The Conquest of America Part 11

In a flash my newspaper sense made me realise that this was an extraordinary opportunity. The greatest naval battle in history was about to be fought so near us that we might almost hear the big guns booming.

It would be worth thousands of pounds to the London _Times_ to have an eye-witness account of this battle, and I resolved to turn the island of Jamaica upside down in search of an aeroplane that would take me out to sea.

The fates were certainly kind to me--or rather the British Consul was efficient; and before night I had secured the use of a powerful Burgess-Dunne aeroboat, the property of Vincent Astor; also Mr. Astor's skilful services as pilot, which he generously offered through his interest in naval affairs and because of his desire to give the world this first account of a sea battle observed from the sky.

We started the next morning, an hour after sunrise, flying to the north straight across the island of Jamaica, and then out over the open sea. I shall never forget the beauty of the scene that we looked down upon--the tropical flowers and verdure of the rugged island, and the calmly smiling purple waters surrounding it. We flew swiftly through the delicious air at a height of half a mile, and in two hours we had covered a third of the distance to Guantanamo and were out of sight of land.

At ten o'clock we turned to the right and steered for a column of smoke that had appeared on the far horizon; and at half-past ten we were circling over the American fleet as it steamed ahead slowly with fires under all boilers and everything ready for full speed at an instant's notice.

As we approached the huge super-dreadnought _Pennsylvania_, flag-ship of the American squadron, Mr. Astor unfurled the Stars and Stripes, and we could hear the crews cheering as they waved back their greetings.

I should explain that we were able to converse easily, above the roar of our propellers, by talking into telephone head-pieces.

"Look!" cried Astor. "Our ships are beginning a manoeuvre."

The _Pennsylvania_, with red-and-white flags on her foremast, was signalling to the fleet: "Prepare to engage the enemy." We watched eagerly as the great ships, stretching away for miles, turned slightly to starboard and, with quickened engines, advanced in one long line of battle.

At half-past eleven another smoke column appeared on our port bow, and within half an hour we could make out enemy vessels on either hand.

"They're coming on in two divisions, miles apart," said Astor, studying the two smoke columns with his gla.s.ses. "We're headed right between them."

We flew ahead rapidly, and presently could clearly discern that the vessels to starboard were large battleships and those to port were destroyers.

At one o'clock the two fleets were about nineteen thousand yards apart and were jockeying for positions. Suddenly four vessels detached themselves from the German battleship line and steamed at high speed across the head of the American column.

"What's that? What are they doing?" asked Astor.

"Trying to cap our line and torpedo it. Admiral Togo did the same thing against the Russians in the Yellow Sea. Admiral Fletcher is swinging his line to port to block that move."

"How do they know which way to manoeuvre? I don't see any signals."

"It's done by radio from ship to ship. Look! They are forcing us to head more to port. That gives them the advantage of sunlight. Ah!"

I pointed to the German line, where several puffs of smoke showed that they had begun firing. Ten seconds later great geyser splashes rose from the sea five hundred yards beyond the _Pennsylvania,_ and then we heard the dull booming of the discharge. The battle had begun. I glanced at my watch. It was half-past one.

_Boom! Boom! Boom!_ spoke the big German guns eight miles away; but we always saw the splashes before we heard the sounds. Sometimes we could see the twelve-inch sh.e.l.ls curving through the air--big, black, clumsy fellows.

Awe-struck, from our aeroplane, Astor and I looked down upon the American dreadnoughts as they answered the enemy in kind, a whole line thundering forth salvos that made the big guns flame out like monster torches, dull red in rolling white clouds of smokeless powder. We could see the tense faces of those brave men in the fire-control tops.

"See that!" I cried, as a sh.e.l.l struck so close to the _Arizona_, second in line, that the "spotting" officers on the fire-control platform high on her foremast were drenched with salt water.

I can give here only the main features of this great battle of the Caribbean, which lasted five hours and a quarter and covered a water area about thirty miles long and twenty miles wide. My plan of it, drawn with red and black lines to represent movements of rival fleets, is a tangle of loops and curves.

"Do you think there is any chance that it will be a drawn game?" said Astor, pale with excitement.

"No," I answered. "A battle like this is never a drawn game. It's always a fight to a finish."

Our aeroboat behaved splendidly, in spite of a freshening trade-wind breeze, and we circled lower for a better view of the battle which now grew in fierceness as the fleets came to closer quarters. At one time we dropped to within two thousand feet of the sea before Astor remembered that our American flag made a tempting target for the German guns and steered to a higher level.

"They don't seem to fire at us, do they? I suppose they think we aren't worth bothering with," he laughed.

As a matter of fact, not a single shot was fired at us during the entire engagement.

I must say a word here regarding an adroit German manoeuvre early in the battle by which the invaders turned an apparent inferiority in submarines into a distinct advantage. The American fleet had thirty submarines (these had been towed painfully around South America) while the Germans had only five, but these five were large and speedy, built to travel with the fleet under their own power and not fall behind. The thirty American submarines, on the other hand, could not make over twelve knots an hour.

Consequently, when the German line suddenly quickened its pace to twenty-five knots, Admiral Fletcher had to choose between abandoning his underwater craft and allowing his fleet to be capped by the enemy; that is, exposed to a raking fire with great danger from torpedoes. He decided to abandon his submarines (all but one that had the necessary speed) and thus he lost whatever a.s.sistance these vessels might have rendered, and was obliged to fight with a single submarine against five, instead of with thirty against five.

When I explained this manoeuvre to Mr. Astor he asked the natural question why Admiral Fletcher had not foreseen this unfortunate issue and left his burdensome submarines at Panama. I pointed out that these thirty vessels had cost half a million dollars apiece and it was the admiral's duty to take care of them. It naturally was not his fault if Congress had failed to give him submarines that were large enough and swift enough for efficient fighting with the fleet.

Meantime the battle was booming on in two widely separated areas, the battleships in one, the destroyers in the other.

Mr. Astor had held the wheel for five hours and, at my suggestion, he retired to the comfortable little cabin and lay down for fifteen minutes, leaving the aeroboat to soar in great slow circles under its admirable automatic controls over the main battle area. When he returned he brought hot coffee in a silver thermos bottle and some sandwiches, and we ate these with keen relish, in spite of the battle beneath us.

The dreadnoughts had now closed in to eight thousand yards and the battle was at the height of its fury, making a continuous roar, and forming five miles of flaming tongues in a double line, darting out their messages of hate and death.

As the afternoon wore on the wind strengthened from the northeast and I realised the disadvantage of the American ships indicated by Admiral Allyn, namely, that, being light of coal, they rode high in the sea and rolled heavily. Unfortunately, the Germans had thirty battleships to seventeen and this disparity was presently increased when the flotilla of German destroyers, about eighty, after vanquishing their opponents, swarmed against the hardpressed American line, attacking from the port quarter under the lead of the four battle-cruisers so that the valiant seventeen were practically surrounded.

In this storm of sh.e.l.ls every ship was struck again and again and the huge Pennsylvania, at the head of the column, seemed to be the target of the whole German column. About three o'clock, as the flagship rolled far over to port and exposed her starboard side, a twelve-inch sh.e.l.l caught her below the armoured belt and smashed through into the engine-room, where it exploded with terrific violence. The flagship immediately fell behind, helpless, and Admiral Fletcher, badly wounded and realising that his vessel was doomed, signalled to Admiral Mayo, on the _Arizona_, second in line, to a.s.sume command of the fleet.

"Look!" cried Astor, suddenly, pointing to two black spots in the sea about a thousand yards away.

"Periscopes," said I.

At the same moment we saw two white trails swiftly moving along the surface and converging on the _Pennsylvania_ with deadly precision.

"Torpedoes! They're going to finish her!" murmured Astor, his hands clenched tight, his eyes sick with pain.

There was a smothered explosion, then a thick column of water shot high into the air, and a moment later there came another explosion as the second torpedo found its target.

And now the great super-dreadnought _Pennsylvania_ was sinking into the Caribbean with Admiral Fletcher aboard and seventeen hundred men. She listed more and more, and, suddenly, sinking lower at the bows, she submerged her great shoulders in the ocean and rolled her vast bulk slowly to starboard until her dark keel line rose above the surface with a green Niagara pouring over it.

For a long time the _Pennsylvania_ lay awash while the battle thundered about her and scores of blue-jackets clambered over her rails from her perpendicular decks and clung to her slippery sides. We could hear them singing "Nancy Lee" as the waves broke over them.

"Are we afraid to die?" shouted one of the men, and I thrilled at the answering chorus of voices, "No!"

Just before the final plunge we turned away. It was too horrible, and Astor swung the aeroplane in a great curve so that we might not see the last agonies of those brave men. When we looked back the flagship had disappeared.

As we circled again over the spot where the _Pennsylvania_ went down we were able to make out a few men clinging to fragments of wreckage and calling for help.

"Do you see them? Do you hear them?" cried Astor, his face like chalk.

"We must save one of them. She'll carry three if we throw over some of our oil."

This explains why we did not see the end of the battle of the Caribbean and the complete destruction of the American fleet. We threw overboard a hundred pounds of oil and started back to Kingston with a crippled engine and a half-drowned lieutenant of the _Pennsylvania_ stretched on the cabin floor. How we saved him is a miracle. One of our wings buckled when we struck the water and I got a nasty clip from the propeller as I dragged the man aboard; but, somehow, we did the thing and got home hours later with one of the few survivors of Admiral Fletcher's ill-fated expedition.

I have no idea how I wrote my story that night; my head was throbbing with pain and I was so weak I could scarcely hold my pencil, but somehow, I cabled two columns to the London _Times_, and it went around the world as the first description of a naval battle seen from an aeroplane. I did not know until afterwards how much the Germans suffered. They really lost about half their battleships, but the Americans lost everything.

CHAPTER XIV