The Tragedy Of The Two Squadrons

: The World Peril Of 1910

It takes a good deal to shake the nerves of British naval officer or

seaman, but those on board the ships of the Spithead Squadron would have

been something more than human if they could have viewed the appalling

happenings of the last few terrible minutes with their accustomed

coolness. They were ready to fight anything on the face of the waters or

under them, but an enemy in the air who could rain down shells, a couple

> of which were sufficient to destroy the most powerful forts in the

world, and who could not be hit back, was another matter. It was a

bitter truth, but there was no denying it. The events of the last ten

years had clearly proved that a day must come when the flying machine

would be used as an engine of war, and now that day had come--and the

fighting flying machine was in the hands of the enemy.



The anchors were torn from the ground, signals were flashed from the

flagship, the Prince George, and within four minutes the squadron was

under way to the south-eastward. After what had happened the Admiral in

command promptly and rightly decided that to keep his ships cramped up

in the narrow waters was only to court further disaster. His place was

now the open sea, and a general fleet action offered the only means of

preventing an occupation of almost defenceless Portsmouth, and the

landing of hostile troops in the very heart of England's southern

defences.



Fifteen first-class torpedo boats and ten destroyers ran out from the

Hampshire and Isle of Wight coasts, ran through the ships, and spread

themselves out in a wide curve ahead, and at the same time twenty

submarines crept out from the harbour and set to work laying contact

mines in the appointed fields across the harbour mouth and from shore to

shore behind the Spithead forts.



But the squadron had not steamed a mile beyond the forts before a series

of frightful disasters overtook them. First, a huge column of water rose

under the stern of the Jupiter. The great ship stopped and shuddered

like a stricken animal, and began to settle down stern first. Instantly

the Mars and Victorious which were on either side of her slowed

down, their boats splashed into the water and set to work to rescue

those who managed to get clear of the sinking ship.



But even while this was being done, the Banshee, the Flying Fish

which had destroyed the forts, had taken up her position a thousand feet

above the doomed squadron. A shell dropped upon the deck of the

Spartiate, almost amidships. The pink flash blazed out between her two

midship funnels. They crumpled up as if they had been made of brown

paper. The six-inch armoured casemates on either side seemed to crumble

away. The four-inch steel deck gaped and split as though it had been

made of matchboard. Then the Banshee dropped to within five hundred

feet and let go another shell almost in the same place. A terrific

explosion burst out in the very vitals of the stricken ship, and the

great cruiser seemed to split asunder. A vast volume of mingled smoke

and flame and steam rose up, and when it rolled away, the Spartiate

had almost vanished.



But that was the last act of destruction that the Banshee was destined

to accomplish. That moment the moon sailed out into a patch of clear

sky. Every eye in the squadron was turned upward. There was the airship

plainly visible. Her captain instantly saw his danger and quickened up

his engines, but it was too late. He was followed by a hurricane of

shells from the three-pound quick-firers in the upper tops of the

battleships. Then came an explosion in mid-air which seemed to shake the

very firmament itself. She had fifty or sixty of the terrible shells

which had wrought so much havoc on board, and as a dozen shells pierced

her hull and burst, they too exploded with the shock. A vast blaze of

pink flame shone out.



"Talk about going to glory in a blue flame," said Seaman Gunner

Tompkins, who had aimed one of the guns in the fore-top of the

Hannibal, and of course, like everybody else, piously believed that

his was one of the shells that got there. "That chap's gone to t'other

place in a red'un. War's war, but I don't hold with that sort of

fighting; it doesn't give a man a chance. Torpedoes is bad enough, Gawd

knows--"



The words were hardly out of his mouth when a shock and a shudder ran

through the mighty fabric of the battleship. The water rose in a

foam-clad mountain under her starboard quarter. She heeled over to port,

and then rolled back to starboard and began to settle.



"Torpedoed, by George! What did I tell you?" gasped Gunner Tompkins. The

next moment a lurch of the ship hurled him and his mates far out into

the water.



Even as his ship went down, Captain Barclay managed to signal to the

other ships, "Don't wait--get out." And when her shattered hull rested

on the bottom, the gallant signal was still flying from the upper yard.



It was obvious that the one chance of escaping their terrible unseen foe

was to obey the signal. By this time crowds of small craft of every

description had come off from both shores to the rescue of those who had

gone down with the ships, so the Admiral did what was the most practical

thing to do under the circumstances--he dropped his own boats, each with

a crew, and ordered the Victorious and Mars to do the same, and then

gave the signal for full speed ahead. The great engines panted and

throbbed, and the squadron moved forward with ever-increasing speed, the

cruisers and destroyers, according to signal, running ahead of the

battleships; but before full speed was reached, the Mars was struck

under the stern, stopped, shuddered, and went down with a mighty lurch.



This last misfortune convinced the Admiral that the destruction of his

battleships could not be the work of any ordinary submarine, for at the

time the Mars was struck she was steaming fifteen knots and the

underwater speed of the best submarine was only twelve, saving only the

Ithuriel, and she did not use torpedoes. The two remaining battleships

had now reached seventeen knots, which was their best speed. The

cruisers and their consorts were already disappearing round Foreland.



There was some hope that they might escape the assaults of the

mysterious and invisible enemy now that the airship had been destroyed,

but unless the submarine had exhausted her torpedoes, or some accident

had happened to her, there was very little for the Prince George and

the Victorious, and so it turned out. Castellan's strict orders had

been to confine his attentions to the battleships, and he obeyed his

pitiless instructions to the letter. First the Victorious and then the

flagship, smitten by an unseen and irresistible bolt in their weakest

parts, succumbed to the great gaping wounds torn in the thin

under-plating, reeled once or twice to and fro like leviathans

struggling for life, and went down. And so for the time being, at least,

ended the awful work of the Flying Fish.



Leaving the cruisers and smaller craft to continue their dash for the

open Channel, we must now look westward.



When Vice-Admiral Codrington, who was flying his flag on the

Irresistible, saw the flashes along the Hillsea ridge and Portsdown

height and heard the roar of the explosions, he at once up-anchor and

got his squadron under way. Then came the appallingly swift destruction

of Hurst Castle and Fort Victoria. Like all good sailors, he was a man

of instant decision. His orders were to guard the entrance to the

Solent, and the destruction of the forts made it impossible for him to

do this inside. How that destruction had been wrought, he had of course

no idea, beyond a guess that the destroying agent must have come from

the air, since it could not have come from sea or land without provoking

a very vigorous reply from the forts. Instead of that they had simply

blown up without firing a shot.



He therefore decided to steam out through the narrow channel between

Hurst Castle and the Isle of Wight as quickly as possible.



It was a risky thing to do at night and at full speed, for the Channel

and the entrance to it was strewn with contact mines, but one of the

principal businesses of the British Navy is to take risks where

necessary, so he put his own ship at the head of the long line, and with

a mine chart in front of him went ahead at eighteen knots.



When Captain Adolph Frenkel, who was in command of the See Adler, saw

the column of warships twining and wriggling its way out through the

Channel, each ship handled with consummate skill and keeping its

position exactly, he could not repress an admiring "Ach!" Still it was

not his business to admire, but destroy.



He rose to a thousand feet, swung round to the north-eastward until the

whole line had passed beneath him, and then quickened up and dropped to

seven hundred feet, swung round again and crept up over the Hogue,

which was bringing up the rear. When he was just over her fore part, he

let go a shell, which dropped between the conning-tower and the forward

barbette.



The navigating bridge vanished; the twelve-inch armoured conning-tower

cracked like an eggshell; the barbette collapsed like the crust of a

loaf, and the big 9.2 gun lurched backwards and lay with its muzzle

staring helplessly at the clouds. The deck crumpled up as though it had

been burnt parchment, and the ammunition for the 9.2 and the forward

six-inch guns which had been placed ready for action exploded, blowing

the whole of the upper forepart of the vessel into scrap-iron.



But an even worse disaster than this was to befall the great

twelve-thousand-ton cruiser. Her steering gear was, of course,

shattered. Uncontrolled and uncontrollable, she swung swiftly round to

starboard, struck a mine, and inside three minutes she was lying on the

mud.



Almost at the moment of the first explosion, the beams of twenty

searchlights leapt up into the air, and in the midst of the broad white

glare hundreds of keen angry eyes saw a winged shape darting up into the

air, heading southward as though it would cross the Isle of Wight over

Yarmouth. Almost simultaneously, every gun from the tops of the

battleships spoke, and a storm of shells rent the air.



But Captain Frenkel had already seen his mistake. The See Adler's

wings were inclined at an angle of twenty degrees, her propellers were

revolving at their utmost velocity, and at a speed of nearly a hundred

miles an hour, she took the Isle of Wight in a leap. She slowed down

rapidly over Freshwater Bay. Captain Frenkel took a careful observation

of the position and course of the squadron, dropped into the water,

folded his wings and crept round the Needles with his conning-tower just

awash, and lay in wait for his prey about two miles off the Needles.



The huge black hull of the Irresistible was only a couple of hundred

yards away. He instantly sank and turned on his water-ray. As the

flagship passed within forty yards he let go his first torpedo. It hit

her sternpost, smashed her rudder and propellers, and tore a great hole

in her run. The steel monster stopped, shuddered, and slid sternward

with her mighty ram high in the air into the depths of the smooth grey

sea.



There is no need to repeat the ghastly story which has already been

told--the story of the swift and pitiless destruction of these miracles

of human skill, huge in size and mighty in armament and manned by the

bravest men on land or sea, by a foe puny in size but of awful

potentiality. It was a fight, if fight it could be called, between the

visible and the invisible, and it could only have one end. Battleship

after battleship received her death-wound, and went down without being

able to fire a shot in defence, until the Magnificent, smitten in the

side under her boilers, blew up and sank amidst a cloud of steam and

foam, and the Western Squadron had met the fate of the Eastern.



While this tragedy was being enacted, the cruisers scattered in all

directions and headed for the open at their highest speed. It was a

bitter necessity, and it was bitterly felt by every man and boy on board

them; but the captains knew that to stop and attempt the rescue of even

some of their comrades meant losing the ships which it was their duty at

all costs to preserve, and so they took the only possible chance to

escape from this terrible unseen foe which struck out of the silence and

the darkness with such awful effect.



But despite the tremendous disaster which had befallen the Reserve

Fleet, the work of death and destruction was by no means all on one

side. When he sank the Leger, Erskine had done a great deal more

damage to the enemy than he knew, for she had been sent not for fighting

purposes, but as a depot ship for the Flying Fishes, from which they

could renew their torpedoes and the gas cylinders which furnished their

driving power. Being a light craft, she was to take up an agreed

position off Bracklesham Bay three miles to the north-west of Selsey

Bill, the loneliest and shallowest part of the coast, with all lights

out, ready to supply all that was wanted or to make any repairs that

might be necessary. Her sinking, therefore, deprived John Castellan's

craft of their base.



After the Dupleix had gone down, the Ithuriel rose again, and

Erskine said to Lennard:



"There must be more of them outside, they wouldn't be such fools as to

rush Portsmouth with three destroyers and a couple of cruisers. We'd

better go on and reconnoitre."



The Ithuriel ran out south-eastward at twenty knots in a series of

broad curves, and she was just beginning to make the fourth of these

when six black shapes crowned with wreaths of smoke loomed up out of the

semi-darkness.



"Thought so--destroyers," said Erskine. "Yes, and look there, behind

them--cruiser supports, three of them--these are for the second rush.

Coming up pretty fast, too; they'll be there in half an hour. We shall

have something to say about that. Hold on, Lennard."



"Same tactics, I suppose," said Lennard.



"Yes," replied Erskine, taking down the receiver. "Are you there,

Castellan? All right. We've six more destroyers to get rid of. Full

speed ahead, as soon as you like--guns all ready, I suppose? Good--go

ahead."



The Ithuriel was now about two miles to the westward and about a mile

in front of the line of destroyers, which just gave her room to get up

full speed. As she gathered way, Lennard saw the nose of the great ram

rise slowly out of the water. The destroyer's guns crackled, but it is

not easy to hit a low-lying object moving at fifty miles an hour, end

on, when you are yourself moving nearly twenty-five. Just the same thing

happened as before. The point of the ram passed over the destroyer's

bows, crumpled them up and crushed them down, and the Ithuriel rushed

on over the sinking wreck, swerved a quarter turn, and bore down on her

next victim. It was all over in ten minutes. The Ithuriel rushed

hither and thither among the destroyers like some leviathan of the deep.

A crash, a swift grinding scrape, and a mass of crumpled steel was

dropping to the bottom of the Channel.



While the attack on the destroyers was taking place, the cruisers were

only half a mile away. Their captains had found themselves in curiously

difficult positions. The destroyers were so close together, and the

movements of this strange monster which was running them down so

rapidly, that if they opened fire they were more likely to hit their own

vessels than it, but when the last had gone down, every available gun

spoke, and a hurricane of shells, large and small, ploughed up the sea

where the Ithuriel had been. After the first volley, the captains

looked at their officers and the officers looked at the captains, and

said things which strained the capabilities of the French language to

the utmost. The monster had vanished.



The fact was that Erskine had foreseen that storm of shell, and the

pumps had been working hard while the ramming was going on. The result

was that the Ithuriel sank almost as soon as her last victim, and in

thirty seconds there was nothing to shoot at.



"I shall ram those chaps from underneath," he said. "They've too many

guns for a shooting match."



He reduced the speed to thirty knots, rose for a moment till the

conning-tower was just above the water, took his bearings, sank, called

for full speed, and in four minutes the ram crashed into the Alger's

stern, carried away her sternpost and rudder, and smashed her

propellers. The Ithuriel passed on as if she had hit a log of wood and

knocked it aside. A slight turn of the steering-wheel, and within four

minutes the ram was buried in the vitals of the Suchet. Then the

Ithuriel reversed engines, the fore screw sucked the water away, and

the cruiser slid off the ram as she might have done off a rock. As she

went down, the Ithuriel rose to the surface. The third cruiser, the

Davout, was half a mile away. She had changed her course and was

evidently making frantic efforts to get back to sea.



"Going to warn the fleet, are you, my friend?" said Erskine, between

his teeth. "Not if I know it!"



He asked for full speed again and the terror-stricken Frenchmen saw the

monster, just visible on the surface of the water, flying towards them

in the midst of a cloud of spray. A sheep might as well have tried to

escape from a tiger. Many of the crew flung themselves overboard in the

madness of despair. There was a shock and a grinding crash, and the ram

bored its way twenty feet into the unarmoured quarter. Then the

Ithuriel's screws dragged her free, and the Davout followed her

sisters to the bottom of the Channel.



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