The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories of the Ships, by Lewis R. Freeman This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Stories of the Ships Author: Lewis R. Freeman Release Date: April 27, 2013 [EBook #42604] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF THE SHIPS *** Produced by Greg Bergquist, Paul Clark and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistent hyphenation. Some changes have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. STORIES OF THE SHIPS DEDICATED TO CAPT. ELLERTON STORIES OF THE SHIPS BY LIEUT LEWIS R. FREEMAN, R.N.V.R. OFFICIAL PRESS REPRESENTATIVE WITH THE GRAND FLEET LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1919 All rights reserved CONTENTS I. STORIES OF THE SHIPS PAGE [Pg i] [Pg ii] [Pg iii] [Pg iv] [Pg v] The Story of the Cornwall 3 i. Plymouth to the Falklands 3 ii. The Battle of the Falklands 28 The Story of the Sydney 53 i. The Signalman's Tale 53 ii. Naval Hunnism 85 II. LIFE IN THE FLEET A Battleship at Sea 107 A North Sea Sweep 130 A Visit to the British Fleet 157 The Health of the Fleet 169 Economy in the Grand Fleet 178 Christmas in a "Happy" Ship 194 In a Balloon Ship 203 Coaling the Grand Fleet 216 The Stokers 232 III. AMERICA ARRIVES The U.S. Navy 247 "Getting Together" 259 i. How the Officers of the British and American Ships that are working together in European Waters are making each other's acquaintance 259 ii. What the British Bluejacket thinks of the American 268 iii. What the American Bluejacket thinks of Britain and the British 278 I. STORIES OF THE SHIPS THE STORY OF THE CORNWALL I. Plymouth to the Falklands Of the countless stories of naval action which I have listened to in the course of the months I have spent with the Grand Fleet, I cannot recall a single one which was told as the consequence of being asked for with malice aforethought. I have never yet found a man of action who was enamoured of the sound of his own voice raised in the recital of his own exploits, and if there is one thing more than another calculated to throw an otherwise not untalkative British Naval Officer into a state of uncommunicativeness, in comparison with which the traditional silence of the sphinx or the proverbial close-mouthedness of the clam are alike sheer garrulity, it is to ask him, point blank, to tell you (for instance) how he took his submarine into the Baltic, or what his destroyer did at Jutland, or how he fought his cruiser at Dogger Bank, or something similar. The quiet-voiced but always interesting and often dramatic recitals of such things as these which I have heard have invariably been led up to quite incidentally—at dinner, on the bridge or quarter-deck, around the wardroom fire, or through something else that has just been told. Several times I have found in officers' diaries—little records never meant [Pg vi] [Pg 1] [Pg 2] [Pg 3] [Pg 4] for other eyes than those of the writers' own friends or families—which have been turned over to me to verify some point regarding which I had inquired, laconic references to incidents and events of great human and even historic interest, and one of the most amusing and dramatic yarns I have ever listened to was told me in a "kite" balloon— plunging in the forty-mile wind against which it was being towed like a hooked salmon—by a man who had assured me before we went up that nothing really exciting had ever fallen to his experience. It was in this way—an anecdote now and then as this or that incident of the day recalled it to his mind—that Captain —— came to tell me the story of the Cornwall during those eventful early months of the war when he commanded that now famous cruiser. He mentioned her first, I believe, one night in his cabin when, referring to a stormy midwinter month, most of which had been spent by his Division of the Grand Fleet on some sort of work at sea, I spoke of the "rather strenuous interval" we had experienced. "If you think life in a battleship of the Grand Fleet strenuous," laughed the Captain, extending himself comfortably in his armchair before the glowing grate, "I wonder what you would have thought of the life we led in the old Cornwall. Not very far from a hundred and twenty thousand miles of steaming was her record for the first two years of the war, and in that time she ploughed most of the Seven Seas and coasted in the waters of all but one of the Six Continents. Always on the lookout for something or other, coaling as we could, provisioning as we might—let me tell you that coming to the Grand Fleet after that (at least until a few months had elapsed and the contrast wore off) was like retiring on a pension in comparison." He settled himself deeper into the soft upholstery, extended his feet nearer the fire, lighted a fresh cigar, and, in the hour which elapsed before the evening mail came aboard, told me of the work of the Cornwall in those first chaotic weeks of the war which preceded the battle of the Falklands. "We were at Plymouth when the war began," said he, "and our first work was in connexion with protecting and 'shepherding' safely to port several British ships carrying bullion which were still on the high seas. It was a baffling sort of a job, especially as there were two or three German raiders loose in the North Atlantic, the favourite ruse of each of which was to represent itself as a British cruiser engaged in the same benevolent work the Cornwall was on. Warned of these 'wolves-in-shepherds'-clothing,' the merchantmen we sought to protect were afraid to reveal their whereabouts by wireless, the consequence being that our first forerunning efforts to safeguard the seas resolved themselves into a sort of marine combination of 'Blind-Man's Buff' and 'Hide-and-Seek,' played pretty well all over the Atlantic. All the ships with especially valuable cargoes got safely to port ultimately, though none of them, that I recall, directly under the wing of the Cornwall. It was our first taste of the 'So-near-and-yet-so-far' kind of life that is the inevitable lot of the cruiser which essays the dual rôle of 'Commerce Protector' and 'Raider Chaser.' "After a few hours at 'Gib,' we were next sent across to Casa Blanca, where the appearance of the Cornwall was about the first tangible evidence that French Africa had of the fact that England was really coming into the war in earnest. There was a good deal of unrest in Morocco at the time, for the Germans were even then at work upon their insidious propaganda among the Moslems of all the colonies of the Allies. The 'buzz' in the bazaars that the appearance of a British warship started must have served a very useful purpose at this critical juncture in carrying to the Arabs of the interior word that France was not going to have to stand alone against Germany. Our reception by both the French and native population of Casa Blanca was most enthusiastic, and during all of our stay a cheering procession followed in the wake of every party of officers or men who went ashore. "Leaving Casa Blanca, we were sent back to the Atlantic to search for commerce destroyers, ultimately working south by the Canaries and Cape Verde Islands to South American waters, where the Karlsruhe was then at the zenith of her activities. The chase of this enterprising and elusive raider, whose career was finally brought to an inglorious end by her going aground on a West Indian Island, kept the Cornwall—along with a number of other British cruisers—steadily on the move, until the ominous and painful news of the destruction of Craddock's fleet off Coronel suddenly brought us face to face with the fact that there was soon going to be bigger game than a lone pirate to be stalked. "We never had the luck to sight even so much as the smoke of the Karlsruhe, although—as I only learned too late to take advantage of the information—the Cornwall was within an hour or two's steaming of her on one occasion. I did think we had her once, though—a jolly amusing incident it was, too. I was getting uncomfortably short of food at the time—a very common experience in the 'here-to-day-and-gone-to-morrow' sort of life we were leading;—so that when the welcome news reached me by wireless one morning that a British ship—Buenos Aires to New York with frozen beef—was due to pass through the waters we were then patrolling, I lost no time in heading over to intercept her on the chance of doing a bit of marketing. "We picked her up promptly as reckoned, but, while she was still hull down on the horizon, her skipper began to signal frantically, 'I am being chased by the "Karlsruhe"!' Here was luck indeed. I ordered 'Action Stations' to be sounded, and the course of the ship to be altered toward the point where I figured the smoke of the pursuing pirate would begin to smudge the sky-line as she came swooping down upon her prey. Sighting nothing after holding on this course for a while, I came to the conclusion that the raider must be hidden by the impenetrable smoke-pall with which the flying beef-ship had masked a wide arc of the western horizon, and headed up in that direction, begging the fugitive in the meantime to give me the bearing of her pursuer as accurately as possible. "Her only reply to this, however, was to belch out 'smoke-screen' faster than ever and continue rending the empyrean ether with renewed 'I am being chased by the "Karlsruhe"!' In vain I assured her that we were the H.M.S. [Pg 5] [Pg 6] [Pg 7] [Pg 8] Cornwall, and would take the greatest delight in seeing that the chase was put an end to, if she would only tell us from which direction the Karlsruhe was coming, and cease to throw out a bituminous blanket for the enemy to hide behind. Blacker and blacker rolled the smoke, heavier and heavier piled the screen to leeward, and still more frantically shrilled the appeals for help. At the end of my patience at actions which it now began to dawn upon me looked more than a little suspicious, I headed the Cornwall straight after the runaway and soon reduced the interval separating us sufficiently to reach her with 'Visual.' She brought up sharp at my 'Stop instantly!' and a quarter of an hour later my boarding party was clambering over her side. "'Where's the Karlsruhe?' I shouted impatiently to the Boarding Officer as his boat came back alongside again. I knew something of the accuracy of German long range naval gunnery, and was far from being easy in mind regarding the kind of surprise packet that might at any moment be wafted out of that slowly thinning smoke-blur to leeward. "'There,' he replied with a comprehensive sweep of the arm in quite the opposite direction from the one I had been expecting the enemy. 'Right there, Sir.' That old lunatic of a skipper thought the Cornwall was the Karlsruhe!" "Did you get your frozen beef?" I asked. The Captain smiled the pleased smile of one who recalls something that has given him great satisfaction. "I think that afternoon marked the beginning of the 'Food Economy' campaign in the Navy," he replied. "If the Admiralty had been able to continue buying frozen beef at the rate that crestfallen but highly relieved skipper—quite of his own free will—charged for the lot we loaded up after he had found it was not to be his fate to be sunk by the Karlsruhe,— well, the Government could have probably built a new battleship or two and never missed the money out of the saving." The recollection of the treat that fresh meat was after a long period on "bully beef" ration turned the Captain's thoughts to another time of plenty he had experienced after the Cornwall had helped the wounded Carmania limp back to Base following her successful engagement with the Cap Trafalgar. "In these times of food economy and restricted rations," he said, "it fairly makes my mouth water to think of the feasts Captain G—— spread for us during the days we were devising a way to get the battered Carmania back to England. You see, when the war started she was just about to sail on one of her transatlantic voyages with the usual midsummer cargo of American millionaires, and her cuisine was of a character calculated to satisfy their Epicurean tastes. When they converted her to an auxiliary cruiser, it was the usual sledge-hammer, crow-bar, and over-the-side procedure with the mirrors, the upholsteries, and the mahoganies, but they left the stores, God bless them, they left the stores. Can you fancy how things such as truffled quail, and asparagus tips with mayonnaise—iced—and café parfait, and Muscat dates, and California oranges—with the big gold labels on—tasted to men who had been for weeks pretty nearly down to the classic old wind-jammer ration of 'lobscouse' and 'dog's-body'? And those plump, black, five-inch-long Havanas in the silver foil (I can smell the soothing fumes of them yet), and that rarely blended Mocha, and those bottles of 1835 Cognac—the pungent bouquet of them scents the memories of the long evenings I sat with G—— in the wreck of his fire-swept cabin while he yarned to me of the ripping fight he had just come out of. And how we all envied G—— his luck—getting as sporting a show as a man could ask for in that half-converted liner while we cruisers were vainly chasing smoke and rumours over most of the South Atlantic. Nothing less than the banquets he gave us would have salved our heart-burnings." And so it was that the Captain was led on to speak of what he had heard—from those who took part in it, and only a few hours from the time it happened—of the first great duel ever fought between modern armed merchantmen, a conflict, indeed, which is still practically unique in naval history. "There was not much to choose between the ships," he said. "The Cap Trafalgar—one of the latest of the Hamburg Sud Amerika liners—had a good deal the best of it on the score of age, and the Carmania probably something on the score of size. The latter had been hastily converted at Liverpool immediately after the outbreak of the war, while the former turned herself from sheep into wolf about the same time by arming herself with the guns of a small German gun- boat. This craft, by the way, steamed to the nearest Brazilian port and, with true Hunnish logic, claimed the right to intern as a peaceful German Merchantman on the strength of the fact that it was no longer armed! The largest guns that either ship had were four-inch, the Carmania having slight advantage on the score of number. The Carmania would have been no match for the Karlsruhe, just as the Cap Trafalgar would have fallen easy prey to the Cornwall or another of the British cruisers in those waters. Under the circumstances, it was a happy fatality that let these two ex- floating palaces fight with each other and in their own class. "The first word we had of the engagement was a wireless Captain G—— sent out saying, in effect, that he had sunk the Trafalgar, but, as his bridge was burned up, his steering gear shot away, and all his navigating instruments destroyed, that he would be glad to have some one come and tell him where he was and lead him to a place where he could, so to speak, lie down and lick his wounds for a while. It took a jolly good bit of searching to find a ship that couldn't tell any more about itself than that, but we finally sighted her ragged silhouette and gave her a lead to such a haven as the practically open seas of our rendezvous afforded. "Poor G—— had lost a good deal more than his steering gear it soon transpired, for the fire which had consumed his bridge had also gutted his cabin, and reduced everything in it to cinders except an old Norfolk jacket. How that escaped we never could figure out, for of garments hanging on pegs to the left and right of it no trace was left. As G [Pg 9] [Pg 10] [Pg 11] [Pg 12] —— was of about three times the girth of any other British officer in those waters at the time, the wardrobe we tried to get together for him was a grotesque combination; indeed, so far as I recall now, the old Norfolk had to serve him as everything from pyjamas and bath-robe to dinner-jacket and great-coat during that trying period. It was a weird figure he cut presiding at those Gargantuan feasts he spread for us on the bruised and battered old Carmania, but there wasn't a one of us who wouldn't have changed places with him—Norfolk and all—for the assurance of half his luck. Such is the monotony of this patrol work in the outer seas, that, after your first enthusiasm wears off, you get into a state of mind in which you can never conceive that anything is ever going to happen. That we had the one most decisive naval battle of the war just ahead of us, no one dreamed at this time. "The fight between the Carmania and Cap Trafalgar," he continued, "has well been called 'The Battle of the Haystacks,' for never before (or since, for that matter) have two ships with such towering upper works stood off and tried to batter each other to pieces with gunfire. Indeed, I well recall G——'s saying that, up to the very end, he could not conceive that either ship could sink the other, and of how—even after the Carmania had been struck three or four- score times and a raging fire forward had driven him from the bridge—he kept wondering in the back of his brain what sort of a fight the duel would resolve itself into when both had exhausted their shells. Luckily, he did not have to face that problem. "Both ships, according to G——'s account, began blazing at each other as soon as they came in range, and, as each was eager to fight it out to a finish, the distance separating them was, for a while, reduced as rapidly as possible. At something like three thousand yards, however, some sort of a rapid-fire gun burst into action on the Trafalgar. 'It didn't appear to be doing me much harm,' said G—— in telling of it, 'but the incessant "pom-pom" of the accursed thing got so much on my nerves that I drew off far enough to dull the edge of its infernal yapping.' "A thing which came near to putting the Carmania out of the running before she had completed the polishing off of her opponent was the shell which I have spoken of as violating the sanctity of the Captain's cabin—the one that burned everything but the Norfolk jacket. This projectile—a four-inch—though (probably owing to the small resistance offered by the light upper works) it did not explode, generated enough heat in its passage to start a fire. Beginning on G——'s personal effects, this conflagration spread to the bridge, destroying the navigating instruments and ultimately making it impossible to remain there—the latter a serious blow in itself. What made this fire especially troublesome was the difficulty, because of the cutting of the main, of bringing water to bear upon it. As it was, it was necessary to head the Carmania 'down the wind' to reduce the draught fanning the flames. Nothing else would have saved her. Except for one thing, this expedient would have enabled the now thoroughly worsted (though G—— didn't know it) Trafalgar to withdraw from the action, and this was that the latter was herself on fire and had to take the same course willy-nilly. From that moment on the battle was as irretrievably joined as one of those old Spanish knife-duels in which the opponents were locked together in a room to fight to a finish. Often as not, so they say, the victor in one of these fights only survived the loser by minutes or hours, and so would it have been in this instance had they not finally been able to extinguish the fire on the Carmania. "G——'s account of the way he had to carry on after being driven from the bridge—it was really a splendid bit of seamanship—was funny in the extreme, but the reality must have been funnier still, that is, if that term can be applied to anything happening while shells are bursting and blowing men to bits every few seconds. G—— is one of the biggest men in the Navy—around the waist, I mean—so it wasn't to be expected of him to be very shifty on his feet. And yet, by the irony of Fate, it was he of all men who was suddenly confronted with a task that required only less 'foot-work' than it did 'head-work.' With the battle going on all the time, they rigged up some sort of a 'jury' steering gear, or it may be that they steered her by her screws. At any rate, G—— had to con her from the most commanding position he could find on one of the after decks, or rather, as he had no longer voice-pipe communication with the engine-room, he had to keep dashing back and forth (it must have been for all the world like a batsman running in cricket) between two or three commanding positions. 'If I wanted to open the range a bit,' he said, 'I had to nip for'ard, wait till there was an interval in both gun-fire and shell-burst, and yell down a hatchway' (or was it a ventilator?) 'to the engine-room to "Slow port!" or if I suddenly found it imperative to open the distance, I had to make the same journey and pass the word down to "Stop starboard!" The very thought of that mad shuttling back and forth under the equatorial sun used to make poor G—— mop his forehead and pour himself a fresh drink every time he told the story. "Battered and burning fiercely as both ships were, G—— confessed that even at this juncture he could not rid himself of the feeling that neither of them had enough shells to sink the other. 'I was racking my brain for some plan of action to follow when that moment arrived,' he said, 'when suddenly the Trafalgar began to heel sharply and started to sink. It was our second or third salvo, which had holed her badly at the water-line, that did the business. She had kept steaming and fighting for close to an hour and a quarter afterwards, though.' "G—— told us one very good story about his Gunnery officer. 'It was just before the shell which started the fire struck us,' he said, 'that Y——'s sun helmet was knocked off—I don't remember whether it was by the wind or the concussion of the firing. Seeing it fall to the deck below, he ran to the rail of the bridge and began shouting for some one to bring it back to him. Before long, luckily, a seaman who had heard the shouting in a lull of the firing, poked his head out to see what it was about, and presently came puffing up the ladder with the fugitive head-piece. I say luckily, because the gun-control for the whole ship was suspended while Y—— waited for that infernal helmet. And the funniest thing about it all was that, when I ventured to suggest a few days later that it might be well if he made use of the chin-strap of his helmet the next time he was in action, he claimed to have no recollection whatever of the incident— [Pg 13] [Pg 14] [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] thought he had been "sticking to his guns" all the time. Just shows how a man's brain works in air-tight compartments when he is really busy.' "The Surgeon of the Carmania (continued the Captain)—a splendid chap who had given up a lucrative West-end practice and sworn he was under forty (although he was really fifty-two) in order to get a chance to do something for his country—told me many stories to prove the splendid spirit of the men that passed under his hands during and after the fight. Though most of the crew were only Royal Naval Reservists, with no experience of and but little training for fighting, it appears that they stood what is perhaps the hardest of all trials—that of seeing their mates wounded and killed beside them—like seasoned veterans. "'There was one stout-hearted young Cockney,' said the Surgeon, 'whom, after I had finished removing a number of shell fragments from various parts of his anatomy, I asked what he thought of the fight. "Rippin', Sir," he replied, grinning ecstatically through the bandage that held up the flap of a torn cheek; "rippin', never been in one like it before." Then, as his eye caught the smile which I could not quite repress at the lifetime of naval battling suggested by that "nev'r afore," he concluded with "Not ev'n in Whitechapel."' "The Surgeon came across one man who insisted that the blood flowing from a ragged tear in his arm was really spattered there when one of his mates—whose mangled body he bestrode—had been decapitated by a shell a few minutes before; and there was one lot of youngsters who went on cheerily 'Yo-heave-ho-ing' in hoisting some badly needed shells which were so slippery with blood that they had to be sanded before they could be handled. Grimly pathetic was the story he told me of a gunner whose torn hand he had just finished amputating and bandaging when some one shouted into the door of the dressing station that the Trafalgar was going down. "'He crowded to a port I had had opened,' said the Surgeon, 'just in time to see one of the last salvoes from the Carmania go crashing into the side of the heeling enemy. "Huroor, boys," he shouted; "give 'em beans," and as he cheered he started (what had evidently been a favourite gesture of approval and excitement with him) to smite mightily with his right fist into the palm of his left hand. But the blow fell upon air; there was no answering thwack. The gnarled, weather-beaten fist shot past a bandaged stump. He drew back with surprise for a moment, and then, grinning a bit sheepishly, like a boy surprised in some foolish action, edged back beside me at the port. "Quite forgot there was su'thin' missin'," he said half apologetically, trying to wriggle the elbow of the maimed arm back into the sling from which it had slipped. "S'pose I'll be havin' to get used to it, won't I?" As the Trafalgar took a new list and began rapidly to settle he burst into renewed "Huroors." "By Gawd, Sir," he cried, when she had finally gone, "if I 'ad as many 'ands as an oktypuss, I'd 'a giv'n 'em all fer the joy o' puttin' that blinkin' pyrit down to Davy Jones."'" The Captain gazed long at the coals of the grate, on his face the pleased smile of one who recalls treasured memories. "I can't tell you how sorry we were to see the Carmania go," he said finally. "My word, how we did enjoy those feasts good old G—— spread for us!" With a laugh he roused himself from the pleasant reverie and took up again the narrative of the Cornwall. "The first intimation we had" (he resumed) "of the sinking of Admiral Craddock's fleet came in the form of a wireless from the Defence asking if I had heard of the disaster at Coronel. Details which came in the course of the next day or two brought home to us the astonishing change in the whole situation which the appearance of Von Spee in South American waters had wrought. The blow fell like a bolt from the blue. "As rapidly as possible the various British warships in the South Atlantic rendezvoused off Montevideo to discuss a plan of action. What the next move of the victorious Von Spee would be we could only surmise. German prisoners picked up after the Falklands battle said his ultimate plan—after seizing Port Stanley for a base, and undergoing such a refit there as was practicable with the means at his disposal—was to scatter his ships as commerce raiders all over the Atlantic, cutting, if possible, the main sea arteries of England to North America. The Germans figured, according to these prisoners, that the suspension of the North Atlantic traffic for even a month (no impossible thing for five speedy cruisers in the light of the delays to sailings caused by the Emden and Karlsruhe working alone) would practically paralyse England's war efforts and reduce her military effort in France to almost negligible proportions. I am much more inclined to believe that this—rather than escorting a fleet of German merchantmen, bearing German reservists from Argentina, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil, to South-West Africa from Buenos Aires and Montevideo—was the real plan of Von Spee. However, it was the immediate rather than the ultimate plans of the Germans that was our chief—in fact, our only— concern. Whether Von Spee intended heading for the North Atlantic later or South Africa, or up the Thames—the only way he could clear the road to any of these objectives was by first destroying such British warships as still remained in South American waters. It was these ships which had hurried to get together off Montevideo, in order to make the path of the enemy as thorny and full of pitfalls as possible. "They had no illusions respecting what the immediate future held for them, that little group of cruiser captains that gathered in the Admiral's cabin of the Defence to formulate a plan of action. We knew nothing at that time of what had been decided upon at the Admiralty; indeed, we were quite in agreement that it would be deemed inexpedient to send any battle cruisers away from the North Sea, where they might be imperatively needed any day, on a voyage to the South Atlantic that might easily resolve itself into a months'-long wild-goose chase. Our plans, therefore, were laid entirely on the assumption that we should have to do the best we could with the ships already available. [Pg 18] [Pg 19] [Pg 20] [Pg 21] "There was not a man of us who was not keen on the chance of a fight at even the prohibitive odds under which it appeared inevitable that the one ahead of us must be fought, but the prospects of success were anything but alluring. Every day that passed had brought reports revealing the completeness of the enemy's victory at Coronel, and all of these were more than confirmed when the Glasgow—whose captain had had the good sense to retire from a battle in which there was no longer a chance for him to be of any use—came in and joined us. "It would be easy to suggest conditions under which one naval force, faced by another as much stronger than itself as the Germans were than the British at this time, would be justified in avoiding an action. The present was not such an occasion, however; in fact, I don't think it ever occurred to any of us to bring up a discussion of that phase of the question at all. This, briefly, was the way the matter presented itself to us: The measure of the power of the Germans to inflict harm to the Allies was their supply of shells. These gone—always provided no new supply reached them—the menace, even though the ships were yet unsunk, was practically at an end. We knew that they had already used up a considerable quantity of their munition in a foolish bombardment of the little tropical port of Papeete, in the French Societies, and we knew that a very large amount had been expended at Coronel. They still probably had enough, we figured, to see them through many months of commerce raiding if only they could avoid another general action against warships, and such an action, even if it was a losing one from our standpoint, it was our manifest rôle to provoke, and at the earliest possible moment. "This point decided, about all that remained to be considered was how to make the most effective disposition of such ships as we had at our disposal when once the enemy was in sight. We knew just what ships we would have to meet. We also knew, practically to a gun, how they were armed. Moreover, with Coronel as an object lesson, we knew how well those ships were handled, and with what deadly effectiveness those guns were served. Now that it is all ancient history, I think there is no reason why I should not tell you how we arranged that our ships should 'take partners' for the little 'sea-dance' they were expecting to shake their heels at. "The Defence—an armoured cruiser of the Minotaur type, subsequently sunk at Jutland—was to tackle the Scharnhorst, Von Spee's flagship. The former was the only ship we had that was anywhere nearly a match for either of the larger German cruisers. She exceeded them in displacement by several thousand tons, and her four nine-point-twos and ten seven-point-fives had a comfortable margin of metal over that fired from the Scharnhorst's eight eight-point- twos and six five-point-nines. In a fair duel with either of the larger Germans, I think there is little doubt she would have had the best of it. In the battle we expected to go into, however, there could be no certainty that she was going to be able to give her undivided attention to the vis-à-vis we had picked for her during a sufficient interval to finish up the job. "The Carnarvon and the Cornwall were to be given the formidable task of keeping the Gneisenau so busy that she could not help her sister fight the Defence. Our combined displacement was about equal to that of our prospective opponent, but the four seven-point-fives and twenty six-inch (all we had between us) could hardly have prevented her pounding us to pieces with her eight-point-twos, in the event that she elected to use her speed to keep beyond the effective range of our lighter guns. By dashing into close range we might have had a chance with her, or, again there was the possibility we might lead her a dance that would take her out of the way long enough to give the Defence time to finish polishing off the Scharnhorst, in which event the former might have been able to intervene in our favour. "Small as would have been our chance of carrying through our part of the programme successfully, the Gneisenau was the one opponent I desired above all the others, on account of the way I knew it would buck up the ship's company to feel that they were having a whack at the ship that sunk the Monmouth. There were a good many men in the Monmouth who had gone to her from the Cornwall, and our men never tired cursing the Hun for letting their mates drown at Coronel without making any effort to save them. They had something to say on that score when their turn came at the Falklands. "The Glasgow we were going to give a chance to wipe out her Coronel score by sending her in against the Nürnberg. With her superior speed, and her two six-inch and ten four-inch guns against the latter's ten four-point ones, she would probably have had the best of what could not but have been a very pretty fight if no one had interfered with it. Here again, unluckily, the chances were against a duel to the finish. Against the Dresden—a very worthy sister of the Emden—the very best we could muster was the armed merchantman, Orama. This (unless another armed merchantman—the Otranto, which had escaped with the Glasgow from Coronel—became available) left us nothing to oppose to the Leipzig, which, in that event, would have been a sort of a 'rover,' free to bestow her attention and shells wherever they appeared likely to do the most harm. And (from the way she was fought at the Falklands, where she was my 'opposite number') let me tell you that a jolly troublesome 'rover' she would have been. "That, in a few words, was our little plan for making Von Spee use up the remainder of his ammunition. That was our principal object, and there can be no doubt that we would have come pretty near complete success in attaining it. For the rest, you can judge for yourself what our chances would have been. As the Fates would have it, however, that battle was never to be fought, save on paper in the Admiral's cabin of the old Defence. Before ever we had completed preparations for our 'magazine-emptying' sally against Von Spee, word was winged to us that the Admiralty had a plan of its own in process of incubation, and that we were to standby to co-operate. "Sturdee and his battle cruisers were well on their way to the South Atlantic, however, before even an inkling of what was afoot was vouchsafed us, and even then my orders were simply to rendezvous with him at the 'Base' I have spoken of before—the one where we foregathered and feasted with the Carmania. I breathed no word of where and why we [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] [Pg 25] [Pg 26] were going until the muddy waters of the Plate estuary were left behind and the last least possibility of a 'leak' to the shore was out of the question. Then I simply passed it on to the men by posting some word of it on the notice-board. There was no cheering, either then or even a few days later, when the Inflexible and the Invincible, the latter flying Admiral Sturdee's flag, came nosing in from the Atlantic and dropped anchor at the 'Base'; but the promise of action in the immediate future was like wine to the men. They were simply tumbling over themselves to carry out the most ordinary routine duties, and so it continued right up to the moment that Von Spee's foretops, gliding along above the low promontory of Port William, brought them to 'Action Stations' with real work to do at last. "Sturdee had his plans all laid, and we repaired to the Invincible shortly after her arrival to familiarise ourselves with them. All in all, it wasn't so very different a gathering as that one which took place on the Defence, off Montevideo, to plan another battle—the one which was never to take place. I don't mind admitting though, that there was a bit more 'buoyancy' to the atmosphere of this second conference, the natural consequence of our 'improved prospects.' There is no use denying that it gives a man a more comfortable feeling to know that he is in a ship that has reasonable expectation of sending its 'opposite' to the bottom of the sea, than to be faced with the prospect of going out as a sort of animated lure to wheedle the enemy out of his shells. "With the Invincible and Inflexible Sturdee had sufficient force to be able to dispense with the Defence, which was, I believe, sent to African water to join a force that was gathering there on the off-chance that the Germans slipped through the net that was being flung off South America. For scouting purposes, the Bristol and the Kent—both of which had foregathered with us at the 'Base'—were added to our 'punitive expedition,' which finally got under weigh for the Falklands on November 28. Steaming in a formation best calculated to sweep a wide range of seas, we held our southerly course for nine days, sighting, so far as I recall, no ship of any description except those of our own force. On the eighth day we weathered a heavy blizzard, but it was out of a clear dawn that the low, rounded hills of the Falklands —so suggestive in many respects of the Orkneys and the north of Scotland—took shape the following morning. We dropped anchor in the double harbour of Port William and Port Stanley at nine o'clock of the forenoon of December 7. Before another twenty-four hours had passed Von Spee—hurrying as though to a rendezvous—had made his appearance, and we were raising steam to go out and even up Craddock's account with him." II. The Battle of the Falklands The Captain had come for a breath of fresh air on the quarter-deck at the end of a grey winter's day, and it was the memories called up by the resemblance of the low, rounded, treeless hills which ringed the Northern Base to some other hills which he had good reason to carry a vivid mental picture of that set him talking of the Falklands. "They're very much like these," he said, "those wind-swept hills around Port Stanley; indeed, I know of few other parts of the world so far apart geographically that have so much in common topographically and climatically. Their people, too, are a good deal like the northern Scots and Orcadians, with a dry sense of humour that usually manifests itself at your first meeting with them, when they tell you that the Falklands have two seasons, the cold and the snowy. The latter, they tell you,—because the snow stops up the chinks and keeps out the wind—is rather the warmer of the two. They are a sturdy, resolute lot, too, and we found that, quite expecting the coming of the German fleet and with no sure knowledge that British naval help would arrive in time, they had made all preparations to fight the enemy to the limit of their very primitive resources. "And a jolly good fight they would have put up, too. The old Canopus (the battleship which did not come up in time to help Craddock at Coronel) had been grounded in the inner harbour and turned into a 'land fort.' Her heavy turret guns had been left aboard her, while those of her secondary batteries had been mounted at the most favourable positions on the hills. The 'standing army'—of something like thirty-five, I believe—had been recruited up to several times that figure, and all over the island firearms, ancient and modern, had been taken down and made ready for use. Von Spee's sailors and marines would have had many a ridge-to-ridge skirmish on their hands before they completed the conquest of the Falklands. "The coming of Sturdee put an entirely different face on things," continued the Captain, smartly side-stepping the flying "grummet" which had been flicked across his path from out of a howling pack of flannelled "snotties" deep in the throes of hockey on the opposite side of the quarter-deck. "'When are the Huns coming?' was still the question on every tongue; but it was now put anticipatively rather than apprehensively. They had not long to wait. "I shall never forget that morning they appeared. It was scarcely twenty hours from the time we had dropped anchor, and most of the ships of the squadron were rushing those odd and ends of cleaning up, overhauling, revictualling, and the like that always follow arrival in port. The Cornwall, with some repairs on one of her engines to be effected, was at six hours' notice, and the Bristol, for similar reasons, at somewhat longer. Only the Kent was ready to put to sea at once. "I was in my bath when a signal reading 'Raise steam for full speed with all despatch' was handed me, and it did not need another signal, which arrived a few minutes later, to tell me that, by some amazing stroke of 'joss,' the enemy was near at hand. How near I did not dream until the guns of the old Canopus began to boom. Luckily, I was already shaved" (I liked that little touch), "but, even so, my finishing dressing and breakfasting within twelve minutes was a very creditable performance of its kind. I can't say much for the toilet I made, but the breakfast was a good hearty one, with porridge, eggs, and marmalade. With an action in the offing, and no knowing when you are going to have time to eat [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] [Pg 30] again, it is only common sense to fortify against an indefinite fast. "By the time I reached the bridge the topmasts of an armoured and a light cruiser were visible, slipping along above the headland which cut off the harbour from the open sea. The events of the next few hours were to etch the profile of the latter ship indelibly upon my memory, for it was the Leipzig, coming up with the Gneisenau to destroy the Port Stanley Wireless Station. From the foretop of the Canopus they were able to see the Huns clearing for action; and the Glasgow and the Bristol, both of which were in the inner harbour, also had a clear view across the depressed neck of the peninsula. The other ships of the squadron saw no more than topmasts until they had raised steam and reached the open sea. "Just how the Huns came to make the disconcerting discovery that there were modern battle cruisers concealed by the higher seaward end of the peninsula I learned from an officer who had been saved from the sinking Gneisenau, who told me the story in his guttural broken English. They had expected to find the Canopus at Port Stanley, he said, and perhaps the Cornwall and Carnarvon and other light cruisers; but anything of the class of the Invincible and Inflexible—'Mein Gott, Nein! Wen der Gunnery Ludenant sent word from der foredop down' (he sputtered) 'dot he zwei ships mit dreipodt madsts gesehen had, mein Kapdtin he say, "Nein, nein, es ist eempossibl. Ich will ein man mit der gut eyes up senden." Wen this man say, ya, he see zwei dreipodt madsts, mein Kapdtin, he say, "Der Teufel, now Ich must go quickt. Ein hour, zwei hour, we run, sehr schnell. Den komen aus der Inglish ships, und preddy soon Ich see dem komen mehr schell von uns." Den Ich say: "Mein Kapdtin, you must der mehr schnell gehen, or you must der fight machen." He say, "Ya, ya," und he mehr schnell try zu gehen. Nicht gut. No good. Den we up mit der Scharnhorst gekommen, und der Admiral, he say, "Nun will we der fight gemachen. Den we machen der fight. Nichts, no good. Kaput! Feenish!"'" The Captain stopped at the windward end of the deck and let the breeze fan a brow that had grown red during his effort at literal rendition. A grin of pleased reminiscence sat on his face. "My word, but it must have given the Hun a jolly good jolt, that first sight of those 'dreipodt madsts!'" he explained finally, as he put on his cap and fell into step beside me again. "If Von Spee ever had any time for arrière pensée before the sea closed over him," he resumed, "he must have reproached himself bitterly for not pushing on in force and attacking us in the harbour before we had steam up. If his whole squadron had come up as the Gneisenau and Leipzig did, they could undoubtedly have given us a very unpleasant hour or two while we were raising steam. We would have polished them off in the end, of course, but they would have done us a deal more harm than by the tactics they did follow. Again, there is a chance that, if the two armoured cruisers had pressed the attack alone—as they eventually were forced to do—they might have inflicted enough damage to our light cruisers to have made the escape of all three (instead of only one) of theirs a possibility. However, Von Spee's star of good fortune, which had been at its zenith at Coronel, was now sinking to near the horizon, and it was ordained that at the Falklands he should meet an enemy who was both faster and heavier armed than he, under conditions of sea and light which favoured him no whit. "The battle of the Falklands was really won in the harbour of Port Stanley. It was all a question of how soon we could get out. If we could reach the enemy in anything like full force there was little doubt of the result. A delay of an hour or two, however, might have easily resulted in their scattering so effectually that the running down of the last of them would have been a matter of months, and months, too, marked with great losses of, and greater delays to, the merchant shipping of two hemispheres. Nothing short of the truly splendid efforts of the engine-room and stokehold personnel of Sturdee's ships would have given their gunners their chance to win the battle of the Falklands. "Of the Cornwall's achievement in this respect I am especially proud. With one of the engines partially dismantled, we would have been doing all that was expected of us if we had been under full steam in six hours. Indeed, that was the very notice we had gone under, in order to do the overhauling desired. And now let me tell you what happened. It was ten minutes after eight when the signal to raise steam for full speed was received, and before half-past ten she was steaming out of the harbour. We could have got under weigh some minutes earlier than we did but for having to let the Invincible and the Inflexible, which had been lying inshore of us, pass out ahead. And before the day was over the old Cornwall, with the heartiest lot of lads that ever swung a scoop throwing coal under her boilers, covered a wide stretch of the South Atlantic at a speed a good knot or two better than she had averaged on her trial trip, or at any other time since then. "There was one trivial but amusing little incident in connexion with the departure of the battle cruisers which stands out particularly clearly among my otherwise rather jumbled memories of those two hours of rush and hurry. We had been leading our usual hand-to-mouth existence in the matter of food for some weeks previous to this, and one of the things we had most looked forward to our call at Port Stanley for was revictualling. We were losing no time in getting provisions aboard, and at the moment the signal to raise steam was received a lighter containing, among other things, a large cask of beer and a lot of salt pork had just moored alongside. We were really in great need of the salt pork, and —well, there seemed to be a considerable desire for the beer also. However, when the Devil drives, or a reckoning is to be settled with the Hun, one can't wait for such incidentals as food and drink. Knowing that we had enough aboard to keep going on until the game was played out, I ordered the lighter to cast off and turned my attention to more pertinent matters. I recalled later that I heard the winch grinding once or twice after I gave the order, but, seeing the lighter floating away with the tide presently, thought no more about it for the moment. [Pg 31] [Pg 32] [Pg 33] [Pg 34] [Pg 35] "Carried hither and thither by the conflicting harbour currents, the lighter was half a cable's length or so off our port bow when the battle cruisers, spouting smoke like young volcanoes, came charging out to take up the chase of the Hun, and, by a strange chance, it was lounging indolently square athwart the course of the Flagship. The sharp bows of the Invincible shore it through like a knife, and her propellers, with those of the Inflexible, quickly reduced boat and cargo to bobbing bits dancing in their bubbling wake.[A] "It really hurt me to see that good food and drink snatched almost out of our mouths, as it were, but I tried to put on a brave front and turn the matter off as a joke. 'Beer and pork sausage,' I remarked to one of my officers who had j...