Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1136 page)

Since this most Christian war includes laying mines in the fairways of traffic, and since these mines may be laid at any time by German submarines especially built for the work, or by neutral ships, all fairways must be swept continuously day and night. When a nest of mines is reported, traffic must be hung up or deviated till it is cleared out. When traffic comes up Channel it must be examined for contraband and other things; and the examining tugs lie out in a blaze of lights to remind ships of this. Months ago, when the war was young, the tugs did not know what to look for specially. Now they do. All this mine-searching and reporting and sweeping,
plus
the direction and examination of the traffic,
plus
the laying of our own ever-shifting mine-fields, is part of the Trawler Fleet’s work, because the Navy-as-we-knew-it is busy elsewhere. And there is always the enemy submarine with a price on her head, whom the Trawler fleet hunts and traps with zeal and joy. Add to this, that there are boats, fishing for real fish, to be protected in their work at sea or chased off dangerous areas where, because they are strictly forbidden to go, they naturally repair, and you will begin to get some idea of what the Trawler and Auxiliary Fleet does.

The Ships and the Men

Now, imagine the acreage of several dock-basins crammed, gunwale to gunwale, with brown and umber and ochre and rust-red steam-trawlers, tugs, harbour boats, and yachts once clean and respectable, now dirty and happy. Throw in fish-steamers, surprise-packets of unknown lines and indescribable junks, sampans, lorchas, catamarans, and General Service stink - pontoons filled with indescribable apparatus, manned by men no dozen of whom seem to talk the same dialect or wear the same clothes. The mustard-coloured jersey who is cleaning a six-pounder on a Hull boat clips his words between his teeth and would be happier in Gaelic. The whitish singlet and grey trousers held up by what is obviously his soldier brother’s spare regimental belt is pure Lowestoft, The complete blue serge and soot suit passing a wire down a hatch is Glasgow as far as you can hear him, which is a fair distance, because he wants something done to the other end of the wire, and the flat-faced boy who should be attending to it hails from the remoter Hebrides, and is looking at a girl on the dock-edge. The bow-legged man in the ulster and green-worsted comforter is a warm Grimsby skipper, worth several thousands, He and his crew, who are mostly his own relations, keep themselves to themselves, and save their money. The pirate with the red beard barking over the rail at a friend with gold earrings comes from Skye. The friend is West Country. The noticeably insignificant man with the soft and deprecating eye is skipper and part-owner of the big slashing Iceland trawler on which he droops like a flower. She is built to almost Western Ocean lines, carries a little boat-deck aft with tremendous stanchions, has a nose cocked high against ice and sweeping seas, and resembles a hawk-moth at rest. The small, sniffing man is reported to be a ‘holy terror at sea.’

Hunters and Fishers

The child in the Pullman-car uniform just going ashore is a wireless operator, aged nineteen. He is attached to a flagship at least 120 feet long, under an admiral aged twenty-five, who was, till the other day, third mate of a North Atlantic tramp, but who now leads a squadron of six trawlers to hunt submarines, The principle is simple enough. Its application depends on circumstances and surroundings. One class of German submarines meant for murder off the coasts may use a winding and rabbit-like track between shoals where the choice of water is limited. Their career is rarely long, but while it lasts moderately exciting. Others, told off for deep-sea assassinations, are attended to quite quietly and without any excitement at all. Others, again, work the inside of the North Sea, making no distinction between neutrals and Allied ships. These carry guns, and since their work keeps them a good deal on the surface, the Trawler Fleet, as we know, engages them there — the submarine firing, sinking, and rising again in unexpected quarters; the trawler firing, dodging, and trying to ram. The trawlers are strongly built, and can stand a great deal of punishment. Yet again, other German submarines hang about the skirts of fishing-fleets and fire into the brown of them. When the war was young this gave splendidly ‘frightful’ results, but for some reason or other the game is not as popular as it used to be.

Lastly, there are German submarines who perish by ways so curious and inexplicable that one could almost credit the whispered idea (it must come from the Scotch skippers) that the ghosts of the women drowned pilot them to destruction. But what form these shadows take — whether of ‘the
Lusitania
Ladies,’ or humbler stewardesses and hospital nurses — and what lights or sounds the thing fancies it sees or hears before it is blotted out, no man will ever know. The main fact is that the work is being done. Whether it was necessary or politic to re-awaken by violence every sporting instinct of a sea-going people is a question which the enemy may have to consider later on.

II

The Trawlers seem to look on mines as more or less fairplay. But with the torpedo it is otherwise. A Yarmouth man lay on his hatch, his gear neatly stowed away below, and told me that another Yarmouth boat had ‘gone up,’ with all hands except one, “Twas a submarine, Not a mine,’ said he. ‘They never gave our boys no chance. Na! She was a Yarmouth boat — we knew ‘em all. They never gave the boys no chance,’ He was a submarine hunter, and he illustrated by means of matches placed at various angles how the blindfold business is conducted. ‘And then,’ he ended, ‘there’s always what he’ll do. You’ve got to think that out for yourself — while you’re working above him — same as if ‘twas fish,’ I should not care to be hunted for the life in shallow waters by a man who knows every bank and pot-hole of them, even if I had not killed his friends the week before.

Being nearly all fishermen they discuss their work in terms of fish, and put in their leisure fishing overside, when they sometimes pull up ghastly souvenirs. But they all want guns. Those who have three-pounders clamour for sixes; sixes for twelves; and the twelve-pound aristocracy dream of four-inchers on anti-aircraft mountings for the benefit of roving Zeppelins. They will all get them in time, and I fancy it will be long ere they give them up. One West Country mate announced that ‘a gun is a handy thing to have aboard — always.’ ‘But in peace-time?’ I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be in the way” ‘We’m used to ‘em now,’ was the smiling answer. ‘Niver go to sea again without a gun — I wouldn’t — if I had my way. It keeps all hands pleased-like. They talk about men in the Army who will never willingly go back to civil life. What of the fishermen who have tasted something sharper than salt water — and what of the young third and fourth mates who have held independent commands for nine months past? One of them said to me quite irrelevantly: ‘I used to be the animal that got up the trunks for the women on baggage-days in the old Bodiam Castle,’ and he mimicked their requests for ‘the large brown box,’ or ‘the black dress basket,’ as a freed soul might scoff at his old life in the flesh.

‘A Common Sweeper’

My sponsor and chaperon in this Elizabethan world of eighteenth-century seamen was an AB. who had gone down in the
Landrail
, assisted at the Heligoland fight, seen the
Blucher
sink and the bombs dropped on our boats when we tried to save the drowning (‘Whereby’ as he said, ‘those Germans died gottstrafin’ their own country because we didn’t wait to be strafed ‘, and has now found more peaceful days in an Office ashore. He led me across many decks from craft to craft to study the various appliances that they specialise in. Almost our last was what a North Country trawler called a ‘common sweeper,’ that is to say, a mine-sweeper. She was at tea in her shirt - sleeves, and she protested loudly that there was ‘nothing in sweeping.’ “See that wire rope?’ she said. ‘Well, it leads through that lead to the ship which you’re sweepin’ with. She makes her end fast and you make yours. Then you sweep together at whichever depth you’ve agreed upon between you, by means of that arrangement there which regulates the depth. They give you a glass sort o’ thing for keepin’ your distance from the other ship, but that’s not wanted if you know each other. Well, then you sweep, as the sayin’ is. There’s nothin’ in it. You sweep till this wire rope fouls the bloomin’mines. Then you go on till they appear on the surface, so to say, and then you explode them by means of shootin’ at ‘em with that rifle in the gallery there. There’s nothin’ in sweepin’ more than that.’

‘And if you hit a mine?’ I asked.

‘You go up — but you hadn’t ought to hit ‘em, if you’re careful. The thing is to get hold of the first mine all right, and then you go on to the next, and so on, in a way o’ speakin’.’ ‘And you can fish, too, ‘tween times,’ said a voice from the next boat. A man leaned over and returned a borrowed mug. They talked about fishing — notably that once they caught some red mullet, which the ‘common sweeper’ and his neighbbur both agreed was ‘not natural in those waters? As for mere sweeping, it bored them profoundly to talk about it. I only learned later as part of the natural history of mines, that if you rake the tri-nitro-toluol by hand out of a German mine you develop eruptions and skin-poisoning. But on the authority of two experts, there is nothing in sweeping. Nothing whatever!

A Block in the Traffic

Now imagine, not a pistol-shot from these crowded quays, a little Office hung round with charts that are pencilled and noted over various shoals and soundings. There is a movable list of the boats at work, with quaint and domestic names. Outside the window lies the packed harbour — outside that again the line of traffic up and down — a stately cinema-show of six ships to the hour. For the moment the film sticks. A boat — probably a ‘common sweeper ‘ — reports an obstruction in the traffic lane a few miles away. She has found and exploded one mine. The Office heard the dull boom of it before the wireless report came in. In all likelihood there is a nest of them there. It is possible that a submarine may have got in last night between certain shoals and laid them out. The shoals are being shepherded in case she is hidden anywhere, but the boundaries of the newly-discovered mine-area must be fixed and the traffic deviated. There is a tramp outside with tugs in attendance. She has hit something and is leaking badly. Where shall she go? The Office gives her her destination — the harbour is too full for her to settle down here. She swings off between the faithful tugs. Down coast some one asks by wireless if they shall hold up their traffic, It is exactly like a signaller ‘offering’ a train to the next block. ‘Yes,’ the Office replies. ‘Wait a while. If it’s what we think there will be a little delay. If it isn’t what we think, there will be a little longer delay.’ Meantime, sweepers are nosing round the suspected area ‘looking for cuckoos’ eggs,’ as a voice suggests; and a patrol-boat lathers her way down coast to catch and stop anything that may be on the move, for skippers are sometimes rather careless. Words begin to drop out of the air into the chart-hung Office. ‘Six and a half cables south, fifteen east’ of something or other. ‘Mark it well, and tell them to work up from there,’ is the order. ‘Another mine exploded ?’ ‘Yes, and we heard that too,’ says the Office. ‘What about the submarine?’ ‘
Elizabeth Huggins
reports . .’

Elizabeth
’s scandal must be fairly high flavoured, for a torpedo-boat of immoral aspect slings herself out of harbour and hastens to share it. If
Elizabeth
has not spoken the truth, there may be words between the parties. For the present a pencilled suggestion seems to cover the case, together with a demand, as far as one can make out, for ‘more common sweepers.’ They will be forthcoming very shortly. Those at work have got the run of the mines now, and are busily howking them up. A trawler-skipper wishes to speak to the Office.

‘They’ have ordered him out, but his boiler, most of it, is on the quay at the present time, and ‘ye’ll remember, it’s the same wi’ my .foremast an’ port rigging, sir.’ The Office does not precisely remember, but if boiler and foremast are on the quay the rest of the ship had better stay alongside. The skipper falls away relieved. (He scraped a tramp a few nights ago in a bit of a sea.) There is a little mutter of gun-fire somewhere across the grey water where a fleet is at work. A monitor as broad as she is long comes back from wherever the trouble is, slips through the harbour-mouth, all wreathed with signals, is received by two motherly lighters, and, to all appearance, goes to sleep between them. The Office does not even look up for that is not in their department. They have found a trawler to replace the boilerless one. Her name is slid into the rack. The immoral torpedo-boat flounces back to her moorings. Evidently what
Elizabeth Huggins
said was not evidence. The messages and replies begin again as the day closes.

The Night Patrol

Return now to the inner harbour, At twilight there was a stir among the packed craft like the separation of dried tea-leaves in water. The swing-bridge across the basin shut against us, A boat shot out of the jam, took the narrow exit at a fair seven knots and rounded into the outer harbour with all the pomp of a flagship, which was exactly what she was, Others followed, breaking away from every quarter in silence. Boat after boat fell into line — gear stowed away; spars and buoys in order on their clean decks; guns cast loose and ready; wheel-house windows darkened, and everything in order for a day or a week or a month out. There was no word anywhere. The interrupted foot-traffic stared at them as they slid past below. A woman beside me waved a hand to a man on one of them, and I saw his face light as he waved back. The boat where they had demonstrated for me with matches was the last. Her skipper hadn’t thought it worth while to tell me that he was going that evening. Then the line straightened up and stood out to sea.