The British Navy Book. Field Cyril

LEARNING TO FIGHT ZEPPELINS Gunnery practice on a British war-ship against an aerial target. It is a difficult matter to get "war conditions", as the ordinary target, such as a towed kite, is easier to hit than an aeroplane.

      Things are looking ugly. The submarines still follow astern, but are not near enough to risk a shot. We cannot steam any faster, and we are baulking the fire of our friends. We slow down, risking the submarines, to allow our consorts to get ahead of us and enable us to meet the three enemy ships on equal terms. There are many anxious looks astern while this manœuvre is in execution. The periscopes of our submarine foes are still discernible, but beyond them is a fast-growing smoke-cloud from which presently emerge the lithe black hulls of our "X" destroyer flotilla. Apparently the submarines do not observe their approach; their periscopes are steadily fixed on our ship, reckoning every yard they gain on us. But the destroyers see them, and presently we see also a warning signal from the enemy flagship. But it is too late. Before the Unterseeische Böte can dive out of harm's way three or four destroyers sweep over them and ram them at the speed of an express train. Slowing down, they circle right and left and open fire. What at we cannot see. Presently up pops a grey lump some way astern. The light guns on the superstructure give tongue so quickly that one has hardly time to recognize it as the conning-tower of a submarine before it is literally blown to pieces.

      For the first time during the fight a cheer rings out fore and aft. Almost at once the little guns begin banging away again. This time their long muzzles are nosing about in the air. What are they firing at? "There they are!" cries someone, pointing to the south-east, where two big amorphous monsters have appeared high up in the clouds. Zeppelins, right enough; and the bang, bang, bang of the lighter artillery rises in crescendo from every ship and destroyer till the air echoes like Vulcan's forge. Up come the pair of enormous sausages at a high rate of speed, and as they pass over our destroyer flotilla they begin dropping their bombs. Dull concussions thud apparently on the ship's bottom; fountains of white water spout all round the small craft.

      But none are hit. The leading "gas-bag" is heading straight for us. She has probably spotted our damaged condition, and reckons us an easy prey. But our gunners are getting closer to her every shot, and presently she turns slowly to starboard, dropping a futile bomb as she goes. She now presents a fine broadside target as big as a Dreadnought, another shot gets home somewhere, and she makes off in the direction she came with her nose down, tail in air, and a pronounced list to port. Her consort turns too, and scuttles off at top speed. She hopes to "live to fight another day" over some peaceful English village where there are no nasty, disagreeable quick-firing guns, shrapnel-shell, and other unkind greetings from those she would destroy.

      The day is drawing to a close. We are heading homewards in tow of a consort. Low down under the tawny sunset that dim purple line is the coast of "Old England"—the motherland we are engaged in defending from the assault of the most unscrupulous enemy she has ever encountered. The wind has fallen, the waves are hardly more than ripples, and evening is closing down with a soothing hush over land and sea. We have cleared up after the smashing and racket of the battle as far as possible, but we can hardly crawl along, and are bound to go into dockyard hands for some weeks at any rate.

      "Are we downhearted?" "No!" For we have given much better than the best efforts of the Huns could give. Two of their ships are at the bottom, with most of their crews; though, thanks to the exertions and humanity of our gallant seamen, a considerable number of them have been saved from a watery grave. To this bag may be added three if not four submarines and a badly damaged Zeppelin, so we are not ill-satisfied with the day's work. We have just passed several "tall ships" on their way out to relieve us on patrol, and as we begin to get under the land there is a whirring up aloft in the gathering dusk, and a dozen sea-planes, like a flight of wild-ducks, come swooping seaward and make towards the Channel.

      Where are they off to? Are they patrolling, or are they bent on a raid on the enemy's magazines, hangars, and gun positions? We do not know, but our ignorance does not worry us. We know the kind of man that is flying down there towards the southern horizon, and are quite satisfied that he will "make a good job" of whatever he has in hand. Just as the sun dips, out comes a destroyer from the shadow of the land to pilot us through the mine-field, and so we are brought "into the harbour where we would be". We have plenty of hard work before us—some of it very sad work. There are our poor wounded shipmates down below in the sick-bay who have to be taken ashore to hospital, and there are the last honours to be paid to those other gallant comrades and shipmates who have "fought the good fight" and are now making their last voyage en route for that promised land where "there shall be no more sea".

      And now let us consider how this guardian fleet and the men who man it came into being. In the following pages my object will be not so much to describe well-known sea-fights as to give a series of pictures of the sailor and of the navy at different stages of "our island story".

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      A Lesson from Cæsar

      "Storm and sea were Britain's bulwarks,

       Long ere Britons won their name;

       Mightier far than pikes and halberds

       Wind and wave upheld her fame;

       Storm and sea are Britain's brothers,

       Keep, with her, their sleepless guard;

       Britain's sons, before all others,

       Share with them their watch and ward.

       Chorus— "'Forward! On!' the sea-king's war-word Ages back—to do or die.[1] 'Ne'er a track but points us forward!'[2] Ages on—our lines reply." E. H. H. In Officers' Training Corps and Naval Cadets' Magazine, March, 1913.

      Whenever we want to find out anything about the early history of Great Britain, we have, almost invariably, to turn to the writings of our old friend Julius Cæsar. In attempting to trace the beginnings of the Royal Navy, that magnificent organization "whereon", point out the Articles of War, "under the good Providence of God, the Wealth, Safety, and Strength of the Kingdom chiefly depend", we have to conform to the same rule, and consult this authority. From Cæsar's De Bello Gallico we learn that in his time the Ancient Britons made use of boats with a wooden frame, supporting wicker-work instead of planking, and rendered watertight by a covering of skins—just such boats, in fact, though probably larger—as, under the name of "coracles", are used to this day on the Wye and some other rivers and estuaries.

      The portability and rapid construction of these boats commended them to Cæsar's military eye, and later on, in one of his Continental wars, he ordered his soldiers to make some light boats in imitation of those he had seen in Britain, in order to carry his army across a river. But, though Cæsar especially mentions these vessels, he does not say that the British of his day had no other or larger vessels. Though they made use of hides and wicker, they must have known something of wooden vessels. There is no doubt that they or their ancestors had large "dug-outs", hollowed from huge trunks of trees in the same way as Robinson Crusoe constructed his famous boat. We know this because many of these have been discovered buried in the mud of our rivers. One of them, found in the bed of the Rother in 1822, was 60 feet in length and 5 feet wide. Others have been found in Lincolnshire, Scotland, and Sussex, though none of them was nearly as long as the Rother boat. We must remember, too, that the Phœnicians had traded to Cornwall for tin, probably for centuries, and the Britons must have been familiar with their comparatively advanced types of shipbuilding.

      But many writers on naval matters are of the opinion that our British ancestors, whose coracles are described by Cæsar, had, even at that time, really stout and formidable ships. The reason is this. The Veneti, a race who inhabited western Brittany, and the country at the mouth of the Loire, were a kindred race, and when attacked by Cæsar received assistance from Britain. Now the strength of the Veneti