DEDICATED TO CAPT. ELLERTON STORIES OF THE SHIPS BY LIEUT LEWIS R. FREEMAN, R.N.V.R. OFFICIAL PRESS REPRESENTATIVE WITH THE GRAND FLEET LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1919 All rights reserved...

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Of the countless stories of naval action which I have listened to in the course of the months I have spent with the Grand Fleet, I cannot recall a single one which was told as the consequence of being asked for with malice aforethought. I have never yet found a man of action who was enamoured of the sound of his own voice raised in the recital of his own exploits, and if there is one thing more than another calculated to throw an otherwise not untalkative British Naval Officer into a state of un

The Captain had come for a breath of fresh air on the quarter-deck at the end of a grey winter's day, and it was the memories called up by the resemblance of the low, rounded, treeless hills which ringed the Northern Base to some other hills which he had good reason to carry a vivid mental picture of that set him talking of the Falklands. "They're very much like these," he said, "those wind-swept hills around Port Stanley; indeed, I know of few other parts of the world so far apart geographicall

It may be that it is because, since the outbreak of the war, the British sailor has constantly been riding the crest of the wave of great events, that he is so prone to regard even the most dramatic and historic actions in which he has chanced to figure as little or nothing removed from the ordinary run of his existence, as only a slightly different screening of the regular grist of the mill of his daily service. Thus, I once heard a young officer describing a night destroyer action in which he

Perhaps there is nothing about which the German has been more contemptuous of the Briton than in the matter of the way the latter has of treating war as he does his sport, of fighting his battles in the same spirit with which he plays his games. Yet it has been this very desire of the latter to play the game at all stages that is responsible for the fact that the German, for a time at least, was given credit in the popular mind of even the neutral and Allied countries for a great deal that never

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The collier had come alongside a little after seven—two hours before daybreak at that time of year—and I awoke in my cabin on the boat deck just abaft the forward turret to the grind of the winches and the steady tramp-tramp of the barrow-pushers on the decks below. On my way aft to the wardroom for breakfast, I stopped for a moment by a midships hatch, where the commander, grimed to the eyes, stamped his sea-boots and threshed his arms as a substitute for the warming exercise the men were getti

While lunching with Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee in the course of a recent visit to the Grand Fleet, which must always remain one of the most memorable experiences of my life, I ventured the opinion that the work of the British Navy in sweeping every enemy vessel—warship and merchant steamer—from the surface of the Seven Seas, was the one most outstanding achievement of the war. "Perhaps you are right," said the victor of the Battle of the Falklands thoughtfully, "but you must not lose sight of t

It was a great day for the Principal Medical Officer. In spite of the fact that there were nearer 1200 than 1100 men in his ship, the returns of "Sick" and "Hospital" cases had been recorded by successive "pairs of spectacles" for several days. Even a single twenty-four hours like that for a battleship on active service was worthy of remark, and three or four days of it undoubtedly constituted a record for the British or any other Navy. That the clean sheet would be spread over a whole week was

"It fair to druv me crazy huntin' fer that missin' peece," said "Joe" with a hurt sort of "'twas-ever-thus" expression in his eyes; "an' I felt it espeshul, sir, becus I writes po'try and songs a bit mysel'. 'E was jest workin' up tu a climacks, an' I'm wonderin' all th' time what it wuz that smelt better'n 'ambygris' an' musk an' roses an' lilies an' all the rest. D'yu spose, sir, it cud a bin that stuff they put in brilyantin?" and he ran stubby fingers through his hair in an apparent endeavou

There was a hint of Christmas in the long stacks of parcels mail on the station platform and the motley array of packages in the hands of the waiting sailors, but for the rest there was nothing to differentiate the "Fleetward"-bound train from the same train as one might have seen it on any other day of the year. There is only a certain small irreducible minimum of men which can be spared from a fighting ship which at any time is liable to be sent into action, and the season sacred to the Prince

I had crossed in the old Xerxes in those ancient days when, as the latest launched greyhound of the Cunarder fleet, she held for a few precarious months the constantly shifting blue-ribbon for the swiftest transatlantic passage; but in that angular "cubistic" lump of lead-grey looming over the bow of my spray-smothered launch to blot out the undulant skyline of the nearest Orkney, there was not one familiar feature. Her forward funnel had been "kippered" down the middle to somewhere about on the

A signal came one morning, ordering the Grand Fleet to prepare to proceed to sea, and, almost as though the sparks of the wireless that caught the winged word had themselves lighted the laid and waiting fires, wreaths and coils of smoke began crowning some scores of towering funnels which a few moments before had loomed only in gaunt silhouette against the round snow-clad hillsides which ring the Northern Base. Presently a dust-begrimed collier shook herself free from the moorings which held her

Except for the actual lift she receives from a wave, a battleship rolling in a beam sea moves a good deal like an inverted pendulum, so that one feels a minimum of motion when he is down against the skin of a lower hold and the maximum in the foretop. The transition had been a sudden one for me that morning, for the Gunnery Lieutenant, who had been initiating me into the secrets of "Director Firing" in the foretop, brought me back to the main deck and turned me over to the Senior Engineer, who h

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In writing some months ago on the coming of the American Army to France, I quoted the naïve words used by a French Staff Officer to describe the impression the new arrivals had made upon him. After speaking of the keenness of the American officers to learn from those who had had the experience, he concluded: "We like them very much. In fact, they have been quite a surprise. They have not displayed the least tendency to show us how to run the war. Indeed, they are not the least American !" I do n

Perhaps the most gratifying tribute I have heard paid to the American Battle Squadron which has been for many months incorporated in and working with the Grand Fleet was an unconscious one. "How are the Americans getting on?" I asked an officer of the Commander-in-Chief's staff a few days ago. "The Americans?" he repeated. "Oh, you mean the 'Xth B. S.' They have merged so completely into the Grand Fleet that we long ago ceased to think of them as anything but a part of ourselves. Indeed, that's

The British naval officer, sapient of many ports and peoples, had a pretty clear idea that in the American Naval Officer he was going to find an ally who, in spite of a number of superficial differences from himself, would still be a deal easier to act in intimate co-operation with than any of those with whom he had been fighting up to the time of the entry of the United States into the war. With the British sailor it was different. Only a few of him had ever met any American bluejackets, and th

The scroll of human experience has been unrolling at rather a dizzy rate for both the American soldier and sailor during the last year; but it has seemed to me to be the latter—probably because he has somewhat more time to "sit and think" than the former—that has gone the farthest in the orderly pigeon-holing of his impressions. All the spirit of the soldier's being has been concentrated on his preparation for "licking the Boche." In mind and body he is fitting himself for his grim task, and his