B43.
THE
OVER PATROL
By
Jackstaff
ff
Presented to the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY
by the
ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY
1980
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive
in 2007 witii funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
littp://www.archive.org/details/doverpatrolstraiOObennuoft
Captain Carfenteh
From a photograph taken immediately after he received the V.C.
4^^^ ;3iJI^'^
THE
DOVER PATR
THE STRAITS : ZEEBRUGGE : OSTEND
INCLUDING A NARRATIVE OF THE OPERATIONS
IN THE SPRING OF 1918
BY
"JACKS TAFF^^
(J. t. BENNETT)
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
H. W. WILSON
Author of " Ironclads in Action "
ILLUSTRATED
^ !i:S:ii ^
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS LTD.
8 ST, MARTIN'S STREET, W.C.2
First printed 1919
FBiKTSD nr OBBAT bbitaut bt the complete pbbss
WEST HOBWOOD, LONDON
INTRODUCTIOJN
The author of this book writes with personal
knowledge and experience of the work done
by the Dover Patrol, which he watched at
its difficult and dangerous business.
Its functions were of the highest impor-
tance. It had in the first place to guard the
great route to France, the main artery of our
Army on the Western Front, from attack
both by German surface craft and sub-
marines. It achieved this task with extra-
ordinary success against a most energetic,
brave, and enterprising enemy. In no single
instance was a British transport with troops
on board assailed by this enemy.
So vigilant was the watch of our Navy, so
admirably were its measures concerted, that
a vast traffic was conducted almost with-
out let or hindrance. Day after day leave
boats, transports, vessels with material, am-
munition, and supplies, moved to and fro
under the convoy of our destroyers, sub-
5
6 INTRODUCTION
marines, and aircraft, almost as though there
had been no war at a distance of sixty miles,
or less, from the excellent German bases in
Flanders. Only the destroyers steaming on
the beam, ready for action, and (when the
weather permitted) the little airships and
seaplanes buzzing overhead, told the chance
passenger that not many miles away in
strongly fortified ports lurked the enemy's
craft incessantly watching for an opportunity
to strike. The Germans, as is known from
the statements of their submarine com-
manders, hoped at the outset to cut this
h'ne of communications. Their failure to do
so was one of their greatest disappointments
in the war, and must be ascribed solely to
the efficiency of the British Navy.
A second function, connected with the first,
was to close the Straits of Dover against
enemy submarines and thus prevent them
from running down Channel to the waters
near its mouth where they could cruise with
deadly result. This was achieved in 1918 at
the price of many sacrifices, through the
heroism of our drifter and trawler crews,
who guarded the great barrage closing the
INTRODUCTION 7
Straits. The fishermen engaged in this work
were exposed to great danger from attack
by surface craft. Their vessels were poorly
armed and ill-fitted to meet the powerful
German destroyers. They had to be em-
ployed because in the overwhelming demands
upon our warship resources more formidable
vessels could not be provided.
But they did their work. They accom-
pHshed their mission. Towards the summer
of 1918 the Straits of Dover had become
impassable for any but the boldest and most
skilful U-boat commanders, and even of
them heavy toll was taken. Thus, before
Zeebrugge and Ostend passed into the hands
of the Allies, they had become useless to the
enemy. The Germans had been paralysed
by our naval measures.
A third function, which the Navy per-
formed under Vice- Admiral Sir Roger Keyes,
was that of closing the holes from which the
submarines issued. In some of the most
critical hours of the war, the raids on Ostend
and Zeebrugge lifted the spirit of the nation
and showed it what its glorious sea service
could do. I am revealing no secrets when I
8 INTRODUCTION
say that but for peremptory orders the
author of this book would have been among
the eye-witnesses of those raids and would
have shared the perils of the combatants.
In the last months of the naval war the
Dover Patrol passed from the defensive to a
most determined and resolute offensive. Zee-
brugge and Ostend were bombed and bom-
barded with such assiduity — at what price
Captain Bewsher's "Bombing of Bruges"
tells us — ^that the enemy was given no
leisure for attack. These operations will
always be a model ; the history of them is a
brilliant page in our records, to be compared
with Nelson's offensive against the invasion
flotilla at Boulogne in 1801 for energy and
aggressiveness, and of them we may say, in
Nelson's words, that " more determined,
persevering courage " was never witnessed,
and " greater zeal and ardent desire to
distinguish themselves by an attack on the
enemy was never shown than by all the
captains, officers, and crews " of the British
vessels engaged.
The power of the German defences was
great ; the heaviest guns were mounted in
INTRODUCTION 9
rich profusion on the Flanders coast ; every
device of man was employed by the enemy.
Because of this, when we bombarded, our
bombardments had to be carried out at long
range. This was wise tactics as the whole
history of naval war is against engaging
forts on land at decisive range with ships.
Yet the fortifications never stopped our
night onslaughts ; and it was a fitting close
to this war in the Straits that the King of
the Belgians paid his first visit to the recap-
tured ports in a British war vessel.
H. W. WILSON
CONTENTS
PAGE
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 13
I. THE NAVY'S FRONT-LINE TRENCH 17
II. THE PATROL GOES " OVER THE TOP " 26
III. TWISTING THE DRAGON'S TAIL AND
WHAT WE GAINED BY IT 37
IV. THE FIGHT UPON THE MOLE 47
V. THROUGH THE JAWS OF HELL 61
VI. A SUBMARINE'S IMMORTAL EXPLOIT 69
VII. HOW THE BRUGES CANAL WAS
BOTTLED UP 88
VIII. THE CRAFT THAT KEPT THE RING 94
IX. THE FIRST ATTACK UPON OSTEND 103
X. " FINISHING THE JOB " 112
XI. THE HOT TRIANGLE 125
XII. THE AIRMEN'S PART IN OSTEND FIGHT 138
XIII. SOME STORIES OF OUR WAR EAGLES 154
XIV. THE GUNS IN THE DUNES 167
XV. THE NIGHT WATCH ON THE BRINE 178
XVI. THE NAVY'S BULLDOGS 189
XVII. TWIN PILLARS OF SEA-POWER 203
11
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Facing
Captain Carpenter, V.C. Fnmtitpiece page
In the Foretop of the " Vindictive " 48
Members of the Crew of the " Vindictive " 64
The Upper Works of the " Vindictive " 96
Aerial Photograph showing the Position of
the Block-ships at Zeebrugge 112
Some of the Crew of the " Vindictive " among
THE Debris 144
The Fore Funnel of the " Vindictive " after
THE Fight 176
Officers of the " Vindictive " 206
£mm%
f^ »?■ !?C ni ^
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
To fall foul of any person or any thing is no
pleasure to a mild-mannered man, but to fall
foul of an armistice is incredibly unfortunate.
Yet that has, to some extent, been the fate
of the present book, and much as I contemn
" authors' prefaces " in the majority of
books, one is painfully necessary in the
present case.
To apologize for a book is to show faint-
heartedness as to its execution, but an
apology must be made for the conditions in
which this volume appears. The work was
projected soon after the glittering events of
Zeebrugge and Ostend, and was finished
before the cessation of hostilities, but delay
followed delay until now the war and the
stories of the Belgian coast are grouping
themselves in the background of history.
The reader realizes that in those breathless
days before November 11 there existed a
censorship which exercised a certain restraint
13
14 AUTHOR'S PREFACE
on the publication of naval writings. I do
not quarrel with the censorship. Personally,
I think these pages, in view of the circum-
stances of the time, were gently treated.
But there were inevitably a number of
details which would have completed the book
and which are at present lacking.
The book is not incomplete in the sense
that there are gaps in its unfolding of the
picture of the " Dover Patrol," but I feel
that there are many points which would
fuiish off the canvas, and I ask the reader to
consider it a book written in war-time and
produced in war-time, and judge it accord-
ingly. Many readers, I am sure, will read
Chapter VI and wonder when they are
coming to anything that will identify the
immortal submarine. I regret to say they
will search in vain. But, as a little later,
on p. 101, they will find a reference to sub-
marine " C 3," they may go on their way
rejoicing, for they may rest assured that that
boat was the one in question. Of course it
is a great deal to ask a reader to do, this
darting among my pages, but now he knows
the explanation I put my faith in him.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 15
There is one more point to which I would
refer now I have my reader face to face and
can talk plainly to him. A friend with
whom I discussed this book has just said to
me, with that tone of kindly criticism which
friends adopt and which hurts the most,
" People do not want war books now."
That is a vague statement which is some-
what difficult to understand.
There must be a great reaction against the
reading of war books. That is undoubted,
but the reaction will be, to my mind, against
the ephemeral books on various aspects of
land warfare. Even ephemeral books about
the Navy, like this one, must tell the reader
far more than he realized before. The Navy's
secrets have been well and truly guarded.
There have been comparatively few " war
books " about the Navy, and that is my
excuse for writing at all about the "Dover
Patrol." So few people knew anything what-
ever about it. And if I have been able to
introduce the reader in the smallest way into
one of the secrets of Britain's sea-power I
shall have gained my reward.
History cannot perish although many of
16 AUTHOR'S PREFACE
its writers do — and with some justification.
So that if I have been able to cast a little
light on the history of the " Dover Patrol "
I am well satisfied.
J. J. B.
THE NAVY'S FRONT-LINE TRENCH
Without some prefatory account of the
Dover Patrol and its activities, any narrative
dealing with the attacks upon Zeebrugge
and Ostend would be like framing an un-
finished picture, since these smashing blows
at the enemy were dealt as a result of the
Dover Patrol being in existence. They were
a manifestation on a superlative scale of its
fighting spirit, the quality of which the
enemy had tasted often before in smaller
actions.
There has been a Dover Patrol practically
as long as there has been a war. But the
name, whilst a convenient enough one for
official purposes, conveys to the general
public only the shadowiest notion of what
this particular unit of our Fleet is held
responsible for in the way of war work. Less,
indeed, is known of what the Patrol has
done, of what it does for the Allies every day,
17 B
18 THE DOVER PATROL
than of what is expected from it. The
view prevalently held of the Dover Patrol as
consisting of a number of ships which go
out for cruises when they feel inclined to do
so, and return to port after they get tired of
looking for an enemy who bashfully declines
to show himself, errs as widely from truth as
anything well could do.
As a matter of actual fact this naval force
comprises not one patrol alone, but many.
So multifarious are its duties, so important
an influence has the efiicient way in which
they are being performed upon the war along
the Western Front, as well as upon conditions
in the United Kingdom, that the Dover
Patrol will be placed by history alongside
the Blockade of Brest as an outstanding
instance of what sea-power can do for the
nation that holds it and knows how to use
rightly this all-potent weapon.
The imit of our Fleet which has its admini-
strative centre at Dover (and that, though
not so pithy, is a more adequate description
than " patrol," a word which conveys to the
popular mind an idea of limitations which do
not exist in this case) has many fimctions to
NAVY'S FRONT-LINE TRENCH 19
discharge. Upon it falls all the convoy work
for the short cross-Channel passages. It has
to escort to France the vessels carrying
troops there. Officers and men returning to
" Blighty " must rely on its mine-sweepers to
keep a clear passage for the leave boat, and
upon its agile destroyers to see that argosy
of happy souls safely from shore to shore.
Our hospital ships are dependent upon it for
protection against murder, hiding ghoulishly
beneath the waves. And these are but one
part of the responsibilities laid upon it.
Much of the stores needed by our armies in
France have to be carried from port to port
under its guardianship. For nearly every
ounce of his rations, for nearly all the
uncountable millions of cigarettes he smokes,
for much of the clothing he wears ; for what
he eats himself and for what he " feeds " to
'* Gerry " in different ways, Thomas Atkins
is mainly beholden to the Dover Patrol.
And as there are many thousands of tons
of military stores passed across Channel
every day of the year, convoying munition
ships is anything but a light task by itself.
Geographical circimistance makes the area
20 THE DOVER PATROL
within which the Dover Patrol plays vigilant
watchdog the most vitally important to the
Allies of any stretch where land and water
meet. If the Patrol were less unsleeping, so
that the enemy — ^who does not fail through
want of trying — once succeeded in cutting
our lines of communication where they
cross salt water here, and kept them
severed for a short while only, the advantage
thus gained would be worth more to him
than half a dozen " big pushes " on land..
One need not enter upon any long disquisi-
tion as to just how and why this would be
so. A brief study of the map will explain
the matter clearly enough to any person of
average intelligence.
But the Dover Patrol is charged with
other duties, and many of them, as well as
that of acting as a permanent " fatigue
party " for our Army across the Straits,
though that job of itself is no sinecure.
There are no little things on the fighting side
of this war. Being the sea sentinel keeping
immediate watch and ward over the Port of
London, what happens within the borders of
Patrol affects the daily lives of shore folk in
NAVY'S FRONT-LINE TRENCH; 21
our own country much more closely than the
majority of them know. Probably no man
or woman in the metropolis looks upon the
Patrol or what it does as being an intimate
concern of theirs. They regard it as a
section of the Fleet stationed a bit nearer to
them than some other sections, but beyond
that of no greater importance to them than
the far-away Grand Fleet divisions half
hidden in the northern mists. Get close up
to facts, look them squarely in the face, and
one sees what an erroneous conception this
is. In a very real sense of the comparison,
the ships of the Dover Patrol exercise much
the same functions for the benefit of the
people of London as do the policemen who
walk its streets.
The Patrol has two bases — ^viz. Dover and
Dunkirk — and its sphere of influence extends
for a considerable direction on either hand of
these towns. Whether coming up Channel
or down the North Sea, all trading vessels
bound for London must make the final
stages of their voyage along sea roads regu-
larly policed by the fighting ships of the
Patrol and cleared of mines by its trawlers,
22 THE DOVER PATROL
which are the " street cleansing department "
in this important stretch of home waters.
If the Patrol did not guard them with both
sword and shield these trading vessels would
have a very perilous time of it getting into
port. On their way there they have actually
to pass imder the eyes of the enemy — right
close under them too. Zeebrugge and Ostend,
once of great value to the enemy as gateways
from the canals of Flanders into the North
Sea, are now useless to him for that pur-
pose. The attacks made on these places by
the Dover Patrol, which are described in
later chapters, robbed them of all utility to
the Hun as points of issue. But the outer
harbours of each still provide convenient
anchorage for his torpedo vessels and other
light craft. By passing them along the
shore behind his minefields the enemy has
brought down to Zeebrugge particularly a
strong flotilla of his finest destroyers. And
there they lie impotent. The Dover Patrol
keeps such a close watch upon them that they
cannot yet get out to sea in the daytime, and
so far, at any rate, have been prevented from
making any *' tip-and-run " dashes by night.
NAVY'S FRONT-LINE TRENCH 23
Nothing would suit our seamen better
than for the enemy to come out boldly and
fight, but he will not. So the position, as it
stands, is just this : all London-bound traffic,
all merchantmen using the Straits, pass right
under the noses of some thirty odd of the
enemy's best destroyers, which, though
willing enough to wound, are desperately
afraid to strike. The Hun lies in his lair
watching our trading ships go by, like a
hungry dog crouched in its kennel with eyes
fixed greedily upon a tempting bone that it
fears to spring out and seize, knowing that
immediately it did so somebody waiting
near by with a big stick would promptly hit
it on the head. The Dover Patrol holds the
big stick, and is always so ready to use it
that the Hun dog, personified by this force
of destroyers, dare not put a head outside its
lurking-place.
What would be the situation if this whole-
some fear of the Patrol had not been driven
so deeply into the heart of the enemy ?
From Ostend or Zeebrugge to the Thames
Estuary or the Downs is only a very short
run indeed for a fast destroyer. Were the
24 THE DOVER PATROL
enemy able to make any considerable use of
his Belgian ports as bases for raiding our
shipping from, as happily he is not, the
Downs would soon be emptied, and there
would be little or no seaborne trade going in
or out of London river. As it is, merchant-
men come and go between London and the
world at large, enjoying an immunity from
enemy attack that speaks highly for the
efficiency of the force which secures this
for them. It is well that the people who
benefit by it should realize what this phase
of the Dover Patrol's work means to our
land population ; how closely it touches
their daily lives ; how dependent they
are upon it for many things not outstand-
ingly apparent, but the value of which
would be recognized immediately they were
lost.
And this Patrol acts literally as " Keeper
of the Gate." It is common knowledge
that except for just one gateway through
them, the Straits of Dover are impregnably
walled across. By day every cable's length
of this barrier is closely watched. By
night vigilance redoubles. Huge flares bum
NAVY'S FRONT-LINE TRENCH 25
along the " wall " in beacon fashion, giving
no opportunity for " U " boats to creep
through it under cover of darkness. The
duty of watching this " wall " and guarding
the gate falls upon the Patrol.
II
THE PATROL GOES " OVER THE TOP "
What has been said about preventive mea-
sures should not lead one to infer incorrectly
that naval strategy in the Patrol area con-
cerns itself wholly with the defensive. Opera-
tions of this nature are conducted on an
extensive scale because they constitute an
essential part of naval war. It is just as
vital to protect our own shipping as to
destroy that of the enemy. The geographi-
cal position of its territory makes the Dover
Patrol, as already stated, the front-line trench
of the war by sea, and a considerable part of
its activities are of a front-line character.
Every day the Patrol comes into fighting
touch with the Hun somewhere or other.
Offensive tactics have for this long time past
filled a big place in its scheme of operations.
The chance of a real ding-dong sea-fight
occurs but seldom, as the enemy does his
utmost to avoid such encounters.
26
" OVER THE TOP " 27
The Broke and the Swift taught him a
lesson. Just after midnight on April 20,
1917, these two destroyer leaders whilst
patrolling the Channel fell in with a flotilla
of German torpedo craft. It was a calm,
intensely dark night. When the enemy were
first sighted they were about 600 yards
distant, trying to rush past unseen. Failing
in this, all along their line gongs boomed
orders in response to which the Germans
immediately opened fire with every available
gun. Captain A. M. Peck, of the Swift, our
leading ship, gladly accepted the challenge.
Unhesitatingly he swung his ship roimd and
endeavoured to ram the foremost German.
By a hand's-breadth or so he missed her.
Running down a swiftly moving vessel in an
inky-black atmosphere with only momentary
gun-flashes as a guide is " chancy " work.
On went the Swift, straight through the foe-
man's lines. Spinning round she torpedoed
one of his craft, then sprang hot-foot at
another. Terror-stricken lest the Swift's
sharp bows should find him, this German
shut down his guns and fled hurriedly into
the darkness. After him raced the Swift,
28 THE DOVER PATROL
keen as a hawk after its quarry. For as long
as she could do so with any chance of success
the Swift pursued. Decreasing speed due to
the injuries she had received finally obliged
her to break off the chase. So she turned
back to seek another opponent. Whilst
nosing about with this end in view, the
Swift saw the loom of a stationary enemy
hull in the blackness ahead of her. Creep-
ing warily towards it, with her guns ready for
action, the Swift came finally upon an extra-
ordinary scene. The German boat was sink-
ing. Her crew had mustered on deck, and
were shouting in chorus : " We surrender !
We surrender ! " Knowing how little the
word of a Hun may be relied upon, the Swift
approached cautiously, in case this " white
flag " declaration masked some intended act
of treachery. Whilst the Swift was picking
her way warily towards them the Germans
ceased shouting. Quite suddenly their vessel
heeled slowly over — and sank. Certain at
last that no trap had been laid for her, the
Swift switched on her searchlights, lowered
her boats and set about ihe work of picking
up the German sailors from the water.
" OVER THE TOP " 2d
Meanwhile, her consort, the Broke, had
been tight-locked with the enemy. She
fought him in the true old-Navy fashion,
which until this action it had seemed that
modern conditions would prevent from ever
being revived. Being second in line the
Broke was uncovered to the rest of the
enemy after the Swift marked down her
opponent and sought to close with him.
Captain E. R. G. R. Evans, C.B. (the well-
known Antarctic explorer), who commanded
the Broke, torpedoed the second enemy
vessel. Then he turned upon the Germans
every one of the Brokers guns that could be
made to bear. Six enemy destroyers were
opposed to her. All of them were driving at
full speed. Flames pouring out of their funnels
showed the boats up with a weird distinct-
ness that gave Captain Evans his chance to
strike surely. And strike surely he did.
Porting helm he drove the Broke head fore-
most at the third enemy vessel, crashing into
her squarely just behind the after funnel.
With the Brokers razor-like bows embedded
deeply in the German's hull the two vessels
became fast clenched. A desperate hand-to-
80 THE DO\TER PATROL
hand fight ensued. At point-blank range
the Broke swept the German's decks with all
possible guns. And she herself had to bear
the brunt of a furious attack in return. Two
German destroyers poured into her a destruc-
tive fire. Of the eighteen men working the
Brake's foremost guns soon only six were
left. These, headed by Midshipman Donald
A. Gyles, R.N.R., who was wounded in the
eye, kept these guns in action.
Now the crew of the destroyer with which
the Broke was at hand-grips swarmed over
the forecastle and tried to capture the Broke
by boarding her. On they came, a shouting,
frenzied mob, sweeping right past the muzzles
of the forward guns, whose flashes blinded
and confused them. Midshipman Gyles,
though half blinded by blood, stood up to
them single-handed, using an automatic
pistol. One German who threw himself upon
Gyles and tried to wrench the pistol away
from him was bayoneted by Able Seaman
Ingleson. Furiously and fast waged the
fight on the Brokers narrow decks, where
dead and dying lay beneath the feet of
the combatants. Using cutlasses, rifles, and
" OVER THE TOP " 31
bayonets, the survivors of the Brokers crew
threw themselves at the boarding party, and
a strenuous encounter ended in all the
invaders being swept over the ship's side,
save two who lay down and feigned death.
These were taken prisoners. Wrenching her-
self free from the enemy, which by now was
in a sinking condition (it was the boat which
the Swijt saw go down later), the Broke made
an unsuccessful attempt to attack a second
German. But though this failed the Broke
hit another with a torpedo. Out of the six
enemy destroyers two only were now left in
action. The Broke attacked these. But a
shell penetrating her boiler and disabling her
main engine at this moment stopped her
from hanging on to them, and they slipped
away. The Broke proceeded towards an
enemy vessel which was burning some little
distance off. Noticing the Broke coming, the
crew of this craft began to call for mercy
and shout loudly to be saved. The British
Navy never turns a deaf ear to such an
appeal from a beaten foeman. In response
to it the Broke began limping painfully to-
wards the burning ship with the intention of
82 THE DOVER PATROL
taking off the crew at whatever risk to her-
self. But the Germans who had been thus
clamouring for mercy suddenly opened fire
upon the vessel that was coming to succour
them. The Brake's reply to this mean act
was four rounds from her own guns, followed
by a torpedo that struck the foe amidships.
Being unable to move out of his range the
Broke had perforce to protect herself in this
way against any further treachery on the
part of the enemy. As a result of this
brilliant engagement two, and probably three,
enemy destroyers out of the flotilla of six
were sunk. This flotilla had come from
Zeebrugge with the intention of raiding
British shipping in the Straits of Dover when
the Swift and the Broke fell upon them.
The lesson thus taught to the Hun was
underlined and otherwise emphasized on
March 22 of this year. Between 4 and 5 a.m.
on that day the enemy's Zeebrugge flotilla
was again caught by ships of the Dover
Patrol and again suffered a heavy defeat.
The flotilla had bombarded Dunkirk and
was stealing homeward when a force of two
British and three French destroyers led by
" OVER THE TOP " 33
H.M.S. Botha fell upon it. Foggy weather
prevailed at the time, and the Germans
endeavoured by taking advantage of this to
slip away without coming to an engagement.
They did not want to fight. But the Allied
force held them up and made them. As a
consequence of the encounter four of the
enemy craft were destroyed, whilst on our
side the casualties were infinitesimal, only
one destroyer being damaged.
So much the worse did he get of these and
sundry other " scraps " that the Hun has
persistently refused all challenges to open
combat ever since. If his ships do venture
out of the harbour they promptly bolt in
again whenever danger threatens in the shape
of our warships. Also, the enemy shows a
distinct preference for cruising behind the
shelter of his minefields to steaming in the
open sea.
Although this cautious timidity limits
their risks, it does not ensure absolute
immunity from attack for his ships. Rarely
does a day go by without some portion or
other of the Dover Patrol hammering the
Hun at some point along the Belgian coast.
34 THE DOVER PATROL
Out from Dunkirk, with slow ungainly gait,
trudges a batch of monitors, accompanied by
motor-launches and other satellites for mak-
ing smoke-screens. At the chosen spot,
which may be off Zeebrugge or Ostend, or
where troublesome coastal batteries are
known to be located — and all these receive
due attention in turn — ^the smoke-makers
start putting up their screens. From behind
this cover the monitors train their big guns
shoreward. Up go the muzzles to extreme
elevation and the pounding begins. Air-
craft are meanwhile directing the fall of the
shot and incidentally themselves doing some-
thing towards worrying the Hun. Quite
commonly he gets it three ways at once.
Monitors shell him from the sea, aircraft
bomb him from overhead, and siege-guns
bombard him along the coast. The Hun
does not take all this lying down. He has
strewn the Belgian coast so full of big guns
that they bristle up amongst the sand-dunes
as thickly as prickles on a hedgehog's back.
But whilst they are there they cannot be
used against the Allies at any other place ;
neither can the men who man them, and that
" OVER THE TOP " 35
counts as a considerable military gain, espe-
cially as the Hun coastal artillery does scarcely
any harm to our ships, although the latter
knock out his batteries pretty frequently.
By pounding him over the coast-line in this
manner during the earlier stages of the war
the ships of the Dover Patrol helped materi-
ally to stop the enemy from reaching Calais.
They are still preventing him from develop-
ing the stretch of Belgian coast-line which he
holds into the formidable base for offensive
operations against us which he had intended
to make of it. Instead of attacking us from
there he has been driven back upon the defen-
sive and cannot get away with anything else.
Because of the position it holds, the
operations of the Dover Patrol are of especial
importance to the British public. One way
or another it has played a prominent part in
the war right from the beginning. More
actual fighting has been done on this sector
of the " sea front " than upon any. Fight-
ing of one sort or another occurs here almost
daily ; because this is the only stretch of
salt water that the enemy can be reached
from. To this extent the fortune of war
36 THE DOVER PATROL
favours the Dover Patrol, and makes its
doings extremely interesting. But one should
not take too circumscribed a view even of
these. Sea matters, above any, need looking
at in the right perspective and with a due
sense of proportion. Viewing them thus
comprehensively one recognizes at once the
great outstanding fact that during the first
two and a half years of war particularly, the
British Navy protected the world at large
from miseries indescribable by standing be-
twixt it and Germany. When our Fleet
closed the seas against Germany it sealed her
doom and saved civilization. One must be
content to merely state this truth here, and
not demonstrate it at length. But the truth
should be recognized, as it is an all-important
one. And though the work of the Dover
Patrol touches us all so nearly, readers
should clearly understand that this unit of
our splendid Navy only fills its allotted place
in the general scheme of national defence, as
other units fill theirs. Britain's sea-power
reaches long hands into practically every
sea. And it is the greatest national asset
our Empire possesses.
Ill
TWISTING THE DRAGON'S TAIL
AND WHAT WE GAINED BY IT
Now we come to the story of one of the
greatest feats of arms ever accomphshed by
a naval force, and it stands to the credit of
the Dover Patrol. The seaUng up of Zee-
brugge on the night of April 23 takes rank
with such imperishable achievements as the
attack upon Cadiz. In fact, the singeing of
the King of Spain's beard by Sir Francis
Drake at Cadiz and the twisting of the
dragon's tail by Sir Roger Keyes at Zeebrugge
have features of similarity which place them
in a class apart.
The success of the Zeebrugge operations
was due as much to the excellence of the
staff work which preceded it as to the
bravery of the officers and men who carried
the operation through. " Staff work " means
organization, careful planning and the exer-
cise of an astute prevision so that all emer-
37
38 THE DOVER PATROL
gencies may be provided against, and the
element of chance eliminated as completely
as possible. Long before our ships turned
their bows with fighting intent towards the
submarine and destroyer base which Ger-
many had established at the mouth of the
Bruges Canal the scheme of attack had been
worked out to the minutest detail. Every
officer and man had been thoroughly re-
hearsed in the part given him to play.
Nothing was left to the hazard of the
moment. Every one went into the enter-
prise knowing what he should do in any
emergency that might arise. In so far as
skilled generalship could assure such a result
the expedition was won even before it was
started. It is well that this aspect of the
matter should be clearly imderstood ; that
in viewing the splendid success obtained one
should not overlook the foundation on which
it was built and^which made that success
possible.
The more one know:/ about the under-
taking the clearer does the value of the
preparatory work become. For the attack
upon Zeebrugge, though carried through
TWISTING THE DRAGON'S TAIL 39
with sublime dash and courage in its last
and most important stage, was not the out-
come of a brilliant inspiration conceived on
the impulse of the moment and put into
execution as soon as thought of. On the
contrary, the expedition had to wait long
and anxiously for the opportune moment.
Twice the ships started towards their goal,
twice they had to turn back again as condi-
tions were unfavourable to the success of
their enterprise. The minds which planned
this had the fortitude to resist all temptations
to a premature assault which might have
imperilled success. And it was this unerring
skill in choosing the right moment to strike,
and refusing to strike otherwise than surely,
which created the conditions that enabled
Sir Roger Keyes' little squadron to inflict
such a signal defeat on the enemy.
Like most other great schemes the plan
of the Zeebrugge operation was quite simple
in so far as its essential features were con-
cerned. The main object sought was to
block the mouth of the Bruges Canal. Every-
thing else was subsidiary to this. For
example, although the Vindictive^ s attack
40 THE DOVER PATROL
upon the Mole developed into such a wonder-
ful feat of arms, it was, like the submarine's
equally remarkable exploit in blowing up
the viaduct, designed merely as a side-show
in order to attract the attention of the
enemy and thus enable the three blocking
ships to arrive at their goal.
Zeebrugge being the point of entry for the
Bruges Canal into the North Sea had long
been a source of annoyance to us. The
enemy had made of it a strong, well-equipped
submarine and destroyer base from which he
was able to make " tip-and-run " raids by
means of surface craft, and to send out
U-boats both for minelaying and commerce-
destroying purposes. The vessels he used
for these purposes could lie in comfort and
comparative safety in the outer harbour at
Zeebrugge, where the Mole protected them
from the bad weather and minefields to
some extent protected them against the
British Fleet. Whenever our warships made
a raid upon the place and shelled the outer
harbour until it became untenable, as they
frequently used to do, the whole of the
enemy vessels would retire into the Bruges
TWISTING THE DRAGON'S TAIL 41
Canal, and thus get out of the reach of our
longest range guns. In fact, the canal was a
"funkhole" into which they could withdraw
when danger threatened, and, likewise, a
jumping-off point from which they could
obtain a favourable start on raiding expedi-
tions, particularly upon those short dashes
on dark nights to which the German destroyer
flotillas are addicted. It was the Bruges
Canal which enabled the enemy to turn
Zeebrugge into the hornets' nest he made of
it for us, and it was to block up this canal
and make it of no further value to the enemy
that our operations, carried through to suc-
cess on April 23, were undertaken. As
every one knows, the expedition attained its
objective with most important results for us,
and most disastrous ones for the enemy.
One of the heaviest handicaps laid upon
him during the war has been that our Fleet
cut him off from access to the sea. The
Ems, the Elbe, and the Baltic have been of
little use to him, except for passing out sub-
marines, in so far as reaching the wide waters
is concerned. But once he got possession
of the splendid canal system of Flanders he
42 THE DOVER PATROL
was able to open two gateways for his small
craft into the North Sea at points most
awkward for us — ^viz. Zeebrugge and Ostend.
Of the two the former was the most valuable
to him because of the deep-water canal
running straight betwixt it and Bruges.
There is another canal connecting Bruges
with Ostend, but this is so shallow that for
transporting destroyers it is quite useless.
As a result of our having placed two blocking
ships in the mouth of the Bruges Canal, and
subsequently, by means of our aircraft,
sinking a German destroyer alongside them,
the mouth of the Bruges Canal has been
sealed up, at any rate for the duration of the
war. Some dozen or more of the enemy's
best destroyers and several of his large sub-
marines are bottled up in the docks at
Bruges, imable to reach the sea either by
way of Zeebrugge or Ostend, and therefore
useless to him. As a base from which
sporadic raids can be made into the Straits
of Dover or the North Sea, Zeebrugge has
been robbed of most of its utility to the
Germans.
Ostend is far less convenient to them for
TWISTING THE DRAGON'S TAIL 43
this purpose. For one thing it is nearer our
Dover Patrol bases, and consequently more
easily watched. Also, it lies within the
range of our siege-guns ashore, whilst our
ships shell it ceaselessly from the sea. Added
to this the channels within the port have
been partly blocked by the Vindictive, which
was sunk there on the night of May 9, so
that as a base for raiding craft Ostend does
not now hold many possibilities for the
enemy. What the virtual destruction of
these two bases means to the people of the
United Kingdom may be gathered from
what has been said of their menace to all
our sea-going traffic bound for the Port of
London or other places in the North Sea.
From the Belgian coast to the Downs the
Thames Estuary is but a few hours' run for
a fast destroyer of the type which the enemy
used to operate from Ostend and Zeebrugge,
and no merchant ship passing into the
Thames could ever be sure when one of
these sea- wolves would make a sudden pounce
upon it.
As a result of the expedition we are
describing, this danger has almost dis-
44 THE DOVER PATROL
appeared. It can never be absolutely elimi-
nated, because the Germans have assembled
a flotilla in the outer harbour of Zeebrugge,
presumably in the hope that they will some
time or another get a chance of using them.
But the fact remains that whilst the ships
that bring us food and carry out our mer-
chandise pass to and fro right in face of him,
he is powerless to do them hurt. And we
owe this satisfactory state of affairs chiefly
to the magnificent service done by the Dover
Patrol in " bottling up " the enemy's sea
bases in Flanders.
Official announcements of new " prohi-
bited areas " made about the time the
" bottling up " was successfully accomplished
shows that this was only part of an extensive
scheme for closing the North Sea. They
were links in a wide-reaching chain forged
for the purpose of fettering the enemy's
naval movements. Unless this fact is con-
tinually remembered the importance of these
operations cannot be correctly understood.
There has been a barrage across the Straits
of Dover for a long time. Now our Navy
has blocked the other end of the North
TWISTING THE DRAGON'S TAIL 45
Sea as well by laying a gigantic minefield
there.
By translating into plain terms the official
particulars as to latitude and longitude one
gets the fact that the new " prohibited
area " takes the form of a large triangle
which encloses an area of approximately
122,000 square miles of water. Some 400
miles across, its base rims from the Scotch
coast to the edge of the Norwegian three
miles' limit. On its longer sides the triangle
measures 650 miles. Germany will doubt-
less send out her U-boats by way of Nor-
wegian territorial waters since she is no
respecter of neutrality. But owing to this
stupendous " danger zone " having been
created by our Fleet, her submarines must
either take the great risk of passing through
some hundreds of miles of mine-strewn sea,
or else make a detour of 1300 miles towards
the Arctic to get round the apex of the
triangle. That means for them an extra
2600 miles of travelling out and home, with
a resultant decrease by this distance of
their radius of action once they reach
their *' hunting ground." And that helps
46 THE DOVER PATROL
the Allies' anti-submarine campaign tremen-
dously.
With both exits from the North Sea closed
against them, and their most troublesome
" port of issue " into it blocked, U-boats will
have an increasingly " lean " time.
IV
THE FIGHT UPON THE MOLE
The attack upon Zeebrugge was carried out
under the direction of Vice-Admiral Sir
Roger Keyes, K.C.B., in command of the
Dover Patrol, who flew his flag in the
destroyer Warwick. Counting all in there
were somewhere about seventy ships of
various sorts engaged in the operation. These
included the motor-launches which made
the smoke-screens, the monitors which car-
ried out a long-range bombardment, the
coastal motor-boats which operated inshore,
and the destroyers which, as it were, kept
the ring for the central combat and looked
for a force of enemy destroyers that were
known to be at sea. But the latter exercised
the better part of valour by keeping well out
of the way. For blocking up the entrance
9f the Bruges Canal three old warships,
Thetis, Intrepid, and Iphigenia, had been
filled with concrete and fitted with explosive
' 47
48 THE DOVER PATROL
bombs which would sink them immediately
fuses were blown. The old cruiser Vindictive
had been specially fitted and detailed to
make an attack upon the Mole whilst an
obsolete submarine loaded with explosives
was ordered to blow up the viaduct connect-
ing the Mole with the shore. Twice before
had the expedition sailed, but weather con-
ditions necessitated a postponement of the
operation. On this occasion, however, the
elements were sufficiently favourable to en-
able the attack to be carried through. At a
certain point the force fell into their fighting
formation and proceeded towards their ob-
jective. The night was dark and there was
a rather heavy sea running, which made
matters difficult for some of the smaller craft
and considerably handicapped the party
which stormed the Mole.
The Vindictive, the blocking-ships, and the
submarine were manned only by volunteers
as it was deemed very unlikely that any one
would survive. And it says much for the
spirit of the British Navy that although to
be in the van of this expedition was generally
regarded as going to certain death, there
# I
O
THE FIGHT UPON THE MOLE 49
were many times more than the required
number of officers and men who volunteered
for it. The authorities were overwhelmed
with offers of service. " Everybody wanted
to go, and our great difficulty was in sorting
out those we required from the huge number
of volunteers," said the First Sea Lord, when
explaining the basis upon which the expedi-
tion was formed and the necessity for hav-
ing in it only those who were so accuiitomed
to acting together that there could be no
possible chance of any confusion arising
during the intensive hand-to-hand fighting
which it was known would occur amidst the
smoke and darkness. So keen were the men
that when it was proposed to lessen the com-
plement of one of the ships those "weeded
out " flatly refused to leave her.
An essential feature in ensuring success
was that the ships should be well screened
by clouds of artificial fog. The work of
creating this was entrusted to the motor-
launches under command of Captain R.
Collins, R.N. These fell into their assigned
positions and started their smoke going so
skilfully that the main expedition was en-
50 THE DOVER PATROL
abled to approach under cover of it and
to get to fairly close quarters before the
enemy were aware of their coming. Every-
thing worked perfectly as planned. The
blocking-ships made straight for harbour,
the submarine took her course towards the
viaduct, whilst the Vindictive headed for the
Mole. For the purposes of narrative, what
then happened may be divided into three
sections : the Vindictive* s assault on the
Mole, the sinking of the blocking-ships, and
the blowing up of the submarine. Each of
these is an immortal story.
Let us take the Vindictive first. With
dense smoke-screens rolling before, she
headed straight for the Mole, aiming to lay
herself alongside the batteries upon it and
close to the seaplane sheds which it con-
tained, and which it was part of the Vindic-
tive''s duty to demolish. " St. George for
England " (it was St. George's Day), sig-
nalled Sir Roger Keyes to her. *' May we
give the Dragon's tail a damned good twist,"
replied the Vindictive, and unquestionably
she did this.
The Mole is a mile long and eighty yards
THE FIGHT UPON THE MOLE 51
wide. To facilitate landing her storming
force the Vindictive had been fitted along
one side with a high false deck, upon which
were some nineteen brows, or gangways, for
landing purposes. These were triced up in
readiness to be dropped on the Mole imme-
diately the Vindictive scraped alongside it.
Many ancient devices have been revived
during the war. This was one. For the
brows dropped by the Vindictive had their
counterpart ages ago in the boarding gang-
way that used to be thrown out from Roman
war-galleys. Accompanying her were the
Iris and the Daffodil, two ex-Liverpool ferry-
boats. Midnight was chosen for the attack
to begin. As the Vindictive got close in to
the Mole the wind shifted, and blowing away
the smoke-screens that had enveloped the
ship showed her clearly to the Germans.
Promptly these gave the alarm by firing
star-shells, and very soon the sky was alight
with these, whilst searchlights were sweeping
about endeavouring to penetrate the fog.
The star-shells amid the smoke burst with a
curious ghastly green glare, weird and un-
earthly.
52 THE DOVER PATROL
As soon as the oncoming ship was revealed
to them the Germans turned upon her every
weapon they could bring to bear. The
shelling soon rose to a perfect hurricane,
pom-pom, machine-guns, and large-calibre ar-
tillery pouring projectiles into her as rapidly
as they could. In the face of this deadly
onslaught she was navigated with the utmost
coolness and skill. When she ran alongside
the Mole, which was thirty feet high, and
towered well above her decks, the sea beat
her up and down against the wall of it so
heavuly that as her landing brows were
dropped they were nearly all smashed up
and rendered useless. But she went into
position as easily as a hner berthing beside
a jetty, and then signalled to the Daffodil to
give her a push in. The band of heroes who
manned her at once swarmed over her sides
and on to the Mole in any way they could,
sweeping down like a human typhoon upon
the enemy force stationed there. They had
come through an inferno themselves to make
an even worse one for the enemy.
" On emerging from the smoke-screen,"
says Captain A. T. B. Carpenter, V.C., who
THE FIGHT UPON THE MOLE 53
commanded the Vindictive, describing her
experiences, " the end of the Mole where the
hghthouse stands was seen to be about 400
yards ahead of us. We immediately turned
our ship towards the Mole, and increased to
fvdl speed so as to get alongside as soon as
possible. It was our plan not to open fire
until the enemy began to fire on us, as in
that way we hoped to remain unobserved till
the last possible moment. When the enemy
began firing at us we were only about 300
yards away from the muzzles of his guns.
We at once replied with every weapon aboard
the Vindictive that could be brought to bear
on the foe, and we fired at him as hard as we
could. After nearly five minutes of this the
Vindictive slid into position by the Mole,
which we endeavoured to grapple so as to
keep her in place. This proved difficult,
and one of our grapplings tore away a great
lump of concrete from the Mole, which fell
aboard the ship, and we brought it away
with us when we returned. The Daffodil,
which was following close to our stern, came
up, and putting her bows against the Vindic-
tive, pushed the latter vessel sideways until
X-'-i^ n^
54 THE DOVER PATROL
she got close to the Mole. There the Daffodil
helped to hold her by pressing her bows
against the Vindictive^s side so that the
latter ship could not drift away. Owing to
the heavy swell which was on, the work of
securing the Mole proved very difficult.
When the brows were run out from the
Vindictive the men at once climbed along
them. It was an extremely perilous thing
to do in view of the fact that at one moment
the ends of the brows were from eight to ten
feet above the wall, and at the next moment
were crashing on the wall itself as the ship
rolled up and down. The way in which the
men got over those brows seemed almost
superhuman. I expected every moment to
see them falling off between the Mole and
the ship, a drop of at least thirty feet, and
being crushed by the ship against the wall.
But not a man fell ; their agility was won-
derful. It was not a case of a seaman
running barefoot along the deck of a rolling
ship. The men as they landed were carry-
ing heavy accoutrements, such as bombs,
Lewis guns, and other articles, but they never
hesitated. They went along the brows on
THE FIGHT UPON THE MOLE 55
to the Mole at the utmost possible speed.
Within a few minutes three or four hundred
of them had landed, and under cover of a
barrage put down on the Mole by Stokes
guns and howitzer fire they fought their way
along the top. Comparatively few of the
German guns were able to hit the hull of our
ship as it was behind the protection of the
wall. In fact, safety depended on how near
we could get to the enemy guns instead of
upon how far we could get away from them.
" Whilst the hull was thus guarded, the
upper works of the Vindictive, that is,
funnels, masts, ventilators and so forth,
which showed above the wall, were made a
target upon which a large number of German
guns concentrated. Many of our casualties
were caused by splinters coming dowoi from
the upper part of the ship, and if it had not
been for the Daffodil continuing to push her
in towards the wall all the time fighting was
in progress, none of the men who went on
the Mole would have got back again. After
we had been alongside about twenty-five
minutes we saw the blocking- ships rounding
the lighthouse and making for the canal
56 THE DOVER PATROL
entrance. And then we knew that our work
had been successfully accomplished. Just
before this the submarine had been blown up
under the viaduct, and the cheer raised by
my men in the Vindictive when they saw the
terrific explosion was one of the finest things
I ever heard. Many of the men were severely
wounded, some had been hit three or four
times, but they had no thought except for
the success of the operation."
Part of the Vindictive's fighting comple-
ment was composed of the 4th Royal Marine
Battalion, commanded by Colonel Bertram
Nowell EUiot, D.S.O. The bluejacket land-
ing party was under Captain Henry Crosby
Halahan, D.S.O. , R.N. Neither of these
officers was fated to lead ashore the men he
had so carefully trained for fighting there.
The men were assembled on the main deck
and the lower deck ready at the given signal
to rush up the broad sloping ways which led
to the false deck from where the brows were
thrown out. These decks being below the
level of the wall the men on them were fairly
well sheltered until they got the order to
advance. Colonel Elliot and Captain Hala-
THE FIGHT UPON THE MOLE 57
han, both of whom occupied an exposed
position on the false deck, were killed as the
Vindictive hove alongside. Captain Halahan
was caught by machine-gun bullets, whilst
Colonel Elliot was struck by a shell which
caused a great many fatalities in the forward
Stokes mortar battery. In addition to being
specially equipped for throwing men ashore,
the Vindictive had been specially armed for
fighting at close quarters. Distributed about
various parts of her decks were little sand-
bagged emplacements for Stokes mortar and
machine guns, and she had a similarly pro-
tected howitzer fore and aft. From these
positions a deadly fire was directed upon
the enemy for as long as the weapons
situated in them could be used, and par-
ticularly whilst the storming parties were
scrambling on the Mole.
As soon as these received the word to go
they swept forward and poured in a rapid
stream over the couple of brows which the
rolling of the ship alongside the wall had left
intact. From the swaying ends of these the
men leaped into a stream of machine-gun
bullets, and many of them became casualties.
58 THE DOVER PATROL
One of the first to fall was Commander
Brock, R.N.A.S., who perfected the smoke-
screen appliances. Yet the advance never
once wavered or slackened. Lieutenant
H. T. C. Walker, whilst leading the men
towards the Mole, had one of his arms
carried away by a shell. He fell, and in the
darkness (for except for the fitful gleams
from the muzzles of discharging guns and
the eerie light of bursting star-shells it was
very dark) the hurrying feet of the stormers
passed over him until he was seen by another
officer, who dragged him aside. Thereupon
Lieutenant Walker, raising himself, waved
his remaining arm and shouted words of
encouragement to the attacking party as they
rushed past him.
On the Mole the scene was indescribable.
As our men advanced so they threw bombs,
used bludgeons, cutlasses, axes, rifles, bayo-
nets, in a hand-to-hand melee which the
enemy did not very long face. Whilst he
could use his guns from behind a fairly safe
shelter he stuck bravely to his post, but the
fierce onslaught of shouting men, armed with
various weapons and all intent upon coming
THE FIGHT UPON THE MOLE 59
to handgrips with the foe, which was hurled
at him from the Vindictive, in the end sent
the enemy scuttHng to cover wherever he
could find it.
But amidst all the mad excitement of the
fray, and though the fighting spirit was
strong upon them, our men did not forget
the work for which they had been trained.
Each party as it landed upon the Mole made
straight for the definite objective assigned to
it. Some ran to the seaplane sheds and
demolished them, some made a direct attack
upon certain batteries, others used bombs
with most destructive effect upon some
German destroyers lying just inside the Mole,
and which had been lobbing projectiles over
it at the Vindictive. The work of clearing
the Mole was most effectively done, the
enemy being driven shoreward, covering
himself with machine-guns as he fell back.
Whilst they were thus employed amidst
burning buildings, dynamite rent emplace-
ments, clouds of rolling smoke with great
gusts of machine-gun fire sweeping through
them ; amidst surroundings so weird that
they seemed like a dream to those who
60 THE DOVER PATROL
passed safely through them, our men could
see the blocking-ships force their way into
the canal mouth and encouraged them with
a hearty cheer. For an hour this sort of
thing went on.
V
THROUGH THE JAWS OF HELL
But the Vindictive did something more than
bring the storming party alongside and put
them into enemy territory. During the
whole of the time the fight lasted she took
an active part in it. Whilst she lay by the
Mole her guns continued firing, and she threw
out broad sheets of liquid fire from the flame-
throwing cabin built just forward of her
bridge. It was in this cabin, a very exposed
situation, forming as it did a target which
the enemy guns could not miss, that Captain
Carpenter stood when taking his vessel into
her berth. In a very short time the cabin
was literally blown to pieces. The captain
had the peak of his cap shot away, and
several bullet-holes through his clothes, but
escaped with a comparatively slight wound.
Not so fortunate were those near by him.
A huge shell came rattling over the para-
pet and struck the Vindictive just by her
61
62 THE DOVER PATROL
bridge, pounding the chart-room there into
a mass of jumbled wreckage. Towering just
above this was her fighting-top, which was
manned by a party of Royal Marine Artillery
under command of Lieutenant C. N. B.
Rigby, R.M.A. The outside of the top was
stoutly protected by splinter mats, and from
inside it the Marine gunners poured a deadly
stream of pom-pom and machine-gim bullets
into the enemy as long as they could fight
at all. But the prominent position of the
top, standing high above the wall of the Mole,
made it a distinctive mark for the enemy's
artillery, which turned their full strength
upon it in order to silence the guns that
were punishing them so heavily. Lieutenant
Rigby was killed, and all the others in the
top were either killed outright or became bad
casualties, save only Sergeant Finch. Shot
down and wounded. Finch struggled from
beneath a heap of dead and dying comrades.
He then grasped the handle of a pom-pom
and kept this in action right until the last.
The fighting-top was naught but a small
circular steel chamber in which men were
cramped elbow to elbow. By the time the
THROUGH THE JAWS OF HELL 63
Vindictive drew off it was piled with dead
and dying ; the wreckage of knocked-out
guns and other pitiful debris of a hard-won
fight. Other parts of the ship also suffered
heavily. Shells ploughed their way through
the raised wooden deck and burst below.
One killed or wounded practically a whole
howitzer's crew. A second crew promptly
took the gun, but were swept down by shell-
fire, whereupon a third crew took their places
at the weapon. The Vindictive^ s funnels
were torn absolutely to ribbons. Hundreds
of projectiles must have gone through them,
for the outer casings hung in tatters from
the deck level to their tops. The decks
themselves were knee- deep in wreckage of all
sorts. Dead and wounded men lay all about
them, and they were almost impassable with
blood-stained garments that had been cast
aside, weapons hastily throwii down or
dropped by failing hands, empty shell-cases,
belts of ammunition, and the hundred and
one other litters that accumulate during a
fight.
When her work was done and she was
ready to withdraw, the Vindictive, by means
64 THE DOVER PATROL
of her syren, gave the recall signal to those
who had landed from her. But the din of
the iBghting was so tremendous that the
signal could not be heard. Therefore it was
repeated and repeated many times. Every
effort to re-embark men was made, and the
ship did not cast off from the Mole until
assured that everybody who could possibly
do so had got aboard her. Now occurred
one of those instances of self-sacrificing
heroism that are so frequent in the annals of
our warfare, be it by land or sea. Captain
Palmer, who was in charge of the Marines
landed on the Mole, refused to rejoin the
Vindictive because he could not muster all
his men and take them back with him.
" Come aboard ; all are on but you, and
we are just going to shove off," he was
told.
" No, I can't find all my men, and I am
not coming away without them," replied the
captain, and on the Mole he stayed. It is
understood that he was taken prisoner, and
was subsequently interviewed by the Kaiser
when the All-Highest hurried down to Zee-
brugge next day to personally investigate
THROUGH THE JAWS OF HELL 65
what damage the British expedition had
done there.
The fortunes of the Daffodil and the Iris
were so closely allied to those of the Vindic-
tive that all may be considered as constituting
one episode of the fight. It had been in-
tended that after the Daffodil had helped to
berth the Vindictive she should go alongside
the Mole and land her own men upon it.
But her services were required, as before
explained, to hold the Vindictive in position.
A strenuous task and magnificently per-
formed. In doing it the DaffodiVs engines
had to be worked up to just double their
normal pressure of steam per square inch
and kept at that. Being sheltered by the
larger ship, the Daffodil suffered but few
casualties. Lieutenant H. Campbell, her
commanding officer, was wounded by a shell
splinter, one of her men was killed, and seven
of them injured.
Very much less fortunate than this was the
Iris. She moved ahead of the Vindictive
and tried to make fast to the Mole, but failed
to do so as her grapnels were not large
enough to span the parapet. Thereupon
66 THE DOVER PATROL
two of her officers, Lieutenant-Commander
Bradford and Lieutenant Hawkins, climbed
up on the parapet and sat astride it trying
to make the grapnel hold fast. They con-
tinued doing this until both were killed and
fell in the water between the ship and the
wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs, who
commanded the Iris, had both his legs shot
away by a shell which wrecked one end of
her bridge, and he died next morning.
With the commander out of action. Lieu-
tenant Spencer, R.N.R. took charge of the
ship, although he was wounded, and refused
to be relieved. Eventually the Iris was
forced to change her position and come
astern of the Vindictive. She was subjected
to a devastating fire from which she suffered
very heavily. One shell plunged through
her upper deck and exploded in the midst of
a party of Marines who were waiting to go
up the gangway. There were fifty-six men
in this party ; forty-nine of them were killed
outright and the remaining seven wounded.
Another shell found its way into the ward-
room which was being used as a casualty
dressing-station, and bursting there killed
THROUGH THE JAWS OF HELL 67
four officers and twenty-six men. The /w,
in short, was reduced to httle better than a
shambles in a very brief time by a succession
of heavy shells which plunged into her. By
great good luck none of these damaged her
engines or holed her beneath the w^ater-line.
When the ships drew away from the Mole
they exposed themselves to further attack
from a heavy enemy battery which had been
unable to reach them whilst they were
masked by the wall. This promptly opened
fire upon them and threw salvo after salvo
in their direction, but all three of the vessels
were making their best possible speed. The
Vindictive' s engines worked up to as many re-
volutions as they had done in her best steam-
ing days. Consequently the enemy's shell
mostly fell short. Just when the Germans
were getting the range effectively the Vin-
dictive and her two consorts disappeared into
the clouds of smoke which the motor-boats
were making, and which in all probability
saved the ships from being sunk by the
enemy's long-range batteries. As it was they
did not get off without further injury. The
Vindictive' s coxswain was killed at his post,
68 THE DOVER PATROL
whereupon Captain Carpenter took the wheel
himself and steered out of action the ship
he had so gallantly taken into it. How
splendid was the spirit of the Vindictive's
men was illustrated by the reception given
her captain when he made the round of the
decks on the way home. As Captain Car-
penter passed amongst them, even the badly
wounded raised themselves up to cheer him.
" Have we won ? " was their eager query.
So long as the enemy had been defeated
nothing else mattered.
VI
A SUBMARINE'S IMMORTAL EXPLOIT
Next in point of time to the Vindictive^s
attack upon the Mole came the destruction
by a submarine of the viaduct which con-
nected the Mole with the shore. This via-
duct was constructed of open piling with
oak planking and iron gratings on the top
of it. At the lower end of the Mole, where
the viaduct joined it, were the sheds of a sea-
plane base, concrete shelters for men, and
other buildings. The S.S. Brussels, Captain
Fryatt's old ship, which the Germans used
as a torpedo training-school, lay on the inside
of the Mole just under the seaplane hangars,
and there was a shelter for submarines a
little higher up. The Vindictive berthed
alongside the Mole at the point where that
structure bends around towards the light-
house, situated at the extreme end of it.
Her objective was to distract the enemy's
attention so that the blocking-ships, when
69
70 THE DOVER PATROL
they arrived a little later, would be able to
pass the lighthouse unnoticed by the Ger-
mans ; or, at least, would find the latter so
much occupation that they could not con-
centrate all their strength upon checking the
blocking-ships' progress.
Similarly, the purpose of the submarine's
attack upon the viaduct was to breach it,
and thus prevent reinforcements being rushed
from the shore along the Mole in support of
the enemy, who were having such a rough
time at the hands of the Vindictive^ s storming
party. How she performed the exceptionally
dangerous task allotted her constitutes one
of the bravest of the many brave deeds that
sparkle like priceless gems in the golden
setting of our naval history. Really there
exists no parallel to this wonderful exploit,
as nothing like it had ever been done before.
From start to finish it was as full of peril
as anything well could be. So much so
that nobody, not even themselves, expected
that the small volunteer crew which manned
her would come safely through their great
adventure. The odds against them appeared
so overwhelming that, even if they succeeded,
A SUBMARINE EXPLOIT 71
in doing the thing assigned them it was
deemed a certainty that their Uves would
pay the penalty of their achievement. One
must grasp this fact and all it conveys
before one can rightly appraise the magnifi-
cent quality of the courage shown by this
little band of half a dozen stout-hearted
seamen.
The submarine chosen for the work was a
boat of obsolete type. By way of prepara-
tion for the occasion she had been stuffed
full of high explosive, several tons of it,
until the devastating capacity of her cargo
equalled in destructive force the power of
some forty-odd German submarine mines.
That of itself will give some idea of what
she held embowelled within her, and illustrate
dangers which beset her crew ; as well as the
difficulties they had to face whilst getting
the boat to her destination. For them it was
peril all the way. Before they were put to
the supreme test of blowing up their boat
and, as was believed would happen, them-
selves with her, they had to navigate the
submarine for about one hundred miles
through a rough sea. From her home base
72 THE DOVER PATROL
untif Zeebrugge was reached she had to be
towed by a destroyer. Going under her own
power in the circumstances was out of the
question. Towing her proved an awkward
enough task. During the whole of this
hundred miles her crew were sitting atop of
what was actually a huge mine, heavily
loaded, with the waves breaking over them
continually. Much trouble was experienced
in steering the submarine, and there was an
ever-present risk that the tow-line would part
and leave her drifting helplessly at the mercy
of heavy seas.
One gets a fairly realistic glimpse of what
her complement had to withstand on their
way across the North Sea from the ex-
periences of a picket-boat that accompanied
them. This picket-boat had been detailed
to attend upon the submarine after Zeebrugge
was reached. Amongst other things the
intention was that the boat should escort
her towards the viaduct, putting up on the
way a smoke-screen, under shelter of which
she could approach her objective unseen.
Also, that the boat should do its best to
rescue her complement after they had blown
A SUBMARINE EXPLOIT 73
up their vessel. But no matter how carefully
an operation may be planned, arrangements
can seldom be carried through in their
entirety where the vagaries of the weather,
as well as the uncertainties of war, are both
influencing factors. It turned out so in this
instance. The picket-boat also had to be
towed. And owing to the heavy swell and
other adverse weather conditions the boat
towed very badly. Several times she almost
turned over until, finally, only the breaking
up of the tow-line at a critical moment saved
her from capsizing altogether. As a result of
this she fell behind the submarine, which had
to go along without her. In the end this
proved a fortunate accident, as if the picket-
boat had remained in company with her,
the wholly unforeseen circumstance which
enabled the submarine to succeed in her
mission could hardly have arisen.
At a point four miles distant from the Mole
the submarine began moving under her own
power. From this period until she was rent
into innumerable fragments there was not
a single moment in her progress but held its
gripping thrill. The boat was under com-
74 THE DOVER PATROL
mand of Lieut. R. D. Sandford, R.N., who
had with him Lieut. Price, R.N.R., Able
Seaman Hamer (coxswain), Leading Tor-
pedoman Cleaver, Chief E.R.A. Roxburgh,
and Stoker Bendall. Like every other fea-
ture of the operations, the manner in which
the submarine's part in them should be
carried through had been carefully mapped
out beforehand in the fullest possible detail.
In so far as foresight could ensure this
nothing was left to chance, though the god
of chance dipped in his oar all the same.
The picket-boat having perforce been left
behind, a smoke-screen was made for the
submarine by other craft. Behind this cover
she crept until within two miles of the viaduct,
where she turned and made for it. Then
occurred a thing that seemed at first certain
to seal her doom, and probably would have
done so if an even more remarkable event
had not happened immediately upon the
heels of it. A sudden shift of the wind
uncloaked her by blowing the smoke-screen
the wrong way, so that instead of enveloping
the vessel, the smoke left her exposed to the
full view of the enemy. Star-shells were now
A SUBMARINE EXPLOIT 75
lighting the water brilliantly, and search-
lights pointing their broad white fingers
about its surface in every direction.
Full in the glare of this eerie illumination,
which threw her into much the same promi-
nence as a dark object crossing a white screen,
the submarine steered towards her goal.
On the shore, just by the viaduct, were some
nineteen heavy enemy guns. These started
blazing at her furiously, beginning when she
was 1500 yards away and shortening range
until she had got within 500 yards of them.
At the same time a large body of enemy
riflemen stationed on the viaduct poured
heavy volleys into her. Escape for boat or
crew seemed impossible. But although she
formed such a prominent target, by extra-
ordinary good luck neither boat nor any one
in her was hit. Though incredibly fortunate
in this respect, one may easily conceive what
a tense period this was for the small band of
heroes in charge of the boat and how heavily
the strain of the situation must have tugged
at their nerves. Remember, they were
perched out on the top of a hollow steel
cylinder filled with the most powerful of
76 THE DOVER PATROL
high explosives. Had a projectile struck the
craft her risky cargo would have " gone off,"
and those piloting it along been blown into
atoms within sight of their goal, with their
task unfinished.
And they knew this fate might be theirs at
any moment. Real acid of circumstance, a
situation like this, to test what metal men
are made of.
For about ten minutes the submarine
proceeded, marvellously unscathed, through
this deluge of steel and lead, with projectiles
of various sizes beating up the water in angry
spurts all round her. Then suddenly the
firing stopped. Hellish pandemonium was
followed by comparatively a dead silence — a
strange and unexpected change, as surprising
as it was at first difficult to account for.
One divined the reason for it by what one
saw on the viaduct.
Under the vivid constellation of star-
shells the Huns, with which this structure
was crowded, could be seen talking excitedly
to each other, laughing and gesticulating.
Apparently they were under the delusion
that she had lost her course whilst seeking to
A SUBMARINE EXPLOIT 77
enter the harbour, and was now groping
bhndly along the outside of the Mole trying
to discover some way of repairing her error
by getting through it and attacking the
shipping inside. As to what she really
aimed at obviously they had not the slightest
inkling. Seeing her making for the viaduct
the Huns assumed that she meant trying to
pass through the piling which supported it.
'* When she attempts that she will stick fast,
then we can run down the ladders and
capture boat and crew too," they told each
other, congratulating themselves upon the
ease with which they would secure the lot.
And it was because they felt so sure of
picking her up as a gift in this way that they
left off firing at her. Little did the Huns
know what the apparently lost sheep would
do to them.
Their mistake afforded the submarine just
the opportunity her crew were seeking.
When about half a mile distant from the
viaduct they got a clear view of it and of the
point they were to strike. Turning the
boat's head on towards this Lieut. Sandford
steered her direct for the place, the situation
78 THE DOVER PATROL
of which he knew, as where she should hit
to attain her objective most effectively had
been arranged beforehand. After a rapid
survey of the position, Lieut. Sandford
determined to make sure at all costs and to
avoid anything that involved the slightest
risk of failure. At full speed he drove the
submarine straight at the viaduct, into the
imderstructure of which she crashed, burying
her forepart in the timbers to a depth of
forty feet, until her conning-tower came flat
against the piling and thus brought her to a
standstill. At this moment no man aboard
her gave a thought to anything beyond the
work in hand, though it seemed less likely
than ever that any would survive the com-
pletion of it. The Huns who had been
watching the approach of the submarine
now started clambering down the ladders,
all gleefully eager to seize the boat and her
crew.
But the big surprise was on the point of
being sprung upon the enemy. Having got
their craft just where they wanted to place
her — she was put under the viaduct at
exactly the prearranged spot — Lieut. Sand-
A SUBMARINE EXPLOIT 79
ford and his comrades hastened their task.
After starting the fuses they lowered a small
dinghy which they carried for the purpose,
clambered into it, and began to pull away
when quite assured that the fuses would do
their part effectively. So that her crew
might have a chance of getting clear quickly
a powerful motor had been fitted in the
dinghy supplied to the submarine. This
motor was so much too powerful for the tiny
boat that when running it shook her seams
open. Consequently, a strong motor-pump
was also placed in her. And to this for-
tuitous circumstance the complement of
the submarine owe their lives. After they
jumped into the dinghy and started the
motor, they found this to be useless for pro-
pulsion as the screw had fouled something
and broken off when the dinghy was being
dropped into the water. No other course
was left them but to get out the oars, and
they did so.
Heavy fire now assailed them again from
the viaduct. The enemy, seeing their at-
tempt to escape, gave vent to angry cries
and renewed their riifle volleys, supple-
80 THE DOVER PATROL
meriting these by streams of bullets from
machine-guns and pom-poms, being fully
determined that the crew should not get
away. But the crew were of another mind.
Determined to escape if they in any way could,
they fought heroically for liberty in the face
of most adverse conditions. Overweighted
as she was with machinery, their dinghy at
best would have pulled very sluggishly.
Added to other handicaps a strong current
kept sweeping them back towards the viaduct
almost as rapidly as they rowed away from
it — and they struggled desperately to put as
much distance between themselves and it
as possible, for they knew the danger of what
was about to happen, if the enemy did not.
Very soon their boat became riddled with
pom-pom bullets and made water so fast
that she would have sunk and drowned all
her occupants if the motor-pump had not
been set going. This kept the inrushing
water low enough for the dinghy to remain
afloat. Still the bullets rained upon her.
First, Lieut. Sandford fell with a wound in
his thigh and one hand smashed. Next
Hamer, the coxswain, and Stoker Bendall
A SUBMARINE EXPLOIT 81
were shot down. The three unwounded men
pHed the oars as vigorously as they could,
but matters were looking very grave for
them when the submarine went up with
an appalling roar.
At the moment of the explosion the dinghy
was only about two hundred yards from her,
and onlookers thought that the tiny boat and
its occupants must surely be "whiffed into
nothingness " by the force of the terrific
upheaval. Great was the relief when the
tumbling water subsided and they were seen
amidst the smoke still bending sturdily to
their oars. But by the shock all gunfire had
been checked for the time being and the
enemy had suffered severely. As the fuses
ignited the submarine's cargo there occurred
one of the greatest explosions ever known on
the sea. A gap 120 feet wide was made in the
viaduct, everything in this space being cut
away cleanly, from water-line upwards, whilst
some hundreds of the enemy who had
swarmed on top of the structure in their
haste to seize the submarine were blown
away — and only portions of them came back
again. Little bits of Hun, pieces of wood-
82 THE DOVER PATROL
work, and other fragments continued drop-
ping into the water for some time afterwards,
and over a considerable area. Along the
Mole searchlights were extinguished, their
lenses splintering under the shock, whilst
machine-gims were put out of action and the
crews of heavier enemy artillery some dis-
tance away so badly stunned that for a time
they could not go on firing.
The picket-boat in charge of Commander
F. H. Sandford, D.S.O., R.N. (Lieut. R. D.
Sandford's brother), which had been told off
to attend upon the submarine, now came up,
having made a short cut to the scene of
operations after her touring mishap. She
picked up the submarine's complement and
placed them aboai'd the destroyer Phoebe,
where medical attention was given to the
wounded amongst them.
Having done this the picket-boat, down
by the head and so full of water that towing
her would have been dangerous, made a risky
voyage back to Dover imder her own steam.
VII
HOW THE BRUGES CANAL WAS
BOTTLED UP
After separating into three sections the
units of the expedition that were designed to
press close home upon the enemy each took
its prescribed course towards a chosen goal.
Much depended upon the time-table of
movements being adhered to. This was
kept with an accuracy that indicated a high
standard of seamanship on the part of those
who handled the ships.
Last to show themselves to the enemy
was the trio of blocking-vessels. This con-
sisted of the old cruisers Thetis, Intrepid,
and Iphigenia, all of which had been filled
with concrete so that once sunk in the fair-
way they would form a wall of steel and
cement solidified across the mouth of the
Bruges Canal. It had been planned to sink
them close by the lock gates. To put them
there was the main object of the expedition.
88
84 THE DOVER PATROL
In the result this was so nearly attained as
to make the operations a thorough success,
although the ships did not quite reach the
point where, as originally designed, they
should have been blown up.
After the attack upon the Mole had been
in progress some little time, long enough to
absorb the enemy's attention and get him
thoroughly busy in one particular direction,
the main operation was developed. Swathed
in clouds of smoke the three old cruisers
steamed up to the harbour entrance. As
they rounded the end of the Mole the star-
shells and searchlights threw them into
vivid relief before the eyes of a startled
enemy, who, having no knowledge of what
was really intended, probably thought the
whole British Fleet had swooped upon him
in a determined attempt to smash up his
base for good and all. The very weight of the
assault suggested strong forces behind it.
Out of the darkness which hung over the sea,
beyond the area lit up by the star-shells and
searchlights, came the unnerving shriek of
the big shells thrown in by the monitors
that could not be seen and consequently
BRUGES CANAL BOTTLED UP 85
their type and numbers only guessed at.
Projectiles fell from them in the manner of
steady, persistent hammer-blows upon his
shore defences, which were at the same time
bombarded vigorously by our large guns
planted on the coast-line and manned by the
Royal Marine Artillery. Whilst they steamed
in the blocking-ships plied their guns full
blast also ; thus adding to the enemy's
uncertainty of mind — and to the deafening
noise of the fray.
Battle pictures are difficult to draw, either
in words or pencil. Whilst some idea of the
action may be conveyed, the atmosphere
amidst which it occurred, particularly the
bewildering effects of the changing lights and
awe-inspiring noises, cannot be re-created.
And the mind that has never received a direct
impression of such things is unable to visualize
them accurately enough to do the picture
justice. " It seemed as though the skies
had broken up ; that night was falling upon
us in overwhelming wrath, and the mouth of
Hades lay right beneath our bows," is how
one member of the expedition described his
impression of the scene around them as the
.N*'^:"
86 THE DOVER PATROL
blocking-ships fought their way into the
harbour.
The Thetis led the van. Immediately she
hove in sight, enemy guns from shore and sea
opened a thunderous attack upon her. In
addition to his batteries on the Mole, the
enemy had many heavy guns upon the beach.
These ran from Blankenberge, on the south-
ward, right across the shore-line on either
side of the canal, having been laid in position
to beat off just such another attack as the
one now being delivered. And the enemy
gave our forces the full benefit of his batteries
— machine-guns and pom-poms as well, for
there were many of both studded in amongst
the larger pieces. Only a skeleton crew was
left aboard the Thetis, just sufficient to
manoeuvre her into position and settle her
there. The remainder of her men had been
taken into safety aboard a motor-launch,
according to programme.
But, mere navigating party though they
were, those left in the Thetis kept her four
guns in brisk action, as well as worked the
ship. Out from the end of the Mole was
strung a row of armed barges placed there
BRUGES CANAL BOTTLED UP 87
for protection of the channel. The Thetis
dodged clear of these, but had the bad luck
to pick up on her screw the net defence
stretched on the side of the barges. As her
propellor turned quickly round it gathered
these nets in a thick bunch about it. From
that moment the Thetis became unmanage-
able owing to her screw being " seized up."
Steer straight she would not, but reeled about
as the currents swung her. However, she had
torn a clear passage through the boom for
the other two ships.
As the Thetis commenced to yaw about, the
shore batteries picked her up and subjected
her to a severe hammering, whilst she fought
strenuously back. Struggling onwards, de-
termined to reach the canal if possible, the
Thetis stuck upon a bank, lurched off it again
and got back into the channel. By this time
the ship was in a sinking condition, so
viciously had she been punished, and it
became apparent that her end lay near.
Yet she fought with unwavering courage,
and as she lay shell-torn and derelict con-
tinued signalling to the Intrepid and Ijphi-
genia information that proved of the greatest
88 THE DOVER PATROL
value in enabling them to make a safe ad-
vance towards their objective. When the
Thetis had struggled along until she almost
reached the timber breakwater just outside
the canal mouth, Commander R. S. Sneyd,
D.S.O., R.N., in command of her, blew the
charges which tore the final gaps in her now
rapidly settling hull, and down she went
in a slantwise position, partly across the
channel that gives access to the canal.
Though the Thetis did not succeed in entering
the canal mouth, she was sunk in a position
where she helps to most effectually bottle up
this waterway. Of her small crew five were
killed and five wounded. After the ship
went down a motor-laimch commanded by
Lieut. H. Littleton, R.N.V.R., made its way
to the Thetis through the gale of sheUing
that still beat fiercely upon her and took oJEf
all survivors.
Whilst the Thetis thus went gallantly to
the sacrifice, along came the Intrepid —
abundantly justifying her name — with all
guns blazing defiantly and dense volumes of
camouflaging smoke roUing from her decks.
A fearsome object indeed, she must have
BRUGES CANAL BOTTLED UP 89
seemed to the Hun as she bore down aggres-
sively upon him. In the shuddering con-
fusion along the dark edges of the fight the
launch which should have taken off the surplus
of the Intrepid^s crew was unable to reach
her at the psychological moment, much to
the satisfaction of the men thus left aboard
the ship. None of them had wanted to go
from her whilst a fight lay ahead. Indeed,
some who, regarded as supernumeraries,
were ordered to be left behind, told their
captain point-blank that they would not go
out of the ship until the fight was over, and
the captain, being an understanding man
with all a sailor's large sympathy for a
comrade who wants to get at the enemy, saw
not the insubordinate side of their conduct
in looking at the greater one and permitted
them to stay. Through this, and the launch's
inability to heave alongside, the Intrepid
found herself so well manned that she had
men enough for all purposes. And she made
good use of them.
Straight towards the land she swept, guns
roaring, crew cheering, smoke welling out of
her in dense volume until she got a long way
90 THE DOVER PATROL
past the shore-line and some distance inside
the mouth of the canal. There Lieut. Stuart
Bonham-Carter, R.N., the Intrepid's com-
manding officer, put the nose of his ship
neatly upon the end of the western bank and
let her swing across the canal. Whilst this
was happening her crew were removed in a
motor-launch. When all was in readiness
for abandoning ship, Lieut. Bonham-Carter
went into the chart-room and pulled the
switches which fired the explosive charges in
the vessel's interior. Four dull thuds were
heard and at once the Intrepid began to seat
herself firmly on the bottom. Unexpected
testimony to the success of the explosion
was supplied by the engineer officer, who had
not left the engine-room when the fuses were
blown, but came leaping up immediately after-
wards with the report that all had gone well.
All this happened almost within hand-
reach of the enemy on shore and plump
against the muzzles of his guns. So close
inshore that one officer escaped from the ship
by jumping to the beach and running along
the bank towards one of our launches that
had crept in there. Whilst the officer ran,
BRUGES CANAL BOTTLED UP 91
the enemy pelted him with machine-gun
bullets, wounding him in the leg ; as he
jumped aboard the launch one of its crew
attacked him with a hammer, mistaking
him for a Hun.
Equally thrilling was the experience of
Lieut. Bonham-Carter. All the boats had
pulled off before he was ready to leave the
ship. Consequently he launched a float and
jumped into the water with it. But in-
stantly the float (a kind of big lifebuoy)
touched the water, a calcium light attached
to it burst into flare and could not be ex-
tinguished. This made the float and the
officer upon it a brightly illuminated target
for an enemy machine-gun some few hundred
yards away, which promptly began spitting
bullets at full capacity. Luckily the In-
trepid w^as still smoking like a volcano, and
thus protected Lieut. Bonham-Carter some-
what. Seeing a motor-launch pass he caught
a rope trailing behind it. The launch towed
him through the water until the strain upon
his arms became so great he could bear it no
longer. At this moment the lieutenant was
seen and rescued.
92 THE DOVER PATROL
The Iphigenia, also fighting, but with only
a skeleton crew aboard, followed in the wake
of the Intrepid, whose smoke blinded her a
little. When entering the canal the Iphi-
genia crashed into a dredger with a barge
alongside it, that lay moored at the western
arm. Through this obstruction she broke a
path and went on into the canal pushing the
barge before her. Shells and machine-gun
bullets were meanwhile whistling all about
her from close range. One enemy gunner
unconsciously helped the Iphigenia con-
siderably. A shell which he fired at the ship
cut the pipe of her syren. Through this gash
steam came rushing out with a force that
drove away the smoke sufficiently for the
Iphigenia to see what she was doing. Ac-
cording to arrangement her commanding
officer, Lieut. E. W. Billyard-Leake, R.N.,
backed her on the eastern side of the canal
and saw her drop well across channel. Then
he blew her up with engines still running to
keep the ship in position until she had bedded
herself firmly. This accomplished, he and
his crew escaped in one of the ubiquitous
motor-launches.
BRUGES CANAL BOTTLED UP 93
Seeing that they were going right into the
dragon's mouth, " 'An down his throat to
choke him," as one of the men humorously
said, it was regarded as certain that every
officer and man in the blocking-ships would
be either killed or taken prisoner. But
casualties amongst them were very few, and
not a single man fell into the enemy's hands.
Yet the ships did what they were intended
to do. They completely blocked the mouth
of the Bruges Canal " for duration," and there
is no likelihood of the enemy clearing it again
for a very long time — or at all whilst war
lasts. Apart from this serious injury being
inflicted upon him by the blocking-ships,
the other vessels engaged damaged by gun-
fire the lock gates which close across the
canal entrance, and did much hurt to his
shore defences.
VIII
THE CRAFT THAT KEPT
THE RING
Although they may seem to play a very
minor part, the fate of most great combats is
largely determined by what may be described
as the rank and file of the forces engaged —
those who give doughty aid to the champions
but are dwarfed almost into invisibility by
the resplendent figures of the warrior giants
who lead the van. Zeebrugge conformed to
the ordinary in this respect. Had it not
been for the invaluable services of the
monitors, destroyers, motor-laimches, and
coastal motor-boats which formed the "cover-
ing force," the wonderful deeds that gave
this expedition its glowing immortality could
not have been accomplished.
Particularly courageous was the work done
by the motor-launches, which well earned
the official acknowledgment given them.
These motor-launches are one of the many
94
CRAFT THAT KEPT THE RING 95
new types of craft to hoist the white ensign
since war began. In truth they Uttle resemble
the popular conception of the warship, being
nothing more than wooden hulls from 75 to 80
feet in length, fitted with a couple of 220-h.p.
internal combustion engines and drawing five
foot of water. Each launch carries two
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve officers, two
engineers, and five deck-hands. The M.L.'s,
as they are usually termed, may be con-
sidered as the R.N.V.R. unit of our fleet.
Many of their officers come from the Over-
seas Dominions, especially Canada and New
Zealand. Frail though they be, one finds
these motor-launches busy in many seas. In
connexion with the Dover Patrol they are
largely employed in patrol work and along
the Belgian coast making smoke-screens for
other ships. In that capacity they have
participated in nearly every one of the
numerous bombardments there.
This and rescue w^ork formed their chief
duties at Zeebrugge, where the success of
the attack depended upon the smoke-screen
being properly maintained. The M.L.'s
which put up before the enemy's eyes this
9C THE DOVER PATROL
barrier against visibility were strung out
from two miles along the coast to right
into the shore, and therefore full in the
muzzles of enemy guns, one shell from any
one of which hitting a launch would have
been enough to blow her out of existence.
Some of the launches were only a quarter
of a mile from the beach and subjected to
the fire of twenty or thirty heavy guns and
forty or fifty pom-poms.
Whilst the Vindictive was alongside the
Mole four of these launches hung around her
to protect her against seaward attack. After
she drew off they made the smoke-screen that
enabled the Vindictive, the Iris, and the
Daffodil to get away. Also, launches went
right into the canal mouth along with the
blocking-ships, and that was a plucky thing
for such cockle-shell vessels to do, as those
aboard them were continually drenched by
the splashes from shell which exploded in
the water all about them. When the Thetis
grounded at the canal entrance and became
a point-blank target for German guns, M.L.
526, commanded by Lieut. H. Littleton,
R.N.V.R., dashed alongside her, took off her
JO
0) <u
" s
13 JH
CRAFT THAT KEPT THE RING 97
crew as the Thetis was sinking and got
safely away with them.
Even more thrilling was the ordeal of MX.
282 (Lieut. P. T. Deane, R.N.V.R.). She
followed the Intrepid and Iphigenia into the
canal itself, and waited under heavy fire
until the task of sinking was completed ; then
she hurried to the ships and took off their
crews. Now a motor-launch has only limited
passenger accommodation, and by the time
" 282 " completed her rescue journey she had
aboard her 109 officers and men from the
blocking-ships. " Overloaded " conveys only
a feeble idea of her condition ; she was
weighted down to the water-line with her
heavy freight. ^Men were clinging to her
decks much as a cluster of newly swarmed
bees cover anything upon which they alight.
Trouble ensued because the launch would
not steer properly ; she became nearly un-
manageable. Instead of making a straight
course out of harbour she persisted in turning
in towards the Mole and going along close
beneath it, where she ran the gauntlet of
all the enemy guns left in action, and these
were far too numerous to make the over-
98 THE DOVER PATROL
burdened M.L.'s passage under their muzzles
a comfortable one. Subsequently it was
found that the boat would not answer her
helm because, owing to the packed state of
her decks, many of the " passengers " were
standing on the rudder-lines and thus pre-
venting these from moving. Possibly this
was a fortunate mishap, as it led to the
M.L. going so near the Mole that enemy
gunners were confused in their aim and
could not at first bring their heavy pieces to
bear directly upon her. But in going out of
the harbour " 282 " caught it badly. Twenty
or thirty of the rescued crews aboard her
were killed or wounded by the enemy's fire.
Her coxswain was killed at the wheel, and
Lieut. K. Wright, R.N.V.R., second in com-
mand, severely wounded ; yet he stuck cou-
rageously at his post, passing back word that
he was busily attending to an injured man,
when, as a matter of fact, he had himself
been so badly hit that for a long time it
was thought he could not recover. Eventu-
ally " 282 " reached the Warwick (Sir Roger
Keyes' flagship) and transferred the rescued
to her.
CRAFT THAT KEPT THE RING 99
Naturally a flotilla of such light craft as
the M.L.'s did not spend a long period amidst
the tornado of shell-fire that swept the water
at Zeebrugge without suffering casualties,
though their losses were infinitesimal in
comparison with what might have been
expected. The destroyers also got off lightly.
One of them, the North Star, fell a victim to
the enemy's guns. However, a consort, the
Phoebe (Commander H. E. Gore-Langton,
R.N.), slipped in and took off the North
Star\s crew before the destroyer went down.
Whilst engaged doing this a shell struck the
Phoebe* s whistle and started it blowing ; nor
could it be shut off until some time after.
The noise signalled the position of the
destroyer to the enemy, who brought every
gun to bear upon her and damaged her
considerably. Under the fierce attack the
Phoebe went calmly on with her rescue work —
fighting the enemy with one hand, picking
up survivors with the other until she had
them all aboard. The two destroyers just
mentioned and the Warwick were detailed to
keep sentinel over the Vindictive, so that the
enemy destroyers which were known to be
100 THE DOVER PATROL
at sea could not dash through the smoke
and assail her. It was whilst doing this that
the North Star, blinded by the dense clouds
of artificial log that were rolling about, came
suddenly into a patch of water lit up vividly
by star-shells and was sunk.
The coastal motor-boats whirled joyously
into the very heart of the fray — and they
were the strangest as well as the swiftest
craft that joined in it. These C.M.B.'s are
gossamer-like hulls that skim the surface of
the water rather than swim upon it ; being
very lightly powered and of the lightest
possible construction, they can spin about
with extraordinary speed and nimbleness.
All that can be seen of one whilst she is
travelling at high power is a pointed bow
standing bolt upright amidst a rapidly moving
smother of boiUng white foam; should there
be any sea on, nothing is discernible beyond
a high colimm of flying spray somewhere in
the midst of which the boat is buried. Yet
the C.M.B.'s are admirable fighters, capable
of doing varied sorts of service. Under such
conditions as prevailed at Zeebrugge the
enemy found them to be elusive antagonists.
CRAFT THAT KEPT THE RING 101
swift to strike themselves yet difficult to hit
back at, as no sooner had they delivered
their blow than they sped away to some other
point of attack. The C.M.B.'s raked over
the shore close in for whatever they might
find there and buzzed about inside the Mole
after the fashion of angry hornets. One of
them leaped at the Brussels and torpedoed
her ; others attacked with Lewis guns the
enemy by the seaplane-sheds on the Mole ;
another spun round the end of the Mole itself
and drove a torpedo into a German destroyer
that w^as trying to get at the Vindictive.
Here, there, and everywhere raced these
vicious little craft, worrying an enemy who
knows them well and hates them mightily —
themselves finding greatest safety in their
own celerity of movement and the smallness
of the target they made.
From the above it will be seen that whilst
the chief honours of Zeebrugge fell to the
Vindictive, to Submarine C3, and to the
blocking-ships, each of which did a thing that
in itself was sufficient to make the fight for
ever illustrious in the annals of sea warfare,
the crews manning the various types of
102 THE DOVER PATROL
supporting vessels played their part with a
skill and courage that helped materially
towards the brilliant success attained. To
employ a rather hackneyed expression, which
means a lot all the same, every officer and
man there " worthily upheld the traditions
of the great service to which he belonged."
The glorious adventure of Zeebrugge showed
the whole world that the British seaman of
to-day is made of the same stout stuff as
his forefathers.
IX
THE FIRST ATTACK UPON OSTEND
Sir Roger Keyes' scheme of organization
was comprehensive. Ostend and Zeebrugge
being the two gateways into the narrower
parts of the North Sea through which the
Germans used to make salHes upon our ships,
Sir Roger aimed at closing both these up.
Part of the expedition which he led out
on April 23 was under orders to make for
Zeebrugge; to the other part had been
assigned the task of blocking up Ostend
harbour. For the latter purpose the obsolete
cruisers Sirius and Brilliant, filled with
cement, were taken along. The plans had
been for both parts of the joint expedition
to reach their goal at the same time, and the
" blocking up " operations at each place to
be carried out simultaneously. So far as
the times of arrival went the programme was
kept with exactness ; beyond that, local cir-
cumstances intervened to prevent a brilliant
103
104 THE DOVER PATROL
tactical conception from being developed
exactly as projected.
The force dispatched to Ostend was under
Commodore Hubert Lyne, C.M.G., who at the
time had charge of the Dunkirk section of
the Dover Patrol. Surrounded by their
escorts, the Sirius and Brilliant made for
their objective, which they reached promptly
at the arranged hour — midnight. With that
success their good luck ended. Fortune
proved their enemy thenceforward until the
end. In getting to Ostend Commodore Lyne's
force overcame many difficulties. Through
darkness, mist, and rain the ships were
obliged to make their way along a hostile
coast where navigation, dangerous enough
at all times owing to the shallows, etc.,
was particularly so on a night of low
visibility.
Whatever defects he may have, the German
is an alert enemy who neglects nothing that
can be turned to his own advantage. None
quicker than he to recognize where ^Nature
may be made to help the Hun. And he has
not omitted to do all that he can to intensify
the difficulties of navigation along the Belgian
FIRST ATTACK UPON OSTEND 105
coast. For this no blame may be laid upon
him ; it is a legitimate act of warfare — but
it made reaching Ostend perilous work for
our assaulting force, which had to steal warily
through minefields, as well as face all the
other risks scattered along their way.
From all angles Ostend was the smaller
operation of the two. The place itself gave
less trouble than did Zeebrugge, being
nearer to our sea " look-outs " and not so
formidable an enemy base. No ship canal
served it from inland, and by no possible
means could the Germans make it duplicate
Zeebrugge, if that were lost to them. But
both these ports " locked, barred, and bolted"
against the enemy meant a heavy blow to
him, and the smaller operation was a neces-
sary complement to the greater. Yet the
partial success of it mattered far less than a
similar result at Zeebrugge would have done ;
and it was partially successful only in so far
as the " blowing up " went, owing to factors
which no skill or foresight could have elimi-
nated— although the moral effect of the blow
at Ostend, coming at the same moment as
the smashing one dealt at Zeebrugge, would
106 THE DOVER PATROT.
have fully justified its being struck had none
of our ships got near the harbour.
At both places the scheme of operations
had much the same basis. The cover of a
smoke-screen was necessary to carry it
through. When Ostend was reached the
motor-launches and other craft put up this
screen as arranged, and behind it the blocking-
ships steamed towards the harbour. But
just at the critical moment the wind changed
suddenly, blowing the screen away from the
ships and uncovering them to the full view
of the enemy, who promptly opened at them
with all his guns and turned night into day
by means of star-shells and searchlights.
Even with this handicap against them the
blocking-ships might have found their assigned
positions had it not been for the fact that
the enemy moved the Stroom Bank buoy a
mile out of place at the last moment. Not
being aware of what he had done, the ships
steered by this navigation mark and were
thus thrown off their proper course.
Coastal motor-boats, fully as busy here as
at Zeebrugge, in addition to helping with
smoke-making flares, which lighted up the
FIRST ATTACK UPON OSTEND 107
ends of the piers, enabled the Sirius and the
Brilliant to pass the buoy. But the unex-
pected shift of the wind which bared the
ships of their enshrouding cover showed them
to the enemy with startHng distinctness. At
the moment of revelation they were within
point-blank range of his guns ; of this he
took full advantage, and battered them
unmercifully. The Sirius apparently suffered
most. Struck many times, she was already
in a sinking condition when she grounded
on a bank about four hundred yards east of
the piers. There the Brilliant brought up
near by her, further progress being impos-
sible. Both ships were blown up at this
point and their crews taken off by motor-
laimches.
By marvellous good fortune practically
every officer and man escaped from the
blocking-ships unhurt ; there were only five
casualties — a miraculous result having regard
to the conditions under which the crews
were picked up. The rescue work was done
by motor-launches, a number of which were
employed on this and various other duties
108 THE DOVER PATROL
under command of Captain Ian Hamilton
Benn, M.P. From the time they discovered
them until they sank, the Germans directed a
fierce, unceasing fire upon the Sirius and the
Brilliant. Full in the face of this M.L. 283
(Lieut.-Commander H. R. Hoare, R.N.V.R.)
and 276 (Lieut. R. Bourke, R.N.V.R.) went
alongside the two ships and took off the 110
officers and men who were upon them.
Previous to this M.L. 532 had gone alongside
the Brilliant, Caught there by the full blast
of the enemy's fire, the M.L. was damaged
so severely that she had to be eventually
taken in tow by another motor-launch.
Both "532's" engines were broken, and
escaping fumes " gassed " the two mechanics
attending upon them. The men were found
insensible and carried on deck, where arti-
ficial respiration was applied until they
recovered. Lieut. Kirkwood, R.N.V.R., who
jumped into the engine-room, was " gassed "
also. Owing to the launch's starboard engine
starting to go astern as soon as she was struck,
"532" backed away, from the Brilliant,
and made, stern foremost, towards the beach,
which lay only about two hundred yards
FIRST ATTACK UPON OSTEND 109
distant. All telegraph signals for the engine
to be put over proving abortive, Lieut.
Kirkwood jumped below to stop the engine
and then discovered the insensible mechanics.
Before he could do anything much this
officer had himself to be rescued from the
gas-filled engine-room. For about half an
hour " 532 " limped about with her disabled
machinery, fairly under the muzzles of the
enemy's guns, and those left combatant
aboard her had to handle an almost un-
manageable boat and bring round their
" gassed " comrades as best they could. The
simple facts of such an incident as this are
the best picture that could be given of it,
for whoever is unable to visualize with their
aid the position in which boat and crew found
themselves would not be helped much by
elaborate description.
At last " 532 " found aid. For somewhere
about an hour after this M.L. 276 stood by her,
all the while in close proximity to the shore,
and finally took the cripple in tow until her
mechanics had recovered sufficiently to get
their engines working again. By now day-
light was approaching, and both launches
110 THE DOVER PATROL
knew that unless they could get away before
dawn crept over the surface of the waters it
would be all up with them. In the end
" 532 " was able to crawl safely back to
Dunkirk under her own steam.
Coastal motor-boats as well as motor-
launches were engaged close in shore and
elsewhere within the sphere of operations
throughout the fighting. And these fragile
vessels seemed to bear charmed lives. There
are fully 120 large pieces of artillery having
an effective range of twenty miles in the
enemy's shore batteries between Zeebrugge
and Ostend ; how many smaller weapons
such as pom-poms he has mounted there only
the enemy himself knows. Guns are clus-
tered more thickly around these ports than
anywhere else along the coast-line. Owing
to difficulties of visibility the enemy could
not easily find our smaller vessels at Ostend,
and for the most part fired over them. But
this was not due to " wildness " on his part :
he sought his targets assiduously enough.
As one means of finding them, he sent up
innumerable star-shells ; then he tried a kind
of blue tracer projectile which spread and
FIRST ATTACK UPON OSTEND 111
shot streams of brilliant light, skipping and
dipping about the surface of the water in all
directions.
Failing of the result he desired in this way,
he put up barrages, varying these rapidly.
Sometimes they would be a mile and a half
from the shore, sometimes half a mile, some-
times only a quarter of a mile. But the
vessels he was endeavouring to hit, through
quick manoeuvring and good luck, got clear
every time — not without being subjected to
very close shaves, though. Plunging shell
threw cataracts of water over their decks,
drenching to the skin the officers and men
upon them. In one case an officer was
covered with mud which a projectile, diving
in a shallow place, heaved up from the
bottom of the harbour. So long as their
presence was needed, then, the flotillas stuck
to their posts in the shell-pitted water off
Ostend ; then steamed away, leaving the
enemy guns in full action behind them. The
task set the force had not been completed ;
it was merely postponed, not abandoned.
" FINISHING THE JOB "
It is not the habit of the British Naw to
leave a job half finished. Ch'cunistances
already explained having prevented the
" blocking up " of Ostend on St. George's
Day, the Dover Patrol forthwith busied itself
with preparations for renewing the attempt
at the first favourable opportunity. Nor
was the doing of this delayed very long. A
new expedition was formed, and on the night
of May 9 the Vindictive, having won immor-
tality at Zeebrugge some seventeen days
earlier, found an honourable grave beneath
the waters of Ostend harbour.
The second, and successful, attack upon
this place was carried through by a force
imder Commodore Hubert Lynes, at whose
disposal Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes placed
all the monitors, destroyers, and other craft
he required. As in the two previous ventures
of a like nature, all the officers and men
112
" FINISHING THE JOB " 113
taking part were volunteers. Once again the
difficulty lay not in getting numbers so much
as in selecting from those who offered. Here
is an incident that shows the fine spirit of
our men. After the Vindictive had steamed
to Dunkirk it became necessary to reduce her
stokehold complement to the barest minimum
so as to lessen casualties, for there was not
much hope that any who went into Ostend
aboard would come out again alive. But
when a weeding-out was attempted none of
the crew were willing to leave the ship. At
last the matter had to be settled by drawing
lots. In this way was decided which stokers
should have the coveted, though perilous,
honour of remaining in her and which should
go ashore.
Commander A. E. Godsall, who had had
charge of the Brilliant in the earlier attempt,
was given command of the Vindictive upon
this occasion. Under him was a volunteer
crew drawn from those who had served
aboard the Ostend blocking-ships on the
previous occasion, save only that Engineer-
Lieut. -Commander W. R. Bury and four
engine-room artificers — H, Cavanagh, N.
114 THE DOVER PATROL
Carrol, A. Thomas, and H. Harris — who had
been in the Vindictive at Zeebrugge, were at
their own request allowed to remain in the
ship because of their special knowledge of
her engines. Commodore Lynes directed
operations from the Faulknor, having with
him as aides Commander J. L. C. Clarke,
D.S.O., R.N., and Commander H. L. Sand-
ford, D.S.O., R.N.
For some days prior to the operations bad
weather had prevented more than the scan-
tiest reconnaissance being done. But the
enemy apparently feared that another attempt
would be made upon Ostend, for he had
removed all buoys so as to impede navigation
as much as possible. In arranging the new
expedition all possible care was taken to
achieve a surprise attack and prevent any
hitch from occurring. Aircraft as well as
sea-craft were employed, and at one time it
looked as though the expedition might have
to fight its way through, as whilst it was on
its way a force of nine enemy destroyers
were reported to be out, though nothing was
subsequently seen of these.
A squadron of monitors stmng themselves
" FINISHING THE JOB " 115
to seaward, and a destroyer screen was also
thrown out. Preceded by the coastal motor-
boats and motor-launches, each of which had
its appointed post, the Vindictive made for
Ostend, being due there at 2 a.m. She
arrived in good time. At 1.43 a.m. the
anxiously awaited signal was given. Aero-
planes hovering over Ostend itself repeated
the order to the monitors at sea and to the
heavy Royal Marine Artillery batteries along
the coast. By the next second huge shells
were bursting on enemy positions. They
screamed in from seaward, they screeched
up from the coast, and a hail of bombs from
the sky supplemented them. The enemy
was given a particularly warm time of it.
Forward now shot two G.M.B.'s, commanded
by Lieut. D. Reid, R.N.R., and Lieut. A. L.
Poland, R.N. Straight they went, one at
each pier-head, and swished torpedoes into
them. Amidst the roar of the explosions
which Ibllowed upon the weapons striking,
an enemy machine-gun situated on the
western pier was seen to fly upward as the
end of the structure disappeared. C| ^
Lieut. W. R. Slayter, R.N., who was
116 THE DOVER PATROL
waiting there for the purpose, dropped a
calcium flare on the spot where the Stroom
buoy should have been anchored, and thus
provided the Vindictive with a navigating
mark which the enemy could not obliterate.
Meanwhile the motor-launches had formed
up on either hand and made two walls of
dense smoke, between which the Vindictive
passed towards her goal hidden from the eyes
of the German artillerymen. But though
the latter could not see, they could act — and
they did act precipitously. With a deafen-
ing crash all their guns leaped quickly into
life. SearchHghts peered inquisitively about,
trying to pierce the fog- wall that the motor-
launches had built ; star-shells innumerable
made their curious green effects on the
thickened atmosphere, whilst "flaming onions"
(strings of luminous balls) floated overhead
in all directions. The noise was terrific.
Amid the hell of shrieking projectiles, the
flash of near-by guns, and the unearthly
" fireworks " that the enemy was sending
up it seemed that surely no vessel could live.
Yet the smoke-screens served their purpose so
admirably that the Germans fired right over
'' FINISHING THE JOB " 117
our ships, being unable to range them with
accuracy.
Now came a change which at first hampered
both sides equally. The weather clerk took
a hand in the game. At 1.45 a.m. the sky
became overcast. Five minutes later there
drifted over a real sea fog which made the
imitation one look like — well, an imitation.
So dense was this fog that our destroyers,
in order to keep in touch with each other,
had to incur the risk of switching on their
lights and blowing their syrens. The Vindic-
tive found herself absolutely benighted. All
around her lay a pall of blackness which
made seeking the harbour mouth a sort of
" blind man's buff " game on her part. She
reduced speed and nosed around, first west-
ward, then eastward, unwittingly passing the
entrance twice whilst doing this. Then a
coastal motor-boat put down on the water a
million-candle-power Dover flare. Through
the rift which this cut in the fog the Vindic-
tive saw the opening between the piers and
steamed boldly into the harbour, passing
right over the flare that had proved as a lamp
to her feet.
118 THE DOVER PATROL
Another coastal motor-boat hung a flare
in the rigging of the sunken Sirius to guide
the Vindictive towards her goal. Under
clearer weather conditions this display of
dazzling lights would have brought heavy
casualties upon our smaller craft inshore by
disclosing their whereabouts to the enemy ;
but the fog, though hampering our ships
much, did this good service for them — ^that
it kept the C.M.B.'s and M.L.'s so well
enshrouded that the enemy could not discern
them by the lights which made brilliant the
pathway of the Vindictive, Throughout this
period of fog and bewilderment the heavy
gun attack from monitors and coast batteries
proceeded unchecked, as likewise did the
overhead bombing. Hard indeed would it
be to convey any adequate idea of what the
water-front of Ostend resembled whilst the
affair was at its greatest intensity. A thou-
sand fiends playing wild gambols in the air
could scarcely have raised such an appalling
clatter.
No sooner had the Vindictive got inside
the piers than the enemy gims began punish-
ing her ruthlessly. Fired from short range,
'' FINISHING THE JOB " 119
the shells ripped open old wounds in her
structure and inflicted many new ones. Over
her decks and upper works swept a deadly
torrent of steel. A shell struck the after-
control, instantly killing Sub-Lieut. A. H.
MacLachlan and all others in the place.
Bullets from machine-guns came in such
showers that they made the chart-room
untenable. Consequently Commander God-
sail and his officers went into the armoured
conning-tower, from whence they steered the
ship. There was a gap in the eastern pier
about two hundred yards from its seaward
end, caused possibly by a collision, or it may
have been one of several breaches in the
piers made by the enemy to prevent us from
landing upon them an attacking party as
we did at Zeebrugge. Just after passing the
spot Commander Godsall went outside the
conning-tower and stationed himself just in
front of it so that he could better see the
Vindictive's course. Through the observa-
tion-slit in the tower he gave the order to
" Starboard helm." This was obeyed : as
a result of it the Vindictive placed her nose
towards the eastern pier and began to swing
120 THE DOVER PATROL
across the channel she was designed to
block.
Just at that moment a shell from the shore
batteries struck full on the conning-tower,
killing Commander Godsall and stunning
Lieut. Sir John Alleyne, the navigating officer
who was by the wheel inside. Through the
observation-slit Lieut. V. A. C. Crutchley,
R.N., the only uninjured officer in the tower,
called to the commander. Receiving no
reply from him, Lieut. Crutchley put the
engine hard astern to assist in swinging the
Vindictive athwart channel. By this time
she was pointing at an angle of about forty
degrees from the pier, grounded so fast that
she could not be moved farther. For some
few minutes Lieut. Crutchley tried to do so
but failed ; thereupon he gave the order to
clear the engine-rooms and abandon ship.
Engineer-Lieut.-Commander Bury, the last
one below, blew the main charges from aft
whilst Lieut. Crutchley blew the auxiliary
ones from his station in the conning-tower.
By the force of the explosion the bottom
plates were ripped out of the ship, her bulk-
head torn down, and with one frail quiver
" FINISHING THE JOB " 121
the Vindictive sank six feet until she lay
fast on the bottom of the Channel. Lieut.
Crutchley searched the ship in the hopes of
finding the bodies of Commander Godsall and
Sub-Lieut. MacLaehlan, but her decks were
such a tangle of wreckage that he could
discover no trace of either.
M.L. 254 (Lieutenant G. H. Drummond,
R.N.V.R.) now went alongside the Vindictive,
which the enemy were still bombarding
furiously, and took off her crew — a dangerous
task, during the performance of which the
M.L. suffered considerably. But exemplary
bravery and coolness were shown by every-
body. First-class Petty Officer J. J. Reed,
the Vindictive' s coxswain, scrambled through
the heavy fire into the conning-tower, and
brought from thence Lieut. Sir John Alleyne,
who was still unconscious. Before he could
be lifted into the launch Sir John Alleyne
was hit and fell into the water. As Engineer-
Lieut. Bury was leaving the Vindictive he too
sustained bad wounds. He rolled over and
over along the rescuing boat's deck with
enemy machine-gun bullets continually strik-
ing him. In all *'254" saved two officers
122 THE DOVER PATROL
and thirty-eight men — a magnificent feat
considering her own battered condition.
As she followed the Vindictive into harbour
a shell struck her, killing the second in
command, Lieut. Gordon Ross, R.N.V.R.,
who was spraying the pier-ends with bullets
from a machine-gun, and a deck hand named
Thomas. Lieut. Drummond was wounded
severely in the right leg, and Rees, the
coxswain, had part of his hand shot away as
he stood at the wheel. A second later and
Lieut. Drummond got a machine-gun bullet
in his shoulder and another through his right
arm, whilst a third injured his hand badly.
Nevertheless he and the coxswain both stuck
to their posts, taking the M.L. alongside the
Vindictive and away again after she had
picked up the crew. Stern foremost, they
backed the launch out of the harbour and
got to sea. It was there found that the
vessel had suffered so much damage that
difficulty was experienced in keeping her
afloat ; practically she was in a sinking
condition. But they managed, by means of
pumping, to make her float for half an hour
longer, at the end of which time they fell
" FINISHING THE JOB " 123
in with the destroyer Warwick, with Vice-
Admiral Sir Roger Keyes aboard. To the
Warwick were transferred all those in the
launch and the launch herself was sunk, it
being clear that she could not in any circum-
stances hold the surface much longer.
M.L. 276 (Lieut. R. Bourne, R.N,R.) had
also followed the Vindictive in. As '' 254 " left
her " 276 " went alongside her to make sure
nobody had been left aboard ; getting no
reply to his shouts, Lieut. Bourne began to
back away. Thinking he heard a cry, he
took his vessel to the Vindictive again, but
once more could find nobody. A second and
a third time this happened, Lieut. Bourne
being all the while under intensive enemy
machine-gun fire. Already his launch had
been hit by a shell and the coxswain killed at
the wheel, his place there being taken by
Sub-Lieut. Petrie. Going for the third time
alongside the Vindictive, Lieut. Bourne found
in the water beside her, clinging to a rope,
three men ; it was their cries for help that
he had answered so often. When Sub-Lieut.
Petrie had hauled them aboard it was found
that one of the rescued trio was Lieut. Sir
124 THE DOVER PATROL
James AUeyne, whom falling into the water
had brought sufficiently to consciousness for
him to grasp a rope. M.L. 276 literally
fought her way out of harbour, as Sub-Lieut.
Petrie kept a machine-gun spitting at the
piers whilst she ran past them. What a hot
corner **276" had been in was evinced by
the condition of her hull. There were over
fifty shots in this, part of her wheel was blown
away, and a five-inch shell had gone clean
through her — fortunately without exploding.
Two other launches that entered the harbour
for rescue work also experienced a bad time
there, but got away in the end.
As regards the object of the expedition,
this was attained in so far as the Vindictive
was concerned. She lies in a position which
blocks the channel so that no large craft
can get by. Ostend as a naval base is now
of much less value to the Hun.
XI
THE HOT TRIANGLE
The Hot Triangle lies about fifteen minutes'
air voyage of England. Do not confound it
with the Wet Triangle ; they are quite
distinct war zones. One of several differences
between them is that, whilst warships domi-
nate in the Wet Triangle, most of the fighting
in the Hot Triangle is done by aircraft.
Roughly, a line cutting through the sea just
off Nieuport-Ostend-Zeebrugge marks the
base of the " Triangle " ; its apex lies at
Bruges.
Not exactly a triangular dimension ! Maybe
so ; but why urge such a quibble ? It's one
near enough to justify the name. Besides,
this is no book of Euclid but a volume
concerned rather with what happens in an
area than with the label colloquially attached
to it.
And what happens in the bomb-wracked
terrain of the Hot Triangle affects home folk
125
126 THE DOVER PATROL
very closely. The farthermost (in some ways
the most effective) outposts of London's
protection against aerial attacks lie there ;
also, to an important extent, there begins
the defence of our sea-borne commerce, and
of ihe Ports of America too, against U-boat
depredations.
It is a commonplace of strategy that the
best way of preventing your enemy from
striking you at close quarters is to keep him
busy shielding his own body. By acting on
this principle our forces operating against
the Hun in the Hot Triangle save people
living this side of the North Sea from many
unpleasant visitations.
Owing to geographical conditions the air-
craft attached to the Dover Patrol find
greater opportunities here than its ships do.
The latter keeps a strangle-hold to seaward.
But warships are unable to go overland ;
aircraft can do that. Shoal-water and shore-
lines do not restrict their radius of action ;
trenches cannot be dug against them ; neither
can barbed-wire entanglements stay their
progress, nor minefields hamper their move-
ments.
THE HOT TRIANGLE 127
Added to this, the " overhead arm " is the
most mobile of all — usually the most far-
reaching as well. Daily it stretches into
various parts of the Hot Triangle and delivers
♦ lusty blows at the enemy, who in quaking
terror signals around, " Take cover, take
cover. Here are those Verdammte Englischer
aeroplanes coming again. Gott strafe 'em" —
and down goes the Hun rabbit into his
burrow.
Do not look on this as a fancy picture, for
it is not one. If there be anything certain
in this world it is the fact that the persistent
bombing raids made by our aerial squadrons
in this part of Flanders have " put the wind
up the enemy " pretty badly. Their attacks
upon him are unceasing. Every possible
day finds them on wing.
Every possible night also — plans being so
arranged that raids are continuous ; they
begin with daybreak and they don't stop
with darkness. Certain squadrons " go
over" at different times during the day
loaded with bombs and deliver their cargo
upon a chosen objective ; others attack
only at night. Never does the enemy know
128 THE DO\^R PATROL
when they are coming nor where they will
hit him.
The only certain thing he knows is that
they will assuredly come some time, and this
purposely created suspense tries his nerves
severely. One time the target will be Bruges,
another Ostend, another Zeebrugge, or some
point of military importance lying in the
immediate vicinity of these places.
Great care is always taken to assault only
actual military objectives. The residential
parts of a Flanders town are never bombed
by our airmen.
Neither do they copy the Germans' prac-
tice of throwing projectiles about indiscrimi-
nately. Upon munition centres, wharves,
aerodromes, and other legitimate points they
shower deadly missiles actually by ton-
weights at a time and content themselves
with this.
Photographs show Bruges docks to have
been bombed by us so heavily that the space
around them resembles a piece of honeycomb
laid flat, so full of holes is it. Yet the town
itself remains untouched. The same is true
of Ostend and elsewhere.
THE HOT TRIANGLE 129
If the Powers who have the ordering of
affairs were wilHng that they should do so —
and they are not — the men who handle our
aerial fleets would decline to lower themselves
to the contemptible level of the Hun.
Except for the coming and going of the
machines their daylight incursions into the
Hot Triangle yield little to the mere sight-
seer. But night-bombing raids furnish a
wonderfully picturesque spectacle. Sitting
amongst sand-dunes or at the edge of the
flooded area, one sees approaching what
seem like huge, staring owls' eyes high up
in the air.
These are the navigation lights of the
big bombing craft. After a while the angry
whirr of the machines sounds overhead.
Gradually this noise fades into the distance
and the pyrotechnic display begins. The
enemy has heard his sorely dreaded enemies
coming and forthwith provides for them the
warmest reception he can.
He goes to the business whole-heartedly,
and does it with real Teuton thoroughness.
On every hand shrapnel-bursts dot the sky
with brilliant star-points of light ; often
ISO THE DOVER PATROL
there's quite a Milky Way of them. Flares
go up one after the other in rapid succession ;
then " onions " by the string ; then tracer-
bullets thread long lines in the darkness.
Across this flat country, which offers no
obstacles to the vision, one can obtain as
good a \'iew of the " fireworks " over such
places as Ostend and Bruges as if one were
close by them. Also of the searchlights,
which appear to be imcountable ; these shoot
up suddenly like thick forests of tall, silvery,
branchless trees.
And the noise grows terrific. " Whing,"
" whing," sings the shrapnel from the
"Archies." Down come the bombs with a
thunderous " Wonk, wonk," shaking the
ground as they explode. Fires start up —
this is a quite usual result — and to the " hate"
with which the Hun tortures the air overhead
is added the blaze and rolling fumes of the
conflagrations beneath.
Quite often an ammunition-dump, or some-
thing else equally combustible, is fired, and
the roar of its explosion momentarily drowns
all other noises. Scenes of this kind are of
almost nightly occurrence within the Hot
THE HOT TRIANGLE 131
Triangle. If Bruges escapes, Zeebrugge gets
it ; whilst Ostend is rarely exempt, being a
convenient target for our airmen to take a
parting shot at.
What these unceasing raids have cost the
enemy in the loss of war material he alone
knows ; but the sum must be tremendous.
For enormous damage has been done to
him. In addition to ^destroying his am-
munition-dumps and wrecking his aero-
dromes we, by thus attacking him from
the air, make it impossible for him to use
against us the huge stores of war material
he is constantly accumulating in the " Tri-
angle."
What is equally important, we prevent him
from doing anything towards unsealing Zee-
brugge or from obtaining much military
benefit from his possession of the Flanders
canal system. All the waterways within the
Hot Triangle are regularly searched by our
aircraft. Wherever they find a destroyer
pushed away for safety they bomb it. Sub-
marines, munition barges, and so on get like
treatment. Nowhere can the enemy find a
safe corner to stow anything. Even half-
132 THE DOVER PATROL
subterranean aerodromes are spied out and
" pilled."
Big gun positions, naturally, are much too
tempting objectives to be let alone. The
Hun artillerymen employed about them are
being continually chased into their dug-outs
like rabbits chevied to their holes. Much of
their time is spent in building new shelters
to replace those we make untenable.
Until the Royal Air Force came into being
the Royal Naval Air Service did most of the
air work in this sector. Ex-R.N.A.S. flights
are still the most numerous there. It may
be only a fortuitous circumstance or the same
thing may be true of other divisions of the
R.A.F., but into the personnel of these
squadrons there has been introduced a
composite material that results in splendid
efficiency.
Pilots and observers are drawn in nearly
equal proportions from the Motherland and
the Overseas Dominions, particularly Canada;
in some cases a few American flying men are
attached as well. Just as the finest metals
are obtained by blending various ores, so
this combination of men, differing in some
THE HOT TRIANGLE 133
ways but fundamentally of the same blood
and the same ideals, has produced a magni-
ficent body of airmen.
Moreover, they work excellently together.
It is the squadron rather than the individual
which they think about. With them the job
counts more than the man who does it.
Assimilation has reached such ^ point amongst
them that they have even arrived at a
common language in which Colonial and
American idioms figure largely. For example,
no airman hereabout ever says " Yes " ;
" Yep " is the affirmative he always uses.
Many other indications are observable of
the complete and harmonious understanding
that has been established. Comradeship in
danger is the greatest bond for knitting men
together ; and the Allies' pilots have it in
full strength here.
Well need they be competent. In the Hot
Triangle the enemy has mustered as for-
midable a collection of " Archies " and other
anti-aircraft weapons as can be found any-
where along the Western Front ; the whole
area is stiff with them. Yet despite this,
our airmen and their American comrades
184 THE DOVER PATROL
cross the lines at will. Quite commonly they
go forty or more miles into hostile territory —
forcing the fighting always, never declining
combat however long the odds may be
against them numerically.
Often these odds are two to one, as the
Hun never chances a " scrap " in the air
when numbers are anything like equal. Nor
will he come near the lines for an engagement.
His favourite practice is to wait in force
anywhere from twenty to forty miles behind
them and try to cut off stragglers from our
formations, bearing them down by sheer
weight of numbers. When our bombers go
out upon daylight expeditions they are
accompanied by fighting squadrons composed
of lighter machines. The task assigned to
the latter is to hold off the enemy aircraft
whilst the bombers do their work.
Only occasionally does the enemy attack.
He sits up in the air as high as he can get
and watches for an opportunity of swooping
down when conditions are all in his favour.
If he cannot get these advantages he will
avoid a fight— when he has the chance of
doing so ; that is not always afforded him.
THE HOT TRIANGLE 135
As soon as their cargo has been delivered
our bombers and scouts together invariably
make for any machines that may be within
striking distance and bring them to action
if by any possibility they can do this.
Night raids are a different matter. Then
the machines steal in and steal out again
without escort ; for various reasons such
would be of little value after the sun has
gone to bed. Being brave enough in thei
dark, the Hun airmen take advantage of the
cover of night to come our side of the lines
and try reprisals.
Generally he aims at " laying out " one of
the aerodromes from which we send the
machines that trouble him so sorely ; but
he never succeeds in diminishing the force of
our aerial offensive, though he spends quite
a lot of money trying to accomplish that
object. During one of these nocturnal assaults
he has, upon occasion, expended somewhere
about one hundred thousand pounds' worth
of bombs without damaging a single one of
our machines or hurting any of the men who
fly them.
And he is not permitted to raid with
136 THE DOVER PATROL
impunity. The whirr of the Gotha overhead
is a signal that breaks pandemonium loose.
Guns roar out, not by twos and threes, but
by batteries ; not over a few miles, but
many. " Mournful Marie " wails her dismal
note of warning to Dunkirk. Syrens, shrill
and piercing, repeat the " alert " elsewhere,
whilst " Archies " emphasize it by their ear-
splitting " cracks." Within the Hot Triangle
war blazes fiercely in the sky and beats a
destructive tattoo on the ground.
Just our side of the lines there prevails a
similar " liveliness " in so far as the air is
concerned. Nor is this merely an incidental
state of affairs ; it is the normal condition
every night when the weather permits flying.
Out of sheer desperation the Hun seizes every
chance of " getting a bit of his own back " ;
but in this locality, at any rate, what he
succeeds in doing to us is only a mere trifle
in comparison with what our airmen do to
him.
By their skill and persistency they have
made the Triangle a hard place for the Hun
to live in, though for strategic reasons he
dare not evacuate it. So he hangs on
THE HOT TRIANGLE 137
tremblingly — each day fearing what the night
will bring, each night hoping that clouds and
mist will next day give him a temporary
respite from the assaults of our bombing
squadrons.
XII
THE AIRMEN'S PART IN OSTEND
FIGHT
For the student of war Ostend possesses one
feature of outstanding interest. It supplied
the first instance of sea-fleets and air-fleets
being employed jointly, under the same
commander, in such an assault upon an
enemy stronghold. Events at which we have
barely leisure to glance in these crowded
days are certain at some future time to be
weighed in the balances of history and their
importance correctly appraised. Probably
the real significance of the innovation made
at Ostend may have to await this judgment
before receiving full recognition, but the
most casual follower of "the greatest game
of all " cannot wholly overlook its import.
Earth, sea, and sky were marshalled against
Hun, for land guns as well as others played
their part on our side.
Such a co-ordination of forces was made
188
THE AIRMEN'S PART 139
possible by the fact that the Dover Patrol is
not limited wholly to the sea. Within its
sphere comes a part of the English coast, a
part of the Belgian coast, and a part of the
French coast, as well as the water that lies
between them. Both sea-squadrons and air-
squadrons are included in the Patrol's effec-
tives. All are under command of Vice-
Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, w^ho thus had at
his disposal the means of attacking the
enemy from sea and air at the same moment.
As both " wings " were directed by one clear-
thinking mind, risk of confusion disappeared ;
that was a great advantage. Ostend, in this
respect, proved the value of unity of control.
Usually the best recorder of an event is a
person who has taken part in it — some one
who, possessing the gift of narrative, sets
down his impressions of things seen whilst
yet they are fresh in his mind. The following
account of what our aircraft did at Ostend
on May 9, and what befell them whilst doing
it, was contributed by a pilot who took part
in the fight. His story is given with only
this prefatory comment : " Any person whose
imagination cannot be quickened into some
140 THE DOVER PATROL
comprehension of what it must have been Uke
to sit up in the air and watch the night-
battle raging below must be exceedingly
sluggish-minded. Could one conceive a more
enthralling situation than that of our airmen,
who from their cloud-paved eyrie looked down
upon this picture of hot-breathed war — upon
a combat in which they themselves were to the
enemy the most terrifying element because
they represented the peril that flew unseen ?
" By employing aircraft to escort the fleet
and thus prevent enemy scouts from detecting
its movements," says the narrator, " we were
enabled to spring a real surprise attack upon
the Hun. I was with the bombing squadrons.
When we turned out to make a start the
weather did not seem very propitious. After
' running up ' our engines to warm them and
see that they were all right, we climbed into
our seats. Then came the order to ' go,' and
off we went. Clouds were low and there
were confusing mists, but we knew the way
so well from having gone over it often that
we could have steered straight for Ostend
blindfold. Climbing gradually higher and
higher, we sped through the night at a high
THE AIRMEN'S PART 141
pace. It was so dark that in order to avoid
colliding with each other our navigation lights
had to be kept burning ; that was a handicap,
though not a very material one since it merely
set the Hun guessing. He might be able
to see us coming but did not know whither
we were bound.
" Each of us knew exactly where to go and
what to do ; fully detailed instructions were
in our hands. As a result, we made our
rendezvous easily in spite of the weather
difficulties. One of our chief objectives was
to occupy the enemy's attention — to keep
him so busy looking after us that he would
have no leisure to spare for investigations
seaward. We did that successfully. Further-
more, the distraction we caused prevented
him from using many of his guns and search-
lights on the fleet. Clever as he is, the Hun
has not yet produced a gun that will fire
two ways at once ; nor a searchlight that can
look two ways at once either. Everything
turned on us meant something diverted from
the ships. It was largely as a result of this
distraction that the fleet was able to approach
undetected. After arriving at our destina-
142 THE DOVER PATROL
tion we flew round and round, waiting the
signal to begin operations. Now ' marking
time ' in the air on a dark night over a
strongly defended enemy base is a manoeuvre
one must perform before one can understand
what it's like. As I have already mentioned,
weather conditions were against us. Although
our navigation lights were on we had several
narrow escapes from collisions. Often we
got quite close to the ships ; then buzzed off
again before they spotted us.
*' So things went on until we received the
anxiously awaited signal ; this came from
the monitors lying far out at sea. As soon as
we saw their guns begin to make big rents
of vivid yellow light in the darkness that
lay like a funeral pall over the water we
knew the moment had arrived for us to start
attacking. These gun-flashes were our word
of command, and gladly we obeyed it. In
fact, the boom of the monitors' guns proved
a call to general activity. The sleeping
blackness beneath us woke suddenly into
virile, noisy life. Our own coastal batteries
began popping in shells from long range ;
whilst the Hun commenced to use everything
THE AIRMEN'S PART 148
he had — and that was quite a lot — with
spiteful energy. And we knew, though we
could not see them, that somewhere near at
hand a whole swarm of our ships were
creeping silently up to join the melee. One
felt a certain sense of pleasurable expectancy
whilst waiting for them to burst in.
" We climbed and turned our machines
towards the shore. Immediately the guns
from our monitors and batteries opened up
the Hun started his customary fireworks.
From the altitude we were at we could see
not much of Ostend itself except the enemy's
' Archie ' bursts and ' flaming onions,' which
were soon flying about everywhere. These
* onions ' are rather ghastly sort of things.
I don't know whether they are intended
merely for illuminating or for setting machines
on fire as well. They do the illuminating
right enough. As a string of these luminous
green balls goes wriggling by it makes one
feel so lit up that every button on one's
coat must be visible to the anti-aircraft gun-
ners— decidedly an uncomfortable sensation.
Besides, a pilot would be severely burned, if
notliing worse, should an ' onion ' hit his
144 THE DOVER PATROL
bus. Searchlights were switched on also.
In short, one way or another there was as
fine a display of ' pyrotechny ' as one could
wish to see.
" Right into the middle of this we sailed.
It was our job to go there — and we went,
without thinking overmuch about what might
result from the venture. So quickly did
matters develop that by the time we passed
across the beach the air was fairly vibrating
with ' hate ' of one kind or another. ' Old
man Hun,' as my Canadian observer calls
him, was throwing it up with both hands
and all too bountifully.
" Unquestionably he was in a panic, and,
as he always does when in that state of mind,
he started a barrage that seemed powerful
enough to lift the ceiling. So great was the
noise that we could hear very little even
with engines merely ' ticking ' ; but from
long acquaintance with the sound we recog-
nized the unpleasant whistle of shrapnel as it
sprayed out around us. This ugly ' dust '
seemed to be blowing about in clouds on
every hand. Several of our buses were hit,
though, luckily, the men in them got through
THE AIRMEN'S PART 145
unhurt. Our situation was pretty tough.
' Archies ' and ' onions ' were not the only
troubles we had to contend against. Search-
lights no one minded much ; the clouds
screened us from them.
" One of our greatest difficulties was the
disturbed air. Piloting a bus through it
resembled navigating a choppy, storm-tossed
sea. This atmospheric condition resulted
from the firing beneath us. Big shells were
constantly whizzing in from our monitors in
one direction and from our coastal batteries
in another, to say nothing of those coming
from enemy artillery. Every time a projec-
tile passed beneath us it caused our machines
to bump and wallow exactly as a ship does
in the trough of a heavy sea. As projectiles
by the score were criss-crossing unceasingly,
you may imagine what a rough passage we
made overhead. We were like a squadron
of ships fighting in a gale. That may appear
a strange comparison, though it's as accurate
a one as could be made. One could hardly
have had conditions worse for piloting.
" We were not mere spectators of the fray ;
we took a combatant part in it as well. In
146 THE DOVER PATROL
addition to acting as a sort of decoy for
turning the enemy's attention one way, the
air squadrons were detailed for Hghting up
and bombing enemy gun-positions. To do
this we circled over his defences and dropped
parachute-flares upon them. These flares
illuminate a considerable area ; they are very
brilliant and burn for a long time. As they
go sailing slowly earthward everything in the
vicinity of them shows up clearly — almost
startlingly so, owing to the queer sheen of
the light. We used this device for disclosing
enemy gun-positions to our ships. Steering
our buses over the Hun's gun-emplacements,
we dropped parachute-flares just rearward of
them. As the flares descended so they
threw the gun-positions into strong relief.
You know how an object shows up in the
darkness when a light is placed behind it ;
that is how the Hun batteries looked, and
they thus made a vividly outstanding target
for our artillery. After releasing the flares
we dropped bombs. Our course took us over
and over the enemy defences, where we
dropped flares one minute and bombs the
next. For about an hour this went on
THE AIRMEN'S P.4lRT 147
almost incessantly, whilst the Hun did his
best — no mean best either — to bring our
machines down.
" Sitting up amongst the clouds and watch-
ing the fight below, in brief intervals between
taking part in it ourselves, was a weird kind
of experience. None could see us, though
we could see, more or less, what was going
on all round. It was by no means an easy
seat that we had, either. All the while the
enemy ' Archied ' us hotly ; ' onions ' flamed
up, and the big guns slung about their ton-
weight shells, which as they passed under-
neath caused our buses to bump and roll
frightfully. Visibility was fluky ; once we
could barely see objects one hundred feet
away. One had an odd kind of impression
that the fighting we surveyed was taking
place under a great black veil that had a
big rent in it just where we hung ; through
that rent hell blazed up fiercely and viciously.
Except for this spot, on looking round one
felt a queer sense of the unreal. You must
remember that the flashes of the guns out at
sea, along the coast, and in the harbour were
at times only faintly visible to us through the
148 THE DOVER PATROL
murk ; then they would become quite vivid
again.
" Occasionally, as we shut off engines to
steal down towards an objective the full roar
of battle came upon our ears ; and it was
an awful din too. Guns barking, projectiles
exploding, shells shrieking, shrapnel whining
past us — how can one describe the indescrib-
able ?
" For about an hour, as I have already
said, we were amidst these surroundings —
full in the midst of them, with no chance
of getting away and no wish to do so.
We dropped flares, bombed gun-positions,
hovered about over beach and harbour ;
circled out of the fray, then flew into it
again, carrying out our orders.
" None of our machines failed to see the
business through to the end. I am sure that
no man in them would willingly have done
otherwise. The main question in our minds
was how to worry the Hun hard enough to
keep his attention off our ships, or reduce to
a minimum all of it he could spare for them.
Busy as they were in other ways, some of
the fellows thought out special methods of
«o^v
THE AIRMEN'S PART 149
doing this. Switching oft engines, they dived
noiselessly towards his batteries, gave them
a burst of machine-gun fire, then ' zoomed '
up out of reach before the enemy could get
a shot at them ; others slid down the beams
of searchlights and fired at the lenses. Each
one of us aimed at planting our bombs where
they would do most good from our point of
view, and we went low enough to ensure a
fair shot before we released them. It was
exciting work, and more than a bit dan-
gerous. But one does not trouble over the
dangers incurred when in the heat of battle.
Think of the sporting side of the thing.
That is the way to get through with a good
heart and a whole skin. Anyway, that was
the aspect of the matter that appealed most
to us.
Regarded in that light it was a great
event. Your own wit and skill pitted against
the enemy's ; as a result, either he gets you
or you get him. That is the stake you play
for always, and it's big enough to give
wonderful zest to the game. Your life or
your liberty : can you imagine a stake that
is bigger or so much worth endeavouring to
150 THE DOVER PATROL
win ! It was not from any lack of hard
trying that the Hun failed to ' get ' any of
us ; always his powerful searchlights were
trying to pick us up. But a searchlight can
only look one way at a time, and whilst
peering about after us they could not be
turned seaward. Another point of the game
scored in our favour. The weather aided us
by limiting the searchlight's range. It was
queer to look down from above the clouds
and see them turned into a luminous yellow
mass right below you by the lights that made
persistent yet imsuccessful attempts to pierce
through them — queer but encouraging, being
a distinct advantage to us. For no airman
likes to have the rays of the Ostend search-
light encompass him ; such an occurrence is
a sure prelude of a hot burst of ' Archies '
close under your wings.
" Kiiowing the main objective of the
operations, I kept an eye upon the harbour
entrance, as I believe all of us did, to see the
Vindictive come in. Somehow we never
doubted her getting there. Owing to the
fog, mist, and darkness we could not obtain
a clear view of what the ships were doing,
THE AIRMEN'S PART 151
though we knew from the heavy firing that
they had arrived and were hotly engaged.
Suddenly a big flare illuminated the space
between the piers and the Vindictive showed
at the entrance, making inward. Imme-
diately she appeared the fierce heart of the
fighting, if I may so express myself, seemed
to switch sharply from the coast-line to
the harbour. How many guns the enemy
brought into action here I do not know ; they
blazed from shore and piers with one inces-
sant roar. He seemed to sweep every inch
of the harbour with them. Gazing down
upon it, the combat seemed to me so in-
credibly furious that none could survive it.
You can have no conception of what a cyclone
of destruction appeared to have burst upon
that small space ; neither can those who
were caught in it, for the comprehensive,
detached view we obtained from aloft was
impossible to them.
" So long as the affair lasted I looked and
marvelled. It was an intensely fascinating
spectacle — the more so as one knew it to
be war, real blood-stirring, blood-spilling,
death-dealing war, that one was looking
152 THE DOVER PATROL
at, not merely some cleverly staged make-
believe.
" We see quite a bit of war in this corner
of the front, but I had never laid eyes upon
anything in the fighting way nearly so
thrilling as this ; possibly I may never do
so again, for you cannot have ' Ostends '
very often— even with the whole world at
enmity. Of the details of the fighting we
could distinguish nothing ; only the picture
as a whole spread under our eyes. The
impression of it which I brought away was
of booming guns; blazing searchlights with
tiny dots of vessels shooting through their
rays ; all sorts of weird illuminations floating
about overhead ; clouds of smoke with great
swathes of fire cutting through them; bursting
shells; noise incredible.
" Surrounding this picture of flaming, hot,
intensive war, night lay like a broad ebony
frame. ' The burial of the Vindictive ' one
of our fellows termed it ; and that would
certainly make an appropriate title to the
picture, remembering what the gallant old
ship had done. When the tumult quietened
down and the fleet drew off, leaving the
THE AIRMEN'S PART 153
Vindictive in her honourable grave, we turned
homeward also.
" Except for some of the machines being
shot up a little, our squadrons suffered no
damage. Pretty lucky that, considering the
fierce onslaught they had withstood from
enemy ' Archies.' But with our return to
camp aircraft had by no means finished with
Ostend. A few hours after we left other of
our squadrons were over the place worrying
the Hun — ^and they have kept this sport
going ever since."
XIII
SOME STORIES OF OUR
WAR EAGLES
Rome's war eagles were carried on the tops of
poles. Great Britain's war eagles fly — and
there are quite a lot of them always on the
wing over the Hot Triangle.
As might be expected, in their raids into
such a stoutly defended area our airmen
meet with many thrilling adventures. One
cannot help being impressed with their calm
acceptance as being just " part of a day's
work " of situations that would freeze an
ordinary person's blood into icicles by the
sheer horror of them. For cool nerve here
is an incident that would be difficult to beat.
During a night raid one of our big bombers
had beaten up " good and proper," as the
phrase goes, a troublesome enemy aerodrome
within the Triangle to the accompaniment of
the customary virulent defensive gun-play
from the ground. Driven by this to a high
194
STORIES OF OUR WAR EAGLES 155
altitude, the machine continued circling round
seeking a place upon which its remaining
" eggs " could be laid to advantage, when the
gunner in the back seat espied a hostile
aeroplane beneath him. Determined that
this should not go unassailed, he unshipped
his Lewis gun and, leaning over the side,
fired straight down at the foe.
When all his cartridges were spent the
gunner straightened himself up to reload.
At that instant he noticed a leak in one of
the petrol-pipes. A piece of shrapnel from
an anti-aircraft gun had struck the pipe and
cut a big hole in it. The gunner could not
speak to the pilot from his cockpit, so he
dropped the Lewis into this, climbed out on
top of the fuselage and wriggled his way
along the top of it. The bomber being now
some ten or twelve thousand feet up, the
gunner had to make his way at this dizzy
height for some distance along a slippery
domed surface, crawling right beneath the
upper planes and between the propellers. A
bank of the machine or the slightest slip on
his part would have projected him into space.
Unmindful of his own danger, the gunner
156 THE DOVER PATROL
crept forward until he was able to lean over
the pilot's seat and shout into his ear " Your
petrol-tank is leaking." The pilot signalled
acknowledgment of this information, which
was soon after further impressed upon him
by one engine ceasing to run through lack of
fuel. He switched it off and struggled home
with only one engine working.
Nor was this the sum total of troubles.
A change in the weather caused the aneroid
to register wrongly ; the instrument showed
an altitude of some hundreds of feet where
actually there were only tens. As a result of
this, whilst the pilot was making, as he
thought, for the beach, the machine struck
the water with great force and turned over.
In his hurry to climb along and tell the pilot
about the leaking pipe the gunner had for-
gotten to secure the Lewis. Consequently,
as the machine somersaulted the gun rolled
forward, striking on the head, first the pilot,
then the observer who sat beside him.
Both received nasty injuries. Seeing what
had happened, the gunner jumped into the
water, picked up his injured comrades, and
carried them ashore. Having seen them
STORIES OF OUR WAR EAGLES 157
removed to hospital, he sat quietly down on
the beach, lit his pipe, and waited by the
machine until help came to salve it. x4l11 this
happened amidst the uncertainty of darkness
and, so far as the actual landing of the
machine went, with a Hun sitting overhead
dropping bombs sniper fashion.
One pilot there was who determined to
provoke a fight somehow, having grown tired
of hawking into the Triangle and finding
there no one who would come up and measure
skill with him ; so he flew down as low as he
could at Zeebrugge and looped the loop along
the Mole from one end to the other.
Even this contemptuous challenge failed
to stir the enemy's fighting blood sufficiently
for him to send a machine up. The chal-
lenger left Zeebrugge with " Archies " bark-
ing after him — but no scalp at his belt, nor
any chance of hanging one there. Neither
did he suffer any damage, being in this
respect more fortunate than a comrade, who
during one of the numberless air attacks
upon Zeebrugge had one hundred and fifty
holes shot through his machine. In spite of
this riddling he got it home safely, although
158 THE DOVER PATROL
the fabric of the wings was about as air-
tight as a sieve. Our machines, in fact, have
a fine homing instinct ; some way or another
they manage to get back to their aerodromes
when to all appearances they have been so
badly cut up that they should not be able to
fly at all.
Another illustration of this was the bomber
which returned from a night expedition to
Bruges with one of its lower planes so shot
away that the fabric hung from it in big
tatters like washing on a line. Disreputable
as the machine looked after its night out,
it had done a splendid bit of work against
the enemy. x4Lrriving over Bruges, the bomber
found the barrage so strong that no way
appeared open of breaking through it. Carry-
ing " eggs " home is a thing no " eagle "
would think of doing, so the pilot of this
one began dodging aroimd in order to get a
good shot at something. Whilst he was
doing this the searchlights picked up the
machine and held it. Though all sorts of
manoeuvres were tried, the bomber could not
wriggle out of their grasp. " Dirt " (as he
airman calls shrapnel) was being thrown up
STORIES OF OUR WAR EAGLES 159
in great quantities and the machine getting
hit pretty freely.
Worst of all, a big shell struck it. Now
the machine began to fly very strangely, and
the pilot, still manoeuvring for attack, found
himself barely a thousand feet from earth
and below the searchlights at last. His back
gunlayer, firing as rapidly as he could,
knocked the " eyes " out of a couple of
these, and this helped matters somewhat.
Getting at last inside the defences, the pilot
" yoncked " his bombs squarely on Bruges
docks — a wonderful achievement considering
the difficulties. After doing it the bus
staggered laboriously out of the whirlwind of
shelling loosed against it, scrambled somehow
or other to four thousand feet (which meant
danger all the way), and at this altitude flew
home. Overhauled on arrival there, it was
found that one of the propellers had been
shot away and a plane torn to ribbons, as
before described. Yet despite its crippled,
tattered and torn condition, the machine
flew — which, when you come to think of it,
spoke favourably for the skill of the men
and women at home who made the machine.
160 THE DOVER PATROL
as well as for the skill of the man who piloted
it into action and out again.
War in its weirdest form is this night bomb-
ing, and nowhere quite so appealingly eerie
as at Bruges. This quaint old Flemish city,
strongly defended, pertinaciously attacked,
will from henceforward be as famous for its
bombings as for its belfry. Here the Hun
devotes all the energy he can muster towards
keeping our airmen outside the place.
They try everything ingenuity can suggest
to get into it. As a result of this thrust and
parry the most unbelievable things happen
over the town.
One bomber of ours trying to sneak in
there was caught by the " onion " batteries,
w^hich began their detested jugglery of ball-
play all around the machine. Somewhere
about forty searchlights were stacked against
him at the same time.
Try as he would, the pilot could not break
through this fence ; so he determined to
attempt a new trick, in the very daring of
which lay its prime chance of succeeding.
Flying a little way in the Zeebrugge direction,
he turned sharply back Brugeswards, shut
STORIES OF OUR WAR EAGLES 161
off his engines, and planed silently down.
A few seconds later the enemy gunners saw
whizz past above their heads a big black
object which strewed bombs quickly, then
disappeared the other side of the town.
The conventional " before the enemy re-
covered from his surprise " would not be
quite true here. So accustomed has the Hun
become to our airmen doing unexpected things
in the Hot Triangle that he is no longer
surprised by anything. What is much worse
for his nerves, he is a good deal worried as
to what they will initiate next.
Straight for a canal basin one airman
headed, dropping as low as possible in order
to make sure. On the centre of the dock gates
for which he was steering stood a Hun pumping
out bullets from a machine-gun with terror-
stricken energy. The pilot released his bomb,
which struck its target fairly — and up went
Hun, gun, and dock gates, all mixed together.
Pilot No. 2 swooped in a second or two
later and bombed the surroundings of the
gates. It took the enemy quite a long time
to repair damages. After he did this, what
he put up was promptly knocked down again.
162 THE DOVER PATROL
Such is the game of " skittles " as played by
our airmen within the Hot Triangle all round
the clock.
Going down quite low in order to reach an
objective, though done frequently, has dangers
unknovvn to the mere earthworm ; one is that
if the pilot be too near his target when he
bombs it the explosion will probably turn
his machine over. Many's the nasty bump
adventurous wights have sustained in this
way.
One pair of daredevils there were who
whilst flying a two-seater one night came
suddenly upon a big enemy anti-aircraft gun.
The gun started firing at them when they
were right down upon it, and they determined
to blot the weapon out somehow. Deter-
mining is one thing — doing quite another.
In this case the doing was particularly
difficult because of searchlights and other
things.
So low down were the pair when they
attacked that the bomb explosions pitched
their machine about like a cork on the waves.
After a bit of rough voyaging they sailed
gaily off again, leaving behind them only a
STORIES OF OUR WAR EAGLES 163
smoking desolation where once a fair, bright
" Archie " stood.
" Shooting up " searchHghts seems a quite
popular recreation with these air fighters of
ours. But those who play it are by no means
timid fellows ; if they were, their record of
work within the Hot Triangle would not be
the brilliant chronicle it is.
Personal escapes of the strangest nature
occur. One of the most remarkable was
that of a pilot whose machine being hit by a
hot burst of shrapnel, a bullet entered at his
sleeve, passed down his forearm and out at
his wrist, cutting off his glove-buttons but
hurting him not at all. Likewise indivi-
duality crops out, as always it will.
The thing our flying men least believe in
is going to war heavy-hearted ; and the
longer they have been at the game the more
ready are they for any little humorous relief
in the grim business.
American pilots, possibly because they are
newer comers, incline towards going all out
for blood. Down in the Triangle they show
themselves determined fighters and fine hands
aloft. Being in this respect on a par with
164 THE DOVER PATROL
our own aviators, both work together, feehng
quite satisfied that one will not let the other
down should " old man Hun" tight-corner
them. ,
Daylight bombers are not supposed to fight
except in self-protection — though they do —
being provided with an escort to do all
necessary attacking for them. One J^ such
squadron had attached to it an American
pilot who, never having had a chance of
" getting his Hun," was determined to take
first opportunity of bringing one down.
Whilst the squadron was busy bombing a
certain objective a number of Hun planes
showed up. The American had peppered
his target and was already streaming home-
ward when the enemy appeared. " Gee, I'm
in this ! " he joyfully decided. Pulling his
machine round, he singled out a Hun and
made for it. Quite a determined " scrap "
followed between them, which ended in the
Hun rolling over and falling in flames to the
earth. The American had shot him down,
and there was not a happier man than he
in the victorious squadron when it reached
home. He had battled and won ; he was a
STORIES OF OUR WAR EAGLES 165
full-blooded air fighter at last, and over his
soul there lay a sublime content.
All the most strenuous air work in this
sector does not fall upon the bombing and
fighting squadrons. There are machines
specially employed on anti-submarine patrol.
Over the sea lies their beat. Particular
knowledge and strong powers of endurance
are necessary to the men who pilot them.
Like all other airftien in this part, they have
done splendid work.
Owing greatly to their vigilance the U-boats
are unable to operate effectively off this coast,
and many of these pests have been bombed
out of existence. The photographic aero-
planes likewise come in for a full share of the
rough labour within the Hot Triangle. After
the bombers have visited a place the photo-
graphers must follow them there to make
records of the results obtained.
This means long flights into enemy terri-
tory ; frequently also sticking about above
" hot spots " until the required picture has
been obtained. Photographs are usually
taken from a very high altitude. Going
lower would be too dangerous — a fact
166 THE DOVER PATROL
which in itself conveys an idea of how
exacting the task is. Air war offers no
cushy jobs to those engaged in it, no
matter what their vocation may be when
upon the wing.
XIV
THE GUNS IN THE DUNES
As the official reports of attacks upon
Ostend and Zeebrugge have time and again
announced, one section of the Dover Patrol
consists of siege batteries posted on the
Belgian coast, "The Guns in the Dunes," as
they are called by those who have mutual
relations with them. Whilst the name con-
veys an idea of the guns' whereabouts it
gives the merest inkling as to the nature of
their surroundings.
Yet environment counts as a matter of
importance everywhere along the Western
Front. It makes all the difference whether
one be on dry ground or in a mud-hole ;
whether underfoot be sandy or swampy ;
whether one has an ammunition-dump or a
farmhouse for a near neighbour. By such
apparently trivial circumstances as these the
tenor of life is determined. Being next door
to a dump may mean sleepless nights and
167
168 THE DOVER PATROL
days of turmoil ; whilst in the vicinage of
the farmhouse there broods the calm that
should be habitual to a rural atmosphere.,
Farmhouses, unless on a battlefield, do not
attract enemy attention. Dumps always do.
That explains why the one is a pleasanter
neighbour than the other.
Location counts as just as important a
factor as contiguity. In this respect the
officers and men who form the train attendant
upon the lordly guns in the dunes are not
quite heavenly circumstanced, though happy
enough withal. All are Royal Marine
Artillery men. They live, Arab-like, in a
desert, for that's what " the Dunes " resemble
at the present time. It's a mistake to
picture these as just a few sandhills. Stand-
ing in any of the valleys that furrow them one
might easily imagine oneself in the Sahara.
From Malo, by Dunkirk, right along
the Belgian coast there runs a broad strip
of hummocky, billowy, insistent sand ;
capricious as woman in some ways ; in-
exorable as Time in others. Though there
can be no certainty of finding its aspect in
any part alike for two days together one
THE GUNS IN THE DUNES 169
thing remains unchangingly sure : whatever
the sand grips it holds, and will ultimately
devour. Four years ago this frill to the
North Sea was in process of being gradually
trimmed down and dotted with little com-
munities, who were not anchorites, although
they did live in a desert. Now the rough
hand of war has nearly obliterated all traces
of human habitation.
The wilderness has reverted to wilderness
once more, flecked here and there with
pathetic ruins of those modern miniatures
of Nineveh and Babylon — destroyed since
the Hun raped Belgium — the shell-beaten
walls of which are being slowly engulfed by
the powdery white grains heaping up around
them. In short, there are few attributes of
the greater deserts which this smaller one
lacks except it be their spacious aridity.
Amidst this gritty solitude the siege guns
and those who look after them hide cunningly
away. So cunningly that one might walk
over their lairs a dozen times unguided
without suspecting what lay beneath. On
every side one sees nothing but sand ; here,
barren and drifting, being continually scooped
170 THE DOVER PATROL
into big hollows or piled into miniature
mountain ranges by the wind ; there,
patched with a scrubby vegetation struggling
hard to exist, and only partially succeeding.
This belt of lonesomeness is the favourite
playing-ground of the sea wind which romps
merrily about tossing the sand in all directions,
imitating a monsoon one hour and a sportive
summer breeze the next.
Of all the discomforts this is the worst.
It is impossible to get away from wind-
blown sand. The gunners have built them-
selves wonderful quarters in its unstable
bosom. But shore up and close up as they
may, they cannot shut out the drifting
particles. These filter through everywhere.
Always there is sand on their mess-tables,
peppering their food untastily, sand in their
eyes, their ears, their mouths, and their
clothing. Sand even goes to bed with them.
Yet despite all this a healthier, cheerier lot
one could not find.
Any visitor whom a wind of chance blows
along in that direction may be sure of a
hearty welcome to the burrows in which
they live — for burrows these really are.
THE GUNS IN THE DUNES 171
Weird sort of places even to any one accus-
tomed to dug-outs. In response to a genial
" Come in and make yourself at home " you
slip through an aperture into a cramped
space that may be screened off at the en-
trance by a strip of canvas, or may be wide
open to the desolation outside. It does not
greatly matter which, as sand follows you in
and keeps paying friendly calls upon you all
the time you stay. As one covering of it is
swept off the table another deposits there.
" Hang it all, let the stuff alone," says one
of your hosts to another who tries to keep the
table clear. " It will come in, you know, and
we're so used that we don't notice it anyhow.
No good if we did. You'll get like a walking
sand-bag, same as we are, if you stay here
long," he adds with a happy laugh.
If you are not nervous you find the in-
junction to " make yourself at home " easy
enough to follow, for sincere hospitality
efficaciously salves discomforts. But if you
be at all timid you are likely to have a jumpy
time of it.
" Whing ! Whuff ! " sounds overhead,
followed immediately by the noise of a muffled
172 THE DOVER PATROL
explosion quite near, so near that it seems
just outside.
Although you recognize the sound as
that of an incoming shell you ask instinc-
tively, " What's that ? "
" A five-nine," answers one of your hosts.
" It's a good way oft," adds another.
As nobody else seems to take any notice of
the matter you dismiss it also.
" Whing ! Whuff ! " and another muffled
burst comes a minute or so later.
" Rotten shooting," comments some one,
whilst the subaltern with the teapot opines
that " Fritz 's right off it to-day," and
calmly goes on filling teacups.
Curious to discover how far "off it"
Fritz really is you peep outside and notice
the smoke of the shell rising from behind the
shoulder of a near-by sand-hill.
" But that's nothing," protests the subal-
tern who has followed you, teapot in hand.
"This stuff" (a wave of the teapot here
indicates the sand) "is a fine localizer of
explosions. Shell's got to be right close
before it gets you. Don't bother. There'll
be a lot more coming in ! "
THE GUNS IN THE DUNES 173
As a concession to your novice's curiosity
to see the " lots more " arrive the mess
accompanies you outside, and unconcernedly
finishes its tea there whilst watching the Hun
shells fall.
Each one is " ticked off " by some such
comment as " That's a dud," and " That
comes from " " He'll get our garden ! "
(This with real concern.) But never a flicker
of personal fear does any gunner show.
Quite a number of the Hun projectiles
prove " dud," for which you are thankful,
not being so hardened to bombardments
as your hosts. But knowing something of
the hammerings they receive at times when
the Hun has been worried up into a state of
wrathfulness by their damaging assaults
upon him you ask:
" What do you do when the shelling grows
what you call really hot ? "
" Scoot," comes the prompt answer.
" Only a fool takes foolish risks. Fritz's
biggest stuff could not hurt us once we're in
cover."
Nevertheless, the guns in the Dunes have
had their share of casualties. The ingenuity
174 THE DOVER PATROL
of man cannot devise absolute protection
against the freaks of shell-fire, which are
sometimes impishly capricious. Supposedly
safe positions get crumped up, whilst the
most exposed ones escape untouched.
This not being a subject upon which it is
permissible to dilate, the housing of the big
guns cannot be very fully described.
Rather a pity too, since few of the millions
of people at home who are being fought for
know anything at all about this interesting
corner of the war. Anyway the weapons are
well housed in subterranean forts wherein
everything is spick and span, marvellously
so, considering the surroundings. From the
CO. down to the tail-end " number " each
man takes great pride in the guns. The
breech ends of the great pieces gleam like
polished silver. Well they may. From
muzzle to firing-key they are rubbed down
and groomed as carefully as though they
were thoroughbreds — as they are of their
sort. Standing beside their long tapering
barrels it seems hard to realize that from the
hole by the seashore in which they hide, these
guns can lob heavy shells into such far-off
THE^GUNS IN THE DUNES 175
places as Ostend and Zeebrugge, places well
outside the range of vision — ^but they do,
and hit the mark every time.
Such is the business of the guns in the
Dunes ; to poke their grim muzzles this way
or that as ordered, and suddenly drop death
and destruction upon some enemy strong-
hold invisible miles away, and they do it.
If you would know how frequently or effec-
tively ask the Hun. He is best able to
answer the question. In one of these gun-
pits in the Dunes an officer gives an order.
Thereupon somebody jerks the firing-key.
A huge mass of flame and metal goes leaping
up an embrasure (from above it looks as
though a sand-hill had suddenly turned
volcano), some few seconds later a building
at Zeebrugge or men and guns elsewhere
start disintegrating — ^little pieces going in
all directions. The shell from the Dunes has
blown them up. Weird and a bit marvellous
too, isn't it ? But only part of the Hell's-
magic of war that works more strange and
devilish wonders every day.
> Of course the guns in the Dunes have to
stand bombardments as well as give them.
176 THE DOVER PATROL
The Hun is one of those aggressive persons
who will not take anything lying down where
they can get up and give a kick back. There
may be two opinions about his expertness
with some weapons ; there can be only one
as to his readiness with artillery. He is
there with it every time. At least, on this
part of the line. In addition to shooting
often, he shoots straight. Thoi^gh our
gimners are his master, yet he manages to
keep the air warm for them, and makes
walking in the open oft-times a dangerous
recreation.
With Hun shells daily in the air, and the
desolation and discomforts^ of a desert all
roimd them, how do the guns' crews pass their
time when not actually fighting ; in what
way find reUef from the strain ? In the
best manner of all ; they have made them a
garden. Situated in a little oasis of scrub,
this garden keeps their table supplied with
most vegetables — except potatoes. How the
stuff grows or what it feeds upon remains
somewhat of a mystery even to the gardeners
themselves ; for there is no soil, only bare
sand.
The forefunnel of the Vindictive after the fight
THE GUNS IN THE DUNES 177
Potatoes decline to put forth any increase
in it ; but other vegetables do well. Lettuce,
beans, etc., stand up in thriving rows,
whilst pumpkins of aldermanic rotundity
loll comfortably in their beds. The men have
made themselves not only a garden, but a
very successful one. In tending it they
obtain the best recreation possible, and also
are following the instinct of their race by
taming the wild, though on a very small
scale.
Seeing few people, though otherways in
touch with all things that concern them, the
guns in the Dunes are a small though an
important part of the Great War. Here
land-front and sea-front meet, and these guns
form the universal joint that connects the
two.
XV
THE NIGHT WATCH ON THE
BRINE
Sitting one evening at a window overlooking
Dover Harbour I heard a lady exclaim in
astonishment, " Why, all the ships have
gone ! " This was only relatively true. A
good many craft still strained at their moor-
ings ; but the numbers had thinned down
considerably in a very short period.
Without so much as a formal " May we
part company ? " they had cast loose one
after the other and slipped out to sea.
Destroyers, drifters, etc., disappeared along
various courses. Each had its job to do,
and went off to do it without making any
fuss about the matter. Characteristic this
of the Navy all through. For that service
never fusses over anything, least of all
over the work on hand. It's '' Get off
silently and carry on — and mind that you
carry on efficiently, or there'll be gold-laced
178
NIGHT WATCH ON THE BRINE 179
trouble waiting for you on your return to
port."
Our " Watch upon the Brine " is carefully
organized. Patrols plough through blue
water wherever that flows. But for obvious
reasons they are more numerous in the narrow
seas than elsewhere. Not a square mile in
the Straits of Dover or on either hand of
them goes unwatched, and in the dark hours
the vigil is closest of all. The sentinel ships,
after turning on to their course, plod steadily
up and down it, no matter how bad the
weather may be, until the time for relief
arrives.
Travelling in a destroyer on night patrol
is a picturesque experience. Lying in har-
bour, where larger hulls dwarf them, these
craft seem only miniature vessels. Go
aboard one and you get a different impres-
sion. You find that she is a real ship, well
found and complete. Long and narrow,
but with far more deck space than you had
imagined. Routine is easier than in battle-
ships or cruisers. This does not mean that
work is lighter. Quite the other way about.
Only in order to compensate for some of the
180 THE DOVER PATROL
discomforts more go-as-you-please ways are
permitted.
When starting upon one of these night
trips nearly every one changes into the least
valuable clothes he possesses. The com-
manding officer, who came aboard in immacu-
late gold lace and spick-and-span uniform,
climbs the bridge, sea-booted, with a thick
muffler round his throat, wearing cap and
jacket in which he would under no circum-
stances be seen ashore. From Number Two
down to the coxswain all follow the
" skipper's " example, the reason for this
being that if the smart " rig-out " remained
upon its owner instead of going into
" storage " for the night it would most
likely be spoiled by the morning. De-
stroyer work tells heavily upon clothes as
well as upon the men who wear them.
To reach the vessel's bridge you climb
steep iron ladders. Stepping off these you
come into a high-perched, circular, canvas-
screened structure wherein are crowded
several persons and a gun, together with a
wheel, chart-table, and whatever else may be
required for navigating the ship. The con-
NIGHT WATCH ON THE BRINE 181
tents of the bridge will differ according to the
type of destroyer. From this elevated post
you obtain a bird's-eye view of the decks, and
a wide visual sweep of the water all around
them. Room for movement there is little,
but by craning your neck over the rails you
can see the remainder of the flotilla stringing
out behind. A fascinating picture they make
dipping and rolling whilst the smoke pours
from their funnels. Forward on the bridge
the captain and the navigating officer carry
on a monosyllable conversation in under-
tones, each keeping meanwhile a sharp
look-out on either side. What they have to
say deals wholly with the work in hand.
Now it is a brief comment upon the dirty
weather that is blowing up ; again a question
as to what some object sighted may be.
Of general conversation there is none ; not
even as a concession to the " passenger."
In fact, there is really no talking at all beyond
what proves necessary, everybody being so
fully occupied with his duties that he has no
leisure for aught else.
As the bearded and ruddy-faced quarter-
master spins the wheel about he quietly
182 THE DOVER PATROL
repeats the orders given him. The only
time a voice is raised is when the man at the
speaking-tube calls down it to ask whether a
certain " nimnber " of the after gun is at his
post. Always the answer comes " Yes."
But at intervals the inquiry is repeated,
though not always addressed to the same
individual. From each part of the ship
keen, steady eyes^are scanning the horizon.
And the captain, as the responsible head,
must be assured that all his crew are alert
at their posts.
k Gradually night deepens. Almost before
you are aware of it darkness has covered the
face of the sea. Instead of everything
being blotted out by this as might have
been expected, surroundings now become
more intensely interesting. Over the
Northern coast signs of battle begin to peep
up. The flashes of the guns along part of the
Western Front show quite vividly. At some
points far off they are like the quick play of
faint siunmer lightning. Nearer, they blaze
in darkness with broad yellow glares, and the
dull " thud, thud " of their discharges comes
beating across the water. After watching
NIGHT WATCH ON THE BRINE 183
this for some time, you turn towards our own
shores, mentally contrasting the peaceful
serenity which broods over them with the
rending, tearing war that tortures the night
on the opposite side of this narrow stretch of
salt water, and wonder, for the hundredth
time perhaps, whether the British people
really^understand how much they owe to
their never-sleeping Navy.
" Hallo ! poor old Dunkirk's getting it
again I " exclaims some one. Turning
quickly in the direction indicated you see the
sky above this much-bombed town constantly
filling with the sharp bright twinkles of
bursting shell.
" Archieing the Huns, that is," comments a
seaman. " Air-raiders are goin' to be busy
to-night."
He proves a sound prophet. Very soon
there are ample evidences that air-raiders
are very busy indeed. A brilliant constella-
tion springs over Ostend. Soon there comes
another above Zeebrugge. Then at various
other spots in this part of Hunland the '' fires
of hate ' ' leap upward . It is j ust as though you
were viewing so many Crystal Palace displays.
184 THE DOVER PATROL
" That's our machines givin' ole Fritz a
shake up," the sailor explains. " An' they
don't arf give it 'im neither. Nearly every
night 'e gets it right in the neck like that.
Wish we could get a chance at 'im too " (this
quite wistfully), "but the blighter won't
come out."
And there you have the sailor's chief
grievance against the Hun, " the blighter
won't come out." Nevertheless, the patrols
must put to sea regularly and look for him
in case he does make a venture. Sometimes
their hearts are gladdened by the loom of
destroyers in the offing. " Clang ! " goes
the engine-room telegraph for " full speed
ahead." With eager anticipation each officer
and man tautens at his post. But dis-
appointment follows. The enemy has smelt
danger and bolted back to his funk-hole out
of its way.
A fairly common experience this on night
patrol in these waters. The ships go out
never knowing at what instant they may find
themselves engaged with the enemy. Any-
thing that does happen will happen on the
instant. Therefore a state of constant pre-
NIGHT WATCH ON THE BRINE 185
paredness is necessary lest one commit the
unforgivable sin of being caught napping.
And the strain of thus persistently hanging
" on the top line " night after night tests
endurance far more severely than actual
fighting would do.
After what fashion is preparedness main-
tained ? Let us go down from the bridge
and see. By now the weather has beaten up
rough. The destroyer rocks so giddily to and
fro that descending the bridge-ladders in the
dark is like climbing down the swinging
pendulum of a clock. Once on deck good
sea-legs are needed. Even with these,
progress is unstable. You must hang on to
the life-lines or down you go. If you do
go down you will most likely go overboard —
and that will be the end of you, for there's
no hope of being picked up. Remember, all
around is inkily black. Except for the glow
that comes from the engine-room — and that's
battened down as much as possible — no
lights show anywhere.
Feeling your way cautiously along you
come upon one of the broadside guns.
Beside it, standing immobile, you just
186 THE DOVER PATROL
discern the figures of men facing seaward.
Were you able to pick out such details
you would probably find that these men
had tied themselves to their gun in order
to keep foothold. These are the principal
" mmibers." Others of the gun's crew he
curled up close by, behind anything that will
give them shelter from the water that every
now and again jumps over the gunwale,
and goes swishing across the decks to tumble
off them on the opposite side. The recum-
bent men are not sleeping. A call to action
would bring them to their stations before the
words conveying it had been fully spoken.
Beside the searchlights are other silent
figures each ready to promptly obey the
command to " switch on." The torpedo-
tubes, lying athwart-ships fore and aft, are
similarly manned. So are the inboard guns.
In short, it soon becomes apparent that the
ship which seemed deserted above deck
when you were looking down upon it is really
alive from stem to stern with braw-sinewed,
alert men. The quiet overlying her is not
the silence of sleep, but the silence of intent
watchfulness — as would be quickly enough
NIGHT WATCH ON THE BRINE 187
demonstrated if an enemy came within
reach of her guns.
Feeling your way along, staggering under
the lively movements of the boat but keeping
sure handhold upon the lines, you are pre-
sently startled to notice two white-rimmed
eyes staring at you from just below your knee.
Stooping to investigate you discover these
to belong to a stoker who has pushed up his
head from a manhole to catch a breath of air.
Except for the eyes and an ivory gleam of
teeth as he smiles at you, his face is as black
as the coals he shovels. With a deep-
breathed inflation of the lungs he disappears.
You bend down and peep after him, but
have no wish to follow. Above deck may
be bad enough, below seems less inviting.
Yet down there are squads of men toiling
mightily, in cramped spaces, amidst swelter-
ing heat, to keep steam in the powerful
engines that drive the destroyer along. But
for their work, little noticed yet all-impor-
tant, the guns and tubes above deck would be
shorn of their fighting efficiency, since a
vessel cannot manoeuvre unless her engines
be in good trim.
188 THE DOVER PATROL
So throughout the long hours of the night
the patrol " carries on." In fine weather
the task is less exacting, but for the greater
part of the year rough weather is met with.
Seas that break over the ship from end to
end, drenching everybody, winds with a
chilling Arctic edge on them, are a frequent
experience. Whether the moon shines on
placid water or Northerly gales are howling
along the surface makes no difference. The
patrol vessels must still go out and stick it
through.
Although fortunate enough to have had a
fairly good passage, the rosy face of Dawn
peeping brightly over the horizon is a welcome
sight to your eyes. For it means that the
patrol has ended. The destroyer turns her
weary head back towards harbour, there to
" pipe down " until returning night calls
her back to her " beat " again.
XVI
THE NAVY'S BULLDOGS
Monitors move like snails and fight like
bulldogs. A steam launch could out-
manoeuvre them, but neither big guns nor
little guns can chase them away once they
are settled down determinedly to attack. If
they draw off " voluntarily " they soon go
snarling back and fix in their teeth again.
The earliest use of monitors during the war
was in connexion with the Dover Patrol,
where they quickly justified the revival
of what had been regarded as a hopelessly
obsolete type of warship. At first there were
only two, these not of the best, judged by
present standard. But they did most effec-
tive work against the enemy along the
Belgian coast, where monitors have been
continually employed'ever since.
One of the originals, the Mersey, vSubse-
quently achieved fame by getting herself up
as a floating island and in that guise
189
190 THE DOVER PATROL
smashing the German cruiser Konigsberg
in the Rufiji River. For this remarkable
essay in camouflage the Mersey's decks were
covered with earth and trees, whilst her
crew coloured their hands and faces green so
as to harmonize with surroundings. Only a
monitor could have adopted such a guise.
Broad decks and low free-board permitted
it. Only a monitor could do what monitors
are doing daily off the shallow, difficult sea-
board of Flanders.
Their light draught takes them where no
other heavy vessel could float. From a
single pair their strength in the Dover Patrol
has grown to a squadron. Design has
improved as numbers have increased.
A monitor is still a freakish-seeming craft.
She has no beauty of colour, none of the
aggressive stateliness of a Dreadnought.
She looks what she is, a doughty, bull-necked
fighter, with no pretensions to gracefulness
either of form or movement. Her gait is
something between a wallow and a waddle :
her hull a broad, low, oval platform with an
armoured citadel containing guns big and
little, and surmounted by a tripod mast,
THE NAVY'S BULLDOGS 191
sticking up in the middle of it. Big, cor-
pulent "blisters" bulge out all along
her sides. She moves sluggishly, steers awk-
wardly, but reaches her goal nevertheless,
and "plays hell" with the enemy when she
gets there.
In one point she betters some other war-
ships : there are spacious, comfortable quar-
ters for the crew, especially in the larger
class.
When bombarding along the Belgian coast
monitors do not play a lone hand altogether.
When one of them sets out from Dunkirk
there goes with her a swarm of small craft
that makes the monitor, looming big in the
midst of them, seem like a mammoth duck
with a numerous brood of young swimming
round her. Ahead steam a flotilla of de-
stroyers, coastal motor-boats skim along in-
shore, whilst a string of motor-launches plod
with steady pace abeam. Satellites all of
them, each with its special duty to do. Off
Zeebrugge or Ostend the monitor anchors
by the head, to keep herself in position, and
lies with her bows pointing shoreward. Li
this position she offers such a small target
192 THE DOVER PATROL
to the enemy that the gunner of his who
hits her, unless by accident, must be as good
a marksman as WiUiam Tell. All of her that
shows above the water is the citadel and mast.
At many miles distance these appear about
the size of a broom-stick when they can be
seen at all. Usually they cannot. Contrary
to what might be supposed, a bright sunny
day is not esteemed good " bombardment "
weather.
A misty atmosphere with " low visibility "
is^ preferred, for then the monitor can get
closer inshore and lob her ton weights of
steel on to the target more effectively. If
Father Neptune is not obliging enough to
provide a real fog, the motor-launches create
one artificially. They specialize in making
smoke-screens amidst which the monitor
can hide from the enemy gunners. Steaming
between the ships and the beach the launches
start the smoke rolling in dense volumes with
the special appliances they carry for that
purpose, imtil it quickly makes a thick im-
penetrable wall. Not a pleasant job " smoke-
making," as any one who has inadvertently
swallowed a mouthful of the " fog " will
THE NAVY'S BULLDOGS 193
agree. But the launches keep the screen
going — and the monitor gets going also.
" Stand by for the buzz," orders her cap-
tain. Every one on the bridge stuffs wool
into his ears or covers them with pads to
deaden the sound. " All ready "is reported
from the gun-house. Those around the cap-
tain watch him, anticipating what he will
say, and press the tips of their fingers to
their ears as he gives the command " Fire ! "
Instantly the upward-pointing mouth of one
of the big guns spits out a broad, blinding,
yellow flash and a huge puff of acrid smoke.
Amidst this combustion is a shell which you
cannot see, though you can hear its shriek
dying away into the distance if you imclose
your ears quickly enough. Well plugged
though your ears be the detonation of the
gun causes a sharp stabbing pain in them, and
the shock makes you stagger, for the ship
reels beneath your feet under the force of the
concussion. " 'Tween decks " doors bang,
furniture pitches, the mess-traps go clattering
all over the place, glass and crockery suffer
heavily unless carefully stowed beforehand.
Once at least a tasty dinner cooking for the
194 THE DOVER PATROL
ship's company and almost ready for serving
was thrown out of the galley and strewn on
the deck. What the ship's company said
when they saw this happen it's useless to
repeat here, since it would not pass the
Censor. Sometimes after strenuous bom-
bardment a monitor's upper deck-plating
becomes so buckled up that it resembles a
badly laid carpet. From this effect of big-
gun fire upon the place where the shells
start from one may judge somewhat of its
effect upon the enemy within the place where
the shells explode.
f The gun's crew inside the barbette feel dis-
comforts of the firing least of any. And
those outside are so accustomed to the con-
cussion and what results from it that they
pay small attention to either. Far up in the
sky sits an aeroplane observing the fall of the
shot. As this drops the " spotter " signals
back information. " What is the report ? "
asks the captain.
From somewhere inside one of the bridge
structures a voice answers him. It may be
that the round was a " short " or an " over."
Possibly some right or left deflection has to be
THE NAVY'S BULLDOGS 195
allowed for. Necessary corrections are made
and the gun roars out again.
" Ringed it that time. What'll you have,
a china ornament or a cigar ? " facetiously
queries the observer aloof.
This method of reporting may not be
strictly regulation, though it's just as inform-
ing as if the most cut-and-dried formula had
been used.
Quite likely the answer goes back in the
same strain.
The British fighting man is the most
humorous person in the world. He keeps
up his spirits that way, recognizing that a
joke is the greatest easer of burdens that can
be found.
Having "[got on " to her target the moni-
tor continues steadily pounding away at it.
All that one could see of her from a distance
would be dense black fog amidst which gun-
flashes every now and again show luridly.
From the vessel's bridge it appears as though
she were firing promiscuously over a thick
cloud-bank that obscures the shore — ^yet
each roimd is carefully directed and accu-
rately aimed. Presently the Hun starts firing
196 THE DOVER PATROL
back. He cannot see the monitor so he
endeavours to " straddle " her by throwing
salvos through the screen at the point where
he judges her to be. Often he proves a good
guesser too. His shells " plonk " into the
water all round about. Sometimes they get
so near that the monitor is obliged to shift
her position. Along this stretch of sea-front
the enemy pits naval gun against naval gun.
We send ships' guns off the coast to attack
him, and he brings up ships' guns inside the
coast to defend himself. Naval weapons
have a longer reach than land artillery, and
here the Hun uses the best kind he possesses.
Consequently, when our monitors go along
shore to bombard him they find themselves
opposed to a long-reached, hard-hitting an-
tagonist, who tries his best to give back
blow for blow although it is always he who
gets the black eyes and the bruises in the end.
Whilst the game of bowls is being played
between monitors and shore guns, the de-
stroyers keep watch lest any enemy torpedo
craft make an attack upon the fighting ships.
One can never be sure of what the Hun will
attempt, so the only safe way is to make
THE NAVY'S BULLDOGS 197
provision against everything. That's what is
done. Now and again he makes experiments.
These are generally in the nature of giving
old ideas a new opportunity. In this war
pretty nearly every old weapon devised since
the Stone Age and every new one that could
be thought of were tried without getting
things much " forrarder " for a wearying
long time. The Hun, greatest pirate of
other men's brains that ever was, has brought
out many " gadgets," hardly one of them of
his own invention.
Failing to keep them off him in any other
way he suddenly brought out against our
monitors a launch armed with torpedoes and
controlled from overhead.
But this venture failed. The launches
were sunk and what was overhead came down.
Besides, it's a foolish waste of war energy to
torpedo a monitor ; she minds that no more
than an elephant would having a handful of
boiled peas thrown at him.
If a " tin-fish " merchant in the shape of an
enemy submarine manages to get in a shot, the
torpedo merely strikes a " blister " and
explodes harmlessly. But the odds are
198 THE DOVER PATROL
ninety-nine and three-quarters against that
particular merchant ever doing any more
trade. The anti-submarine gunners on the
look-out from every part of the ship's deck
are almost certain to get him. It is the same
with the occasional Boche aeroplanes that
come out for bombing. Special guns on the
citadel never cease peering skyward for these
machines, which have an option between
turning back or being shot down. Usually
they have the Hun-sense to choose the
former.
Looking at the matter from the enemy's
point of view, what's the use wasting
machines and submarines against ships that
regard being bombed as a very mild excite-
ment and torpedoed as a comic incident
in the day's proceedings ! But shells are
shells — ^when they come from a fifteen-inch
gun. Nothing is ever left smiling after
they've hit it. And upon shells the enemy
relies mainly in his defence against monitors.
He seldom hurts them for he seldom hits
them. Not having her stolid resisting power,
the small craft which accompany the
monitors get worried far more than she does.
THE NAVY'S BULLDOGS 199
A direct hit would simply wipe one of them
clean away. Though such an occurrence is
very rare, it is common enough for very light
craft to get " shaken up " by projectiles
falling into the water close by them.
Motor-launches do quite a lot of hard work
in connexion with these bombardments.
Also much hazardous and gaspingly uncom-
fortable work — especially " fog-raising."
When conjuring up smoke-screens — or imita-
tion fogs that better the real article — ^the
motor-launches' crews have to stay amidst
the asphyxiating abomination they are creat-
ing and take their chances. But they do
not appear to mind this in the least. Most
of them are " hostility blokes." That is,
have joined the Navy for duration of the
war, and they have apparently concluded
that one might just as well be suffocated as
die of old age.
If a launch gets cracked up by a Hun
shell and has to be lifted on to a monitor's
" blister " for " first aid," as happens some-
times, the matter doesn't seem to worry the
crew. After the " dressings " are on, they
take her back to port somehow, and get
200 THE DOVER PATROL
ready for the next " shoot." " Old duck "
monitor, of course, has to keep a motherly
eye upon her swarming brood all the time
"Hun stuff" is flying around amongst them,
and be ready to give help when necessary.
They may not often need it, but it must be
there when they do. And that is another
addition to the monitor's activities and
responsibilities. She must do a certain
amount of fending as well as fighting.
In the coastal motor-boats, or " scooters,"
Youth sits at the helm and faces everything.
These are the most nimble of all the monitor's
satellites. Hither and thither they scurry,
and much too quickly for the enemy to hit
them — ^thou^h he is always trying to do so.
" Plash " comes a shell into the water. With
a twist of the wheel the " CO." has sent the
" scooter " flying out of the way. Another
turn and she has changed course again, prob-
ably to go leaping along right inshore.
Beside the " CO." sits his observer ; crouched
beneath the deck in front of him sit the
engineers. These have about the most
uncomfortable post of any engineers in
any ship that floats — or skims either. For
THE NAVY'S BULLDOGS 201
want of room to do aught else they have
to sit doubled up beside the machinery,
whilst a tabloid hurricane gallops over
their backs, and all the water coming in
" forrard " falls upon them. Here, chin
upon toes, they sit and work, keeping the
boat's speed up. Very useful auxiliaries in
many ways are these " scooters " to the
monitors during a coastal bombardment,
and also one of the most picturesque features
of her entourage. From her bridge, as they
speed about, they appear to be just so
many water- spouts moving rapidly over the
surface.
The general conception of Belgian coast
bombardments differs widely from the
actuality. It is not the case of a captain
deciding that because the day is fine he will
take his ship and have a shot at the Huns.
The firing has to be organized just as carefully
as other parts of the Patrol's work, and all
necessary craft provided for carrying it
through. When the monitor at last returns
to harbour with lightened magazines she will
have done something more than hurl a few
tons of steel at the enemy. These bombard-
202 THE DOVER PATROL
ments, which have an important place in the
war activities of this area, are carried out at
every possible opportunity, to the intense
annoyance of the Hun, who likes them not
at all.
XVII
TWIN PILLARS OF SEA- POWER
Contrast ranks amongst the most effective
forms of study. It puts up facts to tell
their story one against the other, and so one
learns truths without much labour of search-
ing for them. By comparing Dover and
Dunkirk, the two bases of the Dover Patrol,
the pillars at the main gateway of our sea-
power — one gets as illuminating a study of
this kind as the world has ever provided.
Dull and leaden-minded must they be who
cannot perceive the lesson it conveys ;
stupidly indifferent to their own interests
the people who neglect to profit by its
teachings.
Bear in mind that one is not speaking here
of places vastly remote from London. Dover
is almost a seaport of the Metropolis.
Dunkirk lies within some hundred odd miles
of it, practically as close as Birmingham,
Nottingham, and other familiar Midland
203
204 THE DOVER PATROL
towns. This nearness of the war is an
important aspect of it which the British
people have never fully grasped. War has
rolled up to one of our frontiers, a jump
of the " ditch " and it would be on us. Here
is a situation pregnant with food for reflection ;
one well worth thinking out in all its bear-
ings. Also Dunkirk once belonged to the
British Crown until that amorous, cynical, and
perpetually impecunious " Merry Monarch "
Charles II sold the town to King Louis.
About Dover little need be said. So far
as mere bricks and mortar go, it is a quiet
picturesque town, nestling cosily in a pleasant
valley. From the cliffs beside it a famous,
ages-old castle turns a grim face seaward.
The castle has seen many wars just as the
hoarily antique church within its precincts
has witnessed many upheavals of another
sort. Both castle and church still remain
in the exercise of the functions for which
they were built. And as fortress and
place of Christian worship they bid fair to
continue for centuries yet to come. The
harbour beneath is full of war shipping. But
though Dover lies right on the frontiers of
TWIN PILLARS OF SEA-POWER 205
the war — so near that it can hear the guns
and at times see the reflection from them —
the town, in a material fashion, has suffered
hardly anything from war itself.
The famous white cliffs still smile a serene
welcome back to the returning Briton.
Sailor and soldier homeward bound hail
them with joy as harbingers of the calm,
sweet peacefulness of England, so different
from the scenes of strife and turmoil he has
left behind. But in Dunkirk, just across the
" ditch," one sees another side of the picture,
the other part of the combat, in all its in-
structive ugliness. What most strikes any
person visiting this town for the first time
under present conditions is its spirit of brave
endurance. This seems to be typified by the
bronze Jean Bart, who stands in the principal
square, still waving his sword defiantly
aloft ; a forceful, energetic figure that power-
fully suggests what the attitude of a fiesh-
and-blood Jean Bart would have been at the
moment. Peace be to his soul. Some one
of his countrymen has had the genius to make
a bronze model of this stout old sea-dog's
soul, and set it up to become an inspiration
206 THE DOVER PATROL
and encouragement to the Dunkirkois in
their hour of greatest need. In the sweep of
his arm Ues a gesture of triumph, a presage
of victory sure to come.
Apparently that is how the Dunkirkois
feel about the matter, for they lay as votive
offerings at the feet of their hero such
German aeroplanes as are brought down
during the Huns' night raids in the neigh-
bourhood. Quite a lot of the raiders fail to
get home again. Wherever one may come
down it is pretty sure to be at the foot of
Jean Bart's statue next day, laid within a
roped enclosure for all who wish to see.
Around the " captive " gather the towns-
folk, country people who have come in
marketing, and the drivers of the British
army vehicles parked along one side of the
square.
Amongst them one hears such comments
as : " That's th' blighter as come buzzin' low
down over us last night. Winged 'e was,
but 'e managed to 'op it out o' our way, so
the French gotj'im. Out at daylight they
was looking for 'im."
In at least one case this was literally true.
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TWIN PILLARS OF SEA-POWER 207
A Him bomber, hit by one of our guns,
struggled away in the dark with faihng
engines and fell at last in a field beside a
canal where some French soldiers were out
fishing. Promptly they seized it and advised
their authorities. At daybreak they were
on the spot with the Mayor of Dunkirk
amongst them, and a few hours later, the
machine was on view in Jean Bart's square.
Its three occupants were killed when the
machine crashed. Fishing, by the way, is by
far the most popular recreation hereabout,
Dunkirk people seem to find in the gentle
art a never-failing solace for their troubles.
So do the French soldiers on leave. By
sunrise one may see them along the quays
dropping little circular nets and hauling
these up again pulley-wise.
In the moats beside all the canals and
amidst the reedy seclusion of the fosses
around sleepy, mediaeval Bergues one comes
continually upon anglers with an opened up-
turned umbrella strung from a pole in front
of them. This is the creel into which their
catch is dropped, and rarely do they use aught
else. Fishing is a wonderful sedative for
208 THE DOVER PATROL
over-tired nerves. No other recreation that
man has discovered brings such peace to the
soul or so surely induces that philosophic
frame of mind that enables one to meet
troubles with equanimity. And the Dun-
kirkois need all the moral stiffening they can
obtain from any source whatever, for they
have much to endure. Well does the town
deserve the Croix de Guerre conferred upon
it. In four years it has been raided from the
air more than four hundred times, and its
tribulations are not over yet.
Before the war Dunkirk was the Liverpool
of Northern France. Now it has gained fame
as probably the most bombed town in any
war area. Very few fine nights pass without
" Mournful Marie " (which gives notice of
impending raids) emitting her tragic howl
of warning. Then it's " Into the cellars all
of you, and be quick about it." Most of the
inhabitants will have gone there already ; for
in order to ensure a few hours' undisturbed
repose the majority of them go to bed in
early evening. When darkness comes they
leave their beds for underground shelter
somewhere. About nine o'clock one meets
TWIN PILLARS OF SEA-POWER 209
them in groups making for these refuges.
Neighbours gather at street corners and call
to one another. When the customary party
has collected they move off towards their
" dug-out," not dolefully, but chatting
brightly. Some are jocularly discussing
whether "' les Boches " will really come ;
others animatedly discussing " la guerre "
as rejflected in the latest communique posted
outside the Hotel de Ville. Hun raiders may
come and Hun raiders may go, but they
cannot depress the brave French spirit,
which knows so well how to meet danger
with a smile, and, if it must die, prefers to
die gaily.
Here and there mothers are calling their
children who may have wandered rampart-
wards for a game, but are far more likely to be
trooping along beside a party of British
sailors or soldiers shouting "One penny,
please ! " These are the first words of Eng-
lish that the French children of the work-
ing class learn. And it is " Jack " and
" Tommy " who gladly teach them. British
sailor and British soldier, child-lovers both,
are tremendously popular with French
210 THE DOVER PATROL
children because of the prodigal way they
distribute pennies amongst them. It's
" Here y'are, y' little beggar. Go an' buy
some toffee ! " or a commiserating " Poor
little kids, rotten time they must have ! "
But always the pennies flow out. Often
one sees " Jack " and " Tommy " rolling
" coppers " along the Dunkirk sidewalks,
delighted as the youngsters themselves at the
joyful rush after the coins.
The little French girl seldom joins these
scrambles. The woman's wit budding with-
in her teaches her an easier and more pro-
fitable way than that. She stands by, sticks
a finger in her mouth, peeps shyly and wist-
fully up — ^and gets pennies without the
trouble of racing after them. For the great
kindness of our sailors and soldiers to the
French children there exists a psychological
reason. Most of these big-hearted fellows
have little ones of their own at home, and
when they make a French child happy it
seems to them as though they were also
gladdening the hearts of their own young-
sters. Subconsciously they see, not the
smiling faces near by them, but other dearly
TWIN PILLARS OF SEA-POWER 211
loved rosy little faces in the England that
seems so terribly far away. And how far
away England does seem from a locality such
as this, one must get into the war-shattered
parts of France to realize. Everything is so
utterly different from home.
" Gawd, what a place for people to hve
in ! " exclaims Tommy, looking around at
the scarred walls and windowless houses of
Dunkirk. " Horrible, ain't it ! " agrees Jack.
And they are right. Dunkirk does not ex-
hibit an attractive exterior. Enemy bombs
have reduced the cathedral to a gaunt shell,
whose shattered windows, broken arches, and
violated shrines are an eloquent though mute
protest against war as the Hun makes it.
Every street throughout the town has been
damaged more or less — ^usually more. Great
gaps yawn here and there. Houses stand
without a window in them like so many
peeled skulls with eyeless sockets. Such
windows as remain are generally part board
and part patched glass. Shrapnel-exploding
bombs have pitted the house fronts from
string-course to eaves as though they had
been subjected to heavy machine-gun fire.
212 THE DOVER PATROL
Uncountable thousands of these sears are
spattered about the walls. In numerous
instances the fronts are partially blown in.
Damage is partially repaired somehow, and
the occupants live in the uncomfortable
interiors as best they can. Even were it
possible to do that, substantial repairing
would be useless, since what was put up in
the daytime would probably be knocked
down in the night.
Passing along the streets one comes con-
stantly upon little sandbagged apertures
which lead to the underground quarters
wherein the residents find shelter when the
Hun is overhead, and most of them regularly
spend the greater part of each night. Such
as take their chance of remaining in bed
sleep with ears wide open; as soon as
" Marie " begins to wail, down to the cellars
they go — as quickly as possible. The bombs
that fall in Dunkirk are not a kind that any
one can treat with indifference. Added to
which the noise made by the defences and
the hail of flying shrapnel are both things
to shelter from as much as possible.
Despite all this Dunkirk, though sadly
TWIN PILLARS OF SEA-POWER 213
maimed, is far from dead. Many of the
people have left it. But somie thousands
still remain there and they " carry on " in
the courageous unflinching French way that
has won the admiration of all peoples except
the Huns — and they cannot understand it,
as it is so vastly different from what they
expected would happen. Shops are open, so
are the principal hotels, the cafes, and the
public market. What is more, all do good
business.
Take the difference between Dunkirk and
Dover or any other English town and see
what the contrast teaches. We owe our
immunity from the crucifixion of woe suffered
by the French base of the Dover Patrol, not
to any forbearance of the Hun, but to the
fact that he is unable to inflict such damage
upon us though yearning soulfully to do so.
Sea-power as personified by the Dover Patrol
interposes a barrier which the enemy cannot
pass.
Throughout the war sea-power has been
our greatest imperial asset. Unquestionably
the British Navy, of which the Dover Patrol
is but a part, though a very important and
214 THE DOVER PATROL
efficient one, has been the greatest factor in
saving civiUzation the world over from the
onslaught of the modem barbarians whom the
Kaiser and his War Lords have launched
upon it.
To the British Navy we owe immunity
from invasion ; the food we eat and the
continuance of trade that keeps us going
financially. Without its protecting arm
America could not have put her splendid
troops in the field ; neither could we have
used the magnificent soldiery which our
Overseas Dominions have raised. These are
all things which should be remembered, not
only now, but after the war is over. To
forget them would be dangerous, for ours is
a great Empire, and without it embraces sea
as well as land in its firm, motherly arms
it cannot be held together.
1.8.18
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D Bennett, J. J.
581 The Dover patrol
345
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