A MONITOR IN ACTION

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16209, 11 May 1918, Page 6

A MONITOR IN ACTION

ATTACKED FROM LAND, SEA,

AND AIR

As the monitor lurched indolently along the heavy seas beat against her low freeboard, then slapped down on her dccks, playing a merry game of leapfrog over cook's galley, capstans, and other structures as the .waves swept from one side of the ship to the other.

High up on the where big guns glowered menacingly in front of them and smaller weapons poked sharp nuizsles over the screens of the rear platform, stood a little group of cil-skin-clad men. In tiieir njidst was the commander, giving terse orders that were obeyed almost before they had been issued.

They were taking the ship into position. For hours she had waddled an uneasy way across the North Sea and was now approaching the point where siie would v'iay to" and open fire upon the enemy concealed among the sand dunes. Over a bank she slid, then humped with greater difficulty across a sccond one. The commander jerked sharply at the engine-room telegraphs and gradually the cumbrous bulk of the vessel wore round. Cables rattled noisily through the hawseholes as anchors were dropped. A few minutes of this and the monitor had moored head and stern, with her nose pointing towards shore, and was ready to begin operations.

"Booni-uhir-rr!" sung one of her big guns. ''Short," came the signal from aloft. The gun-laver moved pointers and the weapons spoke again. Corrections were signalled and made until the exact range had been found, whereupon the monitor settled down to her work steadily and seriously. Cabin doors splintered, such. mess traps as were breakable dissolved into fragments: s>uch as were not, clattered and leaped protestingly all around the place after every discharge of the guns; but still the monitor went 111concernedly on with hor job. After a while "Fritz" 1 began to talk back to her. Shells from his longrango guns. began to fall in the water ■ all around her, sending np. huge splashes that "christened" the ship pretty freely. "Heavy stuff" was thrown constantly by both sides, yet the monitor was giving more than she took. A change in the character of the duel came about when a Hun aeroplane shot over the eoast-linc -ind "plop! plop!" down fell the bombs. Promptly the monitor opened out with her anti-aircraft weapons and filled the sky with white festoons that were pretty enough to watch though deadly to any aeroplane that came near them. A few minutes of this and the Hun pilot "turned again home." "He's hopped it. I wonder when the 'subs.' will start?" speculated one of the monitor's crew. Hardly were the words spoken ere a deafening roar and a huge uprising column of water showed where a torpedo had struck one cf the vessel's "blisters." "Try again, 'Fritzic.' Waste some more of your money!" was the only comment this incident drew from ner men. . And "Fritzie" Jid try again. Torpedoes coming bow on, broadside on. stern on, indicated that submarines were all around her. But this did not worry the monitor a whit. She was built to withstand snch attacks— in fact, quite accustomed to them. Her light artillery spat angrily into the water, her big guns maintained their continuous "boom, boom," while' her Archies ' shrieked a vicious ' greeting every time a Hun 'plane appeared. Thus, bombed from the air fired at by long-range gnns on shore', and continuously attacked by submarines, the monitor "carried on" steadily until a cessation of firing from the dunes showed that the big gnns hidden there had been "knocked out." Then the monitor "up anchored'' and sheered off for home. She had done. her job successfully, as her kind "are i continually doing along the Belgian coast, though little is heard of their! work there.—(Bv "Jackstaff" in Lon-' don 'Daily Mail.") j in i