How British Destroyers Fought at Jutland

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 237, 22 December 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

How British Destroyers Fought at Jutland

By Rudyard Kipling.

(This is one of a series of four articles written by Mr. Rudyard Kipling, from material placed at his disposal by the I.ords of the Admiraltl. The articles are appearing in t English newspapers and also the leading papers in the United States.)

DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND. ' ''Have you news of my boy' Jack?'' Not this tide! •' When dye think that he'll coma back"?" Not with this wind blowing, And this tide! '"Has anyone else had word of him?'' Not this tide! For what is sunk will hardly swim— Not with this wind blowing, And this tide! Oh, dear! What comfort can I find?"' None this tide, Nor any tide, Except he didn't shame his kind. Not even with that wind blowing, And that tide! Then hold your head uip all the more ' This tide, And ev'ry tide! Because he was the son you boreAna gave to that wind Wowing, And that tide I

fTIHERE was much destroyer work in ■*■ the battle of Jutland. The actual battle area may not be more than 20,000 square miles, but incidental patrols from first to last must hove covered many times that area. Doubtless then ext generation will comb out every detail of it. All we need to remember is thaiP /thc|re (were many squadrons of battle-ships and cruisers engaged over the face of the North Sea, and that they were accompanied in their diead comings and goings by multitudes of destroyers, which attacked the enemy both by day and by night from the 'afternoon of May 31 to the morning of June 1, 1916. We are too close to the gigantic canvas to take in the meaning of the picture. Our children, stepping backward through the years, may get the true perspective and proportions.

When the German Fleet ran for homo on the night of May 31, it seems to have scattered —starred, I believe, is the word for evolution in ai general sauvo qui peut —while the devil, livelily represented by our destroyers, roo.t the hindermost.

Our flotillas were strung out far and wide on this job. One man compared it to hounds hunting half a hundred separate foxes. I take the adventures of several couple of destroyers who on the night of May 31 were nosing along somewhere toward the Schleswig-Hol-stein coast, ready to chop any Hunstuff coming back to earth by that particular road. Tho leader of one liiie was the Gehenna, and the next two ships astern of her were the Eblis and the Sl.aitan, in the order given. There ■were others, of course, but with the exception of one, the Goblin, they don't come violently into this tale. There had been a good deal of promiscuous firing that evening, and actions were going on all around. Toward midnight our destroyers were overtaken by several three or four funnel German ships cruisers, they thought, hurrying home. At this stage of the game, anybody might have been anybody — pursuer or pursued. The Germans took no chances, but switched on their searchlights and opened lire on Gehenna. Her acting sublieutenant reports "A sal.'i hit us forward: T opened firo with the after guns. A shell then struck us in the steampipe, and T could see nothing hut steam. But both starboard torpedo tubes were fired." The Kblis, the Gelmnna's next astern. at once fired a torpedo at tli second ship in the German line, a fourfunnelled cruiser, and hit her between tho second funnel and the main-mast, when "she appeared to catch fhe for' l and aft simultaneously and heeled right over to starboard and undoubtedly sank." The. Eblis loosed off a second torpedo

and turned aside to reload, firing at the same time to distract the enemy's attention from the Gjeihenna, which was now ablaze fore and aft. The Gehenna's feting sublieutenant, the only executive officer who survived, says that by the time steam from the broken p'pe cleared, he found the Gehenna stopped. Ntefrrly everybody amidships was killed' or wounded, cartridge boxes lay around, guns .were exploding one after another, as the fires teok hold, and the enemy, not to be seeu, in three minutes or less did all the damage. The Eblis had nearly finished re-load-ing, when a shot struck the davit that was swinging her last torpedo into the tube, and 'woujnded all hands concerned. Thereupon she dropped torpedo work and fired at the enemy searchlight, which winked and 1 went out, and was closing in to help the Gehenna, when she found herself under the noses of a couple of enemy cruisers. "The nearer one," she says, "altered its course to ram me, apparently." The senior service writes in ai curiously lawyerlike fashion, but there is no denying that it acts quite directly. " I therefore put my helm hard l aport, antforthe 'two ships met and rammed each other port bow to port bow " MET RAMMER DELIBERATELY. There could have been no time to think, and, for the Eblis's commander on the bridge, none to gather information ; but he had observant subordinates, and he writes and would humbly suggest that these words be made a ship's motto for evermore. He writes: " Those aft noted" that the enemy cniSl'cr fed certain marks on her funnel and certain arrangments of

derricks on each side, which, quite apart from the evidence she left behind her, Imtrayed her class. The Ebb's and she met. Says the Eolis: — " I consider I must have considerably damaged this cruiser, as twenty feet of her side plating was left in my forecastle.''

Twenty feet of swaged rivets and sling steel razoring - and reaping about i.i tho dark on a forecastle that had collapsed like a concertina ! It was a very fair plating, too. There was a si do scuttle with holes in it that we passengers would call pert-holes, but it might have been better, for the "Eblis reports sorrowfully:— " By the thickness of the coats :.f paint, duly given in thirty-seconds of an inch, she would not appear to h'vve been a new ship.'' TORI-; EBLIS TO SHREDS. New or old, the enemy had done her lic-ot. She had completely demolished the Eblis'.-. I>ridge and searchlight platform, had brought down the mast and fore-fuunei, ruined hVr whaler and dinghy, split the forecastle open above tho water from stem to the galley, which is abaft the bridge, and below the water had opened it up from tin stem to the second bulkhead. She had further ripped off the Eblis's skin plating mi one side of her and had fired a couple of large calibre shells into the Eblis at point blank range, narrowly missing her vitals. Even so. the Eblis is as impartial as a prize court. She reports that tho second shot, a trjilo of eight inches, "may have been fired at a different tinio or just after colliding." But the night was yet young, and "just after getting clear of this cruiser nil enemy battle-cruiser grazed past our stern at high speed." And again the judgmatic mind: 'J think she must have intended to ram

She was a lurge, three-funnelled tiling, her centre funnel shot away, and "lights were flickering under her forecastle 35 if she was on fire forward." Fancy the vision of her hurtling out the dark, red-lighted from within, and fleeing on like a man with hi« throat cut.

FUGITIVES MAKE POOR SHOT. As an interlude, all the enemy cruisers that night were not keen on ramming. They wanted to get home. A n.an I know, who was on another part o'. the drive, saw a covey bolt through our destroyers, and had just settled himself for a snot at one of them, when the night threw up m second bird, coming down full speed on his other beem. He had barely time to jink between the two. As they whizzed past, one switched on her searchlight and fired a whole salvo at him point-blank. Heavy stuff went between his funnels. She must have sighted along her own beam of light, which was about 1000 yards. "How did you feel?" I asked. " I was rather sick. It was my best chance all that night, and I had to mishit or be cut in two." "What happened to the cruisers?" " Oh, they went on, and I hoard 'em being attended to by some of our fellows. They didn't know what they were doing or they couldn't have missed mo sitting the way they did." After all that, the Eblis picked herself up and discovered that she was still alive, .with a dog's chance of getting to port, but she did not bank on it. That grand slam had wrecked her bridge, pinning her commander under the wreckage. By the time he had extricated himself be "considered it advisable to throw overboard his steel chest, and despatch box of confidential and secret books." BURIAL SERVICE FOR SHIPS. These are never allowed to fall into strange hands, and their proper disposal is the last step but one in the ritual of the burial service of his Majesty's sliips at sea. The Gehenna, afire and sinking out somewhere in the dark, was going through it on her own account. This i 5 her acting sub-lieutenant's report: "Confidential books were thrown overboard. Hie ship soon afterward heeled over to starboard and the bows went under. The first lieutenant gave the order of 'Everybody for himself.' The ship sank in about a minute, her stern going straight up into the air." But it was not written in the book of fate that the stripped and battered Eblis should die that night as the Gehenna died. After the burial of books it was found that Several fires on her were manageable, that she "was not making water aft of the damage," which meant that two-thirds of her was more or less in commission and, best of ail, that 4 three boilers were usable in spite of cruiser's shell. So she "shaped her course and speod to make the least water and the most progress toward land." UNKIND WIND MADE EBLIS LATE. On the way l>ack the wind shifted eight points without warning. It was this shift, if you remember, that so embarrassed the crippled and paralytic on their homeward cfawil, and that, with one thing and another, made the Eblis unable to make port till the scandalously lato hour of noon on June 2, "the mutual ramming having occurred about 11.40 p.m. on the 31st >f Mav.

She says this time, without any legal reservation whatever: "I cannot speak too highly of the courage and discipline of the ship's company." Her recommendations are a compendium of godly deeds for the use of mariners. They cover pretty much all that they mav be expected to do. There was, as Ihero always is, a first lieutenant who. while his commander was being extricated from bridge wreckage, took charge of affairs and steered the ship, first from the engine-room—or what remained of it—and later from aft, and otherwise manoeuvred as was requisite among the doubtful bulkheads. In his leisure he "improvised a means of signalling." And if there be not one joyous storv behind that smooth sentence, I am a Hun. They ,all improvised like the manner of craft they were. The chief emgi.li-room artificer, after he had helped put out the fires, improvised stops to gaps wlil»li were left by the carrying away of the forward funnel and mast. He got and kept up steam to ; 'a. much higher point than would have appeared at all possible." HE SAVED THE SHIP. And vlon the sea rose, a.s it always dors if jtou are in trouble, "he improvised jumping and drainage arr.ngemcnts, t-has allowing the ship fo -.-team a f , good speed, on the whole. There <ould not have been more than ;Vrty fct of io!e surge on a pronation^! - sing'e handed in the wreckage by the bridge, and by the "wonderful ■ skill, resource, and unceasing care nnd devotion, ho undoubtedly saved the lives of the many seriously wounded men."

That no horror might I*> lacking, there was "a short circuit among bridge wreckage for a considerable time." The searchlight- and wireless were tnngLd up together and electricity leaked into everything. There were also three wise men who saved the ship, whose names must not he forgotten. They were Lea, th.* chief engine-room artificer; Gardiner, stoker petty officer, and Elvina, stoker. When the funnel was carried away, it w:is touch and go whether the foremost hoiler wculd not explode. Th.'se three put on respirators and kopt the fans going til! all the fumes, etc., were cieared away." To each man you will olwrve his own particular hell, which lie entered of hi* own particular initiative. Lastly, there were two remaining quarter-masters. Mutinous dogs, both ol 'cm—one wounded in the right hand and the other in the left —who took Iho wheel between them all the wav home, thus improvising one complete navy pattern cpiartf mnster, and "refused to be relieved during the. wholo 1 thirty-six hours before the ship returned to port." EXIT THE BIUYE ERLTS MEX. S-) the Eblis passes out of the picture with "never a moan or complaint from a singlo v.ounded man, and in .spite f the rough weather of .Tun. 1 1 they a 1!

remained cheery.' They had one Hun cruiser torpedoed to their credit and strong evidence aboard that they had knocked tho end out of another. But the Gehenna went down, and those of her crew who remained hung on to rafts that destroyers carry till they were peked up about dawn by the Shaitan, third ia line, who at that hour was in no shape to give much helpHere is the Staitan's tale. She saw the unknown cruisers overtake the flotilla, saw thfir leader switch on searchlights and open fire as she drew abreast of the Gehenna, and at once fired a torpedo at a third German ship. The Shaitan could not see the Eblis, her next ahead, for. as we know, the Eblis, after firing her torpedoes, had hauled off to reload. When the enemy switched his searchlights off, the Shaitun hauled out, too. It is not whole-some for destroyers to keep on the samn course withfn .a| thousand yards of big enemy cruisers. She picked no a destroyer of another division, the Goblin, who for a moment had not been caught by the enemy's searchlgihts and had contrived, by this direst obscurity, to fire a torpedo at the hindmost of the cruisers. Almost as the Shaitan took her station behind the Goblin the latter was lighted up by a large ship and heavily fired at. The enemy fled, but she left the Goblin out of control, with a grislv list of casualties and her helm jammed. GOBLIN AND SHAITAN COLLIDE. Tho Goblin swerved, returned, and swerved again. The Shaitan, astern, tried to clear her, and the two fell aboard each other, the Goblin's bows deep in the Shaitan's fore bridge. While they hung thus locked, an unknown destroyer rammed the Shaitan aft, cutting off several feet of her stern and leaving her rudder jammed hard over. As complete a mess as the personal devil himself could have devised, and all due to merest accident of a tew panicky salvos. WOUNDED MEN CATAPULTED. Presently the two ships worked clear, in ? smother of steam and oil, ind went their several ways. Quite .1 while after she had parted from tho SI ai tan, the Goblin discovered several the Shaitan's people, some of them Mounded, on her forecastle, where they had been pitched by the collision. The Goblin, working her way homeward on such boilers as remained, carried on a one-gun fight at a few cables' distance with some enemy destroyers, rt hich, not knowing what state she was in. sheered off after a few rounds. The Shaitan, holed forward and cpened up .aft, came across the summers from tho Gehenna clinging to their raft and took them aboard. Then Ecmo of our destroyers they were thick on the sea that night—tried to tow her stern first, for the Goblin had cut her up badly forward. But sinoo tho Saitan lacked any stern and her rudder vas jammed hard i-cioss where the stern should lave been, the hawsers parted. And after leave asked of lawful authority across all that waste ti waters, they sank the Shaitan by gunf.re, having first taken all proper steps about the- confidential books. Yet the Shaitan had her little crumb of comfort. While she lay crippled she saw quite close to her a German cruiser that was trailing homeward in tlic dawn, gradually heel over and sink. THE GEHENNA DIES NOT IN VAIN. This completes my version of the various accounts of the four destroyers directly cone erned for a few hours on one minute section of one wing of our battle. Other ships witnessed other aspects of the agony and duly noted them as thev went about their business.

One of our battleships, for instance, madb out by the glare of the burning Gehenna that the supposed cruiser that the Eblis had torpedoed was a German battleship of a certain class. So the Gehenna did not die in vain and we may take it that the discovery did not unduly depress Eblis wounded in the hosoital. The rest of the flotilla that the four destroyers belonged to had their own adventures later. One of them, chasing or being chased, saw the Goblin out of control just before the Goblin and Shaitan locked, and narrowly escaped adding herself to that collision. Another loosed a couple of torpedoes at enemy ships who were attacking the Gehenna, which, perhaps, accounts *or the anxiety of the enemy to break away from that hornets' nest as soon as possible. THEY RAN INTO TROUBLE. Half a dozen or so of them ran Into four German battleships, which they set about torpedoing at ranges varying from half a mile to a mile and a half. It was asking for trouble, and they got it, but they had in return at least one big ship, and the same observant battleship of ours who identified the Eblis's bird reported three satisfactory explosions in half an hour, followed by a glare that lit up all the sky. One of the flotilla, crossing on what she thought was smoke of a sister ii difficulties, found herself well in among four battleships. "It was too lite to get away." she says, so she attacked. She fired her torpedo, was caught up in the glare of a couple of searchlights, and pounded to pieces in five minutes, not even her rafts being left. She went down with her colours flying, having fought to the list available gun. Another destroyer who had borne r, hand in the Gehenna's trouble had her try at the four battleships, and got in' a torpedo at eight hundred yards. She saw it explode and a ship tike a heavv list. "Then I was chased,'' which is not surprising She picked up a friend who could do only twenty knots. Thev sighted several Hun destroyers, who fled from them, then dropped on to four Hun destroyers all together, who made a great parade of commencing action, but soon afterward "thought better of it and turned away." ALL VARIETIES OF FIGHTING. So, you see, in that flotilla alon«> there was everv variety of fight from ordered attacks of sqmdrons under control to single-!-hip affairs, every turn of which depended on the second'* decision of the men concerned—endur- | nnio to the hopeless end, bluff and; cunning, reckless advance, and red-hot J flight. Clear vision, and as much of blank I bewilderment as the senior service per- l mi*s its children to induk'* in is not

much when a destroyer who has been dodging enemy torpedoes and "gunfire in the dark realises about midnight that she is "following a strange British flotilla, having lost sight of my own." She "decides to remain with them," and shares their fortunes and whatever language is going. If lost hounds could speak when they cast up the next day after an unchecked night among the wild life of tho dark they would talk much ae our destroyers do.