E. F. Knight

“ The strain of submarine work is very great. To occupy the minds of the men with amusements while they are resting awhile on shore after their trying duties cannot but help to keep up their moral. And that the moral of the submarine men was wonderful all are agreed. Surely no other Service on land or sea can supply a greater test of sustained valour than does this submarine warfare. ”

“ The Germans, knowing this, for a long time directed all their mine-laying energy to that great highway of shipping, the swept War-Channel extending from the Sunk to the Shipwash light-vessels—the channel the daily sweeping of which was the charge of the Harwich mine-sweepers. Very often, owing to the tides being quite unsuitable for sweepers, the choice had to be made between two evils—stopping all traffic, or risking the sweepers and convoying the traffic through the danger zone. ”

“ In the course of this war our ships have often thus hurried to the succour of others in the face of fearful odds. Over-rashness may have been displayed on occasion. But let us regard [35] another side of the question. What confidence and spirit it must give to our men to feel that, if menaced by deadly peril, they can rely upon their comrades to come to their help if it is humanly possible to do so! A Navy that has no soul, in which a commander will coldly calculate the exact risk before deciding whether the game is quite worth the candle, will never achieve great things. ”

“ On many a stormy winter's night the destroyers would rush out in the teeth of the icy spray to attack a foe or assist a friend in difficulty. It was perpetual vigilance, peril, and sometimes toil almost beyond the endurance of human flesh. Thus, on one occasion two light cruisers had no sooner returned with their weary crews from a harassing three days' patrol, than they were ordered out again to cross the North Sea and reconnoitre the German High Sea Fleet, which, it was known, was coming out to manœuvre off Heligoland. Thus people in England were enabled to sleep in their beds in confidence ”

“ As a rule the submarine is playing a lone hand upon the seas. It is rare, when disaster comes, for a friendly ship to be near her to bring help or to carry tidings of her to England. In the great majority of cases, when one of our submarines has been lost, all that is known of the disaster is that she does not come home. What has happened to her remains a secret of the sea never to be revealed. An ordinary patrol for a submarine of the Harwich Flotilla was of about ten days; a mine-laying trip, of from three to six days' duration. ”

“ The fate of the stokers trapped below, when disaster comes in this fashion, is a feature of naval warfare horrible to contemplate.
One of the Arethusa's stokers, by the way, must have been a very powerful sleeper. While the ship was breaking up and all the survivors—so it was supposed—had been taken off, a man appeared on a portion of the wreck, waving his hand for help. He was rescued, and proved to be a stoker, who had been sleeping below tranquilly through the explosion, the wreck, and the breaking up of the ship. ”

“ Our ships, as I have shown, always stood by a consort in distress, and brought her safely back to her base if it were possible to do so, even at the greatest risk to themselves; and there always was a great risk of envelopment and destruction by a superior force whenever a disabled ship was being slowly towed through enemy [92] waters. Our crippled ships of the Harwich Force were never allowed to fall into the enemy's hands. Many are the stories of the saving of our ships in the North Sea during the war. ”

“ There are many who were in Harwich during the war who can now read Byron's stanzas describing the scene at Brussels on the eve of Waterloo with an understanding mind. This war has shown that the spirit of the Elizabethan and Nelson days is still with us. One wonders how the people of ages hence, when, from a long way off, they look back at these "old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago," will think and write of the men and women of this day. ”

“ The vessels employed in mine-sweeping on our coasts are of various types. I will not touch on the Fleet Sweepers, the twin-screw ships, the gunboats, and other craft, attached to the Fleet, whose duty it is to search the approaches to the Fleet bases in advance of the Fleet, but will confine myself to a description of the work performed by the hired paddle steamers, trawlers, drifters, and motor launches that constitute the auxiliary force at the Harwich base.
First to speak of those sturdy little craft, the steam trawlers—as fine sea-boats as you will find the world over. ”

“ The enemy therefore should have received early information of the approach of a British force, and it is strange that German ships, of which there were many within call, did not come out [68] to support the Meteor and attack the patrol.
To our Navy, an enemy on the surface is a welcome sight, for with him one can fight a fair fight. But the unseen mines of the enemy, lying in wait to bring about disaster in a second, are another matter. I imagine that there cannot be a sailor who does not curse the inventor of mines. It is true that we got our own back on the enemy with our own mines ”

“ Out of the little Harwich force, twenty-two mine-sweepers were sunk by mines in the course of the war, while many others were mined—some more than once—but were brought safely back to port. The loss of life was heavy. Nearly one-quarter of the officers and men were killed in the course of the war. In the case of the trawlers there was small chance for the men when their vessel was mined under them; but these tough fishermen, whose trade had taught them to face danger from their childhood, carried on cheerily among the minefields through all the years of the war. ”

“ In times of peace, not few are the wrecks and gallant savings of life on the stormy [215] North Sea. But in war-time, with the far graver peril from enemy mines and ships added to that of storm or thick weather, many were the disasters and many were the courageous rescues of crews and passengers by our mine-sweepers. ”

“ Even in war there are humorous [121] incidents, and, indeed, there are many of them. One submarine captain of this flotilla attacked a German submarine on the surface and gave chase to her with the intention of torpedoing her. But the Hun had the greater speed; the British submarine had no gun, and could not get near enough to the receding foe to use a torpedo. So the captain had to content himself with signalling insulting messages to the Hun, hoping to taunt him into fighting; but the shocked Hun dived under the surface and disappeared in order to avoid the language. ”

“ Of the great British Navy the Harwich Forces formed but a small part, but they were typical of the whole Navy, and it was no small part that they took in far the most important theatre of the naval war—the North Sea. And now the Harwich Force of light cruisers and destroyers and the Submarine Flotilla, having carried through their great duty, are to be dispersed over the four quarters of the globe. Many have already sailed to the West Indies, to the Mediterranean, to the China seas, and elsewhere. ”

“ When the convoy, on the further side of the North Sea, approached the area that had been mined by the Germans, the formation was altered. The convoy formed in line ahead, the destroyers tucking themselves in, so to speak, as close to the line of merchantmen as possible. In this narrow formation, with the destroyer mine-sweepers and the converted merchantmen mine-sweepers leading the way, their paravanes over the stern set at twenty feet to cut adrift all the mines encountered, the convoy steamed across the deadly enemy minefield to the comparative safety of the Dutch territorial waters beyond. ”

“ There was no great decisive naval action, for the good reason that the High Sea Fleet would not fight it out with our Grand Fleet, but retired to the shelter of the German minefields whenever it was attacked. In vain inferior forces were sent to tempt the enemy out. The German raids on the East Coast had no military value, and apparently had frightfulness as their sole object. Their fast ships used to rush across the North Sea under cover of the fog, bombard our undefended watering-places for half an hour or so, then hurry home again. ”

“ The patrolling submarines were bombed constantly by enemy Zeppelins and seaplanes, but with little effect. To the submarine the mine was by far the greatest danger, and no doubt the depth charge too accounted for some of our casualties. But, as I have said, in nearly all cases when a submarine is lost, no one knows what has happened. She merely does not come back. The mine-laying of the Harwich submarines was chiefly directed against the enemy submarines, the mines being generally laid at about eight feet below the surface, so as to catch these craft while travelling on the surface. ”

“ Most gallant was the conduct of the sub-lieutenant and the men who went into the ice-cold water among the struggling and drowning men, at great risk to themselves, to save lives. Exceptional coolness, too, was displayed by the engine-room and stokehole branch of the Radiant while rescue work was being performed in the dangerous area. That all survivors volunteered, on their own, to serve in the Harwich [64] Force, although some of them had been mined or torpedoed two or three times previously, speaks for the splendid type of men who man the ships of the Harwich Force. ”

“ It is part of the tradition, too, of the British Navy at all cost to stand by a friend in distress. It will be remembered that at the beginning of the war two [8] important ships were torpedoed while rescuing the crews of sinking consorts, and that this led to the issue of an Admiralty order to the effect that no heavy ships must risk valuable material by undertaking this dangerous work, which should be left to the light craft. The zeal that comes of an old tradition may need checking at times, but it leads to victory in the end. ”

“ Thus E34, while returning from a mine-laying expedition, made a clever attack on an enemy submarine. The two ships were on the surface, coming towards each other. The British submarine was the first to sight the other. She dived and fired a torpedo, which struck the German in the conning-tower. A violent explosion followed, and afterwards there was nothing to be seen on the water save two objects, one of which proved to be the German captain, who was saved, and the other to be one of the crew, who sank.
It is the practice of the submarine to deliver its attack when below the surface. ”

“ To remain longer on the coast with a crippled ship in tow would be to invite the attack of a superior enemy force; in fact, it was known that strong forces were already putting to sea from the German bases; so at 11 a.m. the Commodore ordered the entire force to withdraw to the westward. The flotilla-leader Lightfoot took the Medusa in tow.
At the beginning of the homeward voyage the enemy seaplanes circled round the ships, but were kept off by our high-angle guns. One plucky German airman, however, despite the shrapnel that was bursting all round him, made a most determined attack. ”

“ What I have said of the trawler skippers and crews also applies to those who man the North Sea drifters, which were taken from the fishing grounds to do their work among the minefields. These drifters are for the most part manned by hardy Scotch [190] fishermen, who, like the East Coast trawler men, took to their new work as a duck takes to water. These drifters are of lighter draught than the trawlers, and so can be employed in shallower waters. They proved of great service, not only in mine-sweeping, but also for laying mine nets and for carrying out exploratory sweeps. ”

“ These men, who have been fishermen from infancy and have faced danger throughout their lives, brought up in the roughest of schools, now belong to the R.N.T.R., the Royal Naval Trawler Reserve, and man the mine-sweeping trawlers. Some of them might appear rude in speech and manners to residents of garden cities, but to those who know them these are true men led by "captains courageous," and they call for the admiration and respect of all Englishmen for the way in which they have carried out their perilous duties throughout the war. The mine-sweeping trawler carries a crew of about fifteen men. ”

“ Whenever an enemy ship, attracted by the bait thus displayed for her benefit, made [158] for the apparently defenceless trawler with the object of sinking her, the trawler, by means of the telephone wire which connected her with the submerged submarine, communicated to the latter the movements of the enemy. The submarine—which was enabled by a device to slip the tow-line from within—when the right moment arrived delivered her attack, and a torpedo, possibly backed up by a round or two from the trawler's now disclosed gun, finished the enemy off. ”

“ At this hotel—and, by the way, what a scene was here when the armistice was announced!—there were always staying numbers of the relatives and friends of the naval officers. There was often a gay assemblage here. It was the gaiety of brave men at the prospect of danger, and of women who concealed their anxiety for the sake of their men. ”

“ When the German armoured cruiser Blücher, which had been damaged badly by our fire, dropped astern of the German line, the Indomitable was detached to finish her off, and while thus engaged was screened by the 1st Destroyer Division of the Harwich force. The Arethusa gave the coup de grâce to the Blücher with a torpedo and sank her. The Arethusa and the destroyers were picking up the survivors of the Blücher when a Taube flew [47] overhead and attacked the boats with bombs, killing Germans struggling in the water as well as some of our own men. ”

“ First the two leading destroyers, Lennox and Lance, attacked and sank the leading enemy torpedo-boat. Then the destroyers, cutting in between the enemy ships, sank them in turn. During the action the Undaunted kept outside effective torpedo range and engaged the enemy at long range, attacking whichsoever ship happened to be nearest to her at the time. The enemy losses were very heavy; only forty-seven men were picked up by our boats, of whom many afterwards died of their wounds. On this occasion the enemy fought with great gallantry against a far superior force. ”