Naval Sketches and Stories by Author of "Carry On!" "Pincher Martin O.D., Etc." London C. Arthur Pearson, Limited Henrietta Street, W.C. 1916...

It seems almost unnecessary to remark that the characters and ships figuring in the sketches throughout this book are entirely fictitious. "Bunting," "The Acting Sub," "Our Happy Home," "The Lost Sheep," "The 'Muckle Flugga' Hussars," and "The Mother Ship" appeared in the Daily Mail , and "The 'Pirates'" in the Weekly Despatch . They are here reprinted, with minor alterations, by kind permission of the Editors. 1916....

He was a very junior young officer indeed when the powers that be first gladdened his heart and ruined his clothes by sending him to a destroyer. A mere sub-lieutenant with "(acting)" after his name, which, as any proper "sub" will tell you, is a sign of extreme juniority. Moreover, the single gold stripe on his monkey jacket was still suspiciously new and terribly untarnished. Not so very long before he had been a "snotty" (midshipman) in a battleship, a mere "dog's body," who had to obey the o

Sixteen years ago, when the ships of the Royal Navy still disported themselves in black hulls, with red water-lines, white upper works, and yellow masts and funnels, she was a smart cruiser attached to one of the large fleets. She was as spick and span as elbow grease and ingenuity could make her, and the show ship of her squadron and the pampered darling of the admiral, went by the name of "the yacht." She was easily one of the cleanest ships afloat. Her blue-black side, anointed daily with som

Compared with that of a "27-knotter" of twenty years ago the wardroom of a modern destroyer is a palatial apartment. Imagine a room about 15 ft. long, 25 ft. wide—the whole beam of the ship—with about 7 ft. headroom. It has white enamelled sides and ceiling. A table, long enough to seat ten people at a pinch, runs athwartships, and ranged round it are various straight-backed chairs. On the after bulkhead is a square mahogany cupboard with a railed top, on which reposes a gramophone, while to the

The climb had been a stiff one. The day was very hot, and, rather purple about the face and breathing heavily, the sailor relapsed on the springy, scented turf close to the cliff's edge and gazed pensively at the vista of shimmering sea spread out before him. He was a massive, rotund, bull-necked individual, with a face the colour of a ripe tomato, and wore on the sleeves of his jumper two red good conduct badges and the single gun and star of an able seaman, seaman gunner, of His Majesty's Navy

He was a short, thick-set, ruddy-faced, shrewd-eyed little person, who wore on the left sleeve of his blue jumper two good-conduct badges and the single anchor denoting his "Leading" rate, and on his right the crossed flags denoting his calling, together with a star above and below which signified that he was something of an expert at his job. In short, he was a Leading Signalman of His Majesty's Navy. His name I need not mention. To his friends he sometimes answered to "Nutty," but more often t

The glass had gone down with a thump during the afternoon, and all through the night the destroyer had been steaming home against a rapidly rising gale. Of how she came to be alone and parted from her flotilla the less said the better. It was due to a variety of circumstances, among them being a blinding rain squall after dark the evening before, in which the officer of the watch was unable to see more than twenty yards, and some temporary trouble with an air pump which necessitated stopping to

Denis was a pig, a very special sort of pig, a pig of German origin, and perhaps the only animal of his species in whose favour a special dispensation was made by the Board of Agriculture. He originally belonged to the German light cruiser Dresden , and, after the destruction of that vessel at Juan Fernandez by the Kent , Glasgow , and Orama , was seen swimming about in the water close to the Glasgow . A blue-jacket promptly jumped overboard and rescued him from a watery grave, and Denis, instea

She was a member of that gallant and distinguished corps after which this article is named. You will not find her regiment mentioned in any British Army List, nor, so far as I am aware, and for all the foreign sound of it, in the Army List of His Imperial Majesty the Czar of All the Russias. The name does not appear in any Army List at all, for the Hussars to which she belonged are a sea regiment, pure and simple. Her uniform of dull grey, with no facings or trimmings of any sort or description,

"It is not possible to prevent the occasional appearance of enemy submarines within the range of our shores, but I can give an assurance that the measures which have been and will be taken are such as to render proceedings of this sort increasingly dangerous to the submarines."—DR. MACNAMARA, Financial Secretary to the Admiralty . They looked an orderly little squadron of six as they steamed jauntily out towards the open sea in single line ahead through the grey-green, tide-ripped waters of the

  H.M.S. ————     c/o G.P.O., LONDON.       June 30th, 1916. You ask me for a more elaborate account of a certain little affair which took place some time ago. It was merely an episode of a few light cruisers, anything up to a score of destroyers, and some seaplanes; quite a minor and a comparatively unimportant little business which elicited a brief announcement from the Secretary of the Admiralty, and must have proved rather a Godsend to those newspapers whose readers were anxious for naval ne

The Rapier was an old destroyer, one of the 370-ton "thirty-knotters" completed in about 1901. She burnt coal and was driven by reciprocating engines, instead of using oil fuel and being propelled by new-fangled turbines, while 23 to 24 knots were all she could be relied upon to travel in the best of weather. She had a low, sharp bow and the old-fashioned turtle-back forward instead of the high, weatherly forecastle of the later destroyers, and in anything more than a moderate breeze or a little

We were steaming to the westward, towards the spot where the sun, glowing like a disc of molten copper, was slowly nearing the horizon. It had been one of those hot, breathless sort of days with no breeze; and now, near sunset, nothing but an occasional cat's-paw stole gently across the sea to ruffle its glassy surface in irregular-shaped patches. Elsewhere, the water, shining like a mirror, reflected the blazing glory of the sky. Some distance off lay the coast, its familiar outline dim, purple

"Well, I'm damned!" ejaculated the first lieutenant, looking up from his breakfast as a barefooted signalman held a slate under his nose. "Just as I'm in the middle of painting ship!" The navigator, doctor, and assistant paymaster looked up from their plates. "What's up, Number One?" queried the former. "Only that the new skipper's arrived in the English mail," said the first lieutenant glumly. "He's coming on board at nine o'clock in the Spartan's steamboat!" "Good Lord!" protested Cutting, the