THE BRITISH FLEETS

Otago Witness, Issue 3277, 3 January 1917, Page 36

THE BRITISH FLEETS

MORE POWERFUL THAN BEFORE. THE HONOURABLE SCARS OF JUTLAND. VISIT TO THE NEW ZEALAND. (From Captain Malcolm Ross, War Correspondent, with the I\\Z. Forces.) I awoke suddenly in the dim light of the early morning, and thought I saw a man climbing over the parapet. I rubbed my eyes, and found that it was only my tunic and "slacks," crowned with my hat, all on the one peg, and swinging to the motion of a sleeping cai on the Highland railway. I raised the blind, and the scene upon which I looked was not the broken-down earth and dismembered trees of the Somme battlefield. There were no trenches, and so no parapet over which a man could climb. The trees were fir trees, and not at all like the elms and poplars of Picardy. And the fields, too, were different. They were hemmed with hedges, and black-faced sheep were grazing contentedly in their pastures. Later we ran through wilder scenery than anything you can find in Northern France. Tbfi rivers ran swift and strong, their flanking hills clothed ' with heather. Autumn had already splashed with her lavish brush the woodland foregrounds, and, to make the contrast the greater, winter had whitened the backo-ronnd with a thin snow coating. With a whir a covey of grouse rose from a late oat field. We climbed the pass to Culloden Moor, whore we picked heather half in bloom and half in seed.

That night I slept in a great room in an inn in the Far North, from which, almost, you can see the comings and goings of the Grand Fleet. I had come, at the invitation of the Admiralty, straight from the battle zone of the Somme—by car across miles of Northern France, by boat across the Channel, by train through London, and so on here. Next morning I was on board a destroyer steaming at 30 knots an hour out to the fleet. All this I had done without let or hindrance, even without discomfort. One thing was clear: the War Lord had not yet reaped the fruits of his victory (!) when, in the words of our admiral, on May 31, 1916, the German High Sea Fleet "was brought to action to the westward of the Jutland Bank, off the coast of Denmark." THE GREAT GREY FLEET. A glimpso of the Grand Fleet, with all its attendant auxiliaries, is, in spite of the Kaiser's boast, a thrilling sight. It is, of course, a great privilege to see it-at all. And the privilege is none the less because there is so much about it that cannot be mentioned. It- is the last word—or very near the last word —in naval construction and naval gunnery. No sooner had wo settled ourselves in the more or less sheltered spots available on that part of the destroyer that is by courtesy called "a deck than we were invited on to the bridge. Here a signalman, with a clattering iron Venetian blind that screened a flaming arc light, was already telling the hidden fleet all it needed to know about us. He was not talking direct to the Flag, but to an intermediary in the shape of a" grim headland. And the headland replied with steely flashes—flashes that made the daylight pale. With her grey funnels blistered by the heat of her hidden oil fires, and her mass of top hamper and gear and guns and tubes that seemed to be piled haphazard on board, our destroyer cut a graceful curve in the water, and went racing on through a swirling rip towards the boom that guarded the Great Grey Fleet. A foaming wave curved from her bow on either side. Her speed was such that on a calm day you found yourself in a strong wind.

The stern scenery of the Far North seemed a fitting setting for the scene that was soon to burst upon our gaze. Outside the boom thousands of fluttering gulls and tern were making a breakfast of the fish that, are checked there. There is little other fishing now. The sturdy Highlanders and Islanders who were wont to sweep the tideways for the harvest of the sea are dragging bigger nets for bigger fish farther afield, and dragging them to some purpose as the War Lord too well knows. They are scattered across the seas of other lands.

From tho dim shieling and the misty Island Mountains divide thorn and a world of seas; But still the blood is strong, tho blood is Highland, And they in dreams behold the Hebrides. True, it is not the Hebrides to which wo have come, but tho sentiment is tho same. Those of them who remain aro quiet, thoughtful, frugal, well-read men. They have few books, but such as they have arc p-oocl books, and thoy know them well. There aro men horo who have sent their sons to success in the outermost confines of Empire. They have carved now homes in the forests of the now lands, thoy have made now and successful ventures in industry and and thoy have been preachers and loaders of tho bar, and even Prime Ministers as far away as the Antipodes. Thoy make fine sailors, and you will find them in the fleet on the North Sea, arid the Aegean, and in the trenches in Picardy and Flanders. You can toll them by their talk and by their strong faces —they are men of tho breed. The old Xorse words persist to this day in their vocabulary.

But it in not by those that tho fleet is manned. There aro in this Great Grey Fleet also tho best of tho English race. On tho quarter-deck of some of the biggest ships to-day you can shako hands with direct descendants of Drake and Grenville. On tho lower deck you can hold converse with men from tho South Devon—men who will toll you that the strange boating in the air that comes to England now on calm days across tho Channel is Drake's drum sounding onco more in presage of victory. THE SHIP AND THE GUNS.

And so wo sweep through tli£ boom, and swine slowly round a promo'y.jvy that reveals the long lines of the. GKi>>>» Grey Fleet. It is a glorious morning, with sunlight and a distant haze, and the lanes and streets of ships fade away between grey water and grey mist. Steaming majestically through a narrow entrance comes a line of battleships. Through the jjinss you can pick out the huge armour-plated turrets, and the jutting muzzles of their long guns. Great tripod masts of steel give them an un-

wonted look. You gaze spell-bound as the huge masses of floating steel came on with an enormous sense of power, yet with the ease :.nd grace of a swan swimming in a garden pond. You miss the old straight masts and the heavy oldtime spars, and some people with an artistic pose lament their loss, hut the modern tripod, with its three thin steel yards crossing a thin steel mast, high above the bridge and the oval funnels, Inns a beauty of its own. Not all the poetry has. gone with the advent of the age of steel. .Since tlio sixties there have been vast strides made.

Noting all this and much more, we have still time to glance round along the streets and lanes of floating steel upon which we have so suddenly come. Away on the left three leaden-coloured destroyers, with the oil and smoke coming from their short squat funnels, arc already under way. They have seen the oncoming of the big ships, and have marked them as their prey. With wonderful celerity they have got up a high epced, and come racing past us in line in a welter of foaming sea. The water foams up to their lnuvse-pipes and spreads a great white wake fanwise behind. Nearing tin; big ships, they turn, manoeuvre again into line, and pass on. It is a beautiful movement seen in daylight; but it is meant to be a deadly night attack, and long before the destroyers have passed the battleships a second time, one or more would have been at the bottom of the sea.

Armour plating, the steam turbine, and oil fuel have done much for the modern ship of war. I boarded one such ship—the latest of the kind, —and after her all the other ships seemed of lesser interest, excepting, of course, those that had on them the honourable scars of the Jutland battle. One watched with fascinated interest the flaming oil of Iter furnaces far below in a clear, cool atmosphere, well ventilated, and marvelled at the ponderous ease with which her great guns and turrets worked at the behest of one man. That man, with the pressure of a thumb and finger, can sent 20001 b of forged steel charged with high explosive tearing through the air on to the deck of an enemy snip 10 miles away. Inside the huge turret you stand agape at the almost diabolical movements and the clang and rattle of machinery as the great loading tray comes tip from the bowels of the ship with the enormous shell, and a clattering, bending chain rammer pushes it home. The propelling charge is sent homo more quietly, the tremendous breach swings easily on its hinges, pushes its nose into the gun, and locks. Then the gun is fired, and the huge mass of metal comes flashing back with the recoil, only to resume, more slowly, its former position in readiness for the whole performance to be repeated again and again. You are standing level with the marine artilleryman who is on the gun platform, and he, in the intervals of noise from this roaring loom of destruction, is carrying on a conversation with you. "I suppose old So-and-So," ho says, "is still footling about Portsmouth." Then there is a touch on a lever, and, as the long barrel of the gun goes skyward, he and his iron platform disappear into the dim recesses below. Another touch on the lever and he comes tip. It is your opportunity to give him his answer before he does his disappearing trick again. One might write a great deal about the things one_ saw and heard in this ship, but the writing would never be published—at all events in war time. As a junior lieutenant said: "'We are not giving away picture post-cards of this ship—not just yet." THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE. On the flagship we were welcomed by a short, alert man with a kindly smile on his [ace and a telescope under his arm. He is iiie man at whose bidding the great grey fleet goes out through its gateways. There is no mistaking who he is. Wo know him at a. glanco. He is the Nelson of to-day, and the whole fleet has a supreme confidence in his judgment and his ability. He is a typically modest sailor, and he would not thank me for saying more than this about' him At luncheon afterwards we asked him for a message to the overseas dominions, and his reply was typical oi the man. "You ask me for a message to the dominions," he said. "Well, all I wotdd say to them is: 'Go on as you have begun.' " We left his ship to visit others, and everywhere there was the same talo of readiness and efficiency. On the Warspite the men pointed to the honourable wounds of the Jutland fight, and told tales of the lighting, half of which cannot yet be published. Healed and patched in the dockyard th >se wounds are now scarcely noticeable.- The War Lord told his credulous peoplo and the people of other nations that he had sent her to the bottom of the sea. But she is not one whit the worse for the War Lord's powder, and at any moment is ready as ever -to take her place in the hue when the German fleet comes out again. A GIFT SHIP.

When tho people of the farthermost dominion gave the battle cruiser Now Zealand to the i aw thoy lUtle dreamt that in a few short years she would have such battle honours blazoned on her stool. " Heligoland, August, 1914." ' Dogger Bank, January, 1915,"" "Jutland, May, 1916," aro battle honours that will, remain on ships of that nanro «> long as tho Empire stands. At another base in which long lines of ships stretched into the morning mists I found Now Zealand. As ~>uv destroyer sped up between the lines of battle-Cruisers the roar of British cheering camo across the placid waters, and looking ahead we saw the boats' crews of two ship* straining at their oara in the finish of a race. Now Zealand had won. It was their second win that day in a contest, between crews of the First Battle cruiser Squadron. New Zealand has had groat luck in being in three battles and in coming through almost ecathlcss. Later in tho day I boaided her, and noted that rho had tho British ensign painted on her forotop. She of all ships, therefore, cannot strike her colours not that any ship in the navy would do so. On he.- forotop, too, there is painted the tattooed head of a Maori chief. This is the mascot of tho ship, and to this her sailors attribute her good luck. .At tho time of my visit she was being repainted, but tho head of tho chioftain was not touched. "Jf it is painted out you can bet your life it. will soon be painted in again " s.iid her commander. On her deck is a great chunk of steel, placed so that all may see it. It was punched out of tho glacis of one of her turrets by a Gorman shell that came aboard, but did no other damage. It is a treasured memento of tho greatest naval battle in history.

Tho New Zealand's part in the fight, even so far as it can be told now. is interestimr. The fleet was steaming along on a normal cruise, and it is quite certain that neither fleet knew that the other wad out.

On Ni w Zealand tho officers wore at afternoon tea, when suddenly (ho e:i!l came "To Action:" They thought it rather a bore — the usual battle practice, they thought. But this time it was the real thing. Within a few minutes the notion had actually begun, but at very loner range. In a few minutes more liidegfatigable was hit by the second salvo from an enemy ship and blew up. J lor Picket boat could be seen turning over and over in the air, 500 ft up. Now Zealand till then had been firing at the fourth ship in the enemy line. She had now to alter her fire, to tho last ship. Before this she had fired four or five salvoes, and had "straddled" her first opponent. In other words, she had put one ehort and the other over, and the chances were that with her next she would have hit. When she was firing at the last ship she got very littlo reply, so presumably she had got her shots on to her right away, but owing t-o tho haze eho could not make certain of this. She was practically firing at the flashes of the enemy's guns in the mist, and only occasionally could tho ships be seen. Eighteen minutes after Indefatigable blew up those on board New Zealand saw Queen Mary disappear. Tiger plunged into her black smoke, and was in darkness for about 10 seconds. Now Zealand swerved and passed part of Queen Mary's hull sticking up out of the water. When New Zealand was hit. the piece'' of steel punched out by tho shell fell on to the working parts of the turret, and it was stopped, but only for 20 minutes, and the ship probably fired more rounds than any other ship in the battle.