World's War Events Volume III Part 13

The surprise, despite the German's watchfulness, seems to have been complete. Up till the moment when the torpedoes of the motor-boats exploded, there had not been a shot from the land--only occasional routine star-sh.e.l.ls. The motor-launches were doing their work magnificently. These pocket-warships, manned by officers and men of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, are specialists at smoke-production; they built to either hand of the _Vindictive's_ course the likeness of a dense sea-mist driving landward with the wind. The star-sh.e.l.ls paled and were lost as they sank in it; the beams of the searchlights seemed to break off short upon its front. It blinded the observers of the great batteries when suddenly, upon the warning of the explosions, the guns roared into action.

[Sidenote: Heavy batteries on the Ostend coast open fire.]

There was a while of tremendous uproar. The coast about Ostend is ponderously equipped with batteries, each with its name known and identified: Tirpitz, Hindenburg, Deutschland, Cecilia, and the rest; they register from six inches up to monsters of fifteen-inch naval pieces in land-turrets, and the Royal Marine Artillery fights a war-long duel with them. These now opened fire into the smoke and over it at the monitors; the Marines and the monitors replied; and, meanwhile, the aeroplanes were bombing methodically and the anti-craft guns were searching the skies for them, Star-sh.e.l.ls spouted up and floated down, lighting the smoke banks with spreading green fires; and those strings of luminous green b.a.l.l.s, which airmen call "flaming onions," soared up up to lose themselves in the clouds. Through all this stridency and blaze of conflict, the old _Vindictive_, still unhurrying, was walking the lighted waters towards the entrance.

It was then that those on the destroyers became aware that what had seemed to be merely smoke was wet and cold, that the rigging was beginning to drip, that there were no longer stars--a sea-fog had come on.

[Sidenote: Destroyers keep in touch by lights and sirens.]

The destroyers had to turn on their lights and use their sirens to keep in touch with each other; the air attack was suspended, and _Vindictive_, with some distance yet to go, found herself in gross darkness.

[Sidenote: The fog and smoke are dense.]

[Sidenote: A motor-boat leads the way for _Vindictive_.]

There were motor-boats to either side of her, escorting her to the entrance, and these were supplied with what are called Dover flares--enormous lights capable of illuminating square miles of sea at once. A "Very" pistol was fired as a signal to light these; but the fog and the smoke together were too dense for even the flares. _Vindictive_ then put her helm over and started to cruise to find the entrance. Twice in her wanderings she must have pa.s.sed across it, and at her third turn, upon reaching the position at which she had first lost her way, there came a rift in the mist, and she saw the entrance clear, the piers to either side and the opening dead ahead. The inevitable motor-boat dashed up, raced on into the opening under a heavy and momentarily growing fire, and planted a flare on the water between the piers. _Vindictive_ steamed over it and on. She was in.

[Sidenote: A hail of lead falls upon the _Vindictive_.]

The guns found her at once. She was. .h.i.t every few seconds after she entered, her scarred hull broken afresh in a score of places and her decks and upper works swept. The machine-gun on the end of the western pier had been put out of action by the motor-boat's torpedo, but from other machine-guns at the insh.o.r.e ends of the pier, from a position on the front, and from machine-guns apparently firing over the eastern pier, there converged upon her a hail of lead. The after-control was demolished by a sh.e.l.l which killed all its occupants. Upper and lower bridges and chart-room were swept by bullets, and Commander G.o.dsal, R.N., ordered his officers to go with him to the conning-tower.

[Sidenote: The _Vindictive_ prepares to turn.]

They observed through the observation slit in the steel wall of the conning-tower that the eastern pier was breached some two hundred yards from its seaward end, as though at some time a ship had been in collision with it. They saw the front of the town silhouetted again and again in the light of the guns that blazed at them; the night was a patchwork of fire and darkness. Immediately after pa.s.sing the breach in the pier. Commander G.o.dsal left the conning-tower and went out on deck, the better to watch the ship's movements; he chose his position, and called in through the slit of the conning-tower his order to starboard the helm. The _Vindictive_ responded; she laid her battered nose to the eastern pier and prepared to swing her 320 feet of length across the channel.

[Sidenote: A sh.e.l.l strikes the conning-tower.]

It was at that moment that a sh.e.l.l from the sh.o.r.e batteries struck the conning-tower. Lieutenant Sir John Alleyne and Lieutenant V.A.C.

Crutchley, R.N., were still within; Commander G.o.dsal was close to the tower outside. Lieutenant Alleyne was stunned by the shock; Lieutenant Crutchley shouted through the slit to the Commander, and, receiving no answer, rang the port engine full speed astern to help in swinging the ship. By this time she was lying at an angle of about forty degrees to the pier, and seemed to be hard and fast, so that it was impossible to bring her further round.

[Sidenote: The order is given to abandon ship and the _Vindictive_ sinks in the channel.]

After working the engines for some minutes to no effect, Lieutenant Crutchley gave the order to clear the engine-room and abandon ship, according to the programme previously laid down. Engineer Lieutenant-Commander Wm. A. Bury, who was the last to leave the engine-room, blew the main charges by the switch installed aft; Lieutenant Crutchley blew the auxiliary charges in the forward six-inch magazine from the conning-tower. Those on board felt the old ship shrug as the explosive tore the bottom plates and the bulk-heads from her; she sank about six feet and lay upon the bottom of the channel. Her work was done.

It is to be presumed that Commander G.o.dsal was killed by the sh.e.l.l which struck the conning-tower. Lieutenant Crutchley, searching the ship before he left her, failed to find his body, or that of Sub-Lieutenant MacLachlan, in that wilderness of splintered wood and shattered steel.

In the previous attempt to block the port, Commander G.o.dsal had commanded _Brilliant_, and, together with all the officers of that ship and of _Sirius_, had volunteered at once for a further operation.

Most of the casualties were incurred while the ship was being abandoned.

The men behaved with just that cheery discipline and courage which distinguished them in the Zeebrugge raid.

[Sidenote: Recall rockets are fired from the flagship.]

Always according to programme, the recall rockets for the small craft were fired from the flagship at 2.30 a.m. The great red rockets whizzed up to lose themselves in the fog; they cannot have been visible half a mile away; but the work was done, and one by one the launches and motor-boats commenced to appear from the fog, stopped their engines alongside the destroyers and exchanged news with them. There were wounded men to be transferred and dead men to be reported--their names called briefly across the water from the little swaying deck to the crowded rail above. But no one had seen a single enemy craft; the nine German destroyers who were out and free to fight had chosen the discreeter part.

[Sidenote: Ostend Harbor is thus made impracticable.]

It is not claimed by the officers who carried out the operation that Ostend Harbor is completely blocked; but its purpose--to embarra.s.s the enemy and make the harbor impracticable to any but small craft and dredging operations difficult--has been fully accomplished.

Too little was heard during the war of the work of the American submarines, but they performed most efficient and useful service. A sketch of the life aboard one of these little vessels follows.

WITH THE AMERICAN SUBMARINES

HENRY B. BESTON

[Sidenote: A view of the Embankment.]

A London day of soft and smoky skies, darkened every now and then by capricious and intrusive little showers, was drawing to a close in a twilight of gold and gray. Our table stood in a bay of plate-gla.s.s windows overlooking the Embankment close by Cleopatra's Needle. We watched the little double-decked tram-cars gliding by, the opposing, interthreading streams of pedestrians, and a fleet of coal barges coming up the river, solemn as a cloud.

[Sidenote: Submarine folk are a people apart.]

Behind us lay, splendid and somewhat theatric, the mottled marble, stiff white napery, and bright silver of a fashionable dining-hall. Only a few guests were at hand. At our little table sat the captain of a submarine who was then in London for a few days on richly merited leave, a distinguished young officer of the "mother ship" accompanying our underwater craft, and myself. It is impossible to be long with submarine folk without realizing that they are a people apart, differing from the rest of the naval personnel even as their vessels differ. A man must have something individual to his character to volunteer for the service, and every officer is a volunteer. An extraordinary power of quick decision, a certain keen, resolute look, a certain carriage; submarine folk are such men as all of us like to have by our side in any great trial or crisis of our life.

Guests began to come by twos and threes--pretty girls in shimmering dresses, young army officers with wound-stripes and clumsy limps. A faint murmur of conversation rose, faint and continuous as the murmur of a distant stream.

Because I requested him, the captain told me of the crossing of the submarines. It was the epic of an heroic journey.

[Sidenote: How the submarines crossed the Atlantic.]

[Sidenote: The mother-ship and submarines leave.]

"After each boat had been examined in detail, we began to fill them with supplies for the voyage. The crew spent days manoeuvring cases of condensed milk, cans of b.u.t.ter, meat, and chocolate, down the hatchways--food which the boat swallowed up as if she had been a kind of steel stomach. Until we had it all neatly and tightly stowed away, the _Z_ looked like a corner grocery store. Then, early one December morning, we pulled out of the harbor. It wasn't very cold, merely raw and damp, and it was misty dark. I remember looking at the winter stars riding high just over the meridian. The port behind us was still and dead, but a handful of navy-folk had come to one of the wharves to see us off. Yes, there was something of a stir--you know, the kind of stir that's made when boats go to sea: shouted orders, the plash of dropped cables, vagrant noises. It didn't take a great time to get under way; we were ready, waiting for the word to go. The flotilla--mother-ship, tugs and all--was out to sea long before the dawn. You would have liked the picture: the immense stretch of the grayish, winter-stricken sea, the little covey of submarines running awash, the gray mother-ship going ahead, as casually as an excursion steamer, into the featureless dawn.

"The weather was wonderful for two days,--a touch of Indian summer on December's ocean; then, on the night of the third day, we ran into a blow, the worst I ever saw in my life. A storm--oh, boy!"

He paused for an instant. One could see memories living in the fine, resolute eyes. The broken noises of the restaurant, which had seemingly died away while he spoke, crept back again to one's ears. A waiter dropped a clanging fork--

[Sidenote: A terrific storm comes on toward night.]

"A storm. Never remember anything like it. A perfect terror. Everybody realized that any attempt to keep together would be hopeless. And night was coming on. One by one the submarines disappeared into that fury of wind and driving water, the mother-ship, because she was the largest vessel in the flotilla, being the last we saw. We s.n.a.t.c.hed her last signal out of the teeth of the gale, and then she was gone, swallowed up in the storm. So we were alone.

[Sidenote: Rough water the next day.]

"We got through the night somehow or other. The next morning the ocean was a dirty brown-gray, and knots and wisps of cloud were tearing by close over the water. Every once in a while a great hollow-bellied wave would come rolling out of the hullabaloo and break thundering over us.

On all the boats the lookout on the bridge had to be lashed in place, and every once in a while a couple of tons of water would come tumbling past him. n.o.body at the job stayed dry for more than three minutes; a bathing-suit would have been more to the point than oilers.

[Sidenote: The boat registers a roll of seventy degrees.]

[Sidenote: The cook provides food after a fashion.]

"Shaken, you ask? No, not very bad: a few a.s.sorted bruises and a wrenched thumb; though poor Jonesy on the _Z-3_ had a wave knock him up against the rail and smash in a couple of ribs. But no being sick for him; he kept to his feet and carried on in spite of the pain, in spite of being in a boat which registered a roll of seventy degrees. I used to watch the old hooker rolling under me. You've never been on a submarine when she's rolling,--talk about rolling--oh, boy! We all say seventy degrees, because that's as far as our instruments register. There were times when I almost thought she was on her way to make a complete revolution. You can imagine what it was like inside. To begin with, the oily air was none too sweet, because every time we opened a hatch we shipped enough water to make the old hooker look like a start at a swimming tank; and then she was lurching so continuously and violently that to move six feet was an expedition. The men were wonderful--wonderful! Each man at his allotted task, and--what's that English word?--carrying on. Our little cook couldn't do a thing with the stove, might as well have tried to cook on a miniature earthquake; but he saw that all of us had something to eat--doing his bit, game as could be."

He paused again. The Embankment was fading away in the dark. A waiter appeared, and drew down the thick, light-proof curtains.