With scarcely a motion, save the quiet insistent urge of the spinning turbines—something sensed rather than felt, save in the after part of the ship—we ploughed on into a night that required small effort to fancy as filched from a Mediterranean April or a North Pacific June. The breeze—no more than a zephyr purring contentedly over our starboard quarter—was redolent with the "landsy" smell of the North Scottish hills, and the indolent ebony billowheaving in from the North Sea had just enough energy to rise with a friendly swish and blink blandly up at us through the "eye-holes" of the hawse-pipes.
"We're watching you," those transient foam flashes seemed to signal, "but we're not going to try to do anything to disturb you, leastways not to-night. Might just as well make a stand-easy of your watch."
It must have been the almost tropical mildness of the night which turned the Admiral's mind, after he had rejoined us on the bridge, back to his days in the South Seas. Leaning lightly on the rail, and with only an occasional step aside for a squint at the soft round glow of the binnacle, or a swift glance to where barely discernible flashes of white revealed the bow-wave and wake of a screening destroyer, he spoke of the stirring events of ninety-nine when, commanding H.M.S.Porpoise, and weeks away from the nearest cable, he had co-operated with the American naval forces there in an endeavour to save the Samoas from the grip of a far extended tentacle of the German octopus, already stirring in its slime and reaching outwards to fasten its hold upon any of the desperately desired "sun-places" its suckers might encounter.
On a later occasion Admiral Sturdee narrated at length the events of the astonishing drama that was played out by the reef and palm of fair Apia, and dwelt on the significance which attached to them in the light of later developments; but for the moment—under the influenceof this "maverick" of a tropic night that had strayed into a North Sea January—it was of the softer side of the idyllic South Pacific existence that he spoke. The Chief Navigating Officer, who had once been in a cruiser on the Australian station, came and joined us when his watch was over, and for an hour—or was it two or three?—we talked ofsiva-sivasandhulas, of swims with the village maidens in the pool under the sliding waterfall of Papa-sea; of moonlight dances under the coco-palms of Tutuila, ofkavadrinking andluausof hot-stone-roasted sucking pig; of missionaries, traders, and "black-birders"; of Stevenson, Louis Becke, and "Bully" Hayes; of the thousand and one customs and characters, dangers and delights, that go to complete the idyll in those sensuous latitudes fanned by the perfumed breath of the South-East "Trade."
The Admiral was just telling of his youthful embarrassment the first time thetaupoor village maiden of Apia insisted on encircling his neck with the same fragrant garland ofTiare Tahitiwhich was looped around her own, when a signal was brought him by the Flag Lieutenant. He read it by the reflected light from the binnacle, grinned amusedly, and handed it to the Flag Captain. The ripple of a quick smile ran over the grave countenance of the latter, and the play of light and shadow on two or three other faces which pushed into the pale glow of the binnacle seemed to indicate that the signal was something out of the regular routine orders.Presently the Admiral beckoned me inside the glassed-in bridge cabin and handed me the sheet of white paper. This, as nearly as may be set down, was what I read.
"S.N.O. at —— reports unusual sound in hydrophones. Supposed to be hostile submarine —— miles S.E. of —— Island."
"—— miles sou'-east of —— Island," mused the Admiral. "H'm. Just about the position of the Squadron at the present moment. H'm.... Think I may as well go down and get a few hours' sleep. Have to turn out early in the morning. Be sure and be up here at daybreak," he added, turning to me. "Perhaps you'll find the sea will not be quite as empty then as it seems to be to-night."
Giving my arm a friendly squeeze in passing, he disappeared down the ladder, followed by his Flag Lieutenant.
"The Admiral doesn't appear to be much disturbed about that U-boat we are supposed to be steaming over," I remarked to the Commander, who had come up a few minutes previously.
"What U-boat?" he asked. "Oh, the one in the signal. Well, hardly. He knows by long experience that the average U-boat skipper won't take any risks he can avoid with a warship behind a destroyer screen, especially where there is a chance of throwing his mouldies into some merchantmen and drowning a lot of women and children. There is only one thing the Hun is more careful about than his torpedoes, and that is his own thick hide."
The waning moon had risen just before midnight, and my last look round before turning in revealed, to port, one line of destroyers—swift, blue-grey arrows—shooting smoothly along in the light of it, and, to starboard, another line of dark shadows silhouetted against the silvered waters to the south-east, with the leader cutting a fluent furrow across the moon-track itself.
The "To-ra-loo" of the imperious call to "Action Stations" awoke me before dawn on the following morning, and it was through a tangle of men, hammocks, and unreeling fire-hose, and in the bedlam of clanging water-tight doors and the banging of hurrying feet upon steel ladders, that I wriggled forward and upward toward the fore bridge. The sharp blast which cut my face as I emerged upon the boat deck gave warning that the weather had indulged in one of its sudden overnight changes, and that the day would be one of characteristic North Sea rawness. Ducking through a fluttering string of mounting bunting on the signal bridge, I gained the next ladder and came out upon the fore bridge, with an open view before me at last.
Early as it was, Admiral Sturdee was there before me, and wearing no more protection against the penetrating cold than was afforded by an ordinary service cap and uniform, a short overcoat, and a light pair of overshoes. In contrast, I felt almost ashamed of the ponderous duffle coat—a half-inch thick of solid wool, and equipped with a heavy hood—with which I had fortified myself against the weather.
"You're just in time," he greeted me cheerily with. "Come and look who's here."
It was an ashen grey morning, with a low mist just beginning to thin into luminous strata in the light of the rising sun. Overhead it was clear, with indications good for a brightening all around before long. At first I was conscious of only the ships of our own Squadron, with those of the Second Division steaming hard to close up the "night interval" between them and those of the First. Then, abeam to port, I espied a similar line, and beyond that another and still another. And farther still, slipping ghostily along in the depths of the retreating mist, was even another line.
"Shades of Father Neptune!" I gasped. "Do they go on into the Skager Rak? Where did they all come from?"
The Admiral smiled, led me over to the starboard side, and pointed to where, dimly discernible against the smoke pall with which they had smudged the immaculate south-eastern heavens, but still unmistakable, was a file of great ships driving hard to push up to their appointed station.
"Some of them have come a long way,"[B]he said, with a twinkle in his steady grey eye, "but we're all the gladder to have them here. As for the others," he went on, going back to the port side, "we're almost at the extreme right of ourpresent formation, and, until the sun licks up a bit more of this mist, you will not be able to see more than halfway across the Battle Fleet, to say nothing of the battle cruisers and all the other ships that are out to-day. It's far from being a favourable morning on which to have your first view of the Grand Fleet at sea; just about the same shifting sort of visibility, indeed, that we had at Jutland."
"It may be so," I assented; "yet to me there is a suggestion of going-on-to-the-ends-of-the-earth in the way those farthest lines melt into the mist that would be quite absent if it was clear enough really to see the last of them. As it is, it takes no effort at all of the imagination to fancy those lines going on, and on, and on, into the farthest bight of the farthest sea in which their power is felt. I wouldn't have a clear horizon for the world to-day. The Grand Fleet will never be so big to me as it is this morning. I know just how big it is (for I've learned the names of all its units, ship by ship), and I know just about how much sea it takes up (for I've looked down on the whole of it from a 'kite' at Scapa); but to-day—to me—it reaches to the ends of the Seven Seas, and I don't want any shifting of the scenery to destroy my illusion."
The Fates were kind, for that mask of luminous mist (though it interfered considerably with the effectiveness of the "P.Z." as an exercise) did not clear away sufficiently during all the time we were out to make it possible to see, from even the loftiest vantage, the whole of theFleet at one time. So that first illusion still holds, and so strongly that I cannot visualise it—even to-day, many weeks after—without a catch in my breath and a "choky" feeling in the throat. I have seen "all the way across" the Grand Fleet several times in the interim, and once I have been with it when it tore across the North Sea on what appeared the hottest kind of a scent; and yet—that first impression has kept a place all its own.
Straight on eastward pressed the swiftly steaming Fleet, straight on into the alternately advancing and receding mist wall, until the snowbirds from the "other side"—wind-blown victims of the capricious shift of weather—were fluttering about our bows, and the blurred outline of what appeared to be a rocky coast rose distantly in the smother ahead. Then, at a signal from the Flagship, we turned ten or a dozen points and stood away to the south on a course that might lead anywhere from the Skager Rak to Heligoland Bight.Thatmanœuvre would have been a sight for a clear to-day, and to be followed from a balloon, if one were to have his choice of vantages. A hundred ships—more or less—were steering steadily on one course. Suddenly a string of multi-coloured bunting breaks out beside the half-blurred blue-black tower of a unit steaming somewhere toward the middle of the formation, and instantly the whole great body begins to turn. Vastly more than a million tons of steel are wheeling in unison at the flutter of that single signal, and yet in any one ship nomore than a few quiet words down a voice-pipe—orders less loud and no more peremptory than that with which one would bring his spaniel to heel—have been spoken.
"Steady by compass!" you hear (if you chance to be standing close to the quiet-voiced Chief Navigating Officer bending above the binnacle); and presently, "Port fifteen!" At practically the same moment those same orders have been given on the leading battleship of every line, and round they go together, throwing swirling wakes with short sharp waves running off their outer curves and transiently smooth patches in the embrace of the inner ones. When the turn is complete and the leading ships ploughing the desired course, the laconic "Midships" completes the brief series of orders.
To a novice the countless destroyers shuttling in every direction between, ahead, and astern of the turning lines of battleships and wallowing wildly in the confused welter of conflicting wakes appear to be wheeling as aimlessly as range cattle "milling" in a blizzard. In reality their moves are calculated to a nicety, and they turn and "click" to place with almost the precision of the plungers of the combination of a safe.
The "flexibility" of the Grand Fleet, in spite of its increasing size—it has seldom if ever gone to sea but what it was stronger by many thousands of tons than when it last emerged—is a source of never-ending wonder to one to whom it has not become a commonplace by endlessrepetition, and the swiftness and ease with which it changes form at the will of the Commander-in-Chief never fails to remind me of one of those fascinating wire toys which an ingenious child can push or pull into a great variety of geometrical shapes. A few points' alteration of course changes a squadron—or a half dozen of them steaming abreast—into any desired "Line of Bearing," which might be what would happen in case it was deemed advisable to start zigzagging to avoid a submarine. A squadron may go from "Line Ahead" to "Line Abreast" in anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, according to the course the latter is going to hold, and so on through other formations, simple and complex. How this works in practice I had a good opportunity to see before we returned to Base.
The general practice on a "P.Z." for the Grand Fleet is to make a comprehensive sweep around the North Sea for two or three or four days, and then—if none of the enemy has been caught up in the net—to chivy together as large a force as possible of battle cruisers, light cruisers, and anything else available and have a sham fight with them. Failing in the former on this occasion, recourse had been had to the latter, and our Squadron was just getting ready to "open" on some dusky, mist-masked shapes suspected of being the "enemy," when the incident occurred to which I have referred.
"To 'equalise' the opposing forces," Admiral Sturdee was explaining to me, "it is laid downthat each ship in the Fleet we are meeting shall represent a Squadron of the enemy. For instance, that light cruiser to the right—the one making all that smoke—represents an 'enemy' Battleship Squadron, which, incidentally, is steaming hard in the hope of getting in a position to waft us a breeze on a 'windy corner' when we begin to turn. Incidentally"—and the lines of his firm mouth relaxed in a quick smile—"I think we shall have turned before he gets to the place he's driving for. Now that ship there (I think she's a battle cruiser) represents——"
Just then his Flag Lieutenant, stepping rather more quickly than usual, handed him a signal. "Now fancy that," he said, after running his eye over the laconic message; "there's an enemy submarine ahead of us."
"And what might she represent, sir?" I asked, my mind still engrossed with the intricate strategy of the "battle" into which we were rushing at twenty knots an hour.
The Admiral had turned to read a second signal—this one from the Flagship—after which he was busy giving some orders on his own account. My very natural query would have remained unanswered had it not been overheard by the Commander, who had just come up from below.
"Officially," he said with a laugh, "she probably represents the Kaiser, or Von Tirpitz, or whoever stands sponsor for the Huns' 'ruthless' submarine war. That signal refers to a U-boat, not to any of the craft playing in our little game." He paused for a moment as a detonation ofterrific force rumbled distantly, and a shock like that of a blow from a mighty wave shook the ship from bow to stern, and then resumed with a grim smile: "But if that charge came anywhere near her, by this time she probably represents—well, a tired lily folding up and going to sleep for the night would probably be about as near it as anything in Nature."
Eight or ten times, with short intervals between, those thunderous under-sea detonations—each followed by its own shuddering jar—came over and through the water to us. Whitish perpendicular bars, dimly guessed in the mist, revealed what might have been high-tossed foam-geysers four or five miles away, but it was almost inconceivable that explosions at that distance could reach us with such staggering force. Indeed, I have since talked with officers from a number of different squadrons—seasoned veterans of many big gun battles, all of them—who, experiencing the shocks from 'tween decks, felt certain that their own ships had been mined or torpedoed.
While the muffled booms of the depth-charges were still sounding we saw one of the "enemy" ships—apparently a battleship of the "Queen Elizabeth" class—which had been manœuvring for a position from which she could deliver an effective "broadside" at us, suddenly alter course eight points to port and head directly away at right angles to our extended line. As the raking this would have exposed her to was about the last thing in the world she would have riskedhad she been still playing the "make believe" battle, it hardly needed the far-borne and faint but still unmistakable shriek of a syren to tell us there was another game afoot. Presently she altered back to her original course, and all we ever heard of what happened was a signal, received shortly afterwards, saying that theValianthad attempted to ram the periscope of a hostile submarine.
From first to last this little by-play had taken but a very few minutes, and, absorbed in the drama being played out on the fringes of the mist curtain, I quite neglected to take account of what was going on in our immediate vicinity. When I looked again the disposition of the units of the Grand Fleet—both battleships and screening destroyers—had completely altered. The battle formation had melted as by magic into one which offered the maximum of protection against submarine attack. Shortly we went down to lunch, where the only allusion I recall being made to the episode was something Admiral Sturdee said about how discouraging it must have been to the U-boat skipper to bob up right in the middle of the Grand Fleet, and then not have an opportunity to fire a single torpedo. In the afternoon we crept upon the "skeleton" fleet of the "enemy" in the mist and gave it the trouncing the U-boats were responsible for our failing to complete in the morning. The next day the Grand Fleet was lying quietly at its anchorage.
FOOTNOTES:[B]The reference is to the ships of the ——th or American Battle Squadron, which went to sea with the Grand Fleet for the first time on this occasion.
[B]The reference is to the ships of the ——th or American Battle Squadron, which went to sea with the Grand Fleet for the first time on this occasion.
[B]The reference is to the ships of the ——th or American Battle Squadron, which went to sea with the Grand Fleet for the first time on this occasion.
While lunching with Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee in the course of a recent visit to the Grand Fleet, which must always remain one of the most memorable experiences of my life, I ventured the opinion that the work of the British Navy in sweeping every enemy vessel—warship and merchant steamer—from the surface of the Seven Seas, was the one most outstanding achievement of the war.
"Perhaps you are right," said the victor of the Battle of the Falklands thoughtfully, "but you must not lose sight of the fact that to win this victory over the German the British sailor has had to win an even more remarkable victory over himself. At the outbreak of the war I had every confidence that, in one way or another, we would be able to establish a control of the sea quite as complete as that which we actually have established; but, if any one could have assured me that the foundations of that control would have to rest upon the Grand Fleet being based in this isolated harbour, with the men practically cut off from intercourse with the world for months at a time, I must confess that I might have been—well, somewhat less sure, to saythe least. Certainly I would never have dared more than to hope that the moral of the men of the Fleet, far from being lowered by the most trying experience of the kind sailors have ever been called upon to endure, would actually be heightened. On the score of enthusiasm and 'lust for battle,' there could not, of course, have been any improvement, but this has given way to a cheerful, high-spirited willingness which, if possible, makes the Fleet a more efficient fighting unit with every day that passes. If you will observe well the spirit of the men of the Grand Fleet at a time when the German Fleet—based though it is in the Kiel Canal, where regular shore-leave is easy to arrange—is filled with unrest and threatened with mutiny, I think you will agree with me the keeping of the British sailor in a healthy state of mind and body, without once letting him verge on 'staleness,' is worthy to rank as an achievement with that of keeping the enemy off the seas."
Evidence of the high spirits of the men of the Grand Fleet I had been having from the moment I sighted the first car-load of returning-from-leave sailors on my journey up from London, but the occasion on which I was the most impressed was the morning on which I was allowed the honour of helping to coal ship by wheeling 2-cwt. sacks on a barrow for a couple of hours, an experience the memory of which promises long to outlast even the not unlingering stiffness of my dorsal muscles. The ship had not been ordered, and was not expecting to be ordered tosea, and there was no reason to rush the coaling save to be free to take up some other of the regular grind of routine drudgery next in order.
I have watched warships coaling in many ports of the world, but never have I seen men working under the stimulus of extra shore-leave at Gibraltar, Nagasaki, or Valparaiso get the stuff into bunkers faster than did those lusty men of the good old "X——" that misty morning in Scapa Flow. Almost every man who was not smoking was singing, and even out of the dust-choked inferno of the collier's holds, the beat of a chesty chorus welled up in the pauses of the grinding winches.
Time and again (until I learned how to defeat the manœuvre) men behind me in the line pushed their barrows in ahead and made off with sacks that should have been mine to shift, and time and again (until I had found my second wind and my "coaling legs") the rollicking Jack Tar just behind me put his speeding barrow into one of my by no means slow-moving heels. The several hundred tons of coal which went down the chutes between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. on that ordinary "routine" morning was shifted at a rate that would have been entirely creditable to a crew filling their bunkers for a long-deferred homeward voyage.
I did not have another opportunity to discuss with Admiral Sturdee the manner in which the miracle of "Fleet moral" had been wrought, but an officer of the battleship in which I stayed summed the thing up succinctly.
"I quite understand," I had said, "why the physical health of the Fleet should be the best ever known—why no battleship averages more than two or three sick at a time. The long months away from the germ-laden air of the land is sufficient to account for that. But how, after these three years and a half between the Devil, the Deep Sea, and the Scotch Mist, the men are still exuberant enough to want to push barrows of coal faster than a landsman, like myself (who is pushing for the sheer luxury of the thing), or how they are still full enough ofjoie de vivreto enjoy fits of singing between fits of coughing in the hold of a collier, is beyond my comprehension. How did you do it?"
The reply was prompt and to the point, and seems to me to disclose the secret in a nutshell. "By giving them," he said, "both more work and more play than they had in peace-time; in other words, by cutting down to a minimum the time in which to twirl their thumbs and think."
"Outside polishing brass and holystoning the deck," he went on, "there is a deal more work in a warship in war-time than in days of peace, so that we are never hard put to find a field for extra effort. We learn much quicker from practice than we did from theory, and there is an astonishing amount of work going on all the time to the end that the ship shall be kept as up to date as possible in all her equipment. The increase of a ship's offensive and defensive power, making her better to fight with and safer to fight in, is naturally a work in which the men arevitally interested, and they go into it with a will. We try as far as possible to avoid simply putting the men through the motions of work, like doing unnecessary painting or scrubbing, for instance. If the ship does not provide for the moment enough real work, we try to find it on the beach. For the next few days, for example, we are sending several hundred men ashore to make roads on one of the islands. They are very keen about the change, and I have heard them speaking about it all to-day. That kind of a thing works much better than simply improvising work on board. It gives variety, and the men feel that they are doing something useful instead of simply being kept busy.
"So much for work. On the score of play, we aim to give the men rather more athletic sports than they would have in harbour in peace-time, though all of it has to be carried on with many less 'frills'—flag-dressings, tea-parties, and the like—under the limiting conditions of always being ready to put to sea at notice of a few hours. In the ship, doubling round the deck for exercise is kept up regularly, as is also a certain number of Swedish drills. Every encouragement is given to the men to box, and the ship, squadron, and Fleet championships in the various classes are, of course, great events. There is scarcely a drifter or patrol-boat without one or more sets of boxing-gloves, for there is no form of sport quite so well calculated to exercise both mind and body in restricted quarters.
"Water-sports—swimming, rowing, and sailing—are kept up about as in peace-time, though here the long spell of inclement weather makes the winter rather a longer 'closed season' than farther south. Ashore there are several indifferent cricket and football grounds, though not, however, nearly enough for the normal demand of the great number—it runs well up into six figures—of able-bodied, sport-loving men in the Fleet. A good deal of hockey is played, and we have found it a better wet-weather game than football. In all of these sports inter-ship and inter-squadron rivalry is encouraged, principally because it stimulates the minds of so many outside the actual participants.
"Many of the officers have their golf clubs and tennis racquets, and though our links and courts would hardly satisfy the critical eyes of St. Andrews or 'Queens' professionals, they have been a big help to us. Cross-country runs and paper-chases, up and down the steep hills and over the soggy peat bogs, are taken part in by both men and officers, and for flesh-reducing, muscle-hardening, and chest-expanding are about the best thing we have. The tug-of-war is a traditional Navy sport, for it can, if necessary, be enjoyed on shipboard as well as ashore. The great pride which the men of a ship take in the success of its team makes this also a very useful sport for its 'psychologic' value.
"Amusements pure and simple—the kinema and theatricals—are a new thing with us (atleast while on active service) and the scheme is still in process of development. For a number of reasons it is impracticable for professional troupes to visit the Grand Fleet in the same way as they have been going to France to entertain the Army. The greater distance is against it, as is also the fact that we have no place to put them up. Again, as there is no place where they could perform to more than a thousand men (at the outside) at one time, it would obviously take some months to make a round of the Fleet. The fact that the visitors might awake almost any morning to find themselves on the way to a sea-fight is also a deterrent. All of these things have made it necessary for us to shift for ourselves in the matter of entertainment.
"Each ship, of course, has always had its band and orchestra, and concerts and rather crude theatrical shows have been features of Navy life from time immemorial. The trouble with the shows, however, has always been the amount of improvising that they entailed, especially in the matter of a stage, footlights, seats, and the like. Before the war the men usually managed to find time to paint and rig 'flies' and 'drops,' devise lighting effects, and even to fix up some kind of 'auditorium.' Here, with the whole ship standing by for orders to put to sea, all of this was out of the question. Under these circumstances, the man who first conceived the idea of a special 'theatre ship' deserves a monument as a benefactor to the British Navy.
"The suggestion was to provide a steamer on which a permanent stage, complete with sets of scenery, exits and entrances, footlights, sidelights, and dressing-rooms, had been installed; also sufficient seats to accommodate as many of the crew of a battleship as could ever be off duty at one time. The thing would have been worth while a dozen times over, even if it had been necessary to detach a three or four thousand-ton steamer for no other purpose. Luckily, the plan chanced to dove-tail to a nicety with the functions of a steamer which, in carrying frozen beef to the Fleet, laid alongside each ship for from twenty-four to forty-eight hours. The stage, auditorium, and the rest were built without interfering in the least with the steamer's regular work, nor have the some hundreds of performances already given aboard been responsible for the least interruption in our supply of frozen beef. As for the shows, she is discharging to the 'X——' of our squadron to-day, and you can go over to-night and see one for yourself.
"The trouble with the 'theatre ship' idea is that it is too long between shows. Between the battleship and the endless auxiliaries, it may easily take from two to three months for the beef-cum-theatre steamer to make the full round of the Fleet, an interval which we had to find some way of bridging with other entertainment. It was a difficult problem in many ways, and it is only within the last month or two that we have found—through the kinema—a satisfactorysolution. Every ship in the Fleet has now its projector, and, through an organisation formed in London for that purpose, a continuous supply of the latest and best films is sent up and circulated at a cost to us that is almost negligible. The films on arrival at the Depot Ship which houses the Post Office, are listed and filed, to be distributed to the various units in accordance with their demands.
"Each ship has a daily bulletin of the new films arriving, and at once sends in an application for its preference, with two or three alternatives should the first choice have gone to a prior claimant. The scheme has been successful beyond words. Each ship has a nightly performance, the projector being at the disposal of the men during the week, and of the officers on Saturday. All share in the cost of it, which only comes to a shilling or two per head a month. With a little larger supply of the more popular films, the development of this kinema scheme promises to give us everything we could possibly ask on the score of evening amusement. About the only thing left to do would be to buy a few picture-taking machines, let the officers and men write the scenarios, and start making films on our own account. If it turns out that we're to be here another year or two, I don't doubt that's what we will be doing."
There is not a great deal that I can add to this comprehensive summary of the way work and play have been administered with such success in maintaining the moral of the men of theGrand Fleet. The show in the "theatre ship" that night I found well worth the wet launch trip in a sloppy sea. It consisted of two parts of varieties and one of burlesque. Most of the numbers had been under rehearsal for several weeks, and the whole affair went off with all the aplomb of a London Revue. No "accessories"—from posters to programmes—were missing, not even the Censor.
An officer sitting next me, calling my attention to the blank back of the programme, said that he had written some "advertisements" to fill it, but that the Censor had banned them at the last moment as "not proper." As a matter of fact, there was far less in the whole show played by men to men, as it was, to "bring a blush to the cheek" than in the average West End Revue. A certain "chilliness" in the atmosphere of the auditorium, due to the fact that it was situated immediately over one of the refrigerating chambers, was more than neutralised by the warm reception the packed audience gave the show from the opening chorus to "God Save the King."
I managed to spend a few minutes at the nightly kinema show on several battleships. All of the available seats were invariably packed, with the enthusiasm tremendous, especially for the "knock-about" pictures. Charlie Chaplin appeared to be a ten-to-one favourite over any one else—both in the Ward Rooms and in the Lower Decks—and the demand for films in which he figured was a good deal greater than theavailable supply. The "sentimental" Mary Pickford sort of films were rather more popular than the men cared to show by their applause, but the harrowing "suffering-mother-and-child" subjects they would have none of. A rather poor film of Rider Haggard'sShewhich I saw was very coldly received by both men and officers. The Official War films of all of the Allies were always sure of a rousing reception. A special treat was the picture of the King's recent visit to the Grand Fleet, which offered men and officers the exciting sport of "finding" themselves on various sectors of it. Travel films were in little demand, the reason for which was perhaps supplied by one of my "coaling-mates," who said that the only kind of travel "movie" that he was interested in was the woods of Scotland running north at sixty miles an hour past the window of his homebound train.
Besides the more or less organised forms of work and play, many of the men in the Fleet have some sort of a hobby to which they turn in the rare intervals which might otherwise be spent in "thumb-twirling" and "thinking," those twin enemies of "The Contented Sailor." Thousands of men "make things"—not the old ship-in-a-bottle seaside bar ornament sort, but objects of real usefulness. One officer had become a specialist on electrical heating contrivances, and had equipped the wardroom with cigar-lighters to work with the ship's "juice" and save matches. Another was making hisown golf clubs, and I heard of a Captain of Royal Marines of noble lineage who had fabricated a very "wearable" pair of Norwegian ski-boots. There are so many skilled artisans among the men that one is not surprised to see them making almost anything; nevertheless, the gunner of one of the battleships who—with the sole exception of the lens—made a complete kinema projecting machine, did a very creditable piece of work.
Some of the senior Naval Officers have gone in for stock-breeding, overflowing to the land in their endeavours to find room to expand. Pig-raising is the most popular line, and there is great rivalry between the several "sty proprietors." A certain distinguished sailor—his name is a byword to the English people—discoursed learnedly to me for fifteen minutes on the strategy of the Battle of Jutland, and then, turning to a visiting officer, spoke with equal facility, and even greater enthusiasm, of his success in crossing the "China Poland" with the "Ordinary Orkney" to increase (or was it to reduce?) the "streak" in the bacon. He called the new breed the "Chinorkland," or something like that, and if the fact that he was planning three or four generations ahead conveys anything as to the view the Navy takes regarding the duration of the war, my readers—with the Censor's indulgence—are welcome to the tip.
It was a great day for the Principal Medical Officer. In spite of the fact that there were nearer 1200 than 1100 men in his ship, the returns of "Sick" and "Hospital" cases had been recorded by successive "pairs of spectacles" for several days. Even a single twenty-four hours like that for a battleship on active service was worthy of remark, and three or four days of it undoubtedly constituted a record for the British or any other Navy. That the clean sheet would be spread over a whole week was almost too much to hope for, even after the sixth day of the double duck's eggs had gone by. But now the morning of the seventh day had come, the last of a week in which there had been no case of sickness in a ship which carried one of the largest, if notthelargest, complement of men in the British Navy. It was no wonder that the P.M.O.'s eyes were beaming, and that he shook hands all round with his Staff Assistants, for it was an achievement which might well stand as a record for many a year.
"Since you do not appear likely to be troubled with anything worse than a rush ofcongratulations to-day, sir," I said, after extending my own felicitations, "perhaps you'll have time to tell me how you've done it. I've heard fine tributes paid the R.N.M.S. by French, American, and Italian doctors who know something of it, but I was hardly prepared to find you starting a sort of Ponce de Leon 'Fountain of Perpetual Youth,' in the British Fleet."
The P.M.O. laughed.
"Making a health resort of a battleship, with your dressing stations under casemates and your sick bay all but under a turret, does seem a bit like reversing the saying about 'in the midst of life we are in death,'" he replied. "But the fact remains that this ship—the whole of the Grand Fleet indeed—is one of the most remarkable 'health resorts' the world has ever known. Not since the dawn of history has there been a large body of men with so small a percentage of bodily ills and ailments as that which mans the ships of the Grand Fleet at this moment. This is due to the absolutely unique conditions which prevail here, and our success in maintaining and improving the standard of health is principally due to making the most of those conditions.
"The health of any community—of any body or collection of human beings—depends primarily upon the natural salubrity of the region in which it is located and the extent to which it is isolated from those living under less favourable conditions. A city may be very healthy naturally, but if its inhabitants are subject toa constant influx of more or less infected transients from less healthy places its own standard must inevitably be lowered. Under normal conditions, a modern warship—either in port or at sea—is one of the healthiest places in the world, and such sickness as prevails there is almost always contracted ashore and carried—and often spread—aboard.
"With a Fleet that has its base near a large city, so that the men are in more or less constant contact with those ashore, the health of the former will very largely depend upon the extent to which that contact can be controlled. Between dock-hands, etc., coming aboard and the sailors going ashore, it is difficult under such circumstances to keep the men afloat much healthier than those on the land. It is only when there is comparatively complete isolation from large cities that it is possible to take full advantage of the ideal conditions for maintaining physical healthfulness at sea, and such conditions exist at the Northern Base to a degree never before equalled in Naval history. Our success here is merely the consequence of making the most of those unique conditions.
"On the score of bodily healthfulness, life as lived in the Grand Fleet has more favouring conditions, and fewer unfavouring ones, than that possible at any other point at which a considerable fleet has ever had its base. Indeed, I could go farther than that, and say that never has a large number of men, either afloat or ashore, had such an opportunity to maintain sohigh a standard of physical health. In the first place, wet, cold, and stormy though it is for much of the year, the climate is a salubrious and invigorating one for the physically sound man that the sailor must be before he finds his way into the Navy at all. Even ashore the population is notably robust.
"In the next place, the anchorage is isolated, but not too isolated. It strikes almost the ideal mean on this score. In the ordinary routine, there is practically no contact whatever between those afloat and the people ashore. If the men land at all it will be for a game of football, a cross-country run, road work or something of the sort, in the course of which nothing whatever is seen of the resident population. It is not practicable to give the men a long enough shore leave to allow them to visit a neighbouring town, where one sees rather less navy blue as a rule than in many an inland town in England. The steward doing his marketing is about the only regular human link between a ship and the land, and his contact with those on shore is not of a character likely to be dangerous. This leaves the fresh drafts and the men returning from leave as almost the only possible carriers of new infection. How those are looked after I will explain presently.
"Much more complete isolation than this is, of course, effected when a cruiser or a fleet of cruisers goes on an extended voyage or patrol, but in such a case the freedom from contact with shore is offset by the more arduousconditions of life, especially in the matter of diet. The great thing about the situation of Scapa is that its unique position makes it possible to eliminate most of the rigors of sea life without being exposed to the health dangers of harbour life. A ship here can be just as well victualled as at Portsmouth, so far as the men are concerned, while letters and newspapers six times a week are ample service on that score. As I have said, the conditions for keeping mind and body at their best are ideal, and give us a unique opportunity for establishing new health records for the Navy.
"Of the two main channels by which disease could come to us from the outside—returning leave men and new drafts—the latter is the more dangerous, and therefore the one the more closely watched. Generally speaking, the men get leave about every nine months, this more or less roughly coinciding with a period in which the ship is in dock for repairs. If during a man's leave there is a case of any infectious or contagious disease in the house where he has stayed, or if he has reason to believe that he may have been exposed to infection or contagion elsewhere, he is ordered to report that fact immediately upon his return to the ship, when we take such precautions as the circumstances seem to warrant to prevent trouble. His clothes are disinfected, and he is ordered to report for examination over a period of days varying with the disease to which there was risk of his having been exposed. This enables us to isolate him(should it be necessary) before he is in a condition in which he could pass on the disease to others. A useful check which we have upon a man who might neglect to report his possible exposure to disease during his leave is the law which requires medical officers in all parts of Great Britain to ascertain if any soldier or sailor on leave is living in any house where there is a case of infectious disease, and to report this fact to the proper authorities. In this way it may be that we learn a man has been exposed even before he returns to the ship.
"New drafts are watched equally closely. Some time before a man's arrival a health sheet is sent to me on which is indicated any disease which he may have had during his period of service, together with information as to whether or not he may have been exposed to anything infectious in the interval immediately before he is sent to us. Any treatment for minor chronic ailments which may be in progress is continued in the ship. A general disinfection of kit and a daily reporting for twenty-one days for examination makes it practically impossible for a new rating to bring disease to the Ship's Company.
"The greatest obstacle to the preservation of perfect health in the men on a warship is the unavoidable necessity of having them sleep close together in comparatively confined spaces. This ship, from the fact that she was originally designed for a foreign Power, is worse off than most modern battleships on that score, and, everything else equal, would be more difficultto keep the men in health in than in any of the others. This is one of the reasons why I am so gratified by our showing of the past week. Sleeping in hammocks in itself is not unhealthy—quite the contrary, in fact—but the danger lies in the chance an infectious disease has to spread among so many men lying almost side by side and head to feet. Thorough ventilation is the best preventive of disease under the circumstances; this has been provided by fans.
"The one thing dreaded above all others on a warship is cerebro-spinal meningitis, both on account of its unavoidably high rate of mortality and the difficulty of preventing its spread under the limiting conditions. Luckily, we have had practically none of it up here. In the event of the appearance of a case of any infectious disease, the man is isolated, the men of his mess are put under observation, and all of their clothes are disinfected. As soon as possible the case is removed to one of the hospital ships which are always here. The restricted sleeping quarters occasionally are responsible for the quick spread of a bad cold, but the fresh air, free from germs, makes anything like an epidemic of influenza almost out of the question in the Grand Fleet. German measles has been rather a nuisance once or twice; in fact, we have seen rather more of it than we have of the German Fleet. If the latter is as easily disposed of as the former, however, we shall have little to complain of."
Of the progressiveness and general up-to-dateness of the Royal Navy Medical Service, I had already heard from a number of sources (I remember in particular how Madame Carrel had told me that the British Admiralty had adopted the remarkable "irrigation" treatment, discovered and perfected by her distinguished husband, long before any French military hospital would even consider it), so I was quite prepared to find every ship in the Grand Fleet amply provided to handle "action eventualities."
The problems of a hospital on a warship are quite different from those of even an advanced hospital at the Front. The latter has a fluctuating but more or less unbroken stream of casualties to handle, with sometimes weeks of warning when defensive or offensive action will make unusual demands. A battleship may easily be lying quietly at anchor in the morning and be joined in a death-grapple in the evening. Her surgeons may have spent a year with nothing more to keep their hands in than reducing sprains and stitching up cuts, and then a hundred casualties may drop out of the sky in the wake of a single enemy salvo. For them, it rarely rains but it pours, though it may be a long time between the storms.
The usual practice is for a warship to have a small permanent sick bay and hospital capable of coping with routine exigencies, and to supplement these during and after action by converting certain favourably located parts of the ship—always below the water-line if possible—into action dressing-stations. The equipmentof these latter—operating tables, beds, lights, etc.—is all made on collapsible lines and kept stored close at hand. The battleship whose remarkable health record I am writing about, takes especial pride in the fact that it has two action dressing-stations, permanently equipped and ready for use at a moment's notice.
The men in the various turrets and casemates, as well as in all other parts of the ship where casualties are likely to occur in action, are trained to give first aid and carry their wounded to the nearest dressing-station. For the latter purpose a specially designed stretcher is used, so constructed that the wounded men, strapped in securely, can be carried at any angle with a minimum of discomfort. The stretcher at present in use in the British Navy is of Japanese manufacture. It is made almost entirely of canvas and strips of bamboo, the two materials which experience has shown are the best combination on the score of lightness and strength.
As soon as possible after an action the badly wounded are transferred to a base hospital ship, whence, as soon as they are able to stand the voyage, they are sent in a carrier ship to one of the big R.N.M.S. hospitals.
The superlative care which has been taken of the bodily health of the men of the Grand Fleet has been one of the main, if notthemain factor in contributing to the healthiness of mind and the keenness of spirit which have made it possible for them to "stick out" their long vigil in the northern seas.
The wind had been whistling raw and cold through the foretop, from where I had been watching the night target practice, and my appetite was whetted to a razor edge by the time the game was over and the ship was again at anchor.
"I'm as hungry as a shark myself," said the Gunnery Commander, "but never mind, we'll have a good snack of supper just as soon as we climb down and get out of these Arctic togs."
Five minutes later, the first of a dozen officers who stamped in as fast as their duties were over, we were seated at one of the wardroom tables. "Would you rather have ham or sardine sandwiches?" some one asked. "Both!" I unblushingly replied, "unless the sardines are as large as whales."
A waiter came hurrying through the door in answer to the ring, buttoning his coat as though he had been surprised by an unexpected summons. "A couple of plates of ham and sardine sandwiches and beer all round," was the laconic but comprehensive order.
The old "Marine" smiled deprecatingly, as one who has unpleasant news to impart."Sorry, sir," he said, addressing the Commander, "but the day's bread was finished at dinner, sir, an' the 'am we 'ad for breakfast was all we can 'ave to-day, sir."
And then the wonderful thing happened. I had expected the howl of a Roman stage mob to greet the disappointing announcement, but it was only the Commander's voice that was heard, speaking quietly as he rose from the table. "Very well, Jenkins," he said; "bring us some hot cocoa in the smoking-room. A good hot drink's the best thing for a night like this anyway."
Over steaming cups of the most nutritious and sustaining of drinks, the Commander told me, quite briefly and casually, something of what had been done in his ship (which was thoroughly typical of the other units of the Grand Fleet) to cut down the unnecessary consumption of food.
"The old idea," he said, "that a fighting man ought to be stuffed like a prize steer was discredited by experience long ago, but it took the war to jar us into putting that experience (like so many other things) into practice. Any man living a non-sedentary life will make a very brave attempt to eat all the food that is put before him, but that by no means proves that he needs it. If he is working hard enough in the open air the surplus over his normal requirement doesn't do him any harm, and so there wasn't much point in keeping it away from him as long as there was food to waste all over the world. But when the world's surplus began tobe turned into a deficit by the war, the opportunity arose to kill two birds with one stone—to save food and to improve the health of the men. I am glad to say that we have been able to do both, and that, moreover, with the hearty concurrence of every one concerned, both officers and men. It's the same kind of thing that could be done with the civil population if only they were subject to the same control as the Navy. Perhaps, if an adequate rationing scheme can be devised, this will be accomplished.
"Generally speaking," he continued, "we have left the Navy ration just about as it was before the war, with the exception of those staples in which there is the worst shortage—bread, meat, and potatoes. The latter could be relaxed now if we desired, as there is ample supply in sight; but—to save transport and because we are better off anyhow on our present ration—even that item will probably remain as it is. Indeed, great as the actual food-saving has been, a still more important benefit has been that to our health. There are several factors contributing to the fact that the personnel of the Grand Fleet has incomparably the highest standard of health ever maintained in so large a body of men, and I am quite positive that by no means the least of these is the check that has been put on overeating by our food-saving measures. Again, I am sure that the civil population would be equally benefited by similar restriction."
This incident occurred on the occasion ofmy first visit to the Grand Fleet in the late fall of last year, but it was not until my return nearly two months later that I had opportunity to gather anything further of the details of food economy. Then I learned that a strict rationing was only the first part of a scheme of which the second was a waste prevention campaign. Bread and meat were both further restricted, but to the improvement rather than the detriment of the already high health standard of the Fleet. The bread now served consists of one-eighth potato, one-sixth barley meal, and the remainder—but slightly more than two-thirds—of "standard" flour, which itself contains a high percentage of the whole wheat. The Fleet Paymaster of my ship, who outlined the scheme to me, said that the idea was to reduce waste to a minimum, both "coming" and "going." "We aim to put no more food on the tables of either the officers or men than they will eat up clean. 'Jack Spratt' and his wife are our models. We try to see that the 'platter' is 'licked clean.' But we don't stop there by any means. 'Jack Spratt,' so far as we have any information, must have thrown away the bones, even if he and the missus did lick the platter. We not only save the bones, but even go so far as to skim the grease off the dish-water the platter is washed in. If you'll run over this report here you'll understand the 'fade-away' expression on the faces of the gulls that used to fatten on the waste of the Grand Fleet. It is merely a tabulated summary of a week's saving of the things whichused to go down the chutes for the birds and the fishes."
There were numbers running to four and five figures in the table, most of them referring to the pounds of various refuse which had been collected and shipped for conversion into glycerine and other useful and valuable products. Without giving figures which might be "useful or heartening to the enemy," I will probably be permitted to state that the various headings were the following: Drippings, Fat Meat, Bones, Waste Paper, Bottles and Jars, Discarded Clothing, Lead Seals, Mail Bags and Tins. Several of the items would have run to substantial figures even in tons, and the money received for them at even the nominal prices paid by the contractor aggregated many thousands of pounds.
"You will now understand," continued the Fleet Paymaster, "just how it made us feel when we read in a London paper a few days ago a statement to the effect thatifthe Navy had gone in for waste-saving in the same way the Army had, a certain total would have been greatly increased. Since we've been going into this sort of thing heart and soul for more than a year, and since it is far easier to check waste on a ship (where you have absolute control of all the in-comings and out-goings) than on land, you can imagine that reading that sort of 'tosh' makes us feel—well, about as we do when we try to digest the wisdom of the 'Naval Strategic Writers' of the type that want to put the Grand Fleet on wheels and send it to Berlin." Glancingquickly through the figures under the headings opposite the various ships of our squadron I noticed at once that there were considerable variations in their savings, and, knowing that the number of men did not vary materially on any of them, I asked the reason why the Flagship, for instance, with less than half the weight of "Bones" to her credit than "Ourself," was still able to put by something like 50 per cent. more "Drippings."
"It will probably be because we haven't yet 'standardized' our methods throughout the Fleet," replied the Paymaster; "because different ships may have different ways of going about the job. Of these particular items you have mentioned, perhaps we can find out something by talking to Mr. C——, the Warrant Officer who has charge of the collection of by-products."
Mr. C——, who was plainly an enthusiast, launched into the subject with eagerness.
"I've been intending to explain that matter of the drippings to you, sir," he said, addressing the Fleet Paymaster, "for the figures certainly have the look of not doing us justice. Fact is, though, that the only reason we've run behind the Flagship on this count is because I have been encouraging the messes to carry food-saving one stage farther by using the clean grease—the skimmings from their soup and the water their meat is boiled in—instead of margarine. With a little pepper and salt, most of them like it better even than butter, and ofcourse they can use it much more free. And since dripping is worth much more for food than it ever can be to make up into soap or explosives, I figure I'm on the right track, even if it does give theLuciferand theMephistophelesa chance to head us in the 'grease' column. I must admit though, sir, that they've both been gaining a few pounds of second quality stuff by rigging 'traps'—settling tubs at the bottoms of their chutes—in which they catch any grease that has got away from them in the galley. I'll be beating them at that game before long, though, for I'm putting in settling tubs at both top and bottom, with a strainer in between.
"As for the 'Bones,'" he went on, turning to me, "that's largely 'personality.' 'Boney Joe,' my chief assistant, is perhaps more largely responsible than any one else for the fact that we are not only the champion 'bone-collecting' ship of the squadron, but also head the list with 'Bottles and Jars' and 'Empty Tins.' With 'Waste Paper' there's no use competing with the Flagships, for they come in for an even heavier bombardment of that kind of stuff from the Admiralty than we do; and as for 'Discarded Clothing,' I feel that a place at the bottom of the column would be more likely to indicate economical management than one at the top. But the things that represent a sheer saving, the things that used to be thrown away right along—they're what it's worth while piling up by every means we can, and they're the ones I want to keep heading the columns with. And,as I said before, 'Boney Joe' is the main feature of the show on this score. If you like, I will arrange it so that you can do his morning round with him to-morrow."
I accepted the offer with alacrity, for I had heard, or heard of, "Boney Joe" on several occasions already, but without once getting my eyes on him. The first time was when, in order to avoid a howling blizzard which was raging outside, I endeavoured to make my way forward to the ladders leading up to my cabin under the bridge by threading the mazes of the mess deck. Bent almost double to keep from butting the low swung hammocks, I tripped the more easily over a box of empty tins, and fell with one arm sousing elbow-deep into what proved to be a tub of "frozen" grease. Surveying the draggled cuff of my jacket in the morning, my servant pronounced his verdict without a moment's hesitation.
"Tumblin' into 'Boney Joe's' pickin's last night, sir, was you?" he said with a grin; "we's allus doin' it oursel's."
On a number of other occasions certain sirenical notes which came floating up to my cabin from the mess deck were variously ascribed to "'Boney Joe' doin' 'is rounds," "'Boney Joe' cadgin' for grease," and "Boney Joe singin' 'is 'Mornin' 'Ate.'" I had several pictures of "Boney Joe" in my mind, but not one of them came near to fitting the handsome, strongly built and thoroughly sailorly man-o'-war's-man whom Mr. C—— introduced to me as the bearer of thatstoried name on the following morning. Only a sort of scallawag twinkle in his eye revealed him as a man who liked his little joke.
"If you don't mind, sir," he said, saluting, "we'll clean up these last two flats, an' then we'll be clear to push along up to my 'bonatorium' an' have a bit o' a yarn."
Working with neatness and dispatch, "Joe" and his half-dozen assistants made rapid progress with their clean-up. "Pick-uppy" as the job was, everything was really in admirable order. Bones, papers, tins, bottles and grease—each had its separate receptacle. The grease was already hardening in large cans: the other refuse was in boxes or tubs. In each mess was one small tub with a few sad bits of assorted food in the bottom. Unable to classify this, I asked "Joe" what orphan asylum these crumbs were intended for.
"Not for no orphan 'sylum, sir," he replied with an appreciative grin; "only for the piggery. We don't keep no pigs oursel's, sir, but the A'miral on the 'X. Y. Z.' does, an' we all 'elps wi' wot we kin spare. They sends round a drifter tu pick up the leavin's ev'ry day or two, but Lor' bless yu', ther' ain't no leavin's since we got our by-producks macheen a-workin'. If the rest o' the ships don't dish out no more pig feed an' what we does, the 'X. Y. Z.'s' live stock'll be gettin' so thin they'll blow away one o' these days. This ain't really no place fer pigs and gulls no more, sir."
Considerable as the accumulation was, it was loosely sacked in a few minutes, after which itwas carried forward to the hold where the repacking for shipment was carried on. This consisted largely of protecting the bottles with straw, forcing small tins inside of large ones, pouring the grease into larger cans and putting the bones into stronger sacks. "Joe" said that he called the place his "bonatorium" partly because bones formed the largest and most valuable item of shipment, but principally because they were his "favrut produck," the one he took the most pride in collecting. Even the few days' accumulation of refuse on hand was of huge bulk. I saw at once how important a work was being carried on, and had no envy for the pig or the gull whose lot it was to live on what is now thrown away by the Grand Fleet.
Mr. C—— was called away at this juncture, and, left cock of his own dunghill, "Boney Joe" became at once his own natural self. The sailorly man-o'-war's-man disappeared in an instant, and only one of the drollest characters in the British Navy remained behind.
"I'll be showin' yu 'ow I goes out tu drum up me bone trade," he said, throwing an empty sack over his shoulder and replacing his beribboned cap with a crumpled velour of the Hombourg type. "Found it in me pickin's; spose it kum from one o' the orficers," he added parenthetically, giving the queer headpiece a proprietary pat with his free hand. "Now 'ere's wot I sing tu 'em. Made it up mysel', too."
With a quick double-shuffle he began footing it up and down the junk-cluttered deck of the"bonatorium," singing in a voice which cut the air like the whine of the wind through the radio aerials.