'•
/
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ECHOES FROM THE FLEET
THE LORD HIGH ADMIRAL
THE SECRET OF CONSOLATION
THE MERCHANT SEAMAN IN WAR
THE BRITISH NAVY: THE NAVY VIGILANT
THE FAIRY MAN
COMMANDKk C. UKNNI.S BURNEY, C.M.G.
KuvAL Navy
I'ro'tllf/'uxc r/wio I'y Lajaycltc Ltd.
THE PARAVANE
ADVENTURE
BY
L. COPE GORNFORD
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
r\
fiA
TO
THE PARAVANE OFFICERS
OF THE ROYAL NAVY
1914-1918
The author desires to express his
thanks to the Lords Commissioners
of the Board of Admiralty, to whose
courtesy he is indebted for permission
to examine the records of the Para-
vane Department.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Ex-Paravane officers who have kindly read the proofs of
this book have suggested that the erroneous impression
may be most unfortunately disengaged that more was
effected by the Paravane in the submarine war than was in
fact effected. The Admiralty have courteously raised the
same objection, affirming that "the narrative ignores
throughout every other factor which made for the defeat
of the submarine and mine," such as the convoy system,
regulation of merchant ship routes, minelaying, auxiliary
patrols, mine-sweepers, the hydrophone, the depth charge,
and "many other factors, for which could be claimed, as
compared with the Paravane, a much more direct success
in attacking the submarine." Quite true. I would how-
ever observe that I was writing, not about these other
magnificent achievements, for which no praise can be exces-
sive but, about the Paravane. I would therefore pray the
reader to bear in mind the limitations imposed by the
nature of my task, and to study the other aspects of the
submarine war as already depicted by cleverer hands than
mine.
Lest there should be any misunderstanding, I would
say, further, that the information concerning each of the
persons of this history, was given to me in every instance,
not by himself but, by his colleagues. It is a narrative
presented in reflecting mirrors. Even so, the officers on
active service (with what I regard as an excessive modesty)
insisted that they should be designated by initials alone.
In the case of Commander Burney, as his name was already
publicly associated with the Paravane in two continents,
it was plainly foolish to suppress it, and for that reason
he reluctantly withdrew his request. It remains to add
that for the brief account of Commander Burney's financial
arrangements in respect of his inventions, and for state-
ments concerning Admiralty procedure, I am alone re-
sponsible.
L. C. C.
October, 19 19.
INTRODUCTION
For some time before the conclusion of
the Armistice, the present writer, as a
student of naval affairs, could not but
remark what was evidently a weakening
of the German submarine offensive, and
an absence of losses by mine. There
were evidently forces at work of which
he knew not, nor sought to know. But
that a new spirit was abroad, the storm-
ing of Zeebrugge and the blocking of
Ostend sufficiently demonstrated. Of the
Paravane he had once heard the name,
when the captain of a convoying cruiser
told him that the boatswain complained
that the Paravane ' caught fish.' Why the
captain seemed to think the circumstance
amusing, I did not know, having then no
conception of the Paravane, nor did the
captain explain.
viii THE PARA.VANE ADVENTURE
When I read Admiral of the Fleet
Viscount Jellicoe's history of the Grand
Fleet during the first two years of the
war, the contrast between the state of
the Navy then, and its condition at
the time of the surrender of the Im-
perial German Navy (which event I wit-
nessed) insistently emerged. In the mean-
time, it had been officially announced
that a real War Staff, with executive
powers, had been instituted at the Admir-
alty, with the First Sea Lord as Chief of
the Imperial Staff. Here was a reform
which had been urged by Lord Beresford
and others for five-and-twenty years.
They had represented that there should
be created at the Admiralty a body of
officers whose sole business should be the
study of the war ; including the collation
of intelligence, the investigation of weapons
and their application, and the preparation
of plans. These, broadly speaking, are the
duties of a war staff.
INTRODUCTION ix
After the conclusion of the Armistice,
the present writer was privileged to read
the following letter, written to the owners
by the master of the ship. (The Otter to
which he refers is the merchant service
variety of the Paravane.)
H.M. Hospital Ship 'Goorkha'
Salonika, 19th November 1918.
The Managers,
Union Castle Mail S.S. Co., Ltd.,
3-4 Fenchurch St., London,
Gentlemen, — I would like to pay a tribute to
the efficiency of the Otter Gear as fitted to the
Goorkha. The last minefield I passed through
in daylight, the Otters cut adrift three enemy
moored mines (in 15 minutes) which came to the
surface just abaft the bridge. In dangerous
areas, especially such as some of the pro -enemy
waters we have to traverse just now, the Otters
are more than ever necessary, and look-outs are
placed in Nos. 5 and 6 boats to watch the water
surface above the Otters. The patients (who
are able) are kept on deck with lifebelts on, and
the crew also, as far as possible. The tremendous
tearing sound and vibration caused by the mine
mooring wire rushing along the Otter towing
wire, does not leave many of the crew in their
X THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
quarters forward, and is felt quite strongly on
the forecastle head. In the event of getting
among mines, I see nothing for it but to steer a
straight course, full speed if possible, as slowing
down too much, or stopping, brings the Otters to
the surface where they are useless, and turning
under helm renders the stern liable to strike a
mine, which the Otters have cut adrift. The
very hard steel cutting teeth in the jaws of the
Otter show little or no signs after cutting mine
wires, although in one case, portions of the wire
were found in the jaws, and in another a length
of wire and the depth nipper were brought on
board with the Otter. In another instance, the
port Otter refused to work and came alongside
ship, when it was found on hoisting it out of the
water, that though it had cut the mine adrift,
it had fouled the wire with some anchoring
arrangement attached. The wire was cut with
an axe, and the Otter freed. In most cases, the
mines cut adrift by the Goorkha's Otters have
very shortly afterwards been sunk by gunfire.
In the Mediterranean from 28th June to 17th
November, the ship steamed 1594 hours, during
which time the Otters were in use 361 hours. —
Yours obediently,
(Signed) John D. Whitton.
INTRODUCTION xi
At the same time, there were casually
published in the Press some rather vague
and obviously inaccurate references to the
Paravane. Clearly the effect of this device
(whatever it might be) had been consider-
able ; and it occurred to the present
writer that, if the Admiralty no longer
desired to keep the matter secret, a precise
account of the invention would both
rightly inform the public, and affix the
credit thereof where it was due.
He therefore wrote to the First Lord of
the Admiralty on the subject, and the
Board most courteously gave him access
to the requisite information, stipulating
that any technical description of the
apparatus should be submitted to their
Lordships before publication, and that the
work should not be used as a text-book
for officers.
Both these conditions have, of course,
been observed, and the present writer
desires to express his sense of the courtesy
xii THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
and kindness of the Lords Commissioners
of the Admiralty. It should, however,
be distinctly understood that the Admir-
alty have no responsibility whatever for
the statements in the book, for which the
author is alone responsible.
In the course of his researches the present
writer discovered that, as a matter of
fact, the War Staff at the Admiralty had
nothing to do with the invention or use of
the Paravane, because the War Staff did
not exist at the time. Had the War Staff
existed, the story of the Paravane adven-
ture might have been very different. As
it was, the Paravane officers did in spite
of the system, what a War Staff would
have done by virtue of the system.
There is now a War Staff at the Admir-
alty ; but, it is officially stated, its organ-
isation is not yet complete ; and times
change ; and people forget. . . .
The history of the Paravane is the
history of a romantic adventure, trium-
INTRODUCTION xiii
phantly achieved ; it is the history of a
young officer of high inventive genius, who,
loyally backed through foul weather and
fair by his brother officers, proved that
nothing is impossible to him who wills ;
and it is also the most instructive example
extant of the necessity for the mainten-
ance of a permanent War Staff, in peace
as in war.
J-/, v^. L/«
London, June 1919.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Commander C. Dennis Burney, C.M.G. Frontispiece
PAGE
General Arrangement of High Speed Sub-
marine Sweep, showing an Explosive Paravane
engaging submarine . . . • q9
General Arrangement of Protector Paravane 71
General Arrangement of High Speed Mine
Sweep, showing Paravane towing from stern
of Destroyer . . . . .74
Stern of a Destroyer under way . . 76
Showing the towing-wire (electric) of the High Speed
Submarine Sweep standing out from the fore-and-aft line
of the ship as the Paravane tows. Looking aft over the
Destroyer's starboard quarter.
High Speed Submarine Sweep Paravane being
hoisted in to the dropping-gear after a run
AT Spithead in a Destroyer . . .76
An Otter being hoisted in . . .193
The Standing Cutter on the towing-frame of
AN Otter with the towing-wire attached to
ITS UPPER JAW BY THE SPECIAL TOWING-SLEEVE
FROM WHICH THE WIRE IS SEEN HANGING DOWN . 193
The moorings of a mine encountered by this wire are
automatically forced into the jaws of this cutter and are
there cut by the serrated teeth of the knives which lie one
in each jaw. "With a magnifying glass these teeth can be
clearly seen in the cutter jaws.
xvi THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Taken from the forecastle -head of s.s.
' accrington ' at spithead, looking aft along
her port side ....
Showing the gallows fitted for hoisting and lowering an
Otter ; and the inhaul wire leading from it to the Otter
running below the water.
I'AGE
An Otter being hoisted in at the gallows head
on starboard side of s.s. ' accrington ' . 208
A Mine whose moorings have been cut being
secured to the gallows in s.s. ' accrington '
preparatory to hoisting it on board . . 208
Taken from the forecastle of s.s. 'Accrington'
LOOKING aft along HER STARBOARD SIDE . 241
The ship is under way and her starboard Otter has just
cut the mooring of a submerged dummy mine at which
the ship was directly steered. The mine has been flung
away from the ship, its moorings have then reached the
cutter on the Otter and have been cut, and the mine is
here seen leaping to the surface well clear of the ship's
side.
An Otter being hoisted out over port side of
S.S. 'Accrington' .... 241
Taken from the forecastle- head of s.s.
'Accrington ' at Spithead, looking aft along
her starboard side ....
Showing the gallows fitted for hoisting and lowering an
Otter ; and the inhaul wire leading from it to the Otter
running below the water.
2.56
256
This is the story of how a group of young
naval officers, during the Great War,
matched their wits against the craft of
the German and outwitted him.
The beginning of the story is really
the Imagination of Lieutenant C. Dennis
Burney ; but it is better to start in the
middle, that is, in February 1916, when
there came to Scapa Flow two officers,
Commander E. L. W., Royal Navy,
and Lieutenant C. Dennis Burney, Royal
Navy, bringing with them a Paravane.
Exactly what is a Paravane will be ex-
plained presently. The two officers went
on board H.M.S. Iron Duke, in which they
were received by the Commander-in-Chief
of the Grand Fleet, Admiral Sir John
Jellicoe (now Admiral of the Fleet Viscount
Jellicoe of Scapa).
2 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
The subject of the conversation which
then took place in Sir John JelHcoe's cabin,
between the Commander-in-Chief and Lieu-
tenant Burney, is not on record ; but it
may be deduced from the posture of affairs
at the time.
During the previous year and a half,
the British had lost, by enemy action and
marine risks, about one million and three-
quarters gross tons of merchant shipping,
or about 250 vessels, and the rest of the
world had lost over three-quarters of a
million gross tons of merchant shipping,
or about two and a half million tons in all.
The Grand Fleet had no power to protect
merchant shipping, other than the power
it exercised of keeping the German ships
of war in their ports ; for the Grand Fleet
could deal neither with mine nor sub-
marine. The Grand Fleet itself was con-
tinually hunted by submarines and per-
petually in danger of crashing into unknown
minefields. Lord Jellicoe's history of that
time shows that the existence of the Grand
Fleet was menaced by day and by night,
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 3
and that nothing but incomparable skill
and vigilance saved it from disaster.
If the position is to be made plain, I
must ask the reader to bend his patience
to a very brief consideration of technical
conditions. But first let us define our
terms. Strategy means the act of bringing
your forces into contact with the enemy.
Tactics means the act of using your forces
when they are thus brought into contact
with the enemy. Both strategy and tac-
tics depend upon the weapons in use on
either side. If, for instance, there is a
minefield between you and the enemy,
you cannot get at him. Or if, when you
have come within range of the enemy,
he can torpedo you ere you can prevent
him from so doing, your guns will be
useless.
Now in the old wars, there was nothing
to prevent you, if the wind served, from
bringing your fleet into action with the
fleet of your enemy. Nor was there any-
thing to prevent you from cruising up and
down outside his ports, thereby blockading
4^^ THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
him. Therefore the principle of naval
warfare was to maintain so powerful a
fleet, that it could either bring the enemy
to battle and defeat him, or shut him up
in his ports. In either event, he could
not interfere with the free passage of the
seas. And to keep the free passage of the
seas, while denying it to the enemy, is the
object of naval warfare. The thing is so
simple in theory, that many eminent per-
sons who have read of it, think they can
conduct a war at sea ; and so difficult in
practice, that many a sagacious Admiral
has failed to accomplish it.
When the mine, the long-range torpedo,
the submarine, the flying ship and the
aeroplane came to be employed by the
Germans, the principles of naval warfare
remained, but the old methods of carrying
those principles into execution became
partially nullified. And that disagreeable
fact was exactly what Sir John Jellicoe
perceived when he took command of the
Grand Fleet.
The Grand Fleet was built, armed and
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 5
equipped and trained to use the old
methods. These so far succeeded that
the main German Fleet was held in check.
But in the meantime quite another German
Fleet was interfering with the free passage
of the seas and bringing the war to the
very doorsteps of these islands. To deal
with the new warfare the Grand Fleet was
helpless.
That, in brief, was the technical situation.
And it is pleasant to remember that flushed
old gentlemen on shore went about saying
defiantly, ' Well, whatever happens, the
Navy is All Right ! '
Whether or not Sir John Jellicoe thought
the Navy was all right, may be deduced
from his admirable book. It is another
count to the credit of that great public
servant, that when Lieutenant Burney
arrived in the flagship bringing a new
weapon with which to wage the new war-
fare. Sir John Jellicoe most carefully in-
vestigated its value, and gave his decisive
support to Lieutenant Burney. That
young two-stripe Lieutenant had produced
6 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
a device which, he said, would help to
destroy the submarine and which would
enable a ship to pass unharmed through
a minefield.
I have begun in the middle of the story
instead of at the beginning, because the
approval of the Paravane by the Com-
mander-in-Chief marks the culmination of
what happened before, and made possible
what ensued.
II
The beginning of the story is the Imagin-
ation of Lieutenant C. Dennis Burney. We
name that quahty of mind, Imagination,
by means of which man is enabled inwardly
to see pictures of what has happened, what
may happen, even what must happen, and
what he wants to do or to make. All that
man has made existed in his mind as a
Thing — what the metaphysicians call a
Thing-in-itself, by way of making it clear
— before it existed in material substance.
Very well : Lieutenant Burney could not
help having imagination ; but, like many
other people, he might have refrained from
the trouble of transmuting his perceptions
into real things. The process is full of
pain. It can only be accomplished by an
indomitable tenacity. And imagination
and tenacity are two gifts but seldom
granted to one person.
8 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Lieutenant Burney was that person.
Like most pioneers, he was naturally
devoid of respect for established authority,
as such. It is indeed obvious that if the
pioneer in any walk of this adventurous
life here beloAv were to respect authority
simply because it was authority, and not
because it manifested intelligence, he would
never become a pioneer. And it is the
first, elemental impulse of established
authority to resist innovation.
For the sake of convenience, we will go
back to the year before the war, in which
Lieutenant Burney was inspired to predict
what would happen if war came. His
prognostication was contained in an article
published in the Review produced by the
Naval Society, for private circulation, of
May, 1913. Tlie idea upon which the
article is based is that the object of war
is to bring the most destructive weapon
possible into contact with the enemy in
the shortest possible time. Lieutenant
Burney thought that in order to fulfil that
principle, it was necessary to study weapons
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 9
and their uses. As, however, there was no
department at the Admiralty especially
charged with that duty, there was no reason
why an officer should not conduct his own
researches.
Lieutenant Burney foresaw that air
power would in the future be one of the
decisive factors in naval as in military
warfare. At that time, the heaviest load
of an aeroplane was about two tons. Air-
ships had been built by Germany with a
radius of action of 1500 miles, carrying
capacity of forty men and speed of fifty
miles. In this country there were no
efficient large dirigibles. There was no
defence against submarines.
Lieutenant Burney suggested in May 1913
that aircraft should be used to attack sub-
marines, and that ships should carry aero-
planes, which should be fitted with wireless
and should be used for attack, for recon-
naissance and for scouting. ' On the one
hand when used solely as a scout, they
will enable us almost to eliminate the
strategic advantages of the Kiel Canal,
10 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
and on the other, used as an offensive
agent, they will enable us to defeat the
submarine, and so free our fleets for action
in the North Sea ; and it is upon these
two points and upon these two only, that
Germany is at the present time placed in
so favourable a position.' Considered in
the light of the experience of the war,
this is a remarkable passage.
Lieutenant Burney argued that ' the
introduction of aircraft . . . tends for the
first time in history to carry the offensive
over the enemy's towns and ports, without
first having to meet and defeat the enemy's
craft. In short, it means that our methods
of offence are beginning to outstrip our
methods of defence^ and when the meaning
of this has been grasped, it will be seen
that the whole art of war will be gradually
revolutionised.'
During the war, it became painfully
evident that the enemy's methods of offence
had actually outstripped our methods of
defence.
' It appears therefore that efficient air-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 11
craft could practically bring the industries
and communications of a country to a
standstill, and in so doing make that
country helpless. What does an invading
army do but try to get all means of com-
munication into its hands, and stop all
distributions and industries in its wake ?
The invaders do not attempt to kill all
the inhabitants but fight certain selected
men of their opponents for positions,
which enable them to dominate the lines
of communication. W^ith the introduction
of aircraft this can be done without first
gaining those dominant positions, and it
is only necessary to send a sufficiently
strong force of aircraft to destroy the
enemy's communications. . . . Has a
moral sense ever governed a nation's
action when it is fighting for its exist-
ence . . . ? '
It may be noted at this point that in
an official statement published in the
Press of 20th April, 1919, the damage in-
flicted upon the City of London alone by
twelve air raids, is estimated to average
12 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
£1,250,000 for each raid, or £15,000,000 in
all. In none of these raids was a large
force employed.
Lieutenant Burney was not alone in
forming these conclusions. They were
held by the Royal Flying Corps. Burney
quotes a remark made by Major Sykes,
Commandant of the Military Arm of the
Royal Flying Corps (as he was then) in
the course of a lecture. ' The navies of
the world — I am sorry for them — but in
my dream they have somewhat to re-
linquish their present proud position.
Their role is that of floating defence. The
Air Service is the foremost line.' ' Being
a soldier,' observes Burney, ' he is quick
to see how it will affect the Navy, but
contends that it will not affect the role of
the Army. Similarly, naval officers realise
that land war is altered, but some are blind
where their own Service is concerned.'
Burney's main purpose in setting forth
these anticipations was to urge the con-
struction of the hydro-aeroplane, a craft
which should combine the qualities of an
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 13
aeroplane with the quahties of a seaworthy
boat able to keep its speed in rough water,
and which should be used for attacking
submarines with gun and bomb, for re-
connaissance and for scouting. Burney
conceived that the hydro-aeroplane should
be ' about four tons total weight, with a
speed of between seventy and eighty miles
per hour, carrying capacity for a crew of
three men with the necessary navigational
instruments, four or five hundred pounds
of explosives, with a light gun for pro-
jecting them ; a range of between 400
and 500 miles in the air, and 800 to 1000
miles on the sea and air combined ; a sea
speed of anything up to fifty miles per
hour according to the state of the sea,
and capable of being used for over 300
days in the year.'
At that time experiments were being
made with such a type of vessel, and two
years before (in 1911) an aeroplane had
been constructed which left the water
under its own power. It is not our present
purpose to trace the development of the
14 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
hydro-aeroplane, but to note that in the
course of his endeavours to build a practic-
able machine, which were inspired by a
sense of the necessities of the times, and
which were cut short by the outbreak of
war, Burney gained a knowledge and an
experience which enabled him to devise
the Paravane.
The article in which Burney in 1913
forecast the developments of the war,
unlike the brilliant prophecies of Mr. H. G.
W^ells or the late Lord Tennyson's glimpse
of futurity, was, not an effect of pure
fantasy but, the imaginative deduction
from long previous study and industrious
experiment. In 1910, Burney, then a
sub-lieutenant, was appointed to H.M.S.
Crusader for work on the Anti-Submarine
Committee formed in that year, of which
his father. Rear- Admiral (now Admiral
Sir Cecil) Burney was the first president.
The Committee studied both the develop-
ment of the submarine and methods of
defence against submarine attack. At
that time, the theory was that submarines
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 15
were useful for harbour and coast defence,
but that they could not be employed
independently in deep water. It was,
however, demonstrated by experiment
that a submarine could navigate under
her own power, proceeding far out to sea,
attacking and torpedoing a man-of-war.
To meet this new form of offensive, various
methods of towing explosive charges were
devised, which, by the time the war came,
had developed into what was called the
Modified Sweep. Young Burney, for the
Committee, invented and conducted ex-
periments, which were of course secret.
In the course of these adventures, a sub-
marine (without crew) went to the bottom
and stayed there in an unknown position.
Burney borrowed a primitive aeroplane in
order to discover her position from above,
and was thereby inspired to study aircraft.
In September 1911, he left the Anti-
submarine Committee, went on half-pay
to pursue his researches at the experi-
mental aviation works of Sir George White,
at Bristol, and persuaded the Admiralty
16 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
to lend to him a torpedo-boat for use in
the experiments in the development of
the hydro-aeroplane. Here it falls to
observe that the late Sir George White
was a true patriot. He was a pioneer in
scientific aviation, and spent money and
time in research and experiment, without
thought of gain.
Henceforward, for many months, though
the Admiralty might move his body here
and there, Burney's heart and mind dwelt
in Bristol, bent upon the making of the
seaplane.
For instance, in November 1911, the
Admiralty mill ground out Burney's ap-
pointment to H.M.S. Venerable, in which
ship he remained just long enough to apply
for half-pay and to receive it, when he
returned to Bristol. And in the following
March, 1912, the Admiralty mill ground
out his appointment to H.M.S. Black
Prince, in which ship he also remained to
apply for half- pay and to receive it, when
he returned to Bristol.
During 1912 Burney joined H.M.S.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 17
Excellent for the course in gunnery.
Accordingly, he became a gunnery
officer, in the intervals of Bristol. To
Bristol he went every week-end, so arrang-
ing that the draughtsmen employed under
his instructions should be at work during
his visit.
Burney was then appointed to H.M.S.
President for experimental work, and con-
tinued his experiments in seaplane construc-
tion and anti-submarine defence. During
liis time at Bristol, Burney, together
with his technical collaborator, Mr. F. S.
Barnwell, did in fact construct an efficient
seaplane. He also acquired a professional
knowledge of the science of aviation, and
learned the methods and office routine
of a private commercial firm (which differ
extremely from Government methods),
attainments which in the future were to
serve him well.
But Lieutenant Burney was now a gun-
nery officer, and four months before war
was declared, he was appointed according
to the usual procedure to the Chatham
B
18 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Gunnery School as instructing officer.
And he continued to spend his week-ends
at Bristol.
Early in 1914, representatives of the
Royal Naval Air Service witnessed the
first official trial of the Burney hydro-
aeroplane, or seaplane, at Pembroke, where
the Senior Officer was generously directed
by the Admiralty to render every assist-
ance ' at Lieutenant Burney's expense.'
Shortly afterwards, the war put an end
to Burney's experiments in the design of
aircraft. So far, Burney had equipped
himself with a specialist's knowledge of
the design, construction and use of sub-
marine vessels, had devised methods of
defence against submarine attack, had
mastered the principles of aviation, and
had done much practical inventive con-
struction of aircraft. These things he had
accomplished entirely of his own initiative.
It was of course not the part of the
Admiralty to encourage young officers to
adventure outside the scope of their duties.
As an Admiral once said to the present
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 19
writer, young officers are not paid to
think.
Upon the outbreak of war, Lieutenant
Burney was appointed to the command
of H.M.S. Velox, torpedo-boat destroyer,
in the Channel patrol, based upon Ports-
mouth, where Admiral of the Fleet Sir
Hedworth Meux was Commander-in-Chief.
Ill
When war came, the British pubHc held
a subhme and apathetic confidence in the
British Navy which endured to the end.
And in so far as the skill, tenacity, valour,
and seamanship of the Fleet were con-
cerned, that confidence was absolutely
justified. The preparation, organisation
and direction of the Fleet, apart from
its conduct at sea, were another matter,
of which the public, fortunately for their
composure, knew and were permitted to
know, nothing. Not until the publica-
tion of Admiral of the Fleet Viscount
Jellicoe's book, in February 1919, did the
country begin to understand the frightful
perils from which it had been saved. How
it was saved it is the purpose of this book
to show.
In The Grand Fleet, 1914-10 : Its Crea-
tion, Development and Work, Lord Jellicoe
20
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 21
indicates plainly enough that, had the
German High Seas Fleet challenged a
general action early in the war, the British
Fleet might well have been defeated ; for
had Germany attacked when the usual
proportion of British vessels were absent
from the Fleet, obtaining fuel or under
repair, the High Seas Fleet would have
been equal in strength to the British Fleet
in capital ships, and in destroyers greatly
superior. The German High Seas Fleet
was safely in harbour, whence it could
come at any moment. The British Fleet
was constantly at sea, destitute of a
defended harbour ; exposed by day and
by night to submarine attack ; and in
danger of destruction by mine.
From the beginning, the Germans em-
ployed the new weapons of the mine and
the long-range torpedo, which is fired both
from the destroyer and the submarine.
The Grand Fleet had no harbour in which
it could safely lie. Had a single submarine
penetrated the makeshift defences of
Scapa, it might have destroyed the British
22 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
superiority in capital ships. The Grand
Fleet, perpetually hunted by submarines,
retreated to Lough Swilly, there to remain
while defences were erected at Scapa, and
returned to Scapa to find the barrier
unfinished.
Against the mine there was no defence.
Against the submarine there was no de-
fence, other than a screen of patrolhng
destroyers, always numerically insufficient,
and the device of manoeuvring at high
speed. The use of the mine as a method
of warfare had been constantly considered
by the staff of H.M.S. Vernon, but the
Government invariably refused to grant
the money requisite for experimental
work. The coast defence mining section
of the Navy had been abolished, and the
mining branch of the Fleet was utterly
inadequate.
Theoretically, the business of the Grand
Fleet was to seek out and destroy the Fleet
of the enemy, and in the meantime to
enforce the blockade. With the secondary
war upon commerce conducted by the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 23
enemy, the Grand Fleet had nothing to
do. The theory of naval warfare thus
embodied, was traditional. It was far
from covering the exigencies of modern
war ; but such as it was, the theory had
never been carried into practice. For the
Grand Fleet was utterly unprepared for
its task. It was deficient in numbers of
officers and men; it was deficient in num-
bers of vessels ; it was deprived of protected
bases; it was short of docks; there was no
adequate organisation of coal and oil and
auxiliary vessels ; and the technical equip-
ment of ships was inferior to the German
equipment. All these things and more
are described by Lord Jellicoe, without
comment. These vast deficiencies must
be made up by improvisation. ' Improvisa-
tion,' remarked Sir Douglas (now Earl)
Haig, ' is never economical and seldom
satisfactory.'
But during the first two years of the
war, no improvisation had restored to the
Fleet the freedom of movement of which
it was deprived by minefields. Mines
24 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
might be swept but they were laid again.
Nor had any improvisation quelled the
submarine. It would appear that it was
first the determination of the ^Admiralty
to conduct the war at sea upon the
assumption that the submarine was
comparatively harmless.
In August and September, 1914, 217,108
gross tons of British and foreign merchant
shipping had been lost by enemy action
and marine risks. The number of British
steamships over 1600 gross tons lost was
31. But these losses were considered
negligible. They did not, it was said,
affect the conduct of the war.
Then, on 22nd September 1914, the
three armoured cruisers, Aboukir, Captain
John E. Drummond, Cressy, Captain
Robert W. Johnson, and Hogue, Captain
Wilmot S. Nicholson, were sunk by sub-
marine. They were cruising in company
and were put down one after the other
with dreadful loss of life.
IV
Burney's position at this moment was
near desperate. He had no money to spend
upon that most costly of occupations,
invention ; he had no time, his days and
nights being consumed with his duties as
captain of a patroUing destroyer ; and
those duties were often highly exhausting.
He was a Lieutenant, and therefore, accord-
ing to the etiquette of the Service, so low
in the scale of created beings, that he was
hardly entitled to an opinion of his own,
still less to express it. All these things were
against him.
On his side, was the reputation he had
earned by achievement in submarine and
hydroplane experiment. And also on his
side was the Commander-in-Chief of Ports-
mouth. That distinguished officer is a
man of affairs as well as a seaman, and in
26
26 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
both spheres accustomed to have his
way.
Now the problem to whose solution
Burney again set his mind, was how to
attack and destroy the submarine below
the surface. A submarine on the surface
can be tackled with the gun. A submarine
below the surface must first be detected.
Therefore it was necessary to discover
something which could detect the sub-
marine under water, and when it was
detected, destroy it. That something
must be attached to a ship and worked
from a ship. Explosive charges towed
from the stern of a destroyer had proved
comparatively ineffective, and in any case,
the number of destroyers available for
submarine pursuit was very few.
It is obvious to the least initiated that
a towed body tends perpetually to come
to the surface, and that any alteration of
speed or course on the part of the ship
towing, will alter the depth of the body
towed. The difficulty is partly met by
the device of the otter-board used by
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 27
trawlers to keep their nets down, but the
otter-board alone was useless for the
purpose required.
Therefore the problem to be solved
might be stated thus -.—To keep a body,
containing the requisite explosive or appli-
ance, towing at a consta7it depth unaffected
by any variation of speed or of helm.
By the orders of the Commander-in-
Chief of Portsmouth, Burney was attached
to H.M.S. Vernon torpedo school, for
experimental purposes, while remaining
on patrol duty in Velox, an arrangement
which in practice enabled Burney to con-
duct experiments in Velox. He proceeded
at first upon the hydro-aeroplane prin-
ciple, devising a towed surface-hydroplane
body based on his experiments made at
Bristol. In September, Burney submitted
his scheme through H.M.S. Vernon, asking
for authority to arrange that the requisite
experimental wooden bodies should be
made in Portsmouth Dockyard and to
purchase six planes from Sir George WTiite
at Bristol. The request was officially
28 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
approved on 9th October 1914. But in
the meantime, in order to avoid delay,
Sir George White had sent the planes,
which had been removed from Burney's
model at Bristol for the pm'pose, to Burney
at Portsmouth ; Burney had contrived to
secure the wooden bodies, to finish an
experimental machine, and to complete
its trials, so that by the time official
approval was received, the thing was done.
At this point in the narrative, emerges
that contrast between individual initiative
and official procedure, which will become
more and more insistent. The methods
of the Admiralty, like the methods of other
great Departments of State, are, and per-
haps must be, stereotyped to operate in
rigid grooves. And at this point, Burney,
who had his own views as to the urgency
of the situation, began to take a personal
responsibility involving his own fortunes
in some hazard, albeit in this first instance
the risk was trifling enough. Burney merely
anticipated official approval, and in its
appointed course it duly arrived.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 29
On the 8th October, the day before the
official assent was received, a description
and drawings of the new gear were sub-
mitted to the Admiralty by H.M.S. Vernon
with a request that complete drawings
should be prepared by Portsmouth Dock-
yard. The request was approved and the
drawings were made by the Dockyard
draughtsmen under Burney's direction.
The Dockyard was of course very busy
and found it difficult to take on more
work, but inside a month the drawings
were submitted to the Admiralty together
with a description of the gear, and an
account of its trials in Velox and proposals
for future development. The Admiralty au-
thorised the manufacture in the Dockyard
of one set of gear and the continuance of
the trials in Velox.
The gear was made and was subjected
to further experiments, when it was found
that the surface-hydroplane body might
be eliminated. The Admiralty were in-
formed of the proposed modification on
25th January 1915.
30 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Burney, having discovered that the sur-
face-aeroplane body was superfluous, and
having reported the fact, went steadily
on with his experiments, while his report
was proceeding through the Admiralty.
Presently he succeeded in devising what
was, in fact, a submarine aeroplane, a tor-
pedo body fitted with a plane, which would
tow outwards from the ship's side and
which would keep down below the surface
at a depth unaffected by the speed of the
ship.
This invention, clearly of the first im-
portance, was reported to the Admiralty
by H.M.S. Vernon early in February. A
few days later, two Admiralty letters were
forwarded to Lieutenant Burney for his
information. Both bore the same date.
One directed the Commander-in-Chief of
Portsmouth to stop all experiments. The
other directed the captain of H.M.S.
Vernon to go on with them. The explana-
tion of what was apparently a contradic-
tion is probably simple, but it was not
apparent ; and when Burney received
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 31
copies of the two letters, one saying no
and the other yes, he naturally sought the
advice of the Commander-in-Chief, Ports-
mouth. Sir Hedworth Meux, who had
helped Burney from the first, and who
also appreciated the gravity of the sub-
marine peril, sped to the Admiralty, and
obtained their Lordships' sanction for the
making of the new gear at Portsmouth
for purposes of experiment.
The gear was fitted in H.M.S. Mastiffy
t.b.d., and was tested at Harwich by Com-
modore (T). In May 1915, the Commodore
in his report expressed the highest ap-
proval of the invention, which, he con-
sidered, would be a most effective weapon
in dealing with submarines.
This was the first Paravane.
After seven months' tense and unre-
mitting labour, Burney had solved the
main difficulty of his problem : to keep
a body, containing the requisite explosive
or appliance, towing at a constant depth,
unaffected by any variation of speed or
of helm. The Paravane was still far from
perfect, but it would work. So much had
Burney accomplished since the sinking of
the three cruisers. All day he was at sea
in Velox^ experimenting with wooden
models, noting defects and inventing
remedies ; when he landed, he must in-
struct the draughtsmen in the Dockyard,
and go round the shops to supervise the
making of the models ; during the even-
ings and half the night he was designing,
calculating, and framing reports.
In the meantime, how went the war ?
32
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 33
In September 1914, the three cruisers had
been put down ; on 1st November, the
British squadron under the command of
Rear- Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock had
been defeated ; on 5th November, Great
Britain declared war on Turkey ; on the
8th December, Vice-Admiral Sir Doveton
Sturdee avenged Cradock off the Falkland
Islands ; on 1st January, 1915, H.M.S.
For7nidable, Captain Arthur N. Loxley,
had been torpedoed in the Channel ; on
24th January was fought the naval action
off the Dogger Bank ; on 25th February,
the Allied Fleets had attacked the Darda-
nelles, serious losses ensuing. And in the
same month Germany proclaimed the sub-
marine blockade of this country, officially
announced as follows : —
1. The waters round Great Britain and Ire-
land, including the English Channel, are hereby
declared a military area. From February 18th,
every hostile merchant ship in these waters will
be destroyed, even if it is not always possible to
avoid thereby the dangers which threaten the
crews and passengers.
2. Neutral ships will also incur danger in the
c
84 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
military area, because, in view of the misuse of
flags ordered by the British Government on
January 31st, and the accidents of naval war-
fare, it cannot always be avoided that attacks
may involve neutral ships.
3. Traffic northwards around the Shetland
Islands, in the east part of the North Sea, and
a strip of at least thirty sea miles in breadth
along the coast of Holland is not endangered.
(Sgd.) Von Pohl,
Chief of Admiralty Staff.
The blockade of Germany by Great
Britain was not at that time, and not until
long afterwards, strictly enforced. And
while the British public believed that Great
Britain was blockading Germany, what
was really happening was that Germany
was blockading Great Britain. Tlie Brit-
ish Navy was doing its duty ; suspected
ships were duly sent into port ; but all
save a small percentage were released by
order of the Government. Germany, how-
ever, meant business.
To show how that business was done, I
give here some examples, taken from my
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 85
book ^ on the subject, which, by the
courtesy of the Admiralty, I was enabled
to compile from the official records.
' In the grey noon of an October day the
Glitra, an old, small iron steamship, was
approaching the harbour of a neutral
country, whose tall headlands loomed
ahead. So far the master, following the
directions of the Admiralty, had brought
his ship scatheless. Within an hour or
two she would be safe.
' The master and the chief officer were
on the bridge, and an able seaman was
posted as lookout on the forecastle head.
Up went the flag calling for a pilot, and
presently the master descried the pilot's
motor-boat swiftly approaching from the
shore. At the same moment he perceived
a long and low object moving towards him
on the water some three miles to seaward.
The apparition was like a blow over
* The Merchant Seaman in War. With a Foreword by
Admiral Viscount Jellicoe. (London, Hodder and
Stougliton.)
36 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
the heart to the men of the Glitra. But
it might be a British submarine. The
master, staring through his glass at the flag
flying from the short mast of the nearing
vessel, made out the black German eagles.
The pilot saw them too, for he went about,
heading back to the harbour ; and with
him the men of the Glitra beheld their last
hope for the ship implacably receding, and
confronted the inevitable with the dogged
composure of the British seaman.
' The master altered course, steering
away from the submarine, which, fetching
a wide circle, drew towards the Glitra.
The submarine had the speed of the old
cargo-boat, and as she came closer the
master heard the metallic ring of tube-
firing, and a flight of small shot sang
about his cars. Thereupon he stopped his
engines, and the Glitra lay still, while the
submarine drew nearer and stopped within
a ship's length of the steamer. There she
lay, the water lipping on the rounded hull,
from which the conning-tower rose amid-
ships. The commanding officer stood by
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 37
the rail of the conning-tower, and men were
descending thence to the narrow platforms
fore and aft, and busying themselves on
the deck. Then the submarine hoisted
the code signal, meaning " drag-rope " ;
and the men on board the Glitra saw the
Germans get a collapsible boat into the
water. Two men pulled, and a third sat
in the stern-sheets.
' The men of the Glitra awaited events
in silence ; and the next thing of which
the master was acutely conscious was the
cold muzzle of a revolver pressing into the
flesh of his neck, while the excited German
officer wielding that weapon ordered him
in throaty but intelligible English to leave
his bridge and to get his boats away in
ten minutes, as his ship was to be tor-
pedoed.
'The master, going down on deck with
a disagreeable sensation as of a pistol
aimed at his back, mustered the silent
crew, who assembled under the hard eyes
of three Germans covering them with
revolvers, and who at the same time beheld
38 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
two guns on the submarine, one forward
and the other aft of the conning-tower,
trained expectantly upon the ship. Then
the master, looking directly at the small
black circle of the revolver's muzzle, was
ordered to haul down his flag. Still
followed by the revolver, he went to the
halliards and dropped the flag to the rail,
over which it hung drooping and discon-
solate. And then he was ordered to
fetch the ship's papers which are the most
sacred trust of the master of a vessel.
Down below he went, with the pistol at
his back ; and no sooner had he vanished
down the companion-way than the German
officer seized the flag, tore it across and
across, flung the pieces on the deck, and
stamped upon them like a maniac. The
master came on deck to witness the re-
markable spectacle of an officer of H.I.M.
Imperial Navy wiping his sea-boots on
the Red Ensign.
' The German, having thus gratiffed his
emotions, again turned his revolver on
the master, ordered him to hand over the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 39
ship's papers, forbade him to fetch his
coat, and refused to allow the crew, who
were sullenly launching the three boats,
to get any additional clothing. Then the
German officer ordered the three boats
to pull to the submarine and to make fast
to her.
' The men of the Glitra, fetching up along-
side the submarine, gazed curiously upon
the dull, rigid faces of the German blue-
jackets, and marked the strange and ugly
form of the Tinfish, as the merchant ser-
vice calls it. So soon as the boats were
made fast, the submarine, with a grinding
noise like the working of millstones, drew
off about a ship's length, towing the boats,
and stopped again. During this time the
master, scanning his lost ship intently,
saw the three Germans left on board her
hurrying to and fro, taking his charts and
compasses and lowering them into their
own boat. Then one of them, supposed
by the master to be an engineer, went
below. Presumably the German turned
on the sea-cocks, for the master presently
40 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
observed the Glitra to be settling down by
the stern.
' It was then about a quarter of an hour
since the crew had quitted the Glitra ; and
the commanding officer of the submarine
ordered the master to cast off and to
proceed towards the land.
' As the boats drew away from his ship,
lying deserted and sinking lower into the
water, the master, watching, perceived the
dim shape of the submarine still circling
about her, like a sea-beast of prey. Gradu-
ally the boats drew out of sight of the last
scene.
' The men had been rowing for about
an hour when the pilot-boat came up and
took them in tow. Then the men of the
Glitra were taken on board a neutral ship
of war. The master of the Glitra and the
crew, thus stranded in a foreign man-of-
war with nothing in the world except what
they had on, heard the growl of guns rolling
from seaward, where the submarine was
working her will on the desolate ship.
' The capture and destruction of the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 41
Glitra marks an early stage in the evolution
of the German pirate. The destruction of
the ship in default of having brought her
before the Prize Court of the enemy, was
a violation of international law, which
might, however, be defended on the plea
of necessity. The refusal to permit officers
and men to take with them their effects
was an infraction both of universal rule
and of the German Naval Prize Regula-
tions of 1914. On the other hand, it may
be contended that the enemy did in fact
place the crew of the captured ship in
safety.
' The British were threatened with re-
volvers, and guns were trained upon them,
but these weapons were not fired, and no
one was injured. In his later stages the
German pirate observed no such restraint.
As for the insult to the British flag, while
it may have been the result of an un-
pleasant personal idiosyncrasy, it is also
significant of a mental condition prevailing
among German officers, of which examples
subsequently multiplied.'
42 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
'On November 23rd, 1914, the little
cargo boat Malachite, four days out from
Liverpool, was drawing near to the French
coast. It was a quarter to four in the
afternoon ; the ship, rolling gently to the
easterly swell, was within an hour or so
of Havre, which lay out of sight beyond
Cape La Heve, darkening in the haze
some four miles distant on the port bow.
The master and the mate, who were on
the bridge, descried the indistinct form of
a long and low vessel lying about two
miles away on the starboard beam. As
they looked, the mist clinging about the
unknown craft lit with a flash, followed
by the report of a gun, and a shot sang
across the bows of the Malachite. Then
the two officers on the bridge recognised
the vessel to be a German submarine.
The first that the men below in the engine-
room knew was the clang of the bridge-
telegraph and the swinging over of the
needle on the dial to "stop." They eased
down the engines, and as the ship lost way,
they heard two long blasts of the steam
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 43
whistle sounded on the bridge. Then
silence, the ship rolling where she lay.
' The master and the mate, standing
against the bridge-rail, contemplated the
approach of the submarine. The German
officer and the quartermaster were on the
conning-tower. Abaft of the conning-
tower, on deck, a seaman stood beside a
small gun, which was fitted with a shoulder
piece. The submarine drew close along-
side the Malachite, and her officers looked
down into the eyes of the German naval
officer, and the German naval officer looked
up at the two British seamen. These knew
well enough what to expect, and merely
wondered in what manner it would arrive.
' The German officer was polite but
business-like. VV^here have you come from ?
Where are you going ? What is your
cargo ? These were his questions, framed
in that school English which for many
years every German midshipman has
learned as part of his pass examination,
in order that he may communicate with
the conquered race of Britain.
44 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
' The master gave the required informa-
tion. He could do nothing else. Then
the submarine olBcer gave an order, and
a sailor ran along the deck of the sub-
marine and hoisted the German ensign on
the short mast mounted aft. All being
now in order, the submarine officer re-
quested the master of the Malachite to
prepare to leave his ship at the expiration
of ten minutes, and to bring with him the
ship's papers.
' The master, mustering the crew, got
away the two lifeboats, and fetched his
papers. The two boats came alongside
the submarine ; and now the submarine
officer gazed down at the stolid British
seamen, who were utterly in his power,
and they stared curiously up at the trim
and easy German.
' The master, handing over his papers,
since there was no help for it, asked that
the ship's log and the articles might be
given back to him. The submarine officer
declined to grant the request. Then he
added, "I am sorry I cannot accommo-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 45
date you and your crew, but war is
war."
' Then he told the master to stand clear,
and as the two boats hauled off, the sub-
marine got under way. The men in the
boats, resting on their oars, saw the sub-
marine open fire on the Malachite at a
range of about 200 yards, saw the shot
strike the ship at the base of the funnel,
and a hissing cloud of steam and smoke
enshroud her, saw shot after shot pierce
the hull, and the ship begin to settle down
by the head.
' Darkness was gathering, and the fog
was closing, when the master ordered the
men to give way, and steered towards
Havre. As they pulled through the gloom,
the men in the boats heard the inter-
mittent bark of the gun sounding from
seaward. After about three quarters of
an hour there was silence.
' They came into Havre Harbour at half-
past eight, after a pull of some three and
a half hours. Subsequently they learned
that the submarine, having fired the ship.
46 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
left her, and that she remained afloat all
that night and the next day.
' The taking of the Malachite is typical
of the end of the first phase of submarine
warfare ; the phase in which the German
officer, individual acts of biTitality apart,
at least recognised the existence of the law
of nations, used a certain consideration
for the crews of captured vessels, and was
occasionally even courteous. On the other
side, merchant ships were still totally
defenceless ; and sometimes, as in the
case of the Malachite, were taken within
sight of land and close to a port of arrival.'
' The Tokomaru was a steamship of
nearly 4000 tons register, had left Well-
ington, New Zealand, and had touched
at Tencriffe, which port was swarming
with Germans. The Tokomaru lay at
Tencriffe for eleven hours, during which
time many shore boats came alongside.
The visitors could easily have ascertained
her destination. Wliether or not that
circumstance was related to her destruc-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 47
tion was not known. Teneriffe belongs
to Spain.
' Like the Malachite, the Tokomaru was
bound for Havre. Off Ushant she spoke
a French man- of war, giving her name and
destination. At about nine o'clock on
the morning of Saturday, January 30th,
1915, she was within seven miles of the
Havre lightship. Somewhere on the sea-
floor beneath the Tokomaru' s keel lay the
bones of the Malachite. It was a fine,
clear morning, the land mistily sparkling
beyond the shining levels of the sea. Some
of the crew were busy about the anchors,
preparing to moor. The master and the
second and third officers were on the
bridge. An able seaman was posted on
the forecastle head, looking out. Between
the ship and the shore a French trawler
was steaming about her business.
' Without any sign or warning a tre-
mendous blow struck the ship on the port
side with a loud explosion, and a column
of water, rising to the height of the funnels,
descended bodily upon the three officers
48 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
on the bridge, swept along the decks,
poured down the companion-ways, and
filled up the stokehold. The ship leaned
over to port, and officers and men felt her
settling down under their feet.
' Several things happened simultaneously.
The master, cool and composed, looking
seaward, perceived a little hooded dark
object cleaving the surface about 600 yards
away on the port beam, and, making a
path from it to the ship, irregular, eddying
patches of foam. There, then, was the
submarine and there was the track of her
torpedo, ending in a spreading inky patch
of water about the ship, where the sea
was washing the coal out of the bunkers.
Even as the master ordered the boats to
be manned, the periscope of the submarine
disappeared. At the same time the wire-
less operator, shut up in his room, was
making the S.O.S. signal, and the French
trawler in the distance began to steam at
full speed towards the ship.
' Owing to the list of the vessel the falls
of the boats jammed. The crew cut the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 49
ropes, hammered away the chocks, and
stood by quietly awaiting the order to
launch. They were all wet through, for
those on deck had been smothered in the
falling water, and those below had strug-
gled up the ladders, against descending
torrents. There they stood, the deck
dropping by inches beneath their feet, and
tilting towards the bows, until the sea
was washing over the forecastle head, when
the master ordered them into the boats.
The master was the last to leave the ship.
His cabin being full of water, he was unable
to save the ship's papers and money.
Sixty-two pounds belonging to the owners,
and about seventeen pounds belonging to
the master himself, were lost.
' By this time the French trawler had
come up, and the officers and men, fifty-
eight all told, were taken on board. The
trawler stood by, while a flotilla of French
torpedo-boats, arriving from Havre with
several trawlers, steamed swiftly in circles
round the sinking ship, in order to guard
against a renewed attack.
D
50 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
' At half- past ten, about an hour and a
half after she was torpedoed, the Toko-
maru, with her cargo of general goods and
fruit, went down in a great swirl of water.
When it had subsided, the trawler moored
a buoy over the spot, and took the Toko-
maru's people into Havre.'
' The little steamship Downshire was
small game, but the Germans are nothing
if not thorough. The case illustrates to
what extent, in these early stages of the
war, the master felt he could act on his
own responsibility. He went as far as he
could. The German officer, although, in
sinking the Downshire, he was committing
an act of piracy, behaved with courtesy
and consideration, and spoke " in perfect
EngHsh."
' The Downshire left an Irish port early
in the afternoon of February 20th, 1915,
and by half-past five, in a clear and calm
twilight, she was eight or ten miles from
the English coast, steaming at about nine
knots, when the master perceived a sub-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 51
marine. The enemy vessel was running
on the surface, nearly two miles away on
the starboard bow, and heading for the
Downshire.
' The master instantly altered course to
bring the submarine astern of the Down-
shire, ordered full speed, and roused out
all the men, ten in number. The sub-
marine also altered course and began to
chase, rapidly overhauling the Downshire.
At a range of about four hundred yards
the submarine opened fire from the
machine-gun mounted on her deck.
' Here was a pretty situation for the
peaceful master of a little trading coaster.
He kept his wits about him, and his eyes
on the enemy ; and, continuing to man-
oeuvre his ship to put the submarine astern,
swiftly reckoned his chances. People
think, not in words, but in pictures, dim
or clear. The sharper the emergency, the
more vivid the picture. The master,
never shifting his steady seaman's gaze
from the submarine gaining hand over
hand astern, beheld with his inward eye
52 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
the pieces of his problem shding together
and shpping apart again as he bent his
mind to fit tiiem to a pattern.
' He foresaw the submarine, with her
turn of speed, drawing so close alongside
that, as the machine-gun crackled and
spat, his men would be struck down ; he
foresaw the long fifteen miles to the nearest
port, partly as measured on the thumb-
stained chart, partly as a seascape of deep
water, in which the submarine could
venture all the way, knowing that she
could safely submerge at any moment ;
he foresaw his ship, shoving for safety
under continuous fire for an hour and a
half, splinters flying, men rolled on the
deck ; he may even have seen himself,
crumpled up beside the wheel, and a dart-
ing vision of the ship being taken after all ;
he imagined the coiling track of a torpedo
whitening towards him, and foretasted
the ultimate explosion ; and at the same
moment he reckoned the chance of the
torpedo striking a hull drawing four feet
six inches forward and ten feet six inches
THE PARAVANE ADATENTURE 53
aft, and perceived that the torpedo might
pass under the keel, and also that it might
not. . . .
' In the meantime the submarine was
still gaining on the Downshire. She fired
a second shot. The master, with his prob-
lem now resolved into a grim pattern
whose significance was imperative and
inexorable, may or may not have con-
sidered the possibility of ramming the
submarine. He had no instructions on
the subject. But if he did consider that
possibility, he must also have foreseen
that if he failed in the attempt, the
submarine would certainly try to torpedo
him. If the torpedo hit, all was over.
If it missed the enemy would give no
quarter.
' The submarine fired a third shot at
close range. That settled it. The master
had held on as long as he could. Utterly
defenceless as he was, he had not yielded
at the first shot, nor the second, nor until
he saw that the submarine had the speed
of him. He stopped the engines. The
54 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Downshire drifted on, losing speed, and lay
rolling slightly, while the submarine, draw-
ing up to within fifty yards of the port
quarter, stopped also.
' The Downshire' s firemen, who had
been furiously heaving coal, momently
expecting the next shot to crash into
the engine-room and very likely cut the
main steampipe, came on deck, black,
sweating and sullen.
' The German submarine officer, ad-
dressing the Downshire " in perfect Eng-
lish " from his conning-tower, courteously
issued his orders. The crew of the Down-
shire were to take to their boats, and the
master was to bring the ship's papers to
the submarine. (They could have given
small satisfaction to the German, for the
Downshire's sole cargo was five tons of
empty cement bags.)
' Even at this period of the war British
seamen knew enough of the German officer
to know that his temper was about as
calculable as the temper of a tiger. The
crew of the Downshire launched their two
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 55
lifeboats, pulled towards the submarine,
and stared, composed and curious, at the
strange vessel and the foreign officer.
That personage was decisive but urbane.
He regretted the necessity of his action,
which, he said, was due to the exigencies
of war. One boat he ordered to pull to
windward. The other boat, in which was
the master, was ordered alongside the
submarine. The master and the boat's
crew were taken on board, where they
scrutinised the white faces and the stiff,
over-trained figures of the German blue-
jackets. Then the submarine officer
ordered the second officer and the steward
of the Downshire back into their boat,
telling them to get provisions for the
Downshire\s men. Five men of the sub-
marine's crew pulled the boat to the Down-
shire, and while the second officer and the
steward were fetching provisions from
below and placing them in the boat, the
Germans were occupied in fixing a bomb
under the Downshire.
' These proceedings were watched in an
5G THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
absorbed silence by the master and the
Downshire's men in the submarine, and by
the men in the second hfeboat, standing
off at a little distance. It was the execu-
tion of their ship they were contemplating.
By this time it was evident that no harm
to themselves was intended.
' The first lifeboat, stocked with gear
and provisions, returned to the submarine.
Tlie Germans went on board, the master
and the rest of his men embarked again,
shoved off, and pulled away to join the
second lifeboat, while the submarine got
under way, drew further from the ship,
stopped again, and waited.
' The men of the Downshire rowed away
into the gathering darkness, and the sub-
marine faded out of sight, and the form
of the lonely ship grew blurred and dim.
There was a flash of fire, the sound of a
dull explosion rolled across the water, the
distant ship plunged bows under and
vanished.
' It was then six o'clock. The whole
episode had lasted half an hour. Within
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 57
the next half-hour the Downshires were
picked up by two steam drifters.
' The treatment by the German officer
of the officers and men of the Downshire
shines by contrast with the conduct of
some of his colleagues. That circumstance
does not alter the fact that, in destroying
the ship and in setting her people adrift,
he violated the law of the sea.'
' It was tea-time on board the steamship
Harpalion proceeding down the Channel,
bound for the United States. The third
officer went to the bridge, the master and
the Trinity House pilot went down to the
master's cabin to tea. The second officer
sat at tea with the engineers, and here
follows his account of what happened.
' " We had just sat down to tea at the
engineers' table, and the chief engineer
was saying grace. He had just uttered
the words ' For what we are about to
receive may the Lord make us truly thank-
ful,' when there came an awful crash. I
never saw such a smash as it caused. Cups
58 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
and dishes were shattered to pieces, every-
thing in the pantry was broken, and photo-
graphs screwed into the walls fell off."
' So the second officer told The TiJJies,
from whose issue of February 25tli, 1915,
the passage is quoted. Such was the event
inside the ship. Now let us look at it
from outside, from the bridge of a distant
man-of-war. Her commanding officer,
watching the Harpalion afar off, saw a
column of water leap alongside her, then
another, and heard the dull boom of an
explosion, like the slamming of a heavy
door in a vault, instantly followed by a
second boom. He ordered full speed and
steamed towards the Harpalion.
' On board her, master, pilot, officers
and crew had all tumbled up on deck,
where, in a fog of steam and smoke, they
were just in time to receive the descending
fountain of the second explosion. The
ship listed to port and began to settle by
the head ; it was reported to the master
that three firemen had been killed below ;
and he saw to seaward the periscope of
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 59
a submarine. He also beheld the com-
fortable spectacle of a King's ship tearing
towards him with a bone in her mouth.
' The master ordered the boats to be
got away. One was already in the water
filled with men, by the time the man-of-
war drew close alongside. Her command-
ing officer hailed the master, who instantly
informed the naval officer of the presence
of an enemy submarine. The naval officer
assumed the conduct of affairs. He
ordered the boat's crew then afloat to
stand by to help save the rest of the crew ;
and immediately started in pursuit of the
submarine, cruising at high speed about
the Harpalion while her people were getting
into the boats. Failing to find the sub-
marine, the man-of-war returned, em-
barked the master, the pilot, the rest of
the officers and the crew, thirty-nine all
told, and three dead men, and let the
boats drift.
* The naval officer and the master then
took counsel together. The master thought
the ship was sinking. The naval officer
60 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
thought she was hkely to keep afloat, but
that, as the enemy submarine was probably
hanging about, it would be unsafe to leave
the crew in the Harpalion. It was there-
fore decided to land the crew. The naval
officer signalled to the nearest naval station
asking that a tug should be sent, and
proposed that the Harpalion should be
left anchored with lights burning, an
arrangement which was not, in fact, carried
into execution.
* The man-of-war went on to the nearest
naval station, and landed the living and
the dead. She then reported events to
her own naval station. The ship was
torpedoed at a little after five o'clock in
the afternoon of Wednesday, February
24th, 1915. By a quarter to six she was
abandoned. For nearly twelve hours
afterwards the Harpalion was lost. The
naval officer was right ; she was not sink-
ing. If a tug was sent out that evening
in response to the signal, she failed to find
the Harpalion.
' But let it not be supposed that the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 61
Admiralty allows a ship to disappear
without explanation. That evening and
the next day, Thursday, the Admiralty
was asking every naval station in the
vicinity of the loss, " Where is Harpalion ? "
Station A reported trying to find Har-
palion, incidentally reporting at the same
time that three other vessels had been put
down. Station B reported Harpalion dere-
lict, anchored, lights burning, and later,
" Cannot find, but searching." Station
C replied, " Not in my district."
' Where was Harpalion ? She was
simply drifting about, masterless and
miserable. She drifted from 5.45 p.m. on
Wednesday to 4 p.m. on Thursday. Then
she was sighted by the steamship Ariel,
whose master promptly sent four men on
board to investigate matters. It was
clearly a salvage case ; but in their de-
position the four gallant seamen say
simply, " We four men got on board as
prize crew."
' To be precise, a prize crew is a crew
placed by the captor on board a vessel
62 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
captured by an act of war. Salvage is
another affair. Any ship succouring
another vessel, derelict or wrecked, is
entitled to claim reward from the owners.
In the case of the Ariel and Harpalion, it
would seem that the men of the Ariel,
considering their help to be in the nature
of war service rather than a commercial
transaction, preferred to call themselves
a prize crew. But this is conjecture,
for the four deponents, appearing for a
moment in the light of history, have gone
again. They were the first officer of the
Ariel, two able seamen and one apprentice.
' They boarded the deserted Harpalion
on Thursday afternoon, and their own
ship, the Ariel, went on her way short-
handed. What they did next is not re-
vealed, except that they tried to take her
to Cardiff. Their situation was dangerous
enough. The ship was full of water for-
ward, and listing to port. At any moment
a questing submarine might have sent her
to the bottom without warning. Presum-
ably the prize crew tried to get steam on
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 63
her, but there is nothing to show that
they were successful. If they failed, the
ship was not under control. If they
succeeded, their progress must have been
very slow. In any case, there were only
four men, instead of forty- one, to work
a ship of 3669 tons register. The chief
officer would be on the bridge, steering
and conning the ship, one able seaman
in the stokehold, one in the engine-room,
leaving the apprentice for services as
requisite, such as getting meals, carrying
messages and doing odd jobs.
' The full story of that night on board
the Harpalion spent by the prize crew
adrift in a ship which they believed to
be sinking, remains to be told. Perhaps
it will never be told, like many another
deed of the sea.
' Early on the Friday morning wind and
sea began to rise. The Harpalion was
then within about twenty miles of the spot
upon which she had been torpedoed. The
ship was heavily water-logged ; the water
was washing in and out of her, and the
64 THE PARAVANE AD\^NTURE
chief officer was unable to keep her head
to the sea. They drifted helplessly before
the gale in that dark and bitter February
morning until eight o'clock, the hour at
which all over the world the white ensign
is hoisted on the quarterdeck of His
Majesty's ships. And at that hour the
men of the Harpalion descried three men-
of-war surging towards them through the
smothering sea. Two flew the tricolour
and one the white ensign.
' The British torpedo-boat drew near
and hove a line on board the Harpalion.
The prize crew hauled it in, hauled in a
grass rope, hauled in a hawser and made
it fast, and the little torpedo-boat began
to tow the dead weight of the big cargo-
boat. The weather grew worse, and the
torpedo-boat, unable to make any way,
was obliged to cast off. " We still stuck
to the Harpalion,^^ the prize crew deposed.
They stuck to her all that day, in wind
and sea. A tug came, but so heavy was
the weather she could not get the Har-
palion in tow, and so stood by her. Night
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 65
came, and still the prize crew stuck to
their prize. Towards midnight the ship
was settling dangerously, and the prize
crew were forced to conclude that they
could do no more. At half-past eleven
on that Friday night they went over the
side into their boat, left the Harpalion
and went on board the tug. They were
not much too soon. Thirty-five minutes
afterwards the Harpalion went down.
' The tug landed the prize crew at
Havre, where, before the Vice-Consul, they
made a deposition of the shortest recording
their adventure, and so went their ways.
' All that Friday the unseen eye of the
Admiralty had been bent upon the Har-
palion. Naval station D having reported,
" Cannot find Harpalion,^'' naval station
B reported " Harpalion picked up by
Ariel,' ^ and later " Abandoned by Ariel.' ^
Naval station A reported " Harpalion
being towed."
' Finally, on Saturday, Lloyd's reported
" Harpalion sunk." But she had floated
for fifty-five hours after having been torpe-
66 THE PARAVANE AD\^NTURE
doed. So the naval officer was right in
his estimate. Of that period, she was
twenty-three hours derehct, thirty-one
and a half hours in charge of the prize
crew, and a final half-hour again derelict
in the storm.'
Such losses as these were being inflicted
while Burney was toiling day and night
to produce the Paravane. During this
period, the losses among the British steam-
ships of 1600 tons gross and uj) wards were
as follows : —
In September, 1914, 23 vessels ; in
October, 16 ; in November, 4 ; in Decem-
ber, 4 ; in January 1915, 7 ; in February,
when the German blockade was proclaimed,
8 ; then, in March, a swift rise to 18 ; a
drop in April to 6, much to the public
relief ; a rise again in May to 13 : in all,
99 ships, not including sailing ships and
small craft.
The theory that these losses were not
worth serious consideration, was still
maintained. The Admiralty had organ-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 67
ised a great fleet of patrols, mine-sweepers
and small craft, and continued to increase
it. But there was no effective weapon
either for destroying submarines, or for
protecting ships under way against mines.
Admiral of the Fleet Lord Jellicoe de-
scribed in his book how the Grand Fleet
was constantly hunted by submarines ;
how destroyers were perpetually being
despatched at full speed to the place
where a submarine had been sighted ; how,
not unnaturally, they failed to find it ;
and how the movements of the Fleet were
circumscribed by minefields.
In June 1915, the Admiralty approved
of the ordering of a number of sets of
Burney's new gear, and of the use of a
destroyer for experimental purposes. At
the same time Lieutenant Burney was
appointed to H.M.S. Vernon to supervise
the construction and the issue of the new
gear.
At this point it will be convenient to
describe the Paravane itself. As yet it
had no name ; not until the 3rd December
68 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
1915, when Commander E. L. W. con-
ceived the name, was the gear christened
nor was it until the following January
that the name received official approval.
From the first it was, of course, kept
secret, so far as possible ; indeed, the
initials P. V. were commonly used ; few
of the public ever heard either of P. V. or
of Paravane, and fewer knew what it was.
The secrecy maintained was remarkable.
But the name is no longer a secret, and
may here be employed without indiscretion.
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VI
The Paravane is essentially an aeroplane.
It consists of a buoyant torpedo-shaped
body, across the nose of which is fitted a
plane. It is so constructed that, when it
is towed from a ship, it may be set to a
certain depth below the surface, where it
remains at a distance from the ship's
side, so long as the ship is under way, and
whatever may be the course and speed
of the ship. The Paravane was at first
designed to attack and to destroy sub-
marines. It therefore contained an ex-
plosive charge, which could be fired either
by impact or by other methods. The
whole set of gear employing this form of
Paravane is known as the High Speed
Submarine Sweep.
Two Paravanes are towed from the
stern of a destroyer or other vessel, one
on either quarter, attached to winches
69
70 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
by specially designed towing wires. When
the towing wire fouls a submerged sub-
marine it slips along the surface of the
submarine until it brings the Paravane
into contact with the submarine, when
the explosive charge contained in the
Paravane is fired automatically. Such is
the general outline of the Paravane, the
details of whose construction are secret.
The second form of Paravane was
designed for cutting the mooring wires
of mines, thus enabling a ship to pass
safely through a minefield. The shape of
the mine-cutting, or protector Paravane,
is the same, but it contains no explosive
charge, and the head is fitted with steel-
toothed jaws, making the cutter which
severs the mooring wire of a mine. A pro-
tector Paravane is towed one on either side
of a ship, either man-of-war or merchant
vessel, the towing wire being attached to
the bows at the level of the keel. The
Paravane is set at a depth several feet
below the level of the keel, and, like the
High Speed Submarine Sweep, tows out at
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THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 71
a distance from the side of the ship. Thus
the towing wires make a wedge shape, the
apex being at the bow of the ship. Within
the Hmits of the wedge, the towing wire
catches the mooring wire of a mine, the
mine is deflected away from the ship, and
the mooring wire sUdes into the jaws of
the cutter, by which it is severed. Then
the mine comes to the surface. Thus the
only point of the vessel unprotected is the
bow itself, but in practice the chance of
the bow of a vessel striking directly upon
a mine is negligible. As to the mines set
adrift on the surface, they can be exploded
by fire, or otherwise destroyed. Should a
drifting mine lie in the path of a vessel,
the bow- wave usually washes the drifting
mine outwards from the side.
The towing wire of a Paravane takes a
definite curve, which is shown in the illus-
trations. It is this catenary-like curve,
the result of the inter-action of the
various intricate stresses involved, which
limits the length of the towing wire.
A spread of about 110 feet on either
72 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
side of the vessel, or of about 220 feet in
all, can be obtained. The protector Para-
vane thus sweeps a broad path, cutting
loose any moored mine within that path.
If the mine be moored so deep that the
Paravane wire passes over it, the ship also
will pass over it, except in a very rough
sea, when the ship is pitching heavily, in
which case the Paravane wire ceases to
be an absolute protection.
The necessity of towing the protector
Paravane from the lowest point of the
bows, which occurs at the intersection
of the vertical line of the stem and the
horizontal line of the keel, made it
necessary to make a special fitting for
that point, which is riveted to the bow
and to which the towing wires are attached.
By means of an arrangement of double
chains running up and down on either
side of the bow, the towing wires are
lowered to this point when the Paravanes
are hoisted overboard, and are hauled up
to the forecastle deck when the Paravanes
are taken inboard. The Paravanes them-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 73
selves are hoisted out by means of davits
and derricks fitted on deck. This brief
general description may serve to indicate
something of the nature and the com-
plexity of the gear required, and that a
certain amount of training is required to
enable officers and men to use it.
As the designs of both men-of-war and
of merchant ships vary, it was necessary
to design various types of Paravane,
various sizes of wire, and various modi-
fications of gear to fit the ships. Ships
under construction could be adapted to
the gear ; but the gear must be adapted
to existing ships.
Another application of the Paravane,
the High Speed Mine Sweep, is worked
on the principle of the High Speed Sub-
marine Sweep. The Paravane, instead of
containing an explosive charge, is fitted
with cutters, and is towed from either
quarter of a destroyer. In this case the
wedge made by the towing wires spreads
upon a much wider path than the wedge
of the protector Paravane. The two Para-
74 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
vane wires pass through blocks attached to
either end of a short span of wire. From
the centre of the short span of wire is towed
a depressor Paravane, called by reason of
its shape a tadpole, the span of wire and
the tadpole being secured to the ship by
a separate wire. The use of the tadpole is
to keep the two Paravane wires down to a
depth as near as possible to the depth of
the Paravanes themselves, thus preventing
a mine from passing uncaught between the
Paravanes. Paravane and tadpole wires
make a complete crinoline.
The High Speed Mine Sweep does not
affect the manoeuvring powers of the ship ;
it can be used at a much higher speed than
any other form of sweep, cutting up a
minefield and bringing the mines to the
surface, where they can be destroyed. In
a double ship sweep of the old type, the
mines arc collected in the bight of the
wire and are towed along.
The gear required for the High Speed
Mine Sweep includes two rotary dropping
davits, two steam winches, and various
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THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 75
accessories fitted on the deck of the
destroyer.
The Paravane fitted to merchant vessels
was called the Otter, for convenience in
distinction.
The Paravane looks like a model of an
antediluvian fish, with its corpulent body,
six to twelve feet long, its plane fitted
across its formidable snout, which is armed
with steel teeth, like the jaws of a shark,
and its stiff tail-fins. Or it looks as if a
torpedo had been trying to fly.
This grotesque and amazing creature,
half-fish, half-bird, gropes for the sub-
marine in the still deeps of the sea, clings
to it and blows it and itself to atoms. Or,
swimming steadily speed for speed with
its ship, it bites through the wires of a
minefield, and the ship goes free.
VII
When, in June 1915, the Admiralty sanc-
tioned the ordering of a certain number
of sets of the explosive Paravane gear, it
became evident that the business of manu-
facturing the Paravane and accessory-
gear, which, if it was required at all was
required immediately, must be extended
from the Government yards to private
firms. H.M.S. Vernon, Torpedo School,
was therefore authorised by the Admiralty
to deal directly with private firms in re-
spect of design. But any modification of
design, such as experiment constantly sug-
gested, and all financial arrangements were
still to be submitted to the Admiralty and
were subject to the customary depart-
mental procedure.
(To those unfamiliar with these matters,
it should here be explained that according
to Service regulations for all transactions
76
fcL*Wrf'«<iiii r'm, "aA
STERN OF A DESTROYER UNDER WAY
Showing the tovving-wire (electric) of the High Speed Submarine
Sweep standing out from the fore-andraft hue of the ship as the
Paravane tows. Looking aft over the Destroyer's starboard quarter.
Photo. Coiiiniander C. S. Bowles
HIGH SPEED SUBMARINE SWEEP PARAVANE BEING HOISTED IN TO
THE DROPPING-GEAR AFTER A RUN AT SIMTHEAD IN A DESTROYER
Photo. Cojmnaiider G. S. Bowies
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 77
in H.M. ships the captain is responsible ;
so that while Lieutenant Burney was on
the staff of H.M. S. Vernon, all his business
was officially described as Vernon's busi-
ness.)
If Burney was immersed in work before,
he was now plunged neck-deep into a task
big enough to occupy a whole Government
department. There were experimental
trials to be conducted at sea, improve-
ments in design to devise, drawings to be
made, specifications to be written, business
with private firms to be transacted, offi-
cial reports to be written, and his inven-
tions to be patented. He had, in fact,
to start and to conduct a vast technical
and industrial enterprise, which was
eventually to cost millions, in a cabin in
the Vernon, destitute of modern business
appliances, and with such scant clerical
assistance as the Vernon could provide.
Moreover, the urgency of the affair, at
least in Burney's view, was extreme, for
he had long foreseen what might be the
effect of the steadily increasing submarine
78 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
destruction of commerce, and he knew,
of course, what the whole Navy knew,
but of which the pubHc were ignorant,
the hmitations imposed upon the action
of the Fleet by the enemy's minefields.
It was at this critical moment, when
Burney was fighting with his back to the
wall, that the Admiralty began to give
him some reinforcement. The number
of officers needed in every branch of the
Service was insufficient, but it was fortun-
ately possible to appoint Commander E.
L. W. to take over the duties of First
Lieutenant of Vernon, a post he had occu-
pied before the war. In 1914, Commander,
then Lieutenant- Commander, W. was ap-
pointed First Lieutenant of H.M.S. Kent,
Captain John D. Allen. Lieutenant-Com-
mander W. was present at the battle of
the Falkland Islands, of 8th December
1914, in which the Kent did notable
service, taking part in the chase and
sinking of the light cruiser Nurnberg,
and subsequently, with H.M.S. Glasgow,
hunting for four months the light cruiser
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 79
Dresden, which was finally sunk on 14th
March 1915, off Juan Fernandez, the
Germans escaping to Robinson Crusoe's
island in their birthday suits.
In January, Lieutenant- Commander W.
was promoted to the rank of Commander,
and was re-appointed to the staff of
Vernon. As Commander W. was then in
the Pacific, six months elapsed ere the
officer who was to relieve him could arrive,
so that it was not till July that W. re-
joined H.M.S. Vernon, Captain F. L. Field.
In the Pacific, W. had sailed and
fought in the fashion of the Old Navy,
untroubled by submarines, chasing and
cruising in uncharted waters, and con-
ducting cutting-out expeditions in the
solitary, ice-walled antres of Magellan's
Strait. He returned to the Vernon to
deal directly with the New Navy of de-
structive inventions, of which he had had
a foretaste, for upon the day before he
left Vernon, Lieutenant Burney had
shown to him the Burney scheme for
dealing with submarines. But Com-
80 TPIE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
mandcr V^., rejoining Vernon, little knew
what lay ahead of him. He was instructed
to fulfil the duties of First Lieutenant,
which involved the supervision of ex-
perimental work, and a member of that
section was Lieutenant C. Dennis Burney.
It speedily became evident to W. that
his whole time and his utmost energy
would be required to deal with Burney's
affairs ; and he obtained permission from
Captain Field to be relieved from all
other duties.
Li the same month, July 1915, a
brilliant young officer, Lieutenant G. C. B.,
completing his torpedo course in Vernon^
came out first amongst the officers taking
the long course qualifying for torpedo
officers; and at Commander W.'s suggestion
Lieutenant B. was appointed to W.'s de-
partment. Lieutenant B. assisted Burney
in fitting and testing the new gear in the
destroyer supplied by the Admiralty for
the purpose, and eventually he took over
the whole of that part of the work.
Such were the beginnings of what was
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 81
to develop into a complete department.
Throughout that development, Burney
was the defiant irresistible force, W. the
patient, tactful and sagacious smoother of
difficulties. If Burney tore up the road
in his progress, W., following, made the
rough places plain. Burney had but one
idea : to achieve his end ; W.'s business
was to make it possible. And he did.
A little later, in the early autumn. Com-
mander W. was joined by Lieutenant
George S. Bowles. Mr. Bowles, an ex-
naval officer, had rejoined the Service at
the declaration of war with the rank
of lieutenant. Being an ex-naval officer,
sometime a member of Parliament, and
being by profession a barrister, the Ad-
miralty considered that an appropriate
sphere for him would be mine-sweeping.
Burney, meeting Mr. Bowles at dinner,
judged his man, asked him to join the
Burney enterprise, walked into the Admir-
alty, and obtained their Lordships' ap-
proval of the appointment of Lieutenant
G. S. Bowles to H.M.S. Vernon, Lieu-
82 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
tenant Bowles may perhaps be described
without irreverence as the diplomatist of
the party. Together with a legal (and a
naval) training, he owned a knowledge of
men and of affairs rarely possessed by a
naval officer, and a literary accomplish-
ment of a high order. As Mr. Bowles has
now left the Service, it will not injure his
career to observe that he is gifted with a
cheerful independence of mind and a
genial scorn of convention, as such, which
were of quite inestimable value in the
achievement of the work to which he
gave himself. To Lieutenant (now Com-
mander) Bowles fell the framing of the
innumerable official reports required, the
writing of much correspondence and the
conduct of many delicate interviews.
At this time, the Paravane department
(though it had as yet no official name)
was concentrated in the cabin of the First
Lieutenant in the Vernon. In that narrow
chamber lived and worked Commander
W^., Lieutenant Burney and Lieutenant
Bowles, Lieutenant B. when he was not at
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 83
sea conducting experimental work, one
warrant officer, two petty officers, two men
and one shorthand writer. The warrant
officer had been Burney's gunner in Velox^
and he was therefore acquainted with the
experimental side of the work. One of the
petty officers was a torpedo-gunner's mate
of Vernon, the other was the petty officer
in charge of the motor-boat in which the
Paravane officers went to and from the
shore.
In that stifling cabin (called the Oven),
then, W. and Bowles wrote and directed
affairs, Burney dictated letters to the short-
hand writer, typewriters were clattering,
and some one was continually bellowing
into a long-distance telephone.
As the volume of business to be trans-
acted swiftly enlarged, it became necessary
to discover some one who could take charge
of the financial side of the dealings with
private firms, which were now manu-
facturing the new gear in large quantities.
He must be a man of position, owning a
professional knowledge of commerce and
84 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
knowing something of engineering. Clearly
not a person easily found, in the circum-
stances of the time, when men of military
age were serving and men over military
age were wholly occupied with Govern-
ment work. The Paravane party were
at a stand, when Lieutenant B. suddenly
announced that ' he had an uncle.' Where-
upon he was told to produce his uncle,
instantly.
And presently appeared Mr. William
H. McConnel, who was a director of coal
and iron companies. Mr. McConncl's two
sons were serving in the Army ; he himself
had done Government work in connection
with the hydrophone, and had returned
to civil life. With an admirable public
spirit, Mr. McConnel agreed to join the
Paravane department, and he was accord-
ingly appointed to Vernon, with the rank
of Lieutenant, Royal Naval Volunteer
Reserve.
At this time, Burney was so largely
occupied with organisation, that he re-
quired an assistant in his technical and
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 85
experimental work ; and on a day, there
came to Vernon Lieutenant V. H. D., to
pay a polite call upon his old shipmates.
Lieutenant D. had passed through H.M.S.
Excellent with Burney ; he had been for a
year with E. L. W. in H.M.S. Kent, whose
gunnery officer he was, and had fought
her through the Falkland Islands engage-
ment. Lieutenant D. was known to be an
exceedingly capable naval officer and a
brilliant mathematician. When he came
to visit Vernon, he was on sick leave ; and
he was persuaded to apply to join the
Paravane department. Being unfit for
sea service, Lieutenant D. succeeded in
obtaining his appointment to Vernon ' for
gunnery duties ' (of which there was none)
and so became Burney's assistant on the
theoretical side.
Thus by good fortune, or the hand of
destiny, was assembled the group of offi-
cers, which, gradually adding to its number,
presently achieved so great an enterprise.
Their very existence was utterly unknown
to the public. Officially, they were re-
86 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
garde d merely as a department of H.M.S.
Vernon, the experimental school of the
Navy. Vernon herself, the home of science
in the Navy, was (and is) an old wooden
line-of-battle ship roofed in atop. There
she lay, islanded high up the stream in
Portsmouth Harbour, a black and vener-
able monument to the official idea of the
place of science in naval warfare.
VIII
During the summer and autumn of 1915,
the Paravane department in Vernon were
intensely at work providing the experi-
mental sets of gear and the sets of gear
to be fitted to H.M. ships at sea. By
October, according to the available evi-
dence, several enemy submarines had been
sunk or damaged by Paravanes. Experi-
mental work was carried on continuously
in Vernon^ while the actual manufacture
of the gear by private firms was proceeding
and the gear was being fitted to ships in
the Fleet for submarine destruction.
The destruction of submarines was the
original purpose of the Paravane ; but the
mine was nearly as formidable a weapon
as the submarine, and early in 1915 Burney
perceived that the Paravane could be
employed both for mine and submarine
destruction ; and, as the submarine was
87
88 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
used to lay mines, to destroy mines would
be partially to defeat the submarine.
Burney therefore framed a report in which
he explained that ships fitted with the
Paravane could be effectively protected
against moored mines. Burney was, how-
ever, directed to confine his investigations
to the anti-submarine Paravane for the
time being. His report dealing with the
anti-mine variation was forwarded by the
Commander-in-Chief of Portsmouth to the
Admiralty, and nothing more was heard
of it.
As already described, from September
1914, and including May 1915, 99 British
merchant ships of 1600 tons gross and
upwards had been lost, not including sail-
ing ships and small craft. In June 1915,
the losses were 18 vessels ; in July, 13 ;
in August, 33 ; in September, 19 ; in
October, 15 ; or 98 ships in five months,
besides a number of neutral vessels. These
losses were still considered to be negligible.
In October 1915, the anti-submarine
Paravane being in working order, and its
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 89
manufacture progressing, Burney again
discussed the anti-mine application of the
Paravane with the Captain of Vernon, who
thereupon sent Burney to consult with the
Chief of Staff of the Grand Fleet. Burney
informed the Chief of Staff that if the
necessary provision could be made to
shorten the customary official routine in
making arrangements for manufacture
with private firms, and if a sufficient staff
of designers and draughtsmen was fur-
nished, it would be possible quickly to
supply the Paravane mine-protection gear.
The fulfilment of these two conditions,
simple as it may appear, presented ob-
stacles so formidable that only the Com-
mander-in-Chief could hope to surmount
them. And accordingly the Commander-
in-Chief of the Grand Fleet straightway
requested the Admiralty to instruct the
Captain of Vernon to enable Burney to
conduct experiments with the anti-mine
Paravane.
Burney at once returned to Portsmouth ;
in a few days the new anti-mine Paravane
90 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
was fitted to the experimental destroyer,
H.M.S. Melampus ; and on 4th November,
at Spithead, moored mines were cut for
the first time by the Paravane. Burney
had succeeded in devising a weapon which
made the mine innocuous and which would
restore to the Fleet its freedom of move-
ment. All that now remained was to
manufacture enough Paravanes to fit all
vessels, both men-of-war and merchant
ships.
At the same time it was necessary to
continue the manufacture of the anti-
submarine Paravane. It was clear that
the exigencies of war demanded that the
work should be begun and completed with
the utmost speed. It was also clear that
no organisation existed for the purpose.
In order to appreciate the extraordinary
difficulty of the position, it is necessary to
understand the elements of official pro-
cedure.
IX
The principle upon which Admiralty pro-
cedure is based, is the theory that all
initiative proceeds from the top down-
wards through the official departmental
machine. One of the Sea Lords (let us
say) gives an order, or issues instructions
that (for instance) a new gun moimting is
to be made and supplied. The requisite
instruction goes from department to de-
partment, and is eventually carried into
execution. Perfect.
But now let us suppose that there is
initiative at the bottom instead of the top.
The proposal must be forced backwards
and upwards to the top against the revolu-
tions of the machine. Say that the pro-
posal is made by a member of the staff of
the Vernon. It is forwarded in writing
by the Captain to the Secretary of the
Admiralty. That official marks the docu-
91
92 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
ment for their consideration to the various
departments concerned : three, four, seven,
eight departments, more or less. The
paper is officially known as a Docket. It
is placed in an official cover designed for
the purpose, and on that cover are written
the various names of the departments to
which it must go, in turn. Be it observed
that there is only one original paper. It
is not duplicated. If it were duplicated,
a copy could be sent to each department,
so that all should receive it at the same
time. But that is not done.
The Admiralty is the size of a town.
Its population, male and female, dwelling
in gloomy chambers, great and small,
ranges in condition from My Lords, in-
habiting an upper wing whose corridors
are paved with indiarubber, lest the
slightest sound should interrupt their
meditations, to the messenger-boys fidget-
ing in the entrance hall, surveyed by the
melancholy single eye of the statue of the
late Lord Nelson. In a back room of
every department live the Admiralty mes-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 93
sengers, trusty old veterans in uniform,
perpetually making tea on a sea-coal fire.
The Admiralty messengers are charged
with the duty of keeping thousands of
Dockets steadily circulating through Ad-
miralty Town. Many leagues of lightless
corridors do they traverse daily. Every
official in every department has on his
massive table a long tray, or trough,
divided by partitions into compartments,
each of which is duly lettered, and each
of which holds a pile of Dockets. These
are brought by messengers and taken away
by messengers. The official struggles
breast-high through a jungle of Dockets
all day and most of the night, and ever
the messenger brings more Dockets. The
only sign in the Admiralty that the Armis-
tice had been signed was that in some
rooms the tray, or trough, was empty.
Let it be remembered that the adminis-
tration of the Fleet is but a small part of
the duties of the Admiralty. My Lords
administer docks, naval stations, and
establishments in every quarter of the
94 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
globe. They conduct vast manufacturing
concerns in the dockyards. They deal in
huge commercial transactions with private
contractors. They spend in peace time
some fifty millions sterling of public money,
every penny of which must be accounted
for. They own enormous quantities of
stores, every item of which is tabulated.
If a Royal Marine loses the pull-through
of his rifle, value three-halfpence, the
Admiralty will spend three-and-sevenpence
in discovering how he lost it, and why.
If an officer spends two-and-ninepence
on Service, his account is challenged by
officials who are paid salaries to tell the
officer he ought not to have spent more
than two-and-sixpence. The point is to
have the thing right.
So, if a Docket contains a proposal of
the utmost military urgency, is it to be
supposed that a little thing like a war
shakes the Admiralty ? As well might
the Pyramids tremble in a sandstorm.
And so, when the Secretary of the Admir-
alty marks (say) a Vernon Docket to the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 95
three, four, seven, eight departments con-
cerned, it goes to each of those depart-
ments in turn with the passionless in-
faUibiHty of a law of nature.
But it does not go directly to the official
who deals with it. Oh, no. There is a much
better system than that. It goes to the
departmental registry, and from there it
goes to the right official. He may be a Tor-
pedo authority. He considers the Docket
and writes on it his opinion. The mes-
senger presently enters and carries away the
Docket to, let us say, the Mining depart-
ment registry, whence it goes to the right
Mining authority. Thence, perhaps, by
the same process, to the Electrical people.
And so on. In each stage, the Docket is
enriched by an opinion, a suggestion, a
remark, a query. Eventually, now much
swollen in bulk with these accretions of
wisdom, the Docket comes to port in the
tray of the Sea Lord who commands all
the aforesaid departments. Two or three
weeks or more have now elapsed. But we
have made a beginning. The point is to
96 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
have the thing right; and so far, it is
right.
Now it is the duty of the Sea Lord to
make a decision. He makes it on the
accumulated evidence before him. If he
decides the original proposal to be what
is officially called inadvisable, there is an
end. The Docket is removed to the ar-
chives and is there interred with an epitaph.
But if the Sea Lord approves the pro-
posal or project, what then ? So far as
the Sea Lord is concerned, the thing is
simple. The Secretary of the Admiralty
is instructed to take the necessary steps
(official phrase) to carry the proposal into
execution. So, in the case under con-
sideration, the Secretary causes to be
written a letter to Captain of Vernon.
That officer instructs the officers of the
department in question.
If, now, the proposal is that Paravane
gear should be made and fitted, it is
necessary (1) to make the design, (2) to
make the drawings, (3) to write the speci-
fication. It is now perhaps five or six
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 97
weeks since the proposal was submitted,
and so far nothing, that is to say nothing
practical, has been done. However, that
is the result of the system, which can no
more be altered than the solar system.
Design, drawings, and specification are
now submitted to the Admiralty for
approval. They go through exactly the
same departmental process as the original
Docket underwent, finally fetching up on
the table of the same Sea Lord, after
another two or three weeks or more. The
Sea Lord approves them. Still, nothing
practical has been done. But it is just
going to be done.
The drawings and specification now
travel to the Contracts department, whose
business it is to make contracts with
private firms. The firms on the Admiralty
list then receive copies of the drawings
and specification, and they are asked to
submit their prices for making the article
therein described. The private firms, in
time of war, have a deal of work, and they
may take a month or more framing their
G
98 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
estimate. They then send their tenders
to the Admiralty, and upon a day ap-
pointed the Contracts department sol-
emnly opens the sealed envelopes, com-
pares the prices one with another and,
according to rule, accepts the lowest
tender.
A period of three to five months,
probably six or seven months, has now
elapsed. But now the contractor is
ordered to proceed with the actual manu-
facture. If it is a strange and complicated
engine such as the Paravane, the manu-
facturer must obtain special plant and
make special tools. That process will
occupy at least another month. Then,
and not till then, will the manufacture
begin.
It should here be observed that if the
designer should desire to alter his design
in accordance with the requirements dis-
covered by further experiment, he must
start the whole business again from the
very beginning : proposal, design, drawing,
specification, contract. So that either
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 99
there is no improvement, or another eight
or nine months are expended in making
that improvement.
In the case of the Paravane, it was
wanted so much sooner than immediately,
that words could not describe its urgency.
The Grand Fleet wanted mine protection ;
every merchant vessel in the world also
wanted mine protection ; the submarine
hunters wanted the High Speed Sweep ;
and the Germans were sinking a ship
nearly every day.
X
It was evident that the Admiralty system,
how excellent soever, could not possibly
fulfil the conditions demanded in the
production of the Paravane. In these
circumstances, Burney had represented to
the Chief of Staff of the Grand Fleet the
necessity for a new procedure and a
technical staff. The intervention of the
Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet
had then enabled Burney in Vernon rapidly
to construct the experimental anti-mine
Paravane. The Admiralty also permitted
Vernon to deal directly with private firms
in respect of any small quantities of gear
required for experimental purposes. But
all drawings must still be made in Ports-
mouth Dockyard by draughtsmen already
occupied with other work, and all large
quantities of gear must be ordered through
100
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 101
the Dockyard authorities and through the
Admiralty.
In December 1915, experience of these
methods showed that if some ten months
were required in which to produce the
Paravane, five of these months were ex-
pended in correspondence and procedure.
The Paravane officers in Vernon proposed
a new system, which was submitted to the
Admiralty, but upon whose adoption the
Admiralty came to no decision. In Jan-
uary 1916, the Paravane officers were still
working in the Oven in Vernon ; were
still unable to obtain their own staff of
draughtsmen ; and were still obliged to
order gear through the Dockyard and the
Admiralty.
In the meantime, how went the war ?
By December, when the Allies were
compelled to withdraw from Gallipoli,
they had lost seven battleships by mine
and submarine in that disastrous cam-
paign.
In October 1915, 15 merchant steam-
ships were put down ; in November, 23 ;
102 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
in December, 16. The total losses among
British ocean-going steamships of 1600
tons gross and upwards for the year 1915
were 189. These losses were still con-
sidered by the authorities to be negligible.
Writers on the subject compared them
with the losses inflicted upon merchant
shipping during the Napoleonic wars,
showing that the percentage of loss was
then greater. As every one knew that
England won the old French war at sea,
in spite of losses, the conclusion was
satisfactory. That the Admiralty had
taken over a large number of merchant
ships, so that they were no longer available
for the carrying trade ; that German
merchant ships were kept in port ; that,
with a greatly reduced service, the demand
upon that service had doubled ; that
neutral as well as Allied ships were being
put down : these things were tactfully
waved aside as better forgotten. There
was a pleasant impression that it was
unpatriotic to think about them. There
was a less pleasant feeling, also, that if
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 103
you thought about them too carefully,
you would lose your appetite.
The Annual Report, 1919, of the Liver-
pool Steam Ship Owners' Association con-
tains the following instructive remarks
upon the conditions of the time.
' As the war demands increased, until
nearly one-fourth of our total ship carrying
power had to be given up to the fighting
services, it became impossible even for the
British Mercantile Marine, which had been
built to carry one-half of the oversea trade
of the world, to go on importing into the
country the same quantities of both
necessaries and luxuries as had been
brought in under conditions of peace.
As prices advanced, forced up by com-
petition between consumers all over the
world, and as ship carrying power became
impossible to procure, whatever freights
were offered, the Nation became distrustful
of its traders and shipowners and for a
time concentrated its attention on keeping
down prices and guarding against " pro-
104 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
fiteering " while ignoring the real difficulty,
which was the securing of its oversea
supplies. But when it came to the sugges-
tion of remedies, it was apparent that the
Nation, which had for generations trusted
absolutely to individual enterprise to
satisfy its needs, was profoundly ignorant
of the manner in which our oversea supplies
were purchased, carried, stored and dis-
tributed. When war came, the Admiralty
and War Office knew little or nothing of
the vessels forming the Mercantile Marine,
and of the manner in which they were
employed. There were from 18,000 to
20,000 vessels on the British Register, and
it was apparently assumed that therefore
the supply of merchant ships for war
purposes was practically inexhaustible.
The real facts in regard to the limited
number of vessels available for the ocean
trades, and the average number of the
voyages that could be made by those
vessels in the course of the year, had been
placed in detail by the Secretary of the
Association before the Committee on Im-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 105
perial Defence in 1913, and the War Risk
Insurance scheme had been framed on
the information so given. From the day
upon which war was declared the working
of the Insurance scheme verified, day by
day, the accuracy of that information,
but the fact that we had only about
3600 British ocean-going steamships at
our disposal and that the withdrawal for
war services of every 30 of these vessels
involved of necessity a decrease of 1 per
cent, in the volume of our oversea supplies,
was apparently only recognised after two
years of effort on the part of the Associa-
tion. The weekly returns published by
the Admiralty, in which were recorded the
total number of entrances and clearances
at all our ports, were accurate as figures,
but entirely misleading, as they enormously
magnified the apparent number of the
ships to be protected on the ocean routes.
They showed the repeated entrances and
clearances on every Coasting and Home
Trade voyage. The total figures were in
thousands, whilst the ocean oversea voyages
106 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
could be reckoned in tens. It was this
failure to understand the conditions under
which our ocean oversea supplies were
obtained, and therefore the limited number
of voyages for which convoy protection
had to be provided, that contributed in
no small measure to the initial difficulty
in protecting those supplies against the
unrestricted submarine campaign.
' Upon another point there was complete
want of appreciation by the Nation, and
that was as to the part played by foreign
tonnage in bringing in our oversea supplies.
Under peace conditions about one-third
of our total oversea supplies were brought
to this country in foreign ships. The
carrying of the other two-thirds found
employment for about only 60 per cent,
of the British ships, and therefore, we
had sufficient of our own tonnage to satisfy
the whole of our needs ; but ocean tonnage
commands its price all over the world, and
as the total available supply diminished,
we could not both call in the British ton-
nage from other trades and continue to
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 107
retain the services of the foreign tonnage
on the old terms. The foreign freight
markets bid to replace the want created
by every withdrawal of British tonnage,
and the foreign tonnage we had been
using responded to these bids. The State
could replace foreign with British tonnage,
but unless we were ready to pay the best
rates anywhere obtainable, we could not
retain the carrying power of the foreign
ships. These facts the Association brought
before the Government, and during 1915
and 1916 it co-operated with the Govern-
ment, through the Ship Licensing Com-
mittee, in bringing the maximum number
of British ships into the United Kingdom
trade with the least possible loss of the
carrying power of the foreign vessels. To
obtain reasonable protection for the trad-
ing ships on their voyages was one of the
most difficult problems in which the As-
sociation has been privileged to assist.
On the declaration of war the Navy was
fully occupied in holding the Battle Fleet
of the enemy, and the shipowners and the
108 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
merchant seamen recognised that they
had to take their chances of capture and
the destruction of their ships. But when
the submarine campaign was opened in
February 1915, and when the enemy took
to organised piracy and murder, pro-
tection for the individual trading ships
became an absolute necessity. The first
effort of the Association was to press for
the arming of the merchant ships for self-
defence. This took time, and the work
was delayed by the demands made by the
country for guns for protection against
air raids. Concurrently with the arming
for self-defence, the Association pressed
for an immediate increase in the pro-
tective force. No information has yet
been published as to what vessels have
been built by the Admiralty during the
war, but it is the fact that when the un-
restricted submarine campaign was opened
in February 1917, the necessary force of
fast, light ships was still not in existence,
although the Admiralty had had at its
disposal the shipbuilding facilities of
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 109
the country since the day war was
declared.'
The progress of the war at sea waged
under the conditions so lucidly indicated
by the Liverpool Steam Ship Owners, may
be again illustrated by another instance
quoted from The Merchant Seaman in
War. By this time, some merchant vessels
were equipped with guns. The affairs to
be narrated were not unusual events. The
same sort of thing happened almost daily.
' The master of the steamship Head-
lands, which was entering the western
approaches of the Channel, descried a
burning ship. She lay about five miles
distant to the eastward, and a thick smoke
ascended from the forward part of her.
The master, obeying the custom of the
sea, despite of peril of mine and submarine,
altered course to go to the assistance of
the ship overtaken by disaster.
' It was then nine o'clock of a fine clear
day, Friday, March 12th, 1915. Ere
110 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
twenty minutes had gone by, the master
saw the conning-tower and masts of a
submarine, which was then some three
miles away, and which was heading south,
towards the Headlands. And then he saw,
further away, a httle patrol boat heading
for the submarine, saw the flash of guns,
and heard the distant clap of their ex-
plosion, as the patrol boat fired at long
range on the submarine.
' The master immediately perceived
several things at once. He perceived that
in all probability the burning vessel had
been set on fire by the submarine ; that
the patrol boat was attending to the sub-
marine, and that the Headlands had run
into an affair from which the sooner she
departed the better. So the master put
his helm hard-a-starboard and steered for
the majestic lighthouse which towers, a
white policeman with a lantern, at the
sea-turning to the port.
' The Headlands was shoving along as
fast as she could go, when the master saw
that the submarine was slashing along on
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 111
the surface so fast that the patrol boat
was being left far astern, and also that
the submarine was catching up the Head-
lands. The master, like other masters
since, had occasion to reflect what happens
when you leave your course to help a
friend in trouble. Also he had time to
frame his plan of action.
' He decided to run for it, to hold on,
and to force the submarine to expend a
torpedo before he surrendered. It might
miss him. If it hit, that could not be
helped. He wished the ship's bottom had
been clean, when he could have got another
two knots out of her. The submarine
continued to gain on the Headlands.
' The master went below, unlocked all
his confidential papers, and burned them
in the cabin stove, took his hand camera,
and returned to the bridge.
' The chase had begun at about twenty
minutes to ten, and after about half an
hour the submarine was within speaking
distance astern, and her commanding
officer was hailing the Headlands to stop.
112 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
The master made no reply. He read the
number of the submarine—" U 29 " — and
then he knew he was being chased by the
notorious Captain Otto Weddingen, who
(it was beheved) had sunk the armoured
cruisers Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue, The
master took a photograph of U 29, which
vessel, he afterwards reported, was " of the
latest type."
' Captain Otto VS^cddingen told the
master that he would sink him in five
minutes. The master, still disdaining to
reply, ordered the crew to get their gear
together, and held on his course.
' At 10.25 the submarine fired a torpedo.
It struck the Headlands abaft the engine-
room, and she began to settle down. The
submarine instantly went about and made
off at full speed. The people of the Head-
lands took to their boats, whence they
perceived, far away, patrol vessels which
were apparently hunting the U 29. Half
an hour later the boats were taken in tow
by patrols, which landed them in port at
two o'clock that afternoon.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 113
' In the meantime the submarine had
sped over twenty miles to the westward
and had sunk another ship. Tlie vessel
to whose assistance the master of the
Headlands had been going was still burning.
She was the Indian City, and she sank
during the afternoon of the next day. The
Headlands was still settling down. A
steamer from the port went out to her,
and had towed her to within a mile of the
lighthouse she had failed to reach when,
at eight o'clock in the evening, down she
went.
'Here is the master's (unofficial) com-
ment, which I am permitted to quote :
' " I am naturally sorry that the old
Headlands has gone, the more so as I
have lost something like £150 in stores
and personal effects. Still, I have the
satisfaction of knowing that to the last
minute we did all possible to avoid capture
by carrying out the stipulated Admiralty
instructions."
' As for the U 29, a fortnight later she
114 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
was reported by the British Admiralty as
having been sunk with all hands.
' Had the master of the Headlands been
provided with a gun, he would have had
another story to tell ; such a story, for
instance, as the record of the little steam-
ship Atalanta.
' On a wild autumn morning in the
following year the Atalanta was pounding
down Channel against a full north-
westerly gale, when the master descried
a boat, now swung to the crest of a wave,
the crew pulling steadily, now swallowed
up from view. The master altered course
to pick up the castaways, and manoeuvred
the steamship to put the boat under her
lee. A rope was flung to the men, and
they climbed on board, eleven French
seamen from the sailing ship Marechal de
Villars, which had been sunk by an enemy
submarine.
' The Frenchmen were rescued at about
ten o'clock on the morning of September
11th, 1916. Three-quarters of an hour
later the master sighted a German sub-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 115
marine. Her square, slate-coloured con-
ning-tower, rounded at the fore-end, was
forging through the breaking sea, off the
starboard bow of the Atalanta, between
two and three miles distant from her.
' The master of the Atalanta altered
course to put the submarine astern, ordered
full speed and posted the gun's crew at
the gun, mounted on the quarter.
' The submarine fired. The range was
about 5000 yards, and the shot struck the
sea short of the Atalanta. The submarine
fired again, and again the projectile fell
short. Tlie range had decreased to about
4000 yards, and the Atalanta fired at the
submarine, the shot falling short of her.
After an interval of five minutes the enemy
fired again, and the Atalanta courteously
replied. There was a third exchange, and
then the submarine, with a parting shot,
went about and headed for a steamer
then visible on the horizon. The Atalanta
went on her way. On this occasion three
rounds sufficed to discourage the enemy.'
XI
In the meantime, during the summer and
autumn of 1915, the Paravane officers in
the Oven, armed with the permission of
the Admiralty to obtain tlie new gear,
did actually obtain it, and obtained it
without incurring the lavish expenditure
of time demanded by the official procedure
imposed upon Vernon. That such per-
mission should have been granted at all,
involved so courageous a departure from
precedent, that great credit is due to the
Admiralty ; and in this connection, the
present writer is informed that the Assis-
tant-Director of Contracts, Mr. Percy
Minter, was most courteous and helpful.
The Admiralty, by allowing the Para-
vane officers to negotiate directly with
private firms for small quantities for
experimental purposes, opened a postern
door of escape from the castle of official-
116
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 117
dom . Through that Kttle door the Paravane
officers went out into the strange land of
industry, unvisited by the Admiralty.
Under the Admiralty system, the private
firm is scheduled as an object of suspicion,
and labelled dangerous. The assumption
is that the private firm will, if possible,
get the better of the Admiralty ; from
which assumption follows this further
assumption, that the Admiralty in the
public interests must try to outwit the
private firm — a contest in which the
Admiralty almost invariably lose.
When therefore an amiable Paravane
officer walked into the firm's private room,
addressed the firm as one of God's creatures
like himself, and manifested an acquaint-
ance with real business, the firm was at
first astonished out of measure and then
highly gratified.
Under these new and happy conditions,
the proposal laid before private firms up
and down the country was that (it being
war-time and all) they should accept
orders in advance of actual official author-
118 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
isation ; that as to price, it should be
fair ; and that (in a word) the whole busi-
ness should be transacted as between one
honest man and another. Is it necessary
to say that the innovation, which would
have shaken the Admiralty (in those days)
to its foundations, was wholly justified ?
Hardly. At the same time, there is no
denying that the Paravane officers were
taking a risk. But so was the Admiralty
system, which was all unawares risking the
defeat of this country, not to mention the
defeat of other countries. Burney and
the other Paravane officers were quite
consciously risking their heads. But a
system is seldom actively malevolent.
It does not consciously desire to impede,
hinder or paralyse. It does not desire
anything at all. It is simply a machine
kept in motion by thousands of persons,
most of whom hate it. And in the event,
orders given in advance by Vernon were
in fact ratified by the system. If the
system occasionally demanded an ex-
planation of strange manifestations which
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 119
it vaguely apprehended, and which it
dimly suspected of being not quite right,
that explanation was promptly furnished,
according to official procedure.
But during this period, the lack of
proper clerical and drawing staffs both
prevented progress and imposed immense
labour upon the Paravane officers. Early
in the morning they went by boat to
Vernon, there to toil in the Oven. Burney
and Lieutenant McConnel journeyed about
the country visiting private firms. Lieu-
tenant D. in the austere regions of the
higher mathematics worked on design.
Commander W. and Lieutenant Bowles
strove incessantly with correspondence and
reports. Lieutenant B. went daily to sea
experimenting in a destroyer. Work was
continued far into the night.
One of the Paravane officers, who has
retired from active service, thus described
the day's work.
' We sat all day in the Oven, in that
narrow oak-beamed cabin, all crowded
120 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
together, from about nine, when the first
boat came from the Dockyard, to half-
past eleven at night, when the last boat
left for the shore. Burney and I lived
in the Dockyard. When we came back at
night, Burney went on writing as though
he had done nothing all day, until long
after midnight, when I turned in, if I could.
Breakfast must be finished, and we must
be on board Vernon by 8.50, but Burney
was out long before that, going round the
shops in the Dockyard, and stirring up
the draughtsmen lent by the Director of
Construction. The draughtsmen of course
hated being taken off other work for
Burney, who hustled them perpetually.
Every now and again they would " re-
fuse to work for Lieutenant Burney."
Then it fell to W. to compose matters.
There can be no praise too high for
W. As Commander, he was responsible
for all the Paravane business, and if that
business was to be done at all, W. was
obliged constantly to accept responsibili-
ties w^hich might seriously have prejudiced
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 121
his prospects in the Service. Burney was
taking responsibihties too, but Burney was
always perfectly confident that whatever
obligation he incurred, he could make good
as indeed he did. Burney, moreover, had
the excitement of an adventure.
' But W. had to trust to Burney ; he
worked always in the shadow of uncer-
tainty ; and in the meanwhile he must
make war exigencies square with the
authorities, and perpetually decide what
to do in new emergencies. He had to
deal with reams of official correspondence,
the voluminous correspondence with pri-
vate firms, draw up reports, formulate
requirements, pacify bewildered officials,
decide what to do with the pieces of gear
continually arriving by train for inspection,
generally to organise everything and keep
every one in a good temper. Perpetually
harassed and heavily tried as he was, I
never saw W. shaken. He lived in Ver-
non, and except for an occasional walk
on Sunday afternoons, he never left the
ship for weeks on end. Often he did not
122 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
knock off for meals, a tray of sandwiches
or biscuits or something was shoved on
his desk. . . .
' One emergency occurred when W. and
Burney were away at Scapa. The Grand
Fleet wanted a new kind of practice
mine which, if it was drawn inwards by
the ship cutting the mooring wire, would
not damage the propeller. We designed
a soft-shell mine, had it made in a balloon
factory in London, tested it at sea, found
it could keep its depth, all as calculated,
and sent twenty mines to the Grand Fleet
inside three weeks. They were delighted.
Reckoning on the usual procedure they
hadn't expected a supply for nine months
or so. . . .'
And all the time, amid a thousand
preoccupations, Burney was inventing
improvements and pondering the needs
of the war. The solution of a problem
would come to him at two o'clock in the
morning, and by nine, a dishevelled officer,
a slide rule sticking out of his jacket,
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 123
would be going up the side of Vernon
musing upon a half sheet of paper scrawled
upon with priceless hieroglyphics.
During this period, besides his designs
for the High Speed Submarine Sweep, and
for the use of the Paravane as a mine-
deflector, Burney framed a design for
developing the long-distance hydrophone,
and for a special type of mine.
Then, in February 1916, came that
visit of Commander V^. and Lieutenant
Burney to the Grand Fleet, briefly re-
counted at the beginning of this narra-
tive, as the critical moment of the whole
enterprise. Admiral of the Fleet Lord
Jellicoe describes in his book how the
freedom of movement of the Grand
Fleet was impeded by mines, and in his
judgment the most urgent need of the
moment was the application of some new
weapon which would restore to the Fleet
that mobility in default of which the
command of the sea could not be made
good.
The great danger, then and subsequently,
124 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
was lest a command of the sea able to deny
the sea to the trade of its enemy, might be
increasingly unable to secure the safety of
the sea for its own.
So W. and Burney, in February 1916,
went up to Scapa Flow to demonstrate
to the Grand Fleet the use of the mine-
protector Paravane. Experimental trials
were made daily in a destroyer for a
fortnight ; lectures were delivered ; and
the authorities then decided that the new
device would work. Burney, however,
knew that there was one thing lacking
to make the mine-protector Paravane
absolutely efficient, which had still to
be invented; but he also knew that ere
the gear was actually manufactured, he
would have invented it. As, in fact, he
did. Lieutenant Bowles was present at
the moment, which was two o'clock in
the morning. Burney, reclining in a chair,
apparently dozing, sat up, and said, ' I 've
got it ! ' He drew IT on a half sheet of
paper, then and there. But this is to
anticipate.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 125
The Commander-in-Chief of the Grand
Fleet reported to the Admiralty that the
Paravane was demonstrated to be suitable
for the protection of H.M. ships against
moored mines, and proposed that the
manufacture of the mine-protector Para-
vane should be begun. The proposal was
approved by the Admiralty. This, then,
was the crisis in the development of the
Paravane. It had been tested before Sir
John Jellicoe and was approved by him.
And thenceforward the Paravane officers
had his powerful support.
Immediately the enterprise swelled to
formidable proportions. The Fleet alone
required six or seven hundred sets of the
new gear at once. The Oven had achieved
miracles ; but without a staff, without
draughtsmen, without executive powers,
how could it equip the British Fleet, not
to mention other navies and the merchant
ships of the world ?
XII
In order to deal with the vast operations
required, it was obviously necessary to
prepare an organisation for the purpose.
Sir John Jellicoe therefore directed Lieu-
tenant Burney to devise a scheme. There
and then, Burney formulated the scheme
for the constitution of the Paravane de-
partment, which in outline was as
follows :
The new department should be formed
at the Admiralty and placed under the
Admiral of Mine- sweeping ; it should take
charge of all anti-Mine and anti-Submarine
devices ; it should be empowered to design,
develop, purchase and install all such
devices ; it should be divided into two
sides, the one under Lieutenant Burney,
charged with the design, development and
manufacture of apparatus ; the other,
126
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 127
under Commander W., for the trial, alloca-
tion and installation of apparatus, and for
the instruction of personnel in every ship
fitted ; a factory should be built, and a
proper staff of officers, designers, draughts-
men and clerks should be provided.
Sir John Jellicoe himself submitted the
draft scheme to the Admiralty. The
Admiral of Mine-sweeping, Rear-Admiral
the Hon. Edward S. Fitzherbert, being
directed to formulate the scheme in detail,
sent for Commander W., and, by the end
of February 1916, was formed the new
Paravane Department under the Admiral
of Mine-sweeping. Early in March the
department was working.
During the whole tenure of his com-
mand. Rear- Admiral Fitzherbert took the
utmost pains to ensure that the original
organisation of the department was main-
tained and to smooth and expedite its
work.
A part of the War College building in
Portsmouth Dockyard was then allocated
to the use of the Paravane department.
128 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
The War College was inhabited by the
Dockyard police. These estimable mem-
bers of the Metropolitan Police Force were
not sorry to turn out, because if they were
billeted in the town, they received lodging
allowance. But the Dockyard authorities
had no such motive for repairing, cleaning
and furnishing the War College to lodge a
strange department of which they knew
little more than the name.
They could not be persuaded that the
Paravane officers, hitherto huddled into
the Oven in Vernon, required as well
as other accommodation the large room
on the ground floor. Whereupon the
Paravane officers demonstrated that the
room was needed, by equipping it as
a Museum. When the inspecting officer
arrived he perceived an array of Paravane
gear, pieces of machinery, bits of iron,
coils of wire, and the like, all neatly
labelled, and he was met at the door by
a working party of seamen bearing a Para-
vane into the Museum. At every door
he met likewise a working party of seamen
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 129
bowed beneath a Paravane. Probably
the inspecting officer concluded that there
were several Paravanes arriving ; although
in fact there was only one. In any case,
he was convinced that the room was
required. Soon afterwards, the Paravane
officers discovered that what they really
wanted was, not a museum but, a central
clearing office.
It was now necessary to equip the new
department with drawing desks, boards,
instruments, and all the requirements of
a large staff of draughtsmen. Lieutenant
Simpson, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve,
was appointed to purchase the equipment,
and to engage draughtsmen. Mr. Simpson,
by profession a civil engineer, had been
employed on hydrophone work in Vernon.
An officer owning high technical ability
and some experience in dealing with
private firms was found in Lieutenant-
Commander (now Commander) G. W. P.
(E), Royal Navy, who was then assistant-
engineer-manager of Chatham Dockyard.
Lieutenant-Commander P. had served
130 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
with Burney in the anti- Submarine Com-
mittee appointed in 1910, and had worked
with Burney at Sir George White's ex-
perimental aeroplane establishment at
Bristol, for a year, on half-pay. Lieu-
tenant-Commander P. was charged with
the technical side of the production in
dealing with private firms, while Lieu-
tenant (now Lieutenant- Commander)
McConnel, who had already worked for
some time in Vernon, continued to conduct
the commercial side.
Later, Mr. Huskisson, chief designer at
Crossley's gas-engine works, entered the
Paravane department as chief designer.
Burney visited Professor Lewis at the
Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and
Professor Lewis, taking great interest in
the work, very kindly enabled Dr. Haigh
to come regularly to Portsmouth to help
in the recondite experimental physics and
chemistry required to ascertain the pre-
cise constituents and strength of materials.
Thus Dr. Haigh, in the Service phrase,
was lent by the Royal Na\al College, in
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 131
whose laboratory he was able to conduct
tests and analyses.
One of the most difficult problems to
be solved by the Paravane officers was
the constitution of the towing wire. At
first every wire broke after a few hours
in the water. The fracture was not due
to strain but to the tremendous vibration,
which destroyed the fibre of the steel.
Wire manufactured to withstand a break-
ing strain of ten tons would break in three
hours at a strain of three tons. Experi-
ment after experiment was tried to lengthen
the life of the wire. Dr. Haigh's work in
this research was invaluable. He visited
nearly all the wire-making firms in the
country; conducted experiments at Green-
wich ; worked out the mathematics of the
curve assumed by the towing wire ; and
in three months produced a wire with a
life of a hundred hours.
At this time, too, Lieutenant-Com-
mander (T) F. R., Royal Navy, joined the
Paravane department for theoretical work
and design, as Burney's assistant. Lieu-
132 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
tenant-Commander R. had been on the
staff of Vernon, and at the time of his
appointment to the Paravane depart-
ment, he had returned from service in
the Dardanelles.
Lieutenant- Commander R. relieved Lieu-
tenant V. H. D., who was appointed Para-
vane officer to the Grand Fleet, and who was
attached to the staff of the Rear- Admiral,
First Battle Squadron, Rear - Admiral
William C. M. Nicholson, who had been
captain of H.M.S. Vernon before the war,
and who was President of the Paravane
Committee of the Grand Fleet. When the
fitting of the Grand Fleet with Paravanes
began, Rear-Admiral Nicholson estab-
lished the organisation of Paravanes for
and in the Grand Fleet. That organisa-
tion was in direct communication with the
Paravane department at Portsmouth.
When the Paravane, on the way to the
Grand Fleet, appeared on the horizon,
Rear-Admiral Nicholson took charge of it.
Rear-Admiral Nicholson was thus able to
ensure the standardised fitting of ships.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 183
which was essential. The present writer
trusts that Admiral Nicholson will forgive
him for mentioning his name in connection
with services to whose value the present
writer has received much grateful testi-
mony.
Thus, in the spring of 1916, the Paravane
department was fairly under way in the
War College, the square and sombre build-
ing secluded in a corner of the Dockyard,
beside the lagoon in which disused man-
of-war boats rot at ease, and looking upon
the shaven lawn spread before the house
of the Commander-in-Chief. Its green-
painted chambers were speedily filled
with officers, designers, draughtsmen,
tracers and clerical staff, both men and
women, all under the command of Com-
mander W., now officially designated
Paravane Commander. W. was respon-
sible for the organisation of the whole
department ; Lieutenant Burney was re-
sponsible for experiment and design ;
Lieutenant -Commander G. W. P. was
responsible for technical dealings with
134 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
private firms ; Lieutenant McConnel was
responsible for the financial and business
dealings with private firms.
By the time the Paravane department
was established in the War College, it was
dealing directly with about a hundred
private firms, and was receiving about four
hundred letters a day.
The department was enlarged by the
erection of an extensive hut adjoining the
main building. Altogether, there were
more than forty offices, a lecture theatre,
and a workshop for experimental purposes.
Attached were two destroyers, a torpedo-
boat and several small craft for experi-
mental work and for testing Paravanes at
high speed. Every Paravane was thus
tested before it was issued to the
Fleet.
The staff ultimately numbered more
than three hundred : naval officers, civil
engineers and assistants, draughtsmen,
clerks and messengers.
The Paravane department, thus consti-
tuted, conducted the following operations :
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 135
Experiment and Design. Entirely con-
trolled by Paravane department.
Manufacture and Progress. Almost
entirely controlled by Paravane depart-
ment.
Testing. Entirely controlled by Para-
vane department, which tested every
Paravane at Portsmouth.
Distribution. Entirely controlled by
the Paravane department for a long-time,
except as regards packing and despatch,
which were done by the Naval Store
department, under the direction of the
Paravane department.
Installation in ships. All drawings were
made by the Paravane department, whose
officers visited each ship and arranged the
fitting with the ship's officers.
Instruction. Entirely controlled by the
Paravane department.
The Paravane department was in con-
stant communication with officers using
the gear at sea, and was thus able to
benefit by their experience. The Paravane
officers of the Fleet and of the destroyer
136 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
flotillas were all trained by the Paravane
department at Portsmouth. W^hen an
alteration in the gear was required, Experi-
ment and Design devised it, and then each
sub- department carried it forward to
completion.
XIII
Behold the Paravane department now
a department within a department, sub-
ject to the Admiral of Mine-sweeping, or
A.M.S. (afterward D.T.M.) at the Admiralty.
In March 1916, Lieutenant-Commander
B. V,, Royal Navy, from H.M.S. Shannon,
was appointed Paravane officer under
Rear- Admiral the Hon. Edward S.
Fitzherbert, A.M.S. Thus A.M.S. had a
Paravane department at the Admiralty,
through which went all transactions con-
ducted with the Admiralty by the Para-
vane department at Portsmouth.
But it is one thing to constitute a
department and quite another to endow
it with full discretionary powers. Under
the new arrangement, the system of order-
ing gear through the Dockyard authorities
had disappeared. But the perpetual
difficulty of the expenditure of time in-
137
138 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
volved in the official procedure remained.
And time was of indescribable value.
Every day's delay in the equipment with
Paravanes of the Fleet was a day's advan-
tage to the enemy. Every day's delay in
the equipment of merchant ships with the
Otter (the merchant service variety of
the Paravane) cost loss of ships and
cargoes and very often lives of men.
The Admiralty procedure was designed
to exercise a strict and a necessary con-
trol over expenditure. But the exercise
of that control in time of war disas-
trously hindered the conduct of the war
at sea. In the case of the Ministry of
Munitions, not to mention other depart-
ments, financial control, under the stress
of war, was virtually renounced. In the
case of the Admiralty, an expenditure of
millions was involved. Was that ex-
penditure to be confided to the sole
discretion of a new sub- department at
Portsmouth ? But if not, there would be
disastrous delay. The dilemma was com-
plete.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 139
In these circumstances, the Paravane
department was authorised by the Admir-
alty to place orders with private firms for
experimental purposes up to a small
specified amount. The Paravane depart-
ment, in order to save time, had already
instituted the practices of ordering gear
in advance of official authorisation, and
of dealing directly with private firms, of
which they now had about a hundred on
their list. Under the new arrangement,
they continued these practices, incurring
a considerable expenditure. What else
could they do ?
The Paravane officers were risking their
careers. The private firms were risking
their money. For, understanding the
extreme urgency of the case, private firms
agreed in almost every instance to prepare
their plant in advance for the execution of
orders. That preparation involved the
costly process of making what are called
jigs, of making special gauges, and of
erecting special plant.
In 1916, the fortunes of the war were
140 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
dubious enough. The Germans were
attacking Verdun. The British victory
of the Battle of Jutland had not served
to abate the violence of the submarine
war on commerce. Earl Kitchener, on
5th June, was lost in H.M.S. Hampshire,
mined or torpedoed. On 1st July began
the great battle of the Somme. The losses
of ships steadily increased. The war
losses among British steamships of 1600
tons gross and upwards were : in January,
13 ; in February, 14 ; in March, 16 ; in
April, 32, or a ship a day ; in May, 15, a
ship every two days ; in June, a drop to
9 ; in July, a rise to 21 ; in August, 14 ; in
September, 25 ; in October, 32, again a
ship a day ; in November, 26 ; and in
December, the largest monthly loss hither-
to on record, 39. Total for the year,
256 aliips.
The number of foreign ships was nearly
as great. In gross tons, during 1916,
foreign countries lost 1,300,018 ; Great
Britain, 1,497,848 ; in all, 2,797,866 gross
tons. In the fourth quarter of 1916, the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 141
total loss of gross tonnage, British and
foreign, doubled any previous quarter, the
amount being 1,159,343 gross tons. This
loss was inflicted after the victory of
Jutland, which drove the main battle fleet
of the enemy finally from the sea.
Numbers and tonnage are highly abstract
statements. Let us once more study the
progress and the development of that war
on commerce to defeat which the Paravane
officers were furiously toiling, while the
newspapers were loyally exhorting the
public to trust in the Navy. They were
right, but they did not know they were
right, for they knew nothing of the Para-
vane department. Even the Navy knew
hardly anything of it. When the Para-
vane department began its independent
existence in the War College, it was re-
garded as an unamiable eccentricity likely
to give trouble to the orthodox industrious
officer.
But what was happening at sea ? Here
follow some brief examples from The
Merchant Seaman in War, The case of
142 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
the Cahotia illustrates at once the daring
and the cruelty of the German submarine
officers.
' Tlie submarine prefers to attack in
fine weather. It is pleasanter for all
parties concerned, and much easier. The
reports usually record weather fine and
clear, light airs, slight swell. But the
Cahotia was attacked and chased in a
North Atlantic autumn gale.
' She left the United States on October
9th, 1916, carrying some 5000 tons of
cargo, consisting of wood pulp and 300
horses, and steamed at once into a gale.
It blew hard, with a heavy sea, almost
without cessation, and after eleven days
blew harder. On the 20th, a full gale was
blowing from the south-west. The Cahotia,
steaming east, was holding a zig-zag
course at ten knots, pitching and rolling,
the sea continually washing over the decks.
Tlie master, the chief officer, and the
second officer were in the chart-house,
working out the position of the ship taken
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 143
by observation at noon. They made out
that she was 120 miles from the nearest
land, or twelve hours' steaming. These
were the dangerous hours. If nothing
happened during the day, by midnight
the ship would be safe.
'The third officer was on watch on
the bridge, where an able seaman was at
the wheel. An able seaman was looking
out on the forecastle head, scanning the
broken hills of water rising and falling
away to the grey horizon.
' Suddenly, across the smother, the
lookout saw a dark and glistening object
emerge. It was about three miles away
on the starboard bow. The officers left
the chart-house ; the master went on the
bridge ; and all deck-hands were sum-
moned on deck. The master put the ship
right about, bringing the submarine astern.
The submarine fired, and continued to
fire at intervals of about five minutes,
while she manoeuvred to get on the Cabo-
tid's quarter. But the master of the
Cabotia kept a zig-zag course, and man-
144 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
oeuvred quicker than the submarine, so
that the chief officer presently said that
he thought the Cabotia could escape. She
was unarmed.
' The movement of the ship, turning
swiftly to port and starboard alternately
in a beam sea, was very violent. The
sufferings of the horses penned below are
not described, but they may be imagined.
The engineers and firemen, as usual, stuck
to their work and kept the ship at her
full speed of ten knots. It is uncertain
whether or not the ship was hit during a
chase which thus furiously proceeded for
an hour and a half. But the officers of
the Cabotia clustered on the oscillating
bridge were staring aft at the shape astern.
It was now buried in flying water, the
gunner at his gun plunged up to his neck
in the sea, now emerging and firing with
a sullen flash and a detonation torn by the
wind ; and the people in the Cabotia per-
ceived that in spite of her difficult man-
oeuvring, the submarine had three knots the
better in speed, and was overhauling them.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 145
' The master ordered the boats to be
swung out, and dropped his confidential
papers overboard. No one thought the
boats could live in the sea then running ;
but they were the only chance. The wire-
less operator had been constantly making
the distress call, and a little before two
o'clock he received an answer.
' But by that time the submarine was
close under the stern of the Cabotia, and
she put a shell through the Cabotia's
funnel. Then the master stopped engines,
hoisted the signal that he was abandon-
ing ship, and ordered the crew into the
boats.
' Here was another test of discipline and
seamanship, to get the boats away from
the rolling vessel, in that frightful sea,
under the continual fire of the submarine.
Among the seventy-four men of the crew,
besides British, were Greeks, Italians,
Portuguese, Americans, Danes and Nor-
wegians ; and all " behaved splendidly."
' There were four boats, each having a
week's provisions on board, and all were
K
146 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
safely launched. The boats were in charge
of the master, chief, second and third
officers respectively. In that sea it was
all they could do to keep their boats afloat,
and they were immediately separated
each from the other.
' The second officer, who with his men
expected every instant to be drowned,
kept his boat before the sea, the men
pulling to keep steerage way on her, and
so waited for orders from the master. He
saw the submarine go alongside the third
officer's boat, and speak to the third
officer. Then the submarine went close
to the Cabotia and fired twelve shots into
her. The Cabotia settled slowly down,
and about half an hour afterwards she was
gone.
' About the same time the second officer
sighted a steamer. He hoisted a shirt
on the mast, and pulled hard towards her.
The steamer stopped, but made no reply
to the signal of distress ; and the second
officer, tossing desperately within a few
hundred yards, saw the submarine go
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 147
alongside the strange vessel. She carried
neutral colours painted on her side, and a
black funnel with a deep white band.
' Without taking the slightest notice
of the boats, the steamer got under way,
saluted the submarine with a blast on her
whistle, and departed. No explanation
of these circumstances is available. That
was what happened.
' The second officer, abandoned to his
fate, kept the boat before the sea, and
looked for the other boats, but he could
not see them. It was then about three
o'clock in the afternoon. Four terrible
hours later heavy rain began to fall, and
the sea moderated a little. The second
officer then steered for land, about 120
miles distant, the men pulling steadily all
night. When the ragged daylight dawned
on the desolate sea, the second officer set
sail, and made good way in comparative
ease. At nine o'clock that morning the
second officer sighted a patrol boat right
ahead. A few minutes later the second
officer and his sturdy crew were safe on
148 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
board the patrol boat, and the drenched,
cold and exhausted men were sitting down
to a hot breakfast.
' In the meantime the chief officer's
boat had gone through much the same
ordeal. When the second officer pulled
towards the strange steamer the chief
officer was astern of him and further
away from the vessel. The chief officer
also made signals of distress, hoisting an
apron. Like the second officer, he saw
the steamer stop, noted her neutral colours
and the white band on her funnel, saw the
submarine draw alongside and converse
with her, saw her depart.
' At that time the master's boat and
the third officer's boat were within sight
of the other two, and all remained in
company, though widely separated, drift-
ing northwards, stern to sea, until dark.
' When daylight came the chief officer's
boat was alone. The chief officer hoisted
sail and laid his course for the land.
' The second officer, on coming on board
the patrol boat, of course reported the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 149
situation to her captain, who immediately
steamed in search of the other three boats.
Within twenty minutes the chief officer's
boat was sighted, a Httle and sohtary sail
cleaving the wandering waters ; and pres-
ently he and his party were safe on board
the patrol.
' All that day, all the night and all the
following day the patrol vessel cruised
in search of the master's and the third
officer's boats. They were not found.
The second officer still held to a hope that
they had been driven far to the north and
would be rescued or make a landfall. But
they were never seen again.
' Thirty-two officers and men went down
on that night of storm ; thirty-two out
of seventy-four. In such a sea, a small
boat with little steerage way might be
pooped at any moment ; that is, being
continually followed and overhung by
huge seas, she might fail to rise to the
next sea in time, when the following wave
would fall upon her, sending her to the
bottom like a stone.'
150 THE PARAVANE AD\^NTURE
The next record, containing the adven-
tures of the master of the Seatonia, who
was taken prisoner by a German sub-
marine, illustrates the methodical and
uninterrupted working of the submarine
system.
' Morning of November 1st, 1916. — A
steamship rolling in the long swell of the
North Atlantic, pursued by shots fired
from astern by an invisible enemy. The
Seatonia slipped this way and that like a
hunted animal, the master scanning the
hills of water rising and falling, until he
saw the submarine. She was then some
seven miles distant. Smoke, shot with
flame, continually burst from her guns,
and shells sang about the Seatonia, falling
nearer and nearer. So, for nearly three
hours. Then the submarine, running
close on the steamer's beam, signalled
" Abandon ship."
* Tlie master stopped engines and
ordered the two boats away. Fourteen
people went in the port lifeboat, seventeen
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 151
in the starboard lifeboat, including the
master, who was the last to leave the ship.
' The port lifeboat was in charge of the
chief officer and was first away. The
submarine then hoisted the German ensign,
and two small flags ; and as the master's
boat was launched, the submarine officer
ordered her to come alongside. The chief
officer, standing off, saw the master and
the rest of the people in the starboard
lifeboat taken on board the submarine,
and the lifeboat cast adrift. Whereupon
the chief officer got under way, steered
east by north, and (to make an end of his
adventures) was picked up two or three
hours afterwards by a neutral steamer,
and subsequently landed in a neutral
port, whence, with the thirteen men under
his command, he came home in due time.
' The master and the sixteen others of
the crew of the starboard lifeboat were
sent below in the submarine, so that the
master did not see his ship sink ; but he
heard the " cough " of the discharge of
the two torpedoes which sank her. The
152 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
chief engineer of the Seatonia, who was
also below, says he saw the torpedoes
fired. The submarine then submerged
and the English and the other nationalities
of the Seatonia's people were alone with
the Germans in that narrow cylinder,
intricate and glittering with pipes, wheels,
valves and every kind of mechanism.
' The commanding officer of the sub-
marine was of sallow complexion and
sharp of feature, looking about forty years
of age. The first lieutenant was about
thirty, a fair man of middle size. The
second lieutenant, a dark, clean-shaven
young officer, had (he said) lived for some
years in Nova Scotia, and spoke good
English.
' The crew numbered forty-six. They
wore thick felt-lined brown coats and
trousers, made of i-ubber or waterproofed
leather. The internal fittings of the vessel
were stamped V 49. Externally she
carried no number, and was painted the
usual grey.
' The master said no word, bad or good.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 153
of his experience on board the enemy
submarine. It is certain that he must
have suffered a good deal of discomfort,
for there is no accommodation for pas-
sengers in a submarine, and little enough
for the crew. The commanding officer
and first lieutenant may have had fitted
bed-places ; the other officer and the men
slept on the floor. On that night of
November 1st, the people of the Seatonia
must have been packed like herrings, and
the air must have become very dense.
It seems that they were hospitably treated.
The commanding officer asked many ques-
tions of the master, who, if he were like
other masters, did not illuminatingly
respond. The lieutenant who had dwelt
in Nova Scotia appears to have been
socially disposed.
' At eight o'clock the next morning,
November 2nd, the submarine captain
invited the master to come up on deck.
There, in the keen air and sudden daylight,
the master beheld three British steam
trawlers tossing on a heavy run of sea.
154 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
These were the Caswell, Kyoto, and Harfat
Castle. But the master had not been
asked on deck to admire the view. The
submarine officer had ah'eady made his
arrangements, and the master was part
of them. Tlie men of the Caswell were
ordered to bring their boat alongside, and
the submarine officer ordered the master
to visit each of the three trawlers, to esti-
mate the amount of coal in their bunkers,
and to open the sea-cocks, in the two
which had least coal, and so to sink them.
Such, at least, was what the master under-
stood he was to do.
' The master had no choice but to obey.
So he went away in the CaswelVs boat.
The crews of the other two trawlers were
getting away in their boats. No sooner
was the crew of the Kyoto clear of her than
the master was startled by the report of
a gun, and saw a shell strike the Kyoto.
The submarine fired into her till she sank.
Apparently the German officer decided
to hasten the good work.
' Then the master perceived another
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 155
steam trawler coming up. She looked
like an Icelandic boat, was named Bragi,
and was flying Danish colours. He after-
wards discovered that the Dane had been
captured by the submarine four days
previously, and was then under the com-
mand of a German lieutenant, with an
armed guard of three men. The Bragi
was acting as consort to the submarine.
She lay to, and the submarine officer set
the crews of all three trawlers and some
of the Seatonia's crew to shifting coal from
the two remaining British trawlers, Caswell
and Harfat Castle, to the Bragi.
' There was a considerable sea running,
and the forced working party must hoist
the coal from the bunkers, lower it into
the boats, pull the boats across to the
Bragi, hoist the coal on board her, return
and do it all over again — a hard and heavy
job. The Germans looked on.
' The master makes no remark upon
this procedure. The work went on for
about six hours, and was finished at half-
past four in the afternoon. Then the
156 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
black, wet and weary men were ordered
on board the Bragi, which thus received
the crew of the Seatonia and the crews of
the three trawlers. The master of the
Seatonia was kept on board the submarine.
' The submarine officer ordered the
master of the Bragi to come on board,
gave him his instructions, and sent him
back to his ship. The trawlers' boats
were hoisted on board the Bragi, and the
two remaining trawlers, now gutted of
coal and supplies, were sunk by gunfire.
The Bragi got under way and departed.
' The master of the Seatonia was left
alone with his German captors in the
submarine.
' The master was allowed on deck when
there was no ship in sight, and he admired
the seaworthy qualities of the submarine.
She was much on the surface, both by day
and night ; during the whole time the
master was on board it was blowing hard
with a heavy sea ; and he considered that
the submarine " worked on the surface
in a most weatherly way."
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 157
' When a vessel which might have been
an enemy was sighted the submarine dived,
somewhat, it must be supposed, to the
master's rehef ; for if she was hit and sunk
he would infallibly go down with her,
and it would have been a pity to be
drowned by one's own people.
' Twice, during the night of November
3rd, the master's third night on board,
firing went on over his head on deck.
Two ships were attacked, and so far as
the master could discover, unsuccessfully.
In preparing to attack, the submarine
always submerged so soon as the ship
was sighted, then rose again to fire at her.
' The next night, the 4th, another vessel
was attacked. Nothing more seems to
have happened till the night of the 7th,
when the master understood that the
submarine was firing on the U.S.A. steam-
ship Columbian.
' Next day, November 8th, the sub-
marine forced a Norwegian steamer, the
Balto, to stop and wait for orders. Then
the submarine once more attacked the
158 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Columbian, compelled the crew to abandon
her, sent them on board the Norwegian,
and then torpedoed the Columbian.
' That was an interesting day for the
British master. In her, but not of her,
he watched a first-class pirate at work.
The next day, the 9th, was also variously
destructive. The submarine stopped a
Swedish steamer, the Varing, and to her
transferred the crews of the sunk Colum-
bian and of the Balto. Thus it became
feasible to sink the Balto ; and accordingly
bombs were exploded on board her, and
she sank about noon.
' The master of the Seatonia was now
released from captivity and sent on board
the Varing, where there were already
134 people, in addition to the crew. The
master made the 135th. The same after-
noon 25 more persons joined the party,
making 160 captives in all. For the sub-
marine had forced the crew of the Nor-
wegian Fordelen to abandon her, sent them
to the Varing, and sunk the Fordelen.
' The submarine officer sent a prize crew
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 159
on board the Varing, and at midnight the
German officer in command of the Faring
suddenly sighted a British vessel of war,
and at once cleared the upper deck of all
passengers.
' During the nine days of the master^s
captivity the submarine sank the Seatonia,
the three trawlers Caswell, Kyoto and
Harfat Castle, the neutral vessels Colum-
bian, Balto and Fordelen, seven in all, and
captured the Varing. She had already
captured the Danish trawler Bragi, which
was acting as consort. The disposition
of the captured crews was ingenious. The
Seatonia's people went to the submarine
herself, thence to the Danish consort.
The Columbian was not put down until
provision was made for her crew in the
Balto, The crews of Columbian and Balto
were both transferred from the Balto to
the Varing, and then the Balto was sunk.
The crew of the Fordelen also went to the
Varing, and then the Fordelen was sunk.
' The commanding officer of the sub-
marine thus preserved the lives of the
160 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
people whose ships he destroyed, making
no distinction whatever between beUi-
gerent and neutral ships. The master
of the Seatonia was treated, not as a
prisoner of war but, as a civilian prisoner.
As he had not fired upon the submarine —
having indeed no gun — he did in fact retain
his civilian rights, which were respected.
' The next morning, November 10th,
the master, with one of the captive crews,
was landed in a neutral port.
' In the meantime the Bragi, according
to her instructions, arrived on November
5th, off a neutral port, which was her
rendezvous. Tlie next day the sub-
marine fetched up with the Faring in
company. The master of the Bragi was
again summoned on board the submarine,
where he received his dismissal from the
German service. He afterwards landed
his passengers in a neutral port, and so
departed on his own affairs, carrying in
his mind a powerful objection, mentioned
by the submarine officer, against carrying
fish for England.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 161
' The use made by the Germans of
neutral ships and neutral ports would
seem to add a new meaning to the accepted
notion of neutrality.'
By this time too, the Mediterranean,
once the proudest station of the British
Fleet, was being ravaged.
' The master of the City of Birmingham,
left alone on board his ship, which was
sinking under him, collected his confiden-
tial books and papers, stowed them in a
weighted bag, went on the bridge and
hove them overboard.
' Pulling away from the ship over the
smooth swell were seven boats laden with
passengers. Across the water floated the
pleasant sound of women's voices, sing-
ing. . . .
' The sound was a gracious, unconscious
testimony to the master's forethought,
skill and hardihood. A little more than
ten minutes ago all the people in the boats
had been snug in the ship, which was
162 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
steaming peacefully at thirteen knots :
all men on duty at their stations, every-
thing correct, no sign of an enemy. There
were a crew of 145, of whom 29 were
British and 116 were Lascars, and pas-
sengers numbering 170, of whom about
90 were women and children. There was
no warning ere the torpedo struck the
vessel.
' The master on the bridge perceived
that the after half of the ship was under
water. He had stayed by his ship to the
last, and now it was time for him to go.
He swung himself from the bridge and
ran to the forecastle head, and as he
reached it the ship went down, taking the
master with her. He came to the surface,
struck out, swam to a couple of floating
planks, and clung to them. It was Nov-
ember 27th, 1916, and the water of the
Mediterranean was very cold.
' To the master, adrift on the last
remnant of his fine ship, still came the
sound of women's voices, singing ; but
they seemed very far off. Rising and
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 163
falling on the long slopes of the swell, the
master could see the boats no longer. It
occurred to him that they could not see
him, either. Would they conclude he was
drowned with his ship ? Would each
boat think the other had him on board ?
Would he be left to perish, alone among
the people in the ship, the people whom
he had saved ?
' Swinging drenched on his wreckage,
the master saw again the white decks,
the lookouts at their stations, the gunners
standing by their gun, and felt again the
tremendous blow of the torpedo, striking
fifteen feet under water, and the trembling
of the wounded vessel. Then began the
test of his drill and organisation. Every
officer and man went to his boat station ;
all passengers, lifebelts slung upon them,
went as steadily to their boats as the crew.
The engineer reversed engines and stopped
the way of the ship, though the steam
was pouring out of the saloon windows ;
the wireless operator sent out calls and
received a reply ; the boats were swung
164 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
out and safely launched. And all inside
ten minutes.
' No master could have achieved more.
And there he was adrift. Where were
the boats ? Minute by minute passed
and no boat came. " He saved others. ..."
But still the sound of women's voices,
singing, hung in the air. So soon as they
were in the boats, they struck up that
brave chant, to show that all was well,
and that nothing dismayed them.
' The master, after the manner of the
British seaman, continued to hang on,
let come what would come. Half an hour
may be as half a year to a drowning man.
And the remorseless interminable minutes
lagged one after another to nearly thirty
ere the master caught the beat of oars,
and beheld the prow of a boat cleaving
the crest of the swell above him.
' Once on board the boat the master
instantly took command again. He sig-
nalled to the other boats to come together,
and ordered them to pull eastwards, where
a plume of smoke blurred the horizon.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 165
' The steamer was presently observed
to be approaching, and by four o'clock
the whole of the shipwrecked people were
on board the hospital ship Letitia. The
City of Birmingham had been torpedoed
at 11.15 ; every soul on board except the
master was clear of her ten minutes later ;
at 11.45 she sank, and by four o'clock all
were rescued.
' So soon as the people were on board
the Letitia, the master called the roll of
the passengers and mustered the crew.
He found that four lives in all had been
lost between the time of the explosion
and the pulling away of the boats. The
ship's doctor, who was an old man ; the
barman, who seems to have been of an
unstable temperament, and who fell into
the water ; and two Lascars : these were
drowned.
' Neither the submarine nor the torpedo
was seen.
' The master in his report stated that
*' the women especially showed a good
example by the way in which they took
166 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
their places in the boats, as calmly as
if they were going down to their meals,
and when in the boats they began
singing.
* So might Andromeda have lifted her
golden voice in praise to the immortal
gods, what time the hero slew the sea-
beast that would have devoured her.'
' Three hundred miles from land, in the
Mediterranean, a merchant service officer
crouched on a raft of wreckage, staring at
a German submarine, which lay within a
hundred yards of him. An English ship's
boat, crammed with men, at some distance
from him, was pulling towards him. The
smooth sea was strewn with broken pieces
of the ship, to some of which men were
clinging ; and a second boat was pulling
to and fro, picking the men from the
water. It was about half-past five in the
afternoon of November 4th, 1916.
' The chief officer, contemplating the
enemy with a curious eye, beheld the long
yellow hull awash, the circular conning-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 167
tower rising amidships, painted a light
straw colour, bearing a black number,
indecipherable, and surmounted by a
canvas screen, enclosing the rail. Five
or six men, clad in brown, except one
who wore a white sweater, lined the rail
of the conning-tower, gazing at the de-
struction they had wrought. Forward,
on the deck, beside the gun, two German
officers were leisurely pointing cameras
upon the ship-wrecked men. When they
had taken such photographs as they
desired, they departed. The submarine
got under way and steered to a position
where she lay in the track of steamers
shortly due to pass.
' The chief officer and the rest of the
men were taken into the two boats. By
that time darkness was gathering. The
chief officer, knowing that two steamers
were coming up astern, burned red flares
to warn them of their danger. In so
doing he risked the vengeance of the
submarine, which must have seen the
flares, and which could have overhauled
168 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
the boats in a few minutes, and then
sent them to the bottom.
* The two boats, overladen with the
soaked and shivering crew, pulled and
drifted in the dark for some nine hours.
Early the next morning they were rescued
by the hospital ship Voldavia.
' It was at 5.25 upon the previous after-
noon that their ship, the Huntsvale, had
been struck by a torpedo fired from an
unseen submarine. Her stern was blown
clean off, and she sank in two minutes.
The master sounded the whistle, and the
wireless operator had just time and no
more to send out one call of distress ere
his dynamo collapsed. The master and
six men lost their lives, seven killed out
of forty-nine.
' Immediately after the explosion the
submarine rose to the surface and steered
towards the scene of wreckage, while the
German officers prepared their photo-
graphic apparatus. Doubtless the prints
were designed for publication in Germany
to illustrate the freedom of the seas.'
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 169
The appalling story of the Conch is an
instance of the frightful perils to which
the oil-ships were exposed, and in spite of
which they continued to ply without in-
termission. The incident also illustrates
the valour and seamanship of the naval
officer. It was no fault of the destroyer
captains that they could not avert dis-
aster. The Paravane officers were doing
all that men could do to give their com-
rades at sea the power of prevention.
' On the night of December 7tli, 1916,
in a broad moonlight, a big oil-ship, the
Conch, was steaming up Channel. She
was bringing 7000 tons of benzine from
a far Eastern port.
' Eight miles away, nearer the coast, a
patrol boat was cruising. Her captain
was startled by a bright flame towering
upon the night, and writhing momently
higher amid a vast rolling canopy of
smoke, blotting out the stars. The cap-
tain of the patrol boat steered for the fire
at full speed. At eight knots it was an
170 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
hour or more ere the captain came in full
sight of a large ship, wrapped in a roaring
flame, spouting burning oil from a rent
in her port side, and steaming faster than
the patrol boat. From the forecastle aft
she was all one flame of fire ; wildly steering
herself, she was yawing now to this side,
now to the other ; and as she sped, her
wavering track blazed and smoked upon
the heaving water.
' The heat smote upon the faces of the
men in the patrol boat as they stared
upon the burning ship. The captain
steered nearer to her, and at the same
moment she turned suddenly towards him,
her whole bulk of fire bearing down upon
the patrol boat. The captain put his
helm hard over and turned away ; and
still she came on, dreadfully lighting the
men's scared faces, revealing every detail
of rope and block and guardrail ; and
then the patrol boat just cleared her.
' The captain stood off to a safe distance
and steamed parallel to the course of the
burning ship, scanning her for any sight
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 171
of a living creature, but he could see none,
nor did it seem possible that so much as
a rat could be left alive in that furnace.
' After cruising thus for about an hour,
and perceiving the approach of two
trawlers, also on patrol duty, the first
patrol boat went about her business, her
captain having made up his mind that
there were no men left alive in the burning
ship.
' But there were.
' When the watch was changed on
board the Conch at eight o'clock on the
evening before, the master and the third
officer went on the bridge. During that
watch there were two quartermasters at
the wheel ; a wireless operator and a
gunner were posted at the gun, aft, and
there was a lookout man stationed on
the forecastle head. Below, the fourth
engineer was on watch, and the chief
engineer was in charge. Two China boys
were stoking. The rest of the officers
were either in their cabins or on deck,
and the remainder of the crew were in
172 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
the forecastle, where they had their
quarters.
' About half-past ten the chief engineer
was in his cabin, whence he had been
going to the engine-room from time to
time, when he heard the dull report of an
explosion, and simultaneously felt a heavy
shock. He ran to the engine-room.
Nothing had happened there ; the revolu-
tions still marked ten knots, and the
needle of the telegraph dial still pointed
to full speed.
' The fourth engineer ran to call the
second and third engineers. Swiftly as
he went, the fire caught him as he dashed
into the alley-way, and he must burst
his way through flame and smoke. He
was shockingly burned about the hands
and arms, but he roused the two other
engineers, and all three hurried down to
the engine-room, the whole after part of
the ship blazing behind them. None of
the other officers were ever seen again.
' In the engine-room, imprisoned by
fire, were the eight people of the engine-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 173
room staff ; the chief engineer, the second,
third and fourth engineers and four China-
men ; eight of the fifty-six persons in the
ship, of whom twelve were British and the
rest Chinese.
' From time to time one of the engineers
tried to force his way on deck, and at
each attempt he was beaten back by the
flames. Thus they tried for an hour ;
and all the while the telegraph dial pointed
to full speed and the ship was steaming at
ten knots.
' It was about midnight when the second
engineer succeeded in reaching the deck.
He sounded the whistle. The others
joined him. The bridge was a burning
ruin ; flame and smoke streamed up from
the forward tanks ; burning oil poured from
the hull on the port side, where mine or
torpedo had torn a great hole ; of the
four lifeboats no sign was left except the
blackened and twisted davits. To the
eight men it appeared that they must
either be burned alive or go over the side
and end the business that way.
174 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
' Then they remarked the dinghy se-
cured on chocks on the well deck. Amid
the heat and flame, they hoisted her out
and lowered her into the sea, where she
was immediately filled with water. All
the time the ship was steaming ahead and
yawing. The engineers tried to get back
to the engine-room to stop the engines
and so stop the ship ; for with way on the
ship the dinghy was towing astern, and it
was most difficult to embark in her. But
the fire now barred the engineers from the
engine-room.
' What followed is a little obscure. But
it is clear that the four Chinamen reached
the boat by sliding down the falls, and
that the fourth engineer, attempting to
follow them, could not travel along the
ropes with his wounded hands, so hung
midway, unable to go forward or back,
and then dropped into the sea, whence he
never rose again. The fourth engineer
had come by his hurt when he went to
call the other two engineer officers. So he
lost his life.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 175
' The chief engineer did not see what
happened to the fourth engineer. The
Chinamen in the boat told him of it.
Somehow the chief engineer got into the
boat, and before the second and third
engineers could board her she came adrift
from the ship.
* The chief engineer and the four China-
men were in the water-logged boat, and
the second and third engineers were left
on board the burning ship.
' The people in the dinghy were not
seen by the patrol boat, which was keeping
pace with the Conch some distance away
from her. Tlie dinghy, obscured by smoke
and flame, dropped swiftly astern. The
chief engineer and the Chinamen kept her
afloat by incessant baling ; and after
about an hour they sighted a steamer,
rowed desperately, hailed her, and were
presently taken on board.
' The steamer pursued the burning ship
with the intention of taking off the second
and third engineers, but she could not
approach near enough. By that time
176 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
the flames had subsided upon the after
part of the Conch, but she was still blazing
from the bridge forward.
' What happened to the second and
third engineers left on board the Conch,
their last hope drifting away astern?
At some time between about half-past
one in the night of December 7th-8th,
when the dinghy went adrift, and three
o'clock, one of the trawlers, which had
been observed by the first patrol boat to
be approaching, manoeuvred under the
stern of the Conch, which was still steaming
ahead, and the commanding officer of
the trawler told the two engineers to jump
into the water, whence he hauled them
on board.
' Thus, with the sad exception of the
fourth engineer, the engineering staff was
saved. So far as they knew, when they
quitted the burning ship there were no
men left on board.
' But there were.
' At a quarter to four on that Friday
morning, December 8th, the lieutenant
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 177
in command of one of His Majesty's
torpedo-boat destroyers sighted what he
described as " a very large conflagration."
Upon approaching the fire he perceived
a great vessel burning fiercely from fore-
castle to stern, steaming at about eight
knots, and yawing through some seven
points ; and huddled upon the fore-peak,
like the eyes of a toi-tured creature, a
crowd of Chinamen.
' The lieutenant considered that to run
his destroyer alongside a burning ship
under way and out of control was im-
practicable. Let us now regard the sea-
manship of the Royal Navy.
' The lieutenant lowered all his boats
and ran past the stern of the Conch.
throwing overboard life-saving rafts, life-
belts and lifebuoys, and shouting to the
men to jump into the water. He turned,
ran past the stern again, turned, and
repeated his action. The Chinamen leaped
into the water and were picked up, all
except nine.
' Nine paralysed Chinamen remained
M
178 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
invisibly fettered to the ship, where during
some five hours they had watched the
fire steadily eating its way towards them.
It is probable that they had taken opium.
The flames, which had slackened on the
after part of the ship, were now again
blazing, the fire having ignited the bunkers,
and the Chinamen had but a few minutes
between them and death.
' " I therefore decided," says the young
naval officer who performed the deed,
" that it was necessary to place the
alongside the ship, and take off the re-
mainder of the crew."
' Then followed a feat of consummate
seamanship and indomitable courage.
' A more hazardous evolution could
hardly be devised. As the burning ship
was unmanageable and swerving suddenly
from side to side, a collision was. almost
inevitable, while to go alongside a pyramid
of burning oil was to risk catching fire
and exploding ammunition.
' The lieutenant, steaming eight knots,
keeping pace with the Conchy ran right
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 179
alongside her windward bow, grappled the
riven, red-hot hull, now burned almost
down to the water-line. For a desperate
ten minutes the destroyer was locked to
the burning overhanging mass, in the
reek and the fierce heat and the dropping
flakes of fire, while the nine wretched
Chinamen, roused from the Chinese leth-
argy, lowered themselves one by one from
the peak of the tall vessel to the deck of
the destroyer.
' Then the lieutenant cast off his de-
stroyer, " which sustained slight super-
ficial damage to guardrails and upper deck
fittings." He makes no other remark of
any kind. He was none too soon, for " ten
minutes after the cleared the steamer,
the latter was burnt to the water-line and
disappeared ... at 7.23 a.m."
' In the meantime, ere the destroyer
arrived, the steamer which had rescued
the chief engineer and the four Chinamen
had picked out of the water five more
Chinamen, while, as already narrated, the
patrol trawler had taken on board the
180 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
second and third engineers. In addition,
the other patrol trawler had picked up
two Chinamen. Three British out of
twelve, and twenty-five Chinamen out of
forty-four were saved ; thus, out of the
whole crew of the Conch, twenty-eight
were saved and twenty-eight were lost.
The lieutenant in command of the de-
stroyer rescued fourteen Chinamen, nine
of them at the imminent hazard of his ship
and all on board, by an act of skill and
daring which ranks among the finest
exploits of the Royal Navy.'
These histories are selected from among
many hundreds of similar records. There
was a staff of officers at the Admiralty
engaged in docketing, classifying and sum-
marising these documents. A room in
the Admiralty was entirely lined with
green boxes, arranged in alphabetical
order, containing the dockets of lost ships.
As the dockets increased, they were moved
into a larger room. A Law Officer of the
Crown, Sir Frederick Smith, K.C. (after-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 181
wards Lord Birkenhead), wrote a book in
which he proved by the most masterly
arguments that the Germans were breaking
the law.
Nevertheless, the fact remained that
the great danger, then and subsequently,
was lest a command of the sea, able to deny
the sea to the trade of its enemy, might he
increasingly unable to secure the safety of
the sea for its own trade. ... It was unable.
Now the Paravane was designed both
to destroy the submarine, and by pro-
tecting ships from moored mines laid by
the submarine, to deprive it of a part of
its power to injure. The urgency of the
need is obvious enough. It now becomes
clear why the Paravane officers felt it to
be their duty to use every means, official
or unofficial, to hasten the manufacture
and the supply of the new gear.
The permission obtained from the Ad-
miralty by the Paravane department to
place orders for experimental purposes
with private firms, was considerably
stretched in practice. What else could be
182 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
done ? The situation was very serious ;
the urgency instant ; and to their credit
be it recorded, the private firms mani-
fested the right spirit.
The Paravane department gave ex-
tensive orders, which the Admiralty were
asked to confirm, and which they did con-
firm.
It should here be explained that under
the Admiralty procedure of that time, to
deal with experimental weapons was a part
of the duties of the Third Sea Lord, and
afterwards of the Controller. Weapons,
or improvements in weapons, desired by
Vernon or Ordnance or other technical
departments, were ordered of private
firms by the Director of Contracts. The
result was that the men who made the
design had nothing whatever to do with
placing the order for its manufacture, so
that it was impossible either that they
should explain the design to the con-
tractor or that they should superintend
its manufacture in the shops.
But in the case of the Paravane, it was
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 183
absolutely essential that the designer
should be in constant personal communica-
tion with the contractor, and also that
he should superintend the process of manu-
facture, in order to solve difficulties as
they arose. For when invention and pro-
duction are conducted simultaneously, and
there is no time adequately to test every
improvement, the design of the gear must
be constantly altered during its manu-
facture. Once more let it be recorded
that the private firms employed did their
utmost to help.
Thus Lieutenant-Commander P. and
Lieutenant McConnel dealt directly with
private firms ; and Commander W. or-
ganised a special staff of some twenty
officers, civilian engineers entered in the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, whose
duty it was to superintend manufacture
and to hasten its progress in the shops.
Hence these officers were known as the
Progress Party. The Admiralty not only
approved of the arrangement but in course
of time requested the Paravane Progress
184 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Party to superintend and to hasten the
manufacture of other devices.
W^hen, in 1917, the office of Controller
(unaccountably abolished before the war)
was revived at the Admiralty, the bulk of
the orders for Paravanes had been placed
by the Paravane department. Lieutenant
McConnel was then transferred to the
Controller's department at the Admir-
alty to act as Paravane officer. By that
time the Paravane department was spend-
ing millions.
XIV
When Lieutenant Burney invented the
Paravane, he invented what was com-
mercially a very valuable property. But
its commercial value depended upon its
protection by patents. Here it should be
explained that naval officers are encour-
aged to devise inventions by article 415
of the King's Regulations, under which
all inventions made by a naval officer
become the property of the Lords Com-
missioners of the Admiralty, who, in their
discretion and as an act of grace, may
grant a reward to the inventor, but who
are not bound to award him anything.
In February 1915, Lieutenant Burney
advised the Admiralty that the Paravane
inventions should be protected by patents.
Accordingly, the Admiralty Patent Agent
obtained secret patents in Lieutenant
Burney 's name. These were lodged in
186
186 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
June 1915. In accordance with the King's
Regulations, Burney assigned the patents
to the Admiralty, under a deed of assign-
ment, so that the Paravane patents be-
came the property of the Admiralty, and
the granting of an award to the inventor
rested in the discretion of their Lordships.
Lieutenant Burney then laid before
the Admiralty, in writing, his view of the
position. Foreseeing the necessity of
forming an immense commercial organisa-
tion for the manufacture and fitting of
the Paravane, which would be furnished
to H.M. ships, the ships of the Allied
Navies and the merchant shipping of
Great Britain and of the Allies, Burney
submitted that two courses were open to
H.M. Government : (1) That H.M. Gov-
ernment should take out patents in Allied
countries, and should use the royalties
thereby accruing as appropriations in
aid of the Navy Estimates; (2) If that
course was rejected, that Lieutenant Bur-
ney should be allowed to take out patents
in Allied countries or to sell to them out-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 187
right the drawings of the invention.
Neither then nor at any subsequent time
did Burney ask for an award to be granted
to him by the Admiralty in respect of the
fitting with the Paravane of H.M. ships ;
and subsequently Burney informed the
Admiralty that he would accept nothing
on that account.
It will be observed that the first pro-
posal was that the Government should
work the patents and take what profit
resulted therefrom ; and that the second
and alternative proposal was that Lieu-
tenant Burney should conduct the whole
enterprise in terms to be decided by the
Admiralty.
Their Lordships elected to choose the
alternative. In a letter dated May 17th,
1916, the Admiralty authorised Lieutenant
Burney to take out patents in any part
of the world, at his own expense and for
his own benefit, or to sell the drawings
outright ; with regard to Paravanes and
gear manufactured at the expense of the
Admiralty and supplied by them to foreign
188 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Governments, the Admiralty were to
charge a royalty, a proportion of which
would be paid to Lieutenant Burney ;
and with regard to the use of the apparatus
by the British Navy, the Admiralty were
to consider the granting of an award to
Lieutenant Burney.
In that letter, therefore, the Admiralty
instructed Burney, a lieutenant whose
pay was about £250 a year, and who was
already charged with as much work as
he could well perform, to organise a system
of international manufacture upon a scale
requiring an initial capital expenditure
of at least a million sterling.
Burney accepted the enterprise and at
once began to execute their Lordships'
instructions. He concluded the agree-
ments with France and Russia, during
June and July 1916. All this time he
was also engaged in his work at the Para-
vane department at Portsmouth.
In August 1916, Burney proposed to
Sir George White, of Bristol, that Sir
George White should take over the whole
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 189
financial and commercial side of the enter-
prise. Sir George White had helped Bur-
ney to conduct his experiments with aero-
planes, during which Burney had acquired
the knowledge and experience enabling
him to devise the Paravane, and upon
which Sir George White had expended
some £10,000. Sir George White accepted
Burney's proposal, and concluded an
agreement with Burney under which Sir
George White was to recover his initial
expenditure of some £10,000 from the
first payments received from foreign
countries, and was to pay Burney a pro-
portion of the subsequent profits received.
On 30th August, Burney received a
letter from the Admiralty in which their
Lordships, altering the arrangements they
had authorised Burney to make with
foreign countries, precluded the charging
of royalties. As Sir George White was
now in possession of Burney's rights in
the matter, Burney referred the Admiralty
to Sir George White. The immediate
effect of the Admiralty letter was of course
190 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
to prevent Sir George White from pro-
ceeding with the business. After an
interval, on October 30th, 1916, Burney
received a letter from the Admiralty
which, in fact, cancelled their letter of
May 17th, 1916, in which Bm^ney was in-
structed to conduct the whole enterprise
at his own expense and (excepting in
respect of the British Navy) for his own
profit. The Admiralty forbade the charg-
ing of royalties to foreign countries as
regards the fitting of naval vessels, and
the terms and conditions of the fitting
of merchant ships were to be submitted
to the Admiralty for approval.
Sir George Wliite represented to the
Admiralty that if he was forbidden either
to charge royalties or to receive a fixed
sum in payment, he would be deprived of
the means of raising the capital upon
which he relied both to make up his
initial expenditure already incurred, and
to start the business of manufacture.
These representations were made in vain.
On November 22nd, 1916, Sir George
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 191
White died suddenly, and his son, Sir
G. Stanley White, continued the negotia-
tions with the Admiralty. Sir G. S. White
offered to begin the work of manufacture
upon condition that he received a sum
in compensation for the rights withdrawn
by the Admiralty. Their Lordships delay-
ing their reply, Sir G. S. White, unable for
lack of capital to build and to equip a
factory, decided to transfer his rights to
a firm possessing the requisite resources.
He therefore assigned his rights to Messrs.
Vickers, Ltd. Sir G. S. White had con-
cluded his agreement with Messrs. Vickers,
when he received a letter from the Admir-
alty, omitting any suggestion as to finance,
but urging him to arrange to equip mer-
chant vessels with the utmost despatch.
It was now the end of December 1916.
So far, the commercial side of the enter-
prise had been entrusted to Burney upon
conditions which, with the help of a
private firm, made the enterprise possible ;
the conditions were then so altered as
to make the enterprise impossible ; and
192 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Messrs. Vickcrs had replaced Sir G. S.
White.
Messrs. Vickers, soon afterwards, at the
end of January 1917, received from the
Admiralty a definite order for the suppl}^
of 4000 Otters. It thus became possible,
for the first time since May 1916, after
the lapse of eight months, to begin the
manufacture and supply of protector
Paravanes on a large scale.
Here it should be stated that, by reason
of the alteration by the Admiralty of the
original terms laid down by the Admiralty,
both Lieutenant Burney and Sir G. S.
W^hite were deprived of the monetary
profits which would have accrued to them
under the terms originally formulated by
the Admiralty.
In a letter, dated February 23rd, 1917,
the Admiralty requested Lieutenant Bur-
ney to furnish their Lordships with in-
formation as to the amounts privately
expended on experimental work, such
information being required in connection
with the question of an award to be
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THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 198
granted for the use of the Paravane in
H.M. Naval Service. Lieutenant Burney,
under date February 27th, 1917, repHed
that he desired to state that he had never
asked for, and did not wish to receive,
any monetary awacd whatever for the
use of any of his inventions by the British
Naval Service.
The statements which appeared in the
Press, that Lieutenant Burney had re-
ceived an award of £30,000, were false.
Lieutenant Burney received nothing from
the Admiralty.
And in a clause of the agreement con-
cluded by Lieutenant Burney with Messrs.
Vickers, it was stipulated that Burney
should receive no portion whatever of any
profits, direct or indirect, which Messrs.
Vickers might make out of the manu-
facture or supply of any of the Paravane
apparatus ordered by the British Admir-
alty for the use of H.M. ships.
The expenditure upon Paravanes supplied
or approved to be supplied to H.M. ships
and the ships of the United States Navy
N
194 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
in Home waters, was over four millions
sterling. If the usual royalty of ten per
cent, was charged on that sum, and if on
that royalty the inventor received twenty-
five per cent., he would receive £100,000.
XV
In February 1917, at the moment when
Messrs. Vickers made their arrangements
with the Admiralty, the Germans began
what is known as their unrestricted sub-
marine campaign. The Grand Fleet was
keeping the sea, so that the German Fleet
did not venture forth ; and yet the
losses of British merchant ships, from 256
in 1916, ran up in 1917 to 834. In the
second quarter of 1917, the British losses
in gross tons were 1,361,870 ; the foreign
losses were 875,064, a total of nearly two
and a half million tons. In April, there
were lost 120 British ocean-going steam-
ships. During 1917, the average British
loss was 17 vessels a week.
Before the war, the tonnage of steam-
ships over 500 tons gross owned by the
British Empire was 18j million tons. On
1st January 1917, it was 17f million tons.
195
196 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
But during 1917, it had dropped to 15j
million tons, including new construction
and purchases. Of this tonnage, after
deducting naval and military require-
ments, the available tonnage for imports
to this country was no more than 7J
million tons, as compared with 12 million
tons before the war. Tlie total imports
carried on British ships in 1913 was 35
million tons ; nevertheless, when in 1917
the available tonnage of ships had been
reduced to 7J millions, 31 million tons of
imports were brought into this country.
But, in 1917, the bread turned a re-
pulsive grey colour ; trains of angry people
ominously blackened the pavements out-
side provision shops ; many a well-to-do
citizen began to wear again clothes dis-
carded as too tight ; and the very poor,
accustomed to want, feared starvation.
It was, indeed, not so much actual de-
privation as the dread of what might come
that was the affliction. But the harrying
of the haughty mistress of the seas by the
unsportsmanlike boor Germany was telling.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 197
It was not until February 25th, 1918, that
the compulsory rationing of food was
introduced.
In the meantime, the Paravane depart-
ment, installed in the War College in Ports-
mouth Dockyard early in 1916, was forging
ahead at full speed under Commander
E. L. W.'s sure and steady guidance. The
British Fleet and other navies were being
rapidly fitted with the mine-protector
Paravane. In the big green-painted
lecture theatre of the War College, officers
and ratings from the Fleet contemplated
the strange, antediluvian fish-bird on the
platform, and studied the illustrations of
its anatomy on the blackboard. They
took a five days' special course in the
Paravane and returned thus illuminated
to the Fleet. Some six hundred officers
and some two thousand men went through
the Paravane course. Officers were speci-
ally trained for Paravane work and were
sent to sea for instructional purposes.
A great difficulty, now and always, was
to release officers from specialist duties
198 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
at sea to take up technical work on shore.
Another of the Paravane Commander's
innumerable troubles was the enlistment of
a sufficient staff to deal with the immense
volumes of clerical work. He had, in fact,
to organise the business of a huge indus-
trial concern without the resources open to
a large private firm, and without the private
firm's freedom of choice, and at this time
even private firms were hard put to it to
get labour. Destiny, as usual, knocked
at the Paravane door, and Lieutenant
McConnel, who had served the Govern-
ment in India, was able to secure for his
department a body of patriotic Indian
Civil or cx-Indian Civil servants, who
volunteered their services at the exiguous
naval remuneration. This admirable
party were known as The Rajahs ; and
The Rajahs, let it be recorded in the fine
French phrase, deserve well of their
country. By degrees the Paravane staff
came to muster over three hundred : officers,
engineers, designers, draughtsmen, clerks
and others. But at no time did the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 199
department enjoy in any degree the
splendid licence of the Ministry of Muni-
tions, in which sublime department, to
have it was not even necessary to ask.
It had but to order. Buildings, offices,
staff, thousands of staff, millions of tons
of materials, everything, sprang into being,
and money was nothing accounted. But
the Paravane department must advance
against the hydraulic pressure of a system
whose pipes and conduits had for centuries
been laid and multiplied to retard action
until it was quite certain that the action
was quite right. Throughout, the Para-
vane officers must devise expedients to
counter the continually developing enemy
submarine, which increased its diving
capacity and strengthened its construction,
so that the Paravane officers were perpetu-
ally striving to increase the depth at which
the Paravane would run and to make
stronger its explosive charge.
The trouble was that the German would
not wait. He knew that a command of
the sea able to deny the sea to the trade of
200 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
its enemy, the German, might be increasingly
unable to secure the safety of the sea for its
own, the English and Allied trade.
The German submarine of high speed
and long sea endurance appeared. She
mounted guns as well as torpedo tubes.
Other German submarines laid minefields,
working invisible.
Burney did not wait, either. He had
urged the arming of merchant ships, and
had devised a special gun for the purpose.
He had invented the anti-submarine and
the anti-mine Paravane. He was occupied
day and night with improving and adapt-
ing the apparatus. He travelled about the
country supervising fitting and manu-
facture. About eighty per cent, of his
time was actually spent in administration
and supervision, leaving the balance for
the experimental work in which he was
supreme. And Burney also found time
to frame strategical schemes based upon
the tactical employment of the new
weapons.
The Germans, it is pleasant to remember,
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 201
knew less of Burney than even his fellow-
countrymen knew. They knew that the
Admiralty had created a new Navy of some
ten thousand small craft, mine-sweepers,
patrol boats, motor boats and the like ;
and that in spite of all, Germany was
sinking two or three ships a day.
XVI
What exactly the Germans meant by
unrestricted submarine warfare, may be
illustrated by the following instances
quoted from The Merchant Seaman in War.
' On the evening of Sunday, February
4th, 1917, the steamship Dauntless was in
the northern part of the Bay of Biscay,
outward bound with a cargo of coal. At
six o'clock the master and the second
officer were on the bridge, keeping a
vigilant watch in the clear darkness,
whitened by the foam of a heaving sea.
There was nothing in sight, when there
came the report of a gun, and a shell sang
over the bridge, and then another. One
passed through the funnel, the other
smashed the steering-gear, so that when
the master tried to put the helm over it
jammed, and the Dauntless went straight
on. The man at the wheel was wounded
201
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 208
in the leg. The master was wounded
in the right shoulder and left arm.
Projectiles whistled from out the darkness.
The ship was hit and a fireman was killed.
The master stopped the ship and blew
four blasts on the whistle, signifying that
the ship was being abandoned. The
invisible submarine continued to fire.
The two lifeboats were got away under
shell fire and rifle fire. Two men, one on
either side the second officer, were wounded
as they were embarking in the starboard
lifeboat. The chief officer seems to have
been in command of the port lifeboat,
but there is a doubt on this point. For
the moment the port lifeboat disappears,
for her crew rowed away and were no
more seen by the people in the master's
boat. It is necessary to be particular
about the boats, as will appear. We have
now to do with the starboard lifeboat, in
which were the master and seventeen
others. One dead man was left in the
ship. The master and three men were
wounded.
204 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
' It was then about half-past six. The
submarine hove into view and drew along-
side the master's boat. She bore the
marks of usage and her guns were rusty.
Officers and men wore blue uniform. The
commanding officer ordered the master
and the crew on board the submarine.
Then the submarine officer asked the
master if there was any one left in the
Dauntless, Upon being told that the
ship was deserted, save for one dead man,
the German officer ordered some of his
men to go on board her in the master's
boat. He presented a revolver at the
master's head, telhng him that if any one
was found alive in the Dauntless the
master would immediately be shot.
' What the Germans were after was
plunder. The men of the Dauntless,
sullenly grouped upon the deck of the
submarine, during an hour or so, con-
templated the pirates bringing loot from
the Dauntless to the submarine in the
Dauntless^ s jolly-boat, which had been
left on board, and the starboard lifeboat.
J
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 205
The second officer saw tinned provisions,
enamel paint and turpentine, among other
things, handed up from the boats.
' At about eight o'clock, when the boats
were emptied, the msn of the Dauntless
gazing at the dim ship looming in the
dark, saw a red flash leap from her, and
heard a dull explosion, and the dim ship
disappeared.
' The submarine officer ordered the
master and the crew of the Dauntless into
the starboard lifeboat. But when the
master represented that the lifeboat had
been damaged by gunfire and was leaking,
the German kindly allowed the master
to take the jolly-boat also. The master
divided the crew between the two boats.
In the jolly-boat were the master, the
second officer, the chief, second and third
engineers, the steward and a fireman,
seven persons in all. The rest went away
in the leaking starboard lifeboat, which
soon afterwards parted from the master's
boat, and was never seen again.
' Already the port lifeboat had gone
206 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
away ; but her story is to come. With
the starboard lifeboat we have no more
to do. There remains the jolly-boat.
' As she parted from the submarine the
master asked a German if the land was
five miles away, and the German replied
" More." There is indeed some uncer-
tainty as to the exact position from which
the boats started, as there was an increas-
ingly easterly wind, and also there was the
drift of the current in those waters.
' It is not known if there were pro-
visions in the starboard lifeboat which
went away and was no more seen. But
it is quite certain that the Germans,
having stolen all the provisions they could
find in the Dauntless, sent the seven people
adrift in the jolly-boat without food or
water, in rough weather, and one of them,
the master, badly wounded.
' The master, despite his wounded arm
and shoulder, steered ; the other six men
rowed, and went on rowing. The wind
and sea had risen, and were dead against
the easterly course steered by the master ;
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 207
the cold was extreme, with occasional
storms of snow. They rowed all that
night. At about six o'clock the next
morning the steward fell forward, dead.
' They went on rowing all that day,
Monday, without bite or sup ; cold, wet,
tormented by thirst, their tongues swelling,
their lips black, their skins cracking with
the salt spray and the bitter wind ; still
the five men rowed, and the dead man lay
in the bottom of the boat, and the master
steered.
' In the evening they committed the
body of the steward to the deep. Then
they sighted land. It was near nightfall ;
a thick shower of snow drove down and
they lost the lie of the land, though it
was no more than three or four miles
away.
' They rowed all that night. At day-
light, next morning, Tuesday, February
6th, they sighted land again, and so they
went on rowing. They saw the breakers
bursting all along the beach ; but, wholly
spent, they could do no more than keep
208 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
the boat just moving ; and as her nose
touched ground a wave capsized her, and
the six men were flung into the surf.
' They struggled up on the beach and
fell down. Two of them, the second
engineer and the fireman, then and there
died on the wet sand, where they lay.
' About half-past ten on that Tuesday
morning a French coastguardsman, fully
armed, was marching his lonely beat along
the shore, when he saw four bowed figures
stumbling towards him in the distance.
A little beyond them a capsized boat was
tossing in the surf.
' The Frenchman, with admirable pre-
sence of mind, immediately decided that
four German sailors had landed. He drew
his revolver, and, swiftly approaching the
strangers, commanded them to put up
their hands. Three of them stiffly lifted
swollen hands ; the fourth tried to lift
his arms a little. They stared upon him
with faces like the faces of men in torment,
and one began to speak, uttering strange
sounds, thickly and slowly, framing the
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THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 209
same words over and over again, with a
kind of pitiful desperation.
' And presently the French coastguards-
man saw light. Ah, what a change ! And
there w^as his little house, where the English
could rest until they were taken away by
the authorities to hospital.
' Ten days later, the master had so far
recovered that he was able to leave his
bed, and the second officer, the chief
engineer and the third engineer were at
home in England.
' When the six men in the jolly-boat
reached land they had been adrift during
nearly forty hours. That was on Tuesday,
February 6th. Where, during that time,
was the port lifeboat ? No one knew.
All that the survivors in the jolly-boat
knew was that when the boats were
lowered from the Dauntless, the port life-
boat had gone away with four (or five)
men in her.
' The Dauntless was abandoned on Sun-
day evening, February 4th. On the
following Friday, the 9th, a Spanish
o
210 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
trawler, cruising in the Bay of Biscay,
sighted a boat tossing in the distance.
There were men in her, but whether
dead or aHve the Spaniard could not
discern.
' Coming alongside, the Spanish sailors
looked down upon four men huddled
together. Their eyes moved. Otherwise
they were dead.
' During five days and five nights they
had been adrift on the winter sea. They
had a little biscuit. They had no water.
There were the two seaman gunners, the
cook and a negro. The Spaniards landed
them and they were placed in hospital.
' After three months in hospital one of
the gunners came home and made his
report, which begins : " I was the gun's
crew of the Dauntless,^'' and goes on to
describe his experiences in the boat in two
sentences : " VV^e drifted about in the Bay
for five days. We had biscuits but no
water."
'These four men in the port lifeboat,
and the master and the three officers in
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 211
the jolly-boat, survived out of the twenty-
three people of the Dauntless,^
' Said the third officer to the quarter-
master, who was at the wheel, " James "
— but that was not his name — " James,"
said the third officer, " I think there is a
submarine on our starboard bow."
' The quartermaster's subsequent im-
pressions were extremely crowded. The
dusk of the late afternoon was thickening
the easterly haze ; and, staring across
the long smooth swell, the quartermaster
discerned the dark conning-tower and
lighter hull of a submarine some two and
a half miles away, and the indistinct
figures of two officers on the conning-
tower, and three or four men grouped on
the deck. At the same time he was aware
that the third officer was speaking to the
captain down the voice-tube. Then a
gun spoke on the submarine and a shell
went by in the air. The master arrived
on the bridge. So did the chief officer.
The master turned the engine-room tele-
212 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
graph to stop, blew on the whistle the four
short blasts signifying " Abandon ship,"
and ordered the boats to be swung out
and manned. All these things happened
very quickly. The quartermaster having
run to his boat, saw a shell burst in the
wheel-house which he had just quitted.
' In the meantime the master on the
bridge saw the submarine sink and dis-
appear. Watching, he saw her emerge
again on the port side. She opened fire
again. The master went to his cabin,
possibly to fetch his confidential papers.
The starboard lifeboat, which was the
master's boat, had pulled clear of the
ship.
* The port lifeboat was being lowered.
The submarine continued deliberately to
fire. It is one of the clearest cases on
record of a German submarine officer
continuing to fire upon a ship after she
had surrendered and while the crew were
getting away the boats. The boatswain
and three men were severely wounded by
shell splinters. A shell exploded in the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 213
fiddley (or deck-house), setting the bunkers
on fire. Paraffin oil was pouring from the
stricken ship, slowly spreading a viscous
surface upon the heaving waters.
' The master came on deck to find his
own boat gone, and the chief officer's boat
waiting for him, blood all about, five men
huddled and helpless, splinters flying, and
standing off in the twilight, the sea-wolves
at their murderous work.
' That night the boatswain died of his
wounds and was buried at sea.'
' It was February 7th, 1917, when the
steamship Saxonian was attacked, and
the crew sent adrift in open boats in the
North Atlantic. (Further south, the port
lifeboat of the Dauntless was even then
drifting with four starving wretches in her.)
' The chief officer's boat was picked up
the next morning by a patrol vessel. The
second officer's boat drifted for three days
and three nights, when she was picked up
by one of His Majesty's ships. (That was
on the 10th, the day after the Dauntless^s
214 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
survivors had been rescued by the Spanish
fishermen.)
' The patrol boat which found the chief
officer and his people steamed to the scene
of the capture, and there beheld a sullenly
undulating field of oil, strewn with floating
wreckage, the remains of the Sacconian.^
' The North Atlantic (that arena of
disaster), a confused swell, noon of Tuesday
March 6th, 1917. The steamship Fenay
Lodge heading towards France, a ring of
haze, about ten miles in diameter, closing
her in.
' A torpedo struck her on the starboard
side ; the master ordered the crew into
the boats, and away they went. They
pulled for about half an hour, the water
breaking over them, when, half hidden
in the mist, the submarine emerged into
view and opened fire on the deserted ship.
Presently both ship and submarine were
lost to sight.
' There were twenty-seven persons in
the Fenay Lodge, all British except one
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 215
Dutchman and one Russian. In two
boats they drifted head to sea in the bitter
weather, the rest of that day, Tuesday, and
all that night, and the morning of Wednes-
day. Then, towards noon, they sighted
a steamship ; pulled towards her, making
signals of distress, and were taken on
board. She was a French ship, the Ohio,
' The castaways had scarce shifted into
dry clothing and eaten and drunk, when
the Ohio was struck by a torpedo. She
went down in three minutes. No other
details are available.
' Half an hour after the people of the
Fenay Lodge had been picked up they
were again adrift. But five of them had
been drowned in the sinking of the Ohio.
' The three boats, containing the sur-
vivors of the Fenay Lodge and the French-
men, drifted head to sea in the bitter
weather for the rest of the day. About
six in the evening they sighted a steamer.
She bore down upon them. She was a
British ship, the Winnebago, and, stopping
alongside the tossing boats, the master
216 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
offered to take them on board. He was
answered by so confused a shouting in
French and English that at first he could
make nothing of it. But presently he
understood that the men were warning
him that there were three enemy sub-
marines about, and that they refused to
be taken on board.
' They were some two hundred miles
from land, and they refused to be taken
on board. The master of the Winnebago
had done all he could ; if the castaways
thought open boats preferable to a stout
ship, it was their affair, and he went on.
' The men of the Fenay Lodge and the
men of the Ohio drifted head to sea in
the bitter weather all that Wednesday
night, and all Thursday morning. At
three o'clock in the ajjternoon a patrol
boat ran up alongside and took on board
twenty-two men of the Fenay Lodge and
five officers and twenty-seven men of the
French ship Ohio.''
' Very early on Sunday morning, July
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 217
15, 1917, the steamship Mariston, home-
ward bound in the North Atlantic, was
within about a hundred miles of land.
The evidence of the manner of her loss
and the sequel is the disposition of the
only survivor, who was the cook.
' When the torpedo struck the ship the
cook was asleep in his bunk, in the house
on the main deck. He was awakened by
being hurled upwards against the ceiling,
with the crash of an explosion in his ears.
The mess-room steward, who was asleep
in the bunk below the cook, continued to
slumber, nor did he wake when the cook
shook him. Already the water was surg-
ing about the cook's ankles, and dripping
through the seams of the deck above ; and
the cook ran out upon the main deck,
which was awash. He seems to remember
seeing the apprentice following him as he
doubled to the midship cabin to rouse the
steward. He never reached the steward,
because a second explosion, catching him
on the way, blew the midship cabin to
pieces.
218 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
' Amid the tumult, the black smoke
and the pieces of the ship falling about
his ears, the cook, as he ran aft, was aware
of the chief gunner. The ship was sinking
rapidly ; the main deck was level with the
breaking sea, and the cook caught up a
hatch and plunged overboard, followed
by the chief gunner. Both men clung
to the hatch ; the ship went down boldly,
stern first ; and there came a mighty
rush of water. When it had passed the
cook was alone on his hatch. He never
saw the gunner again.
' In the colourless light of an overcast
sunrise the cook beheld the long, confused
rollers strewn with wreckage, and counted
seventeen men clinging to the pieces of
the ship.
' Then up from the troubled waters pro-
jected two periscopes, like two horns, then
the two conning-towers of the submarine,
and then her long hull, shiny and black
as coal, hove dripping upon the swell. To
the cook she loomed as great as the five-
thousand-ton ship she had just sent to
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 219
the bottom. All along her side, revealed
in curves of the moving sea, waved festoons
of green weed and slimy barnacles. She
carried a gun forward and a gun aft.
' The hatch on the conning tower lifted,
and there emerged a German officer. The
men in the water were crying and shouting
for help. The German officer surveyed
the field of destruction through his glasses.
Presently he dropped them, leisurely dis-
appeared down the hatch, which shut, and
the submarine began to sink. She settled
steadily down, amid the cries of rage of
the drowning men, until the periscopes
alone were visible. Then they glided
away, cutting through the seas, each
square-hooded pole flirting a feather of
foam. . . .
' The cook, tossing on his little raft, kept
counting the men in sight ; and every time
he counted he made the total less. Then
he heard a man scream, and saw him
throw up his hands ; and he saw the black
fin of a shark cleaving the lop of sea, and
the flash of white as the great fish turned
220 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
over to snatch its prey. The cook saw
(he says) " a crowd of sharks," and heard
man after man screaming as he was dragged
under.
' That is all he says. It is perhaps
enough. A theory may here be hazarded
that the sharks followed the submarines.
. . . They could make their profit of the
voyage.
* As the sun rose, the wind and the sea
went down on that desolation ; and still
the cook tossed on his hatch, until he was
the last alive. He thinks it was about
ten o'clock when he found himself utterly
alone, except for the sharks. By that
time he had been some six hours in the
water.
' At about five o'clock that evening,
the master of a British steamship sighted
a space of sea dotted all over with drifting
wreckage. He steered towards it, and
passed through a field of floating timbers
and fittings and packing-cases ; and on
its further fringe he espied the figure of
a man floating on a hatch.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 221
' It was half- past six when the cook
was hauled into the steamer's boat and
brought aboard, and revived and com-
forted. So he lived to tell his tale, alone
of all the people in the Mariston,'
The case of the Belgian Prince, the
concluding example of unrestricted sub-
marine warfare, is peculiarly flagrant.
From this instance alone, not to mention
a thousand others, it is evident that after
two thousand years of the teaching of
Christian ethics, the educated man retains
his capacity for immitigable cruelty. It
may be argued, with some reason, that
the object of war is to destroy the enemy,
and that drowning is an easier death than
burning or poisoning with gas. Neverthe-
less, it is the fact that war may be con-
ducted with the humane modifications
imposed by the law of chivalry. These
were regarded as illogical by the Germans,
as indeed they are. The code of chivalry
is the saving grace of the iniquity of war.
But the German creed was that war is,
222 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
not an evil but, a good in itself, and they
brought their doctrine to the test. The
case of the Belgian Prince is one of the
tests. Judge, therefore, of the result.
' Forty-three seamen of the steamship
Belgian Prince were crowded on the deck
of a German submarine, in the steely
twilight of a summer night, and one, the
master, was below, a prisoner. The sub-
marine was running awash. Astern, the
abandoned ship loomed momently more
dim. In the minds of every one of those
forty-three seamen there dwelt a terrible
apprehension.
' The attack on the Belgian Prince
followed the usual routine. She was
stinick, without warning, by a torpedo.
It was then about eight o'clock on the
evening of July 31st, 1917, and the ship
was two hundred miles from the north
coast of Ireland. The master called away
the boats, and the crew embarked, leaving
the master on board to clear up his affairs.
The port lifeboat put back and took him
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 223
off. The German submarine emerged and
opened fire from her machine-gun upon
the ship's aerials, which she destroyed.
Then the commanding officer of the sub-
marine ordered the two boats alongside,
took the master on board, and sent him
below, ordering all the crew on board.
They were received with furious abuse
by the Germans, who searched their
captives, taking from them all their pos-
sessions. Money and other articles of
value the pirates pocketed ; other things
they hove overboard. In the meantime
a working party took everything out of
the boats. The compasses and provisions
were put into the submarine. Oars,
gratings, bailers, and all loose gear were
thrown overboard. The two lifeboats
were damaged by axes. The plugs were
removed, and they were left to sink. The
master's dinghy was retained. Several
Germans pulled her over to the ship, in
which they remained.
' These things the crew of the Belgian
Prince beheld, contemplating, while they
224 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
were being violently robbed, the destruc-
tion of their last hope of escape.
' The commanding officer of the sub-
marine, a fair, bearded man of thirty-five
or so, ordered the seamen to take off their
lifebelts and place them on the deck.
Then he strode along the deck, among the
men, whom he cursed, kicking the life-
belts overboard. But four men, at least,
contrived to hide their lifebelts under
their coats.
' From the Belgian Prince, in which
were the Germans who had gone to her
in the dinghy, a signal flashed. The sub-
marine got under way ; the captives, as
already described, were crowded on her
deck, as her engines slowly ground her
through the water. So, for about half an
hour.
' Then there came another signal flashed
from the place where the ship lay shrouded
in the thickening dark. Instantly the
German officer on the conning-tower dis-
appeared, and the steel hatch clanged-to
over his head.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 225
' The submarine began to sink.
' The doubt haunting the forty-three
seamen suddenly took shape in a certainty —
the certainty of death. The water hpped
upon the deck, the water covered their
feet. Then they leaped into the sea.
' The chief engineer, the cook, a Russian
seaman, and the little apprentice, who had
contrived to keep their lifebelts, struck
out for the distant ship. The little ap-
prentice held on to the chief engineer.
The cook and the Russian were separated
from the chief engineer and the apprentice,
and from one another, though all were
steering for where they thought the ship
lay. The thirty-nine men they left were
never seen again.
' The chief engineer, holding up the
apprentice, swam steadily on, resting at
intervals. The boy grew heavier and
heavier, his strokes weaker and weaker,
and by the time the grey dawn lightened
the desolate sea, he was unconscious.
The ice-cold water killed him. The chief
engineer went on alone.
p
226 THE PARAVANE AD\^NTURE
' He saw the Belgian Prince, listing
over to port, when, as he reckoned, he
was still a mile and a half away from her.
It was then about half-past five on the
morning of August 1st, 1917. The chief
engineer saw a bright flame leap from the
after part of the ship, saw her go down
stern first.
' The chief engineer, who makes no
remark concerning his emotions at that
moment, continued to swim ; and pre-
sently he saw smoke on the horizon, and
swam desperately towards it.
' The cook, following his own course,
also came in sight of the Belgian Prince
about the same time as the chief engineer
sighted her. He also saw the ship sink ;
and then he perceived the submarine, and
swam away. He was picked up by the
patrol boat.
' The Russian seaman swam faster than
the other two men, and actually reached
the Belgian Prince at about five o'clock,
after about eight hours in the water. For
the moment, at least, he was saved ; but
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 227
he was still haunted by a doubt. Numbed
and exhausted, he struggled on board,
shifted into dry clothing, and ate and
drank. And then he saw the submarine
again. She was coming alongside.
' The Russian ran aft, and hiding himself
watched the submarine stop and lie along-
side, saw three or four Germans climb on
board. There was nothing else for it —
the Russian lowered himself into the water
again, and hung on beside the rudder.
For all he knew the Germans might be
about sinking the ship.
' But for the moment they were looting
her, passing stores, clothing and pro-
visions into the submarine. The Russian
watched them for about twenty minutes.
Then the submarine stood off and fired
two shells into the ship. She broke in
two and sank. The submarine dived and
so departed.
' The Russian, fighting for his life, in
the swirl of water and driving wreckage,
saw the master's dinghy, which had been
left adrift by the submarine. He swam
228 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
to it, climbed in, and lay there until the
patrol boat picked him up.
' There were forty-four people in the
Belgian Prince. The crew numbered
forty-two, including the master, and there
were two negro stowaways. The master
was taken prisoner ; three were saved
because they outwitted the German mur-
derers ; forty were drowned. Deprived
of their boats, robbed of their possessions,
stripped of their lifebelts, they were
mustered on board the German submarine
and drawn down to certain death.
' Then the commanding officer of the
submarine, having as he thought, slain
all witnesses of his crime, returned to
plunder his prey, the deserted ship. He
did not know the sturdy Russian seaman
was watching him from behind the rudder.
Or that two more witnesses were within
gunshot.
' Whether he knew it or not, that sub-
marine officer achieved the lowest deep of
iniquity until then touched even by Ger-
mans on the sea. There may, of course,
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 229
be worse to come ; the civilised nations
are hardly competent to estimate the
possibilities ; but, even now, the Germans
at sea have done that which shall not be
forgotten till the sea runs dry.'
XVII
Had the Navy possessed enough destroy-
ers, the unrestricted submarine warfare, of
which a few out of very many examples
have been quoted, would speedily have been
defeated. And for this reason : a hundred
or two hundred destroyers fitted with the
Paravane High Speed Submarine Sweep
would have effectively countered the
enemy. But in order properly to use
the anti-submarine Paravane, flotillas of
destroyers must be charged with that
business alone, and must work in concert.
But at no time during the war were there
enough destroyers to spare from the Grand
Fleet, or from patrol and escort duties, to
be allocated to submarine hunting. De-
stroyers working singly did much execu-
tion with depth charges ; but investigation
seems to show that, compared with the
230
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 231
systematic use of the explosive Paravane,
depth charges are less certain in their
operation.
It was therefore decided that the most
urgent need was to equip vessels with
the mine-protecting Paravane, which, by
making harmless the mine, would defeat
a great part of the submarine campaign,
and which, by restoring its freedom of
movement to the Fleet, would prepare
for the defeat of the rest.
Early in 1917, then, while the Paravane
department at Portsmouth was supplying
vessels of war with the mine-protector
Paravane gear, Messrs. Vickers in London
began to equip the merchant ships of the
world with the Otter.
What must now be done was to manufac-
ture the Otter and its elaborate gear, and
to equip with it the British and Allied
merchant services. As ships could not be
withdrawn from the sea for the purpose, it
was necessary to fit them when they were
under repair or during their stay in port
between voyages. In order that the
232 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
towing wire should be attached to the fore-
foot of the vessel, at the point where the
bow joins the keel, it was necessary to fit
every ship with a shoe, or a saddle-plate or
a clump, to which were attached the towing
wires of the two Otters. The requisite
fitting varied with the particular build
of the ship. The type of Otter-fitting re-
quired also varied with the particular type
of ship, and the variation was practically
covered within seven or eight standard
types. Ships under construction were, of
course, adapted to the Otter as they were
built.
In some ships it was necessary to extend
the stem itself to take the saddle-plate
or sliding shoe ; to others, in which the
stem was much cut away, a clump was
fitted ; to others, a large saddle - plate
was fitted. Three-strand towing wire of
special design was provided. For drop-
ping and weigliing the Otter, the fittings
again varied according to the type of
ship. If she had no suitable derrick or
davit a gallows crane was fitted. An
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 233
inhaul wire, an easing-out wire, a trip-
ping wire and a tripping hook were
provided.
It was clearly necessary to catch each
vessel as she entered port and to fit her
there and then. For that purpose. Otters
and gear must be ready in the port, with
a skilled staff to fit them.
When the Otter was fitted to the ship
it was necessary to teach the crew how to
use it.
There were two sides to the organisation
for fitting merchant ships with the Otter :
the Admiralty and Paravane department
side, and the manufacturing and commer-
cial side, which belonged to Messrs.
Vickers. Under the Defence of the Realm
Act, the Admiralty made compulsory the
fitting of merchant ships with the Otter,
the cost of which was defrayed by the
State ; so that the Admiralty were clearly
responsible for ensuring that the gear was
rightly fitted. Lieutenant - Commander
(now Commander) E. A. D., Royal Navy,
at the suggestion of the Paravane Com-
234 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
mander, was therefore appointed to super-
vise the whole business. Commander
E. A. D. had previously relieved Lieu-
tenant V. H. D. of the charge of super-
vising the fitting of His Majesty's ships,
and from the end of 1916, Commander
E. A. D. was assisted in that duty by
Lieutenant Y. H. F. G. W., Royal Navy,
who, his eyesight having been affected by
continuous strain at sea in command of a
destroyer, had come on shore. In March
1917, when Messrs. Vickers had received
orders to fit merchant ships, Commander
E. A. D., by degrees leaving the naval
fitting to Lieutenant Y. H. F. G. W., be-
gan to organise the fitting of the merchant
service.
Commander E. A. D. represented that
first of all Messrs. Vickers must be enabled
to examine the way in which ships were
fitted with the gear, and it was therefore
arranged that Messrs. Vickers' men should
receive the requisite instruction from the
Paravane department at Portsmouth,
without charge. It was also arranged
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 235
that all Messrs. Vickers' designs for fitting
the gear should be submitted to the Para-
vane department to ensure that the work-
ing of the gear should be efficient. Com-
mander E. A. D. also represented that it
was necessary to train a number of officers
who should superintend the actual fitting
of each vessel, who should conduct trials
of the gear when it was fitted, and who
should instruct officers and men in the
handling of the Otter. For this purpose.
Royal Naval Reserve officers were very
wisely selected, as being at once con-
versant with both the Royal Navy and the
Mercantile Marine. Six R.N.R. officers
were at once appointed for these duties,
and the number of R.N.R. officers eventu-
ally increased to about fifty. Commander
E. A. D. organised the whole of this
branch, found suitable offices for the
R.N.R. officers, and distributed them
among the ports.
These inspecting officers, working with
Messrs. Vickers, inspected every ship on
her arrival in port, supervised her fitting,
236 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
conducted trials, instructed her officers
and men, made arrangements that at least
one officer in each ship should go to Ports-
mouth to attend a demonstration of the
working of the Otter, went to sea with the
ship when she left port, helped in getting
out the Otter, and then returned (usually
coming back with the pilot) to begin
again. The R.N.R. officers also kept in
communication with ships fitted with the
Otter which came into port, collecting the
opinions of their officers as to the practical
working of the gear. Between sea and
office, these officers worked day and night,
very often without going to bed for several
nights in succession.
At Portsmouth, the merchant service
officers sent down by the R.N.R. in-
specting officers at the ports, received a
one-day's course of instruction in the
training steamship Accrington. In the
morning they attended lectures on the
Otter, and in the afternoon they witnessed
the actual cutting of dummy mines by the
Otter. Sometimes the day's party would
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 237
number fifty masters and mates. In all,
some six thousand merchant service offi-
cers took the course. Apart from the
valuable instruction they gained, the
demonstration served to convince the con-
servative British seamen, as nothing else
would have convinced them, that the
Otter was really a practical weapon.
In organising a system of intelligence
under which the arrival of ships in port
could instantly be ascertained. Commander
E. A. D. received every help from the
Naval Transport Officers, under the
Director of Transport, which official acted
as liaison officer with the Ministry of
Shipping. Commander E. A. D.'s de-
partment was thus enabled to inform
Messrs. Vickers, who also had their own
system of intelligence, of the movements
of ships.
The Admiralty and Paravane depart-
ment side of the fitting of merchant ships
was thus complete. After some months,
when about a thousand ships had been
fitted, the organisation had become so
238 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
extensive that the Paravane Commander
at Portsmouth proposed that the Otter
section should be separated from the Para-
vane department, and should become a
branch of the Trade Division at the Ad-
miralty, or of the Ministry of Shipping.
The suggestion was approved ; the Otter
department was duly constituted ; and
early in 1918 it occupied offices overlook-
ing St. James' Park ; though under what
department of the Admiralty the Otter
department was placed, seemed a trifle
uncertain. But the Otter department
remained under the conduct of Commander
E. A. D., who, in making it, had performed
services so inestimable.
Lieutenant Y. H. F. G. W., who had
been in charge of the fitting of naval ships,
came from Portsmouth and joined the
staff of Commander E. A. D. as his senior
assistant.
Subsequently, Commander E. A. D., his
health having been affected by the im-
mense and continuous strain of his work,
was compelled to retire. Commander
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 239
E. A. D. had first joined the Paravane
department in the summer of 1916. An
ex-naval officer and a barrister, he had
rejoined the Service with the rank of Lieu-
tenant-Commander. He was immediately
plunged into the new, complicated and
difficult enterprise of fitting naval ships,
under the Paravane Commander ; and
then he tackled the whole business of
organising and supervising the fitting of
the merchant service of Great Britain with
the Otter. These vessels were voyaging
on every sea, touching port, unloading and
loading again and departing under the
utmost stress of urgency. The ships were
of various types, and for each type a
special fitting must be designed, made, and
fitted. Officers and men must be per-
suaded of the necessity of the Otter, and
there and then trained in its use. It was
a tremendous task : it was triumphantly
achieved.
Upon the financial side. Commander
E. A. D. was admirably assisted by Mr.
E. P. Burke, who came from Lieutenant-
240 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Commander McConnel's branch, and who
was an ex-Indian Civil Servant. On the
technical side, Lieutenant-Commander P.
(E) of the Paravane department gave
invaluable help.
The present writer has not the privilege
of the acquaintance of these gentlemen ;
so that it may not be improper to set down
the reflection, how little the country, and
how little the Government, know of their
best servants.
The manufacturing and commercial side
of the Otter department was conducted by
Messrs. Vickers, who have very kindly
given the present writer a description of
its organisation and operation.
Be it remembered that at this period
of the war every private firm was choked
with Government work, and that skilled
men were hard to find. Messrs. Vickers
began by appointing a local agent in
each port. They made arrangements with
various other firms to manufacture and
supply the parts and gear of the Otter.
They devised a system under which the
TAKEN FROM THE FORECASTLE OF S.S. ' ACCKINGTON
LOOKING AFT ALONG HER STARBOARD SIDE
The ship is under way and her starboard Otter has just cut the mooring
of a submerged dummy mine at which the ship was directly steered.
The mine has been fiuiig away from the ship, its moorings liave then
reached the cutter on the Otter and have been cut, and the mine is here
seen leaping to the surface well clear of the ship's side.
Photo. Commander G. S. Bowles
AN OTTKR liEING HDlSTED OUT OVER PORT SIDE OF
S.S. ' ACCKINGTON '
Photo. CoiiniianderC S. Bmvles
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 241
parts should be assembled, the Otter
completed, and sent down to the testing
stations at Weymouth and Milford Haven.
Every Otter was tested at sea before being
fitted. When it had been tested and
passed, it was despatched by rail whither
it was wanted.
Conceive the organisation required. It
was necessary to know at all times the
stage of the process to which each type
of Otter had been brought, to allocate the
various types to the various ships as the
ships came in, and to get the particular
Otter required to the particular ship re-
quiring it at the right moment.
Therefore, together with the organisation
of the manufacture and supply of Otters,
it was necessary to devise a system of
intelligence under which Vickers' head
office learned what ships were due at each
port, when they were due and how long
they would remain in port. For this
purpose, a large clerical staff was engaged
and was trained in the use of an ingenious
card index system. At one time, news of
Q
242 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
the arrival of a ship was received every
quarter of an hour, day and night ; and
as the news came in, it was recorded in
the card index, and every movement of
the ship and each process of fitting was
followed in the card index, so that at any
moment the condition of any given ship
was known. It was thus possible to begin
to fit a ship at one port and to finish her
at the next.
As the organisation grew, Messrs. Vickers
installed their own staff at each port.
The country was divided into districts
and each was placed in charge of an official,
who was responsible for the work in his
district. Stations were established on the
Continent and in the United States.
At first, the work was a perpetual con-
flict with every sort of obstacle : deficiency
of labour, difficulties of transport, diffi-
culties in communication ; and throughout
the business must be carried through at
high speed. The staff at Vickers' head-
quarters worked day and night. Wholly
unknown to fame, they were one with the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 243
fighting services in tlieir single aim to win
the war. All depended on the sea; it
was the business of Vickers' staff to do
their part to prevent that great danger,
lest a command of the sea able to deny the
sea to the trade of its enemy might be increas-
ingly unable to secure the safety of the sea
for its own trade.
Combining this enterprise with his work
in the Paravane department, the inde-
fatigable Burney was everywhere, invent-
ing, supervising and organising as requisite.
Some fifty firms were employed in
manufacturing Otters and gear under
Messrs. Vickers. At Messrs. Vickers' head
office, the Otter staff numbered about 180 ;
about 60 men were employed in fitting,
about 50 men in testing, and about 40
men in inspection work. Ships were fitted
at 32 ports in Great Britain : Blackwall,
King's Lynn, Newhaven, Southampton,
Plymouth, Falmouth, Cardiff, Barry, New-
port, Avonmouth, Swansea, Milf ord Haven,
Liverpool, Manchester, Barrow, Working-
ton, Belfast, Dublin, Queenstown, Govan,
244 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Dundee, Aberdeen, Leith, Bo'ness, New-
castle, Blyth, Middlesboro', Sunderland,
West Hartlepool, Hull, Goole and Grimsby.
There were four stations in the Mediter-
ranean : Marseilles, Malta, Alexandria and
Port Said.
Messrs. Vickers' representatives assisted
the United States Government and the
United States Shipping Board to fit Ameri-
can and British vessels at the following
ports, among others : New York, Phila-
delphia, Providence, Norfolk, New Orleans,
Baltimore, Newport News, Boston, Seattle,
Cleveland.
The average number of ships fitted per
week for the six months preceding the
Armistice was 50. The average number
of ships per week repaired was 120, and
inspected, 280. The number of Otters
manufactured was over 17,000.
The first merchant vessel was equipped
with the Otter in April 1917. When
the Armistice was concluded, about 3000
ships had been fitted with the Otter.
The secrecy maintained was extra-
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 245
ordinary. Outside the sea services and
those engaged in the work, very few
persons, during the war and even after-
wards, had ever heard of Paravane or of
Otter. Which circumstance indicates that
what is omitted from the newspapers is
not known. On one occasion at least, an
Otter was washed up on the beach in this
country ; Otters were lying about at rail-
way stations ; hundreds of men and
women were employed in making parts of
Otters and their gear, packing, despatching
and fitting them ; yet the Otter was kept
secret.
XVIII
The result of fitting the protector Para-
vane to H.M. ships was that sixty-eight
men-of-war cut mines: seven battleships,
two battle cruisers, two cruisers, fifty-three
light cruisers, three armed auxiliary cruisers
and one minelayer ; the most of which, it
is reasonable to assume, would in default
of the Paravane have been lost.
Before the Otter was fitted to merchant
ships eighteen vessels a month were being
lost by mine. After the Otter was fitted
the losses dropped to three or four, and in
some months none, and no merchant ship
fitted with the Otter was lost by mine. Thirty-
four British merchant ships were known
to have been saved, and thirteen not
certainly known, forty-seven in all, to
which must be added a large number not
reported by the master. Foreign mer-
chant ships arc not included.
240
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 247
The total tonnage of H.M. ships saved
is 525,833 tons of an estimated value of
£52,533,300.
The total tonnage of merchant ships
known to have been saved is 240,078 tons,
of an estimated value of £9,603,120, to
which must be added the estimated value
of cargoes, £13,000,000. To these figures
must be added a large margin for cases of
mines cut and not reported, and all cases
of mines cut by Allied vessels.
The immense saving of life also accom-
plished is not to be expressed in terms of
money.
The following official record has been
furnished by the courtesy of the Board of
Admiralty.
The following statistics have been com-
piled with a view to showing the successes
of the Paravanes (both explosive and
protector types) and Otters, fitted to
H.M. ships and to the merchant service
respectively. The returns are the official
Admiralty records.
248 THE PAT^AVANE ADVENTURE
No detailed information has yet been
obtained as to the results of the apparatus
fitted to foreign vessels of war and mer-
chant ships, although it is known by verbal
reports that three American ships of war
were saved, including the South Carolina^
one of the latest Dreadnoughts.
There are instances also, like the attack
on Durazzo, which are not included. At
Durazzo a very considerable number of
mines were cut, and the attacking
forces came unscathed through two mine-
fields.
As the resources of the Allies in shipping
were pooled, the amount of tonnage saved
by the Allies was of vital importance, and
it is therefore considered that in estimating
the total cost of shipping saved, the cost
of foreign tonnage saved should be com-
puted.
Cases have occurred of masters refusing
to sail until the Otter gear was in perfect
working condition, thus causing valuable
time to be wasted, and it can be safely
recorded that captains of H.M. service
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 249
and masters of the merchant service have
rehed upon the gear to protect them from
mine attack. The moral value of a sense
of security should be added to the com-
mercial value.
It will be seen from the following stat-
istics that the total tonnage saved by the
protector Paravanes and Otters respec-
tively is : —
tons.
Paravanes (H.M. ships) . . 525,333
Otters (merchant ships) . . 240,078
If the average value per ton for H.M.
ships be taken at £100 and a low average
value for merchant ships, the following
figures are obtained : —
Value of H.M. ships saved . . £52,533,300
Value of merchant ships saved . 9,603,120
Total . £62,136,420
In this figure of £62,136,420 no amount
has been included for the cost of the cargo
carried by merchant ships, so that the
250 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
saving to the Allied countries of food-
stuffs and material at a time when they
were practically irreplaceable, is not
shown. ^
Ships which have been saved more than
once have been counted in value more
than once, as they would have been re-
placed by some other vessel. It cannot
be taken that upon every occasion when a
mine is cut, the ship was necessarily saved,
but as it is only during the daytime that
the mines when cut are seen, it may be
safely assumed that the mines which are
cut at night and which are not reported,
compensate for the uncertain factor. It
should also be considered that masters
often do not report a cut.
The extent of their omissions may be
estimated by noting that where report-
ing is accurate, as in the British Navy,
out of approximately 180 ships fitted with
the gear, reports of 55 cuts have been
* Owing to the large number of cases of mine cutting
unreported, as already explained, the figure is far from the
real total.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 251
obtained, whereas, out of 2720 merchant
ships fitted with Otter gear, only 44 reports
have been received.
The results of the use of the explosive
Paravane are in part doubtful, for it is
only in exceptional cases that definite
proof can be obtained, and the submarine
logged as ' Known Sunk.'
In estimating the value of the Submarine
Sweep, the ' Known Sunk ' cases only have
been taken into consideration.
The number of submarines which have
been classified as ' Known Sunk ' is 205,
and it will be seen from the following
statistics that the Paravane accounted for
five of this number, or approximately two
and a half per cent.
The total damage done by enemy sub-
marines has been estimated at approxi-
mately £1,000,000,000 ; so that the value
of the tonnage sunk by one submarine is
approximately £5,000,000. The value of
the Paravane service was, therefore, ap-
proximately £25,000,000.
The total value of the whole Paravane
252 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
service may, therefore, be summarised as
follows : —
Submarine Sweep . . £25,000,000
Protectors .... 52,533,300
Otters 9,603,120
Total . . £87,130,420
and to this figure must be added the cost
of the cargo saved by Otters which may
be reckoned as £13,000,000. It will thus
be seen that the Paravane Service has
saved the British Empire approximately
£100,000,000. If full reports were avail-
able, that amount, as already explained,
would be greatly increased.
This is a purely financial estimate,
taking no account of the many hundreds
of lives saved.
XIX
The results of the use of the Paravane and
Otter completely justified the Paravane
officers. They had achieved their long,
difficult and incredibly arduous enterprise.
They had matched their wits against the
craft of the enemy and had won. The
submarine was defeated, both actually and
potentially. The occupation of the mine-
laying submarine was gone. By reason
of the lack of destroyers, the High Speed
Submarine Sweep had not been used on a
great scale ; but its efficiency had been
demonstrated. The Paravane officers had
done their part in saving the British Fleet
and the British Mercantile Marine.
In 1917, Lieutenant Burney received
from His Majesty the King the honour of
Companion of the Most Distinguished
Order of Saint Michael and Saint George,
and was promoted to the rank of Acting-
Commander. Lieutenant Bowles was pro-
253
254 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
moted to the rank of Commander (Emer-
gency). Another officer received the
Order of the British Empire. So far as
the present writer has been able to as-
certain, the services of the other Paravane
officers have not received the expression
of official approval.
But during their long months of toil and
anxiety, they had no thought of reward.
The officers of the Regular Navy among
them, in the circumstances, were indeed
conceivably hazarding their career in the
Service. The temporary officers were
simply working for their country. When
the work was done, when the adventure
had been triumphantly accomplished, they
dropped back into civil life, contented that
they had done well what they took in hand
to do. If Burncy was the moving spirit,
the other Paravane officers were the cheer-
ful and indefatigable pioneers of the
adventure, who made possible its success.
In this business, as in others, the ex-
perience of the war demonstrated that the
Navy, regarded as a system, was governed
TIIE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 255
by a tradition which both prevents the
recognition of modern conditions of war-
fare and hinders action in emergency.
Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Jellicoe's
history of the Grand Fleet during the first
two years of the war illustrates, on the one
hand, the appalling defects of the system,
and on the other, the superb conduct of
the naval officer within the limits to which
the system restricted him.
To be quite plain, the system let the
country down, down to the very edge of
disaster. What saved the country ? The
heroic labours of officers and men, of which
Lord Jellicoe tells, and, among other enter-
prises, the Paravane adventure. But is
the country to rely in the future upon for-
lorn hopes led by gallant individuals, in
despite of the system ?
^The Navy has become a profession of
many highly specialised branches, each of
which owes its development to the achieve-
ments of science on shore. Side by side
1 The substance of what follows appeared in The National
Review, June 1919.
256 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
with that development, the old tradition
under which the Navy of masts and sails
was independent of the shore, except (in
the old phrase) for victuals, wood, and
water, survives. There were instances dur-
ing the war of extremely capable naval
officers who, taken from the sea to organise
the invention and application of some
particular device urgently required, were as
totally ignorant of the persons from whom
to seek advice and assistance, and of the
existing state of things in relation to his re-
quirement, as if they had landed in another
planet. While naval warfare, like land
warfare, had become an affair of applied
science, the Navy had remained aloof from
civilian enterprise and unconscious of the
march of events. There existed no de-
partment at the Admiralty whose business
it was to study the invention and the ap-
plication of modern weapons in collabora-
tion with civilian investigators. The Navy
had its own experimental establishments,
and these (it considered) should suffice.
There was H.M.S. Excellent, the gunnery
^f- tfk
TAKEN FROM THE FORECASTLE-HEAD OF S.S. 'ACCRINGTON
AT SPITHEAD, LOOKING AFT ALONG HER STARBOARD SIDE
Showing the gallows fitted for hoisting and lowering an Otter ; and the
inhaul wire leading from it to the Otter running below the water.
photo. Cotiniiander G. S. Boivlfs
TAKEN FROM THE FORECASTLE-HEAD OF S.S. ' ACCRINGTON '
AT SPITHEAD, LOOKING AFT ALONG HER PORT SIDE
Showing the gallows-'fitted for hoisting and lowering an Otter ; and the
inhaul wire leading from it to the Otter running below the water.
Photo. Commander G. S. Bow/es
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 257
school on Whale Island ; there was H.M.S.
Vernon, torpedo school, an old wooden
ship-of-the-line ; there were the Actaeon
torpedo school ships, a group of old hulks,
lying between Sheerness and Chatham ;
and so on. V^ithin the limits to which they
were restricted, the officers of these estab-
lishments did admirably.
But the naval experimental establish-
ments, compared with the great installa-
tions of private firms, were insignificant.
A proportion of the most talented naval
officers, whose advancement in the Service,
after attaining the rank of commander,
depended upon seniority, commonly leave
the Navy to enter private firms. Were
they to remain in the Service and to obtain
promotion, they would be charged with the
sea and administrative duties of a senior
officer, and their particular ability would
be wasted. Hence it is that the senior
officers of the Navy, to whom is confided
its direction, are but dimly aware of any
developments in gunnery, torpedo, mining,
wireless, and the like, occurring since they
B
258 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
were promoted, while the authority of the
young officers who know what the Service
can teach of these things, and how to use
them, is strictly limited by their rank.
Officially, the ability, like the authority,
of an officer is estimated by the number
of gold rings on his sleeve.
Moreover, in whatever the ability of an
officer consists, the Service ordains that a
condition of his promotion is that he puts
in a certain proportion of sea-time, as it is
called. Here is another survival of custom
which has lost its reason ; for in the sailing
days the main qualification for command
was, naturally, experience in seamanship.
Now that many other qualifications are
equally essential, an officer must spend
at sea time in which he seldom acquires
any additional knowledge of seamanship
whatever. There are, of course, many
officers who are seamen and nothing else,
and who are quite content with that noble
branch of their profession. But even for
the salt-horse, it is not necessary that he
should be sent to a naval preparatory
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 259
school on shore at the age of thirteen, and
that he should thenceforth regard the
beach and the inhabitants thereof as hav-
ing been created by the Almighty in a fit
of absence of mind, and therefore to be
regarded with pity and treated with kind-
ness by the naval officer.
The theory that the Navy is still con-
stantly at sea and cruising, as it used to
cruise fifty years ago, for three years or
more at a stretch, is still entertained by the
authorities. In accordance with that tradi-
tion, officers obtained a very scant allowance
of leave. ^ Although conditions have totally
changed, the idea is that in a ship in full
commission, perpetually cruising, an officer
cannot possibly be spared for longer than
ten days or a fortnight without grave
injury to His Majesty's Service. Hence
it is that if an officer desires to improve
his knowledge generally or in particular,
he must apply to go on half-pay, thereby
both injuring his chances of promotion
and making it almost impossible for him
to pay his way.
^ Since extended.
260 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Civilians who encounter the naval officer
during his brief sojourns on shore regard
him with the slightly nervous admiration
due to one who deals familiarly with
formidable mysteries, and who is generally
reputed to be able triumphantly to handle
any emergency, ashore or afloat. But if
the civilian ever dared to interrogate his
hero in what examiners call general know-
ledge, he would be surprised at the ensuing
vacuity.
So long as the Navy was a cruising
Service, in whose ships guns were mounted
as a matter of form — delightful conditions
under which the senior admirals of to-day
entered the Navy — the quaint monasticism
of the seaman was merely charming. To-
day, when the Navy is a complex of applied
sciences, when the ships are floating towns
crammed with engines of destruction and
are driven by fuel which must be replen-
ished every week or so, when they are
longer in port than at sea, the extra-
ordinary isolation of the naval officer is
simply foolish. Its result, during the war,
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 261
was to bring this country into a danger
which the public have not yet understood.
Surely it is time that the naval officer
were treated like a reasonable being ? If
we take the analogy of the Army, we
observe during the war civilians becoming
generals and commanding armies with
notable success. In the Navy itself we
perceive thousands of ' hostilities only '
men, civilians entered straight from the
shore, performing admirable service. It
almost seems as if there was something in
the civilian, after all. Nevertheless the
public are still solemnly impressed with
the notion that the Navy is a great and a
holy mystery, only to be apprehended by
initiation in childhood, and that the prac-
tice of its craft demands the unremitting
devotion of the ascetic.
As a matter of fact, this is all nonsense.
There is no reason why the naval officer
should become so exclusive a specialist
that he knows nothing outside his own
profession, and very often nothings outside
his own particular branch of it. The Navy
262 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
owns an unexpressed sense of injury be-
cause the public do not appreciate it. How
in the world can the public appreciate what
they are not allowed to know ? You do not
find the recluses of a monastery annoyed
because they are forgotten by a godless
civilisation. Doctors, lawyers and soldiers,
simply because they are a part of society,
do not consider that they are misunder-
stood by society. And why should not
the naval officer be a part of society ?
That is really the question the present
writer ventures to ask. After many years'
observation of naval affairs he is drawn to
the conclusion that a very much happier
and a very much more satisfactory state of
things might be created by a few simple
changes.
All naval cadets should be entered from
the public schools and grammar schools.
Osborne could then be abolished, to the
saving of much money, not to mention
anxiety. As for Dartmouth, that institu-
tion could become the first stage of the
cadet, before he goes to sea. A certain
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 263
number, if not all, but preferably all,
sub-lieutenants and lieutenants should be
sent to the Universities for at least a
year.
The officers specialising in engineering
could then go to Keyham College for a
three or five years' course. At the same
time, qualified civilian engineers should
be invited to enter the Navy direct. Why
not ? Engineer-officers are always wanted,
and there they are. Nothing but the
mystery theory bars them from the Ser-
vice, with the result that the Navy never
has enough engineer-officers.
Royal Naval Reserve officers entering
the Navy should be eligible for promotion
above the rank of commander. Royal
Naval Volunteer Reserve officers, many
of whom did excellent service in the war,
should be allowed to enter the Regular
Navy.
The Royal Naval College at Greenwich,
in which noble establishment certain
courses for young officers are now provided,
should be made the headquarters of naval
264 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
education proper. Greenwich, in the
phrase of one among its presidents, who
effected many excellent reforms there, the
late Admiral Sir John Durnford, should
become the University of the Sea. In the
great chambers of that palace there is
room enough for an ample establishment
for every branch. What is lacking is the
initiative of the authorities. And so little
is the potential value of the Royal Naval
College understood that the other day a
Member of Parliament actually suggested
its abolition.
The traditional system of promotion
in the Service should be reformed from
top to bottom. Many years ago Lord
Beresford suggested that the tremendous
responsibilities of an admiral could seldom
be properly discharged by old men.
But apart from the matter of age, under
the present; system the senior officers
speedily lose knowledge of current de-
velopments, and are removed from the
practice of the special branch in which
they are most competent. Moreover, the
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 265
greater proportion of naval officers are
debarred from promotion for the simple
reason that there are many more junior
than senior officers required at any given
moment. The path to the top narrows
as it ascends. Many lieutenant-com-
manders must retire with the rank of
commander and disappear into civil life,
of which they know hardly anything, with
no provision save a small pension. Some
of them own technical knowledge which
gains them a lucrative post, but these are
the few. Among them are officers whom
the Navy cannot afford to lose, but whose
services, owing to its ridiculous system,
it is obliged to forfeit. For the rest, it is
merely the duty of the State to give every
officer and man in its service full oppor-
tunity for fitting himself to earn a com-
petent livelihood in the civil life to which,
except in the minority of cases, he must
presently return. That opportunity can
never be given so long as the dissociation
of the Navy from civil life is jealously
maintained. The alternative is to grant
266 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
a handsome pension, like the Indian Civil
Service.
The entrance of a selected number of
naval officers into the Universities has
given to them their first acquaintance
since childhood with the men and affairs
of the shore. One result will be that if
the Navy fails to offer advantages equiv-
alent to the advantages of a civil career,
the supply of competent naval officers in
the future will diminish.
The experience of the War dissipated the
pleasant delusion that the Navy was wholly
self-sufficing and completely organised to
deal with any emergency. For when the
emergency arrived, the first thing the Navy
was compelled to do was to create a new
Navy out of civilian material. The civil-
ians pulled it out of the ditch. The same
thing happened to the Army, with this
difference, that nobody of any intelligence
imagined that the little Regular Army could
fight a European war. What the Regular
Army did was to sacrifice itself to gain time
while the civilian army was a-preparing.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 267
Had the enemy fought the war at sea with
any spirit, the Navy would have been
obhged to consummate the same sacrifice.
If preparation for war be in question,
the association and interchange of naval
and civilian affairs would still be essential.
But the immediate need is to establish a
reasonable relation between the two which
shall benefit both. It is sometimes said
(with an accent of despair) that reform will
come, if it ever comes, from below — that
is, from the Labour people. The event is
highly improbable, for the more notorious
demagogues manifest not the smallest
interest in the matter, of which indeed
they are profoundly ignorant. Nor is
there any reason to imagine that an in-
dustrial and a mechanical civilisation,
which corrodes intellect, is likely to emit
from its lower layers any light other than
the angry glow of discontent.
At the same time, it is a melancholy
reflection that the series of statesmen who
have occupied the position of First Lord
have never even been aware that any need
268 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
for reform existed. It is true that the Sea
Lords would hardly enlighten them. In
the presence of these tremendous silences
the present writer is conscious of what
will probably be regarded as unforgivable
audacity. But, after all, he did not set
the yeast in the dough. It is there, and
it is working.
This is a matter in which the country as
a whole is concerned, for its security and
its prosperity alike must still depend upon
the sea services, and until a common under-
standing prevails between seamen and
landsmen there can be no unity of purpose.
Imperceptibly, the days of the exclusive
service have gone by, and the sooner the
change is brought into the region of
consciousness the better.
Nothing can correct the impression pro-
duced upon the mind of the landsmen by
some of the recent literature dealing with
the life of the Navy, except personal
acquaintance with that Service, nor can
aught persuade the naval officer that life
on shore has its own intrinsic values.
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE 269
except becoming for a time a part of that
life. The naval officer is not really the
kind of person depicted in those stories
about the Navy in which he is represented
as a compound of profound sentimentality
and romantic heroism, speaking a strange
dialect, invariably addressing his friends
by curious nicknames, and romping like
a child at every opportunity. This sing-
ular conception is like to misfeature the
Navy, as Ouida's Guardsmen, in the
sumptuous Victorian Age, misrepresented
the British Army. Those great creatures
did high credit to Ouida, and as heroes
of fiction they demand homage, but they
did not in fact embody the type of the
British Army.
The Navy enlists every variety of char-
acter, ability and temperament, and it
needs them all. But as at present con-
stituted, it appears that the Service itself
prevents itself from giving due scope and
verge to the talents with which it is
endowed. In the old sailing-ship days a
ferocious discipline was, fortunately, diver-
270 THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
sified by a startling indulgence. As the
ships changed from creatures whose life
was the wind of God and the will of man,
to monstrous mechanisms of steel, so the
administration of the Service became more
and more mechanical. From a free com-
pany the Navy became a factory. When
the man becomes the servant of the
machine he is on the way to death. A
mechanical system of administration kills
by degrees, and presently there is nothing
left but the system. And then . . . ?
APPENDIX
PROTECTOR PARAVANES
The following is a chronological list of occasions officially
reported to the Admiralty upon which a mine mooring
is known or believed to have been cut on service by the
Paravane Gear of H.M. Ships.
DATE.
1917
16 Mar.
1 June
30 Jtily
19 Sep.
19 Sep.
11 Nov.
16/19
Nov.
20 Dec.
22 Dec.
1918
26 Jan.
2 Feb.
16/17
Feb.
26 Feb.
SHIP AND CLASS.
Cambrian, Lt. Crsr.
Shannon, Crsr.
Galatea, Lt. Crsr.
Alsatian, A.M. Crsr.
Alsatian, A.M. Crsr.
Undaunted, Lt. Crsr.
Empebor of India,
Battleship
Cardiff, Lt. Crsr.
Minotaur, Crsr.
Royalist, Lt. Crsr.
Valiant, Battleship
Princess Royal,
B. Crsr.
Erin, Battleship
Carry forward .
Tonnage.
CHARACTER OF i CHARACTER OF CUT.
MINE. 1
German. British. Certain. Probable. Doubtful.
3,750 I
14,600
3,500
18,481
18,481
3,500
25,000
4,190
14,600
3,500
27,500
26,350
23,000
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
11
1
1
1
1
271
272
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Character of
Mine.
CHARACTER OF CUT.
DATE.
SHIP AND CLASS.
TONNAGE.
German.
British.
Certain.
Problble
Doubtful.
Brought forward .
11
2
9
• •
4
1918
4 Mar.
Patuoa, A.M. Crsr.
6,103
, ,
1
. ,
, .
23 Mar.
Angora, Minelayer
4,293
. .
1
. .
. .
26 Mar.
Skirmisher, Lt. Crsr.
2,895
, ,
1
, .
. ,
31 Mar.
Forward, Lt. Crsr.
2,850
. ,
, ,
1
8/11
Malaya, Battleship
27,500
1
Apr.
8/11
Apr.
14 Apr.
Malaya, Battleship
27,500
••
1
Valiant, Battleship
27,500
, ,
, ,
1
27 Apr.
Centaur, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
. .
. .
13 May
Canterbury, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
13 May
Canterbury, Lt. Crsr.
3,760
, ,
. .
. .
13 May
Cleopatra, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
. •
. .
13 May
Cleopatra, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
. •
13 MaV
Cleopatra, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
. .
. .
. .
13 May
Coventry, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
. .
. ,
13 May
Curaooa, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
1
. •
. .
13 May
CuRACOA, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
1
. ,
24 May
Cardiff, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
. .
28 May
Furious, Lt. Crsr.
19,100
1
29 May
Furious, Lt. Crar.
19,100
■*■
1
29 May
Cleopatra, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
31 May
CuRAcoA, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
. .
31 May
Concord, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
31 May
Centaur, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
. .
31 May
Coventry, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
. .
31 May
Coventry, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
31 May
Coventry, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
. .
. •
1 June
Curlew, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
. .
. •
1 June
1/2
June
Cardiff, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
••
••
••
Furious, Lt. Crsr.
19,100
..
, ^
1
, ,
6 June
Birkenhead, Lt. Crsr.
5,235
6 June
Birkenhead, Lt. Crsr.
5,235
. .
. •
6 June
Birkenhead, Lt. Crsr.
5,235
12 June
Coventry, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
. .
• .
. .
12 June
Concord, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
13 June
Galatea, Lt. Crsr.
3,500
13 June
Centaur, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
. .
13 June
Centaur, Lt. Crsr.
3,760
1
. •
14 June
Canterbury, Lt. Crsr.
Carry forward .
3,750
1
. .
39
5
40
3 8
APPENDIX
273
!
CHARACTER OF CHARACTER OF CUT. |
Date.
SHIP AND CLASS.
Tonnage.
■ i
German. British, i Certain.
Probable.
Doubtful.
Brought forward .
39 5 40
3
8
1918
14 Jvine
Cantebbuey, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
1 .. 1
14 June
Cantebbuby, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
.... 1
26 June
CouEAGEOUS, Lt. Crsr.
18,600
1 .. 1
28 June
Phaeton, Lt. Crsr.
3,500
1 .. 1
28 June
Undaunted, Lt. Crsr.
3,500
1 .. 1
29 June
CuEAcoA, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
.. i .. ! 1
,
8 JiUv
Cleopatea, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
1 .. 1
9 July
Repulse, B. Crsr.
26,500
1 .. 1
9 July
Phaeton, Lt. Crsr.
3,300
1 .. 1
1 Aug.
Cleopatea, Lt. Crsr.
3,750
1 .. 1
4 Aug.
Glasoow, Lt. Crsr.
4,800
1 , .. 1
19 Aug.
Cebes, Lt. Crsr.
4,190
1 1 .. 1
22/24
Empebob of India,
Aug.
Battleship
26,000
1 ....
1
28 Aug.
S0UTHAMPT0N,Lt.Crsr.
5,400
1 ..1
• •
1 Oct.
Southampton, Lt. Crsr.
5,400
1 .. ' 1
19 Oct.
Phaeton, Lt. Crsr.
3,500
1 ..1
• •
6 Deo.
Cabdifp, Lt. Crsr.
Total . .
4,190
1 .. 1
• •
583,713
54 ! 5 56
4
8
1 : ! 1
274
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
OTTERS
The following is a list of the occasions on which mines
have been cut by merchant ships fitted with Otter gear,
and the fact has been reported officially. Definite
evidence of the mine having been cut existed except in
the cases where marked with an asterisk.
Date.
SHIP.
Tonnage.
POSITION.
REMARKS.
1917
16 July
HUNSWOBTH
2,991
Off St. Albans
Head
Mine came to sur-
face
11 Sep.
HUNSWORTH
2,991
Off The Shambles
July
♦Granttjlly
Castle
7,612
'
Wire presumed
cut from state of
blades
13 Sep.
HuNSWOBTH
2,991
Off Trevose Head
Led to discovery of
new minefield
13 Sep.
GORSEMOOR
3,079
Off Kirkenek,
Mediterranean
In company with
H.M.S. Harrier
15 Sep.
♦HUNTSCRAFT
5.113
Between Havre
and Cowes
Night. Presumed
cut from state of
blades
13 Sep.
William
MiDDLETOK
2.543
Off Pendeen
Known minefield
24 Sep.
Unknown
4.000 (?)
Off Trevose Head
Reported by drifter
Livelihood
Cut Gorman mine
27 Sep.
Febnandina
1.851
3 mUea S.S.W. of
The Shambles
Type IV.
8 Oct.
Brodliffe
5,893
Between the
Smalls and
Grass holme.
Pembroke Bay
Discovered new
minefield
9 Oct.
Thistlemoob
6,506
31" W. by W.
Beachy Head
Mine came to sur-
face 100 ft. from
ship
Wire presumed
13 Oct.
♦Meltonian
6.306
Off Lamlash
cut from state of
blades
19 Got.
POPLAB BbANOH
5.391
51° 30' N., 4" 21' Cast off her gear.
W. Mine in tow
APPENDIX
275
Date.
Ship.
Tonnage.
POSITION.
REMARKS.
1917
22 Oct.
♦Merchant
3,918
Between Liver-
pool and Glas-
gow
Wire presumed cut
from state of blades
25 Oct.
Lake Manitoba
9,674
Between Belfast
and Liverpool
Night-mine moor-
ing found foul of
Otter
11 Nov.
Gregynoq
1,701
Off Trevose Head
12 Nov.
USKMOOK
3,189
4 miles N. by E.
Bardsley
9 a.m. cut mine
adrift. Otter
brought in mine
moorings and fit-
tings
14 Nov.
♦Glenaet
Castle
4,000 (?)
Outside Mersey
Wire presumed
cut from state of
blades
4 Dec.
Manchester
Mariner
4,106
50° 04' N., 4° 49'
W.
Otter exploded mine
13 Dec.
*ClTY OF ORAN
7,784
Between N.W. of
Ireland and
Mersey Bar
Wire presumed cut
from state of blades
21 Dec.
Wardog
3,046
Between Nash
Point and Sear-
Chain and deton-
ator of newly-laid
1918
24 Jan.
weather
mine brought in
Htjntsland
2,871
4 miles from
Cut mine
Owers. 50° 33'
N., 0° 41' W.
bearing S.W. J
W. Mag.
24 Jan.
Httntsland
2,871
Do.
Cut mine
24 Jan.
*Justitia
32,234
Between The
Maidens and
Mersey Bar
Wire presumed cut
from state of blades
24 Jan.
*Carmania
19,524
Between Over-
say and Mersey
Bar
Do.
25 Jan.
Ariadne
1,986
50° 05' N., 4° 47'
Cut a mine and sunk
Alexandra
W.
it by rifle fire
30 Jan.
Teesbridge
3,898
Off Syra, Grecian
Archipelago
Cut during night.
Patrol picked up
mine in morning on
vessel's track
1 Mar.
♦HONORIUS
3,476
Between Mersey
Bar and Nash
Point
Wire presumed cut
from state of blade
9 Mar.
Olympia
6,138
In vicinity of
Royal Sovereign
Light Vessel
276
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Date.
SHIP.
TONNAGK.
POSITION.
REMARKS.
1918
15 Mar.
KOEA
817
5 miles S.E. New-
haven Light-
house
Cut a mine : sunk
by gunfire from
T.B. 5
22 Mar.
Teakol
4,000 (?)
56" 35' N„ 2° 23'
W.
Off St. Cathe-
Mine sunk by gun-
fire
Wire presumed
14 Apr.
*MOKENQO
4,000 (?)
rine's Road
out from state of
blades
.3 May
SWAINBY
5,811
52° 55' N., 4° 40'
W.
50° 45' 20' N.,
8 May
Qtjilotta
3,692
Mine rose to sur-
Newhaven Pier,
face : discovered
0° 03' 50" E.,
new minefield
Hope Point
10 May
Badagri
2,952
Off Sierra Leone
12 May
Benlawebs
3,949
52° 55' N., 4° 2'
W. (Approx.)
3 July
*EXM00R
4,329
In Schipino Chan-
nel, Grecian
Archipelago
Wire presumed
cut from .state of
blades. Teeth
broken
24 Sep.
♦Nirvana
6,021
Approaches to
Havre, 49°44'N.,
0° 29' W.
Otter came into
ship's side. Teeth
of cutter blades
broken
29 Sep.
Plassy
7,346
Off Long Island,
New York. Lat.
40" 48' N., Long.
70= 33' W.
Mine sighted pass-
ing the stern. Cut-
ter blades marked
6 Oct.
•DOQRA
6,138
On passage to
Bizerta
At night mine not
seen, but condition
of blades and be-
haviour of Otter
indicated mine cut
8 Nov.
Goohkha
(5,335
Off Kavale
Cut mme in day-
light. Mine seen on
surface alongside
14 Nov.
GOORKHA
6,335
Dardanelles
Cut mine and passed
through minefield
14 Nov.
GOORKHA
6,335
Dardanelles
Do.
14 Nov.
GoORKHA
6,335
Dardanelles
Do.
APPENDIX
277
EXPLOSIVE PARAVANES
The following is a chronological list of occasions
officially reported to the Admiralty upon which Explosive
Paravanes have fired on service ; showing also, for each
such occasion, the official classification of its result.
DATE.
Ship .and Class.
Official Classification.
Possibly
Slightly
Damaged.
Probably
Seriously
Damaged.
Probably
Sunk.
Known
Sunk.
1916
18 Mar.
27 May
18 July
26 July
13 Aug.
9 Sep.
11 Sep.
28 Nov.
28 Nov.
6 Dec.
16 Dec.
30 Dec.
1917
27 Feb.
9 Mar.
12 Mar.
13 Mar.
23 Mar.
29 Mar.
13 Apr.
16 Apr.
17 Apr.
19 Apr.
26 Apr.
2 May
16 May
25 May
Medusa, T.B.D,
Matchless, T.B.D.
Acheron, T.B.D.
Ftredrake, T.B.D.
Laverock, T.B.D.
Lucifer, T.B.D.
Patriot, T.B.D.
Laverock, T.B.D.
Linnet, T.B.D.
Ariel, T.B.D.
Achates, T.B.D.
Patrician, T.B.D.
ExE, T.B.D.
Marvel, T.B.D.
MEDEii, T.B.D.
FiBEDRAKE, T.B.D.
Hind, T.B.D.
MUNSTER, T.B.D.
Peregrine, T.B.D.
Rosalind, T.B.D.
Relentless, T.B.D.
Surprise, T.B.D.
Hind, T.B.D.
Murray, T.B.D.
Napier, T.B.D.
Acasta, T.B.D.
Carry forward .
•
1
i
1
1
I
l"
1
••
1
1
• •
*
*
I
6 1 3
• •
1
278
THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE
Date.
SHIP AND CLASS.
Ofkicial Classification.
Possibly
Slightly
'"■'-'v "-^"T^
Known
Damaged.
Damaged. *""''•
ounK.
Brought forward .
5
3
1
1917
1
3 June
Achates, T.B.D.
1
: ..
10 June
Lookout, T.B.D.
, ,
,
15 June
Motor Launch 143
1
.
18 July
Ophelia, T.B.D.
,
28 July
Taubus, T.B.D.
> • 1 •
5 Aug.
Owl, T.B.D.
, ,
19 Aug.
Ready, T.B.D.
1
20 Aug,
Torrent, T.B.D.
, ,
17 Sep.
Acasta, T.B.D.
1
23 Oct.
MELAirpus, T.B.D.
1
13 Nov.
Flredrake, T.B.D.
1
15 Nov.
Oriole, T.B.D.
. ,
17 Nov.
Lance, T.B.D.
30 Nov.
Retriever, T.B.D.
, ,
l
, ,
1918
8 Jan.
Cyclamen, Sloop
■ • ' • •
1
4 Feb.
Sheldrake, T.B.D.
1 !
. .
26 Feb.
Acheron, T.B.D.
• • ■ •
'
. 1
12 Mar.
Defender, T.B.D.
1
1 Apr.
Linnet, T.B.D.
• • 1 ■ ■
22 Apr.
T.B. 81
24 Apr.
Oeeron, T.B.D.
i
2 May
Motor Launch 486
;; '.'. 1 ..
17 May
Throster, T.B.D.
1 .. i ..
1
27 May
Motor Launch 213
1
1
19 July
SuGi, Japanese T.B.D.
. . { * • . .
20 Sep.
Dee, T.B.D.
1
1
4 Oct.
P. 33
Totals
.. 1 .. 1
11 4 1 1 5
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