"CLEAR FOR ACTION."

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 218, 19 October 1914, Page 8

"CLEAR FOR ACTION."

LAST PREPARATIONS IN THE FLEET. WHEN THE GUNS BEGIN TO SPEAK. We say that the modern ship of war has no beauty. Gone are the graceful lines of the old three-deckers, gone-the bellying sails and the majestic pictures of manned yards. If we say these things of the ship of war as we know her in peace time, what should we say of her now, when she is swept bare of every superfluous stick and bar, and floats on the water a mere armoured gun platform? '' Clear ship for action" is a phrase that is often used ashore, but without any very clear understanding of its full meaning. It must be taken literally: it means that the ship is to be cleared. In the event of hostilities breaking out suddenly, with the Fleet at sea and the enemy's ships on the horizon, the order means wholesale wastage. Everything that encumbers the ship, everything that could burn, everything that could splinter and aid the enemy's shells to spread death, must be thrown overboard. Pinnaces, deck awnings, and top hamper of all sorts would be sacrificed. Ten Minutes' Notice. In the present case such wastage is saved, because nearly all the work of clearing for action was done before the Fleet left Portland. Life on board a battleship now is not particularly comfortable, for practically all combustible furniture, all door curtains and scuttle hangings, all the little civilised comforts that go to make sea life less hard, have been left behind. , Every ship is in such a state\that she is ready to fight at ten minutes' notice. That ten minutes, though, will be strenuous, when it comes. Ensign staffs will disappear, rails and stanchions laid on the deck, hatchways closed. Searchlights will be struck down and sent below, the usual wireless office dismantled, and all gear sent to a place of safety while the operators proceed to the special protected station fitted for this emergency. Between decks repair parties of the torpedo lieutenant's staff will be giving a last glance to all the network of communications to the gun turrets, the conning tower, the engine room, fire gongs, and the fire control. All over the ship these repair parties are stationed throughout the action, for those rubber covered wires are the nerves of the ship, from the brain which is in the conning tower of eigliteen-inc.h steel they carry orders to every corner. Below the water-line engineers move from valve to valve, with odd-looking spanners, seeing to it that no precaution is neglected to preserve, the floatability of the ship, however much she may be battered. y

Sighting the Guns. On every deck fire-fighting appliances are set ready to hand; hoses and nozzles, the steam pumps ready to pour hundreds of tons of water on the flames; keys and spanners for the flooding of magazines or the stoppage of ventilation. At any moment during the action the bugle may blare out, "Eire quarters!" and the appointed men will put on their live helmets, -while others take up their places on the hose. A little pennant breaks at the yardarm and tells the Admiral that the ship is cleared.

There follows the order, "General quarters! " and every man proceeds to his allotted station. Eight hundred or a thousand men, trained for nianv years against the coming of this hour, , slip into their places in turret aad casemate, in magazine and shell-room, in sick bay, or in submerged toipedo-fiat. A minut§ or two longer the Admiral lingers on the forebridge. Far ahead in the distance the glasses show the moving shapes that are the enemy ships. In the foremost turret the lighter says, 1 ' 12,000 yards.'' The Admiral looks round quietly at bis staff. "To your stations, gentlemen! " is his farewell.

The conning-tower, whence the steering, the speed, the firing of the guns, and the dispatch of the torpedoes will be controlled, encloses him. The action is joined; ' *

In the forward turrets the gun-layers peer through the telescope of the sighting apparatus, each hand on a little wheel that will move the great gun by hydraulic pressure. The order is given to load, and the breech of the gun opens. A litle lift §hoots up through a a hole in the floor, and the 14001b projectile is rammed into the breech, as are the cartridges that will send the 12cwt of metal and explosive in a few seconds across the miles of water. The breechblock closes again. '' Eight gun ready.''

"Fire!" A few seconds slip by into eternity.

'' Fire!''

The gun-layer touches a trigger no larger than that of a boy's toy pistol. Shattering, blasting, maddening noise fills the turret,-but through it the men proceed to load again. The breechblocks open as the air-blast cleans out the burning remnants of the cartridges, and sweeps violet acrid fumes and flames like a cylinder through the muzzle. Another shell is rammed in. Mechanically, like clockwork figures, these few men in the turret go through, with their "job of work," though they choke with the fumes, and their ears bleed with the reverberating shock of their own guns. Mechanically a few men in every turret in every ship are going through their "job of work" in the same way.* Warfaro at sea on a modern armoured gun-platform is an unknown quantity. We know that at 10,000 yards our gunners can make 41 hits out of 50 rounds on a small target, for they have done it. But what effect those hits will have, wlint effect on our own ships the enemy's hits will have, we can only imagine. For since the days When Togo fought Rozhdestvensky in the Straits of Tsushima the weapons of sea-fighting have been revolutionised.

When the order comes to clear ship for action, and the last man has gone to his station, all the theories of the last decade will be put to the proof.—H. C. Ferraby in the ' 1 Express.''