CHAPTER XI
THE TRAGEDY OF THE TWO SQUADRONS
It takes a good deal to shake the nerves of British naval officer orseaman, but those on board the ships of the Spithead Squadron would havebeen something more than human if they could have viewed the appallinghappenings of the last few terrible minutes with their accustomedcoolness. They were ready to fight anything on the face of the waters orunder them, but an enemy in the air who could rain down shells, a coupleof which were sufficient to destroy the most powerful forts in theworld, and who could not be hit back, was another matter. It was abitter truth, but there was no denying it. The events of the last tenyears had clearly proved that a day must come when the flying machinewould be used as an engine of war, and now that day had come--and thefighting flying machine was in the hands of the enemy.
The anchors were torn from the ground, signals were flashed from theflagship, the _Prince George_, and within four minutes the squadron wasunder way to the south-eastward. After what had happened the Admiral incommand promptly and rightly decided that to keep his ships cramped upin the narrow waters was only to court further disaster. His place wasnow the open sea, and a general fleet action offered the only means ofpreventing an occupation of almost defenceless Portsmouth, and thelanding of hostile troops in the very heart of England's southerndefences.
Fifteen first-class torpedo boats and ten destroyers ran out from theHampshire and Isle of Wight coasts, ran through the ships, and spreadthemselves out in a wide curve ahead, and at the same time twentysubmarines crept out from the harbour and set to work laying contactmines in the appointed fields across the harbour mouth and from shore toshore behind the Spithead forts.
But the squadron had not steamed a mile beyond the forts before a seriesof frightful disasters overtook them. First, a huge column of water roseunder the stern of the _Jupiter_. The great ship stopped and shudderedlike a stricken animal, and began to settle down stern first. Instantlythe _Mars_ and _Victorious_ which were on either side of her sloweddown, their boats splashed into the water and set to work to rescuethose who managed to get clear of the sinking ship.
But even while this was being done, the _Banshee_, the _Flying Fish_which had destroyed the forts, had taken up her position a thousand feetabove the doomed squadron. A shell dropped upon the deck of the_Spartiate_, almost amidships. The pink flash blazed out between her twomidship funnels. They crumpled up as if they had been made of brownpaper. The six-inch armoured casemates on either side seemed to crumbleaway. The four-inch steel deck gaped and split as though it had beenmade of matchboard. Then the _Banshee_ dropped to within five hundredfeet and let go another shell almost in the same place. A terrificexplosion burst out in the very vitals of the stricken ship, and thegreat cruiser seemed to split asunder. A vast volume of mingled smokeand flame and steam rose up, and when it rolled away, the _Spartiate_had almost vanished.
But that was the last act of destruction that the _Banshee_ was destinedto accomplish. That moment the moon sailed out into a patch of clearsky. Every eye in the squadron was turned upward. There was the airshipplainly visible. Her captain instantly saw his danger and quickened uphis engines, but it was too late. He was followed by a hurricane ofshells from the three-pound quick-firers in the upper tops of thebattleships. Then came an explosion in mid-air which seemed to shake thevery firmament itself. She had fifty or sixty of the terrible shellswhich had wrought so much havoc on board, and as a dozen shells piercedher hull and burst, they too exploded with the shock. A vast blaze ofpink flame shone out.
"Talk about going to glory in a blue flame," said Seaman GunnerTompkins, who had aimed one of the guns in the fore-top of the_Hannibal_, and of course, like everybody else, piously believed thathis was one of the shells that got there. "That chap's gone to t'otherplace in a red'un. War's war, but I don't hold with that sort offighting; it doesn't give a man a chance. Torpedoes is bad enough, Gawdknows--"
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a shock and a shudder ranthrough the mighty fabric of the battleship. The water rose in afoam-clad mountain under her starboard quarter. She heeled over to port,and then rolled back to starboard and began to settle.
"Torpedoed, by George! What did I tell you?" gasped Gunner Tompkins. Thenext moment a lurch of the ship hurled him and his mates far out intothe water.
Even as his ship went down, Captain Barclay managed to signal to theother ships, "Don't wait--get out." And when her shattered hull restedon the bottom, the gallant signal was still flying from the upper yard.
It was obvious that the one chance of escaping their terrible unseen foewas to obey the signal. By this time crowds of small craft of everydescription had come off from both shores to the rescue of those who hadgone down with the ships, so the Admiral did what was the most practicalthing to do under the circumstances--he dropped his own boats, each witha crew, and ordered the _Victorious_ and _Mars_ to do the same, and thengave the signal for full speed ahead. The great engines panted andthrobbed, and the squadron moved forward with ever-increasing speed, thecruisers and destroyers, according to signal, running ahead of thebattleships; but before full speed was reached, the _Mars_ was struckunder the stern, stopped, shuddered, and went down with a mighty lurch.
This last misfortune convinced the Admiral that the destruction of hisbattleships could not be the work of any ordinary submarine, for at thetime the _Mars_ was struck she was steaming fifteen knots and theunderwater speed of the best submarine was only twelve, saving only the_Ithuriel_, and she did not use torpedoes. The two remaining battleshipshad now reached seventeen knots, which was their best speed. Thecruisers and their consorts were already disappearing round Foreland.
There was some hope that they might escape the assaults of themysterious and invisible enemy now that the airship had been destroyed,but unless the submarine had exhausted her torpedoes, or some accidenthad happened to her, there was very little for the _Prince George_ andthe _Victorious_, and so it turned out. Castellan's strict orders hadbeen to confine his attentions to the battleships, and he obeyed hispitiless instructions to the letter. First the _Victorious_ and then theflagship, smitten by an unseen and irresistible bolt in their weakestparts, succumbed to the great gaping wounds torn in the thinunder-plating, reeled once or twice to and fro like leviathansstruggling for life, and went down. And so for the time being, at least,ended the awful work of the _Flying Fish_.
Leaving the cruisers and smaller craft to continue their dash for theopen Channel, we must now look westward.
When Vice-Admiral Codrington, who was flying his flag on the_Irresistible_, saw the flashes along the Hillsea ridge and Portsdownheight and heard the roar of the explosions, he at once up-anchor andgot his squadron under way. Then came the appallingly swift destructionof Hurst Castle and Fort Victoria. Like all good sailors, he was a manof instant decision. His orders were to guard the entrance to theSolent, and the destruction of the forts made it impossible for him todo this inside. How that destruction had been wrought, he had of courseno idea, beyond a guess that the destroying agent must have come fromthe air, since it could not have come from sea or land without provokinga very vigorous reply from the forts. Instead of that they had simplyblown up without firing a shot.
He therefore decided to steam out through the narrow channel betweenHurst Castle and the Isle of Wight as quickly as possible.
It was a risky thing to do at night and at full speed, for the Channeland the entrance to it was strewn with contact mines, but one of theprincipal businesses of the British Navy is to take risks wherenecessary, so he put his own ship at the head of the long line, and witha mine chart in front of him went ahead at eighteen knots.
When Captain Adolph Frenkel, who was in command of the _See Adler_, sawthe column of warships twining and wriggling its way out through theChannel, each ship handled with consummate skill and keeping itsposition exactly, he could not repress an admiring "Ach!" Still it wasnot his business to admire, but destroy.
He rose to a thousand feet, swung
round to the north-eastward until thewhole line had passed beneath him, and then quickened up and dropped toseven hundred feet, swung round again and crept up over the _Hogue_,which was bringing up the rear. When he was just over her fore part, helet go a shell, which dropped between the conning-tower and the forwardbarbette.
The navigating bridge vanished; the twelve-inch armoured conning-towercracked like an eggshell; the barbette collapsed like the crust of aloaf, and the big 9.2 gun lurched backwards and lay with its muzzlestaring helplessly at the clouds. The deck crumpled up as though it hadbeen burnt parchment, and the ammunition for the 9.2 and the forwardsix-inch guns which had been placed ready for action exploded, blowingthe whole of the upper forepart of the vessel into scrap-iron.
But an even worse disaster than this was to befall the greattwelve-thousand-ton cruiser. Her steering gear was, of course,shattered. Uncontrolled and uncontrollable, she swung swiftly round tostarboard, struck a mine, and inside three minutes she was lying on themud.
Almost at the moment of the first explosion, the beams of twentysearchlights leapt up into the air, and in the midst of the broad whiteglare hundreds of keen angry eyes saw a winged shape darting up into theair, heading southward as though it would cross the Isle of Wight overYarmouth. Almost simultaneously, every gun from the tops of thebattleships spoke, and a storm of shells rent the air.
But Captain Frenkel had already seen his mistake. The _See Adler's_wings were inclined at an angle of twenty degrees, her propellers wererevolving at their utmost velocity, and at a speed of nearly a hundredmiles an hour, she took the Isle of Wight in a leap. She slowed downrapidly over Freshwater Bay. Captain Frenkel took a careful observationof the position and course of the squadron, dropped into the water,folded his wings and crept round the Needles with his conning-tower justawash, and lay in wait for his prey about two miles off the Needles.
The huge black hull of the _Irresistible_ was only a couple of hundredyards away. He instantly sank and turned on his water-ray. As theflagship passed within forty yards he let go his first torpedo. It hither sternpost, smashed her rudder and propellers, and tore a great holein her run. The steel monster stopped, shuddered, and slid sternwardwith her mighty ram high in the air into the depths of the smooth greysea.
There is no need to repeat the ghastly story which has already beentold--the story of the swift and pitiless destruction of these miraclesof human skill, huge in size and mighty in armament and manned by thebravest men on land or sea, by a foe puny in size but of awfulpotentiality. It was a fight, if fight it could be called, between thevisible and the invisible, and it could only have one end. Battleshipafter battleship received her death-wound, and went down without beingable to fire a shot in defence, until the _Magnificent_, smitten in theside under her boilers, blew up and sank amidst a cloud of steam andfoam, and the Western Squadron had met the fate of the Eastern.
While this tragedy was being enacted, the cruisers scattered in alldirections and headed for the open at their highest speed. It was abitter necessity, and it was bitterly felt by every man and boy on boardthem; but the captains knew that to stop and attempt the rescue of evensome of their comrades meant losing the ships which it was their duty atall costs to preserve, and so they took the only possible chance toescape from this terrible unseen foe which struck out of the silence andthe darkness with such awful effect.
But despite the tremendous disaster which had befallen the ReserveFleet, the work of death and destruction was by no means all on oneside. When he sank the _Leger_, Erskine had done a great deal moredamage to the enemy than he knew, for she had been sent not for fightingpurposes, but as a depot ship for the _Flying Fishes_, from which theycould renew their torpedoes and the gas cylinders which furnished theirdriving power. Being a light craft, she was to take up an agreedposition off Bracklesham Bay three miles to the north-west of SelseyBill, the loneliest and shallowest part of the coast, with all lightsout, ready to supply all that was wanted or to make any repairs thatmight be necessary. Her sinking, therefore, deprived John Castellan'scraft of their base.
After the _Dupleix_ had gone down, the _Ithuriel_ rose again, andErskine said to Lennard:
"There must be more of them outside, they wouldn't be such fools as torush Portsmouth with three destroyers and a couple of cruisers. We'dbetter go on and reconnoitre."
The _Ithuriel_ ran out south-eastward at twenty knots in a series ofbroad curves, and she was just beginning to make the fourth of thesewhen six black shapes crowned with wreaths of smoke loomed up out of thesemi-darkness.
"Thought so--destroyers," said Erskine. "Yes, and look there, behindthem--cruiser supports, three of them--these are for the second rush.Coming up pretty fast, too; they'll be there in half an hour. We shallhave something to say about that. Hold on, Lennard."
"Same tactics, I suppose," said Lennard.
"Yes," replied Erskine, taking down the receiver. "Are you there,Castellan? All right. We've six more destroyers to get rid of. Fullspeed ahead, as soon as you like--guns all ready, I suppose? Good--goahead."
The _Ithuriel_ was now about two miles to the westward and about a milein front of the line of destroyers, which just gave her room to get upfull speed. As she gathered way, Lennard saw the nose of the great ramrise slowly out of the water. The destroyer's guns crackled, but it isnot easy to hit a low-lying object moving at fifty miles an hour, endon, when you are yourself moving nearly twenty-five. Just the same thinghappened as before. The point of the ram passed over the destroyer'sbows, crumpled them up and crushed them down, and the _Ithuriel_ rushedon over the sinking wreck, swerved a quarter turn, and bore down on hernext victim. It was all over in ten minutes. The _Ithuriel_ rushedhither and thither among the destroyers like some leviathan of the deep.A crash, a swift grinding scrape, and a mass of crumpled steel wasdropping to the bottom of the Channel.
While the attack on the destroyers was taking place, the cruisers wereonly half a mile away. Their captains had found themselves in curiouslydifficult positions. The destroyers were so close together, and themovements of this strange monster which was running them down sorapidly, that if they opened fire they were more likely to hit their ownvessels than it, but when the last had gone down, every available gunspoke, and a hurricane of shells, large and small, ploughed up the seawhere the _Ithuriel had_ been. After the first volley, the captainslooked at their officers and the officers looked at the captains, andsaid things which strained the capabilities of the French language tothe utmost. The monster had vanished.
The fact was that Erskine had foreseen that storm of shell, and thepumps had been working hard while the ramming was going on. The resultwas that the _Ithuriel_ sank almost as soon as her last victim, and inthirty seconds there was nothing to shoot at.
"I shall ram those chaps from underneath," he said. "They've too manyguns for a shooting match."
He reduced the speed to thirty knots, rose for a moment till theconning-tower was just above the water, took his bearings, sank, calledfor full speed, and in four minutes the ram crashed into the _Alger's_stern, carried away her sternpost and rudder, and smashed herpropellers. The _Ithuriel_ passed on as if she had hit a log of wood andknocked it aside. A slight turn of the steering-wheel, and within fourminutes the ram was buried in the vitals of the _Suchet_. Then the_Ithuriel_ reversed engines, the fore screw sucked the water away, andthe cruiser slid off the ram as she might have done off a rock. As shewent down, the _Ithuriel_ rose to the surface. The third cruiser, the_Davout_, was half a mile away. She had changed her course and wasevidently making frantic efforts to get back to sea.
"Going to warn the fleet, are you, my friend?" said Erskine, betweenhis teeth. "Not if I know it!"
He asked for full speed again and the terror-stricken Frenchmen saw themonster, just visible on the surface of the water, flying towards themin the midst of a cloud of spray. A sheep might as well have tried toescape from a tiger. Many of the crew flung themselves overboard in themadness of despair. There was a shock and a grinding crash
, and the rambored its way twenty feet into the unarmoured quarter. Then the_Ithuriel's_ screws dragged her free, and the _Davout_ followed hersisters to the bottom of the Channel.
The World Peril of 1910 Page 12