Mark Herbert Joseph Bennett

“ People who read the accounts of vessels being sunk by submarines and talk glibly of piracy and other nonsense from the depths of their arm-chairs never realise the nerve required to carry out those attacks, or the feeling of being cooped up in a tiny shell out of reach of air and sunlight, with the knowledge that there is no quarter meted out to the undersea-forces. Neither do they realise that orders are orders, and that the German submarine captains are merely obeying their orders when they torpedo merchant ships at sight. ”

“ Men seemed to be everywhere, all round her and underneath her even, for the Kingston valves in the bottom of the boat were being seen to and tested among other things. She lay in the dry dock like a landed salmon, hammered at and struck by merciless and persisting workmen who seemed to delight in tearing things to pieces. The main motors were already receiving their due modicum of attention, much to the distraction of the T.I., who spent most of his day in the torpedo shed. ”

“ Underfoot, as in the after compartment, was the great hundred-and-twenty volt battery which fed the hungry motors, and forward were the air bottles and fuel tanks.
In the bows were the torpedo-tubes, whose brass doors winked in the electric light, hiding the wicked torpedoes behind their shining faces. A turn of the bow cap and a pull at a lever, and they would be off at forty knots to reap a harvest of death and destruction. Abaft the tubes were spare torpedoes, shining steel cylinders with copper war-heads, holding sufficient T.N.T. to sink a Dreadnought. ”

“ Raymond shivered and yawned miserably. ‘Damn the war, anyway.’
‘Doesn’t seem to be anything,’ quoth Captain Charteris to the ‘Guns.’ ‘I don’t think we shall be worried to-night. Hallo!’
Boom! roared a gun from the shore battery. Overhead the land searchlights sprang into being, ten of them, from all parts of the horizon, centring on one spot, and flickering over the heavens in search of the invader.
‘Warning gun. Hands to funk-holes,’ said the First Lieutenant. ”

“ The boy saluted. ‘“123” to Zero, sir, “Your signal not understood. Will report sinking of Zero by torpedo on my arrival at base.” Eleven twenty-five, code time, sir.’
‘What did I tell you, Burton?’ laughed the captain. ‘It’s no good trying to get to windward of Raymond. He’s always undefeated to the end.’
‘Precocity, I call it,’ said the other, who was bitterly grieved at the downfall of Jenkins’s attempt to score off the wily ‘hate-boat.’
The signal boy turned his back sharply and busied himself with his flags, while he hid a smile behind a grimy hand. ”

“ The noise subsided and the lights went out in cabins and mess-decks. Silence settled down once more, and the ship was again in the possession of the watch-keepers.
The moon had gone in and it was quite dark by now, save for that yellow glare, gradually fading and dying down, where the Zeppelin had met her ghastly death.
The officer of the watch continued his pacing up and down, and once more fell into a reflective mood.
‘Oh, well. Life wasn’t so awful after all. Might be worse. Those poor beggars in the airship must have had a rotten two or three minutes. ”

“ With much saluting and piping Captain Charteris stepped across to the next boat and the ceremony was repeated. When he once more rose to view, however, some ten minutes later, his face appeared clouded and he boarded Austin’s boat with a briskness that evidenced that all had not been well with the vessel he had just inspected.
‘Wonder what’s up,’ murmured Seagrave. ‘He looks a bit sickish about something.’
‘Man in a dirty rig, I expect, or else he asked too many questions,’ replied Raymond. ”

“ I rise at eight-thirty each morning as fresh as a lark, and if I’m lucky manage to consume a little breakfast. From then till lunch or cocktail time I maintain a complete and unruffled calm, seated daily in the same arm-chair, unless the claims of the Goddess Work call me to her altars. From lunch until tea I meditate in my bunk, and from tea till dinner I give out hints on the home, and generally instructive and edifying remarks from my present seat of vantage. ”

“ To all appearances they were back to ordinary diving routine, the coxswain and helmsmen in the control room and the rest scattered over the boat, but a subtle change had taken place. Before, they had been playing at it, but now, well, those heads bobbing on the water were mute evidence of the experience they had been through.
Perhaps in the heat of an action it may be different, and one may feel differently about it,212 but in a submarine where no one but the captain sees the enemy there is always rather an aftermath to cold-bloodedness, a realisation of what the others have gone through. ”

“ Just below the fore-part amidship was a twelve-pounder gun, and beyond the whole back stretched to the razor bow. She was not much to look at, but she could still do her twenty-two knots and a bit over if called upon, without unduly straining herself or her twin engines.
Jenkins gave an order and the lines were thrown off fore and aft. Then the engines began to move and the Zero slid quietly astern. Aboard the submarine alongside heads appeared from the hatches, and a parting insult was cast in an undertone at an able seaman who was coiling down a line. ”

“ Seagrave staggered over to the folding basin.
‘As usual,’ he grumbled, ‘no bally water now, and I can’t see out of my eyes till I’ve had a wash.’
‘My goodness, you do look a picture of a promising young officer,’ grinned Raymond, ‘and let me tell you, you wash far too often. None of the really classy people in submarines ever wash. When I was up the Marmora I didn’t wash for a month.’
‘Nor since, either, I should imagine,’ retorted Seagrave.
‘This flippancy in one of tender years is very galling. You don’t follow my august example. Look at Boyd, for instance. ”

“ He was one of the older officers, with a Britannia training, who had entered the Submarine Service as a Lieutenant in the experimental days, and who, after six long years as a junior, had gained his well-earned command several years before the outbreak of war, and had gradually worked his way up to command one of the later classes of submarine, and was even now on turn for a bigger boat. In the ward room he was a witty and pleasant companion. As a submarine captain we are able to judge for ourselves. ”

“ Half a mile to the southward a black smudge showed where the Destroyer was anchored and the western horizon was filled with the low coast-line about three miles distant. Then the moon rose and a vigilant look-out was necessary in case any enemy raiders were on the prowl. Very still and silent, save for the lapping of the water round the pressure hull and the sound of the engines and the battery-fans that told that the charge was under weigh. Otherwise the boat was ready for diving. Her hatches were closed save for the conning-tower, and the compass-lid screwed down. ”

“ Away in the distance Raymond was handling ‘123’ like a veteran. Nine boats all shoving off at the same time are apt to get in one another’s way, and when semi-darkness is added matters are not mended. Out of the tangle he made his way, hurling an insult at a passing boat who was talking about her tail in peevish tones, and steering for the open water beyond. ”

“ The ‘Survey and Demand Notes’ are made out in quadruplicate, but mercy of mercies, only one need be signed by the long-suffering captain of the boat. The stacks of paper rise, and rise, and blow away, and are picked up and blow away again. But at last they are finished, and thanks to them and the brains that conceived them, when the submarine gets to work, her re-fit will run like clockwork and no hitch will occur despite the multiplicity and diversity of the trades and workmen who will be employed upon her. ”

“ They were now slowly working their way up, and had joined the Submarine Service since the war, when the necessity for capable men had inspired them with the wish for more authority than fell to their lots in the engine-rooms of a Battleship.
The Stoker Petty Officer was a bearded and efficient ruffian, and the oldest man in the boat. Unlike the seamen, the stokers do not join the Navy as boys, but at about the age of eighteen, and this particular old sinner had had rather a rough time of it in his early days. ”

“ Men could be heard passing aft on their way to the meal, and an opening of lockers and clattering of crockery announced the progress of the meal. In the ward room the officers took theirs off the chart-table and talked of mice and men.
‘Seems a bit queer to sit here and eat bread and jam,’ said Boyd, breaking a momentary silence, ‘with all those beggars killed up there, and the rest of them either in a blue funk or dashing about to Gott strafe us. I wonder what they’re up to. Are you going to have another look?’
‘After tea,’ said Raymond, ‘and then we’ll have to sit down at five o’clock. ”

“ Nevertheless she was a command, and in her captain’s eye she had no blemish. Later, when he had four stripes on his sleeve, and commanded a battleship, he would look back on her and study her photographs with amusement and a little sorrow, but now, he was very serious about her and very touchy about criticisms. No man dared speak lightly of her since the awful day when ‘Snatcher’ Shelldon had referred to her as ‘a lady of doubtful age.’ The result had been terrific, and from that day nobody had openly questioned the Zero or her capabilities. ”

“ I feel it maturing,’ said Raymond, holding his hand to his brow. ‘Don’t speak for a moment, it’s coming. Ah-h-h, I have it! We’ll give a dance, a Submarine dance here in the hotel; the drawing-room will be just the place, and we’ll invite all the old fogies who’re staying here, and a few choice spirits of our own for leavening. It’ll be all right, the manager and I are old pals, and I’ve done it before. I’ll try and fix it for to-morrow night. It begins with men only, and we give them a practice attack with pillows for torpedoes and Boyd for the periscope. ”

“ Bitter were the reproaches of one, Blake, whose control room had been painted but the day before, while Austin and several others had work going on and improvements under weigh which they didn’t want disturbed. Raymond surveyed the matter with the stony calm of a fatalist, while the Torpedo Lieutenant alone maintained his unruffled serenity and dropped pearls of wisdom for the comfort and instruction of the discomforted captains.
‘What you fellows really lack,’ he proclaimed from the depths of an arm-chair and between puffs of an after-breakfast pipe, ‘is the power of organisation. ”

“ True, at the time, one realises that if the enemy is not put under, one’s own boat and her crew will be, but after the first excitement has worn off and the torpedoes have been fired and found their mark, comes the feeling of not having given the men a sporting chance, the feeling one had at school after having ‘dotted the other fellow’ one on the nose or taken the starch out of some one who was always ridiculing us. ”

“ Outside the harbour and clear of the defences Boyd put her on her southerly course, and the log was streamed. Not a log that tows astern like that of a surface ship, but a long cylindrical tube carrying vanes at its lower end, which is lowered through a hole in the bottom of the boat and packed to prevent leakage. The Destroyer shot ahead at her twenty knots (it was nothing to her, as she was one of the latest class, and capable of a good deal more) and began her zig-zag. ”

“ Hit her right amidships and blown two of her funnels out. There’s a lot of things floating in the water, though, and a boat is dodging about. She’s almost gone. Want a look?’
Seagrave and Boyd in turn stepped to the periscope and gazed at the stricken Destroyer, now at her last gasp. Her comrades were dashing round her at high speed in a wide circle, and heads and debris of all sorts were bobbing on the surface.
‘Beastly, isn’t it?’ said Raymond, taking another look. ‘Makes you feel a bit sick to think we’re responsible for it all. Ah! there she goes. She’s under now. ”

“ May those who growl at the War and those who ask, as some have been asking, ‘What is the Navy doing?’ gather from these few pages a glimpse of the life of one small branch of the Service to which Britain owes her immunity. ”

“ The captain left the periscope and went up the dark shaft of the conning-tower hatch. Very gingerly he eased the strongback, and there was a rush of escaping air as the pressure was released from the boat.
Seagrave had his eye on the barometer, which had swung round while diving to ‘off the map,’ and was now rapidly decreasing to the external pressure.
‘One inch!’ he shouted up the hatch. ‘Equal!’
The men could feel the change in the atmosphere29 by a tickling sensation in the ears, much like having a drop of water in them. Raymond threw open the hatch and stepped out, followed by Boyd. ”

“ At four o’clock the captain went below, and he and Seagrave had tea behind the green curtains and discussed the coming prospects of re-fit. So far the weather was beautiful and the sea like a163 mill-pond, and after the meal Seagrave got a deck-chair up the fore-hatch and sat on the superstructure with a magazine. Raymond was dozing down below, in spite of the strains of a wheezy accordion that came from the region of the engine-room, and Boyd, the helmsman, and the look-out were in charge of the bridge. Most of the crew who were off were sleeping too. ”

“ Occasionally a man passed forward outside the curtains on his way to the lockers, or the sound of voices drifted in from the after compartment. Only the sunlight, visible on the water through the periscope, indicated that it was broad daylight.
Once an electric bell broke the stillness with a persistent clanging which caused Boyd to leap from his bunk and rush off muttering imprecations on the gyro compass. ”

“ Nine ‘Subs’ fly at the rate of knots out of the ward room, run round in circles with their hands to their heads, dive down into the boats and begin harassing unfortunate and peace-loving matlows. As regards you people, you’re all completely defeated. You sit here, do nothing, and growl like blazes, when as a matter of fact it doesn’t affect you in the least. ”