Chapter VII Under the White Ensign
Because he was a Sea Scout, clever at semaphore signalling, with a knowledge of seamanship, resourceful, and generally handy, Mark Redisham had no difficulty in entering the Royal Naval Reserve, the more especially as he was strongly recommended by Captain Damant. It satisfied him greatly to be appointed at once as signal-boy and wireless operator on board His Majesty’s steam trawler Dainty.
She was named the Dainty when launched, and as the Dainty she had toiled and battled for three stormy winters on the wild North Sea. But now her impudent white and red funnel and her gaudy hull were painted a sombre war grey, her trawling gear had been altered, her fish-well turned into a cabin, and the name on her bows had given place to the number 99. She was no longer a mere fishing craft, but classed as one of the great new fleet of naval mine-sweepers, flying the white ensign, and manned by a crew of sturdy East Coast fishermen wearing the blue jacket and loose trousers and flat-topped caps of the British Navy.
It was a proud moment for Mark when early on the morning following the “raid” on the pigeon-loft he went on duty, and the Dainty steamed out of Haddisport harbour and bore northward abreast of the lighthouse and past his home on the cliff. She was one of a squadron of twelve, and they went out in the company of the torpedo gunboat Rapid.
Word had come that the Germans had sown an extensive mine-field to the west and south of the Dogger Bank, scattering their deadly explosives over the seas, to the peril of peaceful trading vessels as well as of any British battleships and cruisers that might enter the area of danger. Two Danish cargo steamers and half a dozen English fishing boats had already been blown up, and our busy scavengers of the sea were now to go out and rake up the carefully-sown seedlings of death.
The work was dangerous, for at any moment one of the stout little vessels of the squadron might find a mine with her keel instead of with her stretched wire hawser, which meant ten more good men sent to the bottom. And there was always the risk of a premature explosion if a mine had to be handled in releasing it from its moorings.
Mines are not pleasant things to handle at any time—certainly not such powerful ones as the Germans employ, with glass “beards,” or projecting spikes, the breaking of one of which results in an explosion great enough to sink a Dreadnought! They are charged, not with gun-cotton, but with the even stronger explosive known as T.N.T., which has the quality that if the mine filled with it strikes a ship it blows in the side of the vessel and then continues its destructive work in the interior.
The skipper of mine-sweeper 99 was Harry Snowling, R.N.R., an old salt who had fished for thirty years on the North Sea, and knew its deeps and shallows as well as he knew the lines on his own honest, weather-beaten face. But, of course, he had had no experience of mine-sweeping, and had only vague ideas as to how the mines were to be located.
“What’s she doin’ of, bor?” he questioned, when they were far out in the blue water, watching a seaplane sweeping overhead and flying to and fro athwart the gunboat’s course.
“Well,” said Mark Redisham, “I’m not certain; but I suppose she’s looking for mines. They’re not floating right on the surface, you know. They’re held just about a foot below low water level, so that when a vessel passes she’ll go bang on to them. But the pilot up there can see them, as a gannet sees a fish, and I expect he’ll drop a signal when he spots one.”
For something like an hour the seaplane searched, followed by the gunboat, with the trawlers moving in pairs in her wake.
When at length a signal was sent down that mines had been sighted, “dans,” or small buoys with flags attached, were put out to mark the spot from which operations were to begin. Each couple of trawlers got ready their dredge tackle, dropping over the stern a long wire rope, heavily weighted. The weight drawn by each boat was connected with that of its partner by a yet longer wire hawser, weighted to keep it submerged and stretched below the level of the floating mines. The two vessels, ranging themselves on either side of the mine-field, steamed ahead on a parallel course, so that their submerged gear should catch upon the mooring-lines and sweep up the mines floating between them.
This process was carried on simultaneously by the other trawlers, clearing a wide lane through the mine-field, while the gunboat and the seaplane continued their searching for new fields.
When the mines were thus caught and brought to the surface, they were exploded from a safe distance by gunfire. You may be sure there were many narrow escapes from serious accident.
During the first afternoon, the Dainty and her working partner, the Ripple, brought up two mines together. They came into violent contact with each other, exploding so close astern of the Ripple that she was caught in the edge of the upheaval and badly damaged. Her crew made for the boat, thinking that all was over with them; but her skipper controlled them, and himself crawled below into the narrow space near the screw shaft, discovered the damage, and stopped the leak sufficiently to enable the pumps to keep the water down and save the ship.
Within a quarter of an hour of this accident, one of the other trawlers struck a mine and was shattered to fragments.
At the end of two days, the field having been cleared, the gunboat returned to port. Shortly after she had gone, Mark Redisham and his companions watched a squadron of British dreadnoughts and cruisers steaming safely across the area from which the danger had been so industriously removed.
Their trails of smoke had hardly faded from the horizon when Mark, still looking in the direction in which they had disappeared, noticed a curious disturbance in the calm water, about a couple of miles away.
At first he thought it was a school of gambolling porpoises showing their fins, but presently the periscopes and conning-tower of a submarine rose to the surface. The conning-tower was marked “U15,” and he knew by this that she was German.
It seemed to him that she had probably been lurking in wait for the battleships that had just passed. If so, she had certainly missed her chance of doing them any damage. One of her officers climbed out to the conning-tower platform, looked searchingly around the sea, but quickly disappeared again, and the submarine dived, having paid no attention to the trawlers.
Mark, taking counsel with the skipper, went into the wireless operating-room and sent out a message, reporting what he had seen and giving the position. He did not expect his message to be picked up; but within an hour a British light cruiser came racing down from the north at twenty-five knot speed. The skipper and Mark watched her through their binoculars as she drew nearer, and identified her as H.M.S. Carlisle. They saw her suddenly alter her course, as though to avoid the mine-sweepers and possible floating mines.
“Her needn’t be afeared,” said Snowling. “Thar aren’t no mines here now. Suppose you signals her, bor, and tells her it’s all right!”
“Hold hard!” cried Mark. “Look! Look what she’s after!”
In direct advance of the cruiser, he distinguished for a moment the two periscopes of the enemy submarine making a ripple as they moved through the calm water. In that same moment there was a gush of fire and smoke from one of the warship’s 6-inch guns. A fountain of spray rose high into the sunlit air from where the shell had fallen. One of the periscopes seemed to have been struck. The submarine, evidently crippled, was emptying her ballast tanks to rise to the surface when a second shell struck her half-submerged conning-tower, smashing it like an egg.
“That’s what I calls good marksmanship,” declared old Harry Snowling. And going to the flag-halyard, he dipped his white ensign in salute.
The nearest of the trawlers hastened to the spot where the shattered submarine had gone down, hoping to save some lives; but nothing was found but a slimy patch of floating oil.
The Carlisle came within speaking distance of the trawlers, standing by for about an hour, and gave information of a new mine-field sown between the Dogger Bank and the Bight of Heligoland. Ten British trawlers, it was stated, had been captured by a German cruiser—the Schwalbe—which had taken them in to Emden. Their crews had been kept prisoners, and the boats had been fitted out as mine-layers to scatter mines indiscriminately wherever ships could sail.
The mine-sweepers were supposed to work in stretches of ten days at sea and six in port; but the Dainty and her companions continued at their task a longer time, for the danger was greater than ever the Royal Navy had counted upon.
Many neutral ships and fishing craft had been blown up, a British gunboat had been sunk, another badly damaged, and it was imperative that the seas should be kept clear. But at length a relief squadron from Grimsby came out to take over the work, and the Haddisport boats were dismissed for home.
Early on the next morning, Mark Redisham started up in his bunk, hearing the engines coming to a dead stop. He dressed himself in his oilskins and went out upon the rain-splashed deck. To his surprise he saw that a submarine had come close alongside. It was the H29, of which, as he remembered, his friend, Lieutenant Ingoldsby, was the commanding officer. One of her crew had been taken ill, and Lieutenant Ingoldsby wished the Dainty to take the man on board and nurse him until he could be put ashore in Haddisport.
The sick man had been carried over a gangway thrown across between the two vessels when Mark, happening to glance over the Dainty’s farther bulwark, in search of the rest of the squadron which had gone on in advance, saw instead the dim shape of a three-funnelled cruiser looming ghostlike through the rain mist. She was flying no ensign, but by the look of her he was almost sure she was not British.
Not asking himself why he did so, he strode across the gangway to where Lieutenant Ingoldsby knelt, doing something with a spanner, on the narrow deck abaft the conning-tower.
“Good-morning, sir,” he began. “I think the cruiser over there is signalling.”
“Cruiser?” repeated Lieutenant Ingoldsby, springing to his feet. He climbed a few rungs up the ladder of the conning-tower, and looked out over the wheel-house of the Dainty, behind which the submarine was well hidden.
“Just slip below and ask Jardine for my glasses, Redisham,” he ordered. “I believe it’s the Schwalbe—the ship we’ve been stalking! In fact, I’m sure!”
Mark had never before been on board a submarine, and when he got to the foot of the perpendicular ladder of the hatchway, he became confused by the strange complexity of tanks and machinery. An electric light shone in the far end of a narrow passage. He was making his difficult way towards it when the great boom of a naval gun startled him. The Schwalbe was opening fire on the mine-sweepers.
He stood still. The silence following the gun shot was broken by the banging of an iron door above his head, and the sharply-spoken command rang out in Lieutenant Ingoldsby’s voice:
“Prepare to dive!”