AMBULANCE TUGS IN THE WAR ZONE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 85, 4 January 1919, Page 8

AMBULANCE TUGS IN THE WAR ZONE

TAKING CRIPPLED'SHIPS'TO POET. You may not know it, but many a fine ship afloat to-day would have gone to join her thousand sunken sisters were it not for the gallant work of His Majesty's rescue tugs (writes "L.W.A." in the "Daily Mail"). These sturdy, broadnosed craft go rummaging into the waste spaces of the - deep seas seeking the casualty that has a "Blighty" wound as big as a church door. Had you seen H.M. Rescue Tug Chick in harbour laqt Sunday morning you , ■would have found it hard to have imagined her as she was two days before— the solo support of a reeling eteanier ten times her own size, plugging away for port with every unit of her maximum horse-power. ' ' '. ' It was 2 a.m. when she got wor"d that the ■ s.s. Incognita had received a "mouldy" • in her vitals and was helplessly drifting eomewhero between hero and America. At that moment the Chick's riding-lights and the murmuring steam-feather-'trembling at her exhaust were the only signs of life aboard. In five minutes she was slipping her buoy, her steaming lights had gone aloft, and the'murmuring feather.was growing into a buzzing plume. Twenty minutes and sho was making for the open sea. Now begins a hunt for a needle in a haystack—a moving needle in a boundless stack; Broad day finds the Chick approaching the prescribed area, but when at last the master, reckons he should be within wireless "hail" of the torpedoed ship dusk is already on the sea. Hope falls with, the night, for the wireless operator reports "No reply." ' Only'with the dawn does the Chick discover that she is actually within sight of the. Incognita, whose masts lie against the morning sky at an angle of nearly 45 degrees. A point or two. to starboard and the Chick is brought neatly ahead of the helpless steamer. '"Stern easy" until near enough for a lino to fall across the tug's low quarters; a rope follows, then a steel hawser. All is made fast, and slowly, slowly—for all the would liko a stretcher party with a bad case— tlie procession moves towards port. But at sea Red Cross work no more enjoys. immunity from Hun savagery than it does ashore, and as the T'l'cognitn makes n splendid target for suliinnrpip attnck, the Chick's gun's crew stand by their-weapon. A glad sight U the arrival of swift patrol vessels deUiched by the Navy ashore to escort tlie tug anil her low. With them at hand it is a simple matter of "keeping on, keeping on." The Chick's captain has had no sleep for 48 hours. Into the port of —• the Chick nuikes a inmlcst but triumphal , entry next day, still towing her tpii-thoiisand-ton iwtieiit behind her. . Another hour and she has left the Incognita in the healing hands of dockyard mateys. Honour to the Rescue Tugs, the Koyal Army Medical Corps, of the deep!.