Pincher Martin, O.D.: A Story of the Inner Life of the Royal Navy

The loading number of the right gun, he with the hairy arms, was busy with a piece of chalk, and the other members of the gun's crew who had nothing particular to do watched him with some amusement. 'To Hunny, with love from Bill Mason, A.B.,' he traced out laboriously on the sleek, yellow-painted side of the huge lyddite projectile. He stepped back to survey his handiwork with a little chuckle of glee. 'That'll tickle 'em!' he remarked, winking solemnly.

The men tittered.

The lieutenant at the periscope suddenly held his breath as a muffled, whistling shriek and the roar of an explosion from outside brought the men's heads up in eager, listening attention.

'Garn!' said Mason with a grin; 'that ain't gone nowhere near us. 'Ave another go, ole son!'

'Stand by, men!' cautioned the officer, who was the only person who could see what went on in the outside world.

Mason licked his hands and rubbed them unconcernedly on the seat of his trousers.

Whe-e-e-w! whe-e-e-e-w! B-o-o-m! from the outside again, followed by the sound of another detonation and a slight jar, which showed that the ship had been struck somewhere.

The gun's crew looked at each other. The turret moved slowly to the right, and went on moving. The breeches of the guns began to see-saw gently up and down in rhythm with the movement of the ship. Then a bell rang, and with a roar and a thud the right gun suddenly went off and recoiled backwards along its slide. It ran out again with a wheezing, sucking sound, and the massive breech-block flew open with a metallic crash.

'Left gun, ready!' came a shout.

The turret became filled with the warm, acrid smoke of burnt cordite. There came the swishing sound of the washing-out apparatus, and the clatter of the chain rammer.

The bell rang again. B-o-o-m! roared the left gun. The great battle had begun.

II

It is impossible for any single spectator to describe a naval action as a whole from his own personal observations and experiences, particularly a battle which divides itself into many different phases, lasts intermittently from about three-thirty in the afternoon until the same time next morning, and is fought over many miles of sea.

The Mariner and various other destroyers were present with the battle-cruisers throughout the first shock of the engagement and the running fight which ensued. Some of them, the Mariner included, assisted to repel the attacks of hostile torpedo-craft during daylight, and delivered their own attacks on the heavy ships of the enemy during the afternoon and night; but though Pincher Martin saw a great deal of the fighting, he had no very clear conception of how the engagement went as a whole or of how the time passed.

When he first saw the enemy they appeared as a row of immense gray shapes stretched out across the horizon. They were battle-cruisers – he knew that from their build; and though they must have been fully ten miles distant, they looked grim and menacing. With them were several light cruisers, looking absolute pygmies alongside their overgrown sisters; while on the farther side he saw, or thought he could see, a swarm of destroyers. It was now about three-thirty P.M., and the weather was quite clear.

The Mariner was stationed close to the line of battle-cruisers, and between them and the enemy. She occupied one of the best seats in the house, the front row of the stalls, so to speak, a position from which, but for the clouds of smoke and masses of spray flung up by the falling shell, those on board her would have seen practically everything that happened. But the billet was not exactly a comfortable one. Indeed, it was most unpleasant; for when the firing began the shot from both the British and the German guns whistled and thundered overhead, while there was always the chance that the destroyers would receive the benefit of hostile shell falling short of their intended target.

Pincher watched the enemy with a certain amount of fascinated apprehension. They seemed to swing into a single line, and then, quite suddenly, he noticed five or six tongues of bright orange flame and clouds of brown smoke leap out from the side of their leader. There was a lengthy pause, followed by a terrifying crescendo of howling and screeching as the giant projectiles came hurtling through the air. They fell in a bunch a bare fifty yards short of one of the battle-cruisers, and exploded with a roar, the great upheaval in the sea almost completely shutting out all traces of the ship beyond. The British guns instantly flashed out in reply, and the next moment the engagement became general.

From this time forward the whole affair seemed ghastly and unreal, an awful nightmare in which it was quite impossible to remember exactly what had happened. The air shook and trembled with a turmoil of ear-splitting sound, in which one heard the deep booming note of the British guns as they gave tongue, the shrill whistling or droning of shell as they passed overhead, and the sharper concussion of the hostile projectiles as they fell and burst.

Looked at from a distance, the huge hulls of the German ships seemed literally buried in a spouting maelstrom of shell fountains rising from the sea all round them. At times a shadowy gray mass, sparkling with wicked-looking gun-flashes, slid slowly into view behind some great upheaval in the water, to disappear the next instant as another salvo of shell fell and burst. The British guns seemed to be making very good shooting, but it was impossible to note exact results from the low deck of the destroyer.

Pincher glanced at the Lion and the other ships, and the spectacle held him spell-bound and made him feel almost dizzy. They were enduring a veritable tornado of shell, and the sea all round them leapt and boiled until at times the rushing shapes of the great vessels, close as they were, seemed actually hidden in the turmoil of flung-up water. Some of the shell were going home, too, for here and there in the rifts in the spray and smoke he saw the deep-red flash, a cloud of oily smoke, and a shower of flying débris as they struck and exploded. There were a few ragged holes in the gray steel sides; here and there the symmetrical shape of a ship's superstructure was marred by a twisted and distorted mass of steelwork, and pierced funnels vomited forth their black contributions to add to the already smoke-laden atmosphere. Star-shaped splashes of yellow and white showed where shell had struck armour, had exploded, and had failed to penetrate; but it seemed nothing short of a miracle how any ships built by human agency could withstand such a terrific hammering without being battered to pieces. It was an awesome sight.

It was well for the Mariner and her neighbours that the German shooting was so accurate. The hostile fire was concentrated on the battle-cruisers, and every shell seemed either to strike or else to fall within a few yards of them. The destroyers in their precarious position were untouched, but for all that the experience was nerve-racking, and Pincher had a feeling of intense relief when he saw the brilliant flashes and rolling clouds of brown, rapidly dissolving smoke from the British guns. They were firing fast, and it was no small consolation to think that the enemy were enduring the same terrible ordeal themselves.

One of the most awful incidents of that eventful day was the blowing up of the Indefatigable. The catastrophe, utterly unexpected, was appalling in its suddenness. At one moment the huge, nineteen-thousand-ton ship was steaming bravely along with her guns firing; the next, a salvo of five or six shell seemed to strike her simultaneously amidships. There came the splintering crash of the explosions, some spurts of flame, and upheavals of yellow, brown, black, gray, and white smoke. The great ship seemed literally to be divided in two, for both the bow and the stern reared themselves out of the water at the same moment. The thundering, shattering roar of the explosion made the nearer ships dance and tremble. The report seemed to compress the air until one's ear-drums threatened to burst, and masses of débris, large and small, were precipitated skywards, presently to come raining down into the sea in all directions.

The smoke-cloud spread and rose into the air to a height of three or four hundred feet. Soon it completely blotted out the scene of the disaster, and hung there impalpably, wreathing and eddying in thick, rolling masses. Then some freakish air-current caused another cloud of brown vapour to rise and overtop the first, until the whole mass looked for all the world like some gigantic, overbaked cottage loaf sitting squarely on the sea.

Within two minutes the ship had disappeared for ever, taking with her her gallant crew of nearly eight hundred officers and men. Barely a soul was saved, though destroyers, hurrying to the scene at imminent danger to themselves, searched the flotsam-strewn area for survivors.

The Queen Mary met a precisely similar fate. Again there came the terrible roar and flare of an explosion, followed by the cloud of smoke, in which the great ship sank almost instantly to the bottom. It was an awful moment; but one of the most magnificent spectacles of the battle was the sight of the great three-funnelled Tiger steaming at full speed through the pall a few moments after her unfortunate sister met her fate. At one moment she was in full view; the next her bows disappeared, then her midship portion with its three great funnels, and finally her stern, until the whole enormous length of the ship was completely swallowed up in the mass of brown vapour. Then her sharp stem with its creaming bow-wave emerged into sight on the other side of the pall, to be followed by the rest of the vessel as she drove clear of the scene of the catastrophe with her guns flashing defiance and her glorious white ensigns fluttering. It was an inspiring sight, but of the gallant crew of the stricken Queen Mary, comprising nearly a thousand souls, only four young midshipmen and under twenty men were rescued.

The loss of these vessels was a sad blow, but still the battle raged furiously. The hostile shooting, however, seemed to be becoming erratic, a fact which told its own tale, while ours steadily improved. Indeed, the next time Pincher was vouch-safed a fleeting glimpse of the enemy, two of their largest ships seemed to be badly on fire, while a third had quitted the line and was some distance astern of her consorts. But it was with a feeling of intense relief that the sorely tried British saw a welcome reinforcement of four battleships approaching at full speed, firing heavily as they came.

It was at about this time that some signal was hoisted in the Lion, and before Pincher quite realised what was happening, the Mariner and most of the other destroyers swung round and steamed for the enemy as hard as they could go.

'Gawd!' he whispered breathlessly; 'we're goin' in to attack!'

It seemed a suicidal sort of business, another charge of the Light Brigade, as the ship, quivering and shaking to the thrust of her turbines, drove on at full speed. They were between the lines, and the screeching and howling of the heavy projectiles as the two squadrons fired at each other became fainter and more distant. They drew nearer and nearer to the enemy. They were travelling at something over thirty knots – fifty feet a second, one thousand yards a minute.

'Lie down!' came a sudden order to the guns' crews, for in another moment the enemy's secondary guns would be opening fire. The men flung themselves to the deck and watched.

It was at this moment that Pincher first saw a cloud of enemy destroyers and some light cruisers coming from behind the line of German heavy ships. They darted out at full speed to ward off the British attack, perhaps to deliver one of their own; but whatever happened they were too late, for the British small craft, swinging round, turned to meet them.

'Guns' crews, close up!' came an order. 'Load with lyddite!' The men scrambled to their feet and waited.

'Enemy destroyers bearing green four-five,' came through the voice-pipe. 'Rapid independent! Commence!'

For the next few minutes Pincher was so hard at work cramming shell into his gun that he could hardly see what was happening, much less understand it all. He realised the ship was being fired at, for there were splashes in the sea all round, and he could hear the shrieking whistle of the shell-splinters; but the roaring of the Mariner's own guns drowned every other sound. It was glorious to think that his own gun was firing at last, and somehow he did not very much care what happened so long as the enemy suffered.

It was an exciting experience. The hostile flotilla appeared as a drove of rushing gray shapes in the midst of a turmoil of shell fountains, smoke, and gun-flashes. There were so many of them, and they were so closely packed, that it was unnecessary to single out any one particular vessel as a target, and the British guns merely fired into 'the brown,' with the almost absolute certainty of hitting something.

Nearer and nearer they came – four thousand yards, three thousand five hundred, three thousand. In numbers the two forces were about equal, but the effects of the heavier British guns soon made themselves felt, for before long two of the enemy seemed to crumple up and vanish in a cloud of smoke and steam. A bare thirty seconds later another shared the same fate, while a fourth, badly hit, lay nearly motionless on the water and very much down by the bows, with a storm of shell spurting, foaming, and bursting all round her. The hostile attack was beaten off, for after a very sharp close-range action the enemy's flotillas turned tail and scuttled back to the shelter of their heavier ships.

Then the British flotillas, with the ground cleared, charged on again to press home the attack on the German battle-cruisers. The moment they came within range they were fired upon, and within a few seconds all the enemy's lighter guns came into action in a furious and frantic endeavour to drive them off. The gray shapes of the hostile vessels scintillated with gun-flashes and became shrouded in smoke, and once more the sea started to spout and boil angrily. But the destroyers were not to be denied, and after the gigantic shell fountains of the earlier portion of the battle, these smaller splashes, alarming as they might have been in ordinary circumstances, seemed puny and insignificant. Indeed, they came as a positive relief, and nobody worried his head about them.

The little craft still drove on under an awful fire, and the Mariner, following round in the wake of her leader, turned and fired two torpedoes in rapid succession when she came within range. Others did the same, some ships arriving within three thousand yards of the enemy to do so. Some of the torpedoes must have gone home; but before they reached the enemy the attackers had turned about and were steaming hard to get out of range.

The Mariner had been hit by only one small projectile, which burst aft, but did no damage to speak of except inflicting slight flesh-wounds on two men, much to their subsequent satisfaction. Other ships had not been so lucky, and Pincher noticed one destroyer which had been struck in the engine-room and could not steam. The last time he saw her she lay motionless between the two fleets, enduring a terrible fire from every German gun which would bear. The greater number of her men must have been killed and her deck converted into a reeking shambles, but her colours were still flying.

The action between the opposing battle-cruisers had continued with unabated fury, both forces steaming to the southward on roughly parallel courses; but at four-forty-two the German High Sea Fleet had been sighted to the south-eastward from the Lion. Sir David Beatty thereupon swung round to an opposite course to lead the new-comers towards Sir John Jellicoe, who, with the battleships of the Grand Fleet, was somewhere to the north. The enemy's battle-cruisers, maintaining their station ahead of the High Sea Fleet, conformed to the movement of the British shortly afterwards.

The Fifth Battle-Squadron, under the orders of Rear-Admiral Evan Thomas in the Barham, with the sister-ships Valiant, Malaya, and Warspite, were now approaching from the north, firing heavily as they came on to the head of the hostile line; but shortly before five o'clock they swung round into line astern of the battle-cruisers, coming under a heavy but more or less ineffectual fire from the leading German battleships as they did so.

Up to now the weather conditions had been favourable alike to both sides, but at about four-forty-five a thick mist and a great mass of dark cloud settled on the eastern horizon, and blurred the outlines of the enemy's vessels until they appeared vague, shadowy, and indistinct. To the westward, however, the sky was still quite clear, and the British were plainly silhouetted against the horizon, which gave the Germans the advantage in so far as the light was concerned.

Between five and six P.M. the action continued, Sir David Beatty's force, with the four battleships astern of it, gradually drawing ahead of the enemy, and concentrating a very heavy fire on the battle-cruisers at the head of his line at a range of about fourteen thousand yards. The hostile battleships, meanwhile, farther astern, could do little to reply, and ship after ship of the enemy was badly battered, while one of their battle-cruisers, terribly damaged, was observed to quit the line.

At about six o'clock the leading British battleships were sighted to the north from the Lion, and at this time Sir David Beatty, to clear the way for them to come into action, altered course to the east and crossed the enemy's T, reducing the range to twelve thousand yards as he did so, and inflicting terrible damage with his heavy fire. At this time only four hostile vessels were in sight, three battle-cruisers and one battleship, the others being obliterated in the mist.

Twenty minutes later the Third Battle-Cruiser Squadron, commanded by Rear-Admiral the Hon. H. L. A. Hood, joined Sir David Beatty. The reinforcement was ordered to take station ahead, and steamed gallantly into action at a range of eight thousand yards. The Invincible, subjected to a concentrated fire from every hostile gun which would bear, was sunk.

Previous to this, between five-fifty and six P.M., Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, with the older cruisers Defence and Warrior, had steamed in to attack the enemy's light cruisers, and the two vessels, with their 9·2 and 7·5 inch guns, sank or inflicted severe damage upon their opponents. But in doing so, unaware, on account of the mist, of the immediate presence of the enemy's heavier ships, they suddenly came within easy range of monster weapons against which their comparatively light armaments were impotent.

An awful fire was concentrated upon them. The Defence, to use the words of an eye-witness, was 'blown clean out of the water' by a salvo of shell. The Warrior was hit repeatedly by heavy shell, and suffered terrible injury, for before escaping from her unenviable position she had arrived within a range of about five thousand four hundred yards of two hostile battle-cruisers.

The ship was little more than a battered wreck. A distance of five thousand four hundred yards is nothing at sea. It is point-blank range, and may be compared with using a rifle at fifty yards. Her casualties in killed and wounded had been very severe. The engine-rooms and stokeholds were flooded through shell striking and penetrating below the water-line, while she was blazing furiously aft, and was making water fast. The whole vessel was pierced and perforated until she resembled a gigantic nutmeg-grater, and as time went on she settled lower and lower in the water. Certain of the survivors tried to quench the fire with hoses, while the remainder set to work to build rafts, practically all the boats having been demolished. The conflagration was eventually subdued, and then came the piteous and gruesome task of identifying the dead, while the wounded were brought on deck in case it should be necessary to abandon the ship.

For over an hour she lay there helpless, and we can imagine the relief of officers and men when, later in the evening, the Engadine, a cross-Channel steamer converted into a seaplane depot ship, arrived on the scene and took her in tow. The energy of every soul on board was then concentrated on keeping the ship afloat; and, as the steam-pumping arrangements were useless, the exhausted men were at the hand-pumps all through the hours of darkness.

But it was not to be. The weather during the night grew rapidly worse, and when the next dawn came the wind and sea had risen, and waves were breaking over the quarterdeck. The cruiser could not last much longer. She was sinking fast, and there was nothing for it but to abandon her.

One by one the wounded were passed down into boats and were ferried across to the rescuing vessel. They were followed in turn by the remainder of the ship's company, the officers, and finally the captain; and when last seen, between nine and ten in the morning, the Warrior was sinking by the stern. But she had upheld her name. She came to a noble end, for she had fought valiantly against overwhelming odds until she could fight no more, and her name, together with those of other brave ships lost on that eventful day, will never be forgotten. Her heroic dead did not sacrifice their lives in vain.

Of the gallant work of the Engadine, which towed the cruiser for seventy-five miles between eight-forty P.M. and seven-fifteen A.M. the next morning, and was instrumental in saving the lives of her ship's company, we need make no mention here. The exploit occupies its deserved position of prominence in Sir John Jellicoe's official despatch.

III

It was immediately after the destroyer action between the lines that the Mariner first sighted another body of ships looming up to the southward. The new-comers, about sixteen large ships accompanied by many smaller vessels, came on at full speed towards the scene of action, and at first the men in the destroyers imagined them to be the battleships of the British Grand Fleet. Their spirits rose accordingly, for with the arrival of these powerful units the enemy's battle-cruisers, cut off from their base, could not escape annihilation. But a few minutes later, when the great ships had come nearer, their unfamiliar shape and unusual light-gray colouring proclaimed them for what they really were – the battleship squadrons of the German High Sea Fleet.

Some of the destroyers which were favourably placed at once dashed in to attack with torpedoes, retiring as soon as they had fired, and before very long most of them had rejoined the heavier vessels.38 Their next chance of doing something was to come after nightfall.

From about six-fifteen onwards it is very difficult to give a comprehensive account of what occurred, for with the arrival on the scene of the British Grand Fleet, the German main squadrons turned and retired to the southward. Sir John Jellicoe chased at full speed; and, as he says in his despatch, 'the enemy's tactics were of a nature generally to avoid further action,' while he refers to his own ships as the 'following' or 'chasing' fleet. Moreover, in the engagements which ensued, the enemy were favoured by the weather, for banks of heavy mist and smoke-clouds from the hostile destroyers reduced the visibility to six miles or less, and periodically screened the opponents from each other's view.

The fighting between the opposing battleships, which began at six-seventeen P.M., seems to have resolved itself into a series of ship to ship and squadron to squadron encounters rather than a formal fleet action; but, while our vessels remained in their organised divisions throughout, the enemy, soon after the fight began, seem to have become more or less scattered, and to have had a trail of injured ships struggling along in rear of their main body.

A hostile vessel would suddenly loom up out of the haze a bare eight or ten thousand yards distant, to be greeted with salvo after salvo of shell as the British battleships drove by. She would reply to the best of her ability; but, whereas our vessels had just come into action, and their shooting was very accurate, the German firing was not good, and had little or no result. Ship after ship of the enemy appeared through the murk to be fired at heavily for three, four, or five minutes, then to disappear in the haze, badly hammered and perhaps on fire.