Ormuz

“ The passengers on these Gulf steamers are of as many types as those seen on Change in Bombay. It is not unlikely that of the twenty or more who sit down to dinner, no two will be of the same color, costume, nationality, or religion. Even the crew ceases to be European; Chinamen usually cook and wait, and Indians handle cargo and work the ship.
About 600 miles and 4 days from, Kurrachee, Ormuz is made, dirty, dilapidated, with absolutely no remains of its historic wealth. The first place of importance is Bushire, 300 miles farther up. ”

“ Captain Baffin remained in command of the London, and the fleet returned to Surat. The English then made a treaty with Abbas the Great, Shah of Persia, to drive the Portuguese out of Ormuz, a Persian port which they had occupied since 1515. The English fleet, consisting of five ships, arrived at an open roadstead on the Persian coast near Ormuz, where news was received that the Portuguese had erected a fort on the island of Kishm to protect some wells. ”

“ II. book x. c. 7, there is a curious detail of the revenue and expenditure of the kingdom of Ormuz, which would seem to exhibit the former as not more than £100,000. ↑ The attack on Kishm was notable in that one of the two Englishmen killed there was the great navigator Baffin. ”

“ Further on, on the coast to the south-west by west, at a distance of lxxxv leagues, is another very large town called Julfar, [77] where there are many very respectable people, and many merchants and sailors. And there they fish up many large pearls and seed pearls, which the merchants of the city of Ormuz come there to buy, to carry them to India and other parts. This place is one of much trade, and produces a great deal to the king of Ormuz. ”

“ Here, again, although their reception was hospitable, the travellers gave up their land journey and re-embarked in another vessel to pass around the peninsula, through the Straits of Ormuz, and land on the southern shore, in the territory of Muscat. ”

“ Oroya, 6,057, and the Ormuz, 6,031 tons. The Ophir is 482 feet long, 53 feet beam, and 37 feet moulded depth. She is fitted with triple expansion engines and twin screws, and all the other modern improvements which go to make up a “floating palace.” The company receives a subsidy from the Imperial Government of £85,000 sterling per annum for carrying the mails, which are despatched fortnightly from London calling at Plymouth, Gibraltar, Naples, Port Said, Suez, Colombo, Albany, Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney, Australia. ”

“ I am on the light cruiser of a famous Commodore, and I have just been creeping and climbing through a submarine. The waters round are crowded with those light craft, destroyers, submarines, mine-sweepers, trawlers, patrol boats, on which for the moment at any rate the fortunes of the naval war turns. And take notice that they are all—or almost all—new; the very latest products of British ship-yards. We have plenty of battle-ships, but "we must now build, as quickly as possible, the smaller craft, and the merchant ships we want," says Sir Edward Carson. ”

“ At every town and village crowds assembled to cheer the modern magician. At Ismalia the Khedive's band, sent specially from the palace at Cairo, serenaded the "Aphrodite"; the shipping at Port Ibrahim hailed her approach with a deafening salute upon their syrens; and just as dawn was breaking the submarine, having accomplished the trip in less than seven hours, slipped gracefully under the waters of the Gulf of Suez. ”

“ In a few minutes a couple of shots may flash out, several shells shatter our conning-tower, the water stream into the ship's body, and in a short while the North Sea close over us.
None of this occurs however. A brief command in the control-room, a few grips of the valves and hand wheels, and we continue our way unhurt, for brutal power may shut us from the surface of the seas, but our enemies in their impotence only cause us to lie a few fathoms deeper. We continue submerged for the sake of safety until daybreak. Towards four o'clock we rise to the surface. ”

“ Only when we perceive the true character of the weapon and the value of the campaign can the endurance and achievements of [47] the merchant sailor emerge for us into the full sunshine of their splendour. Examine the matter coolly and one sees that the submarine owes its success as much to its novelty as to its inherent capacities. The limitations and defects are as obvious as the qualities. Virtually powerless on the surface against armed vessels of high speed like destroyers, completely submerged it has hearing indeed but not sight. ”

“ It has, indeed, been asserted that the airplane and the submarine have relegated the battleship to the limbo of desuetude: but as to that the continued control of the seas by Great Britain with her immense battle-fleet, supplemented by our tremendous engines of war, certainly argues for no such theory. What the future may bring forth in the way of submarines, armored and of great size, no man may say. But at present the submarine, while tremendously effective, has not done away with the battleship as a mighty element in the theory of sea power. ”

“ Every man of the chosen crew realised the task that lay before us. It meant acquiring the art of managing this most delicate and complicated vessel, the last word in bold and skilful construction. It meant learning to know and understand that marvellous wonder-work of modern shipbuilding—a submarine. We had to be in a position to sway, according to our will, this heavy mass of nearly 2000 tons, so that she should obey the least pressure of the rudder, so that she should twist and manœuvre like a torpedo-boat, so that she should rise and sink in the water like a dirigible in the air. ”

“ We crossed the steamship lanes in all directions with guns loaded and with a sharp lookout so as not to lose any opportunity to damage the enemy’s commerce.
Shortly before dinner the first merchant ship arose on the south horizon. It was a sailer, a large, full-rigged schooner, which, hard by the wind, headed towards the French coast. With majestic calm, lightly leaning to the wind, the splendid ship approached. ”

“ I never heard a word of the danger of meeting a submarine. The idea that one might send a torpedo after us popped into my mind once or twice, but when it did I looked out at the destroyers, guarding us, and the airplanes above, and I felt as safe as if I had been in bed in my wee hoose at Dunoon. It was a true highway of war that those whippets of the sea had made the Channel crossing.
Ahm, but I was proud that day of the British navy! It is a great task that it has performed, and nobly it has done it. ”

“ Week by week since that time there has come to us from out the grim North Sea, from the Mediterranean and the broad Atlantic abundant testimony, many a story of individual and collective heroism, of ships that have waged gallant fights, of Americans who have lived gallantly, who have died gloriously—and above all there has come to us the gratifying record of reduced submarine losses, as to which there is abundant testimony—notably from the great [Pg 6] maritime and naval power of the world—Great Britain—that our navy has played a vital part in the diminution of the undersea terror. ”

“ Acting in unison with those of France and Japan, they have swept German commerce and German cruisers from the face of the ocean, and so far, except for shore bombardments and submarine attacks, have been the only war-vessels engaged on either side. At the time of writing no battleships have as yet been in action against one another, for we may regard all those ships which have been reported in action at sea as cruisers, from the big battle-cruiser Lion down to the destroyers—and even, perhaps, our submarines, which are very useful scouts. ”

“ And meanwhile these underwater craft so preyed upon British foodships that in the days of the greatest submarine activity England was reduced to husbanding her stores of food with almost as great thrift and by precisely the same methods as did Germany suffering from the British blockade.
Aircraft and submarines! Twin terrors of the world's greatest war! The development, though by no means the final development, of dreams that men of many nations have dreamed throughout the centuries! They are two of the outstanding features of the war; two of its legacies to mankind. ”

“ Ahead, the dark bulk of our column leader sways and thrashes through the spiteful easterly sea, throwing the wash broad out and taking the spray high over bow and funnel. In turn, we lurch and drive at the same sea that has stirred her, and find it with strength enough to lash over and fill the fore-deck abrim. Weighed down forward, we throw our stern high, and the mad propeller thrashes in air, jarring every bolt and rivet in her. We cant to windward, joggling in an uneasy lurch, then throw swiftly on a sudden list that frees the decks of the encumbering water. ”

“ With some fathoms to spare we sheer over the thrash of her propellers, the horizon runs a line across our stem, we have clear yielding blue water under the bows!
The illusion of our sole movement is reversed as the mass of the other vessel bears away from us. The unbroken sea-line offers no further mark to judge our swing; we seem to have become suddenly as immobile as a pier-head, while our neighbour starts from our forefoot in an apparent outrush, closing and opening the line of her masts and funnels like shutting and throwing wide the panels of a door. ”

“ The man who craves excitement is apt to get his fill for a while after a trip in a British submarine under the North Sea. He may dream of the experience for many nights afterwards, and the lip of the conning-tower well seems to get higher and higher until the water rushes over like an incipient Niagara—then he awakens.
The wind was blowing about 30 knots when I boarded the mother ship of the submarines in the English East Coast port. ”

“ You are referring to the submarines, Toni, to the little submarines that were in existence at the beginning of the war—little grasshoppers of fragile steel that moved with great difficulty when on a level with the water and might be overwhelmed at the slightest shock.... But to-day there is something more: there is a submersible that is like a submarine protected by a ship's hull which is able to go hidden between the two waters and, at the same time, can navigate over the surface better than a torpedo-boat.... ”

“ The perfect picture of all courage is, perhaps, a great British war-ship in action; for there you have, among a thousand men, one spirit of elation, of fearlessness, of determination, backed by trained skill and a self-forgetful desire to apply it in the critical moment. The submarine, and the anti-submarine ship, trawler or patrol-boat are, on a smaller scale, equally perfect examples; for there is no hour of their cruise when they are not within call of the critical moment. ”

“ A sailor semaphored with his arms, and the commander of the mine-sweeper sent a message back, and the submarine passed slowly on her way.
"If some of those people at home and abroad at their firesides realised what the men at sea have to suffer to keep this coast free they might have a different way of talking," declared the commander, now taking to his much-burned old pipe. "Those chaps that have just come in have [30] had a week without any sleep—or next to none—and their food has all been canned stuff. There are many persons who think the North Sea's a pond—same as they do over in America." ”

“ I could hear one of the men, lounging on the exposed deck of the submarine beneath the bridge, from which we were steering, humming a ditty, and the voices that came up from the interior of the boat sounded cheerful and confident. The engines themselves seemed singing a song of strength and power. We caught up with the Sea-Gull and her tow, and the men of the Sea-Gull gave us a cheerful salute with their whistle. We ran ahead, dropping the tug-boat behind, and in my tiny cabin I was making my calculations for distance when a man came rushing below. ”

“ From far away, all around the great city, there were hastening toward the attacking submarines scores of the giant striding-machines, their vast steps whirling them across the city with inconceivable swiftness, the great arm of each outstretched toward the submarines. An order was barked, and the craft's propellers spun swiftly as it headed upward to avoid those reaching, menacing arms, while the whole great fleet headed up also with the same purpose. ”

“ But something worse than the fear of unfriendly weather will overshadow the work of disembarkation, and spur to a haste which can only create confusion—that something, the certainty that the alarm has been given, and that every British battleship and cruiser, every British destroyer, torpedo boat, and submarine that wireless telegraphy can summon, is hurrying towards the east coast, and may, at any moment, come into sight. ”

“ New fleets of submarine cruisers were built and held in readiness in all the great ports of the world, and these scoured the ocean depths in all directions with no further result than the swift and silent annihilation of vessel after vessel by some power which struck irresistibly out of the darkness and then vanished the moment that the blow had been delivered. ”

“ I had come down to Kiel intending to take a submarine out to sea, to watch for the approach of the Russian fleet, and to take whatever steps proved practicable to avert any collision between it and the fishing-boats on the Dogger Bank.
I now saw that the chance of my preventing a catastrophe depended entirely on the movements of the boat which had left already. This boat had become my objective, to use a strategical phrase.
Somewhere in the North Sea was a submarine boat, charged with the mission of provoking a world-wide war. And that boat I had to find. ”