TOLD BY A VETERAN

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2296, 2 November 1914, Page 7

TOLD BY A VETERAN

FLOATING INFERNAL MACHINES IN THE BALTIC IN'54 ; (NO. I.) Hie breast showed a line of medals from shoulder to shoulder, and as he sat round the congress table of the New Zealand Association of His Majesty's Veterans, one could not look without the eye catching the glitter of the medals or the glow of tiie ribbons from which they were suspended, telling dumbly of daring incidents by flood and field and hairbreadth 'scapes, and forlorn hopes all successfully won through. Otherwise, why the man? Why the medals? The writer learned that he, of all the veterans assembled round the board, was a Navy man. It was Mr. H. Walton, of Waikanae, now plentifully , snowed with the winters of years, ' yet a brighteyed, active man, still with all his wits and, as .was subsequently found out, keen to have "a go at the Germans. ; And what sights this man had seen. Ho, as a boy, had witnessed, the bread riots in Glasgow, and enlisting in the Navy (then being a boat-builders' assistant on the banks of the Clyde), when the Crimean war broke out, he served at the bombardment of Sveaborg as a sailor of the British Baltic Squadron, and later was present at the taking or the Taku 1 forts by the late Admiral Sir Henry Keppel, in 1860. Mr. Walton was nothing loath to spin a yarn about the days of his youth when England depended upon her 6hips of oak as as'her stout hearts. "I made it up with a certain Peter Minto to bolt from home, make for Greenock, and there enlist on the old Powerful, then recruiting as the war was then on. We got away and at the place of rendezvous met Lieutenant Joyce. The yarn that I spun was not the truth, but poor Peter was -asked to bring his father down for his sanction, which would hare given away the show, so Poter and I parted company, and never saw one another again. . Wβ left Greenook for Spithead in March (1854). We had a epanking voyage until we got to the Kyles of Bute, when the wind dropped, and it became a dead calm. We were. actually becalmed for a fortnight—in March, the windiest of all months in England. The result was that we ran short of provisions, and we were put on short commons until our arrival at Spithead. The Powerful was a 74-gun ship, with a crew of 800— a good old oak line-of-battleship. Prom her I was transferred to the Duk* of Wellington, 130 guns, 1300 of a orew. She was Diindas's 'flagship. Then I was drafted from the Duke to the Exmoutb, 90 guns. Admiral Sir- Michael Symou, Captain W. King-Hall, and although wo had only 90 guns we could fire, a heavier broadside than the Duke with her; 130. •Wβ fired the heaviest broadside in the: Navy. She was a new ship, but was an awful roller. A fleet was. soon collected—69 vessels in all—and. off we went to the Baltic in four columns, the Duke. leading, we second in command. . . . When we got to the Gulf of Finland the signalman reported the Russian Fleet In sight, and the signal to chase was given. With night coming on we got rather disintegrated as an ordered fleet, .it we made Kronstadt the next morning, when wo found that the vessels we had been chasing were small coastal vessels, which; on being pursued,'had made for the shoal waters. Wo got hold of one of them, and found it laden ynth Russian rye-flour. There was agreat rush-with-tins-for-the new flour, us it was something new, .but when it-wae brought up cooked there -was mighty little of it eaten. Blockading at Kronstadt. "We lay off not far from the large stone forts opposite'Kronstadt and five miles from the mouth of the Neva, where the Russian fleet lay under the shore batteries at. the mouth of the river. But they wouldn't come out. One day a large river steamer came out, hugging the land. After, it was allowed to .-. get. well away from tUie mouth of tlie river and opposite the fleet, our skipper went on board one of the tenders and made a desperate attempt to" cut her off. A.s soon as those on, the steamer saw the danger they touted ship and made for the river, arid s.s the gunboat was nearing both river mouth and steamer, she fired across the steamer's bows, but the latter was,too busy to stop. A recall signal 'Was hoisted at the masthead of the Duke, but our skipper took no notice of it; then a general recall was hoisted on each ship, but still he took no notice, and everyone on board was as excited as if they were watching a horse-race .and had money oh the leading .horse. Then the Admiral fired a 'demand , gun, and to save a courtmartial our Skipper had to return. Otherwise'he would have gone under the shore batteries to get that sieamer. It appears that on board the'steamer was Prince Gortchakoff and btlher Russian nobles who had come out to have a look at the fleet. A day or two afterwards the Prince came off under a flag of truce to interview the Admiral. What the object of his mission was we never heard, but it leaked out that, he wished to know what tlie mortar boate were, arid was informed that they were watertanka (as they were like water barges) of those days. The answer served as the mortars were out of sight in tHe hold—until wanted. ' After a few, days the fleet weighed- .anchor and we were, left as a decoy-duck to induce the Russian, fleet to come oat. We had. all our guns loaded, steam up, and fires banked, and a man ready to Knock the shackle out. of the cable if the scheme worked.' Our fleet gave them every, opportunity, as they were so far down the gulf that we could only see their mastheads. The Russians then moved cautiously out, but as soon as they caught signt of our steam they scuttled back to their holes like rats, so we did not get a ohance. "Afterwards the old Blenheim blockship and the gunboats Pincher. and Snap, and ourselves,, got orders to proceed to Narva. On arriving there we dropped anchor well within range, and at 4 a.m. commenced to bombard, arid we kept it up broadside after broadside until 4 p.m. _ The boats were then got out and provisioned, and the marines and small-arm men were ready to land when the signal lieutenant drew the attention of the Admiral to' the forest edge, which was literally teeming with troops. As it would have been folly to attempt to land, we returned to Kronstadt and , monotony." ' Floating Mines In the '50'e. "The monotony' was relieved, however, by an incident whioh had its serious consequences. The waters of the Baltic where we lay were evenly shallow, and when the order was given to bathe the men declined to dive owing to a rumour that there were infernal machines placed in the, water, one of which had nearly wrecked f the little steamer Merlin. An order was given for the boats of the fleet to fish for the machines with boathooks; and. our boats fished up no fewer than eleven pairs in the vicinity of our ship. They resembled an inverted sugarcone, tho smaller kind about 2ft. long and about twelve inches in diameter, with an inch flange'round, the rim. At the bottom end was a ring, to which a weight was attached, so as just to allow the machine to be afloat six feet below tho surface of the water. -. They wore moored in pairs about 5 or 6 feet JgaikEith, j^ E^9 of. iflJsflMl Jjijffl_

3 . —■ j connected. 'As no one_ seemed to know r the dangerous properties of these maj chines, our captain ordered them to be , run up the yard-arm, riddled with shot, j and' then dropped overboard. I had just finished my dinner and had passed up 1 .tie after hatchway to the quarterdeck, t. when a violent.explosion took place on the poop. I ran up the poop ladder and ! picked up Admiral Seymour, and led ' him to the rail, and-afterwards helped to convey the injured man down to his ' oabin.' It appears that during dinner- ' time one of the machines had been 1 brought on to the poop for examination. Two quartermasters held it whilst the officers were commenting on. its strnc--1 ture, when one of the officers touched ' n, projecting piece of iron—there waa \ one on each side. These were connected ■ by a spring with a small conical chamber in the centre, containing some chemical, J which ' when ignited exploded "the ' powder. All on the poop deck were more ■ or less wounded. The Admiral lost ono j It turned out afterwards i that one of our marines had worked in a Sheffield factory where the machines 1 were invented/and he narrated how the ' invention had been offered to the Eng--1 jish Government and refused, after '• which the Russian Government secured 1 the patent rights and dropped the ina- '• chines all over the Baltic Flats in pairs, ' so that any vessel passing between the ' pair would naturally force in the spring I and eo explode them." ■