IN THE DEEP SEAS

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9690, 19 June 1917, Page 2

IN THE DEEP SEAS

THE TRUE EPIC OF ENGLAND

“Tho true epic of England lies buried in many thousands of old ships' logs stained with sea-water, mouldering forgotten,” writes Mr L. Cope Cornford in tho "Sunday Pictorial.” "But England has been so busy making the epic that she has never found time to write it. Sailing the seas, charting and lighting them, fighting up and down them, trading all the world over, grasping riches hard-fist-ed, England never thought what sue was doing; and has not thought, to this day. "Now she is forced to stop and to consider, for a new thing has come upon her; and after a thousand years of seafaring, the hardihood and skill of British seamen, learned in a schooling so long and so bitter, are flowering in a bright red blossom, the wonder of the world. “Ere the King’s Navy had imposea the King’s peace on all seas, the British seamen went armed, and the merchant captain fought his ship, as the law bade (and still bids) him to fight. Always, soon or late, he proved himself fit to matefi and; overmaster any craft that swam tho seas, from; Algerine galley of the corsairs to the hundred-gun line-of-battleships of tho King’s enemies. Then, as the Navy hold the seas secure, the merchantmen for generations sailed unarmed and scathless upon their lawful occoasions.

“Suddenly, tho seas were haumccl by invisible foes, appearing out of tho deep, murderqus-iliko shancs, striking, slaying, and vanishing again; but never berore had England fought a great nation turned pirate. "Piracy began more than two years ago ; and in a moment, without warning, the merchant seaman was in part deprived of the protection of the Navy. He was totally defencelessUpon him, in the same moment, fell the inexorable duty of maintaining the supplies of his country.

“The British seaman was utterly unprepared for the blow. For months after the declaration of war people absolutely refused ito believe that Germany would attack commerce with submarines. ’Hie present writer, who ventured .to foretell the event,.’ was roundly abused for his pains. But, even in the interval, the enemy was dropping mines along the sea high ways; and never a seaman left port with any certainty that ha would return. 'But ho loft port all the same, and groped along the unlighted coasts or sailed upon deep-sea voyages without a word.

"Before Germany turned pirate the ship of many a hapless crew stopped and reeled and settled down, while her people, giddy with tho stunning shock of the exploding mine, struggled jinfio their boate, and wove drowned, or floated, as it might happen, soaken and destitute, their ship gone, and with it all their possessions. Sometimes, after the slow agony of hunger, tliirst and cold, they were picked up; sometimes not. . “Then began the (submarine piracy; and tho merchant seaman, still unarmed and still unafraid, shut his mouth and put to sea as heretofore No man had stayed him for a thousand years; was it likely ho would stop for a German pirate? Ho had his business to do, and did it.”