The Fleets Behind the Fleet

When you have gathered these facts from an authority, the conversation lapses into generalities. It is useless to display an eagerness for knowledge, the book is closed. For the curious it may be added, however, that mine fishing is an art, considerably more complicated than baiting a hook or throwing a fly; that some men are fishers by nature and others despite experience, remain clumsy; that the wriggle and the tug and the play of the fish are part of the sport, that the amusement is not unaccompanied by danger, and that good fishermen are not easy to replace. With these suggestions the matter stands adjourned sine die– that is, till the end of the war.

Mine sweepers are of course protected, for the sympathetic mind will understand that a submarine which has just laid traps resents their removal. Like the ghost of the murderer, its habit is to haunt the region of its labours. For trading with these gentry the fishers have their own methods, sometimes more primitive and courageous than effective, as when the master of a sailing craft – it is fact not fiction – fancied himself a 40 knot destroyer and tried to ram the enemy. Unarmed audacity occasionally, indeed, achieves miracles. One gunless trawler by persistent ill-mannered harassing pursuit, so terrified a German commander who was attacking a merchant vessel, that his quarry escaped. Submarine hunting in armed craft is of course another matter and accounted the greatest of all great games. Sea-going Britons pine for it with an inextinguishable longing. Lowestoft mine-sweepers hanker after leave not to spend by the fireside but on this brave sport. Volunteers jostle each other for the service. Admirals previously on the retired list renew in it all the zest and vigour of their youth. Alas, that after the war a pursuit which outbids in popularity tiger-shooting or steeple-chasing should come to an untimely end.

Another submarine habit is with infinite, untiring Teutonic patience to do the work over again in the wake of the sweepers, for which amiable procedure there is no cure save an equal and opposite persistence. Yet another is to lay little mines nearer the surface to catch trawlers engaged in fishing for bigger ones placed deeper for larger ships. Oh excellent, persevering and philanthropic Teuton!

No one in the world can teach trawler or drifter men, who spend less than a month ashore in the twelve, seamanship. "Smooth sea and storm sea" is alike to them. Grey, tumbling waters are their winter portion, decks continually awash, frozen gear, intolerable motion. Watch that short bluff little vessel 100 miles from any port and a gale rising, with her high bows staggering up from the hollow of the wave that hid her from sight, streaming from rail to rail, to plunge headlong into the next hollow, climb up the approaching mountain to encounter the smothering crest, shake herself and disappear again into the turbid water between the bigger seas. You will see no one on deck save the unconcerned man at the wheel in oilskins and sea-boots, in whom it produces no emotion. That wild sky and furious sea are familiar acquaintances of his, that waif of a boat rolling and pitching through it is his home. Skald to the Viking's son! Mine fishing to men of this stamp was merely a variation in the ordinary way of business. Of course the danger was vastly greater, but they were inured to danger. Against shelling they have a prejudice, for mines they care nothing, and among those still at their old trade the Admiralty prohibition against fishing in mine fields – a prohibition constantly disregarded – creates perhaps as much resentment as the German sowing of them. Good brooms they make these broad-beamed, bluff-bowed vessels, and life preservers too. To their presence in the North Sea and elsewhere thousands already owe their lives. Twenty miles off Tory Island a trawler picked up the survivors from the Manchester Commerce; another, the Coriander, saved 150 of the men from Cressy and Hogue; still another brought home fifty men of the ill-fated Hawke; the Daisy rescued twenty men from the destroyer Recruit. In the Mediterranean the North Sea men were ubiquitous. In answer to distress signals they appeared as if by magic. "Ultimately," wrote one of the passengers on the ill-fated Arabia, "I was put aboard a trawler on which were about 166 rescued… We had few wraps and most of us lay till we reached Malta in drenched clothes. They were 37 hours of utter misery… More than half the survivors on the trawler were women and children."

Drudgery, and monotonous drudgery, it all is, relieved, if you find it relief, that any moment may see the end of you and your ship. Here is the process. "A deck hand came up the ladder and handed up two pneumatic lifebelts. The Captain silently passed one to me. After we had fastened them securely he glanced at the chart and compass. Then he gave a command and a signal was flashed to the other boat. Thus the first preparation was made for our 'fishing.' The other boat nosed easily alongside. There was a clanking of machinery and she made off again, carrying one end of a heavy steel cable. Several hundred yards away she resumed her course, while the cable sagged far down beneath the surface of the water. That was all – we were sweeping… It was late in the afternoon that we made our first catch. A sudden tightening of the cable made it clear that we had hit an obstruction. There was just a slight tremor all through the boat. Everybody stepped to the rail and gazed intently into the water. 'That'll be one,' said the commander as the cable relaxed. Sure enough it was 'one.' The Boche mine broke the surface of the water and floated free, her mooring of 1 inch steel cut off as cleanly as if with a mighty pair of shears. As it rolled lazily in the swell it reminded me of a great black turtle with spikes on its back." Such is the normal procedure, and a rifle bullet does the rest. "There was an explosion that made our teeth rattle, while a huge volume of black smoke belched upward into the still air. And a shining column of water shot straight up through the black cloud to a height of 50 or 60 feet… Then the water poured back through the smoke and the grim cloud drifted off over the waste of the North Sea."

If you pursue your search for incidents you may meet something of this type. The gear of the trawler Pelican was just being hove in when a mine was discovered entangled in the warp. The winch was stopped just as the mine bumped – anxious moment – the ship's side. Any lurch meant an explosion and certain destruction. The skipper ordered all hands into the boat and to pull away. Remaining alone on board, with infinite care he worked to clear the mine, gently, very gently, unwinding the gear of the winch. The men lay on their oars at a safe distance and waited in suspense. At last the mine was released and the skipper cautiously paid out 120 fathoms of line. Hardly was it done when, having touched something, the devil-fish exploded, shaking the trawler from stem to stern and half filling the distant boat with water. When the warp was hauled on board it revealed nothing but a mass of wreckage. If you are in search of adventure on board a mine-sweeper and are in luck you may enjoy the excitement of an aeroplane attack, with bombs dropping around you from the overhead circling enemy, or machine gun bullets rattling on the deck from a German battle-plane. Or again an angry submarine commander rising out of the deep may send a shell or two your way. For the rest it is a peaceful life, and if you escape the attentions of all these death-dealing devices, mine, aeroplane and submarine, you may arrive home safe enough. The odds are probably somewhat in your favour, but the mathematicians have not worked out the table of chances. You may have the best of it and secure quite a number of mines, or one of the enemy devices may secure you. You never can tell. Here is a transcript.

"It was about four in the morning. This time of year. Just such darkness as this. The London Girl came down on my port side… I opened the door (of the deckhouse) to hear what she had to say. 'Don't go near so-and-so,' her old man shouted. 'What's that?' I said. 'Don't go,' he hailed – 'so-and-so – some mines adrift.' That's all. I was just backing into the wheelhouse again when there was a flash and a roar. He'd gone. Not enough left afloat to make a platter. That's it. There's five boats in line astern of you one minute. There's a bright light and when you look back there's only four. It ain't the mines you see that's the worry. I've seen hundreds. It's the beggar you can't see. Never know when it's under your forefoot. Dirty game, like, I call it. No sense in it. Sinking ships. Any ships. I'd never have believed it. Don't know what's come over the world." Most of us are in like case. Only the knights of the German Round Table, those idealist seekers after grace and loveliness, know and in good time, perhaps, will take the rest of the world into their confidence.

Against mines you cannot retaliate but against the U. boat you can occasionally hit back. "A number of trawlers," writes a correspondent, "were fishing off Aberdeen on a fairly stormy day when a submarine came to the surface and commenced firing at the trawlers, making for one in particular – the Strathearn. The Strathearn ran for it, pursued by the submarine. While the shots were falling round, some of the crew shouted to Geordie, the skipper, 'Geordie, get the boat out.' Said Geordie, 'I'll see you in h – ll first! Fire up! If she's gaun doon, I'm gaun doon. Fire up! I think we hae a chance.'

"During this time Geordie was making towards another trawler, the Commissioner (armed) which had her gear down and seemed totally unconcerned. But, as soon as the Strathearn passed her and there was nothing between the submarine and herself, a blow with an axe cut her gear away, she swung round, and at the same moment her gun appeared.

"Her first shot missed the submarine, so did the second; the third hit the enemy's conning tower, a fourth hit the enemy's gun, and the fifth sent the submarine down in flames, and all was over, bar the shouting."

Our Allies could bear witness to the work of British mine-sweepers and patrols in the Mediterranean. In one raid Austrian cruisers and destroyers attacked the patrol line in the Adriatic and sank 14 of our drifters. Our fishermen have swept for mines off Russian, French and Italian ports, and of their work at the Dardanelles all the world has heard. Captain Woodgate of the Koorah has vividly described an episode in which he was himself the protagonist.

"When we were up in the Dardanelles there were what we call three groups – One, Two and Three – and each group had to go up, one at a time. The vessel I was in belonged to the second group. The night we were going to make the final dash in the Dardanelles, up in the Narrows, we went, no lights up, everything covered in. They let us get right up to the Narrows, and as we turned round to take our sweeps up one of our number was blown up. Then they peppered us from each side, from one and a half to two miles. We heard cries for help. I said, 'We shall have to do the best we can, and go back and pick up.' There was no waiting, no saying 'Who shall go?' As soon as I called for volunteers three jumped in. I kept the vessel as close as I could to shelter them. I did not think any would come back alive, but they did come back. No one was hit, and I said, 'Now we'll get the boat in.' Just as we got the boat nicely clear of the water, along came a shot and knocked it in splinters. I shouted, 'All hands keep under cover as much as you can,' and I got on the bridge, and we went full steam ahead. I could not tell you what it was like, with floating and sunken mines and shots everywhere. We got knocked about, the mast almost gone, rigging gone, and she was riddled right along the starboard side. One of the hands we picked up had his left arm smashed with shrapnel; that was all the injury we got. When we got out the commander came alongside and said, 'Have you seen any more trawlers?' I said, 'Yes, we've got the crew of one on board, the Manx Hero.' We were the last out, and I can tell you I never want to see such a sight again… I thought of the three men in the fiery furnace, how they were preserved, and of Daniel in the lion's den, and I think of the 24 of us coming out under that terrible fire and the water covered with floating and sunken mines."

"There's one good thing about it," remarked a skipper who had his second vessel blown up under him, – "you take it calmer the second time." We thought we knew the mettle of these men. We did, but we know it better now. Eighty of these skippers have been killed in action, many have been blown up more than once, and several, among them that celebrity "Submarine Billy," have had three such elevating experiences. But it makes no difference. They go to sea again. One hardly knows what to make of this type of human being. Perhaps the British race has no monopoly in it, but one wonders. Let an expert speak, the commander of a destroyer, whose testimonial, if any testimonials are required, has value.

"Only a quarter of an hour before the Admiral had wished me a pleasant trip. That quarter of an hour now seemed æons away. The Channel was battering us and bruising us… To climb to the bridge was a perilous adventure in mountaineering. Here crouched three figures, swathed from head to heel like Polar explorers. The glass of the wind-screen was sweating and trickling like the window of a railway carriage. From time to time the Captain wiped clear patches with the finger of his fur glove and made very uncomplimentary remarks about the snow. Behind him stood the steersman, a swaddled mummy with a blue nose tip, dripping icicles." All in a moment appeared a smudge on the horizon – "a friend and brother – the King of the Trawlers." "They're It, absolutely It," said the Captain. "No weather's too bad for 'em. They're our eyes and our ears. They know every blessed wave in the Channel, not merely as passing acquaintances, but they address 'em by their Christian names. They'll do anything, and go anywhere and chance the luck. They're just simple fishermen but they run the whole show and they run it magnificently – guns, semaphores, wireless, everything! They live on kippers and tea, and I don't believe they ever go to sleep."

If the Royal Navy, which has its own views on efficiency, says these things of them, further remarks seem needless.

THE SEA TRAFFICKERS

Quit now the dusty terraces and taverns of the town,

And to the great green meadows you shall with us go down;

By the long capes and islands the open highways run

For us the pilgrims of the sea, and pupils of the sun.

'Tis Neptune pours the wine for us, the deep-sea Muses sing,

And through our airy palaces the flutes of morning ring:

We traffic with the stars, we trade adown the Milky Way,

We are the pilots of romance, merchants of Arcady.

Unfold a map of the world and observe how small a part of the earth's surface is land, how much less habitable land, how vast on the other hand – nearly three-quarters of the whole – the interminable plain of sea. Here you have an almost limitless expanse and without a barrier, here you have what was once the dividing flood, the estranging ocean, what is now Nature's great medium of communication. There are no difficult mountains to cross, no scorching deserts, the way lies open. One can sail round the world without touching land, one cannot walk round it without somewhere crossing the sea. Imagine then a road which leads everywhere and you have the first clue to the meaning of that majestic thing, sea-traffic. These immense regions, once so forbidding, and until a few hundred years ago, unknown, uncharted ocean solitudes, are now the broad highway of all the nations. Across them vessels under every flag, laden with all that men produce or peoples require, follow the plotted curves of the chart, and "toss the miles aside" with the same confidence, the same continuity as the trains on their iron tracks across Europe and America. They depart and arrive along the familiar belts of passenger and trade routes with the regularity and exactness of the great land expresses. Safe in times of peace from all dangers save the natural perils of the sea, the freedom of this, the broadest and busiest of all highways, open to all, used by all, vital to the modern structure of civilisation, is unchallenged. Imagine this highway closed and the whole fabric falls to pieces, trade expires, commerce is at an end, famine and chaos impend over half the inhabited regions of the globe.

Seated between the old world and the new, at the centre of traffic, at the midmost point of all the markets Britain laid hold of her great opportunity. All the great routes were open to her, South to Africa, South West to the Spanish Main and Panama, West to America and Canada, North East to the Baltic, East through the pillars of Hercules to the Mediterranean, a route prolonged by the Suez Canal to India, China and Japan. The opportunity was, indeed, great and to meet it she built her merchant navy, "the most stupendous monument," as Bullen wrote, "of human energy and enterprise that the world has ever seen." What the nations bought and sold the ships of England carried. Necessity gave assistance, for as islanders her own people had need of overseas products and sent abroad their own manufactures. Nor was it disadvantageous that in order to build her fortunes she had to exhibit enterprise and cultivate hardihood. No one will say that the sea-farer's life is an easy one. But its discipline and hardships brought their reward in the courage and sustained vigour of the race. When it was a new thing the romance of this ocean travel took hold of the Elizabethan imagination, and the poets rhapsodised over "Labrador's high promontory cape," "the Pearled Isles," "the famous island, Mogadore," "the golden Tagus or the Western Inde."

"I should but lose myself and craze my brainStriving to give this glory of the mainA full description, though the Muses nineShould quaff to me in rich Mendaeum wine."

The Elizabethan poets gloried too in Britain's insularity,

"This precious stone set in the silver sea"

protected by the waters as a house is protected by a moat "against the envy of less happier lands." The historians have expounded the advantages of her position. We were happy in that we were islanders, inhabiting a natural and impregnable fortress. The sea was our bulwark, to us it was no barrier, to the enemy an impassable one. The romantic mood is, however, difficult to maintain and of late the coming and going of some ten or eleven thousand British ships has been productive of little emotion. As a rule the landsman "dismisses the sea with a shudder." Rocks and shoals and icebergs and dark nights and fogs and the making of difficult harbours and winds of strength "8" on the Beaufort scale, are not things that habitually occupy his mind. Hourly our seamen were engaged in the routine of a perilous calling. Two thousand of them in times of peace lose their lives every year. We were not much concerned. But the submarine has now come to our assistance. It has at least this to its credit that we view our insularity with less composure. We see now that there are two sides to this blessing of insularity. We know now that every ton of food brought into the country is purchased with men's lives, and that is an arresting thought. We know, too, that if they do not continue to bring it we are in very evil case, a still more arresting and unfamiliar idea. We have had episodes and hours and experience it will not be easy to forget. There is something to be said for the submarine. It has proved to us that not to our encircling sea, but to our sailors we owe our good fortune; that the sea is as ready to ruin as to enrich us; that in them, not in her, we must put our trust. "The one thing," it has been said, "that would really wake the nation to the vital importance of the Merchant Navy would be for the butcher, the baker and the grocer to cease to ring the back-door bell every morning." Well, we have come within measurable distance of that and can now turn with the more appreciation to the anxieties and trials of the men who have averted the catastrophes.

"It was passing beautiful to see, and to think of," says the old chronicler of a sea battle in the Edwardian days; "the glistening armour, the flags and streamers glancing and quivering in the wind." The beauty and the bravado which lingered on till Nelson's time are gone. Gone too are the courtesy and chivalry of the old sea battles. You need not go for romance, with the pleasant sting of brine in it, to the ugly and stealthy story of the German submarine. A dull monotonous history from first to last, as he who cares to turn over the Admiralty files will find; a baleful, intolerable, damnable repetition. The very extent and enormity of the record deadens all sensibility, so that one soon reads mechanically, giving no thought to the matter, however melancholy. Let us set down some sentences, each a verbal extract from the official record.

"The crew were mustered after the explosion and five men were missing."

"While abandoning the ship the chief engineer was killed by the enemy's fire, and two of the crew were wounded."

"Two of the crew were not seen after the explosion."

"Two of the crew were killed and two were scalded."

"Of the fifteen who left the ship only the chief officer and three others were saved."

"While the ship was being abandoned the enemy continued to fire, hitting the ship and wounding five men."

"One man who had been badly scalded died on board the patrol which picked up the boat."

"The chief officer's boat was picked up at 10 a.m., the boatswain who had been wounded dying in the boat."

"Eighteen of the crew went down in the vessel. One boat reached the shore, but there was a heavy sea running and two men were drowned while attempting to land."

"In one of the boats picked up twenty-four hours after the vessel's destruction were seventeen dead and frozen bodies."

"The submarine rendered no assistance. The commander looked at the men in the water, and shook his fist, saying something in German."

"The master's boat with seven men kept at the oars for forty hours, having a heavy sea to contend with. The steward died in the boat from exhaustion. On reaching the shore the boat capsized, but all six reached land, though the second engineer and a fireman died immediately on the beach."

"The ship was hove to in a gale of wind when she was torpedoed without warning by an unseen submarine. The ship was abandoned by the crew in three boats. Two men were drowned while manning the boats. The apprentice who made his report states that the chief officer's boat when last seen was apparently filled with water, lying broadside on to the sea… The boat of the apprentice which had been lying to with a sea anchor out, made sail at dawn and steered for the land. At 9.30 the survivors were picked up. While drifting in the gale six of the crew of this boat died and were buried at sea… Only nine men from the steamship were landed, suffering from exposure and frostbite."

"At 8.40 the boat capsized owing to the sea, and sight of the other boat was lost. All hands (16) regained boat, but she was full of water. Before midnight she had again capsized three times and then only four hands were left. About 8 a.m. two seamen became exhausted and were washed overboard. A handkerchief on a stick failed to attract the attention of a passing vessel. About 5 o'clock the first mate dropped into the water in the boat and died. His body and the only survivor were picked up two days after the sinking of the vessel." What profit in further citations from this baleful volume? Multiply these records by hundreds and one begins to appreciate the prowess of the enemy in dealing with defenceless vessels. Gentlemen of the German Navy, we congratulate you!

The official phraseology does not help us to realise these happenings. The records deal only in flat commonplaces. There is not a picturesque word anywhere, no sign of emotion, an utter absence of psychology. We are not told how the men felt when the shells struck the ship or the torpedo tore out its entrails. They appear to do just ordinary sensible things and probably the ideas that occurred to them were ordinary sensible ideas. When the steering gear is shattered or the engines disabled they do their best to repair the damage. If a boat capsizes they try to right her. When attacked by aeroplanes they take up a rifle, if there is one aboard, and fire at them, usually without much effect. But what else can you do? As for excitement, these men are not given to it. Nerve storms are not in their line of life.