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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Not only over Great Britain alone, however, does the ocean cast its spell, for it is the free highway of the world, sailed by the ships of all nations, without other hindrances than those of stormy nature, and navigated without restriction from pole to pole by the seamen of all races. It was the international meeting-place, where ensigns were "dipped" in friendly greeting, and since the dawn of history there has been a freemasonry of the sea which knew no distinction of nation or creed. When the
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
Although during the years of bitter warfare which followed this silent coup de main the German fleet many times showed signs of awakening ambition, it did not, after Jutland, dare to thrust even its vanguard far into the open sea. Behind its forts, mines and submarines it waited, growing weaker with the dry-rot of inaction, for the chance that fickle Fortune might place a single unit of the Allied fleet within easy reach of its whole mailed-fist. With a great and modern fleet—the second stronges
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
Lying in the spacious docks at Southampton was the old 4000-ton cruiser Hermione , which had been brought round from her natural base in Portsmouth dockyard to act as the depot ship and training establishment for a large section of this new force. Not all the officers and men of the auxiliary fleet were, however, destined to pass across its decks. This vessel was reserved for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, from which a very considerable proportion of the entire personnel of the new fleet was
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
It was to cabin and lecture hall in this fine old building that officers of the new navy went to complete their knowledge of navigation and kindred subjects when their preliminary sea training came to a close. There is but little romance in a highly specialised course of study designed to enable the recipients to find their way with safety, both in sunshine and storm, over the vast water surface of the world. To describe here the subjects taught would only be wearisome and uninteresting. Suffici
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
Some were for the Spanish Main and bemoaned their fate at being ordered to a station so remote from the principal zone of war. Others were destined for the Mediterranean and comforted themselves with hopes that trouble was brewing elsewhere than in the Adriatic, to which a lucky few were appointed. The Suez Canal and Egypt claimed their share, but by far the greater number were bound for the misty northern seas. About the training given to the 200,000 men little can be said here because of its d
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
The hydrophone resembles a delicate telephone. It is so constructed that when the instrument is lowered over the side of a ship into the sea any noise, such as the movement of a submarine's propellers, can be heard on deck by an operator listening at an ordinary telephone receiver connected to the submerged microphone by an electrified wire. There were many different types of hydrophone in use during the Great War. So important was this instrument for the work of submarine hunting that money was
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
Among the most important of these were the immense meshes of wire known as "indicator nets," which were used to entangle a submarine and then to proclaim her movements to surface ships waiting to attack with guns and depth charges. These nets were made of specially light but strong wire, with a mesh of several feet. They were joined together in lengths of 100 feet by metal clips which opened when a certain strain was exerted on any particular section. Their depth was usually about 50 feet, and t
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
The mystery ship was not a specially constructed war vessel, such as a destroyer or cruiser, but merely a merchantman converted into a powerfully armed patrol ship, camouflaged to give the appearance of genuine innocence, but with masked batteries, hulls stuffed with wood to render them almost unsinkable, hidden torpedo tubes, picked gunners, a roving commission and a daring commander and crew. Their work was performed on the broad highways of the sea, and they hunted singly or in pairs, often f
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
Around the coasts of the British Isles there were about forty of these war bases, each with its own patrol flotillas, minesweeping units and hunting squadrons. The harbours, breakwaters and docks had to be furnished with stores, workshops, wireless stations, quarters for officers and men, searchlights, oil-storage tanks, coal bunkers, magazines, fire equipment, guard-rooms, signal stations, hospitals, pay offices, dry docks, intelligence centres and all the vitally necessary stores, machinery an
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
The rapid development of submarine piracy, however, compelled the Admiralty, early in the year 1917, to resort to what was merely a new form of the old system of protecting sea-borne trade. This comprised the collection of all merchant ships passing through the danger zones into nondescript fleets, and the provision of light cruisers, destroyers, torpedo-boats, trawlers and occasionally (for coastal convoys) of patrol launches to escort them. Certain types of aircraft were also frequently used f
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
When the new navy took the seas in 1914-1915, bases were established not only round the coasts of the British Isles, but also in the more distant seas. The principal danger zones were, however, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Irish Sea, the Mediterranean and the eastern portion of the North Atlantic. It was through these waters that every hostile submarine must pass on its voyage out and home. This geographical factor restricted the theatre of major operations to some 180,000 square mile
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
The explanation is that the mines were laid by large submarines capable of approaching the coast, laying their deadly cargo from specially constructed stern tubes and retreating to comparative safety far out in the broad ocean, without rising more than momentarily to the surface for the purpose of observation. This, it may be said, did not absolve the ships listening on their hydrophones, who should have been able to detect the approach of a submarine from the sound of her engines. During the fi
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
The Germans laid many thousands of these deadly and invisible weapons in the 140,000 square miles of sea around the British Isles alone in the face of over 2000 warships. To search for these patches of death in the wastes of water may well be likened to exploring for the proverbial "needle in a haystack." Yet the sweepers, whose sole duty it was to fill this breach in the gigantic system of Allied naval defence, explored daily and almost hourly, for over four years, the vast ocean depths, discov
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
The practicability of these barrage systems depends, however, very largely upon the following factors:—(1) the geographical features of the area of operations; (2) the hydrographical peculiarities of the seas in which the mines have to be laid; (3) the number of properly equipped mine-laying vessels available; (4) an adequate and highly trained personnel; and (5) the mechanical skill and manufacturing power of the nation employing the system. There are several forms of mine barrage. One is simpl
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
War, whether it be on the sea, under the sea, on the land or in the air, is a science in which the human element is of at least equal importance with that of the purely mechanical. It is a science of both "blood and iron." The armed motor launches described in earlier pages, after being built in Canada to the number of over 500, and engined by the United States, were transported across the Atlantic on the decks of big ocean-going steamships—more than one of which was torpedoed on the voyage. On
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
In a few short weeks the sea had set its stamp on the men of the new navy. Faces became bronzed by the sun, wind and spindrift. Muscles grew hard and eyes and nerves more steady. Each time a vessel went forth on patrol or other duty new difficulties or dangers were met and overcome without advice or assistance, and the confidence of men in themselves and in the ships they worked grew apace. In many of the principal zones of war, such as the North Sea and the Atlantic, the wind grew colder and th
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
There are, of course, intervening periods in harbour, when fierce gales howl overhead, and guard duty on rain-swept quaysides, or sentry-go in blinding snowstorms, comes almost as a relief from the sameness of winter days on northern seas. It is, however, the unexpected which generally occurs in war, and during those terrible winters from 1914-1918 it was the ever-present hope of action that kept the spirits of many a sailorman from sinking below the Plimsoll line of health. Sometimes the happen
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
Many important waterways, such as the Straits of Dover, the mouth of the Thames, the approaches to Liverpool, the Firth of Forth, Aberdeen, Lowestoft and Portsmouth, were repeatedly chosen for this form of submarine attack. At one base alone no less than 400 mines were destroyed by the attached anti-submarine flotillas in one year, and round the coasts of the United Kingdom an average of about 3000 of these invisible weapons were located and destroyed annually. What this meant to the 24,000,000
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
One such as this occurred at a little northern seaport in the late winter of 1917, unimportant and scarcely worth relating except as an illustration of the diverse services rendered by men of this great force during the years of national peril. The gale was at the height of its fury when the March day drew to a close. The whole east coast of Scotland, from John o' Groats to the mouth of the Tweed, was a study in black and white—the white of foam and the black of rocks. All the minesweepers and s
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
To describe how everyone, from commander to signal-boy, looked forward to these spells of leave is unnecessary. Let the reader imagine how he himself would feel after nine or ten months of the monotony and danger, to say nothing of the hardships, of life at sea in time of war. There was, however, another consideration, one seldom referred to but nevertheless unavoidably present in the minds of all. Each time a refit came round there were ships which would never be docked again, and comrades who
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Comparatively few people are, however, aware that one of the largest and most destructive of German mine-fields was laid off the British coast during the Great War by a surface ship which escaped detection through darkness and storm. The barometer had fallen rapidly, and clouds rolled up from the north-west in ragged grey banks which scudded ominously over a cold steely blue sky. For some days the sea had been moderately calm, but it was mid-winter and quiescence of the elements could not be exp
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
Typical of the way succour was brought by the naval patrols to those unhappy victims of both sexes left adrift in open boats in calm and rough, sunshine and snow, all over the northern seas by the cowardly Unterseeboten of the kultured race was the rescue of the passengers and crew of a liner off the wild west coast of Ireland in the winter of 1916. It was mid-December, and flurries of snow were being driven before a stinging north-westerly wind. The sea was moderate, but the heavy Atlantic swel
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
In the intelligence office an assistant paymaster, weary of decoding cypher wireless messages from flotillas, patrols and sweepers spread far out over the leagues of sea lying between this port and the German coast, sat talking to the executive officer on night duty. About 8 p.m. a messenger from the wireless cabin entered with the familiar signal form and the A.P. spread it out carelessly on the desk in front of him, taking the sturdy little lead-covered decipher book from the safe at his side.
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
The duty of these two vessels was to watch lines of cunningly laid submerged nets (described in an earlier chapter) and to guide the few merchant ships which passed that way through the labyrinth of these defences, laid temporarily as a trap for the wily "Fritz" if he should chance to be cruising in the vicinity. The drifters were adequately armed with guns and depth charges to attack any such monster of the deep which betrayed its presence by becoming entangled in the fine wire mesh and so atta
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
Among the latter may be numbered the curious discovery in the North Atlantic of a nameless sailing ship, without cargo, identifying papers or crew, but sound from truck to kelson, and with her two life-boats stowed neatly inboard and a half-finished meal on the cabin table. Experts examined this vessel when brought into port, but so far have been utterly unable to offer any solution or discover any clue, beyond the fact that she was built and fitted out in some American port and carried an unusu
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
During the Great War there were stations for armed aircraft all round the British coast, and the patrols of the sea and air acted in close co-operation. It often happened that one was able to render important service to the other. An occasion such as this took place off an east coast base in November, 1916. A big car dashed up the wooden pier of a small seaport regardless of the violent jolting from the uneven planking. It was pulled up with a jerk when level with one of the little grey patrol b
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CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
Although the security of the North Sea flank did not entirely depend upon the naval forces based on Dover, Dunkirk and Harwich—as all operations, whether on land or sea, were overshadowed by the unchallenged might of the Grand Fleet, which hemmed in the entire German navy—it was upon these light forces, largely composed of units of the new navy, that the brunt of the intermittent flank fighting and the repeated attempts by the enemy to break through—with the aid of all kinds of ruses and weapons
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