Sea Warfare eBook

But it was not written in the Book of Fate that stripped and battered Eblis should die that night as Gehenna died.  After the burial of the books it was found that the several fires on her were manageable, that she “was not making water aft of the damage,” which meant two-thirds of her were, more or less, in commission, and, best of all, that three boilers were usable in spite of the cruiser’s shells.  So she “shaped course and speed to make the least water and the most progress towards land.”  On the way back the wind shifted eight points without warning—­it was this shift, if you remember, that so embarrassed Cripple and Paralytic on their homeward crawl—­and, what with one thing and another, Eblis was unable to make port till the scandalously late hour of noon on June 2, “the mutual ramming having occurred about 11.40 P.M. on May 31.”  She says, this time without any legal reservation whatever, “I cannot speak too highly of the courage, discipline, and devotion of the officers and ship’s company.”

Her recommendations are a Compendium of Godly Deeds for the Use of Mariners.  They cover pretty much all that man may be expected to do.  There was, as there always is, a first lieutenant who, while his commander was being extricated from the bridge wreckage, took charge of affairs and steered the ship first from the engine-room, or what remained of it, and later from aft, and otherwise manoeuvred as requisite, among doubtful bulkheads.  In his leisure he “improvised means of signalling,” and if there be not one joyous story behind that smooth sentence I am a Hun!

THE ART OF IMPROVISING

They all improvised like the masters of craft they were.  The chief engine-room artificer, after he had helped to put out fires, improvised stops to the gaps which were left by the carrying away of the forward funnel and mast.  He got and kept up steam “to a much higher point than would have appeared at all possible,” and when the sea rose, as it always does if you are in trouble, he “improvised pumping and drainage arrangements, thus allowing the ship to steam at a good speed on the whole.”  There could not have been more than 40 feet of hole.

The surgeon—­a probationer—­performed an amputation single-handed in the wreckage by the bridge, and by his “wonderful skill, resource, and unceasing care and devotion undoubtedly saved the lives of the many seriously wounded men.”  That no horror might be lacking, there was “a short circuit among the bridge wreckage for a considerable time.”  The searchlight and wireless were tangled up together, and the electricity leaked into everything.

There were also three wise men who saved the ship whose names must not be forgotten.  They were Chief Engine-room Artificer Lee, Stoker Petty Officer Gardiner, and Stoker Elvins.  When the funnel carried away it was touch and go whether the foremost boiler would not explode.  These three “put on respirators and kept the fans going till all fumes, etc., were cleared away.”  To each man, you will observe, his own particular Hell which he entered of his own particular initiative.