World War I - 9 Book Collection: Nelson's History of the War, The Battle of Jutland & The Battle of the Somme - Buchan John

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to close; at 6.35 he received the admiral's wireless message of victory; at 7.17 he saw his own opponent silenced and burning furiously. He waited half an hour for her surrender, and then opened fire again. At that she burned green lights, and he at once lowered his boats. Five officers and thirteen men had been rescued, when the blazing Leipzig turned over to port and sank.

      Battle of the Falkland Islands—December 8.

       Last Phase.

      The Kent's success was of a different kind. Normally she had but 23-½ knots of speed to the Nürnberg's 25; but her engine-room department by consummate skill and energy forced their lame duck to a speed which at the end of nearly four hours brought her within 12,000 yards of her enemy. Both ships opened fire, the Kent receiving one hit and making two. The Nürnberg then burst two of her boilers, and dropped to 19 knots, turned eight points to port, and engaged with her broadside. Captain Allen accepted the challenge, ran on, and placed the Kent before her beam at 6,000 yards. By 6.10 he had her burning and almost silenced; he ran on again, and raked her at 3,500 yards, destroying all her guns forward. At 6.30 she was silent and motionless. A few more shots, and she hauled down her flag. Captain Allen hastily repaired and lowered two of his damaged boats; but before they could reach her the Nürnberg turned over and sank. Twelve of her men were found, but only seven survived.

      Commander Wharton of the Kent has memorably described the final scene. "It was strange and weird, all this aftermath, the wind rapidly arising from the westward, darkness closing in, one ship heaving to the swell, well battered, the foretop-gallant mast gone. Of the other, nothing to be seen but floating wreckage, with here and there a man clinging, and the 'molly hawks' (vultures of the sea) swooping by. The wind moaned, and death was in the air. Then see! Out of the mist loomed a great four-masted barque under full canvas. A great ghost-ship she seemed. Slowly, majestically, she sailed by, and vanished in the night." The battle-cruisers' fight had been visited, earlier in the day, by the same ghost-ship; manned, it might easily be imagined, by phantom seamen of the Nelsonian age.

      Not since that age, and seldom even then, had so impressive a victory been won at sea: it was not a defeat of the enemy, it was his annihilation. Admiral Sturdee had seized all his opportunities, surmounted all his difficulties, and attained all his objects; he was even able to return his most valuable ships to the Grand Fleet practically intact and in the shortest possible time. It may be added that in a fine dispatch he showed once more how a British admiral writes of his enemy's fate and of his own achievement.

      CHAPTER XXIV.

       MYSTERY SHIPS.

       Table of Contents

      It was towards the end of 1914 that the German Admiralty conceived the idea of blockading the British Isles by means of a submarine fleet. The enterprise was a difficult one; for the pursuit and capture of commerce a submarine is very ill fitted. A frail boat with a small crew cannot afford to hold up and examine a ship on the surface; still less to put a prize crew on board and send the captured vessel into port. It was therefore decided that to carry out the blockade merchant ships must be sunk without examination and without warning. If crews, passengers, or even neutrals perished in this process, the "blame," says Admiral Scheer, "would attach to those who despised our warnings." No civilized power had ever before threatened to kill non-combatants on logical principles of this kind, and as soon as it was seen that the German Admiralty were attempting to carry out their murderous intentions it became necessary to devise means of destroying their U-boats wherever they could be found.

      They were accordingly hunted by destroyers, by trawlers, by submarines, and by airships and seaplanes; they were destroyed by gun fire, by mines, by nets, by torpedoes, and by depth charges, and all these were used with the greatest skill and success. Of all the hunting methods, perhaps the most attractive to the English sporting instinct was that of the Mystery Ships, or Q-boats. This was at first merely the use of a simple trap, but was developed by the genius of a single man into an entirely novel campaign of the most heroic kind.

      The Special Service ship or Q-boat of 1915 was a tramp or collier with a concealed armament for the decoying and destruction of submarines. The first success was achieved on July 25, 1915, when one of them, the Prince Charles (Lieutenant W. P. Mark-Wardlaw), was pursued and shelled by U36, near North Rona Island. Her crew abandoned ship, leaving their gunners concealed on board. The U-boat thereupon closed; but when she was within five hundred yards of her apparently helpless prey, the British guns were suddenly unmasked, and the submarine sank under their fire, leaving fifteen of her crew to be rescued by the victors.

      It was about this same time that a young lieutenant-commander named Gordon Campbell put to sea in charge of the Special Service ship Farnborough, formerly a collier, and now manned from the Mercantile Marine and Royal Naval Reserve. For six months the cruise was unsuccessful, but in the spring of 1916 the Farnborough's look-out at last sighted a U-boat, which, after firing a torpedo at her, broke surface within 1,000 yards, and summoned the supposed tramp with a shot across her bows. Lieutenant-Commander Campbell, who had trained his crew to a perfect knowledge of the game they had to play, stopped the ship, blew off steam ostentatiously, and ordered a "panic abandon ship." The U-boat came nearer, and reopened fire. Lieutenant-Commander Campbell, who was still concealed aboard his ship, then hoisted the white ensign and unmasked his guns. With twenty-one shots from her 12-pounders the Farnborough drove the U-boat under water, then steamed full speed towards her with depth charges, and when she reappeared mortally wounded, sent her to the bottom with five more rounds at point-blank range.

      Three weeks afterwards the Farnborough had the good fortune to be attacked by another U-boat, with whom she fought a surface action at a range of nearly 1,000 yards, disabling her at the second shot, and finally blowing her up.

      The Germans quickly perceived the deadliness of this new method, which made every attack on a merchant vessel a possible disaster for the U-boat, and their press was instructed to complain of the unscrupulousness of an enemy who used disguised ships and took the attacker by surprise. Commanders of U-boats were instructed to use greater caution in approaching their victims, and it soon became evident to Commander Campbell that they would no longer venture to come near a live ship. He determined to tempt them with a wounded one.

      When his new ship, Q5, was attacked by a U-boat early in 1917, he manoeuvred intentionally to get her torpedoed. The crew then abandoned ship as before, while Commander Campbell and his gunners lay hidden in the water-logged vessel, watching until the timid enemy should venture to the surface to finish her off. It took the U-boat twenty minutes to make up her mind. She then came up within 300 yards, and approached to fire a second torpedo, with her captain visible on his conning-tower. The first shot fired from Q5 took off his head, and the boat was then completely shattered; one officer and one man were picked up alive. Q5, with water in her engine-room, boiler-rooms, and holds, then signalled for help, and was taken in tow by Lieutenant-Commander W. W. Hallwright of the Laburnum, with the assistance of the Narwhal, the Buttercup, and the trawler Luneta; after a night of heroic exertions and great danger she was brought safely into port. Commander Campbell received the Victoria Cross. Of his officers and crew he wrote: "They may almost be said to have passed through the supreme test of discipline. The chief engineer and the engine-room watch remained at their posts and kept the dynamos going until driven out by water. They then had to hide on top of the engine-room. The guns' crews had to remain concealed in their gun-houses for nearly half an hour, where we could feel the ship going down by the stern. At that time it appeared touch and go whether the ship would sink before we sank the enemy."

      Four months afterwards Campbell and his men were out again, in the Special Service ship Pargust, and were again successful in being torpedoed. This time the U-boat, after some hesitation, came within 50 yards, and was so much injured by the Pargust's fire as to be incapable of submerging. Her crew made tokens of surrender, but when Commander Campbell ceased fire, attempted to make away upon the surface. The Pargust, of course,

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