FIGHTING THE TORPEDOES.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 March 1918, Page 1

FIGHTING THE TORPEDOES.

REMEMBER OUR MEN

(By Filson Young.)

A Mediterranean Port I was sitting to-day in the cabin of a dingy and battered ocean tramp, with the warm sunshine of the soutli pouring in through the scuttles, and the rattle of winches and the roar of discharging cargo filling the air with incongruous sound. Before me sat the captain, a lean, powerful fellow with a lazy eye and an amiable countenance.

About us were the usual ornaments of such a place—a trade almanac, portraits of the King and Sir Douglas Haig torn from an illustrated paper, a tin of navy-cut tobacco, framed photographs of a baby, of a little parlour stuffed with furniture, ot a young woman who was the proud mother of the baby, and of a little wooden house on a hillside lw the sen.

As we talked of the war, of home, and of the New Year, the captain’s eye wandered to the pictures and nested on them.

“This is my sixth trip out and they haven’t got me yet,” said the captain, without touching wood. “ They've tried every time ; this trip I did think my number was up. T was the slowest ship in the convoy ; we were leaking badly, and could only just keep up. Took the ground coming out and stra ned her bottom. There were ten of us. Out in the Bay, along comes the Hun and torpedoes the next ship in the line. The rest put on speed and scattered, and I was left alone with Fpiz. There was a bit of a sea running and fortunately ic began to come dark, and I did what Fritz didn't expect and got away. But I certainly thought we were for it. “ Yes, that’s my home and that's liiv baby : but I haven’t seen him. The}" won’t let me go (His home was nor in Kngland ) 1 haven’t seen wife or home since 1915. and I don’t suppose 1 shall until the was is over.”

“ Are they afraid you wouldn’t come back ?”

“Oh, I’d comeback right enough ; but you see there’s a lot to do. It's run home, unload, turn round, load, and out again. No time,for a holi • day while these fellows are still about .; still, I’d like a glimpse, if it was only to say, ‘ How d’ye do ? ’ as you might say.” HIS ONE REGRET. “ I expect they know when they’ve got a good man. captain, and don’t mean o lose sight of. him.” The captain shook his head. “As far as that goes, I’ve been lucky, i wouldn’t mind, only for the ship. She’s a fair disgrace. Not a lick of paint this year.” He looked wistfully across Jhe basin to where two German ships, which had hastily interned themselves at the beginning of the war, were lying in a sumptuous ease devoted to paint, polish, and a little quiet signalling at such times as our battered apd glorious old'tank showed signs of going to sea. “ And as for the boilers—if only I could get into dock for a week and whack another thirty pounds of pressure into them, that would give me a couple more knots, you see—something to pull and haul on. As it is, we get left behind. You’d have laughed to see me last trip. (I thought not, but did not interrupt.) I lost three convoys, one after the other; fell behind one, picked up by the next, and so on—and came the last 500 miles on my lonesome. Well, its a great game, but it can’t last for ever, Bnt when the old girl does go, I reckon she’ll have done her bit.”

I thought of the baby, slumbering warmijr through the winter in his northern home; and of the life his father was leading in the winter seas, exposed to the hourly peril of the torpedo ; of the thousands like him, hardly ever leaving their bridges, staring night and day through freezing gales ; of the driving toil loading precious car-, goes; and of the toil, maybe, ail gone in one moment of blinding flash and roar, often followed by the drop into icy water, to cling to upturned boats and, with luck, get to shore with everything gone but bare life.

And I also remembered, travelling the other day in a train in the north of Spain, observing an Englishman in odd clothes who looked so'ill and coughed so badly that I asked him if I could do anything for him. “No, thank you, sir,” he had answered. “ I’m all right.” He looked out through the dusk to where a storm of rain and wind was beating the sea on the wild Biscay shore. “ This is a bit of all right, this is,” he added appreciatively between his coughs. And we got into conversation as the engine panted its way into what was to be his third night sitting up in a train. TIIRICR TORPBDOKI). _ He was a ship's captain ; had just been torpedoed ; had been in water for six hours. “My third time,” he said, with an apologetic cough. He had been taken, straight to hospital, and was now, much too soon, on his way home. On his way lioiue; not to spend the holidays, or have his strength nursed back, but—to get another ship! “ I’m in hopes,” he said (hopes !) “ of getting one of the new ones ; anyhow I don’t want to lose any time’ With luck I’ll be on my way outagain in a fortnight.” With luck !

We do not decorate our merchant seamen, or give them any name or rank of honour, although there is hardly one of them who has not ten times over deserved whatever rewards a country can give for heroic

and devoted service in the hour of need. This man, going home alter being sunk for the third time, in the hope of getting another ship at once, was not unique. He was typical : of,the same noble mould as my other friend who has never yet been torpedoed, and - bashfully brings his disgraceful old tramp safe into port again and again, amid the derisive congratulations of his friends and the bitter compliments of the German spy who meets him on the quay in the guise of a ship’s chandler. ‘There are thousands ot the same mould, and the mould is unbroken; and thev are saving England. There are also many babies in little houses in England where there is a photograph of a steamer on the walls —babies whom their fathers have never seen, and may neve see; babies whose mothers’ hear: 1 flinch when the wind iu.w’.s ■'

drear winter nights, and whosa mothers somehow feel strangely out of it when there are rejoicingamong the neighbours over some military decoration nobly won. For the heroes of the Merchant Service these things are not —why, God and the Admiralty alone know.

They will spend their New Year’s Day at sea—in waters always dangerous, but now hostile and sinister with the hatetul menace over which the} 7 are nevertheless, triumphing Remember them!