Westward with the Prince of Wales Part 1

Westward with the Prince of Wales.

by W. Douglas Newton.

PREFACE

It was on Friday, August 1, 1919, that "the d.a.m.ned reporters" and the _Times_ correspondent's hatbox went on board the light cruiser _Dauntless_ at Devonport.

The _Dauntless_ had just arrived from the Baltic to load up cigarettes--at least, that was the first impression. In the Baltic the rate of exchange had risen from roubles to packets of Players, and a handful of cigarettes would buy things that money could not obtain.

Into the midst of a s.h.i.+p's company, feverishly acc.u.mulating tobacco in the hope of cornering at least the amber market of the world, we descended.

Actually, I suppose, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales had been the first interrupter of the _Dauntless'_ schemes. Lying alongside Devonport quay to refit--in that way were the cigarettes covered up--word was sent that the _Dauntless_ with her sister s.h.i.+p, _Dragon_, was to act as escort to the battle-cruiser _Renown_ when she carried the Prince to Canada.

Though he came first we could not expect to be as popular as the Prince, and when, therefore, those on board also learnt that the honour of acting as escort was to be considerably mitigated by a cargo from Fleet Street, they were no doubt justified in naming us "d.a.m.ned."

We did litter them up so. The _Dauntless_ is not merely one of the latest and fastest of the light cruisers, she is also first among the smartest. To accommodate us they had to give way to a rash of riveters from the dock-yard who built cabins all over the graceful silhouette.

When our telegrams, and ourselves, and our baggage (including the _Times'_ hatbox) arrived piece by piece, each was merely an addition to the awful mess on deck our coming had meant.

Actually we could not help ourselves. Dock strikes, s.h.i.+p shortage and the holiday season had all conspired to make any attempt to get to Canada in a legitimate way a hopeless task. Only the Admiralty's idea to pre-date the carrying of commercial travellers on British battles.h.i.+ps could get us to the West at all. The Admiralty, after modest hesitation, had agreed to send us in the _Dauntless_, and before the cruiser sailed we all realized how fortunate we were to have been unlucky at the outset.

We sailed on August 2 from Devonport, three days before _Renown_ and _Dragon_ left Portsmouth, and when one of us suggested that this was a happy idea to get us to St. John's, Newfoundland, in order to be ready for the Prince, he was told:

"Not at all, we're out looking for icebergs."

We were to act as the pilot s.h.i.+p over the course.

We found icebergs, many of them; even, we nearly rammed an iceberg in the middle of a foggy night, but we found other things, too.

We found that we had got onto what the Navy calls a "happy s.h.i.+p," and if anybody wants to taste what real good fellows.h.i.+p is I advise him to go to sea on what the Navy calls "a happy s.h.i.+p." However much we had disturbed them, the officers of the _Dauntless_ did not let that make any difference in the warmth of their hospitality. We were made free of the ward-room, and that Baltic tobacco. We were initiated into "The Grand National," a muscular sport in which the daring exponent turns a series of somersaults over the backs of a line of chairs; and we were admitted into the raggings and the singing of ragtime.

We were made splendidly at home. Not only in the ward-room that did a jazz with a disturbing spiral movement when we speeded up from our casual 18 knots to something like 28 in a rough sea, but from the bridge down to the boiler room, where we watched the flames of oil fuel making steam in the modern manner, we were drawn into the charmed circle of comrades.h.i.+p and keenness that made up the essential spirit of that fine s.h.i.+p's company.

The "d.a.m.ned reporters," on a trip in which even the weather was companionable, were given the d.a.m.nedest of good times, and it was with real regret that, on the evening of Friday, August 8, we saw the high, grim rampart wall of Newfoundland lift from the Western sea to tell us that our time on the _Dauntless_ would soon be finished.

Actually we left the _Dauntless_ at St. John's, New Brunswick, where we became the guests of the Canadian Government which looked after us, as it looked after the whole party, with so great a sense of generosity and care that we could never feel sufficiently grateful to it.

WESTWARD WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES

CHAPTER I

NEWFOUNDLAND

I

St. John's, Newfoundland, was the first city of the Western continent to see the Prince of Wales. It was also the first to label him with one of the affectionate, if inexplicable sobriquets that the West is so fond of.

Leaning over the side of the _Dauntless_ on the day of the Prince's visit, a seaman smiled down, as seamen sometimes do, at a vivid little Newfoundland Flapper in a sunset-coloured jumper bodice, New York cut skirt, white stockings and white canvas boots. The Flapper looked up from her seat in the stern of her "gas" launch (gasolene equals petrol), and smiled back, as is the Flapper habit, and the seaman promptly opened conversation by asking if the Flapper had seen the Prince.

"You bet," said the Flapper. "He's a dandy boy. He's a plush."

His Royal Highness became many things in his travels across America, but I think it ought to go down in history that at St. John's, Newfoundland, he became a "plush."

Newfoundland also introduced another Western phenomenon. It presented us to the race of false prophets whom we were to see go down in confusion all the way from St. John's to Victoria and back again to New York.

Members of this race were plentiful in St. John's. As we spent our days before the Prince's arrival picking up facts and examining the many beautiful arches of triumph that were being put up in the town, we were warned not to expect too much from Newfoundland. St. John's had not its b.u.mp of enthusiasm largely developed, we were told; its people were resolutely dour and we must not be disappointed if the Prince's reception lacked warmth. In all probability the weather would conform to the general habit and be foggy.

Here, as elsewhere, the prophets were confounded. St. John's proved second to none in the warmth of its affectionate greeting--that splendid spontaneous welcome which the whole West gave to the Prince upset all preconceived notions, swept away all sense of set ceremonial and made the tour from the beginning to the end the most happy progress of a sympathetic and responsive youth through a continent of intimate personal friends.

II

The _Dauntless_ went out from St. John's on Sunday, August 10, to rendezvous with _Renown_ and _Dragon_, and the three great modern wars.h.i.+ps came together on a glorious Western evening.

There was a touch of drama in the meeting. In the marvellous clear air of gold and blue that only the American Continent can show, we picked up _Renown_ at a point when she was entering a long avenue of icebergs.

There were eleven of these splendid white fellows in view on the skyline when we turned to lead the great battles.h.i.+p back to the anchorage in Conception Bay, north of St. John's, and as the s.h.i.+ps followed us it was as though the Prince had entered a processional way set with great pylons arranged deliberately to mark the last phase of his route to the Continent of the West.

Some of these bergs were as large, as ma.s.sive and as pinnacled as cathedrals, some were humped mounds that lifted sullenly from the radiant sea, some were treacherous little crags circled by rings of detached floes--the "growlers," those almost wholly submerged ma.s.ses of ice that the sailor fears most. Most of the bergs in the two irregular lines were distant, and showed as patches of curiously luminant whiteness against the intense blue of the sky. Some were close enough for us to see the wonderful semi-transparent green of the cracks and fissures in their sides and the vivid emerald at the base that the bursting seas seemed to be eternally polis.h.i.+ng anew.

When _Renown_ was sighted, a mere smudge on the horizon, we saw the flash of her guns and heard faintly the thud of the explosions. She was getting in some practice with her four-inch guns on the enticing targets of the bergs.

We were too far away to see results, but we were told that as a spectacle the effect of the sh.e.l.l-bursts on the ice crags was remarkable. Under the explosions the immense ma.s.ses of these translucent fairy islands rocked and changed shape. Faces of ice cliffs crumbled under the hits and sent down avalanches of ice into the furious green seas the shocks of the explosions had raised.

This was one of the few incidents in a journey made under perfect weather conditions in a vessel that is one of the "wonder s.h.i.+ps" of the British Navy. The huge _Renown_ had behaved admirably throughout the pa.s.sage. She had travelled at a slow speed, for her, most of the time, but there had been a spell of about an hour when she had worked up to the prodigious rate of thirty-one knots an hour. Under these test conditions she had travelled like an express with no more structural movement than is felt in a well-sprung Pullman carriage.

The Prince had employed his five day's journey by indulging his fancy for getting to know how things are done. Each day he had spent two hours in a different part of the s.h.i.+p having its function and mechanism explained to him by the officer in charge.

As he proved later in Canada when visiting various industrial and agricultural plants, His Royal Highness has the modern curiosity and interest for the mechanics of things. Indeed, throughout the journey he showed a distinct inclination towards people and the work that ordinary people did, rather than in the contemplation of views however splendid, and the report that he said at one time, "Oh, Lord, let's cut all this scenery and get back to towns and crowds," is certainly true in essence if not in fact.

It was in the beautiful morning of August 11th that the Prince made his first landfall in the West, and saw in the distance the great curtain of high rock that makes the grim coast-line of Newfoundland.

For reasons of the _Renown's_ tonnage he had to go into Conception Bay, one of the many great sacks of inlets that make the island something that resembles nothing so much as a section of a jig-saw puzzle. The harbour of St. John's could float _Renown_, but its narrow waters would not permit her to turn, and the Prince had to transfer his Staff and baggage to _Dragon_ in order to complete the next stage of the voyage.

Conception Bay is a fjord thrusting its way through the jaws of strong, sharp hills of red sandstone piled up in broken and stratified ma.s.ses above grey slate rock. On these hills cling forests of spruce and larch in woolly ma.s.ses that march down the combes to the very water's edge. It is wild scenery, Scandinavian and picturesque.

In the combes--the "outports" they are called--are the small, scattered villages of the fishermen. The wooden frame houses have the look of the packing-case, and though they are bright and toy-like when their green or red or cinnamon paint is fresh, they are woefully drab when the weather of several years has had its way with them.

In front of most of the houses are the "flakes," or drying platforms where the split cod is exposed to the air. These "flakes" are built up among the ledges and crevices of the rock, being supported by numberless legs of thin spruce mast; the effect of these spidery platforms, the painted houses, the sharp stratified red rock and the green ma.s.sing of the trees is that of a j.a.panese vignette set down amid inappropriate scenery.

Cod fis.h.i.+ng is, of course, the beginning and the end of the life of many of these villages on the bays that indent so deeply the Newfoundland coast. It is not the adventurous fis.h.i.+ng of the Grand Banks; there is no need for that. There is all the food and the income man needs in the crowded local waters. Men have only to go out in boats with hook and line to be sure of large catches.

Only a few join the men who live farther to the south, about Cape Race, in their trips to the misty waters of the Grand Banks. Here they put off from their schooners in dories and make their haul with hook and line.

A third branch of these fishers, particularly those to the north of St.

John's, push up to the Labrador coast, where in the bays, or "fis.h.i.+ng rooms," they catch, split, head, salt and dry the superabundant fish.