The Fleets Behind the Fleet

Of the raiders, so far as it has been written, we know the record. The sea is wide, and one might almost as well look for an escaped bird in the forest as for a single ship in any ocean. They have had their victims; fifty of our merchantmen were seized or sunk before the first phase ended with the battle of the Falklands and the destruction of Von Spee. There were of course escapes and adventures, like that of the Pacific Steam Navigation cargo vessel and her conversation with the Karlsruhe, which had information of her position and sent out a wireless signal asking for the latitude and longitude. The operator, instructed by the captain, sceptical soul, refused the friendly suggestion. The polite enemy retorted, "English schweinhund. This is German warship, Karlsruhe, we will you find." But the night set in thick with misty rain, and though only a few miles distant the English ship, heedless of angry signals, slipped away and escaped. The subsequent disguised commerce raiders could only creep at long intervals and under colours not their own, through the patrols, in rain or snow storms, by circuitous routes and through territorial waters. Meteor, under the Russian flag, was rounded up deserted and destroyed by her own crew. Berlin driven into Trondhjem and interned. Greif disguised as a Norwegian ship perished in the encounter with Alcantara. Of these ventures, one may say, that they repeated tactics familiar in all our wars; tactics which never yet turned the scale or threatened to turn it. Consider now the far more serious menace of the submarine and mine. These were weapons indeed not altogether novel, the novelty lay in the scale and ruthless manner of their employment; and the ruthless policy once launched, three things, at first but dimly distinguishable amid the confusion of so vast a conflict, took shape and form. First that the war, however long the decision might be postponed, had entered upon its final and decisive stage. Second that the full strength and pressure of the attack would now be transferred from the Royal Navy to the Mercantile Marine; and third that upon its tenacity and powers of endurance depended not the destiny of Britain alone but that of the world. It was to be a conflict grim and great, suited to the stupendous consequences which hung upon the issue, a conflict without the dramatic and inspiring incidents of engagements between embattled fleets, of monotonous almost featureless repetitions of the same gruesome story, in which the enemy trusted to the accumulated effect of a blow dealt again and again, and yet again, in hardly varying circumstances, reducing with each successful effort the maritime resources upon which the fortunes of the Alliance were absolutely staked. Britain's capital – who is now unaware of it? – is her shipping, and the drain upon that capital, the ceaseless call upon this bank of national security could not fail if unarrested to compass her ruin. Britain, and with Britain her allies, would succumb to a series of stabs in the back.

How is one to account for the success of the submarine campaign? The answer is that Britain was not prepared for it. Why was she not prepared? For no other reason than that it was unthinkable. It is as if a respectable curate of your acquaintance were to whip out a revolver and demand your purse. You are taken by surprise for you had not thought these things possible in your neighbourhood, and particularly not to be expected from a clergyman. The world did not anticipate the new code of morals, more especially from a people of culture. It simplifies the business of the highwayman if you have believed him to be an evangelist. Deceived by the spectacles and the missionary manner Britain left her merchant ships unarmed, and was quite unprovided with mines or any other defensive machinery for her traders. By the law and custom of the nations merchant vessels must not be destroyed at sea but brought into port, and become prizes of war only if condemned after a judicial enquiry. From the first these provisions of international law were thrown aside by Germany. That they had existed, that civilisation had trusted and that she herself had endorsed them gave her a magnificent advantage. She took advantage – the most hideous form of depravity – of the world's growth in goodness. It was felt however that something might be pardoned to an enemy in sore straits, and even Britain made no angry complaint. Having discarded civilised usage as regards property and discarded it in vain the temptation assailed her to descend another step and disregard considerations of humanity. At first, as one knows, the crews and passengers of torpedoed ships were given a chance to escape death. Then, reaching the lowest rung of the malevolent ladder, Germany bowed farewell to her last scruple. Facilis descensus Averni. Free yourself from restraint, lay aside obligations moral and legal, and for the destruction of commerce you have in the submarine a weapon without equal, an immoral inspiration. Unaware that the world, had outgrown morals, that chivalry was wholly out of date, Britain taken aback had, it may be confessed, no ready or immediate answer, and it seemed indeed as if the new instrument possessed qualities unanswerable, borrowed from the region of fable. Only in fables does one put on at will the mantle of invisibility or don invulnerable armour. To see without being seen; to cover yourself with a garment upon which blows fall in vain – these powers suggest magic or dealings with the infernal world. How is an enemy to be resisted who can attack unexpectedly and, if threatened, vanish like a dream? Each of our merchant vessels, it has been said is like an unarmed man walking down a dark lane infested with armed highwaymen. Carrying 30 or 40 of a crew, armed with a gun for surface fighting, and that terrible and devastating weapon, the torpedo, for the secret offensive, capable of an underwater speed – 8-10 knots – equal to, and a surface speed of 18 to 20 knots – far in excess of the average trader; with a radius of action extending to three or four thousand miles, and the capacity of remaining at sea for months at a time, one need feel no surprise that the world rings with the performances of this submersible cruiser. The torpedo is in itself a mechanism of uncanny quality; nothing else than a small vessel, costing £1,000 to build, it moves with a speed of 40 knots, is propelled by its own engines and directed by its own steering gear. Effective at any range under 10,000 yards, given position at the range of a couple of miles it may easily kill; at a mile it kills infallibly. Supply your merchantmen with guns and you drive the submarine to shelter, but you do not disarm it, and though it must manœuvre for position to discharge a successful torpedo, if the missile take effect, a single shot usually suffices. The German submarine hates the gun behind which stands a British crew, and prefers the warfare in which blow cannot be returned for blow. No Briton dislikes a fair fight, or doubts of his success in it, but a warfare in which he can neither see nor retaliate upon the foe, in which his hands are tied, strikes his simple and uncultured mind as cowardly. There is nothing for it but to run away, and for running away Britons are by nature little adapted.

Of the capital expended by Germany on this campaign 15 or 20 millions at least already lie in the ocean depths; but side by side with these millions lies the uncounted wealth of the slaughtered ships and cargoes. Only when we perceive the true character of the weapon and the value of the campaign can the endurance and achievements of the merchant sailor emerge for us into the full sunshine of their splendour. Examine the matter coolly and one sees that the submarine owes its success as much to its novelty as to its inherent capacities. The limitations and defects are as obvious as the qualities. Virtually powerless on the surface against armed vessels of high speed like destroyers, completely submerged it has hearing indeed but not sight. It can obtain little or no knowledge of the drift of current and tide and is blind to surrounding dangers. Above water it can be rammed or shelled, below it can be netted or mined. Strange things have happened to it at the hands of ingenious skippers. Anchors have rudely disturbed its repose when nestling in the sand, and an enterprising seaman has been known to leap aboard a rising vessel, lay about him with a hammer, smash the periscope tube and deprive the aggrieved monster, like another Polyphemus, of his single eye. Against observation or attack from the air, too, the submarine is wholly without defence. It is incapable of descending to great depths and rarely dives lower than 50 feet. The dirigible or hydroplane poised above it is master of the situation, can discover its presence at a great depth, and with ease and perfect security destroy it, either when it emerges or even by means of explosives below the surface.

"Spotting" is everything, for once spotted there is little hope for the monster. A signal calls to his lair the neighbouring patrols and surrounded by a swarm of hostile craft he is quickly given the choice of ascending to surrender or descending for ever. To this mastery the comparative freedom of the English Channel from submarine depredations is largely due. Life aboard such a craft is not without its terrors and bad moments, while it creeps through channels where the water is shoal or puts up its periscope in an unlucky spot. We may be sure that black care sits in the cabin with the crew, a justified uneasiness. The end may be very sudden and of a kind one hardly likes to think of. Mistakes – and mistakes with half trained crews are inevitable – bring quick disaster. The deep sea pirates aboard super-submarines operating on the trade routes have lighter hearts no doubt than those engaged in the narrow seas, but exits and entrances are not without peril, as the North Sea depths could reveal. Yet their work goes forward, and the last sentences of this barbaric sea history are not yet written.

What of the defence in this crafty and lawless war, and what counter measures have been taken? Apart from the continual patrolling of dangerous areas and the vigilant antisubmarine warfare conducted by the warders of the sea routes, the secrets of which none may reveal, broadly stated, the only present reply to torpedo attack consists in some form of evasion. A thousand busy brains are at work, but were an answer discovered to-day how many months would be needed to prepare and supply the necessary gear to some three or four thousand ships? Meanwhile traffic instructions form a separate and highly developed section of Admiralty work. Shipping Intelligence Officers at the ports, in close conjunction with the Customs Officers issue route orders, varying with the needs of the hour, to each British ship outward bound. To neutrals advice is tendered. Orders for homeward bound vessels are now issued at foreign ports in the Western hemisphere or elsewhere by the Consular officers, assisted by men of sea-faring experience specially instructed. In addition, masters have very precise schooling in the arts of avoiding hostile craft. That these arts have their value experience proves, and of the various devices zigzagging has been found perhaps the most effective. The attacking submarine sights her prospective prey and notes the course. She then manœuvres to bring her torpedo-tubes to bear, and submerges. But the helm on the approaching vessel is meanwhile put over to port or starboard and the favourable position is lost. Reduced in speed and turning power by submersion, the submarine commander is thrown out. Again he manœuvres for position but finds his target has again shifted her helm and escaped him. Zigzagging however adds materially to the length of the voyage and the time consumed by it is cordially disliked by skippers. A temptation naturally assails men of their breed to make a dash for it. Time, too, is always a consideration, and the risks to a vessel of less than 10 knots speed are not appreciably diminished by its adoption. For an 8 knot boat, and many of the most valuable traders can hardly attain a greater pace, the increase in the length of the voyage and the time involved balance or eliminate the advantage of this and other palliatives. In the nature of the case there can be no immediate remedy for the disease. Merchant ships – that is the root of the trouble – are not built to resist torpedoes. Possibly such ships might be built, possibly a cure for this sea malady may yet be found. But to combat a new plague or pestilence the physician must have time to study the devastating organism and its peculiar properties. The study proceeds. The arming of merchantmen, a preliminary and successful measure, was necessary to drive the U-boat below the surface. There, capable only of torpedo attack, it loses half its observing, half its striking powers. But the true defence is a vigorous offensive, which is the business not of merchantmen but of patrol and fighting ships. They are at work in daily increasing numbers, they employ new and ingenious devices, they are happy and confident. But the veil is never lifted. A deep, gloomy, mysterious silence prevails. Where her submarines are lost, how they are lost Germany is ignorant. Each goes forth on its mission, with uncertainty at the prow and misgiving at the helm. All the enemy knows is that vessel after vessel fails to return, that they run like sand through the fingers. How many submarines does Germany possess? Probably, including the mine-layers, the number does not much, if at all, exceed two hundred, and of these only a proportion can be at sea in any given week or month, perhaps a third. Submarines, despite Germany's boasts, one of her favourite weapons, cannot be built in a day nor yet a month, and crews are worse than useless with less than half a year's training. The end is not in sight but the barometer of hope must already be falling fast. "If the submarine attack against England be defeated," said Herr Ballin, "it will be a miracle, and I do not believe in miracles." One looks forward with interest to the conversion of Herr Ballin to a less sceptical theology. His philosophical countrymen will no doubt supply him with the necessary metaphysic.

As for ourselves and our lack of foresight in this matter, let us not be too critical. We misjudged human nature, that is all. We believed some species of it were extinct. We believed there were things of which white men were not capable. For this noble error, and it was noble, we pay the price, and are not without compensation. Since none can judge of a vessel's seaworthiness in harbour, none can judge of the spirit of a man or race until it encounters the storm. And if again the superb courage and shining of the British sailor has been proved, if we have been reminded that as a nation with him we stand or fall, we may be magnanimous, and return polite thanks to an enemy that has made these things clear, who has liberated yet again the flashing spirit of liberty. The stars still shine for us above the wild weather of the world.

THE MINE-FISHERS

In any weather

They flock'd together,

Birds of a feather,

Through Dover Strait;

The seas that kiss'd her

Brought tramp or drifter

From ports that miss'd her

In flag and freight;

Trawler and whaler

And deep-sea sailer,

They would not fail her

At danger's gate.

Almost before a gun had spoken the fishermen rallied to their country's aid. Some few indeed were off the Danish coast or far North, Iceland way, unconscious that a more feverish business than fishing had begun, and heard the astonishing news only on their return from waters already troubled. Which of us knows anything of this community or thought it essential to our naval efficiency? Yet if anywhere the spirit of personal independence survives, they cherish it these men, Britons to the bone, wedded to freedom since their ancestors came in their long galleys out of the North East to harry the Saxon farmers. Take English and Scotch together and you may number the East Coast fishermen at a hundred thousand, and their ships, trawlers and drifters, accustomed to voyage to the Polar ice or the White Sea, at some three thousand six hundred. Of these perhaps four hundred of the slower and more ancient craft, the lame ducks of the flotillas, some of them of outlandish type and antiquated gear, manned by boys and men past service in the wars, still drag their trawls or lie to their nets to keep the markets supplied. Since eighty per cent of our spoils of the sea go abroad in normal times, the home supplies can be maintained by the reduced fleet. The rest, over three thousand, steamers and rare sea-boats all, are in national employ, often with their crews complete and handled by the skippers who know them, proud warrant officers now in His Majesty's fleet, and working for the most part in groups commanded by some Lieutenant of the Royal Naval Reserve, a Commodore, in his way, with a squadron admirals might envy. Many of the fisher folk belonged to the Reserve and joined the fighting fleets, and practically all of military age are long since involved in the sea affair. Two things belong to the story – these men, whether of Grimsby or Hull, Cardiff or Leith, or any other of the great centres, were volunteers, and assess their motives for what you will, it was not the Government wage that brought them. Their fellows, old men, still on the fishing grounds, do a thriving business compared with that for which the Government pays its few shillings a day. It is well that the country should know that the work for which no gold can pay was not undertaken for gold, and that they have held on as mine-sweepers when as fishermen they would have lain snugly in harbour. "If there have been frozen feet in the trenches there have been frozen fingers on the sea," says one. "Fifteen hours of drenching and buffeting were our portion that day. The vessel with the pull of the tackle and the drive of the engines keeping her like a half tide rock, never clear of sweeping seas. Thud, slap, crash and swish as they came over our bows and swirled along the deck, never ceasing." They were needed, every man of them. For it happened that in this most civilised warfare machines were employed with which, search the world round for them, no other men could effectively deal. But for their never resting labours the seas about these islands would have been as impassable for ships as a tropical forest for a motor car. Let us open our eyes and acknowledge the grandiosity of the German mind, the spaciousness of its schemes. It is not characteristic of Germany to do things by halves and the simple may well be amazed at the grandeur of her mine-laying campaign.

No country can teach Germany anything on this subject. She is sole mistress of the black art. Before the outbreak of war she had put her mind to it and possessed vessels fitted to carry 500 mines, fitted with special and ingenious mechanisms for lowering and floating them. When her surface ships were driven from the seas her resources were not exhausted, and a fleet of mine-laying submarines continues the business with magnificent industry. No one will ever write a song on "The Mariners of Germany," for the German is not a sailor. Nor has he ever understood the code of honour which prevails upon the sea. But as an engineer he has perhaps few equals, and in so far as engineering skill applied to ships can go you will do well to reckon with him. As for his mines themselves, they are of many patterns, strange sea-beasts with "all manner of horns and of bumps." "There are some kinds," says the author of "In the Northern Mists," "that have horns – like a dilemma; and any logician will tell you that a dilemma is a very dangerous thing for the inexperienced to handle. It is better not to break the horns of the ungodly in this case, for when the horns are broken the mine explodes. Some are arranged to come up to the surface long after they are hidden in the depths, and at unexpected times, like regrettable incidents from a hectic past. Others are constructed with fiendish ingenuity to wait after touching a ship until they have felt at its most vulnerable part before exploding. Some are made to float about at random, as a malevolent wit flings about his spiteful jests, caring not whom he wounds. And others, more dangerous still, drift when they were meant to remain anchored; and then, when they are cast upon the German coasts, our enemy is ever ready to describe them as English mines, – never German, mark you. But it is a rascally people, that cares nothing for the difference between meum and tuum. The task of sweeping for all these different brands of tinned doom is almost as great as that of the old lady in the nursery rhyme, whose job it was to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky. The labour of Sisyphus was child's play compared to it."

Conceived in the magnificent style, elaborated with curious subtlety, representing meticulous and anxious thought the purpose was no less than to convert the waters frequented by Allied shipping into a broad field of death. The magnitude of the conception fascinates one. Had it been understood, as it has not been understood, the timid might have had less sleep o'nights; but they slept untroubled, and none save those whose grave charge it was to counter the campaign can judge or form any estimate of its far-reaching and devilish audacity.

It has been, let us bear in mind, not an occasional but a continuous menace, and threatens us still. Day and night mines are freely sown – a patch here and a patch there – steadily, persistently. "They grow like daisies," some one has said, "cut down in the afternoon, they are up again next morning." Let the sweepers work how they will the end is never in sight. Mines have been laid from the Cape to the West Indies; from Archangel to the Dardanelles; off every Allied port; in every navigable channel; on every avenue of approach to these islands from the ocean or the narrow sea. Strewn with a lavishness that counts no cost too heavy, they represent an expenditure that runs to many millions. In one area alone more than 1,000 mines have been destroyed by our sweepers. No more necessary, no more exhausting, no more hazardous work than theirs is done to-day in any waters.

Let it not be supposed that these admirable activities involve a careless or haphazard disposal of the destructive charges. Each has been laid in accordance with a calculated plan and with definite intention. There is a method in this madness. Take a single instance: in certain areas mines are laid time and again to deflect the stream of traffic into a channel where submarines may act with comparative impunity from danger. The game is played so that the pawn, endeavouring to escape capture by the knight falls a victim to the castle. These thoughtful contrivances demand thoughtful answers and result in an encounter of wits such as the world will probably never see again upon the chequer-board of the seas. But not wits alone are sufficient, and the pieces in the game are numerous. Bear in mind that the area of the North Sea alone is greater than Germany. It is not a case of 20 or 50 or 100 vessels. One can form some picture of such activities. But what are the actual numbers? On the British side some 1,700 ships and 25,000 men concentrate their activities on sweeping for mines. The mind staggers at the immensity of the thing. Is any one surprised that German confidence stands high; that it believed no answer was possible; that it had as good right to believe in the success of these battalions of explosives as in German artillery and German armies?

In the early days mines were directed against our fighting fleet, to endanger their excursions in the North Sea, or to fetter their movements in pursuit of hostile vessels. To protect the fleet, mine-sweepers, specially constructed, or old gunboats, built some of them as early as 1887, manned throughout by naval ratings, kept, unknown to the public, – whose gaze was concentrated upon the trawlers and drifters, – a vigil unimaginable in its range and exhausting in its intensity. Their work continues; but the jackals, baulked of nobler prey, changed their hunting ground and laid still more numerous traps for less wary creatures – the traders. They, too, however are learning caution. There is a certain region through which since the war began 38,000 trading vessels have voyaged; in which no more than 4 have been destroyed by mines. Weigh these facts and consider the compliment that fits the achievement. If you ask by what methods the German mines are safely garnered you will be told that the trawlers sweep in pairs; a method which seems to have advantages over that of the enemy. Pursue your enquiry and you will learn that they are less dangerous at high than at low water; that floating mines since they are easily pushed aside, and explode to expend their force largely in the vacant air, are less of a danger than the anchored type; that when brought to the surface gun or rifle fire disposes of them at a safe distance; that there are other little things to be found when fishing. "Last month, when nearly completing the sweeping, I swept up five mines and came across five full petrol tanks, each holding about 51 gallons or more, which appeared as if they had been moored."