The news from all the Fronts had been discouraging for several days, and it only needed that staggering announcement of the destruction of practically a whole convoy and its escort, in the North Sea, to cap the climax of gloom. This is what I had read in the fog-hastened autumn twilight, by the feeble glow of a paint-masked street lamp, in the Stop Press column of the evening paper a Strand newsboy had shoved into my hand.
“Two very fast and heavily-armed German raiders attacked a convoy in the North Sea, about midway between the Shetland Islands and the Norwegian coast, on October 17th. Two British destroyers—H.M. shipsMary Rose(Lieutenant-Commander Charles L. Fox) andStrongbow(Lieutenant-Commander Edward Brooke)—which formed the anti-submarine escort, at once engaged the enemy vessels, and fought until sunk after a short and unequal engagement. Their gallant action held the German raiders sufficiently long to enable three of the merchant vessels to effect their escape. It is regretted, however, that five Norwegian,one Danish, and three Swedish vessels—all unarmed—were thereafter sunk by gunfire without examination or warning of any kind and regardless of the lives of their crew or passengers.... Anxious to make good their escape before British forces could intercept them, no effort was made to rescue the crews of the sunk British destroyers or the doomed merchant ships, but British patrol craft which arrived shortly afterward rescued some thirty Norwegians and others of whom details are not yet known.... The enemy raiders succeeded in evading the British watching squadrons on the long dark nights, both in their hurried outward dash and homeward flight.“It is regretted that all the eighty-eight officers and men of H.M.S.Mary Roseand forty-seven officers and men of H.M.S.Strongbowwere lost. All the next-of-kin have been informed.”
“Two very fast and heavily-armed German raiders attacked a convoy in the North Sea, about midway between the Shetland Islands and the Norwegian coast, on October 17th. Two British destroyers—H.M. shipsMary Rose(Lieutenant-Commander Charles L. Fox) andStrongbow(Lieutenant-Commander Edward Brooke)—which formed the anti-submarine escort, at once engaged the enemy vessels, and fought until sunk after a short and unequal engagement. Their gallant action held the German raiders sufficiently long to enable three of the merchant vessels to effect their escape. It is regretted, however, that five Norwegian,one Danish, and three Swedish vessels—all unarmed—were thereafter sunk by gunfire without examination or warning of any kind and regardless of the lives of their crew or passengers.... Anxious to make good their escape before British forces could intercept them, no effort was made to rescue the crews of the sunk British destroyers or the doomed merchant ships, but British patrol craft which arrived shortly afterward rescued some thirty Norwegians and others of whom details are not yet known.... The enemy raiders succeeded in evading the British watching squadrons on the long dark nights, both in their hurried outward dash and homeward flight.
“It is regretted that all the eighty-eight officers and men of H.M.S.Mary Roseand forty-seven officers and men of H.M.S.Strongbowwere lost. All the next-of-kin have been informed.”
A few days later a second Admiralty report announced that ten survivors of theMary Rosehad reached Norway in an open boat, and also gave a few further particulars of the action in which she had been lost. From this it appeared that she had been many miles ahead of the main convoy when the latter was attacked, and that, possessed of the speed, with many knots to spare, to have avoided an action in which the odds were a thousand to one against her, she had yet deliberately steamed back and thrown down the gage of battle to the heavily armed German cruisers. Just why her captain chose the course he did was not, and never will be, fully explained. He went down with his ship, andto none of those who survived had he disclosed what was in his mind. It was certainly not “war,” the critics said, but they also agreed that it was “magnificent” enough to furnish the one ray of brightness striking athwart the sombre gloom of the whole disheartening tragedy. “He held on unflinchingly,” concluded an all-too-brief story of the action issued to the public through the Admiralty, some time later, “and he died, leaving to the annals of his service an episode not less glorious than that in which Sir Richard Grenville perished.”
From the time I read these Admiralty announcements I had the feeling that some, if not all, of those ten survivors of theMary Rosewould surely be able to offer more of an explanation of why her captain took her into battle against such hopeless odds than any that had yet been suggested to the public, and in the months which followed I made what endeavour I could to locate and have a talk with one of them. It was not long before the ten were scattered in as many different ships, however, and though I had the names and official numbers of two or three, almost a year went by before I chanced upon the first of them. Indeed, it was but a day or two previous to the first anniversary of the loss of theMary RoseandStrongbowand the destruction of the Norwegian convoy that, in the course of a visit to a Submarine Depot Ship at one of the East Coast bases, I sauntered forward one evening and fell into conversation with a sturdilybuilt, steady-eyed young seaman—some kind of torpedo rating, evidently, by the red worsted “mouldie” on his sleeve—who had just clambered up to the forecastle from the deck of a hulking “L” moored alongside.
“How do you like submarin-ing?” I had asked him, by way of getting acquainted.
“Not so bad, sir,” he replied with a smile, “though it’s a bit stuffy and rather slow after destroyers. With them there’s something doing all the time. I was in one of the ‘M’ class before I volunteered for submarines. P’raps you’ve heard of her—theMary Rose, sunk a year this month, in——”
“Wait a moment,” I cut in, as the ribbon he was wearing caught my eye; “you’re one of the men I’ve been looking for for a number of months. Ten to one you’re Able Seaman Bailey, who received the D.S.M. for his part in the action, and who is specially mentioned in the Admiralty story” (refreshing my memory from a note-book) “for having, ‘despite severe shrapnel wounds in the leg, persisted in taking his turn at an oar’ of the Norwegian lifeboat which picked up theMary Rosesurvivors, and for his ‘invincible light-heartedness throughout.’”
A flush spread under his “submarine pallor” at that broadside, but he admitted, with an embarrassed grin, that his name was Bailey, and that his decoration was awarded for something or other inconnection with the last fight of theMary Rose, though for just what he had never quite been able to figure out. In the hour we leaned over the forecastle rail and watched the North Sea fog-bank roll up the estuary with the incoming tide, this is the account he gave me of the things which he himself saw of what is perhaps the most gallantly tragic of all the naval actions of the war.
“They hadn’t got convoying at that time down to the system it is carried on under now,” he began, by way of explanation, “and the only fighting ships with this one were theMary RoseandStrongbow. TheMarywas of the same class as the ‘M ...’ over there, very large and fast and well armed for a destroyer, but never, of course, built for anything like a give-and-take fight with any kind of a cruiser.
“There was also an armed trawler somewhere about, but it had no chance to do anything but pick up survivors. We were an anti-submarine escort, nothing more, and were not intended to stand off surface raiders. Of course provision was made against these, too, but—well, when you consider the size of the North Sea and the length and blackness of the winter nights, the only wonder is that the Huns can’t buck up their nerve to trying for a convoy twice a week instead of twice a year.
“We had escorted the north-bound convoy across to Bergen, and, on the afternoon of the 16th ofOctober, had picked up the south-bound and headed back for one of the home ports. Escorting even a squadron of warships which know how to keep station is no picnic for destroyers, but with merchantmen it is a dozen times worse. It is bad enough even now, but a year ago, before these little packets had had much experience, it was enough to drive a man crazy. Between the faster ships trying to push on, and the slower ones falling astern, and breakdowns, and the chance of trickery, it was one continual round of worry from the time we left Base to our return.
“This time was no exception to the rule, even before the big smash. One of the Swedes—there were Norwegian and Danish as well as Swedish ships in the convoy, but we called them all ‘Swedes,’ probably because it was shorter and easier to say than Scandinavian—well, one of the Swedes shifted cargo along about dark of the 16th, with the result that the slower ships, and this included most of the convoy, lagged back, while several of the faster ones kept on.
“I don’t know whether this was done by order, or whether it just happened. Anyhow, theStrongbowremained behind with the slower section, while theMary Rosepushed on as an escort for the faster. It was the first lot—the main convoy—that the raiders attacked first, but just what happened I did not see, for we had drawn a long way ahead of them in the course of the night.
A LOOK-OUT ON A DESTROYER AND PART OF HIS VIEW
“When I came up to stand my watch as anti-submarinelookout, on the after searchlight platform, at four in the morning of the 17th, I remember that it was cloudy and thick overhead, but with very fair visibility on the water. We were steaming along comfortably with two boilers, which gave us a big margin of speed over everything needed to cut our zigzags round the comparatively slow packets we were escorting. The sea was rough but almost dead astern, so that it made little trouble—for the moment, that is. We had enough of it a little later.
“Along toward six o’clock the visibility began to extend as it grew lighter, but there was no sign of the main convoy when, at exactly five-fifty, I sighted flashes of light fluttering along the northern horizon. Although my ears caught no sound but the throb of the engines and the churning of the screws, I had no doubt they were from gun-fire, and reported them at once by voice-pipe to the Officer of the Watch—it was Gunner T., if I remember right—on the bridge. The captain was called, and must have concluded the same, for he at once ordered her put about and sounded ‘Action Stations.’ That took me to the foremost torpedo tubes, where my station was on the seat between the tubes, with the voice-pipe gear fitted to my ears. Most of what followed I saw from there.
“In some of the published accounts of the action it was stated that the captain of theMary Rosethought that the flashes he saw were from the gun of a submarine shelling the convoy, so that when he turned back it was with the expectation of meeting a U-boat rather than powerful raiding cruisers. I don’t know anything definite on this score, of course, as I only heard the captain speak once or twice (and then to give orders) before he went down with his ship, but I don’t think it could possibly have been true. There is a sort of fluttering ripple to the flash of a salvo that you can’t possibly mistake for that of the discharge of a single gun, and the flashes which we continued to see for some time were plainly those of salvo answering salvo. The flashes from the mingled salvoes of the heavy guns of the Hun raiders could not have been confused with those from the few light guns of theStrongbowany more than these could have been taken to come from the single gun of a U-boat. Everything pointed to just what we learned had taken place—a cruiser raid on the convoy. There was nothing in the flashes to suggest a submarine was firing, and I can’t see how the captain could have had any such impression. It was enough for him—yes, and for all of us—to know that our consort was in trouble, and I shall always think that he turned back to help theStrongbowwith the full knowledge that he would have to face hopeless odds. He was a proper gentleman, was Captain Fox, and so there was nothing else that hecouldhave done; and, what’s more, there’s nothing elsethat we men in theMary Rose—or any other British sailors, for that matter—would have had him do. It would have been against all the traditions of the Navy to have done anything else but stick by a consort to the last.”
Able Seaman Bailey smote resoundingly the hollow palm of his left hand with the fist of his right as he spoke those last words, and then, in a quieter voice, took up the thread of the story again.
“That turn through sixteen points brought the seas, which we had been running before all night, right ahead, and all in a minute she was being swept fore-and-aft by every second or third of them. Anxious as the captain was to drive her full speed (which would have been a pretty terrific gait, let me tell you, for the ‘Ms’ are very fast), it was no use.
“Plates and rivets simply wouldn’t stand the strain of the green water that anything like full speed would have bored her into, and she was finally slowed down to about twenty knots as the best she could do without flooding the decks and making it impossible to serve the guns and torpedo tubes. As she was good for a lot more than this with two boilers, I doubt very much if the third was ever ‘flashed up.’
“The first I saw of the ships which turned out to be the enemy was some masts and funnels to the north’ard and about a couple of points on the starboard bow. They were making very little smoke,probably because they were oil-burners. As we were steering on practically opposite courses, we closed each other very quickly, and they must have been about four miles off when the captain, evidently becoming suspicious of their appearance, challenged. As there was no reply, fire was opened immediately afterward by the foremost gun, the course at the same time being altered a point or two to starboard, so that the other two guns would bear. The rest of our firing was, I think, by salvoes, or rather, it was until all but the after gun were knocked out by the Hun’s shells.
“Our first shots, fired at about 7,000 yards, were short; but as the salvoes which followed began to fall closer to their targets, I saw the Huns alter to a course more or less parallel to ours, but plainly veering away so as to open out the range. This gave me the first silhouette view I had, and I did not need a glass to recognize them at once as German, the three straight funnels and the ‘swan’ bows being quite unmistakable. Some of our shots fell close, but I saw nothing I could be certain of calling a hit.
“However, I knew that it was not the guns the captain was counting on, but that he was trying to close to a range and bearing that might offer a chance to get home with a torpedo.
“Why the Huns did not open fire before they did I have never quite been able to figure out, unless it was that they hoped to avoid an action and so befree to pursue and sink the leading ships of the convoy—the faster ones theMary Rosehad been escorting—without interference. If that is so, Captain Fox’s sacrifice was not in vain, for all of these ships escaped destruction and reached port in safety. Even as it was, they had no stomach for an action at any range close enough to give us any chance to damage them either with gun-fire or torpedoes. Their plan—proper enough in its way, I suppose—was simply to pound us to pieces with the shells of their powerful long-range guns, and not to close to finish us off until all our guns and torpedo tubes were out of action. As one good salvo from either of them was more than enough to do the job, there wasn’t much hope of our getting in close enough to do them serious harm. It was a bold bid the captain made for it, though.
“The course we were now on brought the seas more abeam than ahead, so that we had been able to shake out several more knots of speed, and this the captain tried to use to shorten the range. We were actually closing them at a good rate (though I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were putting on all their speed to avoid it), when the Huns began firing their ranging shots. By this time we had reached a position from which there was a very fair bearing to launch a mouldie, and we were busy getting one ready to slip while the fall of shot came bounding nearer and nearer to us. I remember, in a vague sort of way, that the first salvo was short bya long way, that the second was much nearer, and that the third, closely bunched and exploding loudly on striking the sea, threw up smoke-stained spouts which fell back into each other to form a wall of water which completely blotted out the enemy for a second or two. Then we turned loose the torpedo, and at almost the same instant two or three shells from a ‘straddling’ salvo hit fair and square and just about lifted the poor littleMaryout of the water.
“All in a second the ship seemed to disappear in clouds of smoke and escaping steam, and it is only natural that my recollections of the order in which things happened after that are a good deal confused.
“I seem to have some memory of receiving from the bridge the order to fire that torpedo, but if that was so, it was the last order I did receive from there, for the explosion of one of the shells carried the voice-pipe away (though I did not twig it at the time), and from then on it was mostly the sizzle of spurting steam that came to my ears.
“There are two reasons why I know that first salvo hit usafterthe torpedo was launched, though there could not have been more than a fraction of a second between one and the other. The first is that one of the shells carried away the lip of the tube before penetrating the deck and cutting a steam-pipe. If the mouldie had been in the tube it could not have missed being exploded; or, if by a miraclethat had not happened, the tube was so much buckled that it could not have been operated. The second reason was that fragments from that shell, besides wounding me in the leg, even killed or blew overboard the rest of the crew, so that there would have been no one to get a mouldie away even if the tubes had been in working order. I remember distinctly seeing the torpedo hit the water, but I have no recollection of seeing it steady to depth and begin to run. As that is the main thing you always watch for, I can only account for the fact I did not see it by supposing that first hit came before the torpedo began to run.
“The shock of the explosion did not knock me off my seat, and a wound from a jagged piece of shell casing, though it was serious enough to put me out of commission for five months, felt only like a sharp prick on my leg. My pal, Able Seaman French, collapsed in a limp heap under the tubes, and though I saw no blood or signs of a wound, and though I never saw a man killed before, I knew he was done for. I don’t know to this day where he was hit. The man whose station was at the breech-blocks I never saw again, living or dead, so I think he must have caught the unbroken force of the explosion and been blown back right over the starboard side.
“This shell, in bursting the main steam-pipe, probably had the most to do with bringing us to stop, though another (I think of the same salvo)exploded in Number Three boiler-room and started a big fire, probably from the oil. The clouds of black smoke and steam rising ’midships made it impossible to see what was going on there. I saw some of the crew of the ’midships gun struggling in the water, and took it that they must have been blown there.
“That gun was out of action, anyway, and, because I did not hear it firing, I assumed that the foremost one had also gone wrong. The after gun was firing for all it was worth, though, and continued to do so right up to the end.
“That one salvo pretty well finished theMary Roseas a fighting ship, and as soon as the Huns saw the shape we were in, they began to close, firing as they came. But even then they were careful to choose a direction of approach on which the after gun could not be brought to bear. With the foremost tubes out of action, and no crew to serve them in any case, there was nothing for me to do but sit tight and wait for orders. So I just chucked my head-gear, which was no longer of use with the voice-pipes gone, and settled back in my seat to watch the show and wait till I was wanted. There was really nothing to stay there for, but it was my ‘Action Station,’ and I knew it was the place I would be looked for if I was needed. On the score of cover, one place is as good an another—in a destroyer, anyhow.
“It must have been the fact that the after gunwas the only one still in action that brought the captain back from the bridge. There was really nothing to keep him on the bridge, anyway. He seemed to be making a sort of general round, trying to see what shape things were in and bucking everybody up. He was as cool and cheery as if it was an ordinary target practice, with no Hun cruisers closing in to blow us out of the water. I saw him clapping some of the after gun’s crew on the back, and when he came along to the foremost tubes, not noticing probably that I was the only one left there, he sung out: ‘Stick it, lads; we’re not done yet.’ Those were his exact words. I remember grinning to myself at being called ‘lads.’
“But weweredone, even then. The Huns were inside of a mile by now, and firing for the water-line, evidently trying to put us down just as quickly as they could.
“All their misses were ‘shorts.’ I don’t remember a single ‘over.’ They were still taking no unnecessary chances. As soon as they were close enough to see that our torpedo tubes were probably jammed to port, they altered course and crossed our bows and steamed past the other side, where there was no chance of our slipping over a mouldie at them.
“We were already settling rapidly, with a heavy list to port, and as soon as the captain saw she was finished, he gave the order: ‘Abandon ship. Every man for himself!’ Those were the last words Iheard him speak. He went below just after that to see about ditching the secret books, I believe, and when I saw him again it was just before she sank, and he was pacing the quarterdeck and talking quietly with the First Lieutenant.
“As our only boat had been smashed to kindling-wood, there was nothing to it but to take to the Carley Floats, and the first thing I did after hearing the order to abandon ship was to see to cutting one of these loose. On account of our oilskins and life-preservers, neither myself nor any of the three or four lads from the after gun’s crew that ran to the float with me could get at our clasp-knives. Luckily, one of the Ward Room stewards came to the rescue with three silver-plated butter-knives from the pantry, and with these we finally managed to worry our way through the lashings. Then we pitched the little webbed ‘dough-nut’ (as the Carley Floats are called) over the settling stern and jumped after it. Four or five minutes later, after heeling slowly to port through fifty or sixty degrees, she gave a sudden lurch and went down, turning completely over as she sank, so that her bottom showed for a few seconds. The captain, who could have followed us just as well as not, seemed to make no effort to save himself, and must have gone down with her. I can’t help believing that was the way he wanted it to happen.
“We had clambered into the float as fast as we could, and I think some one must have said somethingabout the danger of being caught over an exploding depth-charge, for we were paddling (all of these floats have short-handled paddles lashed to their webbing) away from the ship as fast as we could when she went down. Someone remembered that one of the ‘ash cans’ had been set on the ‘ready’ when we went to ‘Action Stations,’ and no one recalled seeing it thrown back to ‘safe’ before we went overboard. It was an anxious moment, waiting after she ducked under the sea, for we had not been able to paddle more than a hundred yards, and the detonation of a depth-charge had been known to paralyse men swimming in the water at twice that distance. Luckily, this particular charge must have been set for a considerable depth, and it is also possible that the hull of the ship absorbed or deflected some of its force. At any rate, the shock of it, when it came, though it knocked us violently against each other and left a tingling sensation on the skin of all the submerged part of one’s body, did not do anyone serious injury.
“When we came to count noses, there turned out to be eight of us on the float—two sub-lieutenants, the captain’s steward, myself, and the remnants of the crew of the after gun. A few minutes later we sighted a couple of men who looked to be struggling in the water, but turned out to be supporting themselves on a fragment of ‘dough-nut,’ which had broken loose when the ship sank. That, strange to say, was the only bit of wreckage that came tothe surface. We took these men aboard, and the ten of us weighted the overloaded float so that is submerged till the water reached our armpits. We were a good deal better off than it would seem, though, for the most of us were heavily dressed, and the animal heat of a man keeps him warm for a long time under oilskins and wool. The only ones that suffered much were a couple of lads who didn’t have any more sense than to ditch most of their togs before they went over the side. They said it was so as not to be hampered in swimming—as if they expected to do the ‘Australian crawl’ to Norway or the Shetlands! These twodidbegin to get a bit down-hearted and ‘shivery’ when the cold struck into the marrow of their bones, and it was with the idea of bucking them up a peg or two that we started singing. No, I don’t just remember all that we did warble, except, I’m glad to say, that ‘Tipperary’ wasn’t on the programme, and that this did include two or three hymns. You’re quite right. There’s nothing very warming to a chilled man in hymns, and I’m not trying to account for why we sang them. The fact remains that wedid, just the same, and that we all, including the chaps in their underclothes, lived to sing again.
SHE CAME BOWLING ALONG UNDER SAIL
“There was a bit of a disappointment when an armed trawler, which was evidently searching for survivors, passed within a mile without sighting us or hearing our shouts, but with the life-boat of oneof the sunk Norwegian steamers we had better luck. She came bowling along under sail about ten o’clock in the morning, and, on sighting the black silk handkerchief we hoisted at the end of a paddle-blade, eased off her sheet and stood over to pick us up. As there were only six men in her, we were not badly off for room, while the store of biscuit and potted stuff—to say nothing of smokes—they had managed to throw aboard before their ship sunk was more than enough for the two days that it took us to row and sail to Bergen.”
There are only two or three conditions under which a destroyer can hope to surprise a U-boat on the surface, and none of these is approximated at the end of a clear North Sea summer afternoon with the stalking craft trying to approach from a direction which silhouettes its leanly purposeful profile against the golden glimmer of the sunset clouds. This particular capsule of Kultur, rising with typical Hunnish effrontery for his evening constitutional in an especially well-watched area while it was yet broad daylight, still had the advantage of visibility sufficiently on his side to make the thing a good deal less risky than it looked. The skipper, doubtless coolly puffing his pipe as he lounged over the rail of the bridge and filled his lungs with fresh air, must have seen the masts and funnels of the speedingFlashfor a good half hour before the latter’s look-out sang out that he had picked up the conning-tower of what looked to be a U-boat two points off the starboard bow; so that all that was needed was the change of course which followed that report to give Fritz fair warning that it wastime to hide his head for a while. Indeed, he must have been going down even as he was sighted, for it was the matter of but a very few seconds more before theFlashfound herself tearing at upwards of a thousand yards a minute into an empty sea.
Under the circumstances, it is probable we gave that Fritz a fairly good run for his money in showering the spot where he had disappeared with what depth-charges we could spare, and then, like a fox-terrier after a rat, standing by and “watching the hole.” Unluckily, we had used a good part of our stock of “cans” the day before, when a rather more promising opportunity for attack had offered itself, while as for “watching the hole,” this particular patch of the North Sea chanced to be one in which that way of playing the game was fraught with special difficulties because it was sufficiently shallow for a submarine to lie doggo on the bottom without danger of having its shell crushed in by the pressure of the water. This defeated the uncannily sure way of tracking the U-boat down by “listening,” and demanded another form of special treatment, which we were not, however, at the moment prepared to administer.
Slim as the chance was, the captain was reluctant to leave while any hope remained, and it was only a signal ordering theFlashto join in some other work that had turned up (a destroyer is subject to as many kinds of summons as a country doctor) that took him off in the end. Mooring abuoy to mark the spot for “future reference,” the captain saw her headed off on the course she was to hold till daybreak, and then took me down to the Chart House for a bowl of ship’s cocoa before turning in. It was some question I asked about the practice of placing buoys over possible U-boat graveyards, to make it easy to resume investigations if desired, that started him on a train of anti-submarine reminiscence that led back to one of the smartest achievements of its kind in the whole course of the sea war.
“There are times,” he said, leaning back on the narrow couch that served as his “sea-bed,” and bracing with outstretched legs against the twisting roll, “that a Fritz will do things that would lead a superficial observer to think that he had a sense of humour. Of course, we know that he hasn’t anything of the kind (any more than he has honour, sportsmanship, decency, or any other of the attributes of a normal civilised human being). But the illusion is there just the same, especially when he tries on such little stunts as the one he incubated a couple of months ago in connection with a buoy I dropped to mark the spot where there was a chance that my depth-charges might have sent him to the bottom.
“It was just about such an ‘indeterminate’ sort of a strafe as the one we’ve just had—no chance for gun-fire, not much to go by for planting depth-charges, and, in the end, nothing definite to indicatethat any good has been done. So, in case it was decided that my report was of a nature to justify further looking into, I left a securely moored buoy to furnish a guide as to where to begin, quite as we have to-night. Well, it chanced that the S.N.O. at Base reckoned that there was just enough of a hope to warrant following up. Indeed, you may be sure there isn’t much that isn’t followed up these days, now that we’ve got our whole comprehensive plan into operation and adequate craft to support it with. So he sent out quite a little fleet of us—craft fitted to do all the various little odds and ends of things that help to make sure one way or the other what has really happened to Fritz. Luckily,Flashwas able to return with them. If she had not—if someone who had not seen the lay of things after the strafe the night before had not been along to ‘draw comparisons’—Fritz’s little joke might have turned out a good deal more pointed than it did.
“We picked up the buoy without any difficulty, as the day was fine and the sea fairly smooth—just the weather one wanted for that kind of work. While we were still a mile or more distant, the lookout reported a broad patch of oil spreading out from the buoy for several hundred yards on all sides. This became visible from the bridge presently, and at almost the same time my glass showed fragments of what appeared to be wreckage floating both in and beyond the ‘sleek’ of oil. Now if there hadbeen any evidence whatever of either oil or wreckage the night before I should not have failed to hail this morning’s exhibit with a glad whoop and nose right in to investigate. But as, when I gave up the fight, I had dropped that buoy into an extremely clean patch of water—even after the stirring my depth-charges had given it—the plenitude of flotsam did not fail to arouse a certain amount of suspicion.
“Ordering the sloops and trawlers to stand-off-and-on at a safe distance, I went with theFlashto have a look at a number of fragments that were floating a couple of cables’ lengths away from the buoy. A piece of box—evidently a preserved fruit or condensed milk case—with German letters stencilled across one end was undoubtedly of enemy origin, as was also a biscuit tin with patches of its gaudy paper still adhering to it. I did not like the careful way the cover of the latter had been put on, however, and, besides, tins and cases are quite the sort of thing any submarine throws over just as fast as it is through with them. It was some real wreckage I was looking for, and this it presently appeared that I had found when the bow wave threw aside a deeply floating fragment of what—even before we picked it up—I recognised as newly split teak. Closer inspection revealed the fact that it was newly split all right, but also the fact that an axe or hatchet had had a good deal to do with the splitting. What had probably been a part of abunk or locker had apparently been prised off with a bar and then chopped up into jagged strips. Attempts to obliterate the marks of bar and axe by pounding them against some rough metal surface had been too hasty and crude to effect their purpose.
“‘That settles it,’ I said to myself. ‘Fritz is trying to play a little joke on us by making us think he is lying blown-up on the bottom, while, in fact, he is probably lying off somewhere waiting to slip a slug into one of the most likely looking of the salvage ships. Now that we’ve twigged the game, however, we’ll have to do what we can to defeat it.’ As senior officer, I ordered the three destroyers present to start screening in widening circles, while—on the off-chance that there really was a wreck on the bottom—a pair of trawlers were sent to drag about the bottom under the messy patch with an ‘explosive sweep.’
“My diagnosis was quite correct as far as it went, but it did not go quite far enough; still—by the special intervention of the sweet little cherubim who sits up aloft to keep watch o’er the life of poor Jack—my plan of operation was quite as sound as if I had all the facts of the case spread out before me. Had the U-boat really been lurking round waiting for a pot at some of the ships trying to save his supposed remains—something that we never gathered any definite evidence on—our screening tactics would probably have prevented his success;while the trawlers, with their sweep, furnished the best antidote for the little surprise party that he alreadyhadprepared for us.
“Scarcely had the trawlers entered the oily area than the jar of a heavy under-sea explosion jolted against the bottom of theFlash, which, a thousand yards distant, was just beginning to work up to full speed. Almost immediately three or four other explosions followed, coming so close together as to make one rippling detonation of tremendous violence. An instant later I saw several columns of grimy foam shoot skyward, two or three of them so close together that they seemed to ‘boil’ into each other as they spilled and spread in falling. Although neither of the trawlers appeared to be immediately over any of the explosions, both of them received terrific shocks. One of them I distinctly saw rear up till it seemed almost to be balanced on its rudder-post as a round hump of green water drove under it, while the scuppers of the other spurted white as they cleared the flood that a spreading foam geyser had thrown upon the deck. It seemed impossible that either of them could survive such shocks as I knew they must have received, and I fully expected to see nothing better than two foundering wrecks emerge from the smother which hovered above the scene of the explosions. Imagine my surprise, then, when two junk-like profiles (they were both of the marvellously sea-worthy ‘Iceland trawler’ type) came bobbingserenely into sight again, and I noted with my glass that neither appeared to have suffered serious damage. On the score of lives, a tom-cat has nothing the best of a trawler. If it had been otherwise our whole fleet of them—and they, with the drifters, form the main strands of the finer meshes of our anti-U-boat net—would have been wiped out many times over.
“At the instant the jar of the first explosion made itself felt, the thought flashed through my mind that there actually was a U-boat lying on the bottom, and that the explosive charge on the sweep had been detonated against its hull. The ‘bunched’ explosions immediately following also lent themselves to this theory, and it was not till the distinct columns of blown water began rising in the air that I surmised the real cause of them—mines, probably laid so close together that the explosion of the first had set off the others. This fact we were shortly able to establish beyond a doubt.
“What had happened, as nearly as we could reconstruct it, was this: The U-boat had been a mine-layer, probably interrupted on its way to lay its eggs off one of our main fleet bases. The chances are that it had been sufficiently injured by my depth-charges to make it more of a risk than its skipper cared to take to proceed farther from his base; quite likely, indeed, he had to put back at once. Then the chance of preparing a little surpriseparty for the ship responsible for his trouble must have occurred to him, and the result was that a snug little nest of mines was laid all the way around the marking buoy. Having more mines than he needed to barrage the buoy, he had scuttled several of those remaining after the first job was completed, and these had been the ones set off by the explosive charge on the trawlers’ sweep. The spreading of wreckage as bait around the trap was probably an afterthought, for it was so hurriedly done that it really defeated the end it was intended to accomplish. I am inclined to think, in fact, that, if the mines had laid round the buoy, with no spread of oil or wreckage left to decoy us into them, they might have had a victim or two to their credit. They were laid shallow enough to have bumped both sloops and destroyers, and the exploding of a mine against the bows of one or the other of these may well have been the first warning we had of Fritz’s little joke. As it was, that part of the show was so crudely done that it gave away that something was wrong.
“Yes, I have always thought of that as ‘Fritz’s little joke,’” continued the captain, bracing himself at a new angle to meet a rollicking cork-screw action that was working into the ship’s wallowings. “It was just the sort of a plant I would like to have left for Fritz, if our rôles had been reversed, and for a while I felt rather more kindly toward all Fritzes on account of having knocked upagainst it. That feeling persisted until three or four months later, when the fortunes of war—in the shape of a luckily-planted depth-charge—paved the way for an opportunity for me to tell the story to a certain HunUnterseebootofficer during the hour or two he was my guest on the way to base. He spoke English fairly, and understood it well; so that I was able to run through the yarn just about as I have told it to you. He gave vent to his approval in guttural ‘Ya’s’ and grunts of satisfaction until I ended by asking him if he didn’t think it was a jolly clever little joke. And what do you think he said to that?
“‘Choke,’ he boomed explosively; ‘choke, vy, mein frent, dot vos not ein choke ad all. He vos dryin to zink your destroy’r. Dot ist no choke.’”
The captain stretched himself with a whimsical smile. “How unpleasant it would be to be shipmates with a chap like that who couldn’t see the funny side of being blown up,” he observed presently.
“Just as unpleasant,” I replied, “as it is pleasant to be shipmates with a man whocould.”
After thus rising to the occasion, I was emboldened to ask the captain to tell me a little more about that “luckily-planted depth-charge” he had referred to so casually, and its train of consequences.
“Here is the result,” he said with a smile, handing me several small kodak prints from his pocketbook.“What little yarn there is to tell I’ll rattle off for you with pleasure after I’ve been up to the bridge for a bit of a ‘look-see.’ Seems as if she is banging into it harder than she ought for this course and speed.”
The light went out as the automatic switch cut off the current with the opening of the door, and when it flashed on again, as the door was slammed shut, I found myself alone, with the prints lying in the middle of the chart of the North Sea. Two of these showed a thin sliver of a submarine that might have been of almost any type. A third, however, showed an unmistakable U-boat, heeling slightly, and with a whaler alongside, evidently in the act of taking off some of the men crowded upon the narrow forward deck. And in the background of this print was lying a long slender four-funneled destroyer that I recognised at once as either theFlashor another of the same class. On the back of this print was written “Quarter view of U.C.—at 14.10.Flash’swhaler transferring prisoners;Splash’swhaler’s crew clearing decks of wounded.”
A fourth print, similar to the third but much covered with arrows and writing, appeared to be a kind of key to the latter. An angling sort of bar, which appeared as a black line above the bows in the photograph, was labelled “Nut Cutter,” and several other characteristic U-boat devices were similarly indicated. These all established points of great technical value, doubtless, but a keenerhuman interest attached to the legends penciled at the feather ends of arrows pointing to two figures on the deck of the submarine, just abaft the conning-tower. Opposite the one that appeared to be leaning over a light rail, with one arm extended as though he was in the act of giving a command, was written, “Deceased captain of submarine.” Against the other, a sprawling inert heap huddled up against the conning-tower, appeared, “Man with both legs shot off (alive).”
There was a lot of history crowded into that scrawled-over print, and I was still gazing at it with awed fascination when the opening door winked off the light, and then closed again to reveal the captain, dripping with the blown brine of the wave that theFlashhad put her nose into at the moment he was coming down the ladder.
“Rather more of a sea than I expected to-night,” he said as he pulled his duffel-coat over his head and sat down to kick off his sea-boots; “so I’ve slowed her down a few knots and we’ll jog along easy till daylight.” Then, as he recognised the photo in my hand, “Rather a grim story that little kodak tells, isn’t it? You’ll find just about all of the yarn you were asking for down there in black and white.”
“Not quite,” I replied hastily, recognising from long experience the forerunning signs of a modest man trying to side-step going into details respecting some episode in which he happens to haveplayed a leading part. “Not quite. It chances that I’ve heard something of the bagging of U.C.—from Admiral —— not long after it occurred, and he said it was one of the cleverest bits of work of the kind that anyone has pulled off. I didn’t connect you and theFlashwith it, though. But now that you’re caught with the goods, the chance to hear several of the details the Admiral had failed to learn is too good to miss. How did you manage to slip up on her in the first place, and did you wing her skipper at the outset, and——?”
Evidently figuring it would be best not to let me pile up too big a lead of questions for him to answer, the captain sat down resignedly and took up the thread of the story at somewhere near the beginning.
“How did we manage to slip up on her?” he repeated. “Well, principally, I should say, because she was ‘preoccupied.’ I told you last night that I used to get away for a bit of tiger shooting while I was on Eastern stations, and you mentioned that you’d had a go at it yourself now and then. So we both have probably picked up a smattering of the ways of tigers. Now I’ve always maintained that the fact that I had given a bit of study to the ways of man-eaters was a big help to me in understanding the ways of Huns. A hungry tiger, on the prowl for something to devour, is about the hardest brute in the world to stalk successfully; while, on the other hand, one that has made itskill and is sating its bloody lust upon it is just about the easiest. It’s just the same with a U-boat. The one best chance we have of surprising one on the surface is while it is in the act of sinking a merchantman by bombs or shell-fire, or just after the victim has been torpedoed and the pirate is standing-by to fire on the boats and pick up any officers it may think worth while to take prisoner. That was what was responsible for the luck that befell me in the instance in question. The U.C.—a day or two previously to the one on which she was slated to meet her finish, had sunk the British merchantmanHilda Bronson, and carried off as prisoners the captain and mate. These men, after we rescued them, were able to give us some account of how their hosts spent the morning of the day on which they encountered theFlash. Their general practice, of course, was to submerge in the daytime and run on the surface, charging batteries, during the night. Emboldened by two or three recent successes in sinking small merchantmen by gun-fire and bombs, they appeared to have become very contemptuous of our anti-submarine measures, and declared that they were just as safe on the surface in the daytime as at night. Bearing out the probability that these words were by no means spoken in jest, is the fact that they did not dive at daybreak, but continued to cruise on the surface on the look out for unarmed ships which could be safely sunk without risking the loss of a torpedo ordamage to themselves by gun-fire. This class of ships—fortunately, there are few of them left save under neutral flags—was the U-boat’s favourite prey.
“About eight o’clock their search was rewarded. The two British sailors heard a number of shots, and presently understood the U-boat skipper to declare that he had just put down a small Norwegian steamer with shell-fire. As they were still full up with the stores looted from theHilda Bronson, no attempt was made to take off anything from the sinking Norwegian. All morning the pirate continued cruising on the surface, diving only once. Great attention was given to surroundings, stops being made about once an hour to heave the lead. In this they displayed good sense beyond a doubt, for it is worth a lot to a submarine to know whether it can dive straight on to the bottom without encountering a pressure strong enough to crush it in.
“About noon another helpless victim—this time a British merchant steamer—was sighted, and the imprisoned sailors counted nine shots before tremendous consternation and confusion spread through the submarine as fire was opened on her by some ship coming up from the same direction as the merchantman bore, and she dived with all possible dispatch. This was where theFlashbegan to take a hand in the game.
“Now the fact that this particular Fritz ought easily to have sighted us at twice the distance atwhich we opened with our foremost 12-pounder bears out exactly what I said about the traits the Hun and the tiger have in common. They are both ‘foul-feeders,’ and begin to see so red, once the blood-lust of prospective satiation is upon them, that they are half blinded to everything else. If this fellow hadn’t been so absorbed in doing that little steamer to death he need never have let us get within a range that would have permitted more than a swift shot or two at his disappearing conning-tower. It was his sheer ‘blood-drunkenness’ that gave us our chance.
“It was a day of very low visibility—not over a mile and a half, or two miles at the outside—and I was out on a bit of an escort stunt of small importance. The first intimation I had that anything out of the usual run was afoot came in the form of sharp gun-fire on my starboard beam. It sounded fairly close at hand, and though no ship was visible, there was just a hint of luminosity in the mist-curtain to indicate the direction of the gun-flashes. The helm was immediately put hard-a-port and the telegraphs at Full Speed, and off went theFlashto investigate. Scarcely had I turned than a wireless signal was brought to me on the bridge repeating the calls of assistance of a steamer that was being shelled by an enemy submarine. That little ‘flying start’ of mine, which involved leaving the ship I was escorting and jumping out without waiting for orders, gave me the minute or so tothe good which probably made all the difference between success and failure. But that is quite characteristic of destroyer work; more than in any other class of ship, you are called on to decide for yourself, to jump out on your own.
“The first thing I saw was the dim blur of a small merchantman taking shape in the mist, and as the image sharpened, the splash of falling projectiles became visible. She was throwing out a cloud of smoke and zigzagging in a panicky sort of way in an endeavour to avoid the shells which were exploding nearer and nearer at every shot. As she caught sight of theFlashshe altered course and headed straight up for us, and, busy as my mind was at the moment, I could not help thinking how like her action was to that of an Aberdeen pup I used to own when he saw me coming to extricate him from his daily scrap with a neighbour’s fox terrier.
“It was just at the moment that the merchantman turned up to get under our wing that the sharpening gun-flashes began revealing the conning-tower of a submarine. We had gone to Action Stations at once, of course, and I am practically certain that the opening shot of the fo’c’sl’ gun was the first warning Fritz had that his little kultur course was about to be interrupted. Under the circumstances, the fact that he effected his disappearing act in from thirty to forty seconds indicates very smart handling; too smart, indeed, togive us a fair chance to get in a hit with a shell, although the gunners made a very keen bid for it. Their turn came a few moments later, however.
“Once Fritz had passed from sight there was only one thing to do, the thing wetriedto do to-night—depth-charge him. And there really was no difference in what we did on the one occasion and what we did on the other—nothing, I mean to say, except the result. Estimating his course from the point of submergence, I steered directly over where I judged he would be and let go one of those very useful type ‘——’ charges. Well,”—the captain smiled in a deprecatory sort of way—“the depth-charge isn’t exactly what you’d call a ‘weapon of precision,’ and so it follows that when you hit what you are after with one it must be largely a matter of luck. Judgment? Oh, yes, a certain amount of it, but I’d rather have luck than judgment any day. At any rate, this was my lucky day. Within fifteen seconds from the moment I felt the jolt of the detonating charge Fritz’s conning-tower was breaking surface on my starboard beam. Helm had been put hard-a-port as the charge was dropped, so that all the starboard guns were bearing on the conning-tower the instant it bobbed up. This was right on the outer rim of the ‘boil’ of the explosion—just where it would be expected—and, of course, it presented an easy target. To say it was riddled would be putting it mildly. One shot alone from the foremost six-pounder wouldhave made it out of the question for it to dive again, even had other complications which had already set in left it in shape to face submergence.
“A second or two more, and the whole length of our bag was showing, riding fairly level fore-and-aft, but with a slight list to starboard. We had now turned, and from our position on the submarine’s port quarter could plainly see the crew come bobbing out of the hatch on to the deck. Each of them had his hands lifted in the approved ‘Kamerad’ fashion, and took good care to keep them there as long as they noticed any active movement around the business ends of our guns. As a matter of fact, as there had been no colours flying to strike, those lifted hands were the only tangible tokens of surrender we received. As we had her at our mercy, however, they looked conclusive enough for me, and I sent a boat away as quickly as it could be lowered and manned.
“It was not until this boat returned that I learned of the two British merchant marine officers who had been aboard her through it all. The Huns had crowded them out in their stampede for the hatches, so that they had been the very last to reach the deck. Mr. X——, who was in charge of the whaler, compensated as fully as he could for this by taking them off first. The experiences they had been through had been just about as terrible as men could ever be called upon to face; and yet, when they clambered aboardFlash, they were smiling,clear of head and eye, and altogether quite unshaken. You’ve certainly got to take off your hat to these merchant marine chaps; they’ve fought half the battle for the Navy.
“The story they had to tell of what they had seen and heard during their enforced cruise in the U-boat was an interesting one, but on the final act—largely because the curtain had been rung down so quickly—there was little they could add to what had passed before my own eye. The shock from the depth-charge—which appears to have detonated just about right to have the maximum effect—was terrific. The whole submarine seemed to have been forced sideways through the water by the jolt, and just as all the lights went out one of them said that he saw the starboard side of the compartment he was in—it was what would correspond to the Ward Room, I believe, a space more or less reserved for the officers—bending inward before the pressure. Instantly the spurt of water was heard flooding in both fore and aft, and that alone was sufficient to make it imperative for her to rise at once. As it was only a minute or two since she submerged, everyone was at station for bringing her to the surface again, so that not a second was lost in spite of the inevitable confusion following the sudden dive and the explosion of the depth-charge.
“There had been a mad lot of rushes for the ladders and hatches, but the skipper, it appears, got up first, through the conning-tower to the bridge,as the official leader of the ‘Kamerad Parade.’ He was just in time to connect with the first shell from our foremost six-pounder, and that, or one of the succeeding projectiles which were fired before it was evident they were trying to surrender, accounted for several others in the van of the opening rush. The officer in charge of the whaler reported seeing several dead bodies lying on the deck and floating in the water, among these being that of the captain, which was taken back to Base and given a naval funeral. There were also two or three wounded. Of unwounded there were fifteen men and two officers, out of something like twenty-four in the original crew. One of the officers claimed to be a relation of Prince Henry of Prussia, but why he didn’t claim the Kaiser himself, who is full brother to Prince Henry, I could never quite make out. As this was the same officer I told you of as not being able to see a joke, I didn’t think it worth while to try to follow the ramifications of his family tree any farther. The engineer asserted that he had already been in eight warships which had been destroyed, these including a battleship and two or three cruisers and motor launches. I did the best I could to comfort him by telling him that, in case theFlashwasn’t put down by a U-boat in the three or four hours which would elapse before we made Base, he need have no further worries on the sinking score for some time to come. Just the same,” he concluded, with a shake of the head,“I was glad to see that chap safely over the side. No sailor likes to be shipmates with a ‘Jonah,’ especially in times like these.
“By the time we had finished transferring the prisoners theSplashhad joined us, and her captain, being my senior, took charge of the rest of the show. On my reporting that I had several severely wounded Huns aboard, he ordered me to return to Base with them.
“I think that’s about all there is to the yarn,” said the captain, rising and starting to pull on his sea-togs preparatory to going up for another “look-see” before turning in. Then something flashed to his mind as an afterthought, and he relaxed for a moment, red of face and breathless, from a struggle with a refractory boot.
“There was one thing I shall always be glad about in connection with that little affair,” he said thoughtfully, a really serious look in his eyes for almost the first time since I had seen him directing the dropping of the depth-charges early in the evening; “and that is that I didn’t know in advance that those two British merchant marine officers were imprisoned in the U.C. ‘——’ with the Huns when we came driving down to drop a ‘can’ on her. My duty would have been quite clear, of course, and, as you doubtless know, some of our chaps have faced harder alternatives than that without flinching or deviating an iota from the one thing that it was up to them to do; but, just the same, I’m nothalf certain that the instinct, or whatever you want to call it, which seemed to jog my elbow at the psychological moment that charge had to be let go to do its best work—I’m not at all sure that instinct would have served me so well had I known that success might have to be purchased by sending two of my own countrymen—yes, more than that, two sailors like myself—to eternity with the pirates who held them as hostages. Yes, it was a mercy that I didn’t have that on my mind at the moment when I needed all the wits and nerve I had to get that ‘can’ off in the right place.”
Visibly embarrassed at having allowed his feelings to betray him—a British naval officer—into a display of something almost akin to emotion, the captain stamped noisily into the stuck sea-boot and disappeared, behind a slammed door, into the night.