a destroyer always casts to port when she goes astern,
do not let any zealous soul try to make her run true,
or you will have to learn her helm all over again.
And it is vital that you should know exactly what
your ship is going to do three seconds before she does
it. Similarly with men. If any one, from
Lieutenant-Commander to stoker, changes his personal
trick or habit—even the manner in which
he clutches his chin or caresses his nose at a crisis—the
matter must be carefully considered in this world
where each is trustee for his neighbour’s life
and, vastly more important, the corporate honour.
“What are the destroyers doing just now?”
I asked.
“Oh—running about—much
the same as usual.”
The Navy hasn’t the least objection to telling
one everything that it is doing. Unfortunately,
it speaks its own language, which is incomprehensible
to the civilian. But you will find it all in “The
Channel Pilot” and “The Riddle of the Sands.”
It is a foul coast, hairy with currents and rips,
and mottled with shoals and rocks. Practically
the same men hold on here in the same ships, with
much the same crews, for months and months. A
most senior officer told me that they were “good
boys”—on reflection, “quite
good boys”—but neither he nor the
flags on his chart explained how they managed their
lightless, unmarked navigations through black night,
blinding rain, and the crazy, rebounding North Sea
gales. They themselves ascribe it to Joss that
they have not piled up their ships a hundred times.
“I expect it must be because we’re always
dodging about over the same ground. One gets
to smell it. We’ve bumped pretty hard, of
course, but we haven’t expended much up to date.
You never know your luck on patrol, though.”
Personally, though they have been true friends to
me, I loathe destroyers, and all the raw, racking,
ricochetting life that goes with them—the
smell of the wet “lammies” and damp wardroom
cushions; the galley-chimney smoking out the bridge;
the obstacle-strewn deck; and the pervading beastliness
of oil, grit, and greasy iron. Even at moorings
they shiver and sidle like half-backed horses.
At sea they will neither rise up and fly clear like
the hydroplanes, nor dive and be done with it like
the submarines, but imitate the vices of both.
A scientist of the lower deck describes them as:
“Half switchback, half water-chute, and Hell
continuous.” Their only merit, from a landsman’s
point of view, is that they can crumple themselves
up from stem to bridge and (I have seen it) still
get home. But one does not breathe these compliments
to their commanders. Other destroyers may be—they
will point them out to you—poisonous bags
of tricks, but their own command—never!
Is she high-bowed? That is the only type which
over-rides the seas instead of smothering. Is
she low? Low bows glide through the water where
