LIFE ON A DESTROYER

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 105, 5 May 1915, Page 4

LIFE ON A DESTROYER

ROUGH NIGHTS AT SEA The following (says the London Times) is taken from a letter of a young naval officer serving in the Eastern Mediterranean : — "1 must tell you what life in a destroyer is like in war. Hero wo have no land baso of any kind, so never get ashore— now and then wo anchor for a day or night rest, under the lee of an island \vhich we are blockading, and every night when on patrol, and even when at anchor for our so-called rests, we are in sight of the enemy's batteries and searchlights. We have" to keep a very good lookout for drifting mines; the Turks, like the Germans, push them out into the sea wherever they can : three have- been picked up at our anchorage. We have men armed with rifles to watch for them all night; at present no one has been actually caught laying them. "Now it is blowing a south-westerly gale, with sleet squalls every hour — it's pitch dark — you can't see an mch — away On the black horizon you keep seeing the gleam of the enemy's searchlights, which light up the thickness of the wind with driving spray and sleet. We are steaming dead slow, head to wind and sea, sometimes going into it at about ten knots in order to keep in the same patrol billet. Each time the ship plunges she chucks the top of a wave right over her bridge, forecastle, and foremost 12pounder gun. Each time she gets a few degrees off her course. She gives a great roll, and a solid black wave (we call them 'seas') washes right over her after gun-platforms and torpedo-tube. At each gun and tube is a man on watch, trying to see through the blackness and spray, holding on for all he's worth each time a 'sea' breaks over her. At each gun" and tube is a huddled heap of oilskin (or sometimes two or three, according to the position of the gun or tube), this is an officer or seaman asleep or trying Ho sleep at his station, ready to be full awake and at his station the second I yell out ' Night action •' "Thi3 is the routine the man has; he goes on watch at 6 p.m. till 8 p.m., when he has half an hour for supper (sometimes the galley ,fire has been washed out by the breaking seas and there is no slipper bar cold meat and ship's biscuit). At half-past 8 p.m. he goes back to his gun and endeavours to sleep there till midnight, when he does a four hours' watch. At 4 a.m. he again tries to sleep till 7 a.m., when it is daylight, and he goes below for a rest. Well, this, mark you, is thirteen hours on end in one continual howling gale, as often as not with seas breaking over him and sleet storms at intervals. I have heard the ship's cook and the .wardroom steward told off to make cocoa all night for the men on watch — hot, thick, oily ship's cocoa ; and once every hour a staggering oilskin form is seen on the reeling decks, hanging on with one hand and balancing a bucket of cocoa with the other (the ship's cook is a fat man, and it is a hard job), and as>often as not half gets spilt. When the galley is washed ont by the sea, then there is no cocoa, and one feels like death about 4to 6 a.m. When daylight appears you see sodden-locWng, palefaced men, begrimed with i stokers' (what gets in the eyo when one looks out of an express train window), staggering forward to get dry, eat, and then sleep on a stuffy, battened-dovvn, overcrowded mess deck, where they have to jam themselves in on the deck to keep from rolling about. ON THE BRIDGE. " On the bridge are two searchlight men (watch ' and watch) and the two signalmen. When it is their 'etattd-by' they eleep on the deck of the bridge. There you also find the captain', who etops up there the whole night, except for ten minutes or .so ,now and then, when he goes down to look at the chart or get some cocoa at the chart-house under the bridge. From 6 p.m. i-ill midnight and from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. 1 ' am there, too.. From midnight till 4 H.m. tha gunner or the sub is on the watch. When we three officers are nnt on watch we are' asleep (?) at our guns i with our men, with practically no protection at all from the cold spray, sleet, and rain all over one while one sleeps. Glurd to the wheel is the helmsman (there aro two of them who split the night), who for six and a-half of these thirteen black weary hours keeps the little lubber's point glued to whichever point of the compass the capta',i ma.y direct; for the other six and a-half hours he is asleep on the deck at the foot of the bridge. "The captain and officer ,tf the watch, are. on the bridge peering out over the 'dodgers' (canvas screens), and seem always to have a pair of glasses glued to the opening of their Balaclava, helmete, Or else trying to wipe the lenses clean with a black and sodden handkerchief. Every now and then all on the bridge duck instinctively, following the motions of whoever is looking out right ahead ; this is when we get an 'extra, big green one over.' When daylight comes we patrol and have look-outs by day as well. From a quarter to 9 till noon the men are hard at work repairing the damage don© by the seas to the upper deck gear and cleaning up the guns and torpedoes. Then every day at 5 p.m. the whole of the fighting mechanisms of the ship .are tested aJid got ready for the night. We get in for about eight hours' rest as a rule once after twenty-four hours' patrol, but one out of every three rests is spent coaling. Sometimes we got a whole night at anchor, and sheltered from the cold black seas, looking out for mines of the enemy, whom we expect any second of our lives here. It is the suspense and the waiting and watching that tells. Still, in spite of this and the truly awful weather and great hardships, we are a very happy family, full of bean 6 'to get at 'em,' and would not be anywhere else for worlds."