"LITTLE TRAWLER."

Matamata Record, Volume II, Issue 83, 23 May 1918, Page 1

"LITTLE TRAWLER."

The Bravery of the North Sea Fishermen. " Little trawler, little trawler, Ai'i, so black ayainsl the ski/, With your sides all turn, and battered Anil your flay but half-mast high, Did your voyage fail to prosper ? ' Cried the little trawler, No; We went out and did, our duly, But the skipper lies below." " Little trawler, little trawler, With the quaint old English name, Did the little ships before you . Ever join in-such a yame f" i " Well I've heard my mother tell me," I Said the trawler, " long ago, That Lord Howard had to use 'em Just «<s much as Jellicoe." Some day when the silence and mystery which surrounds the part the navy is playing in the great war, when the world knows the price of Britain's immunity from invasion has been the perpetual vigilance of the senior service not the least honor will be paid the sturdy North sea fishermen. The German naval raids, the swift outputting and the hurried retreat of German destroyers and light cruisers, the scurry across the North sea passage, the shelling of unfortified and defenceless towns, the indiscriminate laying of mines, the sneaking across of German submarines to the fishing grounds to take toll of the little unarmed fishing trawlers aroused the fishermen. /The navy could not spare the men for mine sweeping, nor were the naval vessels suitable. But in the ancient, wind swept fishing ports of the North Sea were thousands of courageous seamen who knew the North Sea as a landsman knows his own back yard. They-were their own free men, stiff necked and independent, eying the small pay and rigorous discipline of the navy job with some disfavor. "But they saw their own dead," they saw their old friends and shipmates fetched in dead or wounded from other vessels of their fleet, and they vowed vengeance on the Germans. There was little spectacular in their work, and the daily drugery of mine sweeping is the riskiest game of the war by land or sea. Their honor roll of the dead is long and tragic, and on it you may read the names of many a ship of which there were no survivors to tell how the quick finish came. The old-fashioned romance of salt water has not vanished when a ketch-rigged sailing smack with a crew of five men and a boy actually fights and sinks a submarine. These doughty smacks did the trick, and more than once. They did it with gunfire, with one gun at that; and the Hun learned to be wary of the fleet that fished and fought by turns. At first the submarines that undertook this business carried no guns of their own, but trusted to' a torpedo or a haughty summons to take to the boats while bombs were placed in the hold to blow the smack up. This was a blundering procedure, and also painful for the surprised U-boat that filled and sank with the shells ripping through herskin. THE STORY OF THE NELSON Skipper Thomas Crisp won the, Victoria Cross in the smack Nel- , son, and he gained this supreme award for valor while dying on his own bloody deck. It is a fine story to read about in England ; but it is far more gratifying to hear it, from his daughter's husband, who was with him in the engagement as a member of the Nelson's crew. He was sandyhaired, blue-eyed, diffident of manner, with a homely sense of humor that lent an artless touch to the narrative and kept it clear of heroics.

"We were driftin' about a bank where there was plenty of fish," said he, " a bit to the west'ard of this eight-fathom knoll, which you can see for yourself where it is on the chart, sir. The rest of the smacks was some distance away with their nets out and all so peaceful and merry-o. One of the hands was airin' his mind about submarines and wot he'd do to the perishin' blighter if he caught'im, when pop, up comes the Hun no more than a hundred yards from us. It wasn't no shy and artful peep through a periscope that he gave us, but he

boils up awash and is quite ready to finish us off all speedy and scornful-like. Smacks was regarded as of no consequence, in a manner of speakin'. "My father-in-law, 'im that was Skipper Thomas Crisp, had another opinion about the matter, bain' a stubborn man and owning the smack, which was a very good vessel indeed. And the crew more or less belonged to him, as you might say his own son bein' aboard, besides me that was his son-in-law. " This Hun bad a gun on deck, and what was the use of wastin' a valuable terpedo on us poor beggars ? A few shots and we'd be handsomely done in, do you see, or takin' to the boat all in a jolly scramble. So away he blazes ; but we gets the cover off our own popgun to be all sociable and obligin' and returns the compliment. Our skipper draws his share o' hard luck, and plenty of it, for a shell comes aboard where he is standing by the tiller and takes off both his legs. He was fair cut in ,two, poor man, and there was nothing much left of Skipper Thomas Crisp below the waist. It was very amazin' to us that he was not dead at once, but there he was, sir, lying on the deck and conscious, though sufferin' mortal pain. He begged of 'is own son and me to throw him over the side and end the grievous agony, but we had not the heart to do it for 'im and was disobedient to our skipper for the first time." "He was not forgetting the smack, mind you, and told the men very emphatic to work the gun and blow the blighted submarine to hell. Also it was on 'is mind to send word to the admiral that the smack was attacked by a Hun and was in a bad way, with her skipper killed. It was himself v*ho told us to get the message off by a pigeon and what to say, afore he died. This is how the skipper got his V.C., and it was a great pity he could not live to journey down to London and see the King which, would have made.him very proud indeed. It was most encouragin' to the rest of us to have the skipper cheer us up instead of him dyin' promptly, which would have been quite proper under the circumstances,don'tyou think, sir. "We kept on slappin' shells into the submarine and our gun layer did a tidy bit of work, for he put one into her and the Hun had quite enough of us, as his actions signified. He went down with his tail in the air as if he was sore hit and unhappy. At any rate, sir, he was quite fed up with the smack Nelson and failed to sink her, as was his intention." Perhaps the landsman should be informed that the steam trawler is a powerful, wellengined ship, with a bold sheer, which carries a crew of twelve to fifteen men and drags the bottom of the sea with a great bag of a net. The drifter is a smaller steamer which mostly follows the herring and sets her nets by means of cork floats and drifts with the tide until it is time to haul them in again. TEA AND TOAST. - There was a flat calm, with a smooth sea and a summer haze. A submarine was sighted on the starboard quarter, steering northeast at a speed of ten or eleven knots, with part of the conning tower visible. The skipper of the drifter was below, at tea in his cabin ; and it is a well-known fact that nothing short of a call to general quarters will separate a British shipmaster from his tea at eight bells in the afternoon. He came on deck, sighted the enemy and rushed to the wheelhouse, putting the helm hard aport and shouting to the crew to stand by. Now this drifter was scarcely a war vessel, except in the eyes of its men, who had a sublime confidence in their one gun. Therefore the skipper, full of courage, tea and toast, gave the order to steer straight for the enemy and bawled into the engineroom tube to give her all the speed there was. At fifteen hundred yards he shifted the course to sheer off, and opened fire at this range. The first shot went over. The sights were lowered fifty yards and the second shell fell short only a few feet. The third shot i hit the submarine —a smashing

bull's-eye on the port side of the deck. The submarine then alter- t ed her course about four to six points to the eastward, and fire was continued by the drifter until two more shells had struck the enemy. " I saw these shells burst," reports the skipper, "and the range was the-same as of the other hits. The submarine heeled over to starboard and exposed her side to the later shots. We still kept up the fire, but at reduced range, as we were speedily approaching the enemy. We could see the coming tower sink below the surface and the port bilge keel came into view below the water line as the submarine sunk. A big wash came up and the last six rounds from our gun were fired into this wash at a range of about six hundred yards. The submarine took about one minute to sink after heeling to. starboard. "When my crew last saw the wash we were practically on top of the spot, and the .men sang out to one another ' Hang on, she is going to bump!' However, no shock was felt, though we were right in the wash caused by the sinking. Shortly afterward a lot of oil ame to the surface. A depth charge was dropped over the spot and exploded satisfactorily. We circled round the place and presently other drifters arrived on the scene, and we cruised there for an hour, but no- " We were in company with twelve Scotch trawlers from Granton and Aberdeen," is the story told by the skipper of another smack, " when considerable commotion was observed among the trawlers, who lifted their trawls and closed in on my ship. I was informed by the Trawler S that she had seen a submarine alongside an Aberdeen trawler about nine miles to the southwest. I ordered the other vessels to keep clear of me and to carry on as if they were trawling, and I continued trawling myself but altered course to the southwest. At four-thirty p.m. the trawl was hauled and again shot. Two hours later two trawlers were seen overhauling us on our port quarter, and a submarine evidently chasing them. We continued trawling until the submarine was about five hundred yards off, and then, considering that she was in as good a position as I was likely to get her, I ordered the fishing gear cut away, and then brought the submarine on my port beam and opened fire at five hundred yards." " The first shot missed, but the second and third took effect on her fore deck. She was evidently taken by surprise, before she was able to submerge. After the first hit she was seen to list heavily to port, which list she kept up until she finally sank. The result of the fourth shot was not seen by me, but the gun crew claimed it as a hit. After she had sunk I steered for the position, and the leading seaman, who was standing by the depth charge, reporting oil on the water, I ordered him to drop the charge. We remained there until dark, and then having no spare trawling gear aboard I decided to return to port." THE SKIPPER'S BUSY DAY This was rather unhealthy business for the submarine, and others of her kind should have heeded the lesson and let these zealous fisherman severely alone. Another U-boat, however,was rash enough to tackle the Trawler R —, and here is how the affair turned out: "At nine o'clock on Friday morning a steam trawler hailed me, saying: " ' Cut your gear away and run for it. There is a submarine three-quarters of a mile away and she has sunk-a smack, and I have the crew on board.' "I said 'All right, thank you,' and I also asked him the name of his ship, but could not understand what he said. I then towed my trawl about fifteen minutes longer, but thinking we were too far away from the smacks we started to haul the trawl up. " I was bringing the vessel round before the wind and had all but the last twenty fathoms of our trawl in when the winch would not heave any more. I then jumped off the bridge and asked the mate why the winch was running back. He replied : " ' I don't know, skipper. The stop valve is opened out full.' " I tried it myself and found it fully open. I then went and asked the engine man if he had full steam on, and he said : "'The steam is all right, skipper.' " We reversed the winch and it hove all clear again. We had just finished hauling our net in when the mate caught me by the arm and shouted: ' Skipper, a submarine close aboard of us !' " I then saw the submarine no more than a hundred yards off

our starboard quarter. I called out:

" ' Hard a starboard and a tick ahead !'

" Then I ran aft, taking a gun's crow with me, and opened fire. The mate came and said 'Right, skipper!' meaning that he would take charge of the gun, but I told him to go en the bridge and keep the submarine astern, as I had her where I wanted her. My first three shots hit the submarine, and my fourth shot caused an explosion, throwing up a flame from four to five feet, which was seen by all on deck. "I then fired four more shots, during which time the submarine stayed not more than a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards away. After my eighth shot we saw him disappear, and then we steamed round but could not see anything, and continued to do so until daylight, and then we saw large patches of oil on the water. I am confident this submarine had become entangled in the after part of our net, as we lost several fathoms of it, and this was what jammed the winch. It was also the cause of the submarine's coming to the surface so close to us and remaining there." For this exploit the skipper was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross; and the mate the Distinguished Service Medal.