to prod anew his neglected sprayers, “just about concludedour day’s work. As there was no longer any prospect of getting in mouldie-range of any of the big Huns, and as none of the little Huns were in sight to fight with gun-fire, it must have occurred to the captain that it was time he was rejoining the flotilla. There was only some dark blurs on the north’ard skyline to steer for at first, and the Huns did all they knew to keep us from getting there, too. For a while we were doing nothing but playing ‘hide-and-seek’ among the salvoes they tried to stop us with, and I have heard since that the way the captain used his helm to avoid being hit at this stage of the show was rated as about the cleverest work of the kind in the whole battle.
“It was the Fifth B.S.—theQueen Elizabethclass—that we caught up to first, and a grand sight it was, the four of them standing up and giving battle to about the whole of the High Sea Fleet. They were taking a heavy pounding without turning a hair, so far as a man could see, and even when theWarspitehad her steering gear knocked out and went steaming in circles it didn’t seem to upset the other three very much. We sighted our own Battle Fleet about six, and rejoined the flotilla in good time to be back with the battle cruisers when Beatty took them round the head of the Hun line and only failed to cut off their retreat through night coming on.
“Compared with what the next six or eight hours held for some of our destroyers—or evenwith what we had just been through ourselves—the night for us was fairly quiet. We were in action once or twice, and I saw several ships—mostly enemy, but one or two of our own—go up in flame and smoke before I went on watch down here at midnight. But through it all the devil’s own luck which had been with us from the first held good. Although we were through the very hottest of the day action, and not the least of the night, the oldNairobidid not receive one direct hit from an enemy shell. She accounted for at least two Hun ships, saw the other three destroyers of her division sunk or put out of action, and returned to base with almost empty oil tanks and perhaps the largest mileage to her credit of any craft in the Jutland battle—all without a serious casualty or more than a few scratches to her paint. On top of it all, on the way back to harbour, by the queerest fluke you ever heard of, she rammed and exploded the air-chamber of a mouldie that had been fired by a Hun U-boat at the destroyer next in line ahead of her. As the Yanks say, ‘Can you beat it?’”
“If it’s destroyer work you want, there are five of them getting under weigh at four o’clock,” said the “Senior Officer Present,” looking at his watch. “You’ll have just about time to pick up your luggage and connect if you want to go. I can’t tell you what they’re going to do—they won’t know that themselves till they get to sea, and their orders may be changed from hour to hour, and things may happen to send them to the Channel, France, or to several other places, on and off the chart, before they put in here again. But there’ll be work to do—plenty of it. That’s the best part of this corner of the North Atlantic in which our Allies have done the American destroyers the honour of setting them on the U-boats. Whatever else you may suffer from, it won’t be from ennui.” It was luck indeed, on two hours’ notice, to have the chance of getting out in just the way I had planned, where I had been quite prepared to stand-by for twice as many days, and I fell in with the arrangement at once.
Captain X—— ran his eye down a board where the names of a number of destroyers were displayedagainst certain data indicating their whereabouts and disposition. “Zop,Zap,Zip,Zim,Zam,” he read musingly. “Zip—yes, I don’t think I can do better than send you on theZip. Her skipper is as keen as he is able, and theZipherself has the reputation of having something of a nose for U-boats on her own account. I’ll advise him you’re coming. Pick up your sea togs and put off to her as soon as you can. Good luck.” The American naval officer, like the British, never says “Good-bye” if it can possibly be avoided.
They were already preparing to unmoor as I clambered over the side of theZip, and by the time I had shifted to sea-boots and oilskins in the captain’s cabin—which, unoccupied by himself during that strenuous interval, was to be mine at sea—she was swinging in the stream and nosing out into the creaming wakes of the two of her dazzle-painted sisters who were preceding her down the bay.
There are several things that strike one as different on going to an American warship after a spell in a British ship of the same class, but the one which surges to meet you and goes to your head like wine is the all-pervading spirit of vibrant, sparkling, unquenchable youthfulness. Everything you see and hear seems to radiate it—every throb of the engines, every beat of the screws—and at first you may almost get the impression that it comes from the ship herself. But when you start to trace itdown, you find it bubbles from a single fount, the men, or rather the boys—the lounging, laughing, devil-may-care boys. Theirs the alchemy to transform every one and everything that comes near them into the golden seeming of themselves.
This youthfulness of the American destroyers is in the crew rather than the officers, for the latter—especially the captain and executive—will average, if anything, a shade older than their “opposite numbers” in a British destroyer. There is a certain minimum of highly specialised work in navigating and fighting a destroyer which must be in the hands of officers and men who can have only attained the requisite training in long years of technical study and practical experience. Given these, and the remainder of the ship’s company—provided only that they have digestive organs that will continue to function when tilted through a dozen different slants and angles in as many seconds—can be trained to perfection in an astonishingly short time. Here it is that America has scored, for there is no doubt that the youngsters that have rushed to enrol themselves for her destroyer service are better educated and quicker in mind and body than those available for any other navy in the war. It is the incomparable adaptability these advantages have conspired to give him that has made the Yankee destroyer rating a combination of keenness and efficiency that leaves little, if anything, to be desired on either score.
Here is the way a British naval officer who is familiar with the work of the American destroyer flotilla expressed himself in this connection: “The ship’s company of any one of these American destroyers,” he said, “will average a good five years younger than that of a British destroyer. Off hand, one would say that this would tell against them, but, as a matter of fact, quite the contrary is the case.
“Given that the command and the technical operations are in the hands of highly trained and fairly serious-minded officers, you can’t have too much slapbang, hell-for-leather, devil-take-the-consequences spirit in the ship’s company. And where will you find that save in the youngsters—tireless, fearless, careless boys. They’ve found that out in the air services, and we’re finding it out in the destroyers. And right there—in these quick-headed, quick-footed super-boys of theirs—is where the Yankee destroyers have the best of us. It is they—working under consummately clever officers—that enabled the American destroyer flotilla to reach in a stride a working efficiency which we had been straining up to for three years.”
The green hills astern had turned grey and dissolved in mist and darkness before the captain was able to announce what work was afoot for us. TheZimandZam, it appeared, were to be detached on some mission of their own, while theZop,Zap,andZip, after “hunting” submarines for some time, were to proceed to a certain port, pick up theLymptania, and escort her through the danger zone on her westward voyage. The captain was grinning as he finished reading the order. “I can’t give you any definite assurance,” he said, “that the hunt part of the stunt is going to scare up any U-boats, although the prospects this week are more promising than for some time; but”—he turned his level gaze to the westward, where the in-rolling Atlantic swells were blotting with undulant humps the fading primrose of the narrow strip of after-glow—“if this wind and sea keep the same force and direction for three or four days more, I’ll promise you all the excitement your heart can desire when we take on our escort duties. The last time we took out the oldLymptania—well, I’ve got marks on me yet from the corners I got banged up against, and as for the poor littleZip—but she’s had a refit since and most of the scars have been removed. As you will have ample chance to see for yourself, there isn’t a lot ofdolce far nientein any of this life we lead in connection with our little game here, but if there is one phase of our activities that is farther removed from ‘peace, perfect peace’ than any other, it is trying to screen an ex-Atlantic greyhound that is boring at umpty-ump knots into a head wind and sea. Strafing U-boats is a Sunday-school picnic in comparison at any time; but it will be worse this week because they have justput down a couple of big liners, and the skipper of theLymptania, knowing they will be laying for him, will force her like he was trying to get his company the trans-Atlantic mail subsidy. For us to cut zigzags around that kind of a thing—but you’ll be able to judge for yourself. I only hope we can catch you a U-boat or two by way of preliminary, so as to lead up to the climax by slow degrees.”
Things were fairly comfy that night—that is, as comfort goes in a destroyer. There was a good stiff wind and a good deal more than a lop of sea running; but as both were coming on the quarter and we were plodding along at no great speed, theZipmade very passable weather of it. The bridge, save for occasional showers of light spray where a sea slapped over the side, was quite dry, and even on the long run of low deck amidships there were several havens of refuge where the men off watch could foregather to smoke and yarn without fear of more than an occasional spurt of brine. A dry deck does not chance every day that a destroyer is on business bent at sea, and when it does, like sunshine in Scotland, is a thing to luxuriate in.