Sea-Hounds Part 14

A flush spread under his "submarine pallor" at that broadside, but he admitted, with an embarra.s.sed grin, that his name was Bailey, and that his decoration was awarded for something or other in connection with the last fight of the _Mary Rose_, though for just what he had never quite been able to figure out. In the hour we leaned over the forecastle rail and watched the North Sea fog-bank roll up the estuary with the incoming tide, this is the account he gave me of the things which he himself saw of what is perhaps the most gallantly tragic of all the naval actions of the war.

"They hadn't got convoying at that time down to the system it is carried on under now," he began, by way of explanation, "and the only fighting ships with this one were the _Mary Rose_ and _Strongbow_. The _Mary_ was of the same cla.s.s as the 'M ...' over there, very large and fast and well armed for a destroyer, but never, of course, built for anything like a give-and-take fight with any kind of a cruiser.

"There was also an armed trawler somewhere about, but it had no chance to do anything but pick up survivors. We were an anti-submarine escort, nothing more, and were not intended to stand off surface raiders. Of course provision was made against these, too, but--well, when you consider the size of the North Sea and the length and blackness of the winter nights, the only wonder is that the Huns can't buck up their nerve to trying for a convoy twice a week instead of twice a year.

"We had escorted the north-bound convoy across to Bergen, and, on the afternoon of the 16th of October, had picked up the south-bound and headed back for one of the home ports. Escorting even a squadron of warships which know how to keep station is no picnic for destroyers, but with merchantmen it is a dozen times worse. It is bad enough even now, but a year ago, before these little packets had had much experience, it was enough to drive a man crazy. Between the faster ships trying to push on, and the slower ones falling astern, and breakdowns, and the chance of trickery, it was one continual round of worry from the time we left Base to our return.

"This time was no exception to the rule, even before the big smash. One of the Swedes--there were Norwegian and Danish as well as Swedish ships in the convoy, but we called them all 'Swedes,' probably because it was shorter and easier to say than Scandinavian--well, one of the Swedes shifted cargo along about dark of the 16th, with the result that the slower ships, and this included most of the convoy, lagged back, while several of the faster ones kept on.

"I don't know whether this was done by order, or whether it just happened. Anyhow, the _Strongbow_ remained behind with the slower section, while the _Mary Rose_ pushed on as an escort for the faster. It was the first lot--the main convoy--that the raiders attacked first, but just what happened I did not see, for we had drawn a long way ahead of them in the course of the night.

"When I came up to stand my watch as anti-submarine lookout, on the after searchlight platform, at four in the morning of the 17th, I remember that it was cloudy and thick overhead, but with very fair visibility on the water. We were steaming along comfortably with two boilers, which gave us a big margin of speed over everything needed to cut our zigzags round the comparatively slow packets we were escorting.

The sea was rough but almost dead astern, so that it made little trouble--for the moment, that is. We had enough of it a little later.

"Along toward six o'clock the visibility began to extend as it grew lighter, but there was no sign of the main convoy when, at exactly five-fifty, I sighted flashes of light fluttering along the northern horizon. Although my ears caught no sound but the throb of the engines and the churning of the screws, I had no doubt they were from gun-fire, and reported them at once by voice-pipe to the Officer of the Watch--it was Gunner T., if I remember right--on the bridge. The captain was called, and must have concluded the same, for he at once ordered her put about and sounded 'Action Stations.' That took me to the foremost torpedo tubes, where my station was on the seat between the tubes, with the voice-pipe gear fitted to my ears. Most of what followed I saw from there.

"In some of the published accounts of the action it was stated that the captain of the _Mary Rose_ thought that the flashes he saw were from the gun of a submarine sh.e.l.ling the convoy, so that when he turned back it was with the expectation of meeting a U-boat rather than powerful raiding cruisers. I don't know anything definite on this score, of course, as I only heard the captain speak once or twice (and then to give orders) before he went down with his ship, but I don't think it could possibly have been true. There is a sort of fluttering ripple to the flash of a salvo that you can't possibly mistake for that of the discharge of a single gun, and the flashes which we continued to see for some time were plainly those of salvo answering salvo. The flashes from the mingled salvoes of the heavy guns of the Hun raiders could not have been confused with those from the few light guns of the _Strongbow_ any more than these could have been taken to come from the single gun of a U-boat. Everything pointed to just what we learned had taken place--a cruiser raid on the convoy. There was nothing in the flashes to suggest a submarine was firing, and I can't see how the captain could have had any such impression. It was enough for him--yes, and for all of us--to know that our consort was in trouble, and I shall always think that he turned back to help the _Strongbow_ with the full knowledge that he would have to face hopeless odds. He was a proper gentleman, was Captain Fox, and so there was nothing else that he _could_ have done; and, what's more, there's nothing else that we men in the _Mary Rose_--or any other British sailors, for that matter--would have had him do. It would have been against all the traditions of the Navy to have done anything else but stick by a consort to the last."

Able Seaman Bailey smote resoundingly the hollow palm of his left hand with the fist of his right as he spoke those last words, and then, in a quieter voice, took up the thread of the story again.

"That turn through sixteen points brought the seas, which we had been running before all night, right ahead, and all in a minute she was being swept fore-and-aft by every second or third of them. Anxious as the captain was to drive her full speed (which would have been a pretty terrific gait, let me tell you, for the 'Ms' are very fast), it was no use.

"Plates and rivets simply wouldn't stand the strain of the green water that anything like full speed would have bored her into, and she was finally slowed down to about twenty knots as the best she could do without flooding the decks and making it impossible to serve the guns and torpedo tubes. As she was good for a lot more than this with two boilers, I doubt very much if the third was ever 'flashed up.'

"The first I saw of the ships which turned out to be the enemy was some masts and funnels to the north'ard and about a couple of points on the starboard bow. They were making very little smoke, probably because they were oil-burners. As we were steering on practically opposite courses, we closed each other very quickly, and they must have been about four miles off when the captain, evidently becoming suspicious of their appearance, challenged. As there was no reply, fire was opened immediately afterward by the foremost gun, the course at the same time being altered a point or two to starboard, so that the other two guns would bear. The rest of our firing was, I think, by salvoes, or rather, it was until all but the after gun were knocked out by the Hun's sh.e.l.ls.

"Our first shots, fired at about 7,000 yards, were short; but as the salvoes which followed began to fall closer to their targets, I saw the Huns alter to a course more or less parallel to ours, but plainly veering away so as to open out the range. This gave me the first silhouette view I had, and I did not need a gla.s.s to recognize them at once as German, the three straight funnels and the 'swan' bows being quite unmistakable. Some of our shots fell close, but I saw nothing I could be certain of calling a hit.

"However, I knew that it was not the guns the captain was counting on, but that he was trying to close to a range and bearing that might offer a chance to get home with a torpedo.

"Why the Huns did not open fire before they did I have never quite been able to figure out, unless it was that they hoped to avoid an action and so be free to pursue and sink the leading ships of the convoy--the faster ones the _Mary Rose_ had been escorting--without interference. If that is so, Captain Fox's sacrifice was not in vain, for all of these ships escaped destruction and reached port in safety. Even as it was, they had no stomach for an action at any range close enough to give us any chance to damage them either with gun-fire or torpedoes. Their plan--proper enough in its way, I suppose--was simply to pound us to pieces with the sh.e.l.ls of their powerful long-range guns, and not to close to finish us off until all our guns and torpedo tubes were out of action. As one good salvo from either of them was more than enough to do the job, there wasn't much hope of our getting in close enough to do them serious harm. It was a bold bid the captain made for it, though.

"The course we were now on brought the seas more abeam than ahead, so that we had been able to shake out several more knots of speed, and this the captain tried to use to shorten the range. We were actually closing them at a good rate (though I wouldn't go so far as to say they were putting on all their speed to avoid it), when the Huns began firing their ranging shots. By this time we had reached a position from which there was a very fair bearing to launch a mouldie, and we were busy getting one ready to slip while the fall of shot came bounding nearer and nearer to us. I remember, in a vague sort of way, that the first salvo was short by a long way, that the second was much nearer, and that the third, closely bunched and exploding loudly on striking the sea, threw up smoke-stained spouts which fell back into each other to form a wall of water which completely blotted out the enemy for a second or two. Then we turned loose the torpedo, and at almost the same instant two or three sh.e.l.ls from a 'straddling' salvo hit fair and square and just about lifted the poor little _Mary_ out of the water.

"All in a second the ship seemed to disappear in clouds of smoke and escaping steam, and it is only natural that my recollections of the order in which things happened after that are a good deal confused.

"I seem to have some memory of receiving from the bridge the order to fire that torpedo, but if that was so, it was the last order I did receive from there, for the explosion of one of the sh.e.l.ls carried the voice-pipe away (though I did not twig it at the time), and from then on it was mostly the sizzle of spurting steam that came to my ears.

"There are two reasons why I know that first salvo hit us _after_ the torpedo was launched, though there could not have been more than a fraction of a second between one and the other. The first is that one of the sh.e.l.ls carried away the lip of the tube before penetrating the deck and cutting a steam-pipe. If the mouldie had been in the tube it could not have missed being exploded; or, if by a miracle that had not happened, the tube was so much buckled that it could not have been operated. The second reason was that fragments from that sh.e.l.l, besides wounding me in the leg, even killed or blew overboard the rest of the crew, so that there would have been no one to get a mouldie away even if the tubes had been in working order. I remember distinctly seeing the torpedo hit the water, but I have no recollection of seeing it steady to depth and begin to run. As that is the main thing you always watch for, I can only account for the fact I did not see it by supposing that first hit came before the torpedo began to run.

"The shock of the explosion did not knock me off my seat, and a wound from a jagged piece of sh.e.l.l casing, though it was serious enough to put me out of commission for five months, felt only like a sharp p.r.i.c.k on my leg. My pal, Able Seaman French, collapsed in a limp heap under the tubes, and though I saw no blood or signs of a wound, and though I never saw a man killed before, I knew he was done for. I don't know to this day where he was. .h.i.t. The man whose station was at the breech-blocks I never saw again, living or dead, so I think he must have caught the unbroken force of the explosion and been blown back right over the starboard side.

"This sh.e.l.l, in bursting the main steam-pipe, probably had the most to do with bringing us to stop, though another (I think of the same salvo) exploded in Number Three boiler-room and started a big fire, probably from the oil. The clouds of black smoke and steam rising 'midships made it impossible to see what was going on there. I saw some of the crew of the 'midships gun struggling in the water, and took it that they must have been blown there.

"That gun was out of action, anyway, and, because I did not hear it firing, I a.s.sumed that the foremost one had also gone wrong. The after gun was firing for all it was worth, though, and continued to do so right up to the end.

"That one salvo pretty well finished the _Mary Rose_ as a fighting ship, and as soon as the Huns saw the shape we were in, they began to close, firing as they came. But even then they were careful to choose a direction of approach on which the after gun could not be brought to bear. With the foremost tubes out of action, and no crew to serve them in any case, there was nothing for me to do but sit tight and wait for orders. So I just chucked my head-gear, which was no longer of use with the voice-pipes gone, and settled back in my seat to watch the show and wait till I was wanted. There was really nothing to stay there for, but it was my 'Action Station,' and I knew it was the place I would be looked for if I was needed. On the score of cover, one place is as good an another--in a destroyer, anyhow.

"It must have been the fact that the after gun was the only one still in action that brought the captain back from the bridge. There was really nothing to keep him on the bridge, anyway. He seemed to be making a sort of general round, trying to see what shape things were in and bucking everybody up. He was as cool and cheery as if it was an ordinary target practice, with no Hun cruisers closing in to blow us out of the water. I saw him clapping some of the after gun's crew on the back, and when he came along to the foremost tubes, not noticing probably that I was the only one left there, he sung out: 'Stick it, lads; we're not done yet.' Those were his exact words. I remember grinning to myself at being called 'lads.'

"But we _were_ done, even then. The Huns were inside of a mile by now, and firing for the water-line, evidently trying to put us down just as quickly as they could.

"All their misses were 'shorts.' I don't remember a single 'over.' They were still taking no unnecessary chances. As soon as they were close enough to see that our torpedo tubes were probably jammed to port, they altered course and crossed our bows and steamed past the other side, where there was no chance of our slipping over a mouldie at them.

"We were already settling rapidly, with a heavy list to port, and as soon as the captain saw she was finished, he gave the order: 'Abandon ship. Every man for himself!' Those were the last words I heard him speak. He went below just after that to see about ditching the secret books, I believe, and when I saw him again it was just before she sank, and he was pacing the quarterdeck and talking quietly with the First Lieutenant.

"As our only boat had been smashed to kindling-wood, there was nothing to it but to take to the Carley Floats, and the first thing I did after hearing the order to abandon ship was to see to cutting one of these loose. On account of our oilskins and life-preservers, neither myself nor any of the three or four lads from the after gun's crew that ran to the float with me could get at our clasp-knives. Luckily, one of the Ward Room stewards came to the rescue with three silver-plated b.u.t.ter-knives from the pantry, and with these we finally managed to worry our way through the lashings. Then we pitched the little webbed 'dough-nut' (as the Carley Floats are called) over the settling stern and jumped after it. Four or five minutes later, after heeling slowly to port through fifty or sixty degrees, she gave a sudden lurch and went down, turning completely over as she sank, so that her bottom showed for a few seconds. The captain, who could have followed us just as well as not, seemed to make no effort to save himself, and must have gone down with her. I can't help believing that was the way he wanted it to happen.

"We had clambered into the float as fast as we could, and I think some one must have said something about the danger of being caught over an exploding depth-charge, for we were paddling (all of these floats have short-handled paddles lashed to their webbing) away from the ship as fast as we could when she went down. Someone remembered that one of the 'ash cans' had been set on the 'ready' when we went to 'Action Stations,' and no one recalled seeing it thrown back to 'safe' before we went overboard. It was an anxious moment, waiting after she ducked under the sea, for we had not been able to paddle more than a hundred yards, and the detonation of a depth-charge had been known to paralyse men swimming in the water at twice that distance. Luckily, this particular charge must have been set for a considerable depth, and it is also possible that the hull of the ship absorbed or deflected some of its force. At any rate, the shock of it, when it came, though it knocked us violently against each other and left a tingling sensation on the skin of all the submerged part of one's body, did not do anyone serious injury.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE CAME BOWLING ALONG UNDER SAIL]

"When we came to count noses, there turned out to be eight of us on the float--two sub-lieutenants, the captain's steward, myself, and the remnants of the crew of the after gun. A few minutes later we sighted a couple of men who looked to be struggling in the water, but turned out to be supporting themselves on a fragment of 'dough-nut,' which had broken loose when the ship sank. That, strange to say, was the only bit of wreckage that came to the surface. We took these men aboard, and the ten of us weighted the overloaded float so that is submerged till the water reached our armpits. We were a good deal better off than it would seem, though, for the most of us were heavily dressed, and the animal heat of a man keeps him warm for a long time under oilskins and wool. The only ones that suffered much were a couple of lads who didn't have any more sense than to ditch most of their togs before they went over the side. They said it was so as not to be hampered in swimming--as if they expected to do the 'Australian crawl' to Norway or the Shetlands! These two _did_ begin to get a bit down-hearted and 'shivery'

when the cold struck into the marrow of their bones, and it was with the idea of bucking them up a peg or two that we started singing. No, I don't just remember all that we did warble, except, I'm glad to say, that 'Tipperary' wasn't on the programme, and that this did include two or three hymns. You're quite right. There's nothing very warming to a chilled man in hymns, and I'm not trying to account for why we sang them. The fact remains that we _did_, just the same, and that we all, including the chaps in their underclothes, lived to sing again.

"There was a bit of a disappointment when an armed trawler, which was evidently searching for survivors, pa.s.sed within a mile without sighting us or hearing our shouts, but with the life-boat of one of the sunk Norwegian steamers we had better luck. She came bowling along under sail about ten o'clock in the morning, and, on sighting the black silk handkerchief we hoisted at the end of a paddle-blade, eased off her sheet and stood over to pick us up. As there were only six men in her, we were not badly off for room, while the store of biscuit and potted stuff--to say nothing of smokes--they had managed to throw aboard before their ship sunk was more than enough for the two days that it took us to row and sail to Bergen."

CHAPTER XIII

ROUNDING UP FRITZ

There are only two or three conditions under which a destroyer can hope to surprise a U-boat on the surface, and none of these is approximated at the end of a clear North Sea summer afternoon with the stalking craft trying to approach from a direction which silhouettes its leanly purposeful profile against the golden glimmer of the sunset clouds. This particular capsule of Kultur, rising with typical Hunnish effrontery for his evening const.i.tutional in an especially well-watched area while it was yet broad daylight, still had the advantage of visibility sufficiently on his side to make the thing a good deal less risky than it looked. The skipper, doubtless coolly puffing his pipe as he lounged over the rail of the bridge and filled his lungs with fresh air, must have seen the masts and funnels of the speeding _Flash_ for a good half hour before the latter's look-out sang out that he had picked up the conning-tower of what looked to be a U-boat two points off the starboard bow; so that all that was needed was the change of course which followed that report to give Fritz fair warning that it was time to hide his head for a while. Indeed, he must have been going down even as he was sighted, for it was the matter of but a very few seconds more before the _Flash_ found herself tearing at upwards of a thousand yards a minute into an empty sea.

Under the circ.u.mstances, it is probable we gave that Fritz a fairly good run for his money in showering the spot where he had disappeared with what depth-charges we could spare, and then, like a fox-terrier after a rat, standing by and "watching the hole." Unluckily, we had used a good part of our stock of "cans" the day before, when a rather more promising opportunity for attack had offered itself, while as for "watching the hole," this particular patch of the North Sea chanced to be one in which that way of playing the game was fraught with special difficulties because it was sufficiently shallow for a submarine to lie doggo on the bottom without danger of having its sh.e.l.l crushed in by the pressure of the water. This defeated the uncannily sure way of tracking the U-boat down by "listening," and demanded another form of special treatment, which we were not, however, at the moment prepared to administer.

Slim as the chance was, the captain was reluctant to leave while any hope remained, and it was only a signal ordering the _Flash_ to join in some other work that had turned up (a destroyer is subject to as many kinds of summons as a country doctor) that took him off in the end.

Mooring a buoy to mark the spot for "future reference," the captain saw her headed off on the course she was to hold till daybreak, and then took me down to the Chart House for a bowl of ship's cocoa before turning in. It was some question I asked about the practice of placing buoys over possible U-boat graveyards, to make it easy to resume investigations if desired, that started him on a train of anti-submarine reminiscence that led back to one of the smartest achievements of its kind in the whole course of the sea war.

"There are times," he said, leaning back on the narrow couch that served as his "sea-bed," and bracing with outstretched legs against the twisting roll, "that a Fritz will do things that would lead a superficial observer to think that he had a sense of humour. Of course, we know that he hasn't anything of the kind (any more than he has honour, sportsmanship, decency, or any other of the attributes of a normal civilised human being). But the illusion is there just the same, especially when he tries on such little stunts as the one he incubated a couple of months ago in connection with a buoy I dropped to mark the spot where there was a chance that my depth-charges might have sent him to the bottom.

"It was just about such an 'indeterminate' sort of a strafe as the one we've just had--no chance for gun-fire, not much to go by for planting depth-charges, and, in the end, nothing definite to indicate that any good has been done. So, in case it was decided that my report was of a nature to justify further looking into, I left a securely moored buoy to furnish a guide as to where to begin, quite as we have to-night. Well, it chanced that the S.N.O. at Base reckoned that there was just enough of a hope to warrant following up. Indeed, you may be sure there isn't much that isn't followed up these days, now that we've got our whole comprehensive plan into operation and adequate craft to support it with.

So he sent out quite a little fleet of us--craft fitted to do all the various little odds and ends of things that help to make sure one way or the other what has really happened to Fritz. Luckily, _Flash_ was able to return with them. If she had not--if someone who had not seen the lay of things after the strafe the night before had not been along to 'draw comparisons'--Fritz's little joke might have turned out a good deal more pointed than it did.

"We picked up the buoy without any difficulty, as the day was fine and the sea fairly smooth--just the weather one wanted for that kind of work. While we were still a mile or more distant, the lookout reported a broad patch of oil spreading out from the buoy for several hundred yards on all sides. This became visible from the bridge presently, and at almost the same time my gla.s.s showed fragments of what appeared to be wreckage floating both in and beyond the 'sleek' of oil. Now if there had been any evidence whatever of either oil or wreckage the night before I should not have failed to hail this morning's exhibit with a glad whoop and nose right in to investigate. But as, when I gave up the fight, I had dropped that buoy into an extremely clean patch of water--even after the stirring my depth-charges had given it--the plenitude of flotsam did not fail to arouse a certain amount of suspicion.

"Ordering the sloops and trawlers to stand-off-and-on at a safe distance, I went with the _Flash_ to have a look at a number of fragments that were floating a couple of cables' lengths away from the buoy. A piece of box--evidently a preserved fruit or condensed milk case--with German letters stencilled across one end was undoubtedly of enemy origin, as was also a biscuit tin with patches of its gaudy paper still adhering to it. I did not like the careful way the cover of the latter had been put on, however, and, besides, tins and cases are quite the sort of thing any submarine throws over just as fast as it is through with them. It was some real wreckage I was looking for, and this it presently appeared that I had found when the bow wave threw aside a deeply floating fragment of what--even before we picked it up--I recognised as newly split teak. Closer inspection revealed the fact that it was newly split all right, but also the fact that an axe or hatchet had had a good deal to do with the splitting. What had probably been a part of a bunk or locker had apparently been prised off with a bar and then chopped up into jagged strips. Attempts to obliterate the marks of bar and axe by pounding them against some rough metal surface had been too hasty and crude to effect their purpose.

"'That settles it,' I said to myself. 'Fritz is trying to play a little joke on us by making us think he is lying blown-up on the bottom, while, in fact, he is probably lying off somewhere waiting to slip a slug into one of the most likely looking of the salvage ships. Now that we've twigged the game, however, we'll have to do what we can to defeat it.'

As senior officer, I ordered the three destroyers present to start screening in widening circles, while--on the off-chance that there really was a wreck on the bottom--a pair of trawlers were sent to drag about the bottom under the messy patch with an 'explosive sweep.'

"My diagnosis was quite correct as far as it went, but it did not go quite far enough; still--by the special intervention of the sweet little cherubim who sits up aloft to keep watch o'er the life of poor Jack--my plan of operation was quite as sound as if I had all the facts of the case spread out before me. Had the U-boat really been lurking round waiting for a pot at some of the ships trying to save his supposed remains--something that we never gathered any definite evidence on--our screening tactics would probably have prevented his success; while the trawlers, with their sweep, furnished the best antidote for the little surprise party that he already _had_ prepared for us.