Chapter XXIII Striking the Balance
In their hurried flight from Haddisport and Buremouth, the raiding Germans had made a novel and unexpected departure from the recognised methods of warfare. By dropping floating mines in their wake, they showed that their battleships may be more dangerous in retreat than when advancing.
Retreat is not an inspiring proceeding; it depresses the spirits of officers and men, and this would be very evident in the case of the German seamen who had so long boasted of the great things they would accomplish when a naval war came. But if when their ships were in flight the crews knew that they were laying snares to trip up their pursuers their retreat would be robbed of its depressing effects. Any British vessels of war venturing to follow on their heels would inevitably be destroyed.
They were not yet hidden in the fog when Lieutenant Ingoldsby’s submarine, manoeuvring to torpedo them, ran up against one of their mines and was instantly sunk, with the loss of her gallant commander and every one of his crew. Hardly had the H29 disappeared when two of the patrolling trawlers, steaming up to her rescue, were also sent to the bottom.
The German light cruisers must have been fitted for this purpose of mine sowing. When the battleships were advancing, these smaller, high-speed scouts would act as a screen, and in retreat they would keep astern of the big ships, dropping a trail of small mines overboard as they fled.
The sacrifice of the H29 and the two trawlers was a serious disaster; but at the same time it taught our Navy a valuable lesson in tactics. Never again would any British warship pursuing a German follow directly in the wake, but always on a parallel course.
It was the wounded Kingfisher which brought into Haddisport the news that a new mine-field had been sown. A fleet of mine-sweepers, led by the gunboat Stormcock, was at once sent out. It included the Dainty, with Mark Redisham on board, and throughout the rest of that exciting day the people on shore were startled by repeated loud detonations as the floating mines were one after another exploded by gunfire from the trawler’s decks.
The Dainty and three of her consorts remained at sea for a week, doing patrol duty—cruising between the English coasts and the Bight of Heligoland in search of enemy ships or ships carrying contraband of war. They were now armed with machine-guns and could defend themselves in emergency.
At this time the chief interests of the war were centred upon the commerce destroyers on the outer seas and the military operations in France and Flanders. The Germans were making their great effort to force a way through to Calais. Their navy was hemmed in by the watchful British Fleet, and for a long time after the bombardment of Haddisport the North Sea was clear of their ships. There was no target for British naval guns.
Some few of their destroyers and submarines, it is true, contrived to steal out from the protection of their fortified harbours, and two British cruisers—the Hawke and the Hermes—were sunk by their torpedoes.
Fearing to risk their battleships in an engagement on the open sea, the enemy were using their small craft in the pirate work of sinking innocent merchantmen and fishing boats. They had seized the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, and were making this a base for submarines.
It was surmised that they intended also to station a force of torpedo boats at Antwerp, in spite of the breach of Dutch neutrality which the use of the River Scheldt would imply. But to enter either seaport they had to run the gauntlet of our North Sea patrols, and on at least one occasion they met with complete disaster.
A patrol of English trawlers was cruising off the Dutch coast, not far from the mouth of the Scheldt. Mark Redisham, on board the Dainty, was enduring as best he could the dull monotony of his confined life on a small vessel pitching uncomfortably on a rough sea in a bitterly cold wind. He was walking the wet deck, his oilskins dripping with rain, when he saw smoke on the dim horizon to the north. It came from the funnels of four torpedo-boat destroyers.
Mark watched them, and presently determined that they were Germans, making for the Scheldt.
“You’d best rap out a wireless message,” said Skipper Snowling.
“I don’t think there’s any need,” returned Mark. “Look what’s coming along behind them!”
He indicated a second cloud of smoke, much greater in volume than the first, and blacker. The Germans also had evidently seen it, for they had put on full steam, doing their best to escape. Whatever their pursuers might be, they were quickly lessening the distance that divided them from their prey. Mark watched the chase excitedly.
The four enemy boats were small compared with British destroyers; but they were going at quite twenty-six knots speed. Each was armed with three quick-firing guns and two machine-guns, and carried a crew of sixty officers and men. They flashed past, paying no attention to the trawlers.
Through the black oil smoke in the distance could now be distinguished a British light cruiser and four destroyers, rushing along like railway trains, with their high prows smothered in white spray. They were overhauling the Germans hand over hand.
“They can’t escape! They can’t escape!” cried the skipper.
Apparently the fugitives realised this; for they turned abruptly to starboard and at once opened fire on their pursuers. The distance between was about four miles, and it was at this range that the British cruiser, and her consorts, extending themselves into line abreast formation, began their cannonade. The shells from the two opposing sides crossed in front of the patrol of trawlers, which stood by, witnessing the fierce combat.
It lasted hardly more than an hour, a running fight in which everything depended upon marksmanship and in which the superiority of the British gunnery was from the first apparent.
A few moments after the action began, the leading German boat was struck in a vital part. Clouds of wreckage and smoke filled the air about her as the British lyddite shells hit her and exploded, smashing the thin steel plating of her hull. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left of her but a few survivors struggling in the waves.
The remaining three vessels, still going at full speed, tried to dodge the shots, while their own guns were kept at work. The British destroyers had selected each her own target, and continued pounding away at it from a distance. Superior range and weight of guns soon proved their advantage. The second of the German boats was sunk, then the third, and finally the fourth; the Kaiser’s Navy was poorer by the loss of four useful units.
Promptly, when the first of them went down, the trawler patrol hastened to the spot to pick up survivors. From all four some few were rescued, to be taken to England as prisoners.
Three officers and ten men had been saved by the Dainty when the cruiser steamed near, stopped, and dropped one of her boats. As the boat came alongside, Mark Redisham glanced instinctively at the men’s caps and was surprised to read the name H.M.S. Dauntless. He looked at the midshipman in the stern sheets. It was his brother Rodney.
“So that’s your new ship?” said Mark when they had greeted each other. “She’s a smart one. I hope there are not many casualties.”
“Hardly any to speak of,” Rodney answered. “One officer and four men slightly wounded, that’s all; and hardly a scratch on any one of the ships. We’ve wiped off an old score, anyhow. What we’ve just done will balance the loss of the Atreus.”
“Yes,” interposed one of the German officers who had been listening very attentively. “But the balance is still considerably in favour of Germany. You are forgetting what our Emden has done; you are forgetting how our Admiral von Spee annihilated a squadron of your Dreadnoughts, how one of our tiny submarines recently sent three of your best cruisers to the bottom. Did we not sink two more of your cruisers only last week? Have we not successfully bombarded your fortified coast towns——?”
What more he would have said was left unspoken, for at that moment one of the bluejackets in the boat leapt from his seat and seized him by the throat with one strong hand, while he lifted the other to strike him.
“Stop that! Stop that!” cried Rodney Redisham in a voice of stern command.
The seaman instantly let go his hold and stood back abashed.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said humbly, touching his cap; “but my brother Tom went down with the Atreus; my mother and sister were killed by a German shell in Haddisport, and I didn’t reckon I was doin’ no harm in goin’ for the first German as have come within reach of my fist.”
“It is not English to strike a prisoner, however,” the midshipman reminded him.
For some reason which Mark Redisham did not understand, none of the prisoners were left on board the Dainty. They were distributed among her three consorts, which followed the flotilla towards Harwich, leaving the commodore to return alone to Haddisport.
Skipper Snowling took her northward along the Dutch coast before making a slant across the Silver Pit. He had not gone many miles when a German destroyer came in sight, bearing down towards him.
“Looks as if she was a straggler from that other lot,” Snowling continued, and he altered his course to get nearer to a Norwegian steamer to the west of him.
To his surprise and annoyance, the destroyer also altered course and gave chase. Snowling put on more steam, and, as a precaution, got his machine gun ready for action, with Mark Redisham at the breech. In their weeks of mine-sweeping work Mark had proved himself an excellent shot. He had seldom failed to explode a mine when firing at it.
The German signalled to the Dainty to stop and haul down her flag, but the White Ensign remained proudly at the trawler’s masthead and her engines never went so well.
The destroyer opened fire and there was an immediate reply from the gun on the trawler’s deck. Mark aimed with cool precision and made many direct hits in vital parts, while shots from the German fell thick around him.
The two vessels blazed away at each other as hard as they could for about a quarter of an hour, no great damage being done on either side. But the destroyer, with her greater speed, was quickly overhauling the mine-sweeper, and at last the two came broadside to broadside.
“Look out, chaps!” cried Mark. “She’s going to torpedo us!”
All the hands wore their safety collars and lifebelts, and the boat was swung out ready over the quarter rail. The skipper was at the steering wheel.
“Keep cool all,” commanded Snowling. “Let ’em know as we’re Britons. Give her another peppering, Mark!”
Mark and his assistants had already shown that they were better gun-layers than their enemies, and their next cannonade sent splinters flying from the destroyer’s decks. Her wireless machinery and aerial was already wrecked. Her guns were silent for a while as she manoeuvred to discharge a torpedo.
Suddenly Harry Snowling put his helm hard over, the Dainty swung round bow on, and she raced forward like a mad animal direct for the destroyer and crashed into her amidships, her powerful prow smashing like a battering-ram into the steel plates.
The destroyer’s bridge fell over, and the five officers and men who had stood upon it were flung headlong into the sea.
The trawler’s engines were reversed. She backed out of the gaping hole she had made and then stood still as if to take breath after her exertion. The German boat, badly damaged, but not injured below water, just turned round, and, without waiting to pick up any of her men in the sea, made off as fast as her condition would allow her in the direction in which she was originally going.
“And now,” said Harry Snowling, when the survivors had been picked up and stowed safely below, “I reckon we may as well steer straight for home and get a coat of paint over them scratches on our bows.”