OCR Text |
Show ipiTTEMir!iQE60F the pIeTF! ' ' , BY ii RUDYARD KIPLING In Lowestoft a bout was laid, Mark well what I do Kay! And she was built for the herring trade, Hut wlie has gone a rovin', a rovin', a rovln' The Ix)rd knows where! , They gave her government coal to burn, And a Q. F. gun at bow and stern, And sent her out a rovin', a rovin', a rovin'. Her skipper was mate of a bucko Khip Which always killed one man per trip, So he is used to rovin', a rovin', a rovin'. Her mate was skipper of a chapel in Wales, And so he fights in topper and tails, Keligi-ous tho' a rovin', a rovin', a rovin'. Her engineer is fifty-eight, So he's prepared to meet his fate, Which ain't unlikely rovjn', a rovin', a rovin'. Her leading stoker's seventeen, So he don't know what the judgments mean, Unless he cops 'em rovin', a rovin', a rovin'. Her cook he strayed from the Lost Dogs' Home, Mark well what I do say! And I'm sorry for Fritz when they-all come A rovin', a rovin', a roarin' and a rovin', Hound the North sea rovin', The Lord knows where! The navy la very olj an4 very wiee. Much of her wisdom is on record and available for efeieuco; but more of it works in the uneonsoious blood of thn,e who serve her. rhe has a t'noutand years of experience and can find a precedent or a parallel for any situation that the forre of the weather or the malice of the kind's enemies may bring about. The- main principles of ea warfare hold good throughout ail the ages, and .ii far as tho navy ha been allowed to put out her strength, these principles have been aj piled over a!l the seas of all tho world. In matters of detail the navy, to wlom all days are ali'.;e, Las simply returned to the practice and resurrected resur-rected the spirit of old days. la tha last Vcn.h war, -mejiihant railinj out of chained 'port cght in a few hours find himself laid by the heels and under way for a French prison. His majesty's ships of the Una, and even the big frigates, took very little part in po'jeinc the waters for him, unless he were in convoy. The sloops, cutters, j;.Vbrii;i and local crafts of all kinds were supposed to look after that, while the line was buty elsewhere. HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF. So the merchants passed reolutions against the inadequate protection afforded to the trade, and the narrow seas were full of single ship actions; mail packets, weM countrr brigs and fat East Indianien fighting for their own hulls aDd cargo anything that the watchful French ports sent against them, while the loops and cutters bore a hand if they happened to be within reach. It was a brutal age, ministered to by rough-handed men; and we had put it a hundred decent years behind us when it all comes back again! Todav there are no prisons for the crews of merchantmen, but they can (Continued on Pago Eight.) 'THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET (Continued from Page One.) go to the bottom by mine and torpedo even more quickly than th,eir ancestors were run into Le Havre. The submarine takes the place of the privateer; the line, as in the old days, is occupied bombarding and blockading elsewhere, hut the sea-borne traffic must continue, and tliat is being looked after by the liDeal descendants of the crews of the long-extinct cutters and sloops and gun-brigs. The hour struck, and they reappeared to the tune of fifty tliousaud men in no more than two thousand ships, of which I have seen a few hundred. THE OLD SPIRIT SURVIVES. Words of command may have changed a little; the tools are certainly more complex, but the spirit of the new men who come to the old job is utterly unchanged. un-changed. It is the same fierce, hard-living, heavy-handed, very cunning service out of which the navy as we know it today was born. It is called indifferently the trawler or auxiliary fleet. It is chiefly composed com-posed of fishermen, but it takes everyone who may have maritime tastes from retired admirals to the son of the sea-cook. It exists for the benefit of the traffic and tbo annoyance of the enemy. Its doings are recorded by flags stuck into charts; its casualties are buried in obscure corners of the newspapers. " SWEEPING FOR NESTS OF MINES. The grand floft knows it slightly; the restless light cruisers who chaperon it from the background are more intimate; the destroyers working off unlighted coasts over unmarked shoals come, as you might say, in direct contact with it; the submarine alternately praises and since one periscope is very like anothercurses its activities," BI T THE STEADY PROCESSION OF TRAFFIC TRAF-FIC TN HOME WATERS, LINER AND TRAMP, SIX EVERY SIXTY MINUTES, MIN-UTES, BLESSES IT ALTOGETHER. Since this most Christian war includes laying mines id the fairways of traffic, and since these mines may be laid at any time by German submarines especially built for the work, or by neutral ships, all fairways must he swept continuously, day and night. When a nest of mines is reported, traffic must be hung up or deviated till they are all cleared out. When traffic comes up channel it must be examined for contraband and other things; and the examining tugs lie out in a blaze of lights to remind ships of this. Months ago, when the war was young, the tugs did not know what to look for specially. Now they do. All this mine searching and reporting and sweeping, sweep-ing, PLUS the direction and examination of the traffic, PLUS the laying of our own ever-shifting mine-fields, is part of the trawler fleet's work, because the uavy-as-we-know-it is busy elsewhere. TRAWLERS FISH FOR SUBMARINES. And there is always the enemy submarine with a price on her head, whom the trawler fleet hunts and traps with zeal and joy. Add to this that there are boats, fishing for real fish, to be protected in their work at sea or chased off dangerous areas where, because they are strictly forbidden to go, they naturally nat-urally repair; and you wall begin to get some idea of what the trawler or auxiliary fleet does. . . Now imagine the acreage of several dock basins, crammed gunwalo to gunwale gun-wale with brown and umber and ochre and rust-red steam trawlers, tugs, harbor boats and yachts once clean and respectable, now dirty but happy. Throw in fish-steamers, surprise-packets of unknown lines and .indescribable junks, sampans, sam-pans, lorchas, catamarans and general, service stink-pontoons, filled with indescribable inde-scribable apparatus, manned by men no dozen of whom seem to talk the same dialect or wear the same clothes. " SOME OF NAVY'S FIGHTING MEN. The mustard-colored jersey who is cleaning a six-pounder on a Ilull craft clips his words between his teeth and would be happier in Gaelic; the whitish singlet and blue trousers held up by what is obviously his soldier brother's spare regimental belt is pure L-owestoft. The complete blue serge and soot suit passing a wire down a hatch is Glasgow as far as you can hear him, which is a fair distance, because he wants something done to the other end of the wire; and the flat-faced boy who should be attending to it hails from the remoter Hebrides and is looking at a girl on the dock edge. The bow-legged man in the ulster and green worsted comforter is a warm Grimsby skipper, worth several thousands. He and his crew, who are mostly bis own relations, keep to themselves and grimly save their money. The pirate from Skye. The friend is West Country. ADMIRAL OF SIX TRAWLERS. The noticeably insignificant man with a soft and deprecating eye is skipper and part owner of the big slashing Iceland trawler on which he droops like a flower. 'She is built on almost transatlantic lines, carries a little boat deck aft with tremendous stanchions, has a nose cocked high against ice and sweeping sweep-ing seas and looks rather like a hawkmoth at rest. The small sniffing man is reported to be a "holy terror at sea.JJ THE CHILD IX THE PULLMAN CAR TjXIFORM JUST GOING ASHORE IS A WIRELESS OPERATOR AGED NINETEEN. HE IS ATTACHED TO A FLAti-SHIP ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FEET LONG, UNDER AN ADMIRAL AGED TWENTY-FIVE WHO WAS TILL THE OTHER DAY THIRD MATE OF A NORTH ATLANTIC TRAMP, BUT WHO NOW LEADS A SQUADRON OF SIX TRAWLERS TO HUNT SUBMARINES. The principle ia simply enough. Its application depends on circumstances and surroundings. One type of German submarine meant for murder off the coasts mav use a winding and rabbit-like track between shoals where the choice of water is limited. Their career is rarely long, but while it lasts moderately exciting. WORK OF DEEP SEA ASSASSINS. Others, told off for deep sea assassinations, are attended to quite quietly, and without any excitement at all. Others, again, work the inside of the North sea, making no distinction between be-tween noutrals and allied 6hips. These carry guns, and since their work keeps them a good deal on the surface, the trawler fleet, as wo know, engages them there the submarine firing, sinking and rising in unexpected quarters; the trawler firing, dodging and trying to ram. The trawlers ae strongly "built and can stand a great, deal of punishment, let again, other German submarines hang about the skirts of fishing fleets and fire into the brown of them. When the war was young this gave splendidly "frightful" results, but for some reason or other, the game is not as popular as it used to be. LASTLY, THERE ARE GERMAN SUBMARINES WHO PERISH BY ways so armors and inexplicable that one could almost CREDIT THE WHISPERED TDEA (IT MUST COME FROM THE SCOTi'H SKIPPERS) THAT THE GHOSTS OF THE WOMEN DROWNED LED THEM TO DESTRUCTION. But what form those shadows take whether -of the LUSITANIA ladies, or humbler stewardesses or hospital nurses, and what lights or sounds the thing fancies it sees or hears before it is blotted out, no man will ever know. The main thing is that the work is being done. Whether it was necessary or politic to reawaken by violence every sporting instinct of a sea going people is a question which the enemy may have to consider later on. |