Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1148 page)

Her next day’s work opens, as no pallid writer of fiction dare begin, thus: “Having dived unobserved into Constantinople, observed, etc.” Her observations were rather hampered by cross-tides, mud, and currents, as well as the vagaries of one of her own torpedoes which turned upside down and ran about promiscuously. It hit something at last, and so did another shot that she fired, but the waters by Constantinople Arsenal are not healthy to linger in after one has scared up the whole sea-front, so “turned to go out.” Matters were a little better below, and E11 in her perilous passage might have been a lady of the harem tied up in a sack and thrown into the Bosporus. She grounded heavily; she bounced up 30 feet, was headed down again by a man[oe]uvre easier to shudder over than to describe, and when she came to rest on the bottom found herself being swivelled right round the compass. They watched the compass with much interest. “It was concluded, therefore, that the vessel (E11 is one of the few who speaks of herself as a ‘vessel’ as well as a ‘boat’) was resting on the shoal under the Leander Tower, and was being turned round by the current.” So they corrected her, started the motors, and “bumped gently down into 85 feet of water” with no more knowledge than the lady in the sack where the next bump would land them.

The Preening Perch

And the following day was spent “resting in the centre of the Sea of Marmara.” That was their favourite preening perch between operations, because it gave them a chance to tidy the boat and bathe, and they were a cleanly people both in their methods and their persons. When they boarded a craft and found nothing of consequence they “parted with many expressions of good will,” and E11 “had a good wash.” She gives her reasons at length; for going in and out of Constantinople and the Straits is all in the day’s work, but going dirty, you understand, is serious. She had “of late noticed the atmosphere in the boat becoming very oppressive, the reason doubtless being that there was a quantity of dirty linen aboard, and also the scarcity of fresh water necessitated a limit being placed on the frequency of personal washing.” Hence the centre of the Sea of Marmara; all hands playing overside and as much laundry work as time and the Service allowed. One of the reasons, by the way, why we shall be good friends with the Turk again is that he has many of our ideas about decency.

In due time E11 went back to her base. She had discovered a way of using unspent torpedoes twice over, which surprised the enemy, and she had as nearly as possible been cut down by a ship which she thought was running away from her. Instead of which (she made the discovery at three thousand yards, both craft all out) the stranger steamed straight at her. “The enemy then witnessed a somewhat spectacular dive at full speed from the surface to 20 feet in as many seconds. He then really did turn tail and was seen no more.” Going through the Straits she observed an empty troopship at anchor, but reserved her torpedoes in the hope of picking up some battleships lower down. Not finding these in the Narrows, she nosed her way back and sank the trooper, “afterwards continuing journey down the Straits.” Off Kilid Bahr something happened; she got out of trim and had to be fully flooded before she could be brought to her required depth. It might have been whirlpools under water, or — other things. (They tell a story of a boat which once went mad in these very waters, and for no reason ascertainable from within plunged to depths that contractors do not allow for; rocketed up again like a swordfish, and would doubtless have so continued till she died, had not something she had fouled dropped off and let her recover her composure.)

An hour later: “Heard a noise similar to grounding. Knowing this to be impossible in the water in which the boat then was, I came up to 20 feet to investigate, and observed a large mine preceding the periscope at a distance of about 20 feet, which was apparently hung up by its moorings to the port hydroplane.” Hydroplanes are the fins at bow and stern which regulate a submarine’s diving. A mine weighs anything from hundredweights to half-tons. Sometimes it explodes if you merely think about it; at others you can batter it like an empty sardine-tin and it submits meekly; but at no time is it meant to wear on a hydroplane. They dared not come up to unhitch it, “owing to the batteries ashore,” so they pushed the dim shape ahead of them till they got outside Kum Kale. They then went full astern, and emptied the after-tanks, which brought the bows down, and in this posture rose to the surface, when “the rush of water from the screws together with the sternway gathered allowed the mine to fall clear of the vessel.”

Now a fool, said Dr. Johnson, would have tried to describe that.

III

RAVAGES AND REPAIRS

Before we pick up the further adventures of H.M. Submarine E14 and her partner E11, here is what you might call a cutting-out affair in the Sea of Marmara which E12 (Lieutenant-Commander K.M. Bruce) put through quite on the old lines.

E12’s main motors gave trouble from the first, and she seems to have been a cripple for most of that trip. She sighted two small steamers, one towing two, and the other three, sailing vessels; making seven keels in all. She stopped the first steamer, noticed she carried a lot of stores, and, moreover, that her crew — she had no boats — were all on deck in life-belts. Not seeing any gun, E12 ran up alongside and told the first lieutenant to board. The steamer then threw a bomb at E12, which struck, but luckily did not explode, and opened fire on the boarding-party with rifles and a concealed 1-in. gun. E12 answered with her six-pounder, and also with rifles. The two sailing ships in tow, very properly, tried to foul E12’s propellers and “also opened fire with rifles.”

It was as Orientally mixed a fight as a man could wish: The first lieutenant and the boarding-party engaged on the steamer, E12 foul of the steamer, and being fouled by the sailing ships; the six-pounder methodically perforating the steamer from bow to stern; the steamer’s 1-in. gun and the rifles from the sailing ships raking everything and everybody else; E12’s coxswain on the conning-tower passing up ammunition; and E12’s one workable motor developing “slight defects” at, of course, the moment when power to man[oe]uvre was vital.

The account is almost as difficult to disentangle as the actual mess must have been. At any rate, the six-pounder caused an explosion in the steamer’s ammunition, whereby the steamer sank in a quarter of an hour, giving time — and a hot time it must have been — for E12 to get clear of her and to sink the two sailing ships. She then chased the second steamer, who slipped her three tows and ran for the shore. E12 knocked her about a good deal with gun-fire as she fled, saw her drive on the beach well alight, and then, since the beach opened fire with a gun at 1500 yards, went away to retinker her motors and write up her log. She approved of her first lieutenant’s behaviour “under very trying circumstances” (this probably refers to the explosion of the ammunition by the six-pounder which, doubtless, jarred the boarding-party) and of the cox who acted as ammunition-hoist; and of the gun’s crew, who “all did very well” under rifle and small-gun fire “at a range of about ten yards.” But she never says what she really said about her motors.

A Brawl at a Pier

Now we will take E14 on various work, either alone or as flagship of a squadron composed of herself and Lieutenant-Commander Nasmith’s boat, E11. Hers was a busy midsummer, and she came to be intimate with all sort of craft — such as the two-funnelled gunboat off Sar Kioi, who “fired at us, and missed as usual”; hospital ships going back and forth unmolested to Constantinople; “the gunboat which fired at me on Sunday,” and other old friends, afloat and ashore.

When the crew of the Turkish brigantine full of stores got into their boats by request, and then “all stood up and cursed us,” E14 did not lose her temper, even though it was too rough to lie alongside the abandoned ship. She told Acting Lieutenant R.W. Lawrence, of the Royal Naval Reserve, to swim off to her, which he did, and after a “cursory search” — Who can be expected to Sherlock Holmes for hours with nothing on? — set fire to her “with the aid of her own matches and paraffin oil.”

Then E14 had a brawl with a steamer with a yellow funnel, blue top and black band, lying at a pier among dhows. The shore took a hand in the game with small guns and rifles, and, as E14 man[oe]uvred about the roadstead “as requisite” there was a sudden unaccountable explosion which strained her very badly. “I think,” she muses, “I must have caught the moorings of a mine with my tail as I was turning, and exploded it. It is possible that it might have been a big shell bursting over us, but I think this unlikely, as we were 30 feet at the time.” She is always a philosophical boat, anxious to arrive at the reason of facts, and when the game is against her she admits it freely.

There was nondescript craft of a few hundred tons, who “at a distance did not look very warlike,” but when chased suddenly played a couple of six-pounders and “got off two dozen rounds at us before we were under. Some of them were only about 20 yards off.” And when a wily steamer, after sidling along the shore, lay up in front of a town she became “indistinguishable from the houses,” and so was safe because we do not löwestrafe open towns.

Sailing dhows full of grain had to be destroyed. At one rendezvous, while waiting for E11, E14 dealt with three such cases and then “towed the crews inshore and gave them biscuits, beef, and rum and water, as they were rather wet.” Passenger steamers were allowed to proceed, because they were “full of people of both sexes,” which is an unkultured way of doing business.

Here is another instance of our insular type of mind. An empty dhow is passed which E14 was going to leave alone, but it occurs to her that the boat looks “rather deserted,” and she fancies she sees two heads in the water. So she goes back half a mile, picks up a couple of badly exhausted men, frightened out of their wits, gives them food and drink, and puts them aboard their property. Crews that jump overboard have to be picked up, even if, as happened in one case, there are twenty of them and one of them is a German bank manager taking a quantity of money to the Chanak Bank. Hospital ships are carefully looked over as they come and go, and are left to their own devices; but they are rather a nuisance because they force E14 and others to dive for them when engaged in stalking warrantable game. There were a good many hospital ships, and as far as we can make out they all played fair. E11 boarded one and “reported everything satisfactory.”

Strange Messmates

A layman cannot tell from the reports which of the duties demanded the most work — whether the continuous clearing out of transports, dhows, and sailing ships, generally found close to the well-gunned and attentive beach, or the equally continuous attacks on armed vessels of every kind. Whatever else might be going on, there was always the problem how to arrange for the crews of sunk ships. If a dhow has no small boats, and you cannot find one handy, you have to take the crew aboard, where they are horribly in the way, and add to the oppressiveness of the atmosphere — like “the nine people, including two very old men,” whom E14 made honorary members of her mess for several hours till she could put them ashore after dark. Oddly enough she “could not get anything out of them.” Imagine nine bewildered Moslems suddenly decanted into the reeking clamorous bowels of a fabric obviously built by Shaitan himself, and surrounded by — but our people are people of the Book and not dog-eating Kaffirs, and I will wager a great deal that that little company went ashore in better heart and stomach than when they were passed down the conning-tower hatch.

Then there were queer amphibious battles with troops who had to be shelled as they marched towards Gallipoli along the coast roads. E14 went out with E11 on this job, early one morning, each boat taking her chosen section of landscape. Thrice E14 rose to fire, thinking she saw the dust of feet, but “each time it turned out to be bullocks.” When the shelling was ended “I think the troops marching along that road must have been delayed and a good many killed.” The Turks got up a field-gun in the course of the afternoon — your true believer never hurries — which out-ranged both boats, and they left accordingly.

The next day she changed billets with E11, who had the luck to pick up and put down a battleship close to Gallipoli. It turned out to be the
Barbarossa
. Meantime E14 got a 5000-ton supply ship, and later had to burn a sailing ship loaded with 200 bales of leaf and cut tobacco — Turkish tobacco! Small wonder that E11 “came alongside that afternoon and remained for an hour” — probably making cigarettes.

Refitting under Difficulties

Then E14 went back to her base. She had a hellish time among the Dardanelles nets; was, of course, fired at by the forts, just missed a torpedo from the beach, scraped a mine, and when she had time to take stock found electric mine-wires twisted round her propellers and all her hull scraped and scored with wire marks. But that, again, was only in the day’s work. The point she insisted upon was that she had been for seventy days in the Sea of Marmara with no securer base for refit than the centre of the same, and during all that while she had not had “any engine-room defect which has not been put right by the engine-room staff of the boat.” The commander and the third officer went sick for a while; the first lieutenant got gastro-enteritis and was in bed (if you could see that bed!) “for the remainder of our stay in the Sea of Marmara,” but “this boat has never been out of running order.” The credit is ascribed to “the excellence of my chief engine-room artificer, James Hollier Hague, O.N. 227715,” whose name is duly submitted to the authorities “for your consideration for advancement to the rank of warrant officer.”