Part 7

Then there was Seagrave, looking at present rather nervous and wearing a strained expression on his youthful face. Perhaps he was thinking of the hydroplane-motor, or perhaps he was merely worried over the general result of the inspection. He had received his training under the more recent Osborne-Dartmouth scheme, and his presence in the Submarine Service was the outcome of the war and the new Navy methods. The large number of boats that had recently been built had necessitated an increase in the ranks of submarine officers, and as it had not been advisable to drain the general service of too many experienced watch-keeping lieutenants, the Admiralty had hit on the plan of entering Sub-Lieutenants as seconds in command of boats. They received a course of submarine work, and, thanks to their previous training, which included engineering among other things, and their own keenness and intelligence, the scheme had worked very well. Many of them would be in command of boats at a much younger age than their present captains had gained a command, but the responsibilities and cares of a submarine life had amply fitted them for their positions.

Boyd, the R.N.R. Lieutenant, was another offspring of the war, both as regards his being in the Navy at all and as regards his presence in the Submarine Service. Prior to the war the Royal Naval Reserve had contained comparatively few officers, and commissions had been hard to obtain, but after the first few months of hostilities the Admiralty had realised that they had not sufficient trained seamen for their needs, and had reopened the Reserve with a call for more officers. The result far exceeded expectation, for the officers of the Merchant Service flocked to the colours in thousands, and after a course of training were sent afloat as watch-keepers in any class of ship from Super-Dreadnoughts to trawlers. The growth in size and capabilities of submarines, and their more arduous duties, had necessitated that they should have an additional officer soon after war started, and the result was that each of the bigger boats was supplied with a Lieutenant of the Royal Naval Reserve. His duties were entirely those of a seaman, as he was the navigator, took a large slice of the watches, and looked after the confidential books and gyro compass. Boyd himself had served his first four years at sea in a sailing ship or ‘wind jammer,’ and had, after becoming an officer, transferred into steam and done a voyage or two in tramp. At the outbreak of war he had left one of the great mail companies of the Western Ocean, to which he intended to return when all was over. The Navy life did not appeal to him very strongly, and he was looking forward to a return to his old work.

The next in order was the coxswain, a first-class Petty Officer who had joined submarines as an able seaman about the same time as Raymond had entered that Service. Perhaps he had wanted to get married, and had been attracted by the increased pay, or it may have been that a friend in a submarine had told him stories of the life and privileges pertaining to it that had fired his imagination. Like most men of his age he had joined the Navy as a boy and been trained in a sailing brig, whence he had eventually emerged and blossomed out, until he received his anchor and was rated leading seaman after two years in submarines. Raymond had, owing to a vacancy, tried him as a second coxswain, with the result that in course of time he was promoted to the rank of Petty Officer and coxswain, and had followed his captain from boat to boat for several years in succession.

The second coxswain was a middle-aged leading seaman on turn for Petty Officer who had been through much the same training as his senior, and hoped for promotion as soon as he received his ‘crossed killicks.’[11]

Then there came the gun-layer, the cook, and six able seamen, all A.B.’s of much the same age, men about twenty-six who aspired to be coxswains or Torpedo Instructors in due course. They again were new Navy, and had received their early training in shore barracks and training cruisers. The Submarine Service is essentially a voluntary one, and it would be difficult to ascertain why they had ever joined. Probably if they were asked they would have replied ‘private reasons,’ and sucked their teeth noisily.

Then came the T.I., Torpedo Instructor or Torpedo Gunner’s Mate, a Petty Officer and electrical expert, who, after going through the same early trials as the two coxswains, had specialised in electricity after being rated A.B. He had received his first upward step when he became an S.T. or Seaman Torpedo man, and shortly after he was promoted to Leading Seaman the specialist rating of Leading Torpedo Man had been granted him. With maturity and experience had come the rank of Petty Officer and Torpedo Instructor, and now he was one of those who knew more about the internals of those highly mechanical engines of death than the rest of the crew put together. He lived in a whirl of balance chamber doors and hydrostatic valves, and gibbered in his sleep of reducers and ignition delay gear.

The L.T.O., who was a new Navy man and the T.I.’s second-in-command, was in charge under Seagrave of all the electrical appliances and motors in the boat. He was an expert at finding ‘earths’ and short circuits, and was notable among his kind in that he was nimble-fingered and could ‘make’[12] a switch without breaking it.

The engine-room staff was headed by Chief Engine Room Artificer Hoskins, a hoary-headed old sinner of the old school, who could coax a Diesel engine to run on air or coal-dust if necessary and was, moreover, in a permanent state of growl. Raymond swore by him, and had, like the coxswain, taken him from ship to ship in his upward career. He had joined the Navy as a fitter and turner at the age of twenty-two, having just completed his apprenticeship in one of the great shipbuilding yards on the Tyne, and had been entered as a Fourth Class Artificer. His keenness and wonderful ability with anything mechanical had urged him to join the Submarine Service, where he was practically in charge of his own engines. Give him an oil-can and a lump of waste, varied occasionally by a foot-rule and Macmahon wrench, and he would be happy for hours.

The second, third, and fourth E.R.A.’s were all much younger men who had joined under the new scheme as Boy Artificers at the training college at Devonport, whence they had emerged, having received all their knowledge from the Service, and in due course been rated Artificers, 4th Class. They were now slowly working their way up, and had joined the Submarine Service since the war, when the necessity for capable men had inspired them with the wish for more authority than fell to their lots in the engine-rooms of a Battleship.

The Stoker Petty Officer was a bearded and efficient ruffian, and the oldest man in the boat. Unlike the seamen, the stokers do not join the Navy as boys, but at about the age of eighteen, and this particular old sinner had had rather a rough time of it in his early days. However, he had kept going, and as only men of good character are admitted to submarines, it speaks well of him that he had not fallen by the wayside. In a submarine he had seen freedom from dirt and eternal coal shovelling, raking, and slicing, as well as extra pay and other privileges, and the added dangers of the life did not seem to worry him in the least.

His right-hand man was the Leading Stoker, who had seen much the same side of life as his senior, to whose rating he was now aspiring. He was a man of good solid worth, a little fond of the bottle; and possessed of many relations whose sudden deaths necessitated his immediate presence in the home circle. But he was a good man and knew his work and the men under him, and the engines never ran so smoothly as when he was superintending the oiling and other equally necessary operations.

Finally, there were the six First Class Stokers, young men not long in submarines who were very anxious to get on and very much afraid lest they should be returned to general service, which is the punishment dealt out to all those whose conduct in submarines does not justify their remaining in them. They had all been through the same early training, and most of them had joined submarines since the war. Like the rest of the crew they were good, steady workers, for the Submarine Service can always have its picked men, and those who are tried and found wanting are summarily ejected to return to the rigours of ‘big-ship’ routine.

Occasionally an additional hand was carried in the shape of a wireless or W.T. Operator, but, as Raymond dabbled in wireless among other things, he was not a permanent member of the ship’s company, and spent most of his time in the depot.

Captain Charteris took one keen glance along the line of motionless figures, and turned to Raymond and smiled.

‘All very smart, Raymond,’ he said in an undertone.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the other, and Seagrave tingled with delight as the two disappeared down the engine-room hatch.

Arrived below, the Post Captain made a quick and searching examination of the boat from end to end. His eagle-eye seemed to be all-embracing. A question to Raymond, an inquiry of the Chief E.R.A., and a request that the main-line pump should be started followed one another in the first two minutes. It seemed that he made a very cursory visit to the engine-room, but had anything been seriously wrong Raymond felt sure that Captain Charteris would have spotted it, and thanked Heaven and the Chief E.R.A. that nothing was amiss. Then for’ard through the length of the boat, the Captain nodding his head as he listened to Raymond’s explanations of some alterations he had recently made, and occasionally asking a question and always putting his finger on the weak spot as if by instinct.

Presently they reached the tube-doors, and Raymond heaved a sigh of relief. So far everything had been satisfactory. The spare torpedoes were examined, and a door was opened exposing the long dark tunnel of the tube with its “fish” lying snugly within, and then the Captain turned to the firing-gear.

‘Where’s the cross connection on the firing line?’ he asked.

‘Done away with it, sir. It was all right if both torpedoes were fired together, but the firing-tank took 40 seconds to re-charge, and if only one “fish” were fired with the cross connection fitted it was impossible to fire a second unless we waited for that interval, because all the air was used on the first one and there was nothing left to fire the other with.’

The Captain nodded. ‘And now?’ he queried.

‘Each firing-tank fires the torpedo on its own side of the boat, sir.’

‘Do you find it satisfactory?’

‘Very, sir.’

Captain Charteris turned away. ‘That’s all, I think, Raymond,’ he said, and led the way up the fore-hatch.

‘Ship’s company, ’shun!’ ordered Seagrave, as the two officers passed down the line on their way aft, the Captain quietly scanning the faces and pausing now and again to ask a question as to what boats a certain man had served in, when he had received his medal ribbon, or how long he had been in submarines.

At the gang-plank, where the coxswain was waiting with his pipe ready, he issued judgment. ‘Not at all bad, Raymond,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m coming aboard some day to see dummy shots fired without the cross connection.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Raymond saluting, and Captain Charteris was piped over the side.

As he crossed from boat to boat the trilling of the pipes was taken up by each coxswain in turn as the crews came to attention and the officers saluted, the boatswain’s mate at the _Parentis’s_ gangway bringing the performance to a triumphant conclusion.

The quartermaster, the corporal of the watch, messengers, and sideboys stiffened where they stood as he crossed the deck and went down the starboard gangway to inspect the remaining five submarines.

Three-quarters of an hour later ‘pipe down,’ sounded by the juvenile Marine bugler, informed all and sundry that the inspection was over. The boats’ crews fell out, and such as were not wanted for immediate duty trooped aboard the depot and down to the crowded mess-decks, while the officers remained comparing notes and discussing the results of the ordeal.

‘What made the “owner” so ratty, Johnson?’ asked Raymond, on his way across to the _Parentis_.

The officer in question, who was captain of the boat lying between Austin’s and Blake’s, shook his head sadly, and then burst out laughing.

‘It’s all UP with Little Willy, I’m afraid, unless he gets over it, which I very much doubt. And everything was going so splendidly, too.’ He sighed heavily.

‘What was it, you blighter?’ cried Austin. ‘He came aboard my packet in a state of fury, and I had to do my dirty damndest to smooth things over.’

‘It wasn’t my fault, George. I couldn’t foresee it or I should have taken jolly good care to prevent it. One of my stokers, whom I’m going to hang to-morrow, by the way, is the proud possessor of a monkey. I took particular care that the brute should be sent inboard before the inspection, but you know what those ruddy things are, and somehow or other it must have sneaked aboard again. It was hanging from a beam under the torpedo-hatch, with part of an old ensign wrapped round its head, and when the old man passed underneath on his way for’ard, it dropped on his shoulders.’

‘Well?’

‘That’s all.’

* * * * *

Monday morning dawned dull and dismal. A steady downpour of thin drizzling rain that wet through and chilled to the marrow did not tend to brighten matters or relieve the gloom that had settled on the coxswain as he surveyed the weather with the eye of a fatalist. The hour of seven a.m. does not tend to hilarity.

‘This ruddy weather,’ he remarked to the unemotional landscape, ‘near drives me to drink. Near drives me to drink, that’s wot it does.’

A cluster of sleepy-eyed figures clambering up from the mess-decks caught his eye and gave him the opportunity he had been waiting for.

‘Come along now. Step lively,’ he growled. ‘Six bells struck five minutes ago. Fall in ’ere and tow a line.’

The half-dozen seamen and stokers, clad in overalls, put out their pipes and stumbled into some semblance of a line as the remainder of ‘123’s’ crew appeared from their various lairs and joined the unhappy company. The E.R.A.’s carried on down to the boat to commence the day’s labours, carefully picking their way between the demons wielding brooms and the hose brandishers who were performing the early morning task of ‘scrub decks.’

‘Show a little life now,’ snapped the coxswain to his shivering subordinates. ‘Form two deep. ’Shun. Right dress. Eyes front. Stan’-at-ease. Are ye all ’ere?’ he continued, checking off the number on his fingers. ‘No, we’re one short.’

‘Jevons ain’t ’ere,’ volunteered the second coxswain, inwardly cursing the able seamen who kept him shivering in the rain.

‘I’m ’ere,’ cried a dishevelled figure hastily taking its place at the end of the rear rank.

The coxswain surveyed him with a baleful glance.

‘A little more from you, my lad, and you’ll be spoke to. You turn out late once more an’ I takes you before the first lieutenant. I’ve ’ad me eye on you for some time.’

The seaman swallowed heavily. It was unwise to argue with the coxswain in the still hours of the morning. Also his roving eye caught sight of Seagrave, who was coming forward clad in oilskins and sea-boots and pulling on a long pair of engine-room gloves.

‘T.’s crew, ’shun!’ cried the coxswain. ‘All present, sir.’

Seagrave gravely returned the salute and began telling off the men for their various tasks, an extra pressure of work having necessitated an early ‘turn to.’

‘Stokers carry on with the chief E.R.A.; T.I. and an S.T. on topping up and wiping down. The water lighter’s alongside now and I’m coming down to test the water, so don’t begin till I let you know. We’ll charge afterwards. L.T.O. carry on with the volt-metre board. Remainder clean ship.’

The coxswain saluted.

‘T.’s crew. Carry on down to the boat. Jevons, you work with the T.I. Dismiss.’

The weary band broke away and trooped down the ladder and across the boats to where ‘123’ lay on the outside of the tier. The coxswain produced a key of large proportions, and, unlocking the padlock on the conning-tower hatch, disappeared below. Presently the other hatches were opened from inside the boat, over which canvas shelters were rigged to prevent the rain from ruining her internal complexion, and the day’s work commenced.

Overnight a long black lighter, filled with carboys of distilled water, had been towed alongside and made fast to the submarine, and now the tarpaulin cover was hauled back and a long, flexible rubber tube passed up out of the fore-hatch and its end dropped into one of the carboys.

Presently Seagrave appeared armed with a stick of nitrate of silver with which he tested in turn the contents of each of the water-holders. Two of them were found wanting, for they clouded under the operation, and were condemned as unfit for use in the sensitive internals of a battery, and when he had satisfied himself with the others he gave the order to ‘carry on.’

With much labour the T.I. and Jevons filled the tube with sterilised water and passed the free end across to the boat and down the conning-tower hatch, the S.T. firmly grasping its extremity for fear of wetting the sacred brasswork. The siphon thus formed was a labour-saver of a large order and did away with the necessity of passing the water below in buckets and perhaps rendering it dirty in the process. Down below a sound of rasping and hammering came from the engine-room where the E.R.A.s and stokers were effecting repairs, where there had been ‘a bit of a mess up aft, sir,’ and could be seen wielding spanners and lumps of waste in a masterly manner. The L.T.O. was gravely attending to the volt-metre board, whose vagaries had given trouble of late, and the second coxswain was oiling the bearings of the hydroplane and rudder shafts and generally making himself useful. The remaining seamen were cleaning brass as if their lives depended on it, a state of things that was liable to undergo a slight modification on Seagrave’s departure.

‘’Ere, Sam,’ called the T.I., ‘give us a ’and with this deck-cloth,’ as that worthy paused on his round to wipe an oily brow.

Together they rolled back the canvas carpet, disclosing a solid rubber covering bolted to the deck with iron battens, which on being raised exposed a series of hatches beneath which was the for’ard battery. One of these was then lifted and the operation of ‘topping up’ began.

Every three weeks or so, owing to the constant charging and discharging and other reasons, the electrolyte in the cells, composed of sulphuric acid and water, became used up and its level sank in the cells, exposing the tops of the plates. These were no toy cells either. They stood over four feet high and were placed in the bottom of the boat, below the deck level, in two long lines strapped together with steel plates painted red and blue, indicating positive and negative. The process of topping up consisted of replenishing the water in the cells until the level covered the plates, and was usually accompanied by that of carefully wiping and cleaning the inter-cell connections, taking the densities, and generally seeing that all was in order. An unhappy seaman, clad in oilskin, was posted in the lighter to transfer his end of the rubber tube to a fresh carboy as the first was emptied and the work went merrily on. The T.I. was the mainspring of the business, while the S.T. worked under his orders, shifting the tube from cell to cell as necessary, and generally doing as he was told. He was there to learn and he knew it. When two or three cells were finished, the hatch was replaced and another lifted, and so on down one line and up the other, by which time the battery was completed, several carboys had been emptied, and eight bells had struck aboard the _Parentis_. ‘123,’ owing to a busy day, was carrying out a special routine, and the crew trooped inboard to breakfast.

The rain had ceased but the prospect was still anything but cheery, and even the funny man could not brighten the settled gloom that had overcome the crew when work was restarted an hour later. The T.I. and his satellites resumed their labours by tackling the after-battery, and casting much criticism on the health of the cells and nature of the battery in general. The gun-layer, assisted by the cook, overhauled his gun, and the remainder continued their early morning tasks with more or less signs of energy. It was not a cheerful morning.

By-and-by Seagrave came down, having polished off an excellent breakfast and feeling at peace with the world, to examine the work in hand and listen to the T.I.’s comments on his beloved batteries.

Another hour saw the topping up completed, and a waiting tug pounced on the water-lighter and bore it away in triumph to its distant lair.

Boyd appeared just as the job was finished and began to overhaul the gyro compass. While he cleaned contractors and filed transmitters he burst into ragtime, which brought Seagrave aft with a pained and virtuous expression on his face.

‘My God! Pilot,’ he said, ‘what a shine you’re kicking up. If you’d been up since seven, like I have, you wouldn’t feel so cheery. Who wouldn’t be a navigator?’

‘Work with a will and sing while you work,’ said Boyd. ‘Work never killed the cat and I’m going to put in quite half an hour at it to-day. Our hard-worked submarine officers at their daily toil.’

The Chief E.R.A., who was hovering in the offing, chose his opportunity and plunged in.

‘Are you going to charge now, sir?’ he asked Seagrave. ‘We’re all ready in the engine-room.’

‘Yes, yes,’ replied the ‘Sub.’ ‘We’ll have to do a gas-engine charge, though. “147” has got the berth at the charging pier. We’ll start with 500 in the series until the densities rise to twelve twenty-five and then give her two-fifty in parallel. Starboard Engine!’

‘Ay, ay, sir,’ and Hoskins disappeared into his engine-room.

The L.T.O. made the grouper switch and then started the starboard motor, and with the engine-clutch in the Diesel was heaved over until she fired and the engine got away by herself. The process was much the same as cranking up a motor-car, and as the revolutions increased the needle on the ammeter, which had shown discharging at first, worked slowly back, past zero and on to charging, and, after a deal of flickering, finally steadied at five hundred amperes.

The L.T.O. was to look after the charge under Seagrave’s orders, and the T.I. and his minion decamped to attend to the internals of a torpedo that some one had been rude to.

Every hour Furness made the sounds of the pilot-cells with a squeeze bulb--an instrument rather like a fountain-pen filler--with which he sucked up a small portion of the electrolyte and was able to read the densities. Slowly they rose until by noon, with the temperatures at about 50 deg. fahrenheit, the batteries stood at twelve twenty-five and the charge was broken. The sound of the engines died away and the L.T.O. stopped the motor. Then over came the grouper-switch to put the batteries in parallel, the motor was re-started, and in less than a minute the charge was under weigh again. The whole operation was identical with that of starting the engines at sea, the only difference being that the tail clutches were out, so that the propeller was disconnected from the shaft; also when the engines are propelling the ship the motor-switches are broken when once the Diesel is under weigh.