Down Under With the Prince Part 1

Down Under With the Prince.

by Everard Cotes.

I

AT SEA

One March morning of last year, an ordinary train moved out of Waterloo Station for Portsmouth, and among the ordinary people it carried were at least two or three who were going further. They sat together and smoked, and exchanged experiences and speculations. As the train slowed down at Portsmouth Harbour they looked from the carriage windows and saw the fighting tops of a big battle-cruiser lifted grey against the sky above the houses of the foresh.o.r.e, and one said to another "There she is."

There she was, the _Renown_, in alongside, waiting to sail with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to Australasia. It was the day before and already the function was in the quickened air. Sc.r.a.ps of coloured bunting fluttered and flew on the wharf sheds. Dockyard officials gave orders with more responsibility than ever immediately under their caps.

The travellers from Waterloo went up the gangway to the quarter-deck, successfully pa.s.sed the officer of the watch, and found their quarters.

They were the journalists of the tour, there on behalf of the people at home, that mult.i.tudinous "public" which, for lack of accommodation on the _Renown_, must see the Prince's tour in the convex mirror of the daily press.

Next day the function flowered. The Royal train rolled in. The red carpet was spread and the Chief Pa.s.senger went up the gangway, with every sign and circ.u.mstance by which his country could mark the occasion of his going.

Gently the grey turrets slid out from the crowded wharf into the leaden expanse of harbour. "Auld Lang Syne" rang into the chill wind that rocked the rowing-boats lining the fairway. Ant-like figures swarmed into the tall rigging of Nelson's flagship, which lay, bedecked all over, her old oak sides stiff in checkered squares of black and white, while her ancient muzzle-loaders banged off a smoky salvo--the senior ship of the British Navy wishing G.o.dspeed to her fighting junior on Royal Service starting. The hundred and twenty thousand horse-power steam turbines of the battle-cruiser quickened their rhythmic throb. The still shouting crowds ash.o.r.e faded to dark stains on the Southsea beach.

The red and gold of the Royal standard fluttered down from the main, and the _Renown_ put out to sea, starting on this pleasant commission with the same cert.i.tude and the same cheeriness, the same discipline and the same lightness of heart, the same directness of purpose, and above all things the same absence of fuss, with which she had often gone upon errands perilous. The voyage, so much antic.i.p.ated and chronicled, had begun, and the convincing thing was that it was going to be, from the _Renown's_ point of view, precisely like other voyages. That impression came with the first turn of the propeller and remained, it may be said at once, until the last. The circ.u.mstance and ceremonial of the departure, the pomp of Royalty and the glitter of an Imperial mission had all merged, before the sun set in the cloud-bank of that March afternoon, in the sense of function and routine, detached and disregarding, that controls life in His Majesty's ships at sea.

The _Renown_ is the most recent, the fastest, and the best armed battle-cruiser in the world. She received at her christening the proud traditions, extending over three hundred years, of the battles of the British Navy, having had no less than seven fighting predecessors of the same name, beginning with the gallant little wooden frigate _Renommee_, captured in 1653 from the French and transferred to the British squadrons where she became the first of the famous _Renowns_. The present vessel was built as lately as 1916, when British need was great.

She remains a record of what those strenuous times could do.

For all her thirty-two thousand tons and gigantic armament of mammoth guns this great battle-cruiser slides through the water with the smoothness of the otter. She moved steadily at eighteen knots an hour from the time she left Portsmouth, a pace which, for this last word in fighting machines, is mere half-speed, though it is as fast as most suburban trains can travel. She is so big that surprisingly little motion is noticeable at sea, though waves wash freely over forecastle and quarter-deck, contracting the s.p.a.ce available for the exercise and training of the large fighting crew she carries. This intimacy with the ocean is an impression acquired early and vividly by the civilian on board a fighting ship. A voyage on a big liner is a quite super-marine experience by comparison, with a picturesque and phosph.o.r.escent basis some distance below a sleepy deck-chair, and not necessarily observed at all. A battleship penetrates rather than sails the sea, and takes very little interest in keeping any part of herself dry. It is impossible to ignore the ocean on such a vessel. The _Renown_ was no less amphibian than others of her cla.s.s. The accommodation contrived for the Prince was itself liable to ruthless visitation, and even the cabin on the superstructure, which held the chroniclers of his Odyssey, and was the highest inhabited spot beneath the bridge, occasionally took considerably more than enough water to dilute the ink.

Naturally there was nothing in her mission to interfere with the _Renown's_ ordinary routine at sea. Training, gun-drill and inspections went on as usual and it was impossible not to be penetrated with the fact that these things were admirably done. For the pa.s.sengers the day began with breakfast in the ward-room at eight. Soon after nine the whole ship's company a.s.sembled in divisions, in different parts of the vessel. Kits were inspected and the day's duty commenced. One realized, as one watched the proceedings, how completely the war has abolished the old navy methods of stiffness and pipeclay. The relations between officers and men are of the pleasantest and most human character. n.o.body is asked to do anything not of definite importance to the welfare of the ship, or to the training and the making fit of the men. The navigation, the keeping of the watches, the working of the complicated machinery by which the vessel is driven, steered and lighted, the handling of the gigantic guns, and the running of such supplementary services as those of supply and wireless, proceed upon simple matter-of-fact business principles, under the direction of the Captain, who controls the organization as a whole. Immediately under the Captain are the Navigation Commander, the Administration Commander, the Engineer Commander, the Gunnery Lieutenant-Commander, the Torpedo Lieutenant-Commander, the Princ.i.p.al Medical Officer, and the Paymaster, each an expert in the particular branch he is responsible for.

Unquestionably an expert too is the ship's parson who, himself belonging to the upper deck, is related, by his duties, so closely to the lower, as to afford a personal link between the two, which no less sympathetic or more official intermediary could supply. Each of the departments I have named is manned by its own staff of officers and men, who are all trained to carry out definite functions with cheerfulness, confidence and goodwill. On the _Renown_ the same healthy spirit was to be found in every one aboard, from the Flag-Lieutenant down to the humblest stoker.

It is an early inoculation of Osborne and Exmouth and apparently expands in the system with promotion.

At general divisions on Sundays, the entire ship's company a.s.sembled for inspection on the decks, each officer at the head of his respective contingent. A finer sight than these divisions it would be impossible to find, the men well-set-up, and bearing decorations won in every naval engagement during the war, from Zeebrugge to the Falkland Islands, and from the Dardanelles to Jutland, wearing too in many cases the red triple stripe upon the sleeve which tells of fifteen years of good service under the White Ensign.

A battle-cruiser has many aspects. It is a fortress with parade grounds and cricket pitches, a monastery with divagations in port, a school of many things besides arithmetic, and a community that could teach social law to Mr. Hyndman. It is above all from this point of view the home, the castle and the club of the officers and men who inhabit it, and the centre of these significances is the ward-room. The _Renown's_ had an ante-room which enshrined the files, not greatly disturbed, of a few newspapers, and was a most comfortable smoking-room, but it was about the tables and chairs, the Mess President's mallet and the unwearied piano of the ward-room itself that the h.o.a.riest traditions of His Majesty's Navy most conspicuously flourished and the atmospheric essence of the Senior Service most happily clung.

There is a variety of the game of Patience played with cards called "Knock." It was plainly invented, in a moment of drowsy leave, by a sub-lieutenant to whom had arrived the felicity of ordering, by a stroke upon the table, Commander X or Lieutenant-Commander Y to "pa.s.s the wine"

in penalty for having read an urgent signal from the bridge and omitted to excuse himself to him, the said Sub-Lieutenant, and Mess President for the week, though youngest officer present. Various were the offences thus visited across the field of the repast, which had a goal at each end, kept, so to speak, by the Chaplain, with his grace before and after meat. In that consecrated interval no lady's name may be p.r.o.nounced, and nothing of any sort may be perused. The Spell with which the ward-room guards its daily history at once paralyses the pen. There is really no way of learning much about these things except by entering the Navy or persuading a battle-cruiser to give you a berth in her, opportunities which occur but seldom to any of us. The relaxations of that genial and athletic place form a tempting theme, but it is better for the publishers that a modest number of these volumes should reach the libraries than that a whole edition should be sunk at sea.

All this announced and admitted however, this was the voyage to Australasia of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and the _Renown_, at least in the public eye, must be subordinated to her duty.

The Prince was to be met quite often, going about the ship, like anybody else, with always an unaffected word and pleasant smile for those he ran up against. He did a good deal of reading and other work in his state-room in the morning, but in the afternoon he often shared in the recreations of the officers, playing squash racquets in a small court that had been rigged up upon the superstructure, shooting at clay discs thrown out from the ship's side by means of a spring trap, or running and doing Swedish exercises on the p.o.o.p. H.R.H. ordinarily messed with the Captain and the members of the Royal Staff, in the cuddy, which had been enlarged and pleasantly decorated in ivory and green for the purpose; but he was also an honorary member of the ward-room and gun-room messes and sometimes dined with one or other of them. On other nights he often had officers or pa.s.sengers to dine with himself and his staff, in the simplest and most informal way, his guests coming away with the pleasantest impressions of unpretentious good fellowship and cheery company. On these occasions the Prince himself proposed the health of the King, and about this ceremony, simply and modestly as it was observed, hung an odd little Imperial thrill. Republics are worthy forms of Government, but they impose upon no man the duty of toasting his own father. It was a gesture that somehow placed the youthful host momentarily apart--one imagines his having to reconquer the effect of it as often as he makes it.

The Prince is keen upon naval affairs and soon knew the ship from one end to the other. He often accompanied the Captain on inspections and took a hand in all sorts of duties, down to those of the oil furnaces.

He sampled the men's food, tasted their grog and would often have a cheery chat with them. There was no attempt to sequester the Chief Pa.s.senger. He shared and contributed to the life of the ship.

II

BARBADOS

Gloom was cast over the _Renown_, the day before reaching Barbados, by the falling overboard, in rough weather, of a fine young gunner of marines, who was sitting on the taffrail gaily talking to his mates when a roll came that sent him into the sea. The poor fellow had hardly stopped falling when patent life-buoys, which sent out white clouds of smoke, easily visible in the bright afternoon sunshine, were dropped.

The big ship swung round. The man was swimming, when lost to view amongst white-topped waves. A boat was smartly lowered, and within fifteen minutes of the cry "Man overboard," the rowers had reached the buoys and were carefully searching the precise spot where the speck which had been one of our company had disappeared. The Prince was much concerned at the accident, and came upon deck the moment he heard of it.

But our hearts grew heavy as the minutes went by and the search proved vain. It had eventually to be recognized that the unfortunate man had sunk before reaching the life-buoys, close as they had been dropped to him in the water. A funeral service was afterwards held on the forecastle, the entire ship's company and all the officers attending to pay respect to the memory of their shipmate. The Prince also sent a personal message by wireless to the relations of the deceased. It was one of those accidents that no amount of care can entirely prevent, upon the necessarily low, and but slightly fenced decks of a modern battle-cruiser in a heavy sea.

The following evening the _Renown_ arrived off Barbados. The light-cruiser _Calcutta_, flagship of the West Indian squadron, met her at sea and escorted her in to the anchorage half a mile from sh.o.r.e. A dozen sailing barques, mostly American, also three or four steamers of various nationalities, were lying at anchor, all of them decked with bunting in honour of the Royal visit. The usual salutes were fired and formal exchange of calls between the Prince and Sir Charles...o...b..ien, Governor of the island, and Admiral Everett, commanding the West Indian station, took place.

It was the first pause for the purpose of the tour, the first official touch. The feeling of function, of standing at attention, which was soon to clothe the enterprise as with a garment, fell upon all concerned. The silk hat for the first time bobbed in the visiting steam-launch, and the address came out of the breast pocket of the munic.i.p.al morning coat.

Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, as seen from the _Renown_ through the soft warm muggy atmosphere of the end of March, was a tumbled ma.s.s of white and red buildings embowered in emerald foliage, and fringed by the masts of anch.o.r.ed sailing vessels, themselves reflected in the broken amethyst of the open roadstead. The narrow streets had been decorated by the wives and daughters of the residents, headed by Lady Carter, wife of a late governor of the island, who had expended an immense amount of labour upon the work. Gigantic sago-palm leaves had grown into royal emblems wherein the fronds took the place of feathers.

The Broad Street of the city might have been a Cantonese bazaar, so thick was it with coloured banners. Nelson's statue, in the local Trafalgar Square, looked out of a ma.s.s of brilliant floral designs. An imposing triumphal arch of flowers had also been erected. Even the tiny wooden huts of the negroes, on the outskirts, carried paper decorations that must have cost much labour to make. A well-set-up company of volunteers furnished a guard-of-honour at the landing. The members of the Barbados House of a.s.sembly, headed by the Governor in white political uniform, received the Prince. Bands and salutes added to the formality of the occasion. Complimentary addresses were presented in the old a.s.sembly House, where the Prince shook hands with a remarkably long line of returned military and naval officers and men, for Barbados sent an extraordinary large proportion of her sons to the war.

A fleet of motor-cars then turned up and the Prince was taken for a drive through the island. The procession was headed by that veteran planter and member of a.s.sembly, Mr. Graham Yearwood, who seemed to have at his finger-ends every local romance of the past three hundred years, from the story of the "Rendezvous" on the coast, where loyalist planters repelled the onslaught of Cromwellian squadrons, to that of a certain cavernous gully which we also saw, where, for long months, was hidden the body of a swashbuckling moss-trooper slain in single combat by a Barbadian planter. The Prince was also conducted over the buzzing machinery of an immense, up-to-date sugar-factory, fitted with the latest appliances, and learnt something of the vicissitudes of the sugar industry, an enterprise which was doggedly operated through years of low prices, bad crops, and hurricanes, and only narrowly saved from complete bankruptcy by a grant obtained from the British Parliament by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. At the time of the Royal visit, it was in a state of abounding prosperity with prices at twelve times their pre-war level.

Even with the year's by no means favourable season the current crop was valued at eight times the average of five years previously, which meant ease and comfort to all connected with this premier industry of the island.

The whole of the city portion of the route was lined--in places ten deep--with cheering, laughing, bowing coloured people and their women and piccaninnies; the folk of the cane fields and factories. In the country portion of the route, negroes rushed to the roadside from their work in the fields the moment the Royal car appeared in sight. "G.o.d bless you!" they cried to the Prince. "Come! Come! Lookee here, he too sweet boy!" "G.o.d bless my old eyes that have seen him," mingled with laughter and the clapping of hands, while old men bowed low, with dignified, wide-armed, slow gesticulation, and women and girls, sometimes smartly got-up with head-kerchiefs made of Union Jacks, and always with strong, free hip-gait, and the widest of white-toothed smiles, came running to drop a curtsy or bend in salute. It was real contagious joy and excitement, like the overflowing froth of a bottle of Guinness, and as for the noise only a Jazz Band could describe it.

The road was sometimes crowded with four-wheeled mule-drawn carts, piled high with fresh-cut, yellow sugar-cane, on its way to the presses, each stem the thickness of a rolling-pin and the length of a cavalryman's lance, for the harvesting was in full swing. The negroes take the crop, which looks much like sorghum or Indian corn, with cutla.s.ses, primitive work done by primitive people. The luscious growth needs a good deal of fertilizing and care the year round, and generations of these simple folk have thriven upon it since the middle of the seventeenth century. Seventy-four thousand acres of it there are and probably a hundred thousand negroes producing it, all, so far as we could observe, delighted to see the Prince of Wales.

The road wound sometimes through pillared aisles of stately sago-palms, past dense groves of green mahogany and bread-fruit trees or brilliantly red flowering devil-trees, hibiscus, and silk-cotton. Sometimes one saw brown heaps of sweet potatoes, as large as turnips, just dug from the earth. The procession climbed through open fields of uncut sugar-cane and sorghum, getting a fine view of rolling cultivation, bordered with blue sea and white surf-swept beach. Ancient windmills swung black, droning sails on the hill-tops. Tall brick chimneys told of long-established crushing mills close to the cane fields. Cheerful villages of flimsy wooden shacks and solid stone houses followed one another in quick succession, each with its inhabitants lined up in holiday clothes to cheer. Again and again the Prince alighted to inspect boy-scouts, girl-guides, and war-workers, or to say a pleasant word to a.s.semblies of school-children. One gathering proved a community of "Red-legs," descendants, now of mixed race, of Scotch and Irish prisoners of war and "unruly men" exiled and sold for seven years as white servants to the colony in 1653. It was easy to pick out in the white-clad crowd individuals with negro features and pale Celtic skins.

Later in the day, the Prince attended a formal state dinner, and evoked a storm of applause by contradicting emphatically a rumour, which had been causing a good deal of anxiety in the island, to the effect that there was a possibility of some of the West Indies being disposed of to America. "I need hardly say," said His Royal Highness, downrightly, "that the King's subjects are not for sale to other governments. Their destiny, as free men, is in their own hands. Your future is for you yourselves to shape, and I am sure Barbados will never waver in its loyalty, three centuries old, to the British Crown."

It would thus appear that Cromwell's experiment is not likely to be developed by the present government. The a.s.surance was noteworthy as the first of the pleasant and telling things the Prince had to say during his progress, opportunities which he never missed and which, in the aggregate, enhanced so greatly the success of his mission.

III

PANAMA

At dawn, in hot, soft, hazy weather, the _Renown_, followed by the _Calcutta_, left the blue, transparent waters of the Caribbean Sea and entered the green, muddy channel, fringed with dense, verdant forest, which is the beginning of the Panama Ca.n.a.l. Three aeroplanes, each bearing the stripes of the American Air Service, droned overhead in noisy welcome. Resonant concussions and white, fleecy puffs of smoke amidst low wharves and jetties where Colon lay in the forest, spread a Royal salute upon the vibrating air. Music arose upon the _Renown_, while staff-officers arrayed themselves in gold-lace and helmets, ready to receive the Prince's guests. Launches arrived at the ship bringing the British Minister to Panama, Mr. Percy Bennett, accompanied by Captain Blake and Major-General Beth.e.l.l, respectively naval and military attaches at the British Emba.s.sy at Washington. An hour's quiet steaming, thereafter, brought us to the giant Gatun locks, which stand in three black tiers of steel, the gates rising, one above another, in a ma.s.sive setting of grey, rounded concrete, a severing gash in the high, green hill which is the Gatun dam. Here, Senor Lefevre, President of the Panama Republic, Admiral Johnston and Colonel Kennedy, commanding the American naval and military forces in the Panama Zone, also Engineer Colonel Harding, Governor of the Ca.n.a.l, and Monsieur Simonin, French Charge d'Affairs, came on board.

The formality attending these official arrivals, so often to be repeated throughout the tour, was practically always the same. The visitor who came up the gangway from the dock or the launch, as the case might be, saluted the quarter-deck--a survival this from the days when it bore a crucifix--and was saluted in turn by the Officer of the Watch, who, with his telescope tucked under his arm, conveyed the stranger past the row of marines drawn up at attention to the Captain and the Equerry in waiting, who brought him up the starboard companion to the mezzanine deck. Here he would be received by the Prince attended by his Staff. The visit seldom exceeded twenty minutes. When H.R.H. left the ship for the sh.o.r.e the Captain awaited him on the quarter-deck and conducted him past the marines presenting arms to the gangway. On these occasions the junior members of the party were the first to step off, finishing with the Admiral and last of all the Prince, both Admiral and Prince being "piped over the side" to the shrill music of the bos'n's whistle. There was as little variation about the arrival on sh.o.r.e. Always the guard-of-honour, the band, the stunting aeroplanes, always six bars of "G.o.d Save the King" and the pause at attention, always the hand-shaking with the officer commanding the guard-of-honour, the inspection, and so to the business and pleasure of the visit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PANAMA Ca.n.a.l: A SHARP CORNER]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SURF-BOARDING AT HONOLULU]

On this occasion the guard of American soldiers in white uniforms and the familiar wide-brimmed hats was drawn up upon the lawn beside the topmost lock. Thence, past some thousands of prosperous-looking employees of the Ca.n.a.l, and their families, who had turned out to see the reception, the Prince was taken to the Control House, whence the whole of the operations of the locks are regulated, from the manipulating of the little, black, towing mule-engines, which ran busily, like scarabaeid beetles, up and down rails set in concrete slopes on the top of the lock walls, to the opening and closing of the seventy-foot high gates, and the letting in and letting out of the green sluggish water.

From the veranda of the Control House we got our first striking impression of the dramatic achievement of the Ca.n.a.l. We were on the level of the wide island dotted expanse of the Gatun lake. The enormous _Renown_ and the tiny _Calcutta_ lay, side by side, in thousand-feet-long pools, at our feet, in a turmoil of waves of rushing water, out of which, from time to time, some frightened fish would leap, a silver gleam that disappeared before one had made out its shape or kind. The great design was in action before our eyes. The locks opened and closed with extraordinary speed and almost noiseless efficiency, and by the time the Prince had returned from inspecting the monster spillway and power-house, to which he was carried in a tiny train that was in readiness alongside the locks when we arrived, the _Calcutta_ was already entering the lake, while the _Renown_ had surmounted the locks and was only waiting to take on the Royal party before following in her wake.

The route thereafter lay at first through the green water of the lake, past islands covered with densest jungle. About the middle of the lake, we pa.s.sed ma.s.ses of bare tree-trunks, standing erect in the water, on either side of the broad track that is kept clear for the pa.s.sage of ships. These trees are what remain of a forest that covered the bottom of the valley before the building of the dam which converted it into a lake. The trunks, though standing in some seven fathoms of water, still keep their branches and project many feet above the surface; and have to be avoided by pa.s.sing ships. This dismal avenue has kept its place for ten years. It must have been green once. Like a forest after a great burning it stands in skeleton and carries no leaf now, a curious reminder that water can be as pitiless as fire.

In the afternoon we entered the Culebra cut. Here man has been at grips with nature in her least amiable mood. The channel becomes a winding gorge through steep, rugged crags and rounded hills. The stupendous cutting shows treacherous alternating layers of red gravel, yellow sand, brown crumpled rock, and soft, slippery blue clay. A number of mammoth floating steam dredgers were here at work, a fresh slip having occurred a few days previously. Progress, therefore, had to be of the slowest. A climax was reached near the end of the cutting, where, at a sharp curve in the channel, a whole hillside, half a mile each way, had commenced to move, the debris extending right into the ca.n.a.l, which was also impeded by a small island, apparently squeezed up from the bottom by the terrific pressure of the slipping hill. The place looked almost impossible, the great length of the _Renown_ making the manoeuvring of her in what remained of the channel one of the trickiest pieces of navigation imaginable. Naval officers are not easily put off, however, and by the most delicate handling, the vessel ultimately crawled past the obstruction. The cheerful little red-roofed township of Pedro Miguel was reached soon afterwards. Here the entire population had turned out to see the Prince, the girls in brilliant costumes, amongst which one might sometimes see the black mantilla of Spain; the men in anything, from working overalls and slouch hats, to the leisured fashions of New York. At Pedro Miguel began the slow process of descending to the level of the Pacific. The first lock dropped us some thirty feet into the picturesque lake of Miraflores, surrounded by rounded gra.s.s-grown hills, emerald in the setting sun. Two more locks followed at the end of the lake, and we entered a stretch of water at ocean level, which took us to the docks at Balboa, upon the Pacific, close to the city of Panama.