THE HEROIC RECORD
of the
BRITISH NAVY

A Short History of
the Naval War
1914-1918

BY
ARCHIBALD HURD
AND
H. H. BASHFORD

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1919

To the generous help and criticisms of many participants in the events hereafter recorded, and particularly to Admirals Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa Flow and W. S. Sims of the United States Navy; to Vice-Admirals Sir F. Doveton Sturdee and Sir Reginald H. Bacon; and to Lieutenaut-Commander A. D. Turnbull of the United States Navy, the authors desire to express their most grateful acknowledgment.

CONTENTS

[Foreword]
CHAPTER
I. [August 4, 1914]
II. [The Battle of the Bight]
III. [Coronel]
IV. [The Battle of the Falkland Islands]
V. [Back to the North Sea]
VI. [The Seamen at Gallipoli]
VII. [Sub-mariners of England]
VIII. [The Battle of Jutland]
IX. [The Dover Patrol]
X. [The Sealing of Zeebrugge and Ostend]
XI. [The Coming of the Americans]
XII. [The Harvest of Sea Power]
[Index]

FOREWORD

In the years immediately preceding the Great War, already so hard to reconstruct, it was not uncommonly suggested that the British seafaring instinct had begun to decline. In our professional navy most thinkers had confidence, as in a splendid machine ably manned; but, as regarded the population as a whole, it was feared that modern industrialism was sapping the old sea-love. That this has been disproved we hope to make clear in the following pages—a first attempt, as we believe, to give, in narrative form, a reasonably complete and consecutive history of the naval war. We have indeed gone further, for we have tried to show not only that the spirit of admiralty has survived undiminished, but that we have witnessed such a re-awakening of it, both in Great Britain and America, as has had no parallel since the days of Elizabeth. We have also tried to make clear that, in a thousand embodiments, in men and boys fallen or still living, it has shone with a spiritual even more than any material significance; and that it has again declared itself to be the peculiar expression in world-affairs of the English-speaking races.

Nor was the little apparent interest shown, just before the war, in the navy and the navy's exercises very remarkable. Our attitude, as a people, toward it had always been a curious union of apathy and adventure. We had been sea-worshippers so long that our reverence had often been dulled by much familiarity, and to such an extent, at times, that, only by the supremest efforts, had we, as a nation, escaped catastrophe. But if, on the one hand, we had lost the neophyte's fire, we had perhaps gained a little in tolerance. The seas had not found in us jealous masters. Our harbours and ships had been at the world's disposal. No empire in history had been so leisurely or less designedly built up, as none was to prove, perhaps, to have been so apparently loosely but yet so organically knit—probably because the idea of empire had always meant less to us than the growing idea of admiralty. Nor is that so obscure as it may at first seem, since, in spite of so much outward indifference, the call of the sea, as closer examination will show, was still among the most insistent to which we responded. There was scarcely a cottage, for instance, even in the remotest highlands, in which the picture of a ship did not hang upon the walls, or that had failed to send a son or a brother or a cousin to serve either in the navy or the mercantile marine. Even in the greyest and most smoke-laden of our central industrial cities, wherever there was a pond, the children sailed their little boats upon it; and, once a year, as to some lustral rite, the town-bred inhabitant took his family to the coast.

That these were indications of any racial significance the non-seagoing Briton had seldom, perhaps, realized. That, because of them, his language had become a familiar tongue in the uttermost parts of the earth; that because of them every would-be world-tyrant, since Philip of Spain, had been frustrated; that because of them the freedom of nations, no less than that of individuals, had slowly become humanity's gospel—this had been as little present to him as to the inhabitant of Turnham Green that he was living in the greatest harbour of the world; and yet that it was so was but a matter of fact, and indeed the natural outcome of our origin. Since Britain had become an island every wave of invaders had necessarily come to it in ships and with experience of the sea. However various may have been their other contributions to the ultimate nation into which they were to be merged, this had been common to them, they had all been seamen, of whatever temperament or complexion; and, while of the earliest inhabitants of what are now the British Islands, no boat-lore can definitely postulated, the discovery of the famous barge in the Carse of Stirling shows that, 3,000 years before Christ, there must have been some knowledge of navigation; while, of the first Celtic immigrants enough must be assumed, at any rate, to have enabled them successfully to cross the Channel.

Of these the Gaelic Celts, landing from Spain upon the coasts of Devon and Cornwall and in Ireland, seem to have been the pioneers, followed by a stronger invasion of Cymric Celts, who landed in Kent and Essex, and afterward drove the Gaels before them into the northern and western fastnesses. Of later Aryans, the first members of the great Teutonic family to land on these shores were, almost certainly, the Belgae, who settled on the south and east coasts; while the Scillies and Cornwall appear to have been regularly visited by Phoenician traders and Greek merchants from Marseilles—a sea-borne commerce that continued for many years after the first Roman expedition.

This took place under Julius Cæsar, first in B.C. 55, and its ostensible purpose seems to prove the existence of some kind of pre-Roman British fleet—Cæsar's declared object being to punish the Britons for having sent assistance in ships and men to the Veneti, a kindred Celtic tribe, with which he was at war on the mainland. He appears to have encountered no opposition from it, however, for when he set sail from the coast of France, somewhere between the present ports of Calais and Boulogne, his fleet of war-galleys and transports crossed unchallenged, as far as the sea was concerned.

Achieving little more on his first visit than a demonstration of the power of Rome, on his return, a few months later, with 30,000 men, including cavalry, he penetrated deeply inland, although it was not until nearly a century later that Britain became definitely a Roman province; and it was not until the reign of Vespasian at Rome and his deputy Julius Agricola in Britain that Roman vessels for the first time circumnavigated Great Britain and Scotland. The father-in-law of Tacitus, and himself an extremely able and far-sighted administrator, it was by Agricola that the earliest definite foundations of what was to become the British nation may be said to have been laid. Securing the confidence of the islanders, he not only encouraged amongst them the absorption of Roman culture, but protected them against any excess of official exploitation; and, although he was presently recalled by the Emperor Domitian, the principles of administration that he had laid down were generally adopted and developed by his successors in office—forming, in many respects, those of that greater empire whose foundations were already being laid.

It would be hard to exaggerate, indeed, the debt of the nations of British origin to the three and a half centuries of Roman rule, during which period the Christian religion was first preached in these islands. And, though it failed, if that had been its design, to create a strong and independent and self-governing colony—so that when the Roman power was finally withdrawn, owing to impending disasters at the core of the Empire, the Islanders became a prey, if not an easy one, to the next Saxon invaders—its legend of equity as between man and man, its perception and methods of development of natural resources, and its patient thoroughness of execution appealed to the minds and survived in the practice of every succeeding race of immigrants.

That together with these qualities and those to be infused with the next current of invasion there was a real love of the sea among this early population has sometimes been doubted; and Ruskin in one of his essays seems definitely to deny this, adducing Chaucer as an argument. In this great poet of a later period, the first representative voice of emerging England, he finds no expression of it and indeed a positive aversion from all that the sea and sea-travel stood for. But whether or not that be the case, and though there were undoubtedly periods, notably just before the rise of Alfred, wherein the nation as a whole, if it may so be spoken of, had largely forgotten the importance of sea-power, each of the three great tribes, who had then overrun the land, had depended for their success upon their maritime skill.

Saxons and Jutes and Angles, they had all been coast-dwellers upon the Weser, the Elbe, and the Ems, the sea-banks between them, and the tongue of land dividing the Baltic from the North Sea; and, while a certain number of them had already become settlers in Britain, attracted by its prosperity under Roman rule, the majority had been pirates, with an established reputation as amongst the bravest and fiercest of ocean-adventurers. Bold as they were, however, and disorganized as the Romanized Britons had become, upon the withdrawal of the tutelage of their governors, it was nearly two centuries before Great Britain could be said to have become definitely Anglo-Saxon, and yet another two before the newcomers themselves had established any sort of unity; and already, by that time, fresh bodies of invaders had begun to make their presence felt.

These were the Wikings or Vikings, men of the Scandinavian fiords, racially allied with the original Saxon conquerors, but whose subsequent conversion, both to Christianity and what seemed to them the tamer life of agriculture, they affected to regard with indignation, not unmixed with contempt. Carrying their arms into every known sea, and believed to have been the first discoverers of America, these Vikings saw in Great Britain, with its increasing fertility, an ideal and convenient theatre of war.

As early as the later years of the eighth century, they were making sporadic raids upon the Northumbrian coast, and, in 832, they sailed up the Thames, ravaged the Isle of Sheppey, and escaped unscathed. A year later, they attacked the coast of Dorset, and, in 834, they joined the Cornish Celts, when they were defeated, however, by Egbert, King of Wessex—the first, in any real sense, King of England.

But this was little more than a local defeat, and almost every succeeding year saw further raids, until, in 855, a squadron actually entrenched in Sheppey and proceeded to spend the whiter there—the first indication in the minds of the Northmen of serious ideas of invasion. From 866 to 870, they made attacks in such force and with such ferocity that, by the beginning of 871, the whole of England, north of the Thames, lay at their mercy; while, several years before this, permanent settlements of Danes had taken place in Ireland, the Shetland Islands, the Hebrides, and the Orkneys.

This was the situation when, at the age of twenty-two, Alfred, afterward to be called the Great, ascended to the throne. Nor could he well have become king at a less propitious moment. For, with the whole of the north and east now firmly in their grasp, the Danes were already pressing upon Wessex. A battle fought almost immediately after his accession to the throne was rather in the nature of a draw than a victory; and, although the enemy withdrew for a time, a few years later found Alfred at bay in the marshes of West Somerset, with the Danes overrunning and apparently in secure possession of some of the most fertile parts of his kingdom.

Fortunately for his people, however, Alfred, for all his refinement, his love of culture, and cosmopolitan boyhood, had inherited in full measure the stubborn Saxon refusal to accept either slavery or defeat; and, a few months later, rallying to his standard an army of Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Somersetshire men, he inflicted upon the Danes, at the battle of Ethandun, the severest defeat that they had yet sustained. By the treaty of Wedmore in 878, he secured the integrity of the south and west, recognizing that, in the north and east, the Danish element was not only too strong to be expelled, but was already becoming welded, not wholly to its disadvantage, with the national life. He agreed, therefore, for his own part, to recognize the Danish influence upon the other side of Watling Street, at the same time persuading its representative leaders to forsake their paganism and embrace Christianity.

Against further aggression, however, from abroad, he determined at all costs to protect the Island; and he was the earliest of his line to realize that his country's first defense was the sea that washed its shores. Already, in 875, he had been the victor in Swanage Bay over a small but strong fleet of pirates; and, after the peace of Wedmore, he set himself to the serious construction and effective distribution of a fleet of war. With no lack of raw material, with good craftsmen, and with a maritime population needing nothing but initiative, he built a navy that, in respect of personnel no less than in technical equipment, soon outclassed that of the Danes. Distributed round the coast, he had, according to varying accounts, from 120 to 300 warships; and, behind this bulwark, for the next fifteen years, England achieved an almost miraculous degree of progress. In 896, after a considerable struggle, another attempted invasion was crushed, and Alfred's fleet, grown in strength and experience, extinguished the recurrence of piracy that had accompanied it. Merciful in character and tolerant in statesmanship, toward these pirates he showed no clemency, and, when he died in 901, he left a country prosperous and at peace and with its sea-boards inviolate.

To what extent his son and grandson, Edward the Elder and Athelstan, appreciated the full significance of sea-power we do not know; but it is interesting that Athelstan, during whose brilliant reign the Danish portions of England were largely reabsorbed, conferred the dignity of thane-ship upon any merchant who had made three voyages of length in his own trading vessel—thereby fostering, and even perhaps founding, the dynasty of those merchant-adventurers, upon whom in years to come, and on seas then unknown, Britain was to climb to a destiny beyond his imaginings. Nor can the work of Alfred and Athelstan, in these respects, be discounted because of the eclipse that followed in the reign of Ethelred, and that led to the passing of England, predominantly Saxon, under Danish sovereignty for a quarter of a century, and then, after a further period of twenty-four years, under the permanent rule of the Normans.

Tenacious of its rights, impossible to dragoon, there has always been a strain of inertia in the Saxon character—the reflex of that tolerance, perhaps, which has in so many respects been the secret of its influence throughout the world; and it was probably inevitable that there should have been phases in our national growth, and especially in its adolescence, when this should have seemed to be uppermost. To the minority Celt, with his quicker wits, this has often and justly been a subject of annoyance. In it the Normans, conscious in their persons of the latest current of oversea adventure, avid of culture, and contemptuous of ignorance, saw, and at once seized, their opportunity. For men of their enterprise, intellectual subtlety, and disciplined military energy, the prosperous island, with its clannish dissensions and lack of organization, seemed an obvious prey. And if, in the immediate moment, they were largely successful owing to the flank attack upon Harold by his brother Tostig, it was to a lack of vision, curiously Anglo-Saxon, that they were hardly less indebted for their victory.

Gathering for the defense of the realm, both by land and sea, the largest forces that had ever been collected in England, had William and his armies tried to land a month or two earlier they might well have done so in vain. But with August and September came the demands of the harvest, the autumn ploughing, and the neglected farms. As so often before and since in English history, the parochial and individual obscured the national. William had not come. Perhaps he would never come. The discontented soldiery could not be kept together. The ships of the Fleet, or many of them, had to return for re-fitting, and, when on September 28th, William arrived at Pevensey, three days after Harold had defeated his brother at Stamford Bridge, it was to land unopposed both on shore and at sea. Moreover, there was yet another factor, and one also that was to recur again and again in English history—a failure, fresh from military victory, to appreciate the value of sea-power—that contributed not a little to Harold's defeat. By October 14th, the date of the Battle of Hastings, the English Fleet had again been mobilized, and held the Channel. Between their position in Sussex and their base in France, the Normans' connections had been cut; and, just as in later years it was Nelson's "storm-tossed ships upon which the Grand Army never looked" that stood between Napoleon and the dominion of the world, so might Harold's, had he trusted them more fully, have stood between William of Normandy and the conquest of England.

With William's forces dependent for their supplies upon the rapidly dwindling stores of the surrounding country; with that silent pressure behind him of England's naval power—there would have been time and plenty, had Harold been content to wait, for the English armies to have consolidated themselves in overwhelming strength. But it was not to be. Dazzled by his recent success, and thinking in terms of armies rather than navies, he forced the issue and was defeated, and England passed under Norman power; and yet so incompletely that there are few Englishmen of to-day who, on reading the story of the Battle of Hastings, do not instinctively associate themselves with the defeated Harold rather than with the conquering William.

Nor is that as remarkable as it might superficially appear, since, within a very few decades of the Battle of Hastings, the same absorptive process that had been so characteristic a reaction of these islands to their previous conquerors was again in full swing. Even the Romans, although in Gaul and Spain they had succeeded in replacing the original dialects with their own stately language, had never succeeded in Latinizing Britain to any appreciable extent; and, while it is true that many Roman contributions remain as permanent features of our laws and customs, their four hundred years' sojourn left a scarcely perceptible impress upon the tongue of the supposedly defeated. Just as in Roman times, too, there was a considerable and real mingling, both in municipal life and in actual marriage, between the original inhabitants and the Roman colonists, so, in Saxon times, we find a similar process always at work in varying degrees, and indeed officially encouraged by several of the most far-sighted of the Anglo-Saxon kings and administrators. A similar absorptive phenomenon became observable in the later relations of Saxon and Dane; and, with the loss of Normandy, in the reign of King John, and the common cause then made between the French-derived barons and the English hitherto so despised by them, the world was to hear in Magna Charta the first authentic word of the England that we know to-day.

Nor was this process, unique though it was, as far as recorded history can inform us, altogether inexplicable when the position of Great Britain and its succeeding invaders is considered. To each group of these, in the then world, it was an Ultima Thule. Beyond it, as far as they knew, there was no other—it was the verge of all things. To each its occupation had been an adventure, presumably undertaken by the most daring of the represented race. Each was at bay there to those that followed and of a spirit and fibre that could not easily be obliterated; and, in each, despite the ferocity of the times, was the respect of brave men for each other. Centuries later, on the other side of the Atlantic, similar conditions were to come into being; and it may well be that, in the larger island of America, we are witnessing a similar process on an extended scale.

But America was then in the womb of time, though it is a curious and significant fact that its discovery largely coincided with that great renaissance of the sea-instinct of England, embodied in the persons of the Elizabethan sailors. Up to then, the English national purview had been almost wholly insular and focussed on the Continent. The Anglo-Continental dreams of the Norman and Plantagenet kings had scarcely died; and they had died hard. The loss of Calais, perhaps the culminating factor in bringing about the new vision so soon to dawn, had seemed, at the time, nothing but a disgrace and a disaster, and far from the beginning of a greater epoch.

Yet it was no less than this, and, thence onward, we see the England, that had been on the world's edge, looking toward the New World, and perceiving, by right of its position and history, a wider destiny opening overseas. Fighting more stubbornly than ever against every attempt to make it an appanage of Europe, the eyes of England began to turn more and more constantly to those just-discovered realms with their incalculable future. In the imagination of the Celt, the organizing power of the Roman, the tenacity of the Saxon, the daring of the Norman, and in the sea-lore of them all, it seemed that Fate had been slowly forging a new instrument for the new task. It was only the realization of it that was to seek in the composite race that had thus been built up; and it is not too much to say, perhaps, that the loss of Calais was the right-about-turn that brought this about. Not Europe but the West was the new watchword. But the corollary to that was a new conception of the sea. It was no longer the means of defense, insulating Britain from her foes. It was the highway of her full and peculiar national expression. As never before and not often perhaps since, the sense of what admiralty meant flooded through the nation; and though, as in all the enterprises of human society, the motives in this one were no doubt mixed—though the desire for gold and the lust of fighting for fighting's sake were dominant in the minds of many of those sailors—it is equally clear that, for the best and finest of them, the idea of admiralty had a definite spiritual meaning.

As we gather from their letters and records, they had begun to realize in themselves the upholders and missionaries of a nobler life. They were in true succession to the best of those Norman knights, whose spiritual contribution to England they had inherited; and, in admiralty, as they dreamed of it, we may trace the reincarnation, with a fuller and wider outlook, of that older chivalry.

These then were their objects, and the means was the navy, whose first foundations, as we now know it, had already been laid in the reign of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII. Up to that time, though the Government had possessed the right, in times of war, to employ merchant shipping, there had been no definite navy, permanently established, in the modern sense of the word. In return for certain privileges, merchant ship-owners—and especially, in earlier days, those of the Cinque Ports—were under contract, on demand of the king, to supply a specified number of vessels, manned and equipped for war. It was with fleets so assembled that, in 1212, the English had raided Fécamp and prevented a French invasion; that, two years later, in a similar action under William Longsword, they had again destroyed the French Fleet; and that, in 1334, one of the greatest British naval victories had been won at Sluys over vastly superior numbers. And, though the Cinque Ports had, by this time, already dwindled from their earlier importance, similar arrangements were in force, when Henry VIII came to the throne, with the merchant shippers of Bristol, Plymouth, Newcastle, and many other quickly growing ports.

Under Henry VIII, however, we find coming into being the important Government dockyards of Portsmouth, Deptford, and Woolwich, and every provision made for the regular supply of the timber requisite for their needs. The same reign witnessed the establishment of the Navy Office, out of which our present Admiralty has grown, and the granting of a charter to Trinity House—that corporation of "godly disposed men who, for the actual suppression of evil disposed persons bringing ships to destruction by the shewing forth of false beacons, do bind themselves together in the love of our Lord Christ, in the name of the Master and Fellows of the Trinity Guild, to succour from the dangers of the sea all who are beset upon the coasts of England, to feed them when a-hungered, to bind up their wounds, and to build and light proper beacons for the guidance of mariners." And, although at the time of the Armada, as indeed ever since in moments of maritime urgency, a large bulk of the British Fleet consisted of transformed merchantmen belonging to private owners, the Elizabethan admirals found at their disposal the rudiments, at any rate, of a specialized navy.

How gloriously, and to what purpose, against what was then the greatest Power in the world, they used their inferior instrument, with its improvised auxiliaries, is the birth-story of British admiralty. Pitted not only for life, but, as it was to turn out, for the common freedom of the seas, they showed the world a spectacle of such a victory against odds as it had scarcely beheld since the Homeric ages. On the one hand, it saw an empire, one of the greatest ever known, under the ablest of statesmen and soldiers—an empire including Spain and Portugal, most of the Netherlands, and nearly the whole of Italy; Tunis, Oran, Cape Verde, and the Canary Islands in Africa; Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Cuba in America; the mastery of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; and a yearly revenue ten times that of England—and on the other a little island, of which Wales and Scotland were still largely independent, containing a population less by two million than that of London and its suburbs to-day, and possessing beyond its own coast not a yard of territory overseas.

Such were the odds, and the issue was but one more instance of the inevitable decisiveness of the human factor—a factor that to-day, perhaps, such has been the extravagant growth in the weight and precision of modern weapons, has tended to become once more a little obscured. That history has revealed it again, just as it revealed it for us in the case of the Elizabethans, we hope to show; and, if fortune fought for them, it was not until they had proved themselves superior to it in skill, courage, and equanimity.

"Touching my poor opinion," wrote Sir Francis Drake to Queen Elizabeth on April 15, 1588, how strong your Majesty's Fleet should be to encounter this great force of the enemy, God increase your most excellent Majesty's forces both by sea and land daily; for this I surely think there was never any force so strong as there is now ready or making ready against your Majesty and true religion, but that the Lord of all strength is stronger and will defend the truth of His word, for His own name's sake, unto the which be God all glory given. Thus all humble duty, I continually will pray to the Almighty to bless and give you victory over all His, and your enemies.

"We met with this fleet," wrote Hawkins to Sir Francis Walsyngham on July 31st in the same year, "somewhat to the westward of Plymouth upon Sunday in the morning, being the 21st of July, where we had some small fight with them in the afternoon. By the coming aboard one of the other of the Spaniards, a great ship, a Biscayan, spent her foremast and bowsprit; which was left by the fleet in the sea, and so taken up by Sir Francis Drake the next morning. The same Sunday there was, by a fire chancing by a barrel of powder, a great Biscayan spoiled and abandoned, which my Lord took up and sent away. The Tuesday following, athwart of Portland, we had a sharp and long fight with them, wherein we spent a great part of our powder and shot, so as it was not thought good to deal with them any more till that was relieved. The Thursday following, by the occasion of the scattering of one of the great ships from the fleet, which we hoped to have cut off, there grew a hot fray, wherein some store of powder was spent, and after that, little done till we came near to Calais, where the fleet of Spain anchored, and our fleet by them; and because they should not be in peace there, to refresh their water or to have conference with those of the Duke of Parma's party, my Lord Admiral, with firing of ships, determined to remove them; as he did, and put them to the seas; in which broil the chief galleass spoiled her rudder and so rode ashore near the town of Calais, where she was possessed of our men, but so aground as she could not be brought away. That morning, being Monday, the 29th of July, we followed the Spaniards, and all that day had with them a long and great fight, wherein there was great valour shown generally of our company."

A few days later, Admiral Howard, also writing to Sir Francis Walsyngham, said, "In our last fight with the enemy, before Gravelines, the 29th of July, we sunk three of their ships, and made some go near the shore, leaking so they were not able to live at sea. After that fight, notwithstanding that our powder and shot was well near all spent, we set on a brag countenance and gave them chase, as though we had wanted nothing, until we had cleared our own coast, and some part of Scotland of them."

Such were the Fathers of admiralty as to-day we envisage it; and, dark as some of our naval pages have since been, their tradition has never died, or lacked among us sons to sustain and adorn it in larger issues. There have been times when the country in general and its statesmen in particular have lost or under-valued their sea-vision. In 1667, less than eighty years after the defeat of the Armada, and scarcely ten after the death of Blake, one of the greatest figures in English naval history, to such a pass had our naval administration come that the Dutch were able to sail almost unchallenged up the Medway; to destroy the booms and half-equipped battleships; to capture the Royal Charles as a trophy; for several weeks to blockade London; and, in the end, to compel the English Government to a disadvantageous peace.

Fortunately that was a lesson that England never forgot, and, though there were to follow lapses, not a few, in the struggles that followed against the lust for world-power, first of Louis XVI, and, a hundred later, of Napoleon, the navy of England played a not unworthy and probably a decisive part. In Hawke and Rodney and Hood, and supremely in Nelson, in their unremembered captains and too-often ill-requited men, the spirit of the great Elizabethans lived again and ultimately prevailed, as it was bound to do. Not less for peoples in the comity of nations than for individuals in smaller societies, the highest task is to put at the disposal of human progress their characteristic genius. In military capacity, never the equal of France; behind many other nations in certain of the arts and sciences; lacking the spiritual insight of the East and the buoyant versatility of the West, this maritime adequacy, this gift of admiralty, seems, by virtue of her history, to have been allotted to Britain—and she has always been at her greatest, both for herself and for mankind, when she and her statesmen have realized this most fully.

That among her seamen this conception was as strong as ever, the history of the Great War has abundantly made clear, little as most of them dreamed, on that July morning, to be described in our first chapter, that they were on the verge of an ordeal, in which humanity's fate would lie in their hands as never in history. And yet, had they been gifted with a vision of what was to come, certain doubts might well have been pardoned in them. Colossal as the machinery was, it was largely untried. New methods and engines, with unforeseeable possibilities, were already in embryo or in actual being. The submarine, the airship, the mine—in less than half an hour, a fleet might be at the bottom. Recent naval campaigns had shown that, whereas a century before, it had been the exception for a stricken ship to sink, it was now the exception for it to float; and what of the men in a modern naval battle?

For it would have to be remembered that, while on the one hand the terrors of naval warfare had immeasurably increased, the men who had to endure them had become, on the other, the educated products of a more sensitive civilization. Whereas, even in Nelson's time, the majority of British seamen were quite unable to read or write, and were too often, for all their courage, little better than human animals—many had been impressed by slum raids in seaport towns, and disciplined by a brutality now scarcely imaginable—the sailors of to-day, if of the same fibre, were men of a wholly different upbringing. They were the brothers of the shop-attendants, the men in the counting-house, the skilled workmen with their trade unions. They were even better educated than these, with a mellower, deeper, and more humorous philosophy of life. For them the navy was a career, from boyhood to old age, with solid rewards—and not a last resort. How would their new refinement weather the storm?

In the following pages we have tried to answer this, as often as possible, in their own words.

THE HEROIC RECORD OF THE
BRITISH NAVY

CHAPTER I

THE FOURTH OF AUGUST, 1914

Roman, Phoenician, Saxon, Dane,
From these white shores turned not again.
Save to the sea that bore them hence,
For their delight or their defense,
Judgment, persuasion, daring, thrift,
Each to the others lent his gift,
To whom, when all had shared, the sea
Added her own of admiralty.

It was early on the morning of July 20, 1914, that a couple of guests, who had courteously been invited to be present in the gunboat Niger for the King's inspection of the Fleet, made their way through the sleeping streets toward Portsmouth Dockyard. There were to be no manoeuvres this year since, as had already been announced in March, a test mobilization of the Third Fleet was to take their place. This Third Fleet consisted of the older ships of the navy, and depended for a large proportion of its personnel upon the Royal Fleet Reserve—a body of ex-naval seamen and other ratings, brought into being under Lord Goschen, and afterward strengthened and reorganized by the Selborne administration of 1902 onward. To man this fleet had necessitated the calling of about 10,000 seamen and 1,500 marines—all of them volunteers from civil life; and its assemblage at Spithead with the First and Second Fleets had secured, between the Hampshire coast and the Isle of Wight, the greatest exhibition of naval power that the world had then seen.

Since Wednesday, July 10th, the various units and squadrons had been gathering to their appointed stations, in some places eleven lines deep; while, upon the same occasion, and for the first time, there had been a full mobilization of the naval air forces. Less dramatic than the usual manoeuvres, and unaccompanied by any of the splendour that had attended most previous Royal reviews, this test mobilization—this bringing into being of the full fighting power of our naval reserves—was so valuable an exercise that, as Mr. Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, had said in his announcement of it, it was a matter for some surprise that it had never before been undertaken. Nevertheless, as a national spectacle, it had attracted but little public attention, as the blinded windows and empty streets of Southsea and Portsmouth testified.

Grey as steel from vault to horizon but for a single wavering streak of blue, there seemed little prospect in the sky overhead of the fine day that the sailors had foretold; and nothing could have been more sombre than the early morning scene when, without ceremony and almost unnoticed, the Royal Yacht, with the King on board, left her berth in the Dockyard. Picking her course slowly past the Sally Port, so beloved by Marryat, she steamed through the choppy waters to her place at the head of the great fleet; and it was not until she reached Spithead, unsaluted by flag or gun, that the clouds up above began to break, and the sun to shine down on that floating city, now beginning briskly to awake to life.

Long before the little Niger, indeed, was herself out in the Solent, all the long lines were fully astir. Trim picket-boats, scattering spray, were plying up and down with mails and provisions. Cables were rattling till only a single anchor held each of the great ships in her proper position. Flags and semaphores were busy with final instructions. Veils of smoke began to wreathe in the air; and then, at the Admiral's signal, and with no other pageantry than that inherent in its own latent might, the vast assembly, with deliberate precision, began to get under way and out to sea.

Led by the Royal Yacht, the Victoria and Albert, her graceful black hull streaked with gold—preceded, according to custom, by the state vessel of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House—by the time the Iron Duke, at the head of the First Fleet's battleships, came abreast of the Nab Lightship, the Royal Yacht was already at anchor to receive the salutes of the departing navy. For two whole hours the King stood on the bridge, while ship after ship filed before him, each of the larger battleships an embodiment of greater strength than was represented by the whole fleet that had destroyed the Armada, and each of the battle-cruisers capable of a speed and striking-power that, a century before, would have seemed but the wildest of dreams. These were led by the Lion, flying the flag of a then comparatively unknown officer, Sir David Beatty, who, only the evening before, had received the honour of knighthood on board the Royal Yacht.

Following the Lion and her consorts came the light cruisers, and after these the destroyers and submarines, each of the latter submerging and rising to the surface again as she came abreast of the Victoria and Albert, while, to complete the picture, and to foreshadow the enormous development of aerial power in the years immediately to follow, each accompanying aeroplane and seaplane dipped in the air by way of salute.

So the Fleet passed out, great though it was, still only a portion of the total British sea forces, and producing scarcely a ripple upon the national attention, fixed on what seemed to it then a thousand more important matters. Had it been known that, as it then was, no eye would ever behold it again; that, in less than three weeks, stripped at its war stations, the fate of the world would visibly depend upon it—with what other eyes would the whole Empire have watched Spithead on that July morning! But, for the vast mass of Englishmen the world over, the incident passed without notice. Politically, the affairs of Ireland, the readjustment of the House of Lords, and the aspirations of Labour apparently held the field. For the anxious few, to whom the position in Europe seemed already ominously uneasy, it may have been otherwise. But none of them had publicly spoken; and it is now clear, with so sinister a rapidity did the events leading to war follow each other, that the test mobilization designed, not without criticism, to supercede the usual manoeuvres, was coincident with, rather than the outcome of, the hardening of the general diplomatic position.

That was on July 20, 1914, and, upon the political events that ensued, it would be quite impossible, in the present volume, to dwell for more than a moment or two. Very briefly, they succeeded one another as follows. On July 23d, the Austrian memorandum to Serbia, relative to the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, by a Serbian anarchist at Sarajevo on June 28th, was formally submitted. So drastic were the terms of this that its warlike significance was immediately apparent to the whole of Europe: and a reply from Serbia was demanded in forty-eight hours. This was given within the specified time, all the Austrian demands being acceded to, with two exceptions. These were that Austrian representatives should collaborate with Serbia in the suppression of anti-Austrian agitation and also in the judicial proceedings that were demanded against all connected with the Serajevo murder.

The acceptance of these demands would, of course, have been tantamount to an admission by Serbia that she had ceased to be an independent nation. Nevertheless she was ready to refer them to the Hague Tribunal. The Austrian ambassador, however, acting on instructions from his Government, refused to accept anything but an unqualified assent, and left Belgrade on June 25th.

It was clear that, as regarded Serbia at any rate, Austria had determined upon war; but Sir Edward, afterward Viscount, Grey, then in charge of the British Foreign Office, took instant and most strenuous steps to prevent this. He first proposed a conference in London, in which Germany, France, and Italy should participate, to mediate in the issues between the two countries. To this Germany disagreed, stating that discussions were taking place between Austria and Russia, from which she had hopes of a successful issue. So fraught, however, was the whole European atmosphere with dark and immeasurable possibilities, that, in common with every other great Power, Great Britain had been obliged to take certain precautions; and, in the most immediately important of these, the navy was, of course, concerned.

Owing to the illness of his wife, Mr. Winston Churchill had left London for Cromer on the evening of July 24th—Prince Louis of Battenburg, afterward the Marquis of Milford Haven, being, as First Sea Lord, left in charge. About lunch time on Sunday, July 26th, the day after the Austrian Ambassador had left Belgrade, Mr. Churchill telephoned Prince Louis, and, in view of this serious development, told him to take what steps seemed to him advisable, at the same time informing him that he was returning to town that evening instead of on Monday, as he had originally designed.

In ordinary circumstances, the demobilization, following upon the naval exercises, was to have begun on this Monday morning. But Prince Louis, having made himself acquainted with all the telegrams received at the Foreign Office, had an order telegraphed to Admiral Sir George Callaghan, then Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleets at Portland—the newest and most powerful units of which were afterward to form the nucleus of what was to become known as the Grand Fleet—to the effect that no ship was to leave anchorage until further orders, and that all vessels of the Second Fleet were to remain at their home ports near their balance crews. Throughout Monday, July 27th, by telegrams all over Europe to our various representatives, by interviews at home with foreign ambassadors in London, the British Foreign Office, under Sir Edward Grey, ceaselessly worked to avoid the impending collision, or, if that might not be averted, at least to limit its extent.

On Tuesday, July 28th, Austria declared war on Serbia, and, by the next day, was bombarding the Serbian capital. On this day, both Russia and Belgium were mobilizing their armies, Belgium as a precautionary measure of self-defense, and Russia, as regarded her southern armies only, on account of Austria's invasion of Serbia. It was early on Wednesday morning, July 29th, that the German Chancellor, then Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, suggested to Sir Edward Goschen, our ambassador at Berlin, that if Britain remained neutral in the event of France joining Russia against an Austro-German combination, Germany would guarantee to make no territorial demands of France; would respect the neutrality of Holland; but might be forced to enter Belgium, whose integrity she would preserve, however, after the war. In respect of the French colonies, she would make no promises.

This meant the tearing up, of course, of the treaty, in which we as well as Germany had guaranteed Belgium's inviolability, and was an unmistakable index of the line of action that Germany was prepared to take, should it suit her purpose; and it was on this morning, unreported by the papers, and entirely unknown to the nation, that the First Fleet, under Sir George Callaghan, sailed out of Portland to its war-stations.

Peace was still possible, however, or so Sir Edward Grey hoped; and, while immediately rejecting, as he was in honour bound to do, Germany's proposal with regard to Belgium, he made the new suggestion of a European Council—a Council to which these problems, even at the eleventh hour, might be submitted to avert disaster. This plan was also destined to be fruitless. On July 31st, Germany sent a note to Russia demanding the instant dispersal of her armies, and requesting a favourable answer by eleven o'clock on Saturday, August 1st; and it was on the same day that Sir Edward Grey asked both Germany and France if they would guarantee the integrity of Belgium, always provided that this was not infringed by any other Power. To this France assented at once, but Germany made no reply.

Such was the position on Friday, and, on the Saturday afternoon, August 1st, Germany declared war on Russia, following this up, early on Sunday morning, with the invasion of Luxembourg by part of her advanced armies. This was the day on which the remainder of our naval reservists, including all naval and marine pensioners up to the age of fifty-five, were called to the colours—the plans for their mobilization, reception, and embarkment, in any such event as had now arisen, having been carefully prepared and coördinated with the preliminary steps required of all other Government Departments, and included in the War Book, compiled by the Committee of Imperial Defense, under the presidency of Mr. Asquith, then Prime Minister.

Simultaneously, or rather on the previous Saturday afternoon, an order to mobilize had been received at Dartmouth—the Royal Naval College in which, and in the Britannia before it, so many generations of officers had received their first training. Already, on the preceding Tuesday, the cadets had been summoned to the Quarter Deck, as the big recreation hall was called, and told by the Captain that, in the event of war, they would certainly be mobilized—the six "terms" into which the cadets were divided, being ordered to report in three groups at Chatham, Portsmouth, and Devonport, in this order of departure.

Of the thrill produced by this, anybody who has been a schoolboy of fifteen will have little difficulty in forming an idea; and it may be doubted if any of the boys who heard it—many of them, alas, never to see another birthday—will ever again live through such a moment as when the summons actually came on the following Saturday afternoon. It came with added force, because, since Tuesday, the excitement had naturally died down, while most of the boys, in common with their fathers, and indeed the majority of English men and women, had found it difficult to believe that so huge a convulsion would not in some manner be prevented. By what now seems, too, in retrospect, to have been almost the acme of ironical circumstance, they were due to start their holidays on August 4th, and to these their minds had already begun to turn again.

But the summons came, and with it in each boy, as hardly less in the college itself, the death of an era so instantaneous that it was only a little later that it could be realized. A moment before, and the normal Saturday afternoon life had been swinging along, as for so many years past—on the cricket field, in the swimming baths, in the Devonshire countryside surrounding the college; and the moment after, the cricket field was empty, with the stumps still standing there undrawn, and the lanes and river banks were being everywhere searched for such boys as were not in college. Long before nightfall half the cadets—scarcely more than children—had left the place forever; and it was not until then that the sense of what lay before them fell upon the officers and masters left behind. For a little while this was almost intolerable, and the more so because it would have seemed indecent to them to put it into words. Characteristically enough, perhaps—most of them being products of the same kind of system that had produced the boys—it was finally decided, dusk though it was, and tired as they were, to turn out the beagles.

By the evening of August 3d, therefore, August Bank Holiday, and a day of serene and cloudless beauty, the Admiralty was able to announce that the entire navy had been placed upon a war footing, the mobilization having been completed in all respects by 4 o'clock in the morning. This was the position when, in a House of Commons charged with emotions tenser than any man remembered, Sir Edward Grey rose to explain the situation and the attitude of the Government, for which he desired the country's mandate. Beginning by assuring the House that the Government and himself had worked "with all the earnestness in our power to preserve peace," he went on to deal with the British obligations toward her friends in the Entente—making it clear that the country was not bound, by any secret treaty, to provide armed assistance. That was but a small matter, however, and what had to be determined was our moral position in the circumstances that had arisen.

Dealing first with naval matters, Sir Edward Grey pointed out that, the French Fleet being in the Mediterranean, her northern and western coasts—a tribute to her confidence in ourselves—were left absolutely unprotected; while, in the Mediterranean, should the French Fleet have to be withdrawn for vital purposes elsewhere, we ourselves had not then a fleet strong enough to meet all possible hostile combinations. Under those conditions, and with a German declaration of war upon her probably the question of a few hours, it had obviously been our bounden duty to make our position clear toward France; and this had been done on the previous afternoon. Subject to the support of Parliament, the British Government had promised that, if the German Fleet should come into the Channel, or through the North Sea, to undertake hostile operations against the French coast or shipping, the British Fleet would give to the French all the protection in its power. Just before coming to the House, Sir Edward Grey added, he had learned that, if we would pledge ourselves to neutrality, Germany would be prepared to agree that its fleet should not attack the northern coast of France. But that, as he said, was a far too narrow engagement.

Even more vital, however, was the question of Belgium's integrity, not only to France and ourselves, but to the whole basis upon which the relations of all civilized Powers had come to rest. In connection with this, Sir Edward Grey told the House that a personal telegram had just been received by the King, in which the King of Belgium had made a supreme appeal for the diplomatic intervention of Great Britain. Should Belgium be compelled, Sir Edward Grey pointed out, to compromise her neutrality by allowing the passage of foreign troops, whatever might ultimately happen to her, her independence would have gone. To stand by and see that would, in his opinion—and this was overwhelmingly endorsed both by the House and the country—be "to sacrifice our respect and good sense and reputation before the world."

On the same day, Germany declared war on France, and, on Tuesday, August 4th, Great Britain asked for a definite assurance from Germany that Belgium's refusal to allow the passage of troops through her territory should be respected. An answer was desired before midnight, but the only German reply was to present our ambassador with his passports, and, before the day ended, Great Britain was at war not only for her life but for the life of civilization.

And now, as regarded the navy, there occurred a little incident, not without an element in it of the deepest pathos, but demonstrating, at the outset, that one at least of our great naval traditions shone as brightly as ever. For eight years—longer than any other living admiral—Sir George Callaghan had been afloat in various responsible commands; and, in 1911, he had become Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet. Its efficiency as an instrument was due in no small measure to his personal thoroughness and enthusiasm; and the mingled feelings of pride, confidence, and anxiety, with which he had led it to its war stations, can readily be imagined. At last he was to see in action, under his very eyes, that splendid weapon, for which he had so long been responsible. But it was not to be. Just as in most recent naval campaigns conducted by other countries, it had been considered advisable for the leader in war to have come fresh from staff work at headquarters, so it had been felt in England that the admiral commanding the Fleet in action must be not only a sea-officer of high standing, but one with a more intimate knowledge of the general strategical position than it had been possible for an officer so long afloat to acquire. It was for such reasons that Admiral Sampson had been placed in charge of the American Fleet in the Spanish-American War, and Admiral Togo by the Japanese Government in the Japanese War with Russia, and, for similar considerations, it had been decided to appoint Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, still young as admirals went, to the command of the Grand Fleet.

As a former Director of Ordnance and Torpedoes, and thus familiar with every branch of munitionment; as a former Third Sea Lord in control of ship-building and equipment; and, as Second Sea Lord, responsible not only for personnel but familiar, as Deputy for the First Sea Lord, with all questions of strategy, Admiral Jellicoe, apart from his personal qualities, had had unique opportunities of studying the whole naval problem from every possible standpoint. He had proved himself in addition, during naval manoeuvres, a tactical leader of the highest order; and he was already due, later in the year, to succeed Sir George Callaghan in command of the Home Fleets. It was therefore decided—not without considerable personal reluctance on the part of Admiral Jellicoe himself—that he should at once replace Sir George Callaghan on board the fleet-flagship Iron Duke; and nothing could have been more typical of naval esprit de corps and the subservience of even the most illustrious officer to the interests of the whole service than that this incident took place without a trace of bitterness or the slightest personal jealousy. Even so, five years after Trafalgar, having never been allowed to set foot again on English soil, Collingwood had died in his cabin, content that in his long sea-exile he had served his country; and even so, having carried upon his shoulders perhaps the heaviest individual responsibilities of the war, Jellicoe himself, at the end of 1917, walked quietly out of the Admiralty to hang pictures at home.

Born on December 5, 1859, Sir John Jellicoe was in his fifty-fifth year when he stepped on board the Iron Duke as admiralissimo of the Grand Fleet. The son of a well-known captain in the mercantile marine, who lived long enough, as it is pleasant to remember, to witness his son's success, he was also related ancestrally to that Admiral Patton, who had been Second Sea Lord at the time of Trafalgar; while, in Lady Jellicoe, daughter of the late Sir Charles Cayzer, one of the Directors of the Clan Line of Steamships, he had formed, on his marriage, yet further connections with the sea. After a few years at a private school at Rottingdean, he had entered the Britannia as a cadet in 1872, and, from the first, seems without effort to have made the fullest use of his opportunities.

Passing out of the Britannia, the head of his year, with every possible prize that could be taken, he had qualified—again with three first prizes—as sub-lieutenant in 1878, being appointed a full lieutenant three years later, with three first-class certificates. Two years after this, he had taken part in the Egyptian campaign, obtaining the silver medal for the expedition, and also the Khedive's Bronze Star. Returning to Greenwich for a course in gunnery, he had obtained the £80 prize for gunnery lieutenants, and, soon afterward, had been appointed a Junior Staff Officer at the Excellent School of Gunnery at Portsmouth; and it was here that he had come into contact, and begun a lifelong friendship, with the greatest naval genius of modern times, then plain Captain Fisher, and scarcely known outside the service.

It was while still a lieutenant that, in 1886, he had received the Board of Trade Medal for gallantry in a forlorn attempt—during which he was himself shipwrecked—to save a stranded crew near Gibraltar. Becoming a commander in 1891, he had been appointed to Sir George Tryon's flagship, the ill-fated Victoria, afterward to be sunk during manoeuvres—Commander Jellicoe himself, ill in his cabin at the moment, having the narrowest escape from drowning. Six years later, he had become a captain, joining Sir Edward Seymour's flagship, the Centurion, on the China Station; and it was in China that, three years afterward, he had seen his next active service during the Boxer Rebellion. In this he had been Chief Staff Officer to Sir Edward Seymour, who commanded the Naval Brigade; and, at the Battle of Pietsang, on June 21, 1900, he had been very severely wounded. Happily he had recovered, receiving for his services the Companionship of the Bath, and, four years later, had found himself at the Admiralty as Director of Naval Ordnance—a position that he had held during the revolution produced by the appearance of the first British dreadnought. He had also been largely responsible for the immense improvement in our gunnery, associated with the name of Admiral Sir Percy Scott. In 1907 Captain Jellicoe had been promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral, being appointed to a command in the Atlantic Fleet a little later in the same year. In 1908 he had become one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and Controller of the Navy, and, two years afterward, he had reached the vice-admirals' list and had succeeded to the command of the Atlantic Fleet. In 1911, having already been made a K.C.V.O., he had been honoured with a K.C.B. at the coronation of King George V, and, in 1912, after a short spell of service in command of the Second Battle Squadron of the Home Fleet, he had become Second Sea Lord, the position he was holding on the outbreak of war.

Such were the qualifications of the man in whose hands, on that fateful fourth of August, rested more heavily than in those of any other the destiny of our empire and of mankind. Had they proved inadequate, it is no exaggeration to say that the sun of freedom would have set for both. That they were not so is common knowledge, and the fullest justification of those who had believed in them—chief among whom was that masterful administrator, who had changed the whole aspect of our naval strategy.

Rugged of face, with hosts of detractors, and, at this time, well over seventy years of age; a prey to moods, with some defects of his qualities, and a mind too often intolerant of the weaknesses of others, it was to Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, more than to any single living man, that the navy of August 4th owed its strength. Lacking the hereditary sea-influences so strong in Sir John Jellicoe, and with none of the powerful encouragement that he himself had bestowed upon the younger admiral, Lord Fisher had risen to power by sheer mental ability united with an extraordinary force of character; although full credit must be given to Mr. Balfour who, as Prime Minister in 1902, gave Sir John Fisher, as he then was, the fullest scope for his genius.

These had included changes so radical and far-reaching, in almost every branch of naval administration, that it would be impossible here to recapitulate them; and they are already familiar to most people. Briefly, they had amounted, first, to a drastic redistribution of our whole naval forces, including the partial absorption of the Mediterranean Fleet, hitherto our strongest command, into an enormously powerful force in the home seas always ready for war; the disestablishment of overseas squadrons of no strategical importance; the remorseless scrapping of many old ships that were doing little else than eating up money; and the reduction of distant dockyards that had long ceased to have any potential significance. Hand in hand with all this, a revision of the entire system of naval education had been undertaken; the Royal Fleet Reserve had been strengthened by the inclusion of a number of seamen who had had five or more years' training; and from these were to be drawn the balance crews that, in time of war, were to bring the vessels of the Second Fleet up to their full complement.

It had further become clear, both from the lessons learned in the naval actions between Russia and Japan, and in the strong bid for an overpowering fleet then being made by Germany, that new developments in the matter of design were a problem of the most serious urgency. It had accordingly been decided to replace the very large number of differing vessels, of which the navy then consisted, by a few definite classes, each designed to fulfil in war some clearly thought-out tactical purpose; and, at the same time, in absolute secrecy, the first of the great British dreadnoughts had been laid down.

This had not only compelled an immediate response in every navy throughout the world, but had once more secured for us the margin of vital security that had seriously been encroached upon before these reforms were initiated. That in spite of changes of Government and the natural reluctance of the nation, in view of social necessities, to increase its naval expenditure, Lord Fisher had succeeded in carrying through his programme, was the best evidence of his strength; and men of all parties had become increasingly united in endorsing the general wisdom of his attitude.

So swift, even since then, however, had been the advance in naval construction that, when Sir John Jellicoe stepped on board the Iron Duke, the first of the dreadnoughts was almost obsolete. Itself since outstripped by the ships of the Queen Elizabeth class, when war was declared on August 4th, the Iron Duke, as regarded battleships, was perhaps the flower of the British Navy. In full commission displacing 27,000 tons, and costing more than £2,000,000 to build, she had attained on trial, in spite of her enormous armament, a speed of no less than 22 knots. Each of her large guns, of which she carried ten, so arranged as to be able to fire on each broadside, was capable of hurling a shell from twenty to twenty-five miles, during which it would rise far higher than Mont Blanc; and, besides these, she had a dozen 6-inch guns with which to repel possible destroyer attacks. Her armour at the water-line was twelve inches thick; she was fitted with four submerged torpedo-tubes, and carried on board three thousand tons of fuel and a complement of over a thousand officers and men.

No less powerful, though not so heavily armoured, and capable of a speed when pressed, of about thirty knots an hour, was the Lion, the flagship of the battle-cruisers, of whom Sir David Beatty was in command. She, too, carried ten 13.5-inch guns, with sixteen smaller quick-firing guns, and two submerged torpedo-tubes. Typical of yet another class was the since famous Arethusa flying the pennant of Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt, as he then was—a light armoured cruiser, or, in Mr. Churchill's phrase, "a destroyer of destroyers," displacing a little less than 4,000 tons, but capable of a speed, when pressed, approaching forty knots. Lastly should be mentioned the L class, then the latest of our destroyers, consuming oil fuel only—those antennæ of the Fleet, as fast as an express train, and the very incarnation of vigilance and daring.

Such then was the navy in which on August 3d, speaking in that breathless House of Commons, Sir Edward Grey had said that those responsible for it had the completest confidence. To it had been added, on the outbreak of war, a couple of battleships that had just been completed for Turkey and two destroyer-leaders, built for Chile, that had been purchased from her by arrangement. As the child of the cockle-ships that Alfred had beaten the Danes with, that had won the Battle of Sluys for Edward III; as the offspring of the fleets of Drake or even of Nelson, its least unit would have defied belief. But it was of the same family, legitimately descended, and with the old names scattered amongst its children. Bellerophon, St. George, Téméraire, its history was implicit in its roll call; while the dead animals stood re-invoked upon the prows that bore their legends. Collingwood, Benbow, St. Vincent; Albemarle, Cochrane, Hawke—they were at war for England if only as words. But did they live again in the men that hailed them? Well, the nation believed so, and, in that dark hour, this was the sheet-anchor of its hope. In the words of the King to Sir John Jellicoe, it sent them the full assurance of its confidence that they would "prove once again the true shield of Britain and of her Empire in the hour of trial."

CHAPTER II

THE BATTLE OF THE BIGHT

In his speech of August 3d in the House of Commons, Sir Edward Grey told his listeners that we had incurred no obligations to help France either by land or sea. In view not less, however, of the increasing difficulties of our diplomatic relations with Germany than of the spontaneous friendship that had been growing between ourselves and our French neighbours, the question of coöperation with the latter, in certain eventualities, had inevitably arisen and been discussed. It had also been pointed out that unless some conversations were to take place between the naval and military experts of both countries—unless some definite lines were laid down as to the methods by which each country was to help the other—such coöperation, even if desired, would almost certainly be fruitless. At the same time, in a letter written on November 22, 1912, to the French ambassador, Sir Edward Grey had made it clear that these discussions between their respective experts did not commit either Government to a specified course of action "in a contingency which has not yet arisen and may never arise."

When the contingency arose, however, the plans were there; and the mobilization and transport to France of our Expeditionary Force will remain on record as one of the most efficient military operations ever undertaken by any country. Second only to the rapidity and completeness with which the navy took command of the sea, were the speed and secrecy with which those first divisions were conveyed across the Channel. That in mere numbers they seem in retrospect to have been almost ridiculously inadequate is merely a measure of the colossal proportions that the war on land afterward assumed. Small as that army was, however, it was the largest force that we had ever sent oversea as a single undertaking; and it must be borne in mind that, in all probability, it was the most highly trained then in existence, and that its presence in France had both moral and material effects of almost incalculable importance.

Nobody who lived, or was staying, near any of our great southern railway lines during those early days of August will ever forget the emotions roused by that endless series of troop trains, passing with such precision day and night; and of the feelings produced in France by this visible pledge of our friendship there was instant and abundant evidence. Between August 9th and August 23d five Divisions of Infantry and two Cavalry Divisions were safely landed in France; and when it is remembered what a single division consists of some idea may be obtained of what that accomplishment meant.

Apart from the Headquarters' Staff with a personnel of 82, requiring 54 horses, 2 wagons, and 5 motor-cars, it embraced three Infantry Brigades, Headquarters' divisional artillery, three brigades of Field Artillery, one Howitzer Brigade, one heavy battery, a divisional ammunition column, the Headquarters' division of engineers, two Field companies, one Signal company, one Cavalry squadron, one Divisional train, and three Field ambulances—comprising a total personnel of over 18,000 men, 5,500 horses, 870 wagons, 9 motor-cars, and 280 cycles, the number of guns, including machine guns, amounting to 100; and with a base establishment for each division of 1,750 men and 10 horses.

Such was the task performed by the transport officers, every kind of vessel being assembled for the purpose, from the cross-channel packet boat accommodating not more than three hundred at a time to the giant Atlantic liner carrying as many thousands. Chiefly from Southampton, but also from Dover, Folkestone, Newhaven, Avonmouth, and many other ports, that constant stream of men, horses, provisions, and equipment poured ceaselessly for nearly a fortnight, screened by destroyer-escorts, and with aeroplanes and seaplanes keeping watch over them from the sky. Without a single casualty as the result of enemy action, they were mustered and marched into line of the French left flank; and that this great achievement should have been possible within so short a period from the declaration of war is perhaps the completest tribute that could be paid to the consummate skill of our naval dispositions.

Scarcely realized by those splendid battalions, whistling "Tipperary" on the way to Mons, and even now, perhaps, hardly appreciated by the bulk of their countrymen at home, it was the navy and the navy alone that made that glorious epic possible. With their eyes on Europe and the impending clash of the armies; hearing in imagination, under the unsuspected force of the heavy German artillery, the crumpling up of those iron-clad cupolas of the Brialmont forts at Liège—few would have thought twice, perhaps, even if they had known what they were doing, of those tiny submarines E6 and E8 creeping, the first of their kind, into the Bight of Heligoland. Yet but for them and their gallant crews and officers, Lieutenant-Commanders Talbot and Goodhart; but for the presiding destroyers, Lurcher and Firedrake and the submarines of the Eighth Flotilla—the passage of the Expeditionary Force might well have been impossible and the first battle of the Marne fought with another issue.

Within three hours of the first outbreak of the war, E6 and E8 stole out on their perilous errands; and it was upon the information brought back by them from those mined and fortified waters that the later dispositions were made. From August 7th onward, until the Expeditionary Force had been safely landed, the submarines kept their watch. In the lee of islands, at the mouths of channels, in hourly danger of detection and death, day and night, without relief, those cautious periscopes maintained their vigil. Farther to the south, guarding the approaches to the Channel, between the North Goodwins and the Ruytingen, were the two destroyers Lurcher and Firedrake, with the main covering submarine flotilla; while to the northeast of these, the Amethyst and Fearless, each with a flotilla of destroyers, took turns about on patrol duty during the passage of the army.

Nor must it be forgotten, so swift was the subsequent progress both in the range and effectiveness of submarine activity, that this was, at that time, a branch of the service scarcely tried and of unknown possibilities. The submarines used were of a type soon so outclassed as to become almost obsolete, the easiest of prey to net and torpedo, and working at a distance from their bases then unprecedented. Nevertheless, after the Expeditionary Force had been safely transported to France, they were, in the words of Commodore, afterward Vice-Admiral, Roger Keyes, "incessantly employed on the enemy's coast in the Heligoland Bight and elsewhere, and have obtained much valuable information regarding the composition and movement of his patrols. They have occupied his waters and reconnoitred his anchorages, and, while so engaged, have been subjected to skilful and well-executed anti-submarine tactics; hunted for hours at a time by torpedo craft, and attacked by gunfire and torpedoes."

That was written on October 17, 1914, when the action, now about to be described, had already made the Bight of Heligoland a familiar term to most people, but without conveying, perhaps, to more than a very few all that it meant from a strategical standpoint. Between three and four hundred miles from the nearest of our naval bases, and from some of the chief of them more than six hundred miles distant, it was in this small area that there was concentrated practically the whole of Germany's naval forces, the Kiel Canal connecting it with the Baltic, rendering these available in either sea.

Nor would it be easy to imagine, from the point of view of defense, either a bay of littoral with greater natural advantages. Bounded on the east by the low-lying shores of Schleswig-Holstein, with their fringe of protecting islands, and on the south by the deeply indented coast-line between the Dutch frontier and the mouth of the Kiel Canal, each of the four great estuaries, from west to east, of the Ems, the Jade, the Weser, and the Elbe, had been subdivided by sandbanks into a meshwork of channels than which nothing could have been easier to make impregnable. These were further guarded by the continuation of the scimitar curve of the Frisian Islands, beginning opposite Helder in Holland with the Dutch island of Texel, becoming German in the island of Borkum just beyond the Memmert Sands, opposite the mouth of the Ems, and continued, as a natural screen, in the successive islands of Juist, Nordeney, Baltrum, Langeoog, Spiekeroog, and Wangeroog as far as the entrance of Jade Bay, covering the approach to Wilhelmshaven.

Situated on the western lip of this channel, and connected by locks with the Ems and Jade Canal, this was one of the largest of Germany's naval bases and a town of about 35,000 inhabitants. In the next estuary, that of the Weser, and on the eastern coast of it, lay Bremerhaven, another naval base and important dockyard; and, on the same stretch of coast, at the point of the tongue of land between the Weser and the Elbe, lay Cuxhaven, yet a third and immensely powerful naval port. This, with the attendant batteries of Döse, was flanked at sea by the Roter and Knecht sandbanks and the little island of Sharhorn, and was only about forty miles distant from Heligoland, lying in the centre of the Bight and commanding the hole.

Probably, from an offensive standpoint, of less value, under modern conditions, than was generally supposed, the possession of Heligoland, as a fortified outpost, was, if only psychologically, one of Germany's greatest assets. Of rocky formation and rising, at its highest point, to about 200 feet, it was not only a useful observation post but a fortress of the utmost strength. With wide views extending to the mouth of the Elbe and the coast of the neighbouring estuaries, it also protected a roadstead capable of sheltering and concealing a fleet of considerable strength; and, in addition, it possessed a wireless station of the greatest strategical importance.

From an early period, indeed, the peculiar advantages of the island had been obvious to many observers. In the seventeenth century, it had been used as a convenient station by the traders in contraband between France and Hamburg, and, for the same purposes, toward the end of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, by British smugglers. During the Danish blockade of the German ports in the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1848, its advantages had become so manifest to the then British Governor that he made a special report about it to the Colonial Office. "Possessing pilots of all the surrounding coasts and rivers and with its roadstead sufficient for a steam fleet," it would in an emergency, he had pointed out, "amply repay the small cost of its retention in time of peace." Other considerations had supervened, however, and, in 1890, after having been in British possession for more than eighty years, Heligoland had been ceded to Germany, to become, in due course, the keystone of her naval defenses.

Such then was the Bight of Heligoland, commanded at its centre by the rocky island itself; flanked on each side by the sentinel islands of the Frisian and Schleswig coasts; and with its tributary river-mouths each an intricate meshwork of shallow and treacherous sandbanks. Subject to fogs, and responding to its prevalent winds with short steep seas of peculiar violence, it had been mined and protected since the outbreak of war with every means that ingenuity could suggest. As for the island itself, from which all women and civilians, with the exception of five nurses, had been removed, new guns had been mounted there, houses pulled down, and trees felled to assist the gunners; and it is only when this is remembered that some idea becomes possible of all that was involved in those first patrols, and in the affair of outposts, as one officer has described it, afterward to be known as the Battle of the Bight.

This was brought about as the result of the detailed information afforded by our scouting submarines, who had obtained an accurate knowledge of the procedure of the enemy's day and night patrols, and had reported that they could always collect a large force of destroyers round them whenever they showed themselves in the Bight. From this it became evident that a force, approaching at dawn from the direction of Horn Reef, would have every prospect of being able to cut off the enemy's returning night patrols; and an operation was accordingly decided upon, of which the following were the broad outlines. On the morning of August 28, 1914, the day appointed for the action, some submarines, with a couple of destroyers in attendance, were to penetrate into the Bight and expose themselves to the enemy, and were then to lure them, if possible, into contact with other forces that would be waiting. In close proximity, therefore, to the submarines it was arranged for two light cruisers, the Arethusa and Fearless, to rendezvous with two flotillas of destroyers, while, behind these, were to lie ambushed out at sea the Light Cruiser and Battle-Cruiser Squadrons. The general design, with full details as to the meeting-places, was communicated to each of the responsible commanders and, in absolute secrecy, from their various bases, the forces to be engaged put to sea.

Of these the first were the submarines under Commodore Roger Keyes, who accompanied them on board the destroyer Lurcher, with the Firedrake in attendance—those stout little vessels that had already made themselves familiar, during the passage of the armies, with the proposed scene of action. Setting out at midnight on August 26th, they escorted the eight submarines chosen for this hazardous duty, D2, D8, E4, E5, E6, E7, E8, and E9; and, while these were kept in the background throughout the next day, the Lurcher and Firedrake acted as their scouts. To the perils in store for them, in the way of detection, the fine weather and calm sea naturally added; but, at nightfall of August 27th, each submarine crept to its appointed station in close proximity to the German coast.

Meanwhile, at five in the morning of the same day, the Arethusa, under Commodore Tyrwhitt, had set out in her turn, with two flotillas of destroyers, meeting the Fearless at sea during the afternoon; and, farther north, at the same early hour, Vice-Admiral Beatty, in the Lion, had departed with the First Battle-Cruiser and First Light Cruiser Squadrons to be at hand in case of necessity. By the evening of August 27th, therefore, all were in their places; the submarines were feeling their way into the heart of the Bight; and the excitement of all engaged, during those hushed hours of darkness, can be readily imagined and perhaps envied. The night passed uneventfully, however, and, upon the flotillas and squadrons at sea, the day broke clear and sunny, but with a good deal of mist—in some places almost amounting to fog—veiling the entrance of the Bight and the neighbourhood of Heligoland.

The time was now come for the first open movement to be made; and, while the Lurcher and Firedrake began to search the waters, through which the battle-cruisers were to come, for possible hostile submarines, three of our own, E6, E7, and E8, designedly exposing themselves, proceeded toward Heligoland. Finding the sea clear, Commodore Keyes with the Lurcher and Firedrake then followed up the three submarines; and there we may leave them for the moment, turning our attention to the forces assembled in their rear under Commodore Tyrwhitt.

These consisted, as we have seen, of the Light Cruiser Arethusa, flying Commodore Tyrwhitt's broad pennant, the Light Cruiser Fearless, under Captain W. F. Blunt, and most of the destroyers of the First and Third Flotillas, and, at daybreak, they, too, began to push their way into the misty Bight. Nor had they long to wait for the enemy. Though the visibility was poor, seldom at first extending to more than three miles, and though the fighting in consequence afterward became confused, the general strategical plan soon proved itself to have been sound. Issuing apparently from berths between the Frisian Islands and the coast-line, a patrol of German destroyers, setting out toward Heligoland, suddenly discovered our forces on the east, or Bight, side of them. Previous to this, at about ten minutes to seven, a solitary German destroyer had already been sighted and chased, but now, for forty minutes, from twenty minutes past seven, a general action ensued—the Arethusa and Third Flotilla engaging the German destroyers, and steering northwest to cut them off from Heligoland.

So far the presence of the Arethusa, whose armament has already been described, had given us the advantage in this particular attack; but, just before eight o'clock, two German cruisers loomed out of the mist, one with four funnels and one with two. Whether these had come from Heligoland or had followed up the destroyer-patrol was not apparent, but they immediately joined action, and, for a quarter of an hour, the little Arethusa found herself being bombarded by both of them as well as by various destroyers.

Firing with every gun, the Arethusa, then only forty-eight hours out of the builders' hands, was already in as tight a corner as she could have asked for and beginning to suffer pretty heavily.

Twice she was hit below the water-line, but saved by the skill and promptitude of her engineers; shrapnel shells were bursting over her deck, and men were already dropping as the result of them; Lieutenant Westmacott was killed at Commodore Tyrwhitt's side; the foremost port gun was shot out of action, the gunlayer being blown out of his seat; gun after gun was wrecked and the torpedo tubes disabled, till only one 6-inch gun remained effective; and a bursting shell, exploding some ammunition, started a furious fire on the Arethusa's deck.

Fortunately, at a quarter past eight, Captain Blunt in the Fearless—of which a destroyer officer afterward wrote that "to see the old Fearless charging round the field of fight, seeking fresh foes, was most inspiriting"—and appeared on the scene, and attracted to herself the guns of the four-funnelled German cruiser. Thus relieved a little, for ten minutes longer, the Arethusa fought the other on a converging course, till a splendidly directed shot wrecked the German's forebridge, and she broke off toward Heligoland, which was just in sight.

Heavily as the Arethusa had suffered, the little destroyer Laurel, who, with one of her consorts, had first sighted the oncoming cruisers, had been punished, as was only to be expected, with even greater severity. For some little time engaging single-handed a German light cruiser and two destroyers, on every calculation of the chances of war, she should have been sunk a dozen times over. Struck first in the boiler-room, the after funnel was blown in, and the main steam-pipe damaged, four men being killed, but the remainder sticking to their posts with the utmost coolness and heroism. Next she was struck forward, three more men being killed and a gun being put out of action; and a few moments later her captain, Commander F. Rose, was wounded in the leg, but continued to direct the action. Soon afterward he was again hit, dropping on the bridge with the other leg wounded, but remained where he was, after a period of unconsciousness, until six o'clock in the evening.

Meanwhile the Laurel herself, while responding as best she could to the superior gunfire of the cruiser, was vigorously attacking the two destroyers, one of whom she succeeded in sinking and, when Commander Rose was no longer able to take charge, his "Number One," Lieutenant C. R. Peploe, continued the action, bringing his destroyer out, in the words of Commodore Tyrwhitt, "in an able and gallant manner under most trying conditions." Few on board, indeed, would have given much for her chances of ever coming out at all; and, when a final shell struck her near the centre gun, causing a violent explosion and setting her on fire, the likelihood of the Laurel making port must have seemed remote to the last degree. Thanks in a great measure, however, to the gallantry and promptitude of Alfred Britten, Stoker Petty Officer, who put out the fire, in spite of the close neighbourhood of several lyddite shells, no further damage resulted; while the mass of fumes, in which the disabled Laurel now lay heavily wreathed, served in some degree as a screen against further attack from the cruiser.

It was now nearly nine o'clock; fighting had died down; and, when Commodore Tyrwhitt called his flotillas together, it was found that the First Flotilla had also been in action and sunk V187, the German commodore's destroyer. Unfortunately two boats' crews from the destroyers Goshawk and Defender, lowered to pick up survivors from the sunk destroyer, had had to be left behind owing to an attack by a German cruiser during this work of mercy—a self-revealing act on the part of the second navy in the world. Apart from this, though many of our vessels, especially the Laurel and Arethusa, had been heavily battered, all the flotillas were intact; while, unknown to Commodore Tyrwhitt and his command, even the abandoned boats' crews were being rescued. For, peeping through her periscope, Submarine E4 had witnessed the whole occurrence—the sinking of V187, the subsequent work of rescue, and the approach of the hostile cruiser. Under her resourceful captain, Commander E. W. Leir, she had at once proceeded to attack the enemy; and, though she had not managed to torpedo her, she had driven her from the scene of action, returning, at the greatest risk, to the two boats. Coming to the surface, she had taken on board the whole of the abandoned British crews, as well as a German officer and two men. Being unable to embark the rest—eighteen wounded Germans—she had left them with a German officer and six unwounded men, provided them with water, biscuits, and a compass, and allowed them to navigate their way back to Heligoland.

While this unique action was in progress, and while the Arethusa was busy repairing her guns and replenishing her ammunition, let us return again to the Lurcher and Firedrake, whom we had last seen heading for Heligoland in the wake of the decoy submarines. These also had been successful in getting into touch with the enemy forces, and, at ten o'clock, the Arethusa, with most of her guns now in working order again, received a message from them that they were being chased by light cruisers, and at once proceeded to their assistance.

Having joined up with them, and being now close to Heligoland, Commodore Tyrwhitt thought it wiser to retreat a little to the westward, but, a few minutes later, sighted a four-funnelled German cruiser, which opened a very heavy fire upon the British force about eleven o'clock. The position being somewhat critical, Commodore Tyrwhitt ordered the Fearless to attack and the First Flotilla to launch torpedoes; but, though they did so with immense spirit, the cruiser evaded the onslaught and vanished in the mist. Ten minutes later she appeared again from another direction, to be attacked both by the Arethusa and the Fearless, the former especially escaping destruction from her only by the slenderest of margins. Salvo after salvo of shells plunged into the water, some of them barely thirty feet short of the Arethusa, while two torpedoes were also launched at her, but fortunately also fell short, leaving her unharmed.

Meanwhile both Commodore Tyrwhitt and Commodore Keyes had been communicating by wireless with Admiral Beatty, who, just after eleven, having evaded three submarines, ordered the Light Cruiser Squadron to the support of the light forces. While this was hurrying to their assistance, however, the Arethusa's 6-inch guns had proved too accurate for the German cruiser, who had broken off action, disappearing into the mist again in the direction of the Island. How badly she was damaged could only be guessed, but, four minutes later, yet another cruiser was sighted, the three-funnelled Mainz, which was immediately attacked both by the Arethusa and the Fearless. The blood of everybody was up now as never before, and, for twenty-five minutes, the assault was so fiercely pressed that, at the end of that time, the Mainz, in spite of her powerful resistance, was seen to be on fire and sinking by the head. Her engines had stopped, and it was just at this moment that the Light Cruiser Squadron appeared on the scene, reducing her, in a very few minutes, to a condition that, as Commodore Tyrwhitt put it, must have been indescribable.

How bad it was let a single quotation from a cruiser officer's diary suffice to indicate. Watching the deck of the Mainz through his powerful glasses, he was at first completely puzzled by two things—the absence of corpses and the enormous profusion of deck-sponges soaked in blood. It was not for some time that he began to realize that the one accounted for the other. "Enough said," he wrote, "a six-inch projectile does not kill a man nor even dismember him; it simply scatters him."

It was now a quarter past twelve, and, by this time, Admiral Beatty was himself on the spot. From the reports received by him from the various squadron and flotilla commanders, and the obvious presence now of many enemy ships, he had come to the conclusion that, in an action where speed was essential—the main German bases being so close at hand—the lighter forces might not be able to deal with the situation sufficiently rapidly. Bearing in mind the possibilities of a concerted submarine attack, and the conceivable sortie in force of a German battle squadron, he decided that his speed would probably baffle the first, and that the latter, if he were prompt enough, could not arrive in time; while, for anything less in the way of enemy attack, he had ample forces at his disposal.

Working up his engines, therefore, to full speed, he overtook the light cruisers just as they were finishing the Mainz, and, a quarter of an hour afterward, sighted the Arethusa fighting a rearguard action with a cruiser of the Kolberg class—recognized as the Köln. Following the general plan, he at once steered to cut the latter off from Heligoland, and, seven minutes later, opened fire, chasing her at full speed out to sea. While pursuing the Köln, another German cruiser, apparently the Ariadne, was seen right ahead, steering at high speed and at right angles to the Lion, who was herself now travelling at 28 knots. In spite of this, and that, before losing her in the mist, the Lion had only time for a couple of salvoes, she was set on fire, reduced to a sinking condition, and was soon afterward lost, as the Germans themselves admitted. This was just before one; mines had been reported eastward; it was essential that the squadrons should not be too far dispersed; and therefore Admiral Beatty, desisting from pursuit, ordered a withdrawal, and returned to the Köln. She was sighted at 1:25, with her ensign still flying; the Lion opened fire upon her from two turrets; a couple of salvoes sufficed to sink her; and, within ten minutes, she had disappeared. By this time, the Arethusa, the Fearless, and the advanced destroyer flotillas had been in action almost continuously for more than six hours; the Arethusa's speed, owing to her injuries, was slowly diminishing knot by knot; upon the bridge of the little Laurel, Commander Frank Rose, with both his legs crippled, still kept his post; three German cruisers and two destroyers, including the commodore in command, were known to have been sunk; and, behind the mists in the Bight, nothing was more likely than that overwhelming reinforcements were hurrying to the spot. Under these circumstances, Admiral Beatty decided to withdraw his forces, covering their retirement with his powerful battle-cruisers; and it was while doing so that Captain Reginald Hall of the Queen Mary executed one of the smartest manoeuvres of the day. Watching from his bridge, and travelling at the time something approaching thirty knots an hour, he saw an enemy torpedo, ten knots faster, that, in a matter of moments, would strike him amidships. The destruction of the Queen Mary, had the submarine achieved it, would have more than outbalanced all the German losses, but, by very sharply turning full helm, the impact was just avoided in time—the battle-cruiser and torpedo, till the latter sunk, actually travelling side by side.

This was the last sign of hostile reaction to one of the most brilliant little raids in our naval history; and, for the closing picture, we must turn to Admiral Christian, who, with yet another squadron, had been waiting out at sea. To him and Rear-Admiral Campbell had been allotted the task of intercepting any vessels that might have escaped in this direction; and, at about half-past four, some of Admiral Campbell's cruisers met Commodore Keyes in the returning Lurcher. Limping along in company with him were the destroyers Laurel and Liberty, and on board her were 220 of the crew of the Mainz, Commodore Keyes having laid himself alongside the burning cruiser with the greatest chivalry and skill.

The Laurel was by this time quite unable to proceed farther under her own steam, and she was accordingly taken in tow by the cruiser Amethyst, the Bacchante and Cressy relieving the Lurcher of her prisoners, and sailing with them to the Nore. Meanwhile, the Arethusa, after her fiery ordeals, was in hardly better case than the Laurel, and, at seven o'clock, after struggling along homeward at about six knots an hour, found herself unable to proceed farther, and signalled for assistance. Two and a half hours later it was then pitch dark—and with no lights, of course, permissible, the Hogue took her in tow, the necessary arrangements being carried out with the aid of a couple of hand lanterns.

So the day ended without the loss to ourselves of a single vessel of any description; and when, many hours afterward, the news having preceded her, the Arethusa returned to harbour, scarred and lopsided—with her eleven dead and seventeen wounded officers and men—it was little wonder that every ship's syren of all that were assembled there blew her a welcome, and that every seaman who could scramble on deck cheered and cheered her again till he was hoarse.

CHAPTER III

CORONEL

The blood-red sun betrayed our spars,
Fate doomed us ere we started,
Out-gunned, out-manned, out-steamed, we sank,
But not, thank God, out-hearted.

Inevitably the chief interest of the naval story clusters about the waters of the North Sea; and most of its dramatic moments have had this ocean for their setting. But, behind the Grand Fleet and its thousand auxiliaries, watching all the outlets of the German bases, lesser squadrons and detached cruisers were keeping guard throughout the world. Similarly, though the vigour and promptitude with which the Expeditionary Force was rushed across the Channel before the end of August, have held, and rightly held, the first place in the popular conception of our armies' movements, it must be remembered that, during those weeks, many other thousands of men were elsewhere transported across the waters. It must be remembered that from India alone, before the end of August, two Divisions and a Cavalry Brigade sailed for Egypt en route for France; that, during September and October, yet another Brigade was sent from India to East Africa, in time to avert an invasion of the British Colony there that might have had most serious results; that, during October and November, twenty batteries of Horse, Field, and Heavy artillery, and thirty-two battalions of regular infantry were relieved by the transport from England to the East of an equivalent force of Territorials; and that a force of native infantry was despatched to assist Japan in the successful occupation of Kiao Chao.

That represented but a small proportion of the continual military movement that was going on from end to end of our scattered empire; and it was only one aspect of the tremendous problem that faced our navy in the outer seas. What this amounted to can best be comprehended, perhaps, by a brief consideration of what was actually accomplished. After the first week of August, the mercantile marine activities of the Central Empires ceased to operate. Six and a half million tons of shipping in all the seas of the world were thus almost instantly immobilized. Further, every German colony, but for its wireless, was isolated from its centre and prepared for capture; while of the two million men of enemy origin who might otherwise have returned home to join the armies, scarcely a handful—such was the navy's mastery—was, in fact, able to do so. Lastly, not a single Dominion, Colony, or Dependency of Great Britain or her Allies was invaded or seriously molested by an enemy naval force.

Now to have achieved all this, while at the same time containing the German High Seas Fleet in the North Sea—and so containing it that not even a single squadron was able to break through on to our lines of commerce—is the best witness to the fundamental rightness of our initial naval strategy; although the test of war immediately emphasized what was then our chief need—an even larger number, such were our manifold requirements, of fast battle-cruisers. It was our shortness in this respect that, in the last analysis, led to the disaster of Coronel, arguable as the wisdom of certain of our oversea dispositions may not unjustly now seem to have been. And, while in our treatment of both the Goeben and Breslau, as regarded the Mediterranean, and the command of von Spee in the Far East and subsequently in the South Pacific, there are many points to be reasonably debated before the bar of naval judgment, neither problem can be fairly considered apart from the whole situation. In the present and following chapters we are concerned only with von Spee and the five vessels under his command.

To consider the vessels first, these consisted of two armoured cruisers, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, and three light cruisers, the Nürnberg, the Dresden, and the Leipzig. Both the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau were most efficient units, each with a speed of over 22 knots, each with a displacement of over 11,000 tons, a belt of 6-inch armour amidships, and each carrying eight 8.2-inch guns, six 6-inch guns, eighteen 24-pounders, and four torpedo-tubes. The three light cruisers were each capable of a speed of about twenty-five knots, carried ten 4.1-inch, eight 5-pounder, and four machine-guns, with two submerged torpedo-tubes, and displaced between 3,000 and 4,000 tons. It will be seen at once, therefore, that they formed a homogeneous and easily manoeuvred squadron, and it may be readily admitted that they were not only gallantly but very skilfully handled; while their concentration—since, at the outbreak of war, they had been scattered over half the world—was a feat of no mean order, however open to criticism may have been the larger policy involved in it.

As for von Spee himself, he seems to have been of a type apparently all too rare in the German naval service, a chivalrous, modest, and efficient seaman, reticent in victory, and brave in defeat. Under his command, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau had attained an extremely high standard of gunnery, and it is probable that in this respect they were second to none flying the German flag.

Leaving Kiao Chao during July, the war had found von Spee and the two larger cruisers many leagues distant among the Western Pacific islands and separated by thousands of miles from the other three cruisers, the Dresden, the Nürnberg, and the Leipzig. Of these the Dresden was in the Atlantic, divided from the other two by the American continent, and narrowly escaped capture at the hand of the British West Atlantic Squadron, of which Admiral Cradock was then in command. She successfully evaded him, however, and, making her way south, entered South American waters off the coast of Brazil, where her only possible antagonist at the time was the British cruiser Glasgow—a light cruiser of the Bristol class, displacing about 4,800 tons, capable of a speed of 25 knots, and carrying two 6-inch and ten 4-inch guns.

Meanwhile, on August 11th, with all her lights out, there had crept out of the port of Pernambuco a German steamer, the Baden, carrying 5,000 tons of coal, which met and supplied the Dresden at the Rocas Islands. Three days afterward, the latter sank the Hyades, homeward bound from the River Plate to Holland with a load of grain, and, on August 26th, she sank the British steamer Holmwood, also off the coast of South America. A fortnight later, on her way to the Pacific, the Dresden and her collier were creeping round Tierra del Fuego, and here they met a second collier, the Santa Isabel, which had left Buenos Aires on the 6th of August, nominally bound for Togo.

That was in the middle of September, and, about a fortnight later, with her name effaced, her masts altered, and her funnels repainted, the Santa Isabel entered Valparaiso, remaining there until the end of the month, when she cleared, nominally for Hamburg, but in reality to join von Spee. In the meantime the Dresden had announced her arrival in the Pacific by attacking the liner Ortega near the western entrance of the Magellan Straits; and it was only by the resource and seamanship of the latter's captain that the British ship succeeded in escaping.

Bound for Valparaiso with 300 French reservists on board, she had a normal speed of no more than 14 knots, while the Dresden, as we have seen, was at least half as fast again. But the Master of the Ortega was not to be beaten. Calling for volunteers to assist the stokers, he succeeded in working his old liner up to 18 knots an hour, and at the same time headed for Nelson's Strait—a perilous and uncharted passage. Chased by the Dresden, and with her shells plunging on each side of him, he made the dangerous channel in safety. The Dresden turned on her heel, afraid to follow him; and he successfully navigated, probably for the first time in history, an 8,000-ton liner through Nelson's Strait.

With the Dresden in the Pacific, all von Spee's future squadron was now at least in the same ocean, and both the Nürnberg and Leipzig, by stealthy degrees, were approaching the German admiral—the former, during September, having cut the cable between Bamfield in British Columbia and the Fanning Islands, and the latter having sunk the British steamer Bankfield off Peru, while en route to England with 6,000 tons of sugar; the oil tank Elsinore; and the steamer Vine Branch, outward bound from England to Guayaquil.

Whether, in the long run, it would not have been to Germany's advantage for these cruisers to have played their lone hands on the commercial trade routes; to have followed the example of the Emden and Karlsrühe rather than to have formed a fighting squadron, is a matter for argument. Coronel was their justification. The Falkland Islands saw their end. It was finally in the neighbourhood of Easter Island that they united with von Spee, who had in his turn eluded both the China and Australian squadrons, sinking a small French gunboat off Papeete, and bombarding the town on September 22d.

By this time, the Glasgow had been reinforced in Brazilian waters by Sir Christopher Cradock in the Good Hope and Captain Brandt in the Monmouth, with the armed liner Otranto in attendance; and they, too, after similar secret coaling, were making their way round Cape Horn into the Pacific. Time after time they had heard, faint and far, the wireless calls of the Dresden and her colliers—they had even, on more than one occasion, quite unsuspectingly, been within a comparatively few miles of her—but they had never found her and were but slowly able to divine her intention of joining von Spee.

That this admiral, with the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, was making his way eastward was now probable, and the old battleship Canopus was in consequence on her way to strengthen Cradock with her 12-inch guns. Up to the last, however, all were uncertain of the enemy's exact whereabouts and strength; and this was the position when, on the last day of October, 1914, the Glasgow was detached to run into Coronel—not unknown to von Spee, who had instantly ordered the Nürnberg to hover outside and watch her movements.

Such had been the steps whereby, across so many leagues of water, the opposing squadrons had been collected; had felt their way tentatively, and, as it were, half blindfold, into the neighbourhood of each other; and were now, off the coast of Chile, each so far from home, on the verge of their fatal collision. With the character and strength of von Spee and his forces we have already briefly dealt; and, in Admiral Cradock, he had an opponent of an essentially British and traditional type. A lover of sport, particular as to his wines, of medium stature, bearded and swarthy, Sir Christopher Cradock was less identified with the modern and scientific school of naval officer than with those light-hearted adventurers, of whom Sir Richard Grenville in his little Revenge stands as an historic example.

Entering the navy in 1875, he had been attached in 1891 to the East Soudan Field Force, had acted as A.D.C. to the Governor of the Red Sea, and been present at the Battle of Tokar. For his services in that campaign, he had received the Khedive's Bronze Star and the fourth class of the Medjidieh. Nine years later saw him with the British Naval Brigade in China at the capture of the Taku Forts and the relief of Tientsin, and for this he had received the China Medal with clasps, and, in 1902, the C.B. In 1904 he was given the testimonial of the Royal Humane Society for saving the life of a midshipman in Palmas Bay, Sardinia; in 1909 he was A.D.C. to the King, and received the K.C.V.O. in 1912. At the outbreak of the war, as we have seen, he was in charge of the West Atlantic Squadron.

Such was von Spee's opponent—a man perhaps, if anything, too ready to fight, whatever the odds though it must not be forgotten that, until retreat was impossible, he could hardly have been certain of the forces against him. Whether or not he should have deduced these—whether he had in fact done so—must remain a matter of opinion; the captain of the Canopus seems to have entreated him not to join issue without him; but it is equally clear that, if he had waited for the slow old battleship, von Spee, had he so desired, could have avoided action indefinitely.

Considered in the light of after events, indeed, no action of the war seems to have depended less on human prevision, or to have been so determined by natural forces and a leisurely and inscrutable destiny. From the beginning, the odds were against Cradock, just as, six weeks later, they were against von Spee; and when the Glasgow, the first to sight the enemy, saw the four funnels of the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, there could have been little doubt, save for extraordinary good luck, of the final issue of the battle.

Opposed to these two cruisers, each faster than the Good Hope or the Monmouth, the Good Hope had an armament of two 9.2-inch guns as against the eight 8.2-inch guns of the Scharnhorst, while the Monmouth in reply to the Gneisenau, with an equal armament to the Scharnhorst, could oppose nothing more powerful than 6-inch guns which were therefore completely outranged. The Good Hope herself, indeed, owing to faulty construction and the heavy seas, was but little better off; the Otranto, an unarmoured liner, was wholly useless in such an emergency; the middle-aged Canopus, with her superior gun-power, was still plunging along 200 miles away; while the Glasgow, speedy and efficient as she was, was no match for the combined Dresden and Leipzig—to say nothing of the Nürnberg, who came up later to complete the destruction of the Monmouth.

It was about a quarter past four on the afternoon of November 1, 1914, Admiral von Spee being then some forty miles north of the Bay of Arauco on the Chilian coast, and the Nürnberg, which had returned after her vigil, having been once more detached on a scouting cruise, that the Glasgow and Monmouth, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau first sighted and identified each other. It had been a day of strong sunshine, sudden showers, high wind and a rough sea, and all the ships, especially the smaller cruisers, were rolling heavily and shipping a lot of water. When first sighted, the Glasgow and Monmouth, soon to be joined by the Otranto, were to the southwest of the German admiral, fifteen miles distant and pursuing a southerly course—obeying the order of Admiral Cradock to join up with the Good Hope. This was still invisible to the German squadron, but was sighted about forty minutes later, when Admiral Cradock took the head of the British line and both sides moved into battle formation.

The position at this moment—with the long prologue over and the curtain rising upon the first act was as follows: a little to the north and nearer to the land, that is to say somewhat east of the British line, the Germans were steaming south, the Scharnhorst leading, followed by the Gneisenau and the Leipzig. The Dresden was some miles astern, and the Nürnberg not yet in sight, though she had been recalled from her second patrol. On the British side, also steaming south, farther to sea, Admiral Cradock was leading, followed by the Monmouth and the Glasgow, the Otranto bringing up the rear, and with the Canopus far to the south, steaming north, but of course out of the picture.

This was at about half-past five, both sides being fully aware now of the strength and disposition of the other; both suffering severely from the strong head wind and high seas that were continually burying them, and both with their eyes upon the setting sun now dropping rapidly toward the horizon. How vital that sun was each had instantly perceived. For the moment, protected by the glare of it, it advantaged Sir Christopher Cradock, von Spee's squadron being brightly illuminated. But the distance was far too great for the British guns, and, in less than an hour, the conditions would be reversed. In less than an hour, himself in half darkness, von Spee would have the British silhouetted against the after-glow; and, in consequence, there had begun a race, which could have but one ending, for the inside or landward position.

Already nearer to the land than Admiral Cradock, and perceiving Cradock's manoeuvre to try and reverse this, von Spee had crammed full speed on, and was racing to forestall him, in the teeth of the wind, at 20 knots an hour. To do so was essential, and to secure this position he outraced the Leipzig and Dresden, his superior speed enabling him to draw parallel with Cradock, while ten miles of sea still parted the squadrons. Here, while keeping pace with the slower British vessels, he was able to slacken down and await the Leipzig and Dresden; and when, at ten minutes past six, these had joined him, he began to draw nearer to the doomed British squadron. This, as all had foreseen, was now a series of dark targets, tossing clearly outlined against the sunset, with the rising moon in the east to render a chance of escape even less possible; and, at a distance of a little over five miles, von Spee ordered the first shot.

The battle was now joined, and with every circumstance conspiring against the indomitable Cradock and his men. Handicapped by the seas as both sides were, the British, farther out, suffered more severely; while, to the expert gunners of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, discounting this one factor, they formed an ideal objective. Within five minutes the Good Hope was hit, and, though she replied at once, her fire was ineffective; while, during the next quarter of an hour, the Scharnhorst's gunners were finding her time after time. Meanwhile the Otranto had been ordered out of action; the Gneisenau. was pouring shell into the Monmouth; and the Leipzig and Dresden were engaging the Glasgow, who was gallantly spending to the best of her ability.

So the fight went on through the brief twilight and into the early moonlit darkness. Thirty-five hits upon the ill-fated Good Hope were counted by the Scharnhorst's gunners. One of her turrets was destroyed and a fire started, followed presently by an explosion that shook the whole air—the white flames mingling, in von Spee's own words, "with the bright green stars," like some dreadful firework. That as von Spee believed, was the end of her. But Cradock was not yet finished, though his guns were out of action. The opposing vessels were now only two miles apart and the Good Hope was trying to manoeuvre to let off her torpedoes. It was but an expiring effort, however; von Spee stood away a little; the Monmouth, totally outgunned, had already been silenced; a hurrying rain-cloud had added to the darkness; and, though the German gunners, sighting by the red reflection of the fires that they had kindled on the two British vessels, still continued to fire a round or two, their adversaries were powerless to respond.

It was now nearly eight o'clock. To the watching von Spee, the fires on the horizon had died down, the Good Hope's quenched by the seas that covered her, and the Monmouth's put out by the efforts of her crew. Though both vessels must, he knew, have been badly crippled, von Spee was unaware, of course, of their real condition, and had ordered his light cruisers to chase and attack them, himself crossing the British line, and turning his course northward.

Meanwhile the Monmouth, staggering along in the darkness, and slowly sinking by the head, was in touch with the Glasgow—the neighbourhood of the enemy and the state of the sea rendering any assistance from the latter impossible. The Glasgow herself had had an almost miraculous escape, not only from destruction, but even from serious damage. "I cannot understand," wrote one of her officers, "the miracle of our deliverance; none will ever. We were struck at the water-line by, in all, five shells out of about 600 directed at us, but strangely not in vulnerable places, our coal saving us on three occasions—as we are not armoured and should not be in battle line against armoured vessels. We had only two guns that would pierce their armour—the Good Hope's old two 9.2's, one of which was out of action ten minutes after the start. A shell entered the captain's pantry and continued on, bursting in a passage, the fragments going through the steel wall of the captain's cabin, wrecking it completely. Again no fire resulted."

Such was the position, with the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau hunting them through the darkness up from the south, the Dresden and Leipzig between them and the land, and the Nürnberg steaming down from the north. To remain together would be to sacrifice both; the Canopus, still in ignorance, had to be warned; and the Monmouth seems to have signalled to the Glasgow, advising her to part company and make her escape as best she could. As senior officer, however, the decision rested with the Glasgow's captain; and it would be difficult to conceive a more poignant situation. Every instinct not only of himself but of all on board bade him stay with the Monmouth. But the reasons for not doing so were remorseless, and had, in the event, to be obeyed. Moreover, the enemy had already been sighted steaming abreast, about four miles away, morsing with an oil lamp; and the reluctant order to depart at full speed could no longer be delayed. Half an hour later, far behind them, the watchers on the Glasgow counted seventy-five flashes. On her way to rejoin von Spee, and almost by accident, the Nürnberg had run across the Monmouth and sunk her with point-blank fire.

Sir Christopher Cradock was a Yorkshireman, and, upon the monument to his honour, unveiled two years later in York Minster, were inscribed these words from the Book of Maccabees, than which none could have more fully expressed him—

God forbid that I should do this thing,
To flee away from them;
If our time be come, let us die manfully for our brethren,
And let us not stain our honour.

So ended the first act of this outer-sea epic. That another was to follow none knew better than von Spee.

CHAPTER IV

THE BATTLE OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

Situated off the southeast coast of South America the group of islands, known as the Falklands, had definitely belonged to Great Britain since 1833. It consisted of about a hundred larger and smaller islands, the two chief being East and West Falkland, separated by a narrow channel of water known as the Falkland Sound. About 250 miles, at the nearest point, from Tierra del Fuego in the extreme south of the continent, they were some 300 miles distant from the Atlantic entrance of the Magellan Straits. Their climate was healthful but not attractive. Rain fell on more than half the days of the year. The seas surrounding them, even in their December midsummer, were of an arctic coldness and more often than not shrouded with mists that made navigation difficult and unpleasant. The chief industry was sheep farming, most of the farmers and shepherds being of Scottish descent; but there was a certain amount of business done at Port Stanley in the way of ship-repairing and the provision of marine stores.

Until 1904, when it was abandoned as such, Port Stanley had been a naval station, and it still remained the principal town of the islands and the headquarters of the Government. Situated on the easternmost projection of the eastern of the two chief islands, it had a population of about a thousand, and stood on a tongue of land between the ocean on the south and the innermost of two natural and connected harbours on the north. Of these, the outer and larger was known as Port William, with its entrance to the east, the inner recess, on the shore of which stands the town, being known as Port Stanley.

In 1914 the Governor was the Hon. W. L. Allardyce, and it was toward the middle of October that he heard from the Admiralty that a raid on the islands was to be expected and that suitable precautions should be taken. Accordingly, on October 19th, a notice was posted that all women and children were to leave Port Stanley; and this was promptly obeyed, camps being formed inland, and provisions stored in various places. All Government documents, books, and monies were removed from the town and conveyed to a safe hiding-place; while, at the same time, a defense force was organized under the Governor, mustering, all told, about 130 men. All were good shots, and, with their two machine-guns, were fully prepared to fight to the last. On advice from the Admiralty, they were to adopt retiring tactics, should the Germans land; horses and emergency rations were provided for everybody; and, with their knowledge of the terrain, and their island hardihood, there can be little doubt that they would have put up a strong resistance.

This was the position in the island when, on November 3d, a wireless message was received, announcing the disaster at Coronel; and, five days later, this was followed by the arrival of the Glasgow and Canopus. A raid by the enemy now amounted to a certainty; both the British vessels believed the Germans to be on their heels; and when, a few hours afterward, they received orders to sail for Monte Video, the feelings of the defenders naturally sank a little. They kept up a stout heart, however; the strictest watch was maintained; for several days and nights the Governor never had his clothes off; and, when the Canopus reappeared, having been turned back before reaching Monte Video, in order to help the islanders with her guns, there was a general conviction that they would be able to give von Spee a somewhat difficult problem to solve on his arrival.

Laying a chain of mines at the entrance to Port William, the Canopus was put aground in the inner harbour, whence, protected by the land, she would be able to fire her big shells out to sea; her smaller guns were converted into batteries, mounted in strategic positions among the surrounding hills. Meanwhile in England, under Lord Fisher, who had been recalled to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord, secret and decisive measures had been instantly adopted. Within ten days of the Battle of Coronel, by an act of the same genius that had created them, the Invincible and Inflexible—two of our earlier, but still very powerful battle-cruisers, each capable of a speed of 27 knots and carrying eight 12-inch guns—had been detached from the Grand Fleet, coaled and munitioned, and, under Vice-Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee, were steaming toward the equator, unknown to the world, to avenge Sir Christopher Cradock and his lost crew.

Ten days later, at a rendezvous in the South Atlantic, they met their assigned consorts under Rear-Admiral Stoddart; and here the fleet assembled that was to proceed, first to the Falkland Islands, and thence, round Cape Horn, to engage von Spee. Apart from its colliers, of which there were about fourteen, several of these being out-steamed on the way to Port Stanley, it consisted of the Carnarvon, with Rear-Admiral Stoddart, the Kent, Glasgow, Bristol, and the armed merchantman Macedonia, including, of course, the two battle-cruisers from England, Sir Doveton Sturdee flying his flag on the Invincible.

The Glasgow had been in Rio as recently as November 16th, but every precaution against discovery had been taken; all communication by wireless had been strictly forbidden by Admiral Sturdee; and, at about eleven o'clock on the morning of December 7th, the squadron slipped quietly into Port William. For the anxious defense force on the islands the long vigil was now at an end. For such of the officers as could be spared ashore, and for those whose vessels had to wait their turn for coaling it was a welcome opportunity to touch land again, and they were sufficiently prompt to make characteristic use of it. One of them tells us that, sallying out with his gun, he shot two geese and six hares for the wardroom larder—as ignorant as everybody else of the larger game that was even then heading for the islands.

For the most part, however, all on board every vessel were hard at work getting ready for the search—a search that was still believed, of course, to be inevitable, no news of von Spee having reached the island. The Glasgow and Bristol, in the inner harbour, were the first to coal, followed by the Carnarvon, who only finished at four o'clock the next morning, her collier, the Trelawney, then going to the Invincible. This was berthed beside her in the outer harbour of Port William, the Inflexible keeping them company, with the Kent and Cornwall lying a little to the south, the Kent, with her steam up, acting as guardship. Further to seaward, beyond the mine barrage, was anchored the Macedonia, serving as a look-out vessel; while in the inner harbour were the Bristol and Glasgow, with the old Canopus still aground there. So the night passed. At various points in the islands, the volunteer sentries kept their watch; and it was from one of these, stationed on Sapper's Hill, above Port Stanley, that the first news of the approach of enemy vessels was received between seven and eight the next morning.

The day had dawned clear, with a calm sea and a light breeze blowing from the northwest. From horizon to horizon, in the glowing sunlight, the sea stretched blue as the Mediterranean. It was such a day as, in the Falkland Islands, might for weeks together have been prayed for in vain; and, hidden in the harbour, lay such a fleet as von Spee, in his most depressed moments, was unlikely to have pictured. That he would find the Canopus there he may have thought probable. That the Glasgow and Bristol might be there he had deduced from their wireless. But that the giant battle-cruisers, Invincible and Inflexible, lay quiet as death behind those painted hills—that this December morning was the last morning that he would ever look upon on earth—none had told him, and, for all his forebodings, he himself could never have guessed. But the stage was set again; the curtain had risen; the watcher on Sapper's Hill had heralded the last act. Let us look down for a moment with impartial eyes upon the chosen scene. Far to the south, resolved at last on action, but soon to pay the price of its strange hesitation, steamed the German squadron with its two colliers, the Santa Isabel and the Baden. To the watcher on Sapper's Hill, at that early hour, only the foremost cruisers were as yet observable, faint smudges on the southern horizon—the Gneisenau and the Nürnberg. Equally faint, but clear and at their mercy, must have seemed that spit of land to the observers on the Gneisenau, wholly unconscious, as they then were, of the brisk activities that lay behind it. Nor were the cruisers in the hidden harbour any more aware of what the day heralded for them. With the prospect before them of a voyage round Cape Horn, they were stirring with preparations, but not for immediate action. The Kent alone of them, acting as guard-ship at the mouth of Port William, had her steam up. Only the Glasgow and Bristol in the inner harbour had finished coaling and lay with full bunkers; and the latter had her fires out in order that her boilers might be cleaned. Beside the flagship Invincible, the colliers were still busy; the flag-lieutenant was yawning in his dressing-gown over a cup of tea. The Inflexible, on one side of her, was in similar case, while, upon the other, the Cornwall was busy repairing her engines. Over them all arched a sky of serene and cloudless beauty. The air was so limpid that, through powerful glasses, the events of fifteen miles away might be happening almost at hand.

The flag-lieutenant went on yawning. He had had a long day yesterday, had been working most of the night, and was short of sleep. There came a knock at the door. A signalman entered. The smudges on the horizon had revealed themselves as men-of-war. They could only be von Spee's, and yet it was hardly believable. To tell the admiral was the work of an instant; and soon the amazing tidings were known throughout the fleet. The Kent was at once ordered to weigh anchor, and every ship in the squadron to raise steam for full speed. Colliers were shoved off. Sailors who were in their "land rig" scrambled out of it like quick-change artists. Down in the engine-rooms, grimed men worked miracles, of which, for the moment, let the Cornwall give an example. At eight o'clock, as we have said, she had her starboard engine down, with one cylinder opened for repairs at six hours' notice; and yet, before ten o'clock, she was under way, and, by a quarter past eleven, making more than twenty knots.

Meanwhile, at twenty minutes past eight, the Sapper's Hill signaller had reported more smoke on the horizon; and, a quarter of an hour later, as the Kent steamed to the harbour entrance, the captain of the Canopus reported this to be proceeding from two ships about twenty miles off, the two first sighted being now little more than eight miles away. Three minutes afterward yet another column of smoke was signalled from Sapper's Hill; and the Macedonia was ordered to weigh anchor on the inner side of the other cruisers. It was now evident that von Spee was arriving in force, probably with the whole of his squadron; and, at twenty minutes past nine, the Gneisenau and Nürnberg were seen, broadside on, training their guns on the wireless station. By this time, however, at less than seven miles distance, they were well within range of the Canopus, who anticipated them by firing a salvo over the low-lying tongue of land that sheltered her. None of this first shower of 12-inch shells seems to have been effective in damaging the enemy; but it no doubt confirmed for the German admiral the presence of the Canopus in the harbour; and both the Gneisenau and Nürnberg were at once observed to alter their course. For a moment it appeared as if they intended to approach the Kent at the harbour entrance, but, a few minutes later, they wore away with the evident intention of joining their comrades.

Both cruisers were now visible from the upper bridge of the Invincible; and the tops of the Invincible and Inflexible must have been equally apparent to them; though it still seems uncertain whether they had positively identified yet the two great cruisers that spelt their doom. Meanwhile, in the harbour, every preparation was being pushed forward with the utmost speed. At twenty minutes to ten the Glasgow weighed anchor and steamed down the harbour to join the Kent. Next to the two battle-cruisers, she was the speediest vessel in the squadron, and her orders were to observe the enemy. Five minutes later, the Carnarvon put out, followed by the Inflexible, Invincible, and Cornwall, the two big battle-cruisers burning their oil fuel, prudently spared for the occasion that had arrived.

It was now twenty minutes past ten, and the character of the future action was already determined. For the Germans it had become instantly clear that their only hope—if such it might be called—lay in flight; and, on the British side, the order had been signalled for a general chase at full speed. Gathering pace, the two battle-cruisers from the north soon overtook and outstripped the Carnarvon and Kent, the position at eleven o'clock, with the squadron as a whole making about 20 knots, being as follows—the Glasgow was still leading, but had been ordered to remain within two miles of the flagship Invincible; next came the Invincible herself, with her decks flooded by hoses to prevent fire and wash away the last of the coal-dust; the Inflexible followed behind her, on her starboard quarter, with the Kent falling away from her astern and aport, followed by the Carnarvon, with the faster Cornwall reluctantly obeying orders to remain upon her quarter. Left behind in the harbour were the Bristol and Macedonia; but, just at this moment, on the other side of the island, a lady watcher at Fitz Roy, Mrs. Roy Felton, had seen and reported three other German vessels. Two of these—the third made its escape—were the colliers, already familiar to us, the Santa Isabel and Baden. The coal on board these vessels had been obtained from various sources since the action off Coronel, some from the Valentino, a French prize, and some from the British vessel Drummuir, captured on December 2d; and the Bristol and Macedonia were at once ordered by Admiral Sturdee to deal with them. Between nine and ten miles to the south, on a course east-north-east, von Spee in the Scharnhorst was travelling at full speed, followed by the Dresden, the Gneisenau, the Nürnberg, and the Leipzig, in the order named.

This was the situation then, and, before considering in detail one of the completest naval victories in our history, let us examine it for a moment as it presented itself to Admiral Sturdee, a remarkably cool-brained and deliberate tactician. With a long day in front of him, with nothing to fear in the way of destroyer or submarine-attack, with the whole of the enemy squadron now before his eyes, and with perfect visibility, he possessed under his command, in his own flagship, in the Inflexible, and in the Glasgow, three vessels at least that, in the matter of speed, were considerably superior to the enemy. Further, although the enemy's gunnery was known to be excellent both in speed and accuracy, the 12-inch guns of the Invincible and Inflexible enabled him to dictate a long-range action; and there were two other weighty considerations that suggested the wisdom of such a course. For, while in gun-power the two battle-cruisers were far ahead of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, in armour they were not so strong; and the nearest repairing yard was at Gibraltar. There were no obligations, therefore, to run any risk. There was every reason for not doing so. So long as, in the end, the Germans were sunk, a few hours would make no difference. Sailors fight best when well fed. Tobacco is an excellent solvent for undue excitement; and the British admiral therefore gave orders that dinner was to be served as usual, and that the men were to be allowed a few minutes for a quiet smoke. As one of the officers on the flagship afterward observed, they might almost have been at manoeuvres off Spithead—precisely the atmosphere that Admiral Sturdee had wisely designed to create.

It was at five minutes to one, at a range of about nine miles, that the first shot was fired by the Inflexible, taking for her target the light cruiser Leipzig, the last vessel of von Spee's line. Five minutes afterward the Invincible followed suit, also taking the Leipzig for her target; and soon afterward the battle resolved itself into three separate encounters—that between the Invincible, Inflexible, and Carnarvon, and the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau; that between the Glasgow and Cornwall, and the Leipzig; and finally, after an epic chase, that in which the Kent overtook and sank the Nürnberg.

These conditions were first brought about when, at twenty minutes past one, the Leipzig turned away toward the southwest, soon to be followed by the Nürnberg and Dresden, with the Glasgow, Kent, and Cornwall in pursuit. With them had started the Carnarvon, but the rear-admiral in command of her, finding his speed insufficient to keep up with the light cruisers, had to give up the chase, and joined the Invincible and Inflexible in engaging the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Leaving the action of the smaller cruisers in the capable hands of Captain Luce of the Glasgow, let us follow the fortunes of the other three in the most immediate and important task. Of these the ten-year-old Carnarvon, pushing on as stoutly as she could, was still trying vainly to keep up with her swifter sisters; and the first encounter was reduced, therefore, to a four-cornered fight lasting for about fifty minutes.

Beginning at twenty minutes past one, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, after five minutes of a running battle, turned a little to port, began to close the range, and accepted the challenge; and, five minutes later, opened fire themselves. Though of smaller calibre, their guns, firing very rapidly, were as usual handled with extreme ability; and, in the words of the flag-lieutenant—half-way up the Invincible's foremast, in the director-tower with Admiral Sturdee—they shot indeed "fiendishly well." "We went on hammering away," he wrote, "for some time, getting closer and closer, and they were hitting us pretty badly. I thought that our foremast had gone once. The Admiral and I were half-way up so as to get a good view. One of the legs of the mast was shot away. Shell fire is unpleasant, to put it mildly. Exploding shells, when they hit the ship, are worse, as one wonders how many she will stand. The Admiral was wonderfully cool and collected, and I bobbed my head at every shell, and got a stiff neck from doing it!"

At a quarter to two the Invincible was being straddled—the Scharnhorst's shells, that is to say, were exploding on both sides of her—and Admiral Sturdee, consistently with his plan of action, drew away a little to avoid undue risks. The Scharnhorst had by this time been hit on several occasions, but had not been disabled, though she broke off the action; and, at ten minutes past two, the fight became a chase again, the Invincible reopening fire at a quarter to three. For eight minutes, again out-ranging them, the Invincible and Inflexible hammered the two German cruisers, forcing them round to port once more to reply as best they could. The heavier British guns had now begun definitely to tell, however, and the Scharnhorst was already on fire forward. "We hit again and again," wrote Midshipman John Esmonde in a letter to his father after the action. "First our left gun sent her big crane spinning over the side. Then our right gun blew her funnel to atoms, and then another shot from the left gun sent her bridge and part of the forecastle sky-high. We were not escaping free, however. Shots were hitting us repeatedly, and the spray from the splashes of their shells was hiding the Scharnhorst from us.... Down came the range—11,000, 10,000, 9,000, to 8,800. We were hitting the Scharnhorst very nearly every time. One beauty from our right gun got one of her turrets fair and square and sent it whistling over the side. Suddenly our right gun misfired—we had got a jamb and one gun was out of action. The breech had caught against one of the cages and would neither open nor shut. We opened up the trap hatch, and I jumped out, and down the ladder with two men to try and find a crowbar. The 12-inch guns were firing all round us, and our left gun was doing work for two now that the right was jambed. The German shells were whistling unpleasantly close and there were splinters flying all over the place. The Scharnhorst was firing heavily, but I could see she was in a bad way. She was down by the bows and badly on fire amidships. I got the crowbar and brought it in, but they wanted a hacksaw as well, so I jumped out again, and just as I was coming back I saw the Scharnhorst's ensign dip (never knew whether it came down or not, because just then one of the lyddite shells hit her and there was a dense cloud of smoke all over her).[[1]] When it cleared she was on her side, and her propellers were lashing the water round into foam. Then she capsized altogether, going to the bottom."

[[1]] As a matter of fact, the Scharnhorst's ensign was not lowered, but, as Admiral Sturdee afterward remarked, "Von Spee met his fate like a brave Admiral, though our foe."

That was at a quarter past four; her consort the Gneisenau was still firing with all her guns; and, by this time, the old Carnarvon had at last arrived upon the scene—she had in fact fired a couple of shots at the Scharnhorst. The three cruisers, therefore, now turned their attention to the Gneisenau, who, after a moment's hesitation, turned and stood at bay. Nothing in the whole day, indeed, was more gallant than her vain but desperate resistance. At half-past four she was still straddling the Invincible, though without causing casualties or serious damage. A few minutes after five, her forward funnel was knocked out and remained lolling against the second. Seven minutes later, just as she hit the Invincible for the last time, she was herself badly damaged again between the third and fourth funnels; and how accurate the British fire had become can be gathered from the notebook of one of her officers, afterward rescued. "Five ten," he wrote, "hit, hit; 5.12, hit; 5:14, hit, hit, hit again; 5:20, after-turret gone; 5:40, hit, hit—on fire everywhere; 5:41, hit, hit—burning everywhere and sinking; 5:45, hit—men lying everywhere; 5:46, hit, hit."

Listing heavily to starboard, and with her engines stopped, Admiral Sturdee had ordered the "Cease Fire" signal at about half-past five. But, before it could be hoisted, the Gneisenau began to shoot again, though now only spasmodically and with a single gun. She seems to have fired, indeed, until her ammunition was exhausted, when, at ten minutes to six, Admiral Sturdee ordered the "Cease Fire" again and, twelve minutes later, she turned on her side. "Then at last," wrote another officer, "away first and second cutters, man sea-boat. For the Gneisenau is heeling right over on her side in the water. The beggars are done for. All our efforts will now be to save life, having done our utmost for five hours to destroy it.... Three of our boats are away picking up survivors. The Inflexible's boats are doing the same, and so are the Carnarvon's. The sea, which, so different from its state at noonday, is now quite angry, is strewn with floating wreckage supporting drowning men. To add to the misery, a drizzling rain is falling. We cast overboard every rope's end we can, and try our hands at casting to some wretch feebly struggling within a few yards of the ship's side. Missed him! Another shot. He's farther off now! Ah! The rope isn't long enough. No good, try someone else. He's sunk now.... Many such do we see. Now we lend a hand hauling at a rope, pulling some poor devil out of the water. As they are hauled on deck they are taken below into the wardroom ante-room, or the Admiral's spare cabin. Here with knives we tear off their dripping clothing. Then with towels we try to start a little warmth in their ice-cold bodies. They are trembling, violently trembling from the iciness of their immersion. Some of them had stuck it for thirty minutes in a temperature of 35 degrees Fahrenheit!"

"The Invincible alone," reported Admiral Sturdee, "rescued 108 men, fourteen of whom were found to be dead after being brought on board. These men were buried at sea the following day with full military honours." Few will say that they were undeserved.

By now the battle had been distributed over many leagues of sea; the units engaged were not only out of sight of each other, but even beyond the sound of each other's guns; and it is time to return to Captain Luce in his war-scarred Glasgow, who, with the Kent and Cornwall, was pursuing the three light cruisers. More perhaps than to any others of the officers and crews engaged did their part in this struggle mean to those of the Glasgow. The sole survivors of Coronel, they had lived, as none of their comrades had done, for a bitter five weeks, with the picture of it before them. When all would fain have stayed and fought to the last, they had been compelled, in the interests of their service, to take the harder way. They had a peculiar debt to discharge, and now, if they could but seize it, their hour had come to repay it with interest.

It was at about twenty minutes past one when the three German cruisers had broken away toward the southwest, the Dresden leading with the Nürnberg and Leipzig following her on each quarter. The distance then separating them from the Glasgow, Kent, and Cornwall, was from nine to eleven miles; all were speedy, the Dresden being the fastest; and a long, stern chase therefore ensued. Of the three British cruisers, the Glasgow, in spite of her late experiences, was still considerably the swiftest; and she soon drew away from them, overhauling the Leipzig and Nürnberg, until at three o'clock she was within seven miles of the former. Her idea was now, if possible, so to outrange the Leipzig as to turn and delay her until the arrival of the Kent and Cornwall, far slower vessels even than the Leipzig, but carrying fourteen 6-inch guns to the Glasgow's two. At three o'clock, therefore, she opened fire with her 6-inch guns, and, for more than an hour, engaged the Leipzig until the arrival of the Cornwall. By that time she had already hit her many times over, but had had to draw away on several occasions, owing to the accuracy of the Leipzig's gunners. With time and speed and the range on his side, Captain Luce, like his admiral, could afford to be deliberate; and yet even so, with a little more luck, the Leipzig might have damaged the Glasgow rather severely. Two of her officers stationed in the control-top had a very narrow escape from losing their lives, a shell passing between them, and carrying away the hand of a signalman—three other men being wounded and one killed at about the same time. After an hour and a quarter, and having had an early tea, the Cornwall arrived on the scene, and was soon, as one of the Glasgow's seamen, admitted, "shooting very well."

We have last seen the Cornwall, not wholly to her liking, upon the quarter of the even slower Carnarvon; but, a little after noon, to her great satisfaction, she had received orders to go ahead. When the three light cruisers had broken to the south in their endeavour to escape, she had turned after them, as we have said, with her sister ship, the Kent, in the wake of the nimbler Glasgow. Now, thanks to the Glasgow and the superhuman efforts of their two engine-room staffs, both the Kent and Cornwall were at last in action, the former being ordered in pursuit of the Nürnberg—where we may leave her for a moment performing imperishable conjuring-tricks in the way of stoking and engine-driving, while her luckier consorts, already at close grips, were battering the Leipzig to pieces.

At twenty minutes to five, a shot from the Cornwall, at a range of between four and five miles, carried away her foremast; but, ten minutes later, after delivering a broadside, and as she was being hit herself, the Cornwall drew away a little. The Leipzig had now lost one of her funnels as well as being on fire aft, many of her guns being already silenced; but at six o'clock she was still firing well enough to hit the Cornwall severely and once more to force the latter away a little. This was only for a moment, however, the Cornwall reopening with lyddite shell at a quarter past six, and now pressing her attack home with tremendous force and accuracy to a range of less than three miles. In this the Glasgow joined her—it being obviously useless now to hunt for the Dresden miles away in the mist—and, by ten minutes to seven, the Leipzig was on fire everywhere, though her flag was still flying and her guns occasionally responding. The two British cruisers then stopped firing for a little, but dared not draw near for fear of a torpedo-attack. Blazing in every corner, with her sides red hot, and with great gaps in her torn by the lyddite, it seemed now that every moment must be the Leipzig's last; but still she floated and would not strike her colours. Fire was again reopened, therefore, although, as one of the Cornwall's officers said, "We all hated doing it," and, half an hour later, she sent up a couple of rockets signifying that she surrendered and asking for help.

What her condition was then has been vividly described by Private Whittaker of the Royal Marine Light Infantry. "When we went right close," he wrote to his mother, "she looked just like a night-watchman's fire bucket, all holes and fire." Searchlights were now playing upon her through the rain and darkness, but, in view of possible explosions, the boats could not approach too near; out of her crew of over three hundred, less than a score were saved; and, at just about nine o'clock, she rolled over to port, seemed to recover a moment, and then slipped out of sight.

So perished the Leipzig, not less gallantly, but as condignly as the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, news of whose destruction had been wirelessed to the Cornwall and Glasgow. Whatever might happen now, victory was assured; the Good Hope and Monmouth had been amply avenged; and to the Cornwall and Glasgow, buffeting home to Port Stanley, few happier moments were likely to come. Into the feelings of Captain Luce it would be impertinent to pry; but a little may be guessed, perhaps, from what follows. "About half an hour ago," said one of his crew, writing home on December 11th, "the Captain made a speech, or rather tried to, but failed. He first of all read out the King's message to the Fleet, and then tried to say a few words himself; 'I have seen the Glasgow's ship's company fight twice, and I thank you for the way in which you fought. I couldn't have a better ship's company.' Then he said, 'I can't say any more.'"

That is to leap forward, however, three days and to leave the Kent still ploughing after the Nürnberg—out of sight of everybody now and with the impossible task of making a doubtful 20-knot vessel catch one five knots faster; and not only overtake her, but bring her to action, with the weather changing and darkness not far off. But to the engine-room staff of the Kent and to her stokers no less than to Captain Allen—"Sink-her" Allen, they called him—the word impossible, for to-night at least, might not be whispered with impunity. There was the Nürnberg flushed from Coronel, and here was the Kent with her fourteen good guns; coal might be short and the engines in their second childhood, but if those guns did not find the Nürnberg, it would not be the fault of the engine-room. First out of harbour in the early morning, a spirit of extreme cheerfulness seems to have reigned in the Kent from the beginning of the action. Thus, at half-past ten, we find her officers drinking the toast of Deutschland unter Alles in sloe-gin. Soon afterward they lunched; and then—as many of them as could be spared—established themselves on the top of the forward gun-turret to watch the fun.

This was christened "the stalls" and seems to have been well patronized till half-past one when they went to Action Stations again. Falling out at twenty minutes past two, watch was resumed from the bridge, which then became known as "the upper circle." At five minutes to four tea was served in the gun-room, and, twenty minutes later, Action Stations were taken up again. At that time the Leipzig and Nürnberg were well in view, with the Dresden almost out of sight on the horizon—the Leipzig on the starboard bow, nearer at hand, and being engaged by the Glasgow, and a moment afterward by the Cornwall, and the Nürnberg away to port and considerably more distant. Then came the order to pursue the latter, the Leipzig being given a salvo or two in passing; and it was then that there began the race that was destined to become traditional in every engine-room of the navy. With no coal to spare, everything combustible was crammed into her long-suffering furnaces. Tables and chairs, officers' furniture, wooden companion-ladders, even planks from the deck, were knocked to pieces and thrust into the flames for the ultimate destruction of the Nürnberg.

"The entire staff," afterward wrote one of her engineer officers, "was doing its best, and, my word it was a best. We pushed her along, more, more, more. The revolutions of the engines at the first time of starting were more than the revolutions the dockyard could get out of her, and she was worked up gently bit by bit, easying down occasionally when things looked as if they were not going quite right, or when they threatened to do so. An anxious moment was reached when we got on every ounce of steam that the engines could take. We were just then going some sixteen revolutions a minute faster than the Admiralty full power, and also the designed power of 22,000 horse-power, some 5,000 horse-power more than we ought to have done. In times of peace we should have been court-martialled for this, but we came out top.... We were doing from 2-½ to 3 knots faster than the old Kent had ever done before. We were doing over 25 knots 'full speed,' the highest ever attained being 22 knots."

Fortunately for the Kent, too, the Nürnberg had her own boiler troubles, but they were of a different order, and she was unable to make her usual speed; and, after about an hour, the Kent was near enough to open fire at a range of a little over six miles. It was now the gunners' opportunity, and though they were reservists, drawn, as one of the officers put it, "from all sorts of weird places," they rose to the occasion, like first-class experts, and found their target almost at once. Nor could Captain Allen afford himself the license that had been the right policy for the other commanders. It was now past five; rain was falling; his supply of combustible bric-à-brac was strictly limited. It was a case of now or never, and the Kent, taking her punishment as it came, pushed the action for all she was worth.

With her foretop shot away down to the crows' nest, and her silk ensign cut to ribbons; with her wireless knocked out, so that she could no longer send, though she was still able to receive, messages; with half a dozen holes through her funnels and several more in her side—she gained a quarter of a mile with every salvo until she was pounding the Nürnberg at less than three miles distance. Struck in all thirty-six times, and with five men killed and eleven wounded, the behaviour of all on board was, in their captain's own words, "perfectly magnificent"—a typical example being that of Sergeant Mayes, whose courage and presence of mind probably saved the ship.

A bursting shell had started a fire among some cordite charges in the casemate. A tongue of flame had leaped down the hoist and into the ammunition passage, endangering the magazine. Without an instant's pause, and although severely burned, Sergeant Mayes picked up a cordite charge and threw it away, afterward flooding the compartment and putting out a fire that had started in some neighbouring empty shell bags. No wonder that Captain Allen, writing afterward to the Association of Men at Kent, should have said that "though the enemy fought bravely to the very end, against such men as I have the honour to command, they never could have had a chance."

By half-past six, the Nürnberg was on fire forward, all her guns being apparently silenced, and the Kent ceased shelling her, and drew up within two miles. Her flag was still flying, however, and the Kent opened fire again, but only for a few minutes longer, when the Nürnberg hauled her flag down and made signs of surrender. She was now blazing furiously, and listing heavily to starboard; and the Kent began to take measures to save life. Unfortunately all her boats had been holed by the Nürnberg's fire, and, before she could launch them, they had to be repaired. Two were quickly patched up, but the crews were only successful in saving a dozen men, five of whom afterward died on board from the effects of wounds and exposure.

To complete the victory of this single-ship action everyone on board had contributed his utmost, but it seems probable that in history the larger share of the credit will be given unstintingly to the engineers and stokers. It was certainly bestowed on them by their comrades in the Kent. "The captain," we are told, "nearly fell on the engineer-commander's neck and kissed him when he 'blew up' after the action to see him and to advise as to the best speed to go back to harbour. He nearly shouted at him for some time: 'My dear fellow, my dear engineer-commander! You won the action, you did it splendid! Without your speed we should have lost everything.'"

Meanwhile, at Port Stanley, now in wireless communication with all the rest of Admiral Sturdee's squadron, the silence of the Kent, owing to her broken wireless, had begun to give rise to some alarm. "Kent, Kent, Kent" rang the invisible call, but there was no reply, and it was feared that she had been lost. It was perhaps characteristic that, in spite of this, she was the first of them all to reach port the next day. Of von Spee's squadron only the Dresden remained, to be run to earth three months later. The Bristol and Macedonia, after capturing their crews, had sunk the Santa Isabel and the Baden; and the total British casualties in killed and wounded amounted to less than thirty.

CHAPTER V

BACK TO THE NORTH SEA

"Our trawlers mined the fairway.
Our cruisers spread the bait,
We shelled the Briton's seaside towns
To lure him to his fate,
We set the trap twice over.
We left him with his dead—"
"But now we'll play another game,"
The British sailor said.

With the destruction of von Spee's squadron nothing of Germany's navy was left at large in the outer seas save one or two cruisers and armed merchantmen, whose days of freedom were already numbered. Of these the survivor of the Falkland Islands' Battle, the Dresden, was destroyed in the following March at Juan Fernandez; the Königsberg, bottled up in the Rufiji River in Africa, was finally disposed of a few months later; while the Kronprinz Wilhelm, the Prinz Eitel Friedrick, and the Karlsrühe met with various fates during the same summer. That in spite of the enormous calls upon the navy in the way of convoying transports they were joined by no others from their home waters is the best tribute to the efficiency of our floating cordon in the North Sea. And yet its very success in this respect was largely responsible, perhaps, for a somewhat distorted picture of the actual position—that of a sulky and immobilized German Fleet confronted with an impenetrable British barrier.

That would have been hardly true even of each side's surface ships; but it was as far as possible from the complete reality. For what had in fact begun with the outbreak of war—what had never ceased day or night—was a desperate and unceasing battle, none the less crucial because it was so often silent. Some hint of its real nature might have been gathered from the laconic Admiralty announcement, a day or two after war had been declared, that the German passenger steamer, Königin Luise, had been sunk, while mine-laying, by one of our destroyer patrols; and this vessel had been at work, fortunately with very little result, upon a subtle and long-prepared scheme of action. It is true that after she had been sunk, the cruiser Amphion—the leader of the Harwich Patrol that sank her—herself went down on one of the Königin Luise's mines; but the larger end aimed at remained unachieved.

This was no less than the mining in of Harwich, and was part of a deliberate and extensive plan, not only to cripple the northward progress of our larger squadrons to their war-stations, but to block the entrances of as many as possible of our chief naval bases. That some such policy would be attempted had, of course, long been foreseen. Germany's recalcitrant attitude at the Hague Conference toward the question of mine-laying had pointedly suggested this; and it was known that, prior to the outbreak of war, she had accumulated a store of at least ten thousand mines. To counter such measures steps had already been taken in the formation, a few years previously, of a trawler section of the Royal Naval Reserve, whose business it would be to keep the channels clear; while a group of old gun-boats had been assembled for the same purpose to act in conjunction with the Grand Fleet.

It had become instantly clear, however, that the original provision of eighty-two trawlers would be insufficient; and, by the end of August, this had been increased to 250—to be yet further and immensely added to as the busy months went by. Nothing in our naval record, indeed, was more dramatic or so signal an evidence of the national sense of admiralty than the gathering together of that vast auxiliary service of fishermen, pilots, and amateur yachtsmen, and the enormous responsibilities thrust into their hands to be so efficiently and light-heartedly carried. Time after time, by the resource of our fishermen, of sea-loving undergraduates, of amateurs of all sorts, what might have been disasters of the first magnitude were averted or overcome. Between the navy proper, with its thousands of other problems, and these new and insidious dangers—the laying of minefields by apparently innocent neutrals, the ever-present activities of enemy submarines—the courage, the cunning, the native sea-instinct of these otherwise untrained forces was the buffer. The fishermen of Galilee became fishers of men. The fishermen of Britain became fishers of mines. And the debt of human freedom to the latter is not immeasurably less, perhaps, than to their predecessors.

This was the true picture then of the North Sea—an area nearly three times the size of Great Britain—a Grand Fleet holding the exits and entrances against every possible sortie in force, but itself so threatened by submarines and minefields that at one time its war-stations were actually changed, and so nearly paralyzed that there were not a few hours when considerable units of it were practically embayed. Thus, definite minefields were laid by the enemy at Southwold, the mouth of the Tyne, and near Flamborough Head, and not only there but off the north of Ireland, where it was hoped to destroy or disorganize the Canadian transports. Nor were our most vital waters, such as those of the Firth of Forth, free from the repeated visits of those early submarines; and it is primarily as trapping expeditions, leading us into prepared minefields, and only secondarily as baby-killing bombardments, that such raids as those on Lowestoft, Gorleston, and Yarmouth must in reality be considered.

The first of these took place on November 3, 1914, the day following the Admiralty proclamation in which it had been announced that from November 5th the North Sea was to be considered a closed area. This had become necessary, as was then publicly indicated, owing to the persistent and indiscriminate sowing of mines; because peaceful merchant-ships had already been destroyed by these on the main trade-route between Liverpool and America; because these mines had been laid by vessels flying neutral flags; and because exceptional measures had in consequence now become imperative. For these reasons it was announced, therefore, that all vessels passing, from the fifth of November onward, a line drawn from the northernmost point of the Hebrides through the Faroe Islands to Iceland would do so at their own peril. Traders to and from Norway, the Baltic, Denmark, and Holland, were advised to use the English Channel and the Straits of Dover, and were then assured that they would receive full sailing directions, and, as far as Great Britain could secure it, a safe passage.

Meanwhile, in every dockyard, work was being pushed forward upon all sorts of naval construction, and each new problem, as it arose, was being considered and vigorously dealt with. To guarantee, however, in all circumstances and at any given moment, the integrity of our whole coast-line was plainly impossible, though every month saw its increase of patrols and personnel; and, on December 16th, the enemy again bombarded three of our seaside towns.

These were Hartlepool, Whitby, and Scarborough, casualties being inflicted in every case. It was a foggy winter morning when three hostile cruisers were sighted off Hartlepool about 8 o'clock; and, a quarter of an hour later, the bombardment began, lasting till ten minutes to nine. The enemy agents in this case seem to have been two battle-cruisers and one armoured cruiser; and, though Hartlepool itself was an open town, land batteries in the neighbourhood endeavoured to reply. Their fire was ineffective, however; several soldiers attached to the Durham Light Infantry and Royal Engineers were killed and wounded; the gasworks were set on fire; and the civilian casualties amounted to nearly a hundred. Almost at the same time, a battle-cruiser and armoured cruiser approached and shelled Scarborough, firing about sixty shots, while two battle-cruisers attacked Whitby, civilians in both towns being killed and wounded.

Owing to the objectives chosen, the conditions of the weather, the brevity of their visit, and their power and speed, the enemy squadrons made port intact again, though a patrol of destroyers very pluckily attacked them. In all nearly one hundred civilians were killed in these three towns, about five hundred being wounded; the military casualties amounted to thirty-four, and those on the three destroyers to twenty-eight. The German battle-cruisers, employed in this expedition were identified as the Derfflinger, Seydlitz, Moltke, von der Tann, and Blücher, the three latter, it was believed, having been also engaged in the previous raid upon the Norfolk coast.

Though, as we have said, it was quite impossible to give an absolute guarantee against such incidents as these, they were certainly not soothing to the feelings of the Grand Fleet and least of all to those of its cruiser squadrons. In spite of the elaborate justifications voiced in the German Press by such writers as Count Reventlow, they had outraged every canon not only of international law but of decent seaman-like feeling, and were an early indication of the horrible license that German sea-policy was prepared to allow itself. That had not yet staggered the world, as the sinking of the Lusitania was to stagger it, or such incredible atrocities as that to be associated with the Belgian Prince; but it had opened up a vista to every clean-hearted sailor sufficiently dark as to have changed the character of the war. It was now plain, for example, that such naval leaders as Admiral von Spee and the captain of the Emden were no longer to be regarded as typical of the directing minds of Germany's navy. How completely they were in the end to be disregarded was not yet manifest; but it was already clear that the old and peculiar amenities, the traditional chivalry of sea-warfare, were but poorly respected, even if they were understood, by this latest aspirant to sea-power. It was with a special satisfaction, therefore, that early on January 24, 1915, a strong patrolling fleet, under Sir David Beatty, received news of a powerful enemy squadron not far away to the south-south-east.

This consisted, as soon became clear, of the Derfflinger, Seydlitz, Moltke, and Blücher, with six light cruisers and a strong force of destroyers; and there was little doubt that they were once more en route for a bombardment of some part of our coast. With Admiral Beatty, who was flying his flag on the Lion, were the Princess Royal, the Tiger, the New Zealand, and Indomitable, all powerful vessels, the three former each carrying eight 13.5-inch guns, while the New Zealand and Indomitable carried the same number of 12-inch guns. In company with these, disposed on their port beam, were the light cruisers Southampton, Nottingham, Birmingham, and Lowestoft, and, scouting ahead—the two squadrons having met at sea—were Commodore Tyrwhitt in the Arethusa, commanding three flotillas of destroyers, and the two light cruisers Aurora and Undaunted.

It was Sunday morning; the day had broken clear at about a quarter to seven, and it was a few minutes after this hour that the Aurora, then travelling at twenty knots, sighted a two-masted, four-funnelled cruiser accompanied by some destroyers. Half concealed by her smoke, in the uncertain light, and at about four miles distance, the Aurora, for a few moments, had been unable to determine her nationality; and it was for these reasons that the enemy cruiser—afterward known to be the Kolberg—was the first to open fire. No appreciable damage was caused to the Aurora, however, who replied immediately and with such good effect that, five minutes later, the Kolberg changed course and retired upon the stronger enemy forces that had now become visible. The presence of these had at once been signalled to Admiral Beatty and his cruisers, and the whole squadron at once worked up to its full speed of 28-½ knots. When first sighted, the enemy vessels had been steering northwest, but they immediately changed their course to the southeast, the distance separating the two squadrons being then about fourteen miles, and their position, at half-past seven, being about thirty miles from the English coast.

From the outset it had been evident that the enemy did not mean to engage, and that, if he were to be brought to action, it would only be after a chase; and, although as a squadron we had the advantage in speed, our superiority was not very great. Nor was Admiral Beatty's problem in any other respect so simple as had been Sir Doveton Sturdee's. Not only had Admiral Beatty always to bear in mind that he might be being led into some recently laid minefield, but he knew that with every hour he would be nearly forty miles nearer to the heavily guarded waters on the other side. Moreover, he had at all times to be prepared for a torpedo-attack from the accompanying fleet of enemy destroyers, while it was practically certain that, before the action ended, he would find himself in the presence of hostile submarines. He was further at a disadvantage in that, though he was stronger in gun power, he was forced to rely upon bow fire only, and this while travelling at full speed. That meant that, for the greater part of the action, his leading battle-cruisers, the Lion, Tiger, and Princess Royal could only bring to bear four of their 13.5-inch guns, while the Seydlitz and Moltke, firing astern, could each use eight of their 11-inch guns, the Derfflinger four of her 12-inch guns, and the Blücher six of her 8.2's. It became a matter of margins, therefore—and not very extensive ones—both in speed and range, and of the British capacity to use these in the limited time before the German cruisers could reach their own waters.

Some idea of what this meant can best be gathered, perhaps, from the fact that, though travelling at thirty knots, it was almost an hour and a half—during which time more than fifty miles of sea had been covered—before the fourteen miles that separated the two squadrons had been reduced to ten. This was just before nine o'clock, the enemy being still on Admiral Beatty's port bow, his light cruisers ahead, followed by the Derfflinger, Moltke, Seydlitz, and Blücher in single line, with a large number of destroyers on their starboard beam. Leading in the Lion, Sir David Beatty was followed by the Tiger, the Princess Royal, and the New Zealand, the latter and the Indomitable—both slower vessels—having broken all records, thanks to their engine-room staffs.

Already a shot or two had been fired from the Lion's forward guns, taking the Blücher as her target, and, a few minutes after nine, she made her first hit on this cruiser, carrying away her bridge, according to the prisoners afterward taken. At this range, with her 13.5's tilted at an angle of some sixteen degrees and her big shells dropping steeply, the fire of the Lion seems, under the circumstances, to have been remarkably accurate. About ten minutes later, the Tiger came into range and took up the attack on the Blücher, the Lion transferring her attentions to the Seydlitz, the next ahead. Meanwhile the enemy had begun to respond but without inflicting any damage, and, a quarter of an hour later, the Princess Royal was able to join in the chorus, also taking the Blücher for her first target.

The Blücher, slower than her consorts, and already heavily damaged, was now dropping astern and came under the guns of the New Zealand, the Princess Royal transferring her fire to the Seydlitz with immediate and visible results. The enemy's destroyers were now throwing up dense columns of smoke to screen his wounded battle-cruisers; but, by a quarter to ten, not only the Blücher, but the Derfflinger and Seydlitz were on fire. Our own light cruisers and destroyer flotillas had fallen back to port a little so as not to obscure the range; and the position just before ten exhibited the Lion confining her attentions to the Derfflinger, the Tiger attacking the Derfflinger, and, when this was hidden from her by smoke, the doomed and swiftly-flagging Blücher, the Princess Royal shelling the Seydlitz, and the New Zealand engaging the Blücher—the Indomitable, in spite of her efforts, not having yet drawn within effective range.

The condition of the Blücher, as was afterward learned from prisoners, though it was to become worse, was already terrible enough. Early in the action her electric plant had been destroyed, and her men down below crept in darkness. Still too far to be raked, her decks were being excavated by half-ton shells dropping from the sky. In the narrow spaces below, apart from the shattering shell fragments, the enormous air-displacement wrought destruction and death. Iron plates were moulded by it as if they had been wax, and men tossed like apples and crushed to pulp against them. Later, as the range narrowed, the Blücher became more helpless, and, as she came under the full force of the British broadside fire, she staggered at each salvo, scarcely recovering before another hurled her again on her side.

But the main battle had now swept on; and the fact that the Blücher was left to her fate is the best indication, perhaps, of the injuries already sustained by her speedier and stronger consorts. It was not until a quarter to eleven, however, that the Blücher, then far astern, definitely turned north out of the line; and, before this had happened, the German light cruisers and destroyers had closed in from the starboard and were threatening a torpedo attack. The British light forces were accordingly ordered up to prevent this, the Lion and Tiger also opening upon the enemy destroyers. The attack never materialized, however; was possibly only a feint; and would in any case have been checkmated by the admirable handling of the M division of destroyers under Captain the Hon H. Meade, and particularly, perhaps, of the destroyer Meteor under Lieutenant Frederick Peters.

This destroyer, with the Lion and Tiger, was the only British vessel to suffer material damage; and her position at one time, in the full field of bombardment, was one that her crew are never likely to forget. This was soon after eleven, when the Lion, who had drawn more than her namesake's share of the German fire, had been struck by a chance shot that reduced her speed to ten knots an hour. The rest of the destroyers and light cruisers had by this time dropped astern again, the majority on the starboard or disengaged side, while others, on the port side, had turned northward after the Blücher. After the Lion had been hit, however, the Meteor was ordered up to cover her, thereby steaming under the salvos from both sides; and it is possible to glean an idea or two of what this meant from the account of it afterward written by one of her officers.

"We were absolutely in the line of fire," he said, "shells whistling over and all around us, and now and again an enemy's broadside aimed directly at us. Try and imagine a frail destroyer steaming thirty knots, with four battle-cruisers on either side belching forth flame and smoke continually, the screech of the projectiles flying overhead seeming to tear the very air into ribbons, 12-inch shells dropping perilously near, and raising columns of water a hundred feet into the air, a few yards away, the spray washing our decks and drenching all hands. Picture the awful crashing noise, the explosions and flashes, as shots took effect, the massive tongues of fire shooting up, and the dense clouds of yellow and black smoke which obliterated the whole ship from view as the shells burst on striking. And this, if you can imagine it, will give you some idea of the Meteor's position in a glorious action. Its terrible imposing grandeur made one forget personal danger. Of course, something had to happen. It was simply inevitable. About eleven o'clock, the Lion drew out of the line temporarily, the Princess Royal taking the lead, and it was not till then that the Indomitable opened fire and took her part in the engagement. We had already been hit a couple of times, but without doing any material damage, and half of us missed death by inches; but it seemed as if we possessed a charmed life; it is truly miraculous, nothing less, that we continued so long without being disabled; but Providence must have been with us that day. Just about this time, the Blücher was in a terrible state; one funnel gone, the other two like scrap-iron and tottering, both fore and main topmasts shot away, fore turret carried clean over the side, and only part of her mainmast and fore tripod mast left standing, and even these in a very shaky condition. So she fell out of the line—a raging furnace amidships, helpless, unable to steam; and her sister ships left her to her fate. The battering she had undergone was something incredible, and she was in her death agony now, so we began to close her, and found she was settling down, though still on an even keel. Now was our chance. We approached her, circling around, but even then she was not dead, for, at precisely 12.5 p.m., with the very last round she ever fired, she sent an 8.2-inch shell into us, which killed four men and wounded another. But what a sweet revenge was to come! Two minutes later, we discharged our torpedo. It hit her nearly amidships. There was a tremendously violent shock. She heeled completely over and sank in eight and a half minutes, hundreds of men clambering over her sides and standing there, just as if it were the upper deck, waiting for the final plunge."

Not to be outdone, and consistent with her reputation, the Arethusa was also in at the death, and had in her turn loosed a couple of torpedoes at the Blücher with terrific effect—one striking her aft and one forward, reaching her magazine and causing a violent explosion. It was the Arethusa, too, who subsequently embarked and brought home to port the majority of the Blücher's survivors, the rescuers and rescued being alike bombed from the air by a German aeroplane that had appeared on the scene.

Meanwhile the Lion, having pulled out of the line, not vitally injured, but unfit for further action, the Tiger, Princess Royal, and New Zealand had continued the chase of the flying enemy, the Indomitable having been detailed to attend to the Blücher. Round the wounded Lion, to protect her from submarine attack—submarines had already been sighted a few minutes before—had closed one of our light cruisers and six destroyers, and, at half-past eleven, Admiral Beatty called the destroyer Attack alongside, boarded her, and raced at full speed after his other three battle-cruisers.

So fast was the pace at which the action was being fought that not only were these out of sight, but the Blücher, now in her death throes, was also below the horizon. With her guns tilted, as she listed there to port, and the "Engage the enemy more closely" signal still flying from her mast, the Lion had been suddenly wiped off the slate, as it were, with what chagrin to those on board can be readily imagined. But for that unlucky shot, the Battle of the Dogger Bank might have been as complete a victory of its kind as that of the Falkland Islands, and it was only by a hair's breadth that the other three German battle-cruisers, lame and heavily damaged, contrived to reach harbour.

Headlong as he was travelling, it was not till noon that Sir David Beatty met his returning cruisers, and, twenty minutes later, having shifted his flag from the Attack to the Princess Royal, he heard from Captain Osmond de B. Brock of what had subsequently happened; that the Blücher had been sunk near Borkum Reef, a Zeppelin and aeroplane bombing the vessels rescuing survivors; and that the other cruisers had made their escape in an eastward direction. It was owing to the increasing danger from mines thrown out of the fleeing vessels, and the growing proximity of the German minefields, that the action had in the end been broken off; and whether it should, under those circumstances, have been pressed further must remain an open question. That quite apart, however, from its material advantages in the sinking of the Blücher and the disabling of her consorts, the victory of the Dogger Bank had important moral results there is not a shadow of doubt. It had once more re-affirmed the value of the battle-cruiser for which the navy was chiefly indebted to Lord Fisher, and it proved to be the grave of the big-scale raids upon our open east coast towns. More than all that, however, it was a triumphant example of an instantly seized opportunity; it demonstrated to the enemy that, in spite of his mines and submarines, we maintained our full tactical liberty; and it was further evidence that in Admiral Beatty we had found a naval leader of the highest class.

Those were the recognitions behind the "Well done, David" of the Princess Royal's coal-blackened stokers as the Admiral climbed in mid-sea from the little Attack into the famous cruiser; and they spoke again, on the following Tuesday morning, when the Lion limped up the Firth to her anchorage. Three miles away, in the Fifeshire valleys, ploughman and farmboy heard those welcoming syrens.

CHAPTER VI

THE SEAMEN AT GALLIPOLI

At the outbreak of war, Germany was represented in the Mediterranean by two vessels, the Goeben and Breslau, more likely, perhaps, to become historical than any two that she will ever build. Both were modern vessels, the Goeben, a first-class battle-cruiser, carrying ten 11-inch guns and capable of 28 knots, and the Breslau, a light cruiser of about the same speed and with twelve 4.1-inch guns. Outside the Adriatic, these were the only hostile men-of-war with which the Allies in the Mediterranean had to reckon; and, though full allowance must be made for the responsibilities entailed in preventing a sortie of the Austrian Navy, in convoying troops from Algeria to France, and in avoiding the least infringement of neutral waters, the escape of the Goeben and Breslau must still be regarded as a disaster to our arms.

On August 4th, before the declaration of war between Germany and Great Britain, but after France and Germany had already begun hostilities, the Goeben and Breslau had shelled Phillippeville and Bona, two Algerian ports belonging to France, and had returned to Messina in Sicily on August 5th. Here they obtained coal from vessels in the harbour, the Italian authorities refusing, under the laws of neutrality, to allow them facilities for coaling ashore, and, by the same rule, they had to leave territorial waters within twenty-four hours. Their movements and whereabouts had, of course, been known throughout to Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne in command of the British Mediterranean Fleet; and now, being free to attack them, he was awaiting their departure, together with a subsidiary squadron under Rear-Admiral E. C. T. Troubridge. The German admiral and his officers had no illusions as to the destiny that awaited them when they put to sea; made their wills; and steamed out of harbour on the evening of August 6th. Their design, it was believed, was to rush the Straits of Otranto and join up with the Austrian Fleet in the Adriatic. The paramount importance of not affording Italy the least pretext of complaint seems to have weighed heavily on the British admirals. The Goeben and Breslau, heading apparently for the Straits, suddenly changed course for the southeast; and, though the light cruiser Gloucester, which had kept in touch with them, immediately notified this and went gallantly in pursuit, the superior power and speed of the two German cruisers enabled them to fight her off and make good their escape.

They passed through the Dardanelles on August 10th, and, three days later, were said to have been bought by the Turkish Government, by whose officers and crews they were in future to be manned. Sir Berkeley Milne was recalled for an inquiry, the senior French officer, Admiral Boué de Lapeyrère, taking his place as Commander of the combined British and French forces, on August 30th; and, on September 20th, Rear-Admiral Troubridge also returned home. At his own request, he was court-martialled on November 5th, Admirals Sir Hedworth Meux and Sir George Callaghan conducting the inquiry, and, on November 12th, it was announced that he had been acquitted of all blame. Sir Berkeley Milne was also exonerated as the result of an Admiralty investigation.

So ended an episode in which, from the strictly naval standpoint, and though our leaders in the Mediterranean were held free from blame, it must be admitted that the honours rested with the German admiral and the perspicacity of his advisers in Berlin. Whether or no the arrival at Constantinople of the Goeben and Breslau was the determining factor in the Turkish Government's policy; how, if they had been sunk by us, that Government might have acted; and the effect on the situation that they had created of a prompter and more drastic action on our own part—these matters can never probably be accurately determined. On the other hand, it is clear that, both in material and moral effect, their presence was an enormous asset to German diplomacy; and that, indirectly at any rate, our campaign in Gallipoli, with all its consequences, derived from them. On September 27th, Turkey closed the Dardanelles; on October 31st, she declared war; and, three days later, on instructions from the Admiralty, but without reference to the War Council, certain units of the Mediterranean Fleet shelled the outer forts of the Dardanelles. In the light of after events, this was undoubtedly an error, but it was undertaken at the time with the purpose of ascertaining the effective range of the protecting Turkish guns.

Now to obtain a fair picture of the operations at Gallipoli that were afterward undertaken—operations in the first place wholly naval, but finally predominantly military—it is necessary to return for a moment to London and to study the general background against which they must be viewed. Here, after all, were the two or three brains upon which, as a whole, our strategy depended; and it is interesting to note how the mechanism through which they acted had become moulded and modified by the stress of war. For it must be remembered that, after those admirable dispositions, long considered and provided for by the Committee of Imperial Defence, had been undertaken—after not only the navy and army, but every affected department had gone, as it were, to its war-stations—an era followed that is best to be described as the era of improvisation.

No such war had been fought upon the earth's surface, and each succeeding day opened a new prospect. With every branch of both services discovering strange and imperative needs; with no section of our national life that was failing to experience some fresh dislocation—it was little wonder that, in the various higher executives, changes and experiments in change should have been found necessary. Many, perhaps most of these, were proved to be inadequate, and replaced by others as the war went on. Others were doomed from the first and should never have been embarked upon. It had been so arranged, for example, at the War Office, that most of the General Staff officers should take commands in the field; and, when Lord Kitchener became Secretary for War, the General Staff practically ceased to exist.

Accustomed to self-reliance, to centralization even in the minutest details, Lord Kitchener assumed powers so various and important, as it was impossible for any one man to wield; and, to some extent, though not to such an extreme, a similar process had set in at the Admiralty. Instead of the Board of Admiralty, consisting of the First Lord, the four Sea Lords, the two Civil Lords, the Parliamentary and Permanent Secretaries, there had come into being a War Staff Group, including the First Lord and the First Sea Lordd (but none of the other Sea Lords), the Chief of Staff, the Permanent Secretary, a Naval Secretary, and Sir Arthur Wilson—the latter, "Tug" Wilson, as he was called, although retired, being regarded as one of our greatest naval strategists. That was the composition in November, 1914, of the real directorate of the navy, Lord Fisher, who succeeded Prince Louis of Battenburg, on October 30th, being First Sea Lord.

As in the War Office and Admiralty, a similar kind of change had become observable in the Cabinet. Theoretically the direction of the war rested, of course, in the hands of this body, assisted in their deliberations by the Committee of Imperial Defense. Practically both the Cabinet and the Committee of Imperial Defense fell more and more into abeyance, the conduct of the war passing into the hands of a new and smaller body, known as the War Council. This consisted of the Prime Minister, then Mr. Asquith, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Lloyd George, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, the Secretary of State for India, the Marquis of Crewe, the Secretary for War, Lord Kitchener, and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill. Of these, however, the main responsibility rested upon Mr. Asquith, Mr. Churchill, and Lord Kitchener. This was in practice the triumvirate then conducting the war, as far as the British Empire was concerned, and each of the three was a man of strong and outstanding personality. In Mr. Asquith the country was being served by a statesman of very typical English qualities, imperturbable, perhaps a little slow-moving, magnanimous, shrewd, and of great intellectual capacity. In Mr. Churchill the Admiralty had at its head a man of brilliant and impulsive mentality, complete physical and moral fearlessness, and a somewhat headstrong initiative. In Lord Kitchener there had come to the War Office the foremost soldier of the Empire, the man who had been recalled by an irresistible popular appeal from the governorship of Egypt, in whose name the new armies, voluntarily recruited from every social rank, had outrun equipment, ammunition, even places to be lodged in—a man who already, in his sixty-fourth year, had become an almost legendary figure, the liberator of the Sudan, Roberts' successor in South Africa, the administrator of India and Egypt, omnivorous of work, relentless, silent, and the public's beau-ideal of personal efficiency.

But, while of these three, it was little wonder that, politics apart, Lord Kitchener predominated, another figure, scarcely less powerful, and hardly second as a national idol, stood, as it were, at the elbow of this inner triumvirate in the person of Lord Fisher. The maker of the modern navy, and, in an even more vital sphere, as authoritative an influence as Lord Kitchener, at the age of seventy he had returned to the Admiralty with an almost equal popular approval. He had not, however, as had Lord Kitchener, an actual place in the War Council; and he was not, of course, present at many of its meetings.

This was the position at home, then, when, at a gathering of the War Council, held on November 25th, it was suggested by Mr. Churchill that the best way to defend Egypt was to attack some part of Turkey's Asiatic coast, and that an occupation of the Gallipoli Peninsula would give us the control of the Dardanelles and put Constantinople at our mercy—the idea in Mr. Churchill's mind being evidently that of a combined naval and military movement on a big scale. That some such attack on the Turkish lines of communication might eventually become desirable Lord Kitchener agreed. He did not consider, however, that the time had arrived for it; and when, a few days later, Mr. Churchill suggested to the War Office the advisability of collecting enough transport for 40,000 men—such transport to be assembled in Egypt—Lord Kitchener again replied that he did not think this was yet necessary, and that he would give the Admiralty full notice. The precaution was taken, however, in spite of this, to send horse-boats to Egypt whenever convenient, in view of the possible occasion of some such expedition as had already now become adumbrated.

Meanwhile the navy was playing its part in various operations already necessitated by the war with Turkey. Thus, on November 2nd, the Minerva, a sixteen-year-old protected cruiser, had shelled the forts and barracks of Akaba in the Red Sea; and, on November 8th, the town of Fao, at the head of the Persian Gulf, had been bombarded to cover the landing of troops from India, whence they captured Basra on November 21st. Simultaneously, of course, between Russia and Turkey, the struggle for the mastery of the Black Sea had been progressing. On November 10th, the Russians had sunk four Turkish transports; and, on November 18th, the Goeben, had been materially damaged in an engagement off Sebastopol. Two days later, the Turkish Hamidieh had bombarded Tuapse. On December 10th, the Goeben having been repaired, with the Berk-i-Satvet, shelled Batum; and, on December 12th, the Hamidieh was damaged by a mine in the Bosphorus. The first notable Turkish loss, however, was in the torpedoing of the battleship Messudiyeh in the Dardanelles, on December 13th, by the British submarine B11, under circumstances that will be referred to later. On December 17th, the Russian cruiser Askold sank a couple of Turkish steamers off Beyrout, and, on December 26th, the Goeben was again damaged, this time, like the Hamidieh, by a mine in the Bosphorus. Later, having been once more repaired, she was again to figure in desultory raiding actions on Black Sea ports; but, by the end of the year, it may be said that the Russian Navy was practically in unchallenged command of the Black Sea.

Russia's position in the land campaign against Turkey was not, however, quite so satisfactory, and it was on January 2nd that there was received in London a telegram from Sir George Buchanan, our ambassador in Petrograd, destined to have a profound effect upon our Near East policy. In this it was stated that the Russian armies were being rather severely pressed in the Caucasus, and that the Russian Government hoped it might be found possible for a demonstration to be made against Turkey elsewhere. On this same day, Lord Kitchener wrote to Mr. Churchill that he did not think we could do anything that would seriously help the Russians in the Caucasus; that we had no troops to land anywhere; that the only place where a demonstration might check the sending eastward of Turkey's reinforcements was the Dardanelles; but that we should not be ready for anything big for some months. A telegram was, however, sent to Russia the next day that some demonstration would be made, although it was unlikely, it was feared, that it would have any great effect in withdrawing enemy troops from the Caucasus. To an ally in a strait that was the only reply possible. But to the British Government it meant this—that by January 3d it had definitely pledged itself to make a demonstration against the Turks, and that the Dardanelles had again been mentioned as a possible arena of attack.

Let us consider for a moment, from the geographical standpoint, the sort of problem that was presented. A little under fifty miles in length, the channel of the Dardanelles—the Hellespont of the ancients—united the Sea of Marmora on the east with the Ægean Sea and Mediterranean on the west. Its general course was from northeast to southwest, but, at the point known as the Narrows, about fourteen miles from the Ægean entrance, there was a kink in it, lying north and south, a little over four miles long. In no part of its course between the Ægean Sea and the town of Gallipoli, where it began to broaden, was it more than 7,000 yards wide, and at the Narrows it was little more than three-quarters of a mile across. Its depth in mid-channel varied from 25 to 55 fathoms, and down it set a current from the Sea of Marmora of an average speed of 1-½ knots, frequently increasing, and especially in the Narrows, after a northerly wind, to as much as 5 knots. In addition to this, cross-currents were continually met with, owing to the shallow bays on each side of the channel.

The boundaries of this channel were, on the north side, the Peninsula of Gallipoli which separated it from the Gulf of Saros, and, on the southern, the coast of Asia Minor, upon the westernmost portion of which had stood the old town of Troy. The Peninsula of Gallipoli was a narrow tongue of land, not more than three miles wide where it sprouted from the mainland, swelling to twelve just above the Narrows, but only five miles across at the Narrows themselves. It was almost wholly arid or brush-covered, with a central and irregular spine of hills, rising, in the plateau of Kilid Bahr and the heights of Krithia and Achi Baba, to 970, 700, and 600 feet respectively, and, except for a few small beaches and descending stream-beds, facing both north and south in low, precipitous cliffs.

The southern or Asiatic shores of the Dardanelles were somewhat lower and more broken, the hills inland rising to 3,000 feet, many of them being plentifully wooded. Of these the most famous was Kag Dagh, the Mount Ida of the Gods, whence, in the Homeric poems, they had looked down upon the twenty years' siege of Troy. Every yard of these shores, indeed, as of the waters between them, was instinct with real or legendary history. Across the Dardanelles, Leander had swum to Hero. Over the Narrows, Xerxes had built his bridge of boats. By the same road, a hundred and fifty years later, Alexander of Macedon had marched to the conquest of Asia; and it had been across the Narrows, in the middle of the fourteenth century, that the Turks from Asia had swarmed into Europe. Constantinople and all but a few miles around it had soon been encircled by their advance, and had been finally occupied by Sultan Mohamed II about a hundred years afterward.

That had been in 1453, and, nine years later, recognizing the vital importance of the Dardanelles, Mohamed II had built the first two forts of the many that were afterward designed to protect them. These were the Old Castles, the Castles of Europe and Asia, on either side of the Narrows; and it had not been till two hundred years later that the two New Castles had been built lower down, at the Ægean entrance. From that time onward, till 1864, the fortifications of the Dardanelles may be said to have remained mediæval; but, upon the advice of Great Britain, then Turkey's protector, new works had been undertaken, and, after the Peace of San Stefano in 1878, there had been a further strengthening of both coasts, the later fortifications having been German and the artillery provided by Krupps.

Since that date, the Dardanelles had never been forced against armed resistance, and only once before, in modern times, when the British admiral Duckworth in 1807 had made a plucky but not very long-lived demonstration before Constantinople—having had to retire, not without damage, owing to the precarious nature of his communications.

Such was the geographical aspect of the problem that the Admiralty was called upon to consider; and the fortifications protecting the Straits were arranged somewhat as follows. Commanding the entrance, on the European side, were forts at Cape Helles and Sedd-el-Bahr with two others on the Asiatic side, Fort Orkanieh and Kum Kale. These contained, between them, ten 10.2-inch guns, four 9.2-inch, and two 6-inch guns. A few miles higher up, about four below the Narrows, and just south of Point Kephez on the Asiatic coast, was Fort Dardanos, mounting five 6-inch guns in rectangular turrets, at a height of about 350 feet. Opposite this, on the European side, was Fort Soghandere. The mouth of the Narrows themselves was very strongly guarded both at Chanak in Asia and Kilid Bahr on the Peninsula; and a fleet approaching the Narrows would find itself confronted—apart from an unknown number of field-guns and howitzers—with ten 14-inch, eighteen 10.2-inch, eight 9.2-inch, and thirty-seven 6-inch guns, as well as twenty-one 8.3-inch howitzers. When it is remembered that, in addition, there were the channel minefields and land torpedo-stations to be reckoned with, and an area of manoeuvre less than four miles at the widest, it will be seen that the prospect, on paper at any rate, was a sufficiently formidable one from every standpoint. Could it reasonably be faced by the navy alone? Was an accompanying army absolutely essential? And, if so, of what numbers must the latter consist to ensure success?

These were the questions that now inevitably arose; and if, from a technical standpoint, the first could be answered satisfactorily, there would be many obvious advantages in the purely naval attack. If the navy, that was to say, could force itself unaided into the Sea of Marmora and shell Constantinople, troops that would be very valuable elsewhere need not be diverted to a new theatre of war; a great deal of tonnage would be saved at a time when the pressure on our mercantile marine was everywhere immense, while, if it were unsuccessful, such an attack could be abandoned, it was thought, without much damage to our prestige.

It was quite clear, of course, that, unless the Straits could be secured behind it, the Fleet would not remain there for very long. But, from evidence at the Government's disposal, it was believed that its arrival would have immediate and far-reaching results—that a revolution in Constantinople against the pro-German Young Turk Party would almost certainly ensue; and that Bulgaria, then neutral and undecided, might definitely ally herself with the Entente Powers. Further, the opening of the Dardanelles would at once facilitate the admission into Russia of much-needed munitions, and would release, for the benefit of the world at large, considerable supplies of cereals.

Moreover, there was another factor that forbade the question being summarily dismissed as technically impossible. For, while it was true that hitherto the bulk of naval opinion had been adverse to the use of ships in a duel with forts, and while the results of purely naval action against such defenses as those, for example, as Port Arthur, had not been encouraging, it was realized that in the present war—as regarded the land, at any rate—the value of fortresses had fallen very considerably. Hammered by modern artillery, the world had seen such strongholds as those of Liège, Namur, and Antwerp, crumbling to pieces in a few hours, and theories were once more in the melting-pot. Since the outbreak of war, too, there had been added to the navy, in the 15-inch guns of the Queen Elizabeth, the most powerful marine artillery that the world had yet seen. Could the navy then tackle the problem alone?

With all this in his mind, on January 3d, the day that we had pledged ourselves to do our best, Mr. Churchill telegraphed to Vice-Admiral Carden, then our senior officer in the Mediterranean, asking him if he thought it practicable to force the Dardanelles by the use of ships alone, assuming that only our older battleships would be employed, with a suitable escort of mine-sweepers and bumpers, and suggesting that the importance of a successful result would justify severe loss. Two days later, Vice-Admiral Carden replied that he did not think the Dardanelles could be rushed, but that they might be forced by extended operations with a large number of ships. On January 6th, Mr. Churchill invited Admiral Carden to forward detailed particulars as to the force required, the manner of its employment, and the results to be expected from it. Five days afterward, Admiral Carden replied that five operations were possible, namely, the destruction of the defenses at the entrance to the Dardanelles; action inside the Straits so as to clear the defenses up to and including Point Kephez Battery; the destruction of the defenses of the Narrows; the sweeping of a clear channel through the minefields and advance through the Narrows, followed by a reduction of the forts farther up, and an entrance into the Sea of Marmora. What Admiral Carden suggested, in fact, was a methodical invasion with a systematic demolition of the fortifications—an operation estimated to require at least a month for its performance.

This was Admiral Carden's plan, and it was of course discussed by the Admiralty War Group, though never officially by the Board of Admiralty; and it is interesting to discover the general attitude of its naval members toward the scheme. Of these by far the most influential was Lord Fisher, who seems from the first instinctively to have distrusted it, to have been occupied with preparing for other operations elsewhere, and to have left it, so long as it seemed to him likely to remain subsidiary and additional to these, in the admittedly capable hands of Admiral Sir Henry Jackson—not a regular member of the War Group, but frequently consulted—and the then Chief of the Staff, Admiral Henry Oliver. Sir Arthur Wilson seems on the whole to have taken up much the same attitude as that of Lord Fisher. Admiral Oliver believed in its possibilities, though these would largely depend, of course, upon factors, whose importance could only be determined by experiment. At the same time, he would apparently have preferred to wait until the army could coöperate on a big scale. Commodore Bartolomé, while agreeing in the preferability of a combined naval and military operation, believed that, at a push, in a purely naval attack, about half the forces could get through, though what they would do then was a matter upon which he felt himself in the dark. None of these sailors believed, since it could always be broken off, that the proposed naval attack could lead to disaster. All assumed the necessity, as seen by the War Council, from a political point of view, of immediate action; and all assumed it to be the case, on the authority of Lord Kitchener, that no troops were at the moment available.

Thus we come to the 13th of January, the very critical date when, at a meeting of the War Council, Mr. Churchill, with additional details, submitted Admiral Carden's plans. The outer forts having been destroyed, as could be done, it was believed, without the bombarding ships coming into range of their guns, the inner would be attacked both from the Straits and by indirect fire across the Gallipoli Peninsula. Three modern vessels and about a dozen old battleships would, it was thought, suffice for the operation; and these could be spared without sensibly depleting our naval strength elsewhere. Further, the Queen Elizabeth, now ready for her trials and about to carry these out at Gibraltar, could instead fledge her virgin guns upon the forts of the Dardanelles.

Such was the proposition laid before the War Council, and it was quite clear, of course, to every member of it that, with a minimum of effort, it opened a vista of very dazzling political possibilities. It was also obvious that Mr. Churchill himself believed whole-heartedly that the attempt should be made. What was the attitude of his colleagues on this most important occasion? Now, while in the end it was Mr. Asquith who would have to be responsible for any decision, it was undoubtedly Lord Kitchener, in such a matter as this, whose opinion would carry the greatest weight; but Lord Fisher and Sir Arthur Wilson were also present, though not as executive members. Lord Kitchener, after consideration, pronounced himself in favour of the plan, pointing out that, if it were to prove unsuccessful, the attack could be discontinued. Lord Fisher and Sir Arthur Wilson remained silent, and their silence was accepted as giving technical consent. Nor would it have been true to have interpreted it otherwise, although the minds of both of them were occupied with other plans. It was therefore decided to instruct the Admiralty to prepare for a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula with Constantinople as its objective—a decision that was unhappily variously understood by the different members of the Council, the majority being under the impression that all they had done was to sanction the tentative preliminaries of a promising line of action.

Mr. Churchill, however, thought otherwise, and, with his characteristic energy and enterprise, now threw himself vigorously into a scheme that more and more fully absorbed his imagination. He put himself into touch with the French Minister of Marine, who visited London and approved of the plans, and, with the consent of his Government, promised the coöperation of French naval forces in the Mediterranean. The precise sphere in which each navy was to act was determined with great care, and it was understood that Admiral Carden was to be in command of both forces.

Meanwhile, however, from a condition of not very enthusiastic consent, Lord Fisher was slowly adopting an attitude of more or less active disapproval. Already he foresaw that the proposed adventure would almost inevitably assume dimensions that would seriously endanger the larger scheme, upon which he and Admiral Wilson were hard at work. He accordingly wrote direct to Mr. Asquith on January 28th, submitting a memorandum that did not actually condemn the suggested bombardment on its own merits, but made it clear to the Premier that Lord Fisher was not in such accord with it as he had assumed.

Hearing of this letter, Mr. Churchill also wrote to Mr. Asquith, and, as a result of this, on January 28th, before the next meeting of the War Council, Mr. Asquith invited both of them to his private room for half an hour. The drama of Gallipoli, with its throne-shaking prize time after time on the brink of capture, with its pitiless slaughters, its amazing achievements, its epic presentment of human courage—the drama of Gallipoli was still in the future; but, in that half-hour, the stage was committed to it; and there can have been few discussions, during the course of the war, more pregnant with the issues of life and death.

It would be tempting to linger for a moment over the historic picture of the three men in that little room—the old Admiral, pivot of so many controversies, but admittedly the greatest living seaman; the young statesman, who had already in his crowded life played so many parts, soldier, journalist, Cabinet Minister, and who had now been a brilliant First Lord for more than three years; and the silver-haired, ruddy-cheeked Yorkshireman, to whom this was but one of a thousand issues, for which, as for his country's entrance into the war, he must take the ultimate responsibility. In that half-hour, his was chiefly to listen while the two unfolded their separate schemes. Upon the attitude of his mind toward them at the subsequent War Council, its final decision would mainly depend. He entered it, inclining of the two toward Mr. Churchill's, on the ground of its general political advantages; and indeed the preparations for carrying out the latter were already far advanced.

This became clear when, at the Council Table, Mr. Churchill explained what had been done. The Grand Duke Nicholas, then Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armies, had welcomed the idea with enthusiasm; the French Admiralty had promised coöperation; the admiral on the spot believed that it would succeed; the attack could be stopped if unsuccessful; and the necessary ships were already on the way. Further, the French were confident that the Austrian submarines could not get as far as the Dardanelles, while the Turks, as far as was known, had no submarines at all. Little loss was expected during the bombardment of the entrance, though some might result during the sweeping up of mines; the real difficulty would be the attack on the Narrows, of which Mr. Churchill submitted the plan.

Lord Fisher then said that he had understood that the question would not be raised to-day; but Mr. Asquith held that, in view of the steps that had been taken, it could not be left any longer in abeyance. Lord Kitchener considered the attack on the Dardanelles to be one of the utmost importance, and equivalent, if successful, to a victorious campaign fought by the new armies then training; and both Mr. Balfour and Sir Edward Grey dwelt on its political effect upon the Balkans. There then followed a dramatic incident. Lord Fisher, pushing his chair back, rose from the table as though about to leave the room. Lord Kitchener at once followed him, and asked him what he meant to do. He said that he would not return to the Council Table and meant to resign his position as First Sea Lord. For a few minutes the two men, each outstandingly first in his own profession, stood talking by the window, Lord Kitchener urging Lord Fisher to come back to the table. He was the only dissentient, as Lord Kitchener pointed out, everybody else being in favour of the plan; and, after a little fresh argument, Lord Fisher returned and resumed his place among the others.

Mr. Churchill had, however, noticed the incident and, after lunch, had a private talk with Lord Fisher, strongly urging him to undertake the operation, and obtaining his definite, if reluctant, consent to do so. At the afternoon meeting of the War Council, Mr. Churchill then announced that the Admiralty was willing to proceed, and, from that time onward, he never looked back. The matter, in his own words, had passed into the domain of action. By January 28th, therefore, the country was finally committed to a purely naval attack on the Dardanelles with Constantinople as its ultimate objective.

This was the decision, but almost immediately—almost insensibly in fact—the scope of the operations began to widen. From the outset it had been clear that the silencing of the forts would demand a certain number of landing-parties, although it was believed that these need only be small, consisting principally of Marines. Lord Kitchener himself was then of the opinion that, once the ships had completed their passage, the garrison of the Peninsula would evacuate it, and it would cease to have any military importance. He was also quite definite in his statement that there were no more British troops available for the purpose, an opinion which Mr. Churchill did not share, though he was, of course, overborne by Lord Kitchener's authority. Nevertheless the idea of military coöperation grew, as it were, unofficially in the minds of those responsible. Sir Henry Jackson, in a memorandum to be adopted or not, according to Admiral Carden's discretion—pointed out that the naval bombardment was not recommended as a sound operation, unless a strong military force was ready to assist, or at least to follow it up.

Meanwhile the Turkish attack upon Egypt had been defeated; certain of our plans in France and Flanders had been altered; and, on February 16th, at an informal meeting of Ministers, a very important decision was arrived at. This was to send the 29th Division, hitherto destined for service on the Western Front, to Lemnos, an island about sixty miles from the Gallipoli Peninsula—the Division sailing, it was hoped, within ten days. At the same time arrangements were to be made for a further force to be sent if necessary from Egypt; horse-boats were to accompany the 29th Division; arrangements were to be made to assemble a large number of lighters and tugs in the Levant; and the Admiralty was also to build special transports and lighters, suitable for the conveying and landing of 50,000 men where these might be wanted. The military effort was already in embryo, therefore, before the purely naval attack had been begun; and, with all this in mind, we can now transfer our attention to the actual scene of conflict.

It was on February 19, 1915, that Admiral Carden decided to open the bombardment of the entrance forts, namely those of Cape Helles and Sedd-el-Bahr on the northern and European side, and Kum Kale and Orkanieh on the southern or Asiatic. Admiral Carden himself, then fifty-eight, had had a varied and adventurous career; had taken part in the Egyptian campaign of 1882; receiving the medal and the Khedive's Bronze Star; had been present, two years later, at the Eastern Sudan campaign; and, as a commander in 1897, had been with the punitive expedition that followed the Benin massacres. He had reached flag-rank in 1908, and had been Rear-Admiral to the Atlantic Fleet for a year, being the Admiral Superintendent of Malta Dockyard at the outbreak of war.

Under his command, besides a flotilla of destroyers and the seaplane ship Ark Royal, were three old English battleships—the Vengeance, that had already been employed on the Belgian coast; the Cornwallis, that had been at the Nore, in the Third Fleet, christened the "Forlorn Hope"; and the Triumph, formerly the Chilian Libertad, that had been acting as Depot Ship at Hong Kong. With these were the Agememnon, a more modern battleship, though about to have been passed into the Second Fleet; and the Inflexible, which we have last heard of helping to sink the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau near the Antarctic Circle. In addition there were under his command the Suffren, Gaulois, and Bouvet, three old French battleships that, the summer before, had not even been in Commission. All these vessels, however, with the exception of the Triumph, carried 12-inch guns and therefore outranged the forts; and, between them, they mounted a secondary armament of fourteen 7.5-inch, ten 9.2-inch, ten 6.4-inch, twenty-four 6-inch, eighteen 5.5-inch, and sixteen 4-inch guns.

Beginning at eight in the morning, a long-distance shelling was continued till a quarter to three in the afternoon, when the Vengeance, Cornwallis, and Triumph, with the three French battleships—less valuable vessels that could justifiably be risked—drew in to shore and opened fire with their secondary armament of smaller guns. It then became clear that, in spite of the previous five hours' bombardment, the forts had not been silenced, for they immediately opened fire. They effected no damage, however. By nightfall, those on the European side had apparently been put out of action, but one of the Asiatic forts was still replying when the light failed and operations ceased.

Bad weather followed, and it was not till February 25th that the attack could be seriously taken up again, the Fleet having been strengthened in the interval, notably by the Queen Elizabeth with her 15-inch guns. Together with the Irresistible, the Agamemnon, and the French battleship Gaulois, she began a long-range bombardment early in the morning, and this was followed as before by an attack at close quarters—the Vengeance, Cornwallis, and Suffren again taking their part in this, with the Charlemagne and, later in the day, the Triumph and Albion. Even so it was not until evening that the last gun was silenced, and the trawlers, under cover of the fleet, were able to begin clearing away the mines.

Nor could the results of these two days' bombardments have been said to hold great promise for the future. So little damage had been done by the first day's firing that the batteries were all active again by the second; and, at the end of this, when the demolition-parties landed, they found seventy per cent. of the guns still in serviceable condition. Few more dangerous duties, under such circumstances, can be imagined than those undertaken by these little detachments; and, both in the courage with which they were faced and the coolness with which they were completed, the records of the navy and the Royal Marines were more than fully sustained. Particularly prominent was the act of Lieutenant-Commander E. G. Robinson, who on February 26th went alone, under heavy fire, into a hostile gun-position, that might well have been occupied, destroyed a 4-inch gun single-handed, and then returned to his landing-party for a further charge to destroy a second gun that he had found there. Owing to the fact that their white uniforms rendered them so conspicuous as targets, Lieutenant-Commander Robinson refused to allow his comrades to accompany him on either occasion. For this act he was very justly awarded the Victoria Cross.

Meanwhile at home, the lack of unanimity, of whole-hearted enthusiasm in the necessary team-work, and, more than this, of a detailed conception of what was actually intended were beginning to bear their fruits. Thus it had been decided, in the first place—and this had greatly influenced both Lord Fisher and Sir Arthur Wilson—that, if the naval attack were to become unpromising, it would be broken off and its losses cut. That had also been Lord Kitchener's view, but, on February 24th, he stated, at a meeting of the War Council, that if the Fleet could not get through without help, the army would have to come to its aid. By Mr. Churchill that had evidently long been accepted, and preparations, as we have seen, were well under way. Transports had been collected for the despatch of the 29th Division, and it was hoped that it would begin to sail on the 22nd. Two days before, however, Lord Kitchener had decided, for reasons doubtless important, but without consulting his colleagues, that this Division could not be spared, and he had countermanded the transports.

Against this reversal of policy at a critical moment Mr. Churchill made the strongest protest, and said that he must disclaim all responsibility if disaster occurred in Turkey owing to the insufficiency of troops. Lord Kitchener for his part asserted that the forces in Egypt, on the spot, and on the way there were at present quite adequate, and that the 29th Division was not then essential to success—a view that the War Council supported, the 29th Division being detained in England.

While now determined that the affair should not be broken off, Lord Kitchener still believed that the navy would need but little military help, and, on February 24th, he wired to Sir John Maxwell, then commanding the forces in Egypt, and General Birdwood, who was to command the Australian and New Zealand contingent on the Peninsula, that it was not intended to land parties on Gallipoli, except under cover of the naval guns, to help in the total demolition of the forts, when the ships should get to close quarters.

Two days later, Sir John Maxwell replied that, in the opinion of a French officer, formerly military attaché at Constantinople, a military expedition was essential to the opening of the passage for the Allied Fleets; that a landing would be extremely hazardous; and that the Peninsula was very strongly organized for defence. Nevertheless Lord Kitchener retained his opinion and telegraphed the same evening to General Birdwood, that as far as could be seen, till the passage was actually secured, he would be limited to such minor operations as the final destruction of the batteries, though it was possible that he might have to organize expeditions to deal with inland concealed howitzers such as the ships could not destroy.

General Birdwood had not then sailed for the Dardanelles, and, at a meeting of the War Council on March 3d, Lord Kitchener announced that it might after all be possible to send the 29th Division, but that he proposed to leave the matter open till March 10th, when he hoped to have heard from General Birdwood. By this time, the entrance had been cleared, and for several days the ships had been operating in the Straits themselves, bombarding Forts Dardanos and Sogandhere, protecting the mine-sweepers, and landing Marines—the latter suffering a reverse at Kum Kale with about fifty casualties.

This was on March 4th, and the next day General Birdwood, who had arrived earlier than was expected, telegraphed to Lord Kitchener that he was very doubtful whether the navy could force the passage unaided; that the previous attacks had been comparatively easy, since the ships could stand off and shoot from anywhere; but that in the Straits they were being bothered by unknown fire. Twenty-four hours afterward, he sent another telegram maintaining the same point of view. On March 6th, a preliminary bombardment of the forts of the Narrows took place, the Queen Elizabeth and Agamemnon firing over the Peninsula from the Gulf of Saros, themselves being hit but not seriously damaged by concealed Turkish batteries on the Peninsula, yet without obtaining, as was afterward discovered, any appreciable results. The attack was renewed the next day, and it was believed that Fort Chanak had been silenced, several of our vessels having been hit but none of them placed out of action. In these operations, the Ocean, Majestic, Albion, Prince George, Lord Nelson, and Vengeance also participated, together with the French Suffren, Bouvet, Charlemagne, and Gaulois. So we come to March 10th, on which date Lord Kitchener finally released the 29th Division, the transports sailing on March 16th, three weeks later than had been intended, and three days after Sir Ian Hamilton, who had been given command of the Expeditionary Army, left England. The time was now approaching when, if it were to be made at all, the navy must attempt its decisive thrust; and telegrams concerning this were already being exchanged between Mr. Churchill and Admiral Carden. On March 11th, Mr. Churchill wired to the effect that, while Admiral Carden's skill and patience in avoiding casualties had been highly appreciated at the Admiralty, the results to be gained by success were deemed to be sufficiently important to justify a necessary loss in men and ships. The whole operation might be decided, and consequences of a decisive character be produced by the turning of the corner at Chanak. It was recognized that the Admiral would have to press hard, at a certain point of the action, to obtain such a decision; and it was desired to know whether, in his opinion, the suitable occasion had now arrived.

To this Admiral Carden replied two days later that he considered this stage to have been reached, and that, in order to ensure his communications immediately he entered the Sea of Marmora, military operations on a large scale should at once be commenced. On March 15th, Mr. Churchill replied that Sir Ian Hamilton would arrive on the 16th, and that Admiral Carden should consult with him as to the concerted steps to be taken. On March 16th, however, Admiral Carden, for reasons of health, had to resign his command, and, on the next day, Vice-Admiral Sir John Michael de Robeck was appointed by telegram to succeed him.

In this telegram, Mr. Churchill presumed that, in Admiral de Robeck's judgment, the proposed operations were practicable, but asked him not to hesitate to say so if he held a contrary opinion. Replying the same day, Admiral de Robeck made it clear that the suggested plan of campaign received his full concurrence; that the success of the undertaking would depend on his ability to clear the minefields before forcing the Narrows; and that to do this successfully the forts must be silenced while the mine-sweeping was in progress. He further stated that he had had an entirely satisfactory interview with Sir Ian Hamilton, General d'Amade, and Admiral Wemyss—afterward to become First Sea Lord.

On March 18th, therefore, under excellent weather conditions, the decisive attempt was begun, with an advance fringe of destroyers and trawlers to clear a channel for the bombarding squadrons. Work upon the minefields, indeed, had already been in progress since February 25th, in which these trawler mine-sweepers, under Commander W. Mellor, had persisted with unfailing gallantry. With the current always, and the wind frequently, opposed to them; with every minefield accurately ranged, and hotly contested by the enemy's guns, they had suffered the severest casualties both in men and material without for a moment desisting from their task. And, manned, as they were, largely by reservists and men hitherto unaccustomed to war, they had exhibited qualities of heroism and seamanship not even excelled by the destroyer patrols.

That is saying a good deal, since these latter, throughout the winter and under the worst circumstances, had maintained a standard of cheerful efficiency as high as any that the navy had ever reached. Long before the naval expedition had been decided upon and throughout the critical discussions in London, they had sentinelled the Ægean, the Syrian coast, and the mouth of the Dardanelles. With their decks never dry, with their galley-fires out, with all on board drenched to the skin, they had ridden out storm after storm in these notoriously treacherous seas. Servants of everybody, succourers of the wounded, and general suppliers of the landing-parties, none—not even the submarines presently to be considered—were to play a nobler part in the Gallipoli story.

It was at about a quarter to eleven in the morning that the great bombardment began, the Queen Elizabeth, Inflexible, Agamemnon, and Lord Nelson, stationed near the entrance, opening fire at about ten and a half miles range. These four battleships took for their targets the forts at Kilid Bahr and Chanak; while the Triumph and Prince George, at closer range, engaged the forts at Soghandere, Kephez, and Dardanos. This action was continued for an hour and a half, when a French squadron, magnificently handled, advanced up the Straits as far as Point Kephez, and, at close range, engaged the forts of the Narrows.

The Heroic Record of the British Navy: A Short History of the Naval War, 1914-1918

THE HEROIC RECORDof theBRITISH NAVY