Read Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service Online

Authors: Hector C. Bywater,H. C. Ferraby

Tags: #Autobiography, #Military, #World War I, #Memoirs, #True Crime, #Espionage, #Engineering & Transportation, #Engineering, #History, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Naval, #Politics & Social Sciences, #Politics & Government, #Specific Topics, #Historical

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The order to raise steam appears to have been obeyed in most of the ships, if not in all. But on the same evening a majority of the men in the battleships
Thüringen
and
Markgraf
refused to stand their night watches, and went to their hammocks, from which in the morning they refused to turn out. Cases of insubordination occurred in other ships, and in view of this development the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral von Hipper, wisely cancelled the signal to put to sea.

During 30 October the atmosphere in the fleet was charged with electricity. Towards evening the storm broke. The scene in the
Thüringen
has been graphically described by one of her officers:

As though by agreement, the men came streaming from all parts of the ship – gun crews, stokers, and lower-deck parties – to the forward battery, where they prepared to resist. Hawsers were cut through, the weighing of the anchors was rendered impossible, and the electric light was cut off, so that order could not be restored. A grim, uncouth horde of men shut themselves up forward from the rest of the ship. The officers armed themselves, and mounted guard over the after part of the ship to protect vital compartments and gear against attack by the mutineers.

The mutiny in the
Thüringen
was temporarily suppressed by the calling up of a destroyer and a submarine, which took station on the beam with orders to fire torpedoes into the ship unless the men returned to duty by a given time. This they did, whereupon a number were placed under arrest and sent ashore. There, however, the armed escort refused to proceed further, and fraternised with the prisoners, who broke away and roamed through the streets of Kiel, waving red flags and singing revolutionary songs. Meanwhile the mutiny had spread to other ships. Very soon the whole fleet was in open revolt. Strangely enough, scarcely any resistance was offered by the officers, most of whom stood aside while their men hauled down the ensign and ran up the red flag in its place. Only in the battleship
Koenig
did a handful of officers attempt to oppose force by force. In that ship the commanding officer, Captain Weniger, was badly wounded in trying to defend the colours, while two of his officers were shot dead at his side.

The fact that the mutiny originated in the big ships shows very clearly the demoralising effect of prolonged service in harbour. Among the crews of the destroyers, which had put in
much more time at sea, the revolt spread more slowly, and the submarine personnel remained loyal almost to the last. But by 3 November the High Seas Fleet had ceased to exist as a fighting entity. Discipline had gone to pieces; the ships were being run by ‘Soviets’, and most of the officers were ashore or confined to their cabins. Not even the publication of the armistice terms, which demanded
inter alia
the surrender of the fleet to the Allies, sufficed to reawaken the fighting spirit of the men. There was, it is true, some talk of ‘resisting to the last’, but the personnel as a whole regarded the impending humiliation of their service with indifference.

A fortnight later the German battle fleet, escorted by the Grand Fleet, steamed into the Firth of Forth, and eventually was remanded to Scapa Flow in custody, there to await the Allies’ decision as to its fate. It is unnecessary to repeat here the well-known details of that historic event, or of the subsequent sinking of the vessels by their own crews. The world’s comment at the time was scathing enough, as was but natural; but after the lapse of so many years it would be a sorry task to dwell upon the abasement of an enemy who, in almost every action at sea, fought with courage and tenacity. The officers and men who took the German ships into action at Jutland, Coronel, and the Falklands will always be held in honour by British seamen.

By the end of the war the naval intelligence division had grown to imposing dimensions, as a reference to the ‘Navy List’ of December 1918 will show. Its staff included experts on every branch of naval affairs; linguists who between them were masters of practically every modern language, European and Asiatic, and of not a few ancient tongues to boot; cryptographers to whom almost every code was an open book, and chemists who not only
knew all about secret inks, but could even reconstruct a complete document from a handful of ashes taken out of a stove. In fact, the ID of that period might be said to represent a galaxy of practitioners in all the esoteric arts. Most of them held commissions in the Royal Navy, the Royal Marines, the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, or the Royal Naval Reserve, but there was a minority of members who, for one reason or another, preferred to remain civilians, and these, if the least conspicuous, were by no means the least useful units of the vast organisation.

A complete record of ID work and achievements during the war period would run into many volumes, and form a story more thrilling, we believe, than any of the histories on other aspects of the great struggle that have yet appeared. But it is a record that will never be printed, because no state, however liberal-minded, can afford to reveal the whole of its arcana. Nor would it be in the public interest to disclose the whole truth about our secret service operations even during the very period when they were most completely justified. Since perpetual peace is not yet assured, a time may come when the safety of the realm may once more necessitate an inquisition into the designs of its enemies, actual and potential, and the mechanism of intelligence that functioned so admirably in the past may have to be set in motion again. That is one reason why it would be improper to divulge ID methods in greater detail, and for the same reason we have preferred to write this narrative in outline, leaving the informed few to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s for their own satisfaction.

But we have said enough to convey a sufficiently clear and comprehensive idea of what the naval secret service accomplished, and enough, we hope and believe, to vindicate the memory of those who served England valiantly, though in
silence and an obscurity from which they themselves prefer not to emerge. They were the men who, at the call of duty, went forth on perilous emprise to ‘search, seek, find out’; who toiled unceasingly to discover and circumvent the plots that were laid for the undoing of their country. Their task is done, and their most fervent wish is that it may never have to be resumed, either in their own lifetime or in that of any succeeding generation.

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 1931 by Constable & Co. Ltd.
This edition published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Biteback Publishing Ltd
Westminster Tower
3 Albert Embankment
London SE1 7SP
Copyright © Hector C. Bywater, H. C. Ferraby 1931, 2015

Hector C. Bywater and H. C. Ferraby asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the publisher’s prior permission in writing.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.

ISBN 978–1–84954–938–7

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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