CHAPTER XII

AGAINST ODDS

The news from all the Fronts had been discouraging for several days, and it only needed that staggering announcement of the destruction of practically a whole convoy and its escort, in the North Sea, to cap the climax of gloom. This is what I had read in the fog-hastened autumn twilight, by the feeble glow of a paint-masked street lamp, in the Stop Press column of the evening paper a Strand newsboy had shoved into my hand.

"Two very fast and heavily-armed German raiders attacked a convoy in the North Sea, about midway between the Shetland Islands and the Norwegian coast, on October 17th. Two British destroyers--H.M. ships _Mary Rose_ (Lieutenant-Commander Charles L. Fox) and _Strongbow_ (Lieutenant-Commander Edward Brooke)--which formed the anti-submarine escort, at once engaged the enemy vessels, and fought until sunk after a short and unequal engagement. Their gallant action held the German raiders sufficiently long to enable three of the merchant vessels to effect their escape. It is regretted, however, that five Norwegian, one Danish, and three Swedish vessels--all unarmed--were thereafter sunk by gunfire without examination or warning of any kind and regardless of the lives of their crew or passengers.... Anxious to make good their escape before British forces could intercept them, no effort was made to rescue the crews of the sunk British destroyers or the doomed merchant ships, but British patrol craft which arrived shortly afterward rescued some thirty Norwegians and others of whom details are not yet known.... The enemy raiders succeeded in evading the British watching squadrons on the long dark nights, both in their hurried outward dash and homeward flight.

"It is regretted that all the eighty-eight officers and men of H.M.S. _Mary Rose_ and forty-seven officers and men of H.M.S. _Strongbow_ were lost. All the next-of-kin have been informed."

A few days later a second Admiralty report announced that ten survivors of the _Mary Rose_ had reached Norway in an open boat, and also gave a few further particulars of the action in which she had been lost. From this it appeared that she had been many miles ahead of the main convoy when the latter was attacked, and that, possessed of the speed, with many knots to spare, to have avoided an action in which the odds were a thousand to one against her, she had yet deliberately steamed back and thrown down the gage of battle to the heavily armed German cruisers. Just why her captain chose the course he did was not, and never will be, fully explained. He went down with his ship, and to none of those who survived had he disclosed what was in his mind. It was certainly not "war," the critics said, but they also agreed that it was "magnificent" enough to furnish the one ray of brightness striking athwart the sombre gloom of the whole disheartening tragedy. "He held on unflinchingly," concluded an all-too-brief story of the action issued to the public through the Admiralty, some time later, "and he died, leaving to the annals of his service an episode not less glorious than that in which Sir Richard Grenville perished."

From the time I read these Admiralty announcements I had the feeling that some, if not all, of those ten survivors of the _Mary Rose_ would surely be able to offer more of an explanation of why her captain took her into battle against such hopeless odds than any that had yet been suggested to the public, and in the months which followed I made what endeavour I could to locate and have a talk with one of them. It was not long before the ten were scattered in as many different ships, however, and though I had the names and official numbers of two or three, almost a year went by before I chanced upon the first of them. Indeed, it was but a day or two previous to the first anniversary of the loss of the _Mary Rose_ and _Strongbow_ and the destruction of the Norwegian convoy that, in the course of a visit to a Submarine Depot Ship at one of the East Coast bases, I sauntered forward one evening and fell into conversation with a sturdily built, steady-eyed young seaman--some kind of torpedo rating, evidently, by the red worsted "mouldie" on his sleeve--who had just clambered up to the forecastle from the deck of a hulking "L" moored alongside.

"How do you like submarin-ing?" I had asked him, by way of getting acquainted.

"Not so bad, sir," he replied with a smile, "though it's a bit stuffy and rather slow after destroyers. With them there's something doing all the time. I was in one of the 'M' class before I volunteered for submarines. P'raps you've heard of her--the _Mary Rose_, sunk a year this month, in----"

"Wait a moment," I cut in, as the ribbon he was wearing caught my eye; "you're one of the men I've been looking for for a number of months. Ten to one you're Able Seaman Bailey, who received the D.S.M. for his part in the action, and who is specially mentioned in the Admiralty story" (refreshing my memory from a note-book) "for having, 'despite severe shrapnel wounds in the leg, persisted in taking his turn at an oar' of the Norwegian lifeboat which picked up the _Mary Rose_ survivors, and for his 'invincible light-heartedness throughout.'"

A flush spread under his "submarine pallor" at that broadside, but he admitted, with an embarrassed grin, that his name was Bailey, and that his decoration was awarded for something or other in connection with the last fight of the _Mary Rose_, though for just what he had never quite been able to figure out. In the hour we leaned over the forecastle rail and watched the North Sea fog-bank roll up the estuary with the incoming tide, this is the account he gave me of the things which he himself saw of what is perhaps the most gallantly tragic of all the naval actions of the war.

* * * * *

"They hadn't got convoying at that time down to the system it is carried on under now," he began, by way of explanation, "and the only fighting ships with this one were the _Mary Rose_ and _Strongbow_. The _Mary_ was of the same class as the 'M ...' over there, very large and fast and well armed for a destroyer, but never, of course, built for anything like a give-and-take fight with any kind of a cruiser.

"There was also an armed trawler somewhere about, but it had no chance to do anything but pick up survivors. We were an anti-submarine escort, nothing more, and were not intended to stand off surface raiders. Of course provision was made against these, too, but--well, when you consider the size of the North Sea and the length and blackness of the winter nights, the only wonder is that the Huns can't buck up their nerve to trying for a convoy twice a week instead of twice a year.

"We had escorted the north-bound convoy across to Bergen, and, on the afternoon of the 16th of October, had picked up the south-bound and headed back for one of the home ports. Escorting even a squadron of warships which know how to keep station is no picnic for destroyers, but with merchantmen it is a dozen times worse. It is bad enough even now, but a year ago, before these little packets had had much experience, it was enough to drive a man crazy. Between the faster ships trying to push on, and the slower ones falling astern, and breakdowns, and the chance of trickery, it was one continual round of worry from the time we left Base to our return.

"This time was no exception to the rule, even before the big smash. One of the Swedes--there were Norwegian and Danish as well as Swedish ships in the convoy, but we called them all 'Swedes,' probably because it was shorter and easier to say than Scandinavian--well, one of the Swedes shifted cargo along about dark of the 16th, with the result that the slower ships, and this included most of the convoy, lagged back, while several of the faster ones kept on.

"I don't know whether this was done by order, or whether it just happened. Anyhow, the _Strongbow_ remained behind with the slower section, while the _Mary Rose_ pushed on as an escort for the faster. It was the first lot--the main convoy--that the raiders attacked first, but just what happened I did not see, for we had drawn a long way ahead of them in the course of the night.

"When I came up to stand my watch as anti-submarine lookout, on the after searchlight platform, at four in the morning of the 17th, I remember that it was cloudy and thick overhead, but with very fair visibility on the water. We were steaming along comfortably with two boilers, which gave us a big margin of speed over everything needed to cut our zigzags round the comparatively slow packets we were escorting. The sea was rough but almost dead astern, so that it made little trouble--for the moment, that is. We had enough of it a little later.

"Along toward six o'clock the visibility began to extend as it grew lighter, but there was no sign of the main convoy when, at exactly five-fifty, I sighted flashes of light fluttering along the northern horizon. Although my ears caught no sound but the throb of the engines and the churning of the screws, I had no doubt they were from gun-fire, and reported them at once by voice-pipe to the Officer of the Watch--it was Gunner T., if I remember right--on the bridge. The captain was called, and must have concluded the same, for he at once ordered her put about and sounded 'Action Stations.' That took me to the foremost torpedo tubes, where my station was on the seat between the tubes, with the voice-pipe gear fitted to my ears. Most of what followed I saw from there.

"In some of the published accounts of the action it was stated that the captain of the _Mary Rose_ thought that the flashes he saw were from the gun of a submarine shelling the convoy, so that when he turned back it was with the expectation of meeting a U-boat rather than powerful raiding cruisers. I don't know anything definite on this score, of course, as I only heard the captain speak once or twice (and then to give orders) before he went down with his ship, but I don't think it could possibly have been true. There is a sort of fluttering ripple to the flash of a salvo that you can't possibly mistake for that of the discharge of a single gun, and the flashes which we continued to see for some time were plainly those of salvo answering salvo. The flashes from the mingled salvoes of the heavy guns of the Hun raiders could not have been confused with those from the few light guns of the _Strongbow_ any more than these could have been taken to come from the single gun of a U-boat. Everything pointed to just what we learned had taken place--a cruiser raid on the convoy. There was nothing in the flashes to suggest a submarine was firing, and I can't see how the captain could have had any such impression. It was enough for him--yes, and for all of us--to know that our consort was in trouble, and I shall always think that he turned back to help the _Strongbow_ with the full knowledge that he would have to face hopeless odds. He was a proper gentleman, was Captain Fox, and so there was nothing else that he _could_ have done; and, what's more, there's nothing else that we men in the _Mary Rose_--or any other British sailors, for that matter--would have had him do. It would have been against all the traditions of the Navy to have done anything else but stick by a consort to the last."

Able Seaman Bailey smote resoundingly the hollow palm of his left hand with the fist of his right as he spoke those last words, and then, in a quieter voice, took up the thread of the story again.

"That turn through sixteen points brought the seas, which we had been running before all night, right ahead, and all in a minute she was being swept fore-and-aft by every second or third of them. Anxious as the captain was to drive her full speed (which would have been a pretty terrific gait, let me tell you, for the 'Ms' are very fast), it was no use.

"Plates and rivets simply wouldn't stand the strain of the green water that anything like full speed would have bored her into, and she was finally slowed down to about twenty knots as the best she could do without flooding the decks and making it impossible to serve the guns and torpedo tubes. As she was good for a lot more than this with two boilers, I doubt very much if the third was ever 'flashed up.'

"The first I saw of the ships which turned out to be the enemy was some masts and funnels to the north'ard and about a couple of points on the starboard bow. They were making very little smoke, probably because they were oil-burners. As we were steering on practically opposite courses, we closed each other very quickly, and they must have been about four miles off when the captain, evidently becoming suspicious of their appearance, challenged. As there was no reply, fire was opened immediately afterward by the foremost gun, the course at the same time being altered a point or two to starboard, so that the other two guns would bear. The rest of our firing was, I think, by salvoes, or rather, it was until all but the after gun were knocked out by the Hun's shells.

"Our first shots, fired at about 7,000 yards, were short; but as the salvoes which followed began to fall closer to their targets, I saw the Huns alter to a course more or less parallel to ours, but plainly veering away so as to open out the range. This gave me the first silhouette view I had, and I did not need a glass to recognize them at once as German, the three straight funnels and the 'swan' bows being quite unmistakable. Some of our shots fell close, but I saw nothing I could be certain of calling a hit.

"However, I knew that it was not the guns the captain was counting on, but that he was trying to close to a range and bearing that might offer a chance to get home with a torpedo.

"Why the Huns did not open fire before they did I have never quite been able to figure out, unless it was that they hoped to avoid an action and so be free to pursue and sink the leading ships of the convoy--the faster ones the _Mary Rose_ had been escorting--without interference. If that is so, Captain Fox's sacrifice was not in vain, for all of these ships escaped destruction and reached port in safety. Even as it was, they had no stomach for an action at any range close enough to give us any chance to damage them either with gun-fire or torpedoes. Their plan--proper enough in its way, I suppose--was simply to pound us to pieces with the shells of their powerful long-range guns, and not to close to finish us off until all our guns and torpedo tubes were out of action. As one good salvo from either of them was more than enough to do the job, there wasn't much hope of our getting in close enough to do them serious harm. It was a bold bid the captain made for it, though.

"The course we were now on brought the seas more abeam than ahead, so that we had been able to shake out several more knots of speed, and this the captain tried to use to shorten the range. We were actually closing them at a good rate (though I wouldn't go so far as to say they were putting on all their speed to avoid it), when the Huns began firing their ranging shots. By this time we had reached a position from which there was a very fair bearing to launch a mouldie, and we were busy getting one ready to slip while the fall of shot came bounding nearer and nearer to us. I remember, in a vague sort of way, that the first salvo was short by a long way, that the second was much nearer, and that the third, closely bunched and exploding loudly on striking the sea, threw up smoke-stained spouts which fell back into each other to form a wall of water which completely blotted out the enemy for a second or two. Then we turned loose the torpedo, and at almost the same instant two or three shells from a 'straddling' salvo hit fair and square and just about lifted the poor little _Mary_ out of the water.

"All in a second the ship seemed to disappear in clouds of smoke and escaping steam, and it is only natural that my recollections of the order in which things happened after that are a good deal confused.

"I seem to have some memory of receiving from the bridge the order to fire that torpedo, but if that was so, it was the last order I did receive from there, for the explosion of one of the shells carried the voice-pipe away (though I did not twig it at the time), and from then on it was mostly the sizzle of spurting steam that came to my ears.

"There are two reasons why I know that first salvo hit us _after_ the torpedo was launched, though there could not have been more than a fraction of a second between one and the other. The first is that one of the shells carried away the lip of the tube before penetrating the deck and cutting a steam-pipe. If the mouldie had been in the tube it could not have missed being exploded; or, if by a miracle that had not happened, the tube was so much buckled that it could not have been operated. The second reason was that fragments from that shell, besides wounding me in the leg, even killed or blew overboard the rest of the crew, so that there would have been no one to get a mouldie away even if the tubes had been in working order. I remember distinctly seeing the torpedo hit the water, but I have no recollection of seeing it steady to depth and begin to run. As that is the main thing you always watch for, I can only account for the fact I did not see it by supposing that first hit came before the torpedo began to run.

"The shock of the explosion did not knock me off my seat, and a wound from a jagged piece of shell casing, though it was serious enough to put me out of commission for five months, felt only like a sharp prick on my leg. My pal, Able Seaman French, collapsed in a limp heap under the tubes, and though I saw no blood or signs of a wound, and though I never saw a man killed before, I knew he was done for. I don't know to this day where he was hit. The man whose station was at the breech-blocks I never saw again, living or dead, so I think he must have caught the unbroken force of the explosion and been blown back right over the starboard side.

"This shell, in bursting the main steam-pipe, probably had the most to do with bringing us to stop, though another (I think of the same salvo) exploded in Number Three boiler-room and started a big fire, probably from the oil. The clouds of black smoke and steam rising 'midships made it impossible to see what was going on there. I saw some of the crew of the 'midships gun struggling in the water, and took it that they must have been blown there.

"That gun was out of action, anyway, and, because I did not hear it firing, I assumed that the foremost one had also gone wrong. The after gun was firing for all it was worth, though, and continued to do so right up to the end.

"That one salvo pretty well finished the _Mary Rose_ as a fighting ship, and as soon as the Huns saw the shape we were in, they began to close, firing as they came. But even then they were careful to choose a direction of approach on which the after gun could not be brought to bear. With the foremost tubes out of action, and no crew to serve them in any case, there was nothing for me to do but sit tight and wait for orders. So I just chucked my head-gear, which was no longer of use with the voice-pipes gone, and settled back in my seat to watch the show and wait till I was wanted. There was really nothing to stay there for, but it was my 'Action Station,' and I knew it was the place I would be looked for if I was needed. On the score of cover, one place is as good an another--in a destroyer, anyhow.

"It must have been the fact that the after gun was the only one still in action that brought the captain back from the bridge. There was really nothing to keep him on the bridge, anyway. He seemed to be making a sort of general round, trying to see what shape things were in and bucking everybody up. He was as cool and cheery as if it was an ordinary target practice, with no Hun cruisers closing in to blow us out of the water. I saw him clapping some of the after gun's crew on the back, and when he came along to the foremost tubes, not noticing probably that I was the only one left there, he sung out: 'Stick it, lads; we're not done yet.' Those were his exact words. I remember grinning to myself at being called 'lads.'

"But we _were_ done, even then. The Huns were inside of a mile by now, and firing for the water-line, evidently trying to put us down just as quickly as they could.

"All their misses were 'shorts.' I don't remember a single 'over.' They were still taking no unnecessary chances. As soon as they were close enough to see that our torpedo tubes were probably jammed to port, they altered course and crossed our bows and steamed past the other side, where there was no chance of our slipping over a mouldie at them.

"We were already settling rapidly, with a heavy list to port, and as soon as the captain saw she was finished, he gave the order: 'Abandon ship. Every man for himself!' Those were the last words I heard him speak. He went below just after that to see about ditching the secret books, I believe, and when I saw him again it was just before she sank, and he was pacing the quarterdeck and talking quietly with the First Lieutenant.

"As our only boat had been smashed to kindling-wood, there was nothing to it but to take to the Carley Floats, and the first thing I did after hearing the order to abandon ship was to see to cutting one of these loose. On account of our oilskins and life-preservers, neither myself nor any of the three or four lads from the after gun's crew that ran to the float with me could get at our clasp-knives. Luckily, one of the Ward Room stewards came to the rescue with three silver-plated butter-knives from the pantry, and with these we finally managed to worry our way through the lashings. Then we pitched the little webbed 'dough-nut' (as the Carley Floats are called) over the settling stern and jumped after it. Four or five minutes later, after heeling slowly to port through fifty or sixty degrees, she gave a sudden lurch and went down, turning completely over as she sank, so that her bottom showed for a few seconds. The captain, who could have followed us just as well as not, seemed to make no effort to save himself, and must have gone down with her. I can't help believing that was the way he wanted it to happen.

"We had clambered into the float as fast as we could, and I think some one must have said something about the danger of being caught over an exploding depth-charge, for we were paddling (all of these floats have short-handled paddles lashed to their webbing) away from the ship as fast as we could when she went down. Someone remembered that one of the 'ash cans' had been set on the 'ready' when we went to 'Action Stations,' and no one recalled seeing it thrown back to 'safe' before we went overboard. It was an anxious moment, waiting after she ducked under the sea, for we had not been able to paddle more than a hundred yards, and the detonation of a depth-charge had been known to paralyse men swimming in the water at twice that distance. Luckily, this particular charge must have been set for a considerable depth, and it is also possible that the hull of the ship absorbed or deflected some of its force. At any rate, the shock of it, when it came, though it knocked us violently against each other and left a tingling sensation on the skin of all the submerged part of one's body, did not do anyone serious injury.

"When we came to count noses, there turned out to be eight of us on the float--two sub-lieutenants, the captain's steward, myself, and the remnants of the crew of the after gun. A few minutes later we sighted a couple of men who looked to be struggling in the water, but turned out to be supporting themselves on a fragment of 'dough-nut,' which had broken loose when the ship sank. That, strange to say, was the only bit of wreckage that came to the surface. We took these men aboard, and the ten of us weighted the overloaded float so that is submerged till the water reached our armpits. We were a good deal better off than it would seem, though, for the most of us were heavily dressed, and the animal heat of a man keeps him warm for a long time under oilskins and wool. The only ones that suffered much were a couple of lads who didn't have any more sense than to ditch most of their togs before they went over the side. They said it was so as not to be hampered in swimming--as if they expected to do the 'Australian crawl' to Norway or the Shetlands! These two _did_ begin to get a bit down-hearted and 'shivery' when the cold struck into the marrow of their bones, and it was with the idea of bucking them up a peg or two that we started singing. No, I don't just remember all that we did warble, except, I'm glad to say, that 'Tipperary' wasn't on the programme, and that this did include two or three hymns. You're quite right. There's nothing very warming to a chilled man in hymns, and I'm not trying to account for why we sang them. The fact remains that we _did_, just the same, and that we all, including the chaps in their underclothes, lived to sing again.

"There was a bit of a disappointment when an armed trawler, which was evidently searching for survivors, passed within a mile without sighting us or hearing our shouts, but with the life-boat of one of the sunk Norwegian steamers we had better luck. She came bowling along under sail about ten o'clock in the morning, and, on sighting the black silk handkerchief we hoisted at the end of a paddle-blade, eased off her sheet and stood over to pick us up. As there were only six men in her, we were not badly off for room, while the store of biscuit and potted stuff--to say nothing of smokes--they had managed to throw aboard before their ship sunk was more than enough for the two days that it took us to row and sail to Bergen."