Merchantmen-at-arms : the British merchants' service in the war Part 10

We could not have done it as well. The lad is plainly in sight to the crowd on the decks. A small boy, undersized. "Steady up doon therr!" The effect is instant. Noise there still is, but the movement is arrested.

The engines are stopped--we are now beyond range of a second torpedo--and steam thunders in exhaust, making our efforts to control movements by voice impossible. At the moment of the impact the destroyers have swung round and are casting here and there like hounds on the scent: the dull explosion of a depth-charge--then another, rouses a fierce hope that we are not unavenged. The force of the explosion has broken connections to the wireless room, but the aerial still holds and, when a measure of order on the boat-deck allows, we send a message of our peril broadcast. There is no doubt in our mind of the outcome. Our bows, drooping visibly, tell that we shall not float long. We have nearly three thousand on board. There are boats for sixteen hundred--then rafts. Boats--rafts--and the gla.s.s is falling at a rate that shows bad weather over the western horizon!

Our drill, that provided for lowering the boats with only half-complements in them, will not serve. We pa.s.s orders to lower away in any condition, however overcrowded. The way is off the s.h.i.+p, and it is with some apprehension we watch the packed boats that drop away from the davit heads. The shrill ring of the block-sheaves indicates a tension that is not far from breaking-point. Many of the life-boats reach the water safely with their heavy burdens, but the strain on the tackles--far beyond their working load--is too great for all to stand to it. Two boats go down by the run. The men in them are thrown violently to the water, where they float in the wash and shattered planking. A third dangles from the after fall, having shot her manning out at parting of the forward tackle. Lowered by the stern, she rights, disengages, and drifts aft with the men clinging to the life-lines. We can make no attempt to reach the men in the water. Their life-belts are sufficient to keep them afloat: the s.h.i.+p is going down rapidly by the head, and there remains the second line of boats to be hoisted and swung over. The chief officer, pausing in his quick work, looks to the bridge inquiringly, as though to ask, "How long?" The fingers of two hands suffice to mark our estimate.

The decks are now angled to the deepening pitch of the bows. Pumps are utterly inadequate to make impression on the swift inflow. The chief engineer comes to the bridge with a hopeless report. It is only a question of time. How long? Already the water is lapping at a level of the foredeck. Troops ma.s.sed there and on the forecastle-head are apprehensive: it is indeed a wonder that their officers have held them for so long. The commanding officer sets example by a cool nonchalance that we envy. Posted with us on the bridge, his quick eyes note the flood surging in the pent 'tween-decks below, from which his men have removed the few wounded. The dead are left to the sea.

Help comes as we had expected it would. Leaving _Nemesis_ to steam fast circles round the sinking s.h.i.+p, _Rifleman_ swings in and brings up alongside at the forward end. Even in our fear and anxiety and distress, we cannot but admire the precision of the destroyer captain's manoeuvre--the skilful avoidance of our crowded life-boats and the men in the water--the sudden stoppage of her way and the cant that brings her to a standstill at the lip of our br.i.m.m.i.n.g decks. The troops who have stood so well to orders have their reward in an easy leap to safety. Quickly the foredeck is cleared. _Rifleman_ spurts ahead in a rush that sets the surrounding life-boats to eddy in her wash. She takes up the circling high-speed patrol and allows her sister s.h.i.+p to swing in and embark a number of our men.

It is when the most of the life-boats are gone we realize fully the gallant service of the destroyers. There remain the rafts, but many of these have been launched over to aid the struggling men in the water.

Half an hour has pa.s.sed since we were struck--thirty minutes of frantic endeavour to debark our men--yet still the decks are thronged by a packed ma.s.s that seems but little reduced. The coming of the destroyers alters the outlook. _Rifleman's_ action has taken over six hundred. A sensible clearance! _Nemesis_ swings in with the precision of an express, and the thud and clatter of the troops jumping to her deck sets up a continuous drumming note of deliverance. Alert and confident, the naval men accept the great risks of their position. The s.h.i.+p's bows are entered to the water at a steep incline. Every minute the balance is weighing, casting her stern high in the air. The bulkheads are by now taking place of keel and bearing the huge weight of her on the water. At any moment she may go without a warning, to crash into the light hull of the destroyer and bear her down. For all the circling watch of her sister s.h.i.+p, the submarine--if still he lives--may get in a shot at the standing target. It is with a deep relief we signal the captain to bear off. Her decks are jammed to the limit. She can carry no more. _Nemesis_ lists heavily under her burdened decks as she goes ahead and clears.

Forty minutes! The zigzag clock in the wheelhouse goes on ringing the angles of time and course as though we were yet under helm and speed.

For a short term we have noted that the s.h.i.+p appears to have reached a point of arrest in her foundering droop. She remains upright as she has been since righting herself after the first inrush of water. Like the lady she always was, she has added no fearsome list to the sum of our distress. The familiar bridge, on which so many of our safe sea-days have been spent, is canted at an angle that makes foothold uneasy. She cannot remain for long afloat. The end will come swiftly, without warning--a sudden rupture of the bulkhead that is sustaining her weight.

We are not now many left on board. Striving and wrenching to man-handle the only remaining boat--rendered idle for want of the tackles that have parted on service of its twin--we succeed in pointing her outboard, and await a further deepening of the bows ere launching her. Of the military, the officer commanding, some few of his juniors, a group of other ranks, stand by. The senior officers of the s.h.i.+p, a muster of seamen, a few stewards, are banded with us at the last. We expect no further service of the destroyers. The position of the s.h.i.+p is over-menacing to any approach. They have all they can carry. Steaming at a short distance they have the appearance of being heavily overloaded; each has a staggering list and lies low in the water under their deck enc.u.mbrance. We have only the hazard of a quick out-throw of the remaining boat and the chances of a grip on floating wreckage to count upon.

On a sudden swift sheer, _Rifleman_ takes the risk. Unheeding our warning hail, she steams across the bows and backs at a high speed: her rounded stern jars on our hull plates, a whaler and the davits catch on a projection and give with the ring of buckling steel--she turns on the throw of the propellors and closes aboard with a resounding impact that sets her living deck-load to stagger.

We lose no time. Scrambling down the life-ropes, our small company endeavours to get foothold on her decks. The destroyer widens off at the rebound, but by clutch of friendly hands the men are dragged aboard. One fails to reach safety. A soldier loses grip and goes to the water. The chief officer follows him. Tired and unstrung as he must be by the devoted labours of the last half-hour, he is in no condition to effect a rescue. A sudden deep rumble from within the sinking s.h.i.+p warns the destroyer captain to go ahead. We are given no chance to aid our s.h.i.+pmates: the propellors tear the water in a furious race that sweeps them away, and we draw off swiftly from the side of the s.h.i.+p.

We are little more than clear of the settling fore-end when the last buoyant breath of _Cameronia_ is overcome. n.o.bly she has held afloat to the debarking of the last man. There is no further life in her. Evenly, steadily, as we had seen her leave the launching ways at Meadowside, she goes down.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SALVAGE VESSELS OFF YARMOUTH, ISLE OF WIGHT]

XIII

THE SALVAGE SECTION

THE TIDEMASTERS

IF Royal Canute, King of England and Denmark, with his train of servile earls and thanes, could revisit the scene of his famous object-lesson, he would learn a new value in the tide. Suitably, he might improve his homily by presentation of the salvage tidemasters, harnessing the rise and fall of the stubborn element to serve their needs and heave a foundered vessel to sight and service. He would note the cunning guidance of strain and effort, their exact timing of the ruled and ordered habits of the sea. As a moral, he could quote that, if tide may not be ordered to command, it can at least be governed and impressed to performance of a mighty service.

Recovery of s.h.i.+ps, their gear and cargo, is no longer wholly an application of practised seamans.h.i.+p. The task is burdened and complicated by powers and conditions that call for auxiliary arts. It is true that the salvage officer's ground, his main a.s.set, is the knowledge and ability to do a seamanlike 'job o' work' when the time and tide are opportune; he must have a seaman's training in the ways of the wind and the sea and be able properly to a.s.sess the weather conditions under which alone his precarious work is possible. A scientist of a liberal and versatile type (not perhaps exhaustive in his scope and range), he is able to draw the quantum of his needs from a wide and varied summary.

Together with his medical exemplar, he has developed a technique from crude remedies and imperfect diagnoses to application of fine science.

He must have a sure knowledge of the anatomy of his great steel patients, be versed in the infinite variety and intricacy of s.h.i.+p construction, and the valves and arteries of their power; be able to pen and plan his formulae for weight-lifting--the stress and strain of it, down to the calibre of the weakest link. A super-tidesman, he must know to an inch the run of bottom, the swirl and eddy, the value of flood and ebb and springs, for the tide--Canute's immutable recalcitrant--is his greatest a.s.sistant, a familiar _Genius maris_ whom he conjures from the deeps of ocean to do his bidding. Shrewd! He is a keen student of the psychology of the distressed mariner; again, like the medical man, he must set himself to extract truth from the tale that is told. His treatment must be prescribed, not to meet a case as presented, but as his skilled knowledge of the probabilities warrants. Tactful, if he is to meet with a.s.sistance in his difficult work, he must a.s.sume the sympathy of one seaman to another in distress. What, after all, does it matter if he agree heartily that "the touch was very light, we were going dead slow," when, from his divers' reports, he knows that the whole bottom is 'up'?

In the handling of his own men there must be a combination of rigour and reason. Salvage crews are a hardy, tempestuous race who have no ordinary regard for the niceties of law and order; their work is no scheduled and defined occupation with states and margins; they are servants to tide and weather alone; they are embarked on a venture, on a hazard, a lottery. To such men, administering, under his direction, the heroic but destructive remedies of high explosive and compressed air, there cannot be a normal allowance for the economic use of gear and material. He must know the right and judicial discount to be made that will meet the conflicting demands of the expenses department and the results committee. Above all, he must be of an infinite patience, of the mettle that is not readily discouraged. In the great game of seafaring his hand holds the king of disappointment and the knaves of frustration and discouragement. But he has other cards; he holds an ace in stability and determination.

Calm days and smooth seas may lure him to surpa.s.sing effort, to work through the tides in feverish energy, making the most of favoured opportunity. The scattered and interrupted work of months has perhaps been geared and bound, the tackle rigged and set for a final dead lift.

Buoyancy is figured out and a.s.sured; the pumps are in place, throbbing and droning out, throwing steady streams from the weight of water that so long has held the foundered wreck in depth. The work has been long and trying, but an end to difficulty is in sight. Given a day or two of continued fine weather, the sea and the rocks will have to surrender their prisoner.

Comes a darkling to windward and the sea stirs uneasily; jets and spurts of broken water appear over the teeth and spit of rocky ledges. The salvors look around with calculating eyes and note the signs of a weather break. Still, there is no slackening of effort; there may be time to complete the work before the sea rises to interfere; if anything, the omens only call for another spur to the flank, a new sting to the lash.

Beaten to the knees, the gear and tackle swaying perilously in breaking seas, the lifting-barges thundering at their curbs, the pumps groaning and protesting their inability to overcome the lap of blue water, there is no alternative but to abandon the work and return to harbour. From the beach the salvage officer may watch his labour of weeks--or months--savagely undone in an hour or two of storm and fury of the sea!

It is a great catalogue, that schedule of virtues and accomplishments.

To it must be added, as a supplement, that he must be a 'made' man--made in a long hard pupilage in a stern school that appraises strictly on results. It is of little use to show that, in theory, a certain course was right and proper, when the broad but d.a.m.ning fact remains that the property is still in Davy Jones his locker, and likely--there to remain.

Many are called, but few are chosen. The salvage service has no room for the merely mediocre officer: the right man goes inevitably to his proper place, the wrong one goes back to a junior, and less responsible, post at sea.

It is doubtful if the Naval Service could produce the type required.

Their candidate would be, to a degree, inelastic. He would be an excellent theorist, a sound executant, a strict disciplinarian; but his training and ideas would fit ill to the wide range of conflicting interests, and the shutting out of all manoeuvre, however skilled and stimulating--but that of securing a maximum of result by a minimum of effort. Perhaps it was for these reasons our salvage services before the war were almost wholly mercantile and commercial. Certainly, most Admiralty efforts in this direction were confined to ports and harbours where method could be ordered and controlled by routine; their more arduous and unmanageable cases on the littoral were frequently handed over to the merchantmen--not seldom after naval efforts had been unavailing. Among the protestations of our good faith to the world in time of peace, it may be cited that we made no serious provision for a succession of maritime casualties; there was no specially organized and equipped Naval Salvage Service. True, there were the harbour gear, divers, a pump or two, and appliances and craft for attending submarine accidents, but their energies were bent largely to humane purposes--to marine first aid. Of major gear and a trained personnel to control equipment and operation there was not even a nucleus. Salvage was valued at a modest section of the "Manual on Seamans.h.i.+p" (written by a mercantile expert), and a very occasional lecture at the Naval College.

At war, and the toll of maritime disaster rising, the need grew quickly for expert and special service. There was no longer a relative and profitable balance to be struck between value of sea-property and cost of salvage operations. A s.h.i.+p had become beyond mere money valuation; as well a.s.sess the air we breathe in terms of finance. No cost was high if a keel could be added to our mercantile fleets in one minute less than the time the builders would take to construct a new vessel. The call was for competent s.h.i.+p-surgeons who could front-rank our maritime C Threes.

By whatever skill and daring and exercise of seamans.h.i.+p, the wrecks must be returned to service. Happily, there was no necessity to go far afield; the merchants' salvage enterprise, like the merchants' s.h.i.+ps and the merchants' men, was ready at hand for adoption.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN A SALVAGE VESSEL: OVERHAULING THE INSULATION OF THE POWER LEADS]

The Salvage Section, Admiralty, is a dignified caption and has an almost imperial address, but, camouflages and all, it is not difficult to see the hem of old sea-worn garments of our mercantile companies peeping out below the gold braid. If in peace-time they did wonders, war has made their greatest and most successful efforts seem but minor actions compared to their present-day victories. The practice and experience gained in quick succession of 'cases' has tuned up their operations to the highest pitch of efficiency. New and more powerful appliances have come to their hands; a skilled and technical directorate has liberated initiative. Strandings, torpedo or mine damage, fire, collisions--frequently a compound of two or three--or all five--provide them with occasion for every s.h.i.+ft of ingenuity, every turn of resource. There is no stint to the gear, and no limits to invention, or device, if there is a possibility of a damaged s.h.i.+p being brought to the dry docks. Is it not on record that an obstinate, stranded s.h.i.+p, driven high on the beach, was finally relaunched on the crest of an artificially created 'spring'

tide, the wash and suction of a high-speed destroyer, plying and circling in the shallows?

Many new perils are added to the risks and hazards of their normally dangerous work. Casualties that call for their service are rarely located in safe and protected waters; open coast and main channels are the marches of the Salvage Section, where the enemy has a keen and ready eye for a 'potting' shot by which he may prevent succour of a previous victim. The menace of sea-mines is particularly theirs; the run and swirl of Channel tides has strength to weigh a stealthy mooring and carry a power of destruction up stream and down. They have a new and deadly danger to be guarded against in the ammunition and armament of their stricken wards. Many have gone down at 'action stations,' and carry 'hair-sprung' explosive charges, the exact condition and activity of which are usually a matter for conjecture. It calls for a courage of no ordinary measure to grope and stumble under water amid shattered wreckage for the safety-clutch of the charges, or grapple in the mud and litter for torpedo firing-levers. This the pioneer of the divers must do, as the first and most important of his duties.

With skill enhanced by constant and encouraged practice, they set out to bind the wounds and raise our damaged s.h.i.+ps to a further lease of sea-activity. So definite and sure are their methods, so skilled and rapid their execution, they steam ahead of reconstruction and crowd the waiting-room at the dry-dock gates. Lined up at the anchorage awaiting their turn, the recovered vessels may be crippled and bent, and showing torsion and distress in the list, and staggering trim with which they swing flood and ebb. They may rest, halting, on the insh.o.r.e shallow flats, but, laid by for a term of repair, their day is to come again.

The Salvage Section has reclaimed their rent and stranded hulls from the misty sea-Front; the Repair Section, working day and night, will hammer and bind and reframe the gaps of their steel; the Sea Section will take them out on the old stormy road, sound and seaworthy, with the flag at the peak once more.

A DAY ON THE SHOALS

THE rigger was engaged at second tucks of a five-inch wire-splicing job, and hardly looked in the direction we indicated. "Them," he said.

"Them's crocks wot we don't want nothin' more t' do with! Two on 'em's got frozen mutton. High? Excelsi-b.l.o.o.d.y-or! . . . an' that feller as is down by th' 'ead--Gawd! 'e don't 'arf smell 'orrible!" A pause, while he hammered down the strands and found fault with his a.s.sistant, gave us time to disentangle the negatives of his opening. "Grain, she 'as--an'

of all th' ruddy messes wot I ever see--she gets it! We 'ad four days at 'er--out there 'n th' Padrig Flats, an' she sickened nigh all 'ands! . . .

Now we're well quit o' 'er, an' th' longsh.o.r.e gangs is unloadin' th'

bulk, in nosebags an' gas 'elmets, t' get 'er a-trim for th' dry dock!"

As we pa.s.sed alee of the grain-carrier there was no doubt of the truth of the rigger's a.s.surance. Steam-pumps on her fore-deck were forcing a sickly mixture of liquid batter through hoses to a barge alongside, and the overpowering stench of the mess blew down to us and set eyes and noses quickening with instant nausea. The men on the barges were garbed in odd headgear, high cowls with staring circular eyepieces, and each carried a knapsack cylinder on his back. Clouds of high-pressure steam from the winches and pumps threw out in exhaust, and the hooded, ghost-like figures of the labourers pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed in drifts of white vapour. To the hiss and rumble of machines, clamour of block-sheaves and chain and piston joined action to make a setting of _Inferno_, the scene might well be imagery for a stage of unholy rites.

Past her, we turned to the clean salt breeze again and stood on to the open sea. The salvage officer, a Commander, R.N.R., joined us at the rail. "What about that now? Sa--lubrious?" he said.

We wondered how men could be got to work in such an atmosphere, how it was possible to handle such foul-smelling litter in the confined holds.

"Oh! We go through that all right. A bit inconvenient and troublesome, perhaps, working in a restricting gas-rig; but now, the chemists have come to our a.s.sistance and we can sweeten things up by a dose of anti-stink. . . . But you won't see that to-day. Our 'bird' has got no cargo, only clean stone ballast--a soft job."

The 'soft job' had had a rough time, a combination and chapter of sea and war hazard. Inward bound from the United States with a big cargo, a German torpedo had found a mark on her. She settled quickly by the stern, but the undamaged engines worked her gallantly into a small seaport where she brought up with her main deck awash. There she was lightened of her precious load, temporary baulks and patches were clamped and bolted to her riven sh.e.l.l-plate, and she set off again on a short coastwise voyage to the nearest port where definite and satisfactory repair could be effected. Off the Heads, the enemy again got sights on her. Crippled, and steaming at slow speed to ease strain on the bulkheads, she made a 'sitting' target for a second torpedo, that shattered rudder and stern-post and sheared the propellor from the shaft.

"We came on her just before dark," said the commander. . . . "Some of the crew were in the boats, close by, but the captain and a Trinity pilot and others were still aboard. She was down astern to the counter and up forward like a ruddy unicorn. We got fast and started to tow.

Tow?--Might as well have taken on the Tower Bridge. There was no way of steering her, and a strong breeze from the south'ard blew her head down against all we could do. . . . Anyway, we hung on, and at daylight in the morning the wind let up on us a bit, and we guided her drift--that's about all we could do--insh.o.r.e, till she took the bottom on good ground a little north of the Westmark Shoal. We filled her up forrard as the weather was looking bad--a good weight of water to steady her through a gale. She's lain out there for two months now. We've had a turn or two at her occasionally--shoring up the after bulkheads and that, while we had weather chances. _t.i.tan_ has been out at her since yesterday morning. . . . It looks good and healthy now." He cast an eye around appreciatively at the calm sea and quiet sky, the gorse-banked cliffs dimmed by a promising summer haze, at seagulls lazily drifting on the tide or becking and bowing in the gla.s.sy ripples of our wash. "Good and healthy; I like to see these old 'sh.e.l.lbacks' sitting low and not shrilling overhead with all sail set. . . . If this weather holds I shouldn't wonder if we get the old bus afloat on high tide to-day!"

Clear of harbour limits and heading out to the shoals, a brisk rigging of gear and tackle brings action to the decks of the salvage steamer.

Already we had thought the narrow confines from bulwark to bulwark congested by the bulk of appliances, but, from hole and corner and cunning stowage, further coils and shoots and lengths of flexible, armoured hose are dragged and placed in readiness for operations.

Derricks are topped up and purchases rove for handling the heavy twelve-inch motor-pumps. Hawsers are uncovered and coiled clear, stout fenders thrown over in preparation for a grind alongside the wreck.

Mindful of possibilities, the engineer-lieutenant and his artificers go over the insulation of their power leads in minute search for a leak in the cables that may occasion a short circuit later on. The terminals and couplings are buffed and polished with what seems exaggerated and needless precision--but this is salvage, where sustained effort is only possible in the rare and all-too-brief union of favourable tide and weather conditions. A cessation of the steady throw of the pumps, however instant and skilful the adjustment, may mean the loss of just that finite measure in buoyancy that could spring the weight of thousands in tons. Second chances are rarely given by a grudging and jealous sea; there must be no hitch in the gear, no halt in weighing the ma.s.s.

A drift of lazy smoke on the sea-rim ahead marks our rendezvous, where _t.i.tan_ and a sisterly tug-boat are already at work on the wreck. A screen of motor-patrols are rounding and lining out in the offing, with a thrust of white foam astern that shows their speed. Coastwise, a convoy of merchant s.h.i.+ps zigzag in confusing angles on their way to sea, guarded by spurring destroyers and trawler escort. Seaplanes are out, hawking with swoop and wheel for sight of strange fish. The seascape is busy with a s.h.i.+pping that must remind the coastguard and lightkeepers of old and palmy days when square sail was standard at sea. The Westmark Shoal lies some distance from the normal peace-time track of direct steaming courses. It lies in the bight of a bay, where rarely steamers closed the land. Sailing s.h.i.+ps, close-hauled and working a tack insh.o.r.e, or fisher craft on their grounds, had long been the only keels to sheer water in the deeps, but war practice has renewed our acquaintance with many old sea-routes and by-paths, and we are back now to charts and courses that have long been out of our reckoning.

The tide is at low-water slack, and whirls and eddies mark the run over shallows. At easy speed and handing the lead, we approach the wreck. Her weathered hull, gilt and red-rusted by exposure to sun and wind and sea, stands high and bold against the deep blue of a summer sky. Masts and rigging and cordage are bleached white, like tracery of a phantom s.h.i.+p.

The green sea-growth on her underbody fans and waves in the tide, showing long voyaging in the crust and stage of it. She lies well and steadily, with only a slight list to seaward that marks the gradient on which she rests. Through fracture on the stern and counter, the twisted and shattered frames and beams and angles can be seen plainly. Sunlight, in slanting rays, s.h.i.+nes through the rents and fissures of the upper deck, and plays on the free flood that washes in and out of the exposed after hold; seaweed and flotsam surges on the tide, clinging to the jagged, shattered edges of the plating, and breaking away to lap in the dark recesses. To eyes that only know the lines and mould of sightly, seaworthy vessels, she seems a hopeless and distorted ma.s.s of standing iron--a sheer hulk, indeed, fit only for a lone sea-perch to gull and gannet and cormorant. It appears idle for the salvors to plan and strive and wrestle for such a prize, but their keen eyes are focused to values not readily apparent. "A fine s.h.i.+p," says the commander, now happily a.s.sured that his 'soft job' has suffered no worse than a weathering on the ledge that his skill has secured her. "A job o' work for the repairers, certainly . . . but they will set her up as good as new in a third of the time it would take to build a subst.i.tute!"