Merchantmen-at-arms : the British merchants' service in the war Part 2

We have grown to admire him, to like him, to look forward to his coming and a.s.sociation in almost the same way that we are pleased at the boarding of our favoured pilots. He fits into our new scheme of things as readily as the Port Authorities and the s.h.i.+p's Husband. The plumed bonnets are no longer set up to attract our awed regard: by a better way than caprice and petulant discourtesy, the naval officer has won a high place in our esteem. We have borrowed from his stock to improve our store; better methods to control our manning, a more dispa.s.sionate bearing, a ready subordinance to ensure service. His talk, too. We use his phrases. We 'carry on'; we ask the 'drill' for this or that; we speak of our sailing orders as 'pictures,' our port-holes are become 'scuttles.' The enemy is a 'Fritz,' a depth-charge a 'pill,' torpedoes are 'mouldies.' In speaking of our s.h.i.+ps we now omit the definite article. We are getting on famously together.

AT SEA

ALTHOUGH our experience of their a.s.sured protection is clear and definite, our personal acquaintance with the larger vessels of the Navy is not intimate. Saving the colliers and the oilers and stores.h.i.+ps that serve the Fleet, few of us have seen a 'first-rate' on open sea since the day the Grand Fleet steered north to battle stations. The strength and influence of the distant s.h.i.+ps was plain to us in the first days of the war even if we had actually no sight of their grey hulls. While we were able to proceed on our lawful occasions with not even a warning of possible interference, the mercantile s.h.i.+ps of the enemy--being abroad--had no course but to seek the protection of a neutral port, not again to put out to sea under their own colours.

The operation of a threat to s.h.i.+pping--at three thousand miles distance--was dramatic in intensity under the light of acute contrast.

Entering New York a few days after war had been declared, we berthed alongside a crack German liner. Her voyage had been abandoned: she lay at the pier awaiting events. At the first, we stared at one another curiously. Her silent winches and closed hatchways, deserted decks and pa.s.sages, were markedly in contrast to the stir and animation with which we set about unloading and preparing for the return voyage. The few sullen seamen about her forecastle leant over the bulwarks and noted the familiar routine that was no longer theirs. Officers on the bridge-deck eyed our movements with interest, despite their apparent unconcern. We were respectfully hostile: submarine atrocities had not yet begun. The same newsboy served special editions to both s.h.i.+ps. The German officers grouped together, reading of the fall of Liege. Doubtless they confided to one another that they would soon be at sea again. Five days we lay.

At eight o'clock 'flags,' our bugle-call accompanied the raising of the ensign: the red, white, and black was hoisted defiantly at the same time. We unloaded, re-loaded, and embarked pa.s.sengers, and backed out into the North River on our way to sea again. The _Furst_ ranged to the wash of our sternway as we cleared the piers; her hawsers strained and creaked, then held her to the bollards of the quay.

Time and again we returned on our regular schedule, to find the German berthed across the dock, lying as we had left her, with derricks down and her hatchways closed. . . . We noted the signs of neglect growing on her; guessed at the indiscipline aboard that inaction would produce. For a while her men were set to chipping and painting in the way of a good sea-custom, but the days pa.s.sed with no release and they relaxed handwork. Her topsides grew rusty, her once trim and clean paintwork took on a grimy tint. Our doings were plain to her officers and crew: we were so near that they could read the tallies on the mailbags we handled: there were no mails from Germany. Loading operations, that included the embarkation of war material, went on by night and day: we were busied as never before. The narrow water s.p.a.ce between her hull and ours was crowded by barges taking and delivering our cargo; the shriek of steam-tugs and clangour of their engine-bells advertised our stir and activity. On occasion, the regulations of the port obliged the _Furst_ to haul astern, to allow working s.p.a.ce for the Merritt-Chapman crane to swing a huge piece of ordnance to our decks. There were rumours of a concealed activity on the German. "She was coaling silently at night, in preparation for a dash to sea.". . . "German spies had their headquarters in her." The evening papers had a new story of her secret doings whenever copy ran short. All the while she lay quietly at the pier; we rated her by her draught marks that varied only with the galley coal she burnt.

At regular periods her hopeless outlook was emphasized by our sailings.

Officers and crew could not ignore the stir that attended our departure.

They saw the 'blue peter' come fluttering from the masthead, and heard our syren roar a warning to the river craft as we backed out. We were laden to our marks and the decks were thronged with young Britons returning to serve their country. The Fatherland could have no such help: the _Furst_ could handle no such cargo. For her there could be no movement, no canting on the tide and heading under steam for the open sea: the distant s.h.i.+ps of the Grand Fleet held her in fetters at the pier.

While the Battle Fleet opened the oceans to us, we were not wholly safe from enemy interference on the high seas in the early stages of the war.

German commerce raiders were abroad; there was need for a more tangible protection to the merchants' s.h.i.+ps on the oversea trade routes. The older cruisers were sent out on distant patrols. They were our first a.s.sociates of the huge fleet subsequently detailed for our defence and a.s.sistance. We were somewhat in awe of the naval men at sea on our early introduction. The White Ensign was unfamiliar. Armed to the teeth, an officer from the cruiser would board us: the bluejackets of his boat's crew had each a rifle at hand. "Where were we from . . . where to . . .

our cargo . . . our pa.s.sengers?" The lieutenant was sternly courteous; he was engaged on important duties: there was no mood of relaxation. He returned to his boat and shoved off with not one rea.s.suring grin for the pa.s.sengers lining the rails interested in every row-stroke of his whaler. In time we both grew more cordial: we improved upon acquaintance. The drudgery and monotony of a lone patrol off a neutral coast soon brought about a less punctilious boarding. Our _proces-verbal_ had unofficial intervals. "How were things at home? . . .

Are we getting the men trained quickly? . . . What about the Russians?"

The boarding lieutenants discovered the key to our affections--the secret sign that overloaded their sea-boat with newspapers and fresh mess. "A fine s.h.i.+p you've got here, Captain!" We parted company at ease and with goodwill. The boat would cast off to the cheers of our pa.s.sengers. The great cruiser, cleared for action with her guns trained outboard, would cant in to close her whaler. Often her band a.s.sembled on the upper deck: the favourite selections were 'Auld Lang Syne' and 'Will ye no' come back again'--as she swung off on her weary patrol.

Submarine activities put an end to these meetings on the sea. Except while under ocean escort of a cruiser--when our relations by flag signal are studied and impersonal--we have now little acquaintance with vessels of that cla.s.s. Counter-measures of the new warfare demand the service of smaller vessels. Destroyers and sloops are now our protectors and co-workers. With them, we are drawn to a familiar intimacy; we are, perhaps, more at ease in their company, dreading no formal routine.

Admirals are, to us, awesome beings who seclude themselves behind gold-corded secretaries: commodores (except those who control our convoys) are rarely sea-going, and we come to regard them as schoolmasters, tutors who may not be argued with; post-captains in command of the larger escorts have the brusque a.s.sumption of a super-seamans.h.i.+p that takes no note of a limit in manning. The commanders and lieutenants of the destroyers and sloops that work with us are different; they are more to our mind--we look upon them as brother seamen. Like ourselves, they are 'single-s.h.i.+p' men. They are neither concerned with serious plans of naval strategy nor overbalanced by the forms and usages of great s.h.i.+p routine. While 'the bridge' of a cruiser may be mildly scornful upon receipt of an objection to her signalled noon position, the destroyer captain is less a.s.sured: he is more likely to request our estimate of the course and speed. His seamans.h.i.+p is comparable to our own. The relatively small crew he musters has taught him to be tolerant of an apparent delay in carrying out certain operations. In harbour he is frequently berthed among the merchantmen, and has opportunity to visit the s.h.i.+ps and acquire more than a casual knowledge of our gear and appliances. He is ever a welcome visitor, frank and manly and candid. Even if there is a dispute as to why we turned north instead of south-east 'when that Fritz came up,' and we blanked the destroyer's range, there is not the air of superior reproof that rankles.

In all our relations with the Navy at sea there was ever little, if any, friction. We saw no empty plumed bonnet in the White Ensign. We were proud of the companions.h.i.+p and protection of the King's s.h.i.+ps. Our ready service was never grudged or stinted to the men behind the grey guns; succour in our distress was their return. Incidents of our co-operation varied, but an unchanging sea-brotherhood was the constant light that shone out in small occurrences and deathly events.

Dawn in the Channel, a high south gale and a bitter confused sea. Even with us, in a powerful deep-sea transport, the measure of the weather was menacing; green seas shattered on board and wrecked our fittings, half of the weather boats were gone, others were stove and useless. A bitter gale! Under our lee the destroyer of our escort staggered through the hurtling ma.s.ses that burst and curled and swept her fore and aft.

Her mast and one funnel were gone, the bridge wrecked; a few dangling planks at her davits were all that was left of her service boats. She lurched and faltered pitifully, as though she had loose water below, making through the baulks and canvas that formed a makes.h.i.+ft s.h.i.+eld over her smashed skylights. In the grey of the murky dawn there was yet darkness to flash a message: "_In view of weather probably worse as wind has backed, suggest you run for Waterford while chance, leaving us to carry on at full speed._" An answer was ready and immediate: "_Reply.

Thanks. I am instructed escort you to port._"

The Mediterranean. A bright sea and sky disfigured by a ring of curling black smoke--a death-screen for the last agonies of a torpedoed troops.h.i.+p. Amid her littering entrails she settles swiftly, the stern high upreared, the bows deepening in a wash of wreckage. Boats, charged to inches of freeboard, lie off, the rowers and their freight still and open-mouthed awaiting her final plunge. On rafts and spars, the upturned strakes of a lifeboat, remnants of her manning and company grip safeguard, but turn eyes on the wreck of their parent hull. Into the ring, recking nothing of entangling gear or risk of suction, taking the chances of a standing shot from the lurking submarine, a destroyer thunders up alongside, brings up, and backs at speed on the sinking transport. Already her decks are jammed to a limit, by press of a khaki-clad cargo she was never built to carry. This is final, the last turn of her engagement. The foundering vessel slips quickly and deeper.

"Come along, Skipper! You've got 'em all off! You can do no more!

_Jump!_"

OUR WAR STAFF

SOME years before the war we were lying at an East Indian port, employed in our regular trade. The military students of the Quetta Staff College were in the district, engaged in practical exercise of their staff lessons. On a Sunday (our loading being suspended) they boarded us to work out in detail a question of troop transport. It was a.s.sumed that our s.h.i.+p was requisitioned in an emergency, and their problem was to estimate the number of men we could carry and to plan arrangement of the troop decks. Their inspection was to be minute; down to the sufficiency of our pots and pans they were required to investigate and figure out the resources of our vessel. The officer students were thirty-four in number; at least we counted thirty-four who came to us for clue to the mysteries of gross and register and dead-weight tonnage. In parties they explored our holds and accommodation, measured in paces for a rough survey, and prepared their plans. Their Commandant (a very famous soldier to-day) permitted us to be present when the officers were a.s.sembled and their papers read out and discussed. In general it was estimated that the work of alteration and fitting the s.h.i.+p for troops would occupy from eight to ten working days. Our quota--of all ranks--averaged about eleven hundred men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BRITISH SUBMARINE DETAILED FOR INSTRUCTION OF MERCHANT OFFICERS]

The work was sound and no small ingenuity was advanced in planning adaptations, but the spirit of emergency did not show an evidence in their careful papers. The proposed voyage was distinctly stated to be from Newhaven to Dieppe, and it seemed to us that the elaborate accommodation for a prison, a guard-room, a hospital, were somewhat ambitious for a six-hour sea-pa.s.sage. In conversation with the Commandant, we were of opinion that, to a degree, their work and pains were rather needless. Carrying pa.s.sengers (troops and others) was our business; a trade in which we had been occupied for some few years. He agreed. He regarded their particular exercise in the same light as the 'herring-and-a-half' problem of the schoolroom: it was good for the young braves to learn something of their only gangway to a foreign field. "Of course," he said, "if war comes it will be duty for the Navy to supervise our sea-transport." We understood that their duty would be to safeguard our pa.s.sage, but we had not thought of supervision in outfit. The Commandant was incredulous when we remarked that we had never met a naval transport officer, that we knew of no plans to meet such an emergency as that submitted to his officers. It was evident that his trained soldierly intendance could not contemplate a situation in which the seamen of the country had no foreknowledge of a war service; it was amazing to him that we were not already drilled for duties that might, at any moment, be thrust upon us. Pointing across the dock to where two vessels of the Bremen Hansa Line were working in haste to catch the tide, he affirmed that they would be better prepared: _their_ place in mobilization would be detailed, their duties and services made clear.

We knew of no plans for our employment in war service; we had no position allotted to us in measures for emergency. We were sufficiently proud of our seafaring to understand a certain merit in this apparent lack of prevision: we took it as in compliment to the efficiency and resource with which our sea-trade was credited. Was it not on our records that the Isle of Man steamers transported 58,000 people in the daylight hours of an August Bank Holiday. A seventy-mile pa.s.sage.

Trippers. Less amenable to ordered direction than disciplined troops. A day's work, indeed. Unequalled, unbeaten by any record to date in the amazing statistics of the war. There was no need for supervision and direction: we knew our business, we could pick up the tune as we marched.

We did. On the outbreak of war we fell into our places in transport of troops and military material with little more ado than in handling our peace-time cargoes. The s.h.i.+p on which the Staff students worked their problems set out on almost the very route they had planned for her, but with no prison or guard-room or hospital, and sixteen hundred troops instead of eleven: the time taken to fit her (including discharge of a cargo) occupied exactly four days. We saw but little of the naval authority.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE D.A.M.S. GUNWHARF AT GLASGOW]

Later, in our war work, we made the acquaintance of the naval transport officer. Generally, he was not intimate with the working of merchant s.h.i.+ps. His duties were largely those of interpretation. Through him Admiralty pa.s.sed their orders: it devolved on the mercantile sh.o.r.e staff of the s.h.i.+pping companies to carry these orders into execution. If, in transport services, our marine superintendents and s.h.i.+ps' husbands did not share in the honours, it was not for want of merit. They could not complain of lack of work in the early days of the war when the transport officer was serving his apprentices.h.i.+p to the trade. The absence of a keen knowledge and interest in commercial s.h.i.+p-practice at the transport office made for complex situations; hesitancies and conflicting orders added to the arduous business. Under feverish pressure a s.h.i.+p would be unloaded on to quay s.p.a.ce already congested, ballast be contracted for--and delivered; a swarm of carpenters, working day and night, would fit her for carriage of troops. At the eleventh hour some one idly fingering a tide-table would discover that the vessel drew too much water to cross the bar of her intended port of discharge. (The marine superintendent was frequently kept in ignorance of the vessel's intended destination.) Telegraph and telephone are handy--"Requisition cancelled" is easily pa.s.sed over the wires! _As you were_ is a simple order in official control, but it creates an atmosphere of misdirection almost as deadly as German gas. Only our tremendous resources, the sound ability of our mercantile superintendents, the industry of the contractors and quay staffs, brought order out of chaos and placed the vessels in condition for service at disposal of the Admiralty.

Despite all blunders and vacillations our expedition was not unworthy of the emergency. How much better we could have done had there been a considered scheme of competent control must ever remain a conjecture.

Four years of war practice have improved on the hasty measures with which we met the first immediate call. Sea-transport of troops and munitions of war has become a highly specialized business for naval directorate and mercantile executant alike. Ripe experience in the thundering years has sweetened our relations. The naval transport officer has learnt his trade. He is better served. He has now an adequate executant staff, recruited largely from the Merchants' Service.

With liberal a.s.sistance he relies less on telegraph and telephone to advance his work: our atmosphere is no longer polluted by the miasma of indecision, and by the chill airs of the barracks.

Of our Naval War Staff, the transport officer was the first on the field, but his duties were only concerned with s.h.i.+ps requisitioned for semi-naval service. For long we had no national a.s.sistance in our purely commercial seafaring. Our sea-rulers (if they existed) were unconcerned with the judicious employment of mercantile tonnage: some of our finest liners were swinging the tides in harbour, rusting at their cables--serving as prison hulks for interned enemies. Our service on the sea was as lightly held. We made our voyages as in peace-time. We had no means of communication with the naval s.h.i.+ps at sea other than the universally understood International Code of Signals. Any measures we took to keep out of the way of enemy war vessels, then abroad, were our own. We had no Intelligence Service to advise us in our choice of sea-routes, and act as distributors of confidential information. We were far too 'jack-easy' in our seafaring: we estimated the enemy's sea-power over-lightly.

In time we learned our lesson. Tentative measures were advanced.

Admiralty, through the Trade Division, took an interest in our employment. Orders and advices took long to reach us. These were first communicated to the War Risks a.s.sociations, who sent them to our owners.

We received them as part of our sailing orders, rather late to allow of considered efforts on our part to conform with their tenor. There was no channel of direct communication. When on point of sailing, we projected our own routes, recorded them in a sealed memorandum which we left with our owners. If we fell overdue Admiralty could only learn of our route by application to the holders of the memorandum. A short trial proved the need for a better system. s.h.i.+pping Intelligence Officers were appointed at the princ.i.p.al seaports. At this date some small echo of our demand for a part in our governance had reached the Admiralty. In selecting officers for these posts an effort was made to give us men with some understanding of mercantile practice; a number of those appointed to our new staff were senior officers of the R.N.R. who were conversant with our way of business. (If they did, on occasion, project a route for us clean through the Atlantic ice-field in May, they were open to accept a criticism and reconsider the voyage.) With them were officers of the Royal Navy who had specialized in navigation, a branch of our trade that does not differ greatly from naval practice. They joined with us in discussion of the common link that held few opportunities for strained a.s.sociation. Certainly we took kindly to our new directors from the first; we worked in an atmosphere of confidence.

The earliest officer appointed to the West Coast would blush to know the high esteem in which he is held, a regard that (perhaps by virtue of his tact and courtesy) was in course extended to his colleagues of a later date.

The work of the S.I.O. is varied and extensive. His princ.i.p.al duty is to plan and set out our oversea route, having regard to his accurate information of enemy activities. All Admiralty instructions as to our sea-conduct pa.s.s through his hands. He issues our confidential papers and is, in general, the channel of our communication with the Naval Service. He may be likened to our signal and interlocking expert. On receipt of certain advices he orders the arm of the semaph.o.r.e to be thrown up against us. The port is closed to the outward-bound. His offices are quickly crowded by masters seeking information for their sailings: with post and telephone barred to us in this connection, we must make an appearance in person to receive our orders. A tide or two may come and go while we wait for pa.s.sage. We have opportunity, in the waiting-room, to meet and become intimate with our fellow-seafarers. It is good for the captain of a liner to learn how the captain of a North Wales schooner makes his bread, the difficulties of getting decent yeast at the salt-ports; how the schooner's boy won't learn ("indeed to goodness") the proper way his captain shows him to mix the dough!

On telegraphic advice the arm of the semaph.o.r.e rattles down. The port is open to traffic again. The waiting-room is emptied and we are off to the sea, perhaps fortified by the S.I.O.'s confidence that the cause of the stoppage has been violently removed from the sea-lines.

Under the pressure of ruthless submarine warfare we were armed for defence. Gunnery experts were added to our war complement. A division for organization of our ordnance was formed, the Defensively Armed Merchant s.h.i.+ps Department of the Admiralty. We do not care for long t.i.tles; we know this division as the "Dam s.h.i.+ps." Most of the officers appointed to this Service are R.N.R. They are perhaps the most familiar of the war staff detailed to a.s.sist us. Their duties bring them frequently on board our s.h.i.+ps, where (on our own ground) relations grow quickly most intimate and cordial. The many and varied patterns of guns supplied for our defence made a considerable sh.o.r.e establishment necessary, not alone for the guns and mountings, but for ammunition of as many marks as a Geelong wool-bale. In the first stages of our war-harnessing, the supply of guns was limited to what could be spared from battlefield and naval armament. The range of patterns varied from pipe-stems to what was at one time major armament for cruisers; we had odd weapons--_soixante-quinze_ and j.a.panese pieces; even captured German field-guns were adapted to our needs in the efforts of the D.A.M.S. to arm us. Standardization in mounting and equipment was for long impossible. Our outcry for guns was cleverly met by the department. We could not wait for weapons to be forged: by working 'double tides' they ensured a twenty-four-hour day of service for the guns in issue, by a system that our ordnance should not remain idle during our stay in port.

Incoming s.h.i.+ps were boarded in the river, their guns and ammunition dismounted and removed to serve the needs of a vessel bound out on the same tide. The problem of fitting a 12-pounder on a 4.7 emplacement taxed the department's ingenuity and resource, but few s.h.i.+ps were held in port for failure of their prompt action.

With the near approach to standardization in equipment (a state that came with increased production of merchant-s.h.i.+p arms) the division was able to reorganize on more settled lines. New types of armament were issued to them and there was less adaptation for emplacements to be considered. With every s.h.i.+p fitted, the pressure on their resource was eased, the new s.h.i.+ps being constructed to carry guns as a regular part of their equipment. While their activities are now less confused by the new methods, there is no reduction in their employment. Other defensive apparatus has been placed in their hands for issue and control, and their princ.i.p.al port establishments have grown from small temporary offices to large well-manned depots. To the surface guns have been added howitzers, bomb-throwers, and depth-charges for under-water action: smoke-screen fittings and chemicals form a part of their stock in trade: they issue mine-sinking rifles, and even control the supply of our zigzag clocks. The range of their work is constantly being extended.

Their duties include inspection to ensure that darkening s.h.i.+p regulations may not fail for want of preparation in port. Makes.h.i.+ft screening at sea is dangerous.

Their establishments are at the princ.i.p.al seaports, with branch connections and transport facilities for reaching the smaller harbours.

The gun-wharves may not present as splendid a spectacle as the huge store-sheds of our naval bases, but they have at least the busy air of being well occupied, a brisk appearance of having few 'slow-dealing lines' on the shelves. Their permanent staff of armourers and constructional experts are able to undertake all but very major repairs to the ordnance that comes under their charge. By express delivery--heavy motor haulage--they can equip a s.h.i.+p on instant requisition with all that is scheduled for her armament: down to the waste-box and the gun-layer's sea-boots, they can put a complete defensive outfit on the road almost before the clamour of a requesting telephone is stilled.

Another of our staff is the officer in charge of our 'Otter'

installation, an ingenious contrivance to protect us against the menace of moored mines. For deadly spheres floating on the surface we have a certain measure of defence in exercise of a keen look-out, but our eyes avail us not at all in detecting mines under water moored at the level of our draught. Our 'Otters' may be likened to blind sea-dolphins, trained to protect our flanks, to run silently aside, fend the explosive charges from our course, bite the moorings asunder, and throw the bobbing spheres to the surface.

The 'Otter' expert is invariably an enthusiast. He claims for his pets every virtue. They run true, they bite surely: they can speak, indeed, in the complaint of their guide-wires when they are not sympathetically governed. While it is true that we curse the awkward 'gadgets' in their mult.i.tude of tricks, denounce the insistence with which they dive for a snug and immovable berth under our bilge keels--those of us who have come through a hidden minefield share the expert's affection for the s.h.i.+ny fish-like monsters. We cannot see their operation: we have no knowledge of our danger till it is past and over, a dark shape with ugly outpointing horns, turning and spinning in the seawash of our wake.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INSTRUCTIONAL ANTI-SUBMARINE COURSE FOR MERCHANT OFFICERS AT GLASGOW]

Adoption of the convoy system has brought a host to our gangways. Our war staff was more than doubled in the few weeks that followed the sinister April of 1917. If, at an earlier date, we had reasonable ground for complaint that our expert knowledge of our business was studiously ignored by the Admiralty, apparently they did not rate our ability so lightly when this old form of s.h.i.+p protection was revived.

The additions to our staff included a large proportion of our own officers, withdrawn from posts where their knowledge of merchant-s.h.i.+p practice was not of great value. In convoy, measures were called for that our ordinary routine had not contemplated. The sh.o.r.e division of our new staff aid us in adapting our commercial sea-gear to the more instant demands of war service. They 'clear our hawse' from turns and twists in the chain of our landward connections. Repairs and adjustments, crew troubles, stores--that on a strict ruling may be deemed private matters--became public and important when considered as vital to the sailing of a convoy. In overseeing the s.h.i.+ps at the starting-line, indexing and listing the varying cla.s.ses and powers of the vessels, the convoy section have no light task. To the longsh.o.r.e division, who compose and arrange the integrals of our convoys, we have added a sea-staff of commodores, R.N. and R.N.R., who go to sea with us and control the manoeuvres and operations of our s.h.i.+ps in station. For this, not only a knowledge of squadron movements is required: the ruling of a convoy of merchantmen is complicated as much by the range of character of individual masters as by the diverse capabilities of the s.h.i.+ps.

It was not until the spring of 1917 that Admiralty inst.i.tuted a scheme of instruction in anti-submarine measures for officers of the Merchants'

Service. We were finding the defensive tune difficult to pick up as we marched. The German submarine had grown to be a more complete and deadly wars.h.i.+p. Sinkings had reached an alarming height: a spirit almost of fatalism was permeating the sea-actions of some of our Service. Our guns were of little avail against under-water attack. Notwithstanding the tricks of our zigzag, the torpedoes struck home on our hulls. If our luck was 'in,' we came through: if we had bad fortune, well, our luck was 'out'!

A considerable school--the bold 'make-a-dash-for-it-and-chance-the-ducks'

section of our fellows--did not wholly conform to naval instructions. In many cases zigzag was but cursorily maintained; in darkening s.h.i.+p, measures were makes.h.i.+ft and inadequate.

Schools for our instruction were set up at various centres, in convenient seaport districts. At the first, attendance was voluntary, but it was quickly evident to the Admiralty that certain cla.s.ses of owners would give few facilities to their officers to attend, when they might be more profitably employed in keeping gangway or in supervising cargo stowage. (The fatalistic spirit was not confined to the seagoers among us.) Attendance at the cla.s.ses of instruction was made compulsory; it became part of our qualification for office that we should have completed the course.

Although our new schooling occupies but five days, it is intensive in its scope and application. The cold print of our official instructions has its limitations, and Admiralty circulars are not perhaps famous for lucidity. More can be done by a skilled interpreter with a blackboard in a few minutes than could be gathered in half an hour's reading. At first a.s.sembly there is perhaps an atmosphere of boredom. Routine details and a programme of operations are hardly welcome to masters accustomed to command. In a way, we have condescended to come among our juniors, to listen with the mates and second mates to what may be said: we a.s.sume, perhaps, a detached air of constraint.

It is no small tribute to the lecturer that this feeling rarely persists beyond the opening periods. Only the most perversely immovable can resist the interest of a practical demonstration. The cla.s.ses are under charge of an officer, R.N., who has had deep-sea experience of enemy submarine activities. Often he is of the 'Q-s.h.i.+p' branch, and can enliven his lectures with incidents that show us a side of the sea-contest with which not many are familiar. If we are informed of the deadly advantage of the submarine, we are equally enlightened as to its limitations. In a few minutes, by virtue of a plot on the blackboard, the vantage of a proper zigzag is made clear and convincing. Points of view--in a literal sense--are expounded, and not a few of us recall our placing of look-outs and register a better plan. Following the officer in charge, a lieutenant of the Submarine Service dissects his vessel on the blackboard, carefully detailing the action in states of weather and circ.u.mstance. The under-water manoeuvres of an attack are plotted out and explained in a practical way that no handbook could rival. The personal magnetism of the expert rivets our attention; the routine of under-seafaring gives us a good inkling of the manner of man we have to meet and fight at sea; we are given an insight to the mind-working of our unseen opponent--the brain below the periscope is probed and examined for our education.

Nothing could be better ill.u.s.trative of the wide character of our seafaring than the range of our muster in the lecture-hall. Every type of our trade appears in the cla.s.s that a.s.sembles weekly to attend the instructional course. We have no grades of seniority or precedence. We are sea-republicans when we come to sit together in cla.s.s. Hardy coasting masters, commanders of Royal Mail Packets, collier mates, freighter captains, cross-Channel skippers, we are at ease together in a common cause; on one bench in the cla.s.sroom may be seafarers returned from foreign ports as widely distant as Shanghai and Valparaiso.