My Year of the War Part 35

Before he left the Lion Sir David had been the first to see the periscope of a German submarine in the distance, which sighted the wounded ship as inviting prey. Officers of the Lion dwelt more on the cruise home than on the battle. It was a case of being towed at five knots an hour by the Indomitable. If ever submarines had a fair chance to show what they could do it was then against that battleship at a snail's pace. But it is one thing to torpedo a merchant craft and another to get a major fighting ship, bristling with torpedo defence guns and surrounded by destroyers. The Lion reached port without further injury.

XXIX On The "Inflexible"

What Englishman, let alone an American, knows the names of even all the British Dreadnoughts? With a few exceptions, the units of the Grand Fleet seem anonymous. The Warspite was quite unknown to the fame which her sister ship the Queen Elizabeth had won. For "Lizzie" was back in the fold from the Dardanelles; and so was the Inflexible, heroine of the battle of the Falkland Islands. Of all the ships which Sir John Jellicoe had sent away on special missions, the Inflexible had had the grandest Odyssey. She, too, had been at the Dardanelles.

The Queen Elizabeth was disappointing so far as wounds went. She had been so much in the public eye that one expected to find her badly battered, and she had suffered little, indeed, for the amount of sport she had had in tossing her fifteen-inch sh.e.l.ls across the Gallipoli peninsula into the Turkish batteries and the amount of risk she had run from Turkish mines. Some of these monsters contained only eleven thousand shrapnel bullets. A strange business for a fifteen- inch naval gun to be firing shrapnel. A year ago no one could have imagined that one day the most powerful British ship, built with the single thought of overwhelming an enemy's Dreadnought, would ever be trying to force the Dardanelles.

The trouble was that she could not fire an army corps ash.o.r.e along with her sh.e.l.ls to take possession of the land after she had put batteries out of action. She had some grand target practice; she escaped the mines; she kept out of reach of the German sh.e.l.ls, and returned to report to Sir John with just enough scars to give zest to the recollection of her extraordinary adventure. All the fleet was relieved to see her back in her proper place. It is not the business of super-Dreadnoughts to be steaming around mine-fields, but to be surrounded by destroyers and light cruisers and submarines safeguarding her giant guns, which are depressed and elevated as easily as if they were drum-sticks. One had an abrasion, a tracery of dents.

"That was from a Turkish sh.e.l.l," said an officer. "And you are standing where a sh.e.l.l hit."

I looked down to see an irregular outline of fresh planking.

"An accident when we did not happen to be out of their reach. We had the range of them," he added.

"The range of them" is a great phrase. Sir Frederick Doveton St.u.r.dee used it in speaking of the battle of the Falkland Islands. "The range of them" seems a sure prescription for victory. Nothing in all the history of the war appeals to me as quite so smooth a bit of tactics as the Falkland affair. It was so smooth that it was velvety; and it is worth telling again, as I understand it. Sir Frederick is another young admiral. Otherwise, how could the British navy have entrusted him with so important a task? He is a different type from Beatty, who in an army one judges might have been in the cavalry. Along with the peculiar charm and alertness which we a.s.sociate with sailors--they imbibe it from the salt air and from meeting all kinds of weather and all kinds of men, I think--he has the quality of the scholar, with a suspicion of merriness in his eye.

He was Chief of the War Staff at the Admiralty in the early stages of the war, which means, I take it, that he a.s.sisted in planning the moves on the chessboard. It fell to him to act; to apply the strategy and tactics which he planned for others at sea while he sat at a desk.

It was his wit against von Spee's, who was not deficient in this respect. If he had been he might not have steamed into the trap. The trouble was that von Spee had some wit, but not enough. It would have been better for him if he had been as guileless as a parson.

Sir Frederick is so gentle-mannered that one would never suspect him of a "double bluff," which was what he played on von Spee. After von Spee's victory over Cradock, St.u.r.dee slipped across to the South Atlantic, without anyone knowing that he had gone, with a squadron strong enough to do unto von Spee what von Spee had done unto Cradock.

But before you wing your bird you must flush him. The thing was to find von Spee and force him to give battle; for the South Atlantic is broad and von Spee, it is supposed, was in an Emden mood and bent on reaching harbour in German South-West Africa, whence he could sally out to destroy British shipping on the Cape route. When he intercepted a British wireless message--St.u.r.dee had left off the sender's name and location--telling the plodding old Canopus seeking home or a.s.sistance before von Spee overtook her, that she would be perfectly safe in the harbour at Port William, as guns had been erected for her protection, von Spee guessed that this was a bluff, and rightly. But it was only Bluff Number One. He steamed to the Falklands with a view to finishing off the old Canopus on the way across to Africa. There he fell foul of Bluff Number Two. St.u.r.dee did not have to seek him; he came to St.u.r.dee.

There was no convenient Dogger Bank fog in that lat.i.tude to cover his flight. St.u.r.dee had the speed of von Spee and he had to fight. It was the one bit of strategy of the war which is like that of the story books and worked out as strategy always does in proper story books.

Practically the twelve-inch guns of the Inflexible and the Invincible had only to keep their distance and hang on to the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau in order to do the trick. Light-weights or middle- weights have no business trafficking with heavy-weights in naval warfare.

"Von Spee made a brave fight," said Sir Frederick, "but we kept him at a distance that suited us, without letting him get out of range."

He had had the fortune to prove an established principle in action. It was all in the course of duty, which is the way that all the officers and all the men look at their work. Only a few ships have had a chance to fight, and these are emblazoned on the public memory. But they did no better and no worse, probably, than the others would have done. If the public singles out ships, the navy does not. Whatever is done and whoever does it, why, it is to the credit of the family, according to the spirit of service that promotes uniformity of efficiency. Leaders and ships which have won renown are resolved into the whole in that harbour where the fleet is the thing; and the good opinion they most desire is that of their fellows. If they have that they will earn the public's when the test comes.

Belonging to the cla.s.s of the first of battle-cruisers is the Inflexible, which received a few taps in the Falklands and a blow that was nearly the death of her in the Dardanelles. Tribute enough for its courage-- the tribute of a chivalrous enemy--von Spee's squadron receives from the officers and men of the Inflexible, who saw them go down into the sea tinged with sunset red with their colours still flying. Then in the sunset red the British saved as many of those afloat as they could.

Those dripping German officers who had seen one of their battered turrets carried away bodily into the sea by a British twelve-inch sh.e.l.l, who had endured a fury of concussions and destruction, with steel missiles cracking steel structures into fragments, came on board the Inflexible looking for signs of some blows delivered in return for the crushing blows that had beaten their ships into the sea and saw none until they were invited into the wardroom, which was in chaos--and then they smiled.

At least, they had sent one sh.e.l.l home. The sight was sweet to them, so sweet that, in respect to the feeling of the vanquished, the victors held silence with a knightly consideration. But where had the sh.e.l.l entered? There was no sign of any hole. Then they learned that the fire of the guns of the starboard turret midships over the wardroom, which was on the port side, had deposited a great many things on the floor which did not belong there; and their expression changed. Even this comfort was taken from them.

"We had the range of you!" the British explained. The chaplain of the Inflexible was bound to have an anecdote. I don't know why, except that a chaplain's is not a fighting part and he may look on. His place was down behind the armour with the doctor, waiting for wounded. He stood in his particular steel cave listening to the tremendous blasts of her guns which shook the Inflexible's frame, and still no wounded arrived. Then he ran up a ladder to the deck and had a look around and saw the little points of the German ships with the sh.e.l.ls sweeping toward them and the smoke of explosions which burst on board them.

It was not the British who needed his prayers that day, but the Germans. Personally, I think the Germans are more in need of prayers at all times because of the d.a.m.nable way they act.

Perhaps the spirit of the Inflexible's story was best given by a midshipman with the down still on his cheek. Considering how young the British take their officer-beginners to sea, the admirals are not young, at least, in point of sea service. He got more out of the action than his elders; his impressions of the long cruises and the actions had the vividness of boyhood. Down in one of the caves, doing his part as the sh.e.l.ls were sent up to feed the thundering guns above, the whispered news of the progress of battle was pa.s.sed on at intervals till, finally, the guns were silent. Then he hurried on deck in the elation of victory, succeeded by the desire to save those whom they had fought. It had all been so simple; so like drill. You had only to go on shooting--that was all.

Yes, he had been lucky. From the Falklands to the Dardanelles, which was a more picturesque business than the battle. Any minute off the Straits you did not know but a submarine would have a try at you or you might b.u.mp into a mine. And the Inflexible did b.u.mp into one. She had two thousand tons of water on board. It was fast work to keep the remainder of the sea from coming in, too, and the same kind of dramatic experience as the Lion's in reaching port. Yes, he had been very lucky. It was all a lark to that boy.

"It never occurs to midshipmen to be afraid of anything," said one of the officers. "The more danger, the better they like it."

In the wardroom was a piece of the mine or the torpedo, whichever it was, that struck the Inflexible; a strange, twisted, annealed bit of metal. Every ship which had been in action had some souvenir which the enemy had sent on board in anger and which was preserved with a collector's enthusiasm.

The Inflexible seemed as good as ever she was. Such is the way of naval warfare. Either it is to the bottom of the sea or to dry docks and repairs. There is nothing half-way. So it is well to take care that you have "the range of them."

x.x.x On The Fleet Flagship

Thus far we have skirted around the heart of things, which in a fleet is always the Commander-in-Chief's flagship. Our handy, agile destroyer ran alongside a battleship with as much nonchalance as she would go alongside a pier. I should not have been surprised to see her pirouette over the hills or take to flying.

There was a time when those majestic and pampered ladies, the battleships--particularly if there were a sea running as in this harbour at the time--having in mind the pride of paint, begged all destroyers to keep off with the superciliousness of grandes dames holding their skirts aloof from contact with nimble, audacious street gamins, who dodged in and out of the traffic of muddy streets. But destroyers have learned better manners, perhaps, and battleships have been democratized. It is the day of Russian dancers and when aeroplanes loop the loop, and we have grown used to all kinds of marvels.

But the sea has refused to be trained. It is the same old sea that it was in Columbus' time, without any loss of trickiness in b.u.mping small craft against towering sides. The way that this destroyer slid up to the flagship without any fuss and the way her bluejackets held her off from the paint, as she rose on the crests and slipped back into the trough, did not tell the whole story. A part of it was how, at the right interval, they a.s.sisted the landlubber to step from gunwale to gangway, making him feel perfectly safe when he would have been perfectly helpless but for them.

I had often watched our own bluejackets at the same thing. They did not grin--not when you were looking at them. Nor did the British.

Bluejackets are noted for their official politeness. I should like to have heard their remarks--they have a gift for remarks--about those invaders of their uniformed world in Scottish caps and other kinds of caps and the different kinds of clothes which tailors make for civilians.

Without any intention of eavesdropping, I did overhear one asking another whence came these strange birds.

You knew the flagship by the admirals' barges astern, as you know the location of an army headquarters by its motor-cars. It seemed in the centre of the fleet at anchor, if that is a nautical expression.

Where its place would be in action is one of those secrets as important to the enemy as the location of a general's sh.e.l.l-proof shelter in Flanders. Perhaps Sir John Jellicoe may be on some other ship in battle. If there is any one foolish question which you should not ask it is this.

As you mounted the gangway of this mighty super-Dreadnought you were bound to think--at least, an American was--of another flagship in Portsmouth harbour, Nelson's Victory. Probably an Englishman would not indulge in such a commonplace. I would like to know how many Englishmen had ever seen the old Victory. But then, how many Americans have been to Mount Vernon and Gettysburg?

It was a hundred years, one repeats, since the British had fought a first-cla.s.s naval war. Nelson did his part so well that he did not leave any fighting to be done by his successors. Maintaining herself as mistress of the seas by the threat of superior strength--except in the late 'fifties, when the French innovation of iron ships gave France a temporary lead on paper--ship after ship, through all the grades of progress in naval construction, has gone to the sc.r.a.p heap without firing a shot in anger. The Victory was one landmark, or seamark, if you please, and this flagship was another. Between the two were generations of officers and men, working through the change from stagecoach to motors and aeroplanes and seaplanes, who had kept up to a standard of efficiency in view of a test that never came. A year of war and still the test had not come, for the old reason that England had superior strength. Her outnumbering guns which had kept the peace of the seas still kept it. All second nature to the Englishman this, as the defence of the immense distances of the steppes to the Russian or the Rocky Mountain wall and the Mississippi's flow to the man in Kansas. But the American kept thinking about it; and he wanted the Kansans to think about it, too. When he was about to meet Sir John Jellicoe he envisaged the tall column in Trafalgar Square, surmounted by the one-armed figure turned toward the wireless skein on top of the Admiralty building.

I first heard of Jellicoe fifteen years ago when he was Chief of Staff to Sir Edward Seymour, then Commander-in-Chief of the Asiatic Squadron. Indeed, you were always hearing about Jellicoe in those days on the China coast. He was the kind of man whom people talk about after they have met him, which means personality. It was in China seas, you may remember, that when a few British seamen were hard pressed in a fight that was not ours the phrase, "Blood is thicker than water," sprang from the lips of an American commander, who waited not on international etiquette but went to the a.s.sistance of the British.

Nor will anyone who was present in the summer of '98 forget how Sir Edward Chichester stood loyally by Admiral George Dewey, when the German squadron was empire-fishing in the waters of Manila Bay, until our Atlantic fleet had won the battle of Santiago and Admiral Dewey had received reinforcements and, east and west, we were able to look after the Germans. The British bluejackets said that the rations of frozen mutton from Australia which we sent alongside were excellent; but the Germans were in no position to judge, doubtless through an oversight in the detail of hospitality by one of Admiral Dewey's staff. Let us be officially correct and say there was no mutton to spare after the British had been supplied.

In the gallant effort of the Allied force of sailors to relieve the legations against some hundreds of thousands of Boxers, Captain Bowman McCalla and his Americans worked with Admiral Seymour and his Britons in the most trying and picturesque adventure of its kind in modern history. McCalla, too, was always talking of Jellicoe, who was wounded on the expedition; and Sir John's face lighted at mention of McCalla's name. He recalled how McCalla had painted on the superstructure of the little Newark that saying of Farragut's, "The best protection against an enemy's fire is a well-directed fire of your own"; which has been said in other ways and cannot be said too often.

"We called McCalla Mr. Lead," said Sir John; "he had been wounded so many times and yet was able to hobble along and keep on fighting. We corresponded regularly until his death."

Beatty, too, was on that expedition; and he, too, was another personality one kept hearing about. It seemed odd that two men who had played a part in work which was a soldier's far from home should have become so conspicuous in the Great War. If on that day when, with ammunition exhausted, all members of the expedition had given up hope of ever returning alive, they had not accidentally come upon the Shi-kou a.r.s.enal, one would not be commanding the Grand Fleet and the other its battle-cruiser squadron.

Before the war, I am told, when Admiralty Lords and others who had the decision to make were discussing who should command in case of war, opinion ran something like this: "Jellicoe! He has the brains."

"Jellicoe! He has the health to endure the strain, with years enough and not too many." "Jellicoe! He has the confidence of the service."

The choice literally made itself. When anyone is undertaking the gravest responsibility which has been an Englishman's for a hundred years, this kind of a recommendation helps. He had the guns; he had supreme command; he must deliver victory--such was England's message to him.

When I mentioned in a dispatch that all that differentiated him from the officers around him was the broader band of gold lace on his arm, an English naval critic wanted to know if I expected to find him in cloth of gold. No; nor in full dress with all his medals on, as I saw him appear on the screen at a theatre in London.

Any general of high command must be surrounded by more pomp than an admiral in time of action. A headquarters cannot have the simplicity of the quarter-deck. The force which the general commands is not in sight; the admiral's is. You saw the commander and you saw what it was that he commanded. Within the sweep of vision from the quarter-deck was the terrific power which the man with the broad gold band on his arm directed. At a signal from him it would move or it would stand still. That command of Joshua's if given by Sir John one thought might have been obeyed.

One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred twelve-inch guns and larger, which could carry two hundred tons of metal in a single broadside for a distance of eighteen thousand yards! But do not forget the little guns, bristling under the big guns like needles from a cushion, which would keep off the torpedo a.s.sa.s.sins; or the light cruisers, or the colliers, or the destroyers, or the 2,300 trawlers and mine-layers, and what not, all under his direction. He had submarines, too, double the number of the German. But with all the German men-of-war in harbour, they had no targets. Where were they? You did not ask questions which would not be answered. The whole British fleet was waiting for the Germans to show their heads, while cruisers were abroad scouting in the North Sea.