About a quarter of a mile apart, one after the other along the ribbon of deep water just off the shore, lie a number of Admiralty buoys about the size and shape of a small factory boiler. At these buoys, sometimes attached in little groups of two, three, and even four to the same ring bolt, lie the American destroyers. From the shore one sees the long lean hull of the nearest vessel and a clump of funnels all tilted backwards at the same angle. The air above these waspish nests, though unstained with smoke, often broods vibrant with heat. All the destroyers are camouflaged, the favourite colours being black, West Point grey and flat white. This camouflage produces neither by colour nor line the repulsive and silly effect which is for the moment so popular. Going aboard a destroyer for the first time, a lay observer is struck by their extraordinary leanness, a natural enough impression when one recalls that the vessels measure some three hundred feet in length and only thirty-four in width. Many times have I watched from our hill these long, low, rapier shapes steal swiftly out to sea, and been struck with the terror, the genuine dread that lies in the word destroyer. For it is a terrible word, a word heavy with destruction and vengeance, a word that is akin to many an Old Testament phrase.
Our great destroyer fleet may be divided into two squadrons, the first of larger boats called "thousand tonners," the second of smaller vessels known as "flivvers." Another division parts the thousand tonners into those which have a flush deck from bow to stern, and those which have a forward deck on a higher level than the main deck. All these types burn oil, the oil burner being nothing more than a kind of sprayer whose mist of fuel a forced draft whirls into a roar of flame; all can develop a speed of at least twenty-nine knots. The armament varies with the individual vessel, the usual outfit consisting of four four-inch guns, two sets of torpedo tubes, two mounted machine guns, and a store of depth charges.
These charges deserve a eulogy of their own. They have done more towards winning the war than all the giant howitzers whose calibre has stupefied the world. In appearance and mechanism they are the simplest of affairs. The Navy always refers to them as cans: "I dropped a can right on his head"; "it was the last can that did the business." Imagine an ash can of medium size painted black and transformed into a ponderous thick walled cylinder of steel crammed with some three hundred pounds of T.N.T. and you have a perfect image of one. Now imagine at one end of this cylinder a detonator protected by an arrangement which can be set to resist the pressure of water at various levels. A sub appears, and sinks swiftly. If it is just below the surface, the destroyer drops a bomb set to explode at a depth of seventy feet. The bomb then sinks by its own weight to that level at which the outward force of the protective mechanism is overbalanced by the inward pressure of the water; the end yields, the detonator crushes, the bomb explodes, and your submarine is flung horribly out of the depths almost clear of the water, and while he is up, the destroyer's guns fill the hull full of holes. Or suppose the submarine to have gone down two hundred feet. Then you drop a bomb geared to that depth upon him, and blow in his sides like a cracked egg. The sound of these engines travels through the water some twenty or twenty-five miles, and there have been ships who have caught the vibration of a distant depth bomb through their hulls and thought themselves torpedoed. I once saw a depth bomb roll off a British sloop into a half filled dry dock; the men scrambled away like mad, but returned in a few minutes to fish out a "can," that had sixty more feet to go before it could burst. It lay on the bottom harmless as a stone. The charges rest at the stern of a vessel, lying one above the other on two sloping runways, and can be released either from the stern or by hydraulic pressure applied at the bridge. The credit for this exceedingly successful scheme belongs to a distinguished American naval officer.
The destroyer has but one deck which is arranged in the following manner. I take one of the "thousand tonners" as an illustration. From an incredibly lean, high bow, a first deck falls back a considerable distance to a four-inch gun; behind the gun lies another open space closed by a two-storied structure whose upper section is the bridge and whose lower section a chart room. At the rear of this structure the hull of the boat is cut away, and one descends by a ladder from the deck which is on the level of the chart room floor, to the main deck level some eight feet below. Beyond this cut but one deck lies, the mere steel covering of the hull. Guns and torpedo tubes are mounted on it, the funnels rise flush from the plates; a life line lies strung along its length, and strips of cocoa matting try to give something of a footing.
The officers' quarters are to be found under the forward deck. The sleeping rooms are situated on both sides of a narrow passageway which begins at the bow and leads to the open living room and dining room space known as the ward room. In the hull, in the space beneath the wardroom lie the quarters of the crew, amidships lie the boilers and the engine room, and beyond them, a second space for the crew and the petty officers. A destroyer is by no means a paradise of comfort, though when the vessel lies in a quiet port, she can be as attractive and livable as a yacht. But Heaven help the poor sailor aboard a destroyer at sea! The craft rolls, dips, shudders, plunges like a horse straight up at the stars, sinks rapidly and horribly, and even has spells of see-sawing violently from side to side. Its worst motion is an unearthly twist,-a swift appalling rise at a dreadful angle, a toss across space to the other side of a wave, a fearful descent sideways and down and a ghastly shudder. "You need an iron stomach" to be on a destroyer is a navy saying. Some, indeed, can never get used to them, and have to be transferred to other vessels.
The destroyer is the capital weapon against the submarine. She can out-race a sub, can fight him with guns, torpedoes, or depth charges; she can send him bubbling to the bottom by ramming him amidships. She can confuse him by throwing a pall of smoke over his target; she can beat off his attacks either above or below the surface. He fires a torpedo at her, she dodges, runs down the trail of the torpedo, drops a depth bomb, and brings her prey to the surface, an actual incident this. Her problem is of a dual nature, being both defensive and offensive. To-day, her orders are to escort a convoy through the danger zone to a position in latitude x and longitude y; to-morrow, her orders are to patrol a certain area of the beleaguered sea or a given length of coast.
Based upon a foreign port, working in strange waters, the destroyer flotilla added to the fine history of the American Navy a splendid record of endurance, heroism and daring achievement.
IF YOU would understand the ocean we sailed in war-time, do not forget that it was essentially an ambush, that the foe was waiting for us in hiding. Nothing real or imagined brooded over the ocean to warn a vessel of the presence of danger, for the waters engulfed and forgot the tragedies of this war as they have engulfed and forgotten all disasters since the beginning of time. The great unquiet shield of the sea stretched afar to pale horizons, the sun shone as he might shine on a pretty village at high noon, the gulls followed alert and clamorous. Yet a thundering instant was capable of transforming this apparent calm into the most formidable insecurity. In four minutes you would have nothing left of your ship and its company but a few boats, some bodies, and a miscellaneous litter of wreckage strewn about the scene of the disaster. Of the assassin there was not a sign.
All agreed that the torpedo arrived at a fearful speed. "Like a long white bullet through the water," said one survivor. "Honest to God, I never saw anything come so fast," said another.
"Where did it strike?" I asked the first speaker, a fine intelligent English seaman who had been rescued by a destroyer and brought to an American base.
"In a line with the funnel, sir. A great column of steam and water went up together, and the pieces of the two port boats fell all around the bridge. I think it was a bit of one of the boats that struck me here." He held up a bandaged hand.
"What happened then?"
"All the lights went out. It was just dusk, you see, so we had to abandon the boat in the darkness. A broken steam pipe was roaring so that you couldn't hear a word any one was saying. She sank very fast."
"Did you see any sign of the submarine?"
"The captain's steward thought he saw something come up just about three hundred yards away as we were going down. But in my judgment, it was too dark to see anything distinctly, and my notion is that he saw a bit of wreckage, perhaps a hatch."
The next man to whom I talked was a chunky little stoker who might have stepped out of the pages of one of Jacobs' stories. I shall not aim to reproduce his dialect-it was of the "wot abaht it" order.
"We were heading into Falmouth with a cargo of steel and barbed wire. I had a lot of special supplies which I bought myself in New York, some sugar, two very nice 'ams and one of those round Dutch cheeses. I was always thinking to myself how glad my old woman would be to see all those vittles. Just as we got off the Scillies, one of those bloody swine hit us with a torpedo between the boiler room and the thwart ship bunker, forward of the engine room, and about sixteen feet below the water line. Understand? I was in the boiler room. Down came the bunker doors, off went the tank tops in the engine room, two of the boilers threw out a mess of burning coal, and the water came pouring in like a flood. Let me tell you that cold sea water soon got bloody hot, the room was filled with steam, couldn't see anything. I expected the boilers to blow up any minute. I yelled out for my mates. Suddenly I heard one of 'em say: 'Where's the ladder?' and there was pore Jem with his face and chest burned cruel by the flying coal, and he had two ribs broke too, though we didn't know it at the time. Says 'e, 'Where's Ed?' and just then Ed came wading through the scalding water, pawing for the ladder. So up we all went, never expecting to reach the top. Then when we got into a boat, we 'eard that the wireless had been carried away, and that we'd have to wait for somebody to pick us up. So we waited for two days and a Yankee destroyer found us. Yes, both my mates are getting better, though sister 'ere tells me that pore Ed may lose his eye."
Sometimes the torpedo was seen and avoided by a quick turn of the wheel. There were other occasions when the torpedo seems to follow a ship. I remember reading this tale. "At 2.14 I saw the torpedo and felt certain that it would mean a hit either in the engine or the fire room, so I ordered full speed ahead, and put the rudder over hard left. At a distance of between two and three hundred yards, the torpedo took a sheer to the left, but righted itself. For an instant it appeared as if the torpedo might pass astern, but porpoising again, it turned toward the ship and struck us close by the propellers."
So much for blind chances. One hears curious tales. The column of water caused by the explosion tossed onto the forward hatch of one merchant ship a twisted half of the torpedo; there was a French boat struck by a torpedo which did not explode, but lay there at the side violently churning, and clinging to the boat as if it were possessed of some sinister intelligence. I heard of a boat laden with high explosives within whose hold a number of motor trucks had been arranged. A torpedo got ,her at the mouth of the channel. An explosion similar to the one at Halifax raked the sea, the vessel, blown into fragments, disappeared from sight in the twinkling of an eye, and an instant later there fell like bolides from the startled firmament a number of immense motor trucks, one of which actually crashed on to the deck of another vessel !
Meanwhile, I suppose, some hundred and fifty feet or more below, "Fritz," seated at a neat folding table, wrote it all down in his log.
TWO days before, in a spot somewhat south of the area we were going out to patrol, a submarine had attacked a convoy and sunk a horse boat. I had the story of the affair months afterwards from an American sailor who had seen it all from a nearby ship. This sailor, no other than my friend Giles, had been stationed in the lookout when he heard a thundering pound, and looking to port, he saw a column of water hanging just amidships of the torpedoed vessel, a column that broke crashing over the decks. In about three minutes the ship broke in two, the bow and the stern rising like the points of a shallow V, and in five minutes she sank. The sea was strewn with straw; there were broken stanchions floating in the confused water, and a number of horses could be seen swimming about." All you could see was their heads; they looked awful small in all that water. Some of the horses had men hanging to them. There was a lot of yelling for help." The other ships of the convoy had run for dear life; the destroyers had raced about like hornets whose nest is disturbed, but the submarine escaped.
We left a certain harbour at about three in the afternoon. Many of the destroyers were out at sea taking in a big troop convoy and the harbour seemed unusually still. The town also partook of this quiet, the long lateral lines of climbing houses staring out blankly at us like unresponsive acquaintances. Very few folk were to be seen on the street. We were bound forth on an adventure that was drama itself, a drama which even then the Fates, unknown to us, were swiftly weaving into a tragedy of vengeance, yet I shall never forget how casual and undramatic the Esplanade appeared. A loafer or two lounged by the door of the public house, a little group of sailors passed, a jaunting car went swiftly on its way to the station; there was nothing to suggest that these isles were beleaguered; nothing told of the remorseless enemy at the gates of the sea.
All night long under a gloomy, starless sky we patrolled waters dark as the very waves of the Styx. The hope that nourished us was the thought of finding a submarine on the surface, but we heard no noise through the mysterious dark, and a long, interminable dawn revealed to us nothing but the high crumbling cliffs of a lonely and ill-reputed bay. Where were they then, I have often wondered? When had they their last look at the sun? Had they any consciousness of the end which time was bringing to them with a giant's hurrying step? At about six o'clock we swung off to the southward, and in a short time the coast had faded from sight.
From six o'clock to about half past ten we swept in great circles and lines the mist encircled disk of the pale sea which had been entrusted to our keeping. We were at hand to answer any appeal for aid which might flutter through the air, to investigate any suspicious wreckage; above all, to fulfill our function of destruction. I have spoken elsewhere of the terror which lurks in the word destroyer. We were hunters; beaters of the ambush of the sea. About us lay the besieged waters, yellow green in colour, vexed with tide rips and mottled with shadows of haze and appearances of shoal.
We were on the bridge. Suddenly a voice called down the tube from the lookout on the mast:
"Smoke on the horizon just off the port bow, sir."
In a little while a vague smudginess made itself seen along the humid southeast, and some fifteen minutes later there emerged from this smudge the advance vessels of a convoy. Now one by one, now in twos and threes, the vessels of the convoy climbed over the dim edge of the world, a handful of destroyers accompanying the fleet. Almost every ship was camouflaged, though the largest of all, a great ocean drudge of a cargo boat, still preserved her decency of dull grey. A southeast wind blowing from behind the convoy sent the smoke of the funnels over the bows and down the western sky. There was something indescribably furtive about the whole business. The ships were going at their very fastest, but to us they seemed to be going very slowly, to be drifting almost, across the southern sky. "We advanced," as our report read later, "to take up a position with the convoy." The watch, always keen on the 660, redoubled its vigilance. The bait was there; the hunt was on. Now, if ever, was the time for submarines. I remember somebody saying, "We may see a sub." The destroyer advanced to within three miles of the convoy, which was then across her bow. The morning was sunny and clear; the sun high in the north.
"Periscope! Port bow," suddenly cried the surgeon of the ship, then on watch on the bridge. "About three hundred yards away, near that sort of a barrel thing over there. See it? It's gone now."
Powerful glasses swept the suspected area. The captain, cool as ice, took his stand by the wheel.
"There it is again, sir. -About seventy-five yards nearer this way."
This time it was seen by all who stood by. The periscope was extraordinarily small, hardly larger than a stout hoe handle, and not more than two feet above the choppy sea.
" Full speed ahead," said the captain. "Sound general quarters."
I do not think there was a heart there that was not beating high, but outwardly things went on just as calmly as they had before the periscope had been sighted.
The fans of the extra boilers began to roar. The general quarters alarm, a continuous ringing, sounded its shrill call. Men tumbled to their stations from every corner of the ship, some going to the torpedo tubes, some to the guns, others to the depth charges at the stern. The wake of the destroyer, now tearing along at full speed, resembled a mill race. And now the destroyer began a beautiful manoeuvre. She became the killer, the avenger of blood. Leaving her direct course, she turned hard over to port, and at the point where her curve cut the estimated course of the German, she tossed over a buoy to mark the spot at which the German had been seen and released a depth bomb. The iron can rolled out of its chocks, and fell with a little splash into the foaming wake. The buoy, a- mere wooden platform with a bit of rag, tied to an upright stick wobbled sillily behind. For about four seconds nothing happened. Then the seas behind us gave a curious, convulsive lift, one might have thought that the ocean had drawn a spasmodic breath; over this lifted water fled a frightful glassy tremor, and an instant later there broke forth with a thundering pound a huge turbid geyser which subsided, splashing noisily into streaks and eddies of foam and purplish dust. The destroyer then dropped three more in a circle round the first-a swift cycle of thundering crashes. Meanwhile the convoy, warned by our signal and by the uproar turned tail and fled from the spot. Great streamers of heavy black smoke poured from the many funnels, revealing the search for speed. In the area we had bombed, a number of dead fish began to be seen floating in the scum. By this time some of the vessels from the escort of the convoy had rushed to our assistance, and round and round the buoy they tore, dropping charge after charge. The ocean now became literally speckled with dead whiting, and I saw something that looked like an enormous eel floating belly upwards.
The convoy disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Little by little the excitement died away. Finally the only vessel left in sight on the broad shield of the sea was another American destroyer, our partner on patrol. The 305 was fitted with listening devices, and she agreed to remain behind to keep an eye and ear open. We were to have a word from her every half hour.
From twelve noon to two o'clock there were no tidings of importance. At 2:20, however, this laconic message sent us hurrying back to the scene of the morning's combat.
"Signs of oil coming to surface."
What had happened in the darkness below those yellow green waves? I am of the opinion that our first bomb, dropped directly upon her, crushed the submarine in like an egg-shell, that she had then sunk to the bottom, and developed a slow leak.
The 660 returned through a choppy sea to the battleground of the morning.
We caught sight of the other destroyer from afar. She lay on the flank of
a great area defiled by the bodies of fish, purple T.N.T. dust and various
bits of muddy wreckage which the explosions had shaken free from the ooze.
Gulls, already attracted to the spot, were circling about, uttering hoarse
cries. In the heart of this disturbed area lay a great still pool of shining
water and into this pool, from somewhere in the depths, huge bubbles of
molasses-brown oil were rising. Reaching the surface, these bubbles spread
into filmy pan cakes round whose edges little waves curled and broke.