Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (26 page)

As quickly as Salmond had made it on to the deck, Lieutenant Colonel Seton appeared too, dressed in his night clothes but with his sword belted around his waist. The peaceful sleep of minutes before was more distant now than home, and here he was, surrounded by confused and injured men who needed him as never before. Half naked, dazed, barefoot and frightened, the survivors of that first impact were crawling up on to the deck and counting themselves lucky to have lived so long. Some of them were terribly injured, but there was nothing to be done for them now.

Salmond’s crewmen needed help with the pumps and Seton immediately placed 60 of the able men at the captain’s disposal. He gathered his officers to him then and told them that all hope lay with their ability to maintain order.

The manner in which he chose to do that—the words he chose and the tone of his voice—were the measure of the man and of the army that had made him: “Gentlemen—would you please be kind enough to preserve order and silence among the men and ensure that any orders given by Captain Salmond are instantly obeyed,” he said.

No sooner had Seton finished than the captain called for help to lower the lifeboats. Sailor and soldier alike united for the job—but found to their dismay that the chains and winches had either been painted over or left to rust, stopping them working. Only three boats out of an available eight could be lowered—two eight-oared cutters and a gig. What was instantly obvious was that there was to be no salvation for most of the people aboard. They were at least three miles from land and would be going into water known to be thick with sharks, including Great Whites.

Although he never actually used the words “Women and children first,” Seton made it clear to everyone aboard just who would be taking up the first places in the available boats. The officers’ families had been safely rounded up and were now ushered aboard one of the cutters. Wives cried out for husbands and children for their fathers, but there was nothing else for it. Nothing like this had ever been done before, aboard a naval vessel or any other. Previously, when all hope was lost, it had been every man for himself. But here aboard the
Birkenhead
the past was erased and the future shaped. The young officers and men of the 74th and the other regiments were about to set a new standard.

Seton selected a young ensign of the 74th, 19-year-old Alexander Cumming Russell, to take charge of the women and children’s cutter and see it to safety. Fearing the worst, Seton then positioned himself at the foot of the gangplank leading aboard the little boat and drew his sword. He was ready to repel any would-be boarders—but not one man stepped out of line.

Instead they remained where their officers had told them to be. Some in night clothes, some half-dressed in their uniforms and some naked, they had come to order. Shoulders back, eyes front and chins up, they looked into the starry southern sky while the women and children were rowed away from the
Birkenhead.

The places in the remaining serviceable lifeboats were filled using the system the Army has always called “Funeral Order”—youngest first—and these too were lowered into the sea and rowed clear of the ship.

Thinking he might move his vessel off the rocks that had holed her, Salmond ordered the engines to be put into reverse. If they could get out into open water, he thought, perhaps the buoyancy trapped in other parts of the ship would keep her afloat. As it turned out, the effect of his plan was catastrophic. A second rip was torn through the iron plates of the hull and now seawater gushed into the engine
room as well. The fires heating the boilers were immediately extinguished by the deluge, and smoke and steam billowed up on to the deck from below. With that final hope dashed, Salmond issued an order to have all the horses led into the sea. The terrified animals were blindfolded before being manhandled out of their stalls and into the water. But although it had been thought they might strike out for land, most were quickly drowned or taken by sharks, their whinnies and screams serving as a foretaste of what might be to come.

Some time later the
Birkenhead
broke her back upon the reef. She started to lean crazily, but still Seton called for order from his officers and men, willing them to hold their places. And there they stayed, neatly in their lines as the deck bucked and slid beneath them. The ship’s funnel finally gave in to the forces of gravity and snapped off at its base. It tumbled down on to the deck, killing or maiming a group of soldiers and sailors as they worked to try to free another of the lifeboats.

Captain Salmond had climbed up into the rigging—either to try to stay clear of the water or to find a better place from which to address the soldiers. From his perch he shouted at them to get into the water now and swim towards the lifeboats.

“Save yourselves while you still can,” he called. “Those of you who can swim—jump overboard and swim towards the boats. It is your only hope of salvation.”

Hearing him, Seton raised his sword above his head and shouted out to his soldiers. He knew what must be done, what must be endured, and his voice cracked with the emotion of it all: “You will swamp the cutter containing the women and children,” he cried. “I implore you not to do this thing and I ask you all to stand fast!”

Not a man broke ranks, though the deck rose beneath them and only the sea and the sharks awaited. The officers took up the call too—urging their men to hold the line. And so they did. Green youngsters they might have been when they boarded the
Birkenhead
,
but they were men now. Their last remaining duty was to preserve the lives of the women and children and that was what they were going to do.

As the water rose around them, and while the women, children and youngest of the soldiers looked on from the little boats, the officers and soldiers shook hands with one another and said goodbye. One man’s voice rose above the din of the ship’s dying: “God bless you all,” he said. “God bless you all!”

Captain Wright of the 91st Regiment, who made it away from the wreck and lived to fight another day, said later:

The order and regularity that prevailed on board, from the moment the ship struck till she totally disappeared, far exceeded anything that I had thought could be affected by the best discipline; and it is the more to be wondered at, seeing that most of the soldiers were but a short time in the service.

Every man did as he was directed and there was not a cry or a murmur among them until the vessel made her final plunge. All received their orders and had them carried out as if the men were embarking instead of going to the bottom of the sea; there was only one difference, that I never saw any embarkation conducted with so little noise or confusion.

 

Quickly now the ship began to slip beneath the waves. Soon only the top parts of her masts and rigging were visible and pockets of men clung there before their strength failed them and they disappeared. For many of those in the water, time was short. Sharks circled for a while and then, emboldened by numbers, began to move in for the kill. Men cried out as the great fish closed on them and plucked away one after another. Who could have imagined such a thing? Hundreds of impoverished young men, who had left behind a country blighted by famine in hope of a better life, ending up as food for sharks. In spite of all that irony and agony, not one made a move
for the three lifeboats standing off many yards distant but still within reach.

Driven beyond endurance by what they were witnessing, however, the women in the cutter commanded by Ensign Russell eventually insisted it be rowed back toward the struggling men. None of the soldiers would reach out to accept the help being offered to them, none would disobey his orders. One family spotted their father and called out to him. He too refused to approach, but Ensign Russell jumped into the water and helped the man to take his place in the cutter. Seeing the husband and father reunited with his family, the teenager struck out for shore. He was taken by sharks before he had made 20 strokes, and disappeared from sight.

He was not alone. In all more than 430 men died that morning. Captain Salmond was killed when one of the ship’s masts fell on top of him. Lieutenant Colonel Seton was last seen among his men, but perished along with most of them.

Every single woman and child was saved.

There were other miracles too: one young officer managed to swim the three miles to the shore and, when he clambered gratefully out of the surf, found his horse standing there waiting for him. Some hours later, the schooner
Lioness
came across one of the lifeboats and took the survivors aboard. She carried on until she reached the scene of the tragedy and her crewmen managed to pull some more survivors out of the water. Fewer than 200 had lived to tell the tale of the
Birkenhead.

News of the loss did not reach Britain until April—but the reports from the survivors ensured a place in legend for the officers and soldiers who had given their lives for the sake of the few. When the king of Prussia, Frederick Wilhelm, later the first German emperor, was told of the event, he ordered that an account of it be posted in every barracks of his army. This, he said, was the standard of behavior he expected from his men.

By their actions, Seton and his men changed maritime protocol forever. The cry of “Women and children first” is more properly described as “the Birkenhead Drill.” This, then, is their memorial and their greatest monument.

Half a century later, Kipling immortalized the greatness of it all in his poem “Soldier an’ Sailor Too,” which he dedicated to the Royal Marines:

To take your chance in the thick of a rush, with firing all about,

Is nothing so bad when you’ve cover to ’and, an’ leave an’ likin’ to shout;

But to stand an’ be still to the Birken’ead drill is a damn tough bullet to chew,

An’ they done it, the Jollies—’Er Majesty’s Jollies—soldier an’ sailor too!

Their work was done when it ’adn’t begun; they was younger nor me an’ you;

Their choice it was plain between drownin’ in ’eaps an’ bein’ mopped by the screw,

So they stood an’ was still to the Birken’ead drill, soldier an’ sailor too!

The last word on the matter comes from a history of the 74th. The action taken by the men during the
Birkenhead
tragedy, it said:

…sheds more glory upon those who took part in it than a hundred well-fought battles.