"THE DAY"

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 22, 25 January 1919, Page 9

"THE DAY"

HOW THE GERMAN FLEET SURRENDERED

THE NAVY'S FINAL TRIUMPH

"DOWN AND OUT."

(TROH OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

H.M.S. NEW ZEALAND.

Whatever may be the German philosophy of humiliation, nobody who saw tho High, Seas Floet steam methodically into captivity off the coast of Scotland c<in doubt for a moment that the Hun J3 down and out. They are educated men, these enemies of ours, and the whole circumstance of the defeat must by now have permeated through all the strata and castea of German society. Yot the seamen of what was so recently tho second greatest and the" second most efficient navy in the world grinned impudently, and •ometimes in genuine exultation, as the disgraced armada filed slowly and »ur«ly, in perfect alignment, within tho conquering Unea of tie enemy. I was fortuuai* «Dou«h to be in H.M,S. New Zealand fot the final scene. liven while I wu on board the censorship was officially abolished, to that J may say that for th« greater part of ihe past yeaT Admiral Beatty ha» ri4«i the glorious Firth of Forth as hia "ua*» Hero be bad concentrated practically tho whole atrength of the Grand fleet. As a rule the ships dwelt within the bndge. but when I arrived they were just below it, the whole great Navy embattled, with a squadron of America's heaviest battleships, and just a small cruiser and a pair of destroyers from Franc, THE KING'S REVIEW The New Zealand is in the Second Battle Cruiser Squadron, and follows closely hor sister ship, the Australia, in which ilear-Admiral Sir L. Halsey has just raised his flag. All the ships of the Meet were in spick and span condition, freshly painted for the visit of the King. But one could see everywhere, beneath the paint and the polish, the hard wear and tear of four years' strenuous war. They were foggy days last week, and the paint laid on for the King would not dry. But this was an inconsiderable matter. One has seen the King review his ships before, though to he sure not in such an atmosphere of triumph and power. It was a question of policy whether King George V., who is more truly a sailor King than any one who has gone before, should witness in person the surrender of the enemy on the morrow. His ownitrue judgment was entirely against it. He felt that as he had not been at sea during the war he should not take the part of a sailor in the solemn act of victory, and, moreover, that it did not conform with the character of his sovereignty that he should figure in a. triumph of such a sort. But his greeting from his own fleet was only the mor« cordial for that. The long grey lines lay far out to Inchkeith in the thick fog of a North Sea November "Beatty's Destroyer, ' the Oak, which has carried so many distinguished visitors to and from the flagship—the King on several occasions; Kitchener; and quite lately the German naval delegates, arranging the surrender —is painted a lighter shade of grey than fchf others, so that she almost glittered in the dull light. The King stood on her upper bridge in admiral's uniform. Tho Prince o' Wales in khaki was on the bridge b» Jow, and as the little craft pushed hei way dowm between the lines, ship aftei ship manned her bulwarks and guns an< greeted him with Tinging cheers. From port to starboard and back again to porl the King turned with upraised hand acknowledging the salute of his sailors It was a great demonstration of affectioi from men who had conquered the strait and weariness of four long years. Bu' that was not what we were her© for. DER TAG, The real event was for the morrow. Those who had the watch below turned in early, for in the small hours of the morning, Jong before dawn, we were to weigh anchor and proceed to sea to the appointed rendezvous. It was a. wonderful scene. For the first time for how long the battle squadrons put to sea with all their navigation lights showing. They were in line ahead, two lines sir miles apart, and they breasted fearlessly eastward into the treacherous waters of tho North Sea with scarcely any of the precautions which had been routine for four years past. 'There were no zigzags. were no destroyer screens. The speed was eight knots, reduced now; increased again, to make the rendezvous sure and punctual. In all the gloomy months of the war no such thing had happened. The wardroom had bandied jokes about it the night before. When it i»n>e they took it as a matter of course, one would have thought they never had dons anything different. The American battle squadron was at the head of the pttr.t line, where also the French cruiser had an independent position Day dawned grey, with a thin Scots light, but far in the south were promises of brightness. One had little patience for bath or breakfast. There was,so much for the eye and the imagination in this naval day of days. In our little squadron the Australia was standing on just ahead, with the flag of the Commonwealth at the staff and that of Admiral HaJsey at the fore. We were 500 yards astern, keeping station as the New Zealand knows how. Astern of us our chummy ship, the Indomitable, fretted and fumed, swerving ami sheering about like a collaT-proud Clydesdale, and behind her again was the Inflexible. Away on the beam casual bursts o! sunshine lighted, up the rakish hulls of the First B.C.S. in the port line -tho historit! Lion (now flying the flag r-i Vwo-Adwiral Sir W. S. Pakenham), the Tiger (which sailormen say is the prettiest, ship in tho Navy), the Princess Itoyal, and bo on. A PAGEANT OF HISTORY. And it gave cue a thrill to see, as the suu dispersed -what was left of the grey curtain, the stately squadrons of those (•rest British battleships which won the war m _t>«i frozen watches of the North. Most of uiem have never b«en in action. Nfcit, half-a-dozen of them hud seen a 'Run bofore to-day Stately, steady, sed;it», ■•' Jine ahead, precisely stationed, at avßi-y peak the white ensign, these r;onquering battlements stood solemnly out in'o tho ocean. Their names alone epitomise the naval history of England :—Collingwood, Benbow, Eevenge, Repulse, Colussus, Temcraire,. St. Vincent, Warspite. For four years they had been mere names, for the joost part forbidden, To-day they are full of sentiment. There was not one of the fifty British journalists who did not fpei a lump in his throat at the mere reading of these namec when we were allotted io our stations. A fresh breeze blew our ensigns proudy out. Constantly the speaking bunting soared. to th« lorepeak. as ship spoke to ship, admiral to admiral. Constantly the searchlights winked, and stnaeil", and flickered" out. For many i tfcvas had to be said in the final ar--augemskUs lor the final act of tEe.war.

Airship* and captive balloons hovered overhead. Aeroplanes were constantly hopping up from the gun turrets of the capftal Bhips, and from the extraordinary platforms of the zebra-coloured, coi-fin-shaped monster, the Furious, once a "Heavily gunned "hush" ship, but now an aeroplane carrier of the first oraer. At seven o'clock our destroyers, which had gone on ahead, reported that they were hi touch with the Hun fleet near the rendezvous. Nobody was flustered. Everything came as a matter of course. !*■ would be a couple o£ hours yet before we got up with them, and there was plenty to do in the interim. , At'nine o'clock Captain Donaldson, ordered all that is left of the New Zealand silk ensign, which has been flown in all her, battles, and is now tattered and reduced to half its proportions, to be hoisted at the forepeak. Her other battle flag, .shot through and through by German Bhel) in the Battle of Jutland, was flying at the other yard, and at the stern was the old New Zealand ensign, presented by the Maori chiefa. It is the pattern of tho flag which was given to i.h» United Tribes of New Zealand by King William the Fourth, in 1835. Captain DouiMson himself woro on the bridge the Matin mat and the tiki, which have been wora in action in tnrn by Captain HaTsey »nd Captain Green.

TOWARDS TEE BiSNDEZVOUS. Tbe appointed rendezvous was «• 56 decrees 118 N,, 1 degree 3C W.. and a» the distanc* grew Teas and le»s the feefiug of expectation wa* steadily bAightened. Visibility was lo«r, as toe communique* «a.y. The veterans of uiitlaud, pointing to the ships of. the port Jino, of which we got occasional glimpses from a curtain of grey, remarked that it was on just such a day aa this thai the battle-cruisers , came to grips with the fleeting apparitions of thA Gorman battle fleet near the Horn Reef.

All hands went lo action stations, for the British Navy could never be excused, after four years of bitter experience, for putting any trust in the honour or the pligbted word of tho Hun. Gas masks were on; shells lay in the baskets at tits top of of the hoists ready to the breech. In half a minute from the alarm all the great turrets could belch into action. Something' told us that no treachery was likely. Yet it was only so that the seamen of England could have trafficed with those ot tho Kaiser, and bitterly they all regretted that the final meeting was nSt to be a fleet action and trial.of strength.

Outwardly our ships were quite normal. AH the companions were dosed down. The guns lay fore and aft in the securing position. The after-turret of the Australia squinted, one gun into the New Zealand's foretop, the other into her bows.

THil ENEMY IN SIGHT. A few minutes after 9 the Queen Elizabeth winked out Admiral Beatty's signal "Speed sixteen knots." The van, miles ahead of us in the mirk, was in touch with the light cruiser Cardiff, and the Cardiff had been sent on to pick up the Hun line and lead it to the Grand Fleet. There was just a little excitement then. Men who had waited four years for this day, in battleships, in trawlers, in Q-boats and destroyers—became suddenly impatient to see the Hun ships. They were not exactly in position, for it was at 1 deg., 30min. W that the leading ships met. The, Huns had laboriously steered round one of their own minefields, which our trawlers had. swept up months ago. Nor had they come Ecatheless; one of the fifty destroyers was mined and sunk. It was 9.30 when the first German battle-cruiser, the Seydlitz, appeared out of the gloom, flying the broad pennant o£ Commodore Tagert, and following obediently at stated distance the rakish form of the little, Cardiff. Right,down the centre of the lines they passed, one after another,'the Seydlitz, Moltke, Derfflinger, Hindenburg, and Yon Der Tann, They were hard enough to distinguish] at first, for the G«rman grey is dead, and does not silver in the light. But, keeping station perfectly, they forged ahead, hull after hull—the battle-cruisers, then the battleships, led by Friedrich Der Grosse (Rear-Admiral yon Reuter), Koni? Albricht, Kaiser, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Kaiserin, Bayern, Markgraf, Prinz Regent Luitpold, and Grosser Kurfurst, and finally the light cruisers led by the Karlsruhe (Commodore Harder); the Frankfurt, Emden, Nurnburg, Brummer, and Bremse. The Koln broke down and had to return to Germany.

THE SHIPS ADMIRED. As one after anothor came into view it was interesting to hear the remarks of the New Zealand's company. "The first time I have ever seen a German ship," said one who had been three years in other ships of the Grand Fleet. Another saw the Moltke just as she had appeared at Dogger Bank three and a-half years ago. Thre was no demonstration here or anywhere else. There was instead a certain stupefaction—a failure to understand that this really was the High Seas Fleet of the boasted and undoubtedly formidable navy -whose impudent challenge to the sea supremacy of Britain had fallen to the ground without a blow •being struck. There was no lack of admiration for the fine geometrical lines, the square, flat turrets, and the low freeboards of the German ships, or for the rakish flare of the beautiful light cruisers, not one of which was in the hand-books before the war. Nurnberg, Karlsruhe, Emden, Frankfurt, and Koln, they are all "Ersatz" ships, replacing more famous and, alas! more,honourable vessels sunk during the war. Not.a single ship of the whole fleet bears a name on its hull. The capital ships you must recognise by the silhouette and the pinkish funnel, or by the devices on the bow. The Emden has an iron cross, the Brummer has a bee, and so on.

The dishonoured armada kept station perfectly, and stood steadily on between our lines until -we bad almost passed tho whole of the capital ships.

HAD THEY PLAYED THE GAME.

"If they were not such swine," muttered a voice behind me. I knew exactly what he meant. The whole British Navy thinks the same. If only they were not such swine how the British seamen would have delighted to give them a cheer; how they would have hated to inflict the crowning humiliation of the silence in which these defeated seamen were being received into captivity The history of the British Navy holds no other record of a foe who could handle their ;ships so worthily, striking their colours unhonoured by British victors.

Admiral Beatty's instructions for the surrender were explicit. There .were to be no favours and no demonstration. Did he need to order it So? Undoubtedly not. The whole conduct of the German Navy, culminating in its refusal to come out and fight, has deserved the humiliation of surrender and the disgrace of going into captivity unsaluted. For the rest all hands praised the handling of the ships, the perfect sta-tion-keeping, and the businesslike anchoring of the fleet. And all hands, remembering countless callous murders of the seas, whispered "If they were not such swine."

"They are coming in like a row of sucking doves, sir," said a yeoman of signals. Where the Royal Marines dwell a bugler was practising his quavers, perhaps more joyously than before. Otherwise all was as usual.

As the watchers on the !Kew Zealand were speculating as to which was the opposite number at Jutland—it was believed to have been the Yon Der Tnnn — that threw the heavy shell tlirough th«

after turret, a flag signal at the Australia's peak arrested attention. It was the warning of Admiral Halsey for the wheeling movement by squadrons which would turn the whole armada homeward, the Australia leading the southern and the Lion the northern line.

ACCORDING TO PLAN. The weather thickened again, and the northern line was blotted out, except that now and again, like white surf breaking faintly on a hidden shore, the stealthily silvered hulls of our own battle cruisers visible crept along. Th© day brightened again and dulled once more. But every glimpse showed the captives in their station, marching with unfaltering step into the confines of the ■enemy. It was all according to plan. The defeat was so thorough that as we closed May Island, at the wide sea entrance to the Firth, Admiral Beatty, tor the last time •in the greatest naval war of all ages, cancelled action j quarters. Some leagues still to go, at a spot between North Berwick and Ardross Castle, where the opposite shores were still ten miles apart, was the chosen anchorage. The captives and one line of our-fleet passed May Island north about, the other line by the south. Down the lines now came the signal from the Queen Elizabeth :

"The German flag will be lowered at sunset, and will not be hoisted again without permission." Nobody cheered. The kaleidoscope of groat events these ten days has been so stunning. Another burst of sunshine showed us what to many was the most impressive spectacle of all, the fifty German, destroyers —taut, smart, dark, straining like greyhounds within the leash of our lighter and outnumbering flotilias. The spectacle was more compact than that of the battleships, but cestainiy not less inspiring.

ON THE ENEMY DECKS. Slowly we all moved to the anchoraga, t>y strange symetrical circles and sweeps; bo slowly that the Australia, on whoso deck structure I could plainly read ths scrolls "Babaul, German New Guinea, Samoa," made no visible weight at. all. It was an interesting half hour, as one by one the New Zealand passed slowly alongside the German battls cruisers and light cruiser*. It was stipulated that all of the Hun crews who were not actually working the engines should bo above deck. Only one, the Seydlitz, could be said to have a numerous crew. The ships were, all wanting new coats of paint, and some o f the light aruisers looked particularly "woolly." The crew of the latter were scanty—in one or two cases only about thirty men—and they stood about as nonchalantly as our own, with more evidence of curiosity than of the shame which our British seamen thought proper to the occasion. On each ship were several seamen wearing the white armlets of the Soldiers' and Workers' Councils, and on one deck at least was a civilian in frock coat, equat hat, and soft collar. Few officers were visible. An armada which should have sported half a dozen admirals had only one rear-admiral and two commodores. One of the light cruisers had only seamen on the bridge. Another had nobody visible at all until, some minutes after we had passed, the head only of an officer appeared timidly over the screen peeping at us through glasses. I wondered what they thought of their German philosophy as they read in proud letters of gold on the sterns of their warders the names "Australia," "New Zealand," "Canada," "Malaya," and so on.

The Hun ships cuddled down to their anchors in lines, and we, after making a restless circle of them, dropped our own anchors in a ring outside. It was the open sea. There was no protection whatever ; but the Hun was down and out. Nothing was now to be feared of his treachery. .

THE KAISER'S FLAG HAULED DOWN. Sundown was at 3:50 p.m., arid I rushed up hurriedly from tea to see the most historic sundown of our age. As the bugles rang out in the New Zealand and every other ship, all hands faced aft, in time-honoured style, and saluted the white ensign fluttering slowly down from the truck. It is a beautiful,ceremony at any; time. To-day it is solemn and. yet exciting. Which of all those who had watched and waited and fought and hoped tor four years could refrain from glancing furtively the while at the peaks of the Hun battleships, where the ensign of the Kaiser still flew? It was an irresistible temptation. Yet ■when all the white ensigns had disappeared, the flag of Geimany still floated at the peak of every German ship. Surely now at least the German sailors' heart was clinging to the sentiment of a lost honour.. A few more moments passed. Thon one by one, or one after another, the ensigns came slowly down. By 3.55 every scrap of national bunting had vanished, "not to appear again without permission." The Derfliinger was the New Zealand's pigeon, and as the light of day died, and the blood-red sun slid into the bluegrey deep, our pinnace fussed off, determined to maintain the honour of the ship and to make no mistake about her objective. Commander E. C. Davenport and

Lieutenant W. H. Blake (Gunnery) went

in her, and the envious eyes of the whole ship's company and at least one visitor followed them through the lanes of grey fainting silhouettes towards their quarPy> THE LIGHTS OF VICTORY.

An fconr later they came back, having made all the necessary arrangements for a thorough search' in the morning. And as they returned the whole ship's conir pany was lined upon the quarter-deck, not only here, btit in every shio of the fleet, to give thanks to God for tne greatest victory of ths British .Navy, a victory in itself bloodless and thorough. Admiral Beatty's signal said:

"It is my duty to hold a service of thanksgiving' at'lß.oo (6 p.m.) to-day (Thursday) for the victory -which ,Almighty God haa vouchsafed to H.M. arms, and every ship is recommended

to do the same."

Never was the Recessional more aptly tang, or more fervently. Every line was written for this one day of days, and surely no seamen, ever gave thanks moro sincerely for a surcease of their tireless watch and labours.

Was there anything at all wanting to the completion of the victory? Surely not. "The greatness of this achievement," said Admiral Beatty in a general signal, "is no way lessened by the fact that the final episode did not take the form of a fleet action. Although deprived of this opportunity which we had so long and eagerly awaited and of striking the final blow "for the freedom of the world, we may derive satisfaction from the singular tribute which the enemy has accorded to the Grand Fleet.- Without joining us in action he has given testimony to the prestige and efficiency of the Fleet without parallel in history, and it .is to be remembered that this testimony has been accorded to us by those who'were in the best position to judge.' The greatness of the victory I saw written in long cascades /of light as I hurried away up the Forth in the evening. There lay our battle squadrons; on which the whole success of the Allies and of civilisation hinged, securely at anchor ill the open sea, all ships fully lighted and all ports open, even the gangways picked out with electric bulbs. Who could question that the sea was ours, suffering no threat now from the German | ships riding at anchor in their midst? Who now were the victors of Jutland?