The Victory At Sea Part 3

NAVY DEPARTMENT

Office of Naval Operations Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.

_Secret and Confidential_

To: Commander, Eighth Division, Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet, U.S.S. _Wadsworth_, Flags.h.i.+p.

Subject: Protection of commerce near the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland.

1. The British Admiralty have requested the co-operation of a division of American destroyers in the protection of commerce near the coasts of Great Britain and France.

2. Your mission is to a.s.sist naval operations of Entente Powers in every way possible.

3. Proceed to Queenstown, Ireland. Report to senior British naval officer present, and thereafter co-operate fully with the British navy. Should it be decided that your force act in co-operation with French naval forces your mission and method of co-operation under French Admiralty authority remain unchanged.

Route to Queenstown.

Boston to lat.i.tude 50 N--Long. 20 W to arrive at daybreak then to lat.i.tude 50 N--Long. 12 W thence to Queenstown.

When within radio communication of the British naval forces off Ireland, call G CK and inform the Vice-Admiral at Queenstown in British general code of your position, course, and speed. You will be met outside of Queenstown.

4. Base facilities will be provided by the British Admiralty.

5. Communicate your orders and operations to Rear-Admiral Sims at London and be guided by such instructions as he may give you. Make no reports of arrival to Navy Department direct.

JOSEPHUS DANIELS.

No happier selection for the command of this division could have been made than that of Commander Taussig. In addition to his qualities as a sailor, certain personal a.s.sociations made him particularly acceptable to the British naval authorities. In 1900, Commander Taussig, then a mids.h.i.+pman, was a member of the naval forces which the United States sent to China to co-operate with other powers in putting down the Boxer Rebellion and rescuing the besieged legations in Pekin. Near Tientsin this international force saw its hardest fighting, and here Commander Taussig was wounded. While recovering from his injury, the young American found himself lying on a cot side by side with an English captain, then about forty years old, who was in command of the _Centurion_ and chief-of-staff to Admiral Seymour, who had charge of the British forces. This British officer was severely wounded; a bullet had penetrated his lung, and for a considerable period he was unable to lie down. Naturally this enforced companions.h.i.+p made the two men friends.

Commander Taussig had had many occasions to recall this a.s.sociation since, for his wounded a.s.sociate was Captain John R. Jellicoe, whose advancement in the British navy had been rapid from that day onward. On this same expedition Captain Jellicoe became a sincere friend also of Captain McCalla, the American who commanded the _Newark_ and the American landing force; indeed, Jellicoe's close and cordial a.s.sociation with the American navy dates from the Boxer expedition. Naturally Taussig had watched Jellicoe's career with the utmost interest; since he was only twenty-one at the time, however, and the Englishman was twice his age, it had never occurred to him that the First Sea Lord would remember his youthful hospital companion. Yet the very first message he received, on arriving in Irish waters, was the following letter, brought to him by Captain Evans, the man designated by the British Admiralty as liaison officer with the American destroyers:

ADMIRALTY, WHITEHALL 1-5-17.

MY DEAR TAUSSIG:

I still retain very pleasant and vivid recollections of our a.s.sociation in China and I am indeed delighted that you should have been selected for the command of the first force which is coming to fight for freedom, humanity, and civilization. We shall all have our work cut out to subdue piracy. My experience in China makes me feel perfectly convinced that the two nations will work in the closest co-operation, and I won't flatter you by saying too much about the value of your help. I must say this, however. There is no navy in the world that can possibly give us more valuable a.s.sistance, and there is no personnel in any navy that will fight better than yours. My China experience tells me this.

If only my dear friend McCalla could have seen this day how glad I would have been!

I must offer you and all your officers and men the warmest welcome possible in the name of the British nation and the British Admiralty, and add to it every possible good wish from myself. May every good fortune attend you and speedy victory be with us.

Yours very sincerely, J. R. JELLICOE.

At this same meeting Captain Evans handed the American commander another letter which was just as characteristic as that of Admiral Jellicoe. The following lines const.i.tute our officers' first introduction to Vice-Admiral Bayly, the officer who was to command their operations in the next eighteen months, and, in its brevity, its entirely business-like qualities, as well as in its genuine sincerity and kindness, it gave a fair introduction to the man:

ADMIRALTY HOUSE, QUEENSTOWN, 4-5-17.

DEAR LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER TAUSSIG:

I hope that you and the other five officers in command of the U.S.

destroyers in your flotilla will come and dine here to-night, Friday, at 7.45, and that you and three others will remain to sleep here so as to get a good rest after your long journey. Allow me to welcome you and to thank you for coming.

Yours sincerely, LEWIS BAYLY.

Dine in undress; no speeches.

The first duty of the officers on arrival was to make the usual ceremonial calls. The Lord Mayor of Cork had come down from his city, which is only twelve miles from Queenstown, to receive the Americans, and now awaited them in the American consulate; and many other citizens were a.s.sembled there to welcome them. One of the most conspicuous features of the procession was the moving picture operator, whose presence really had an international significance. The British Government itself had detailed him for this duty; it regarded the arrival of our destroyers as a great historical event and therefore desired to preserve this animated record in the official archives.

Crowds gathered along the street to watch and cheer our officers as they rode by; and at the consulate the Lord Mayor, Mr. b.u.t.terfield, made an eloquent address, laying particular emphasis upon the close friends.h.i.+p that had always prevailed between the American and the Irish people.

Other dignitaries made speeches voicing similar sentiments. This welcome concluded, Commander Taussig and his brother officers started up the steep hill that leads to Admiralty House, a fine and s.p.a.cious old building.

Here, following out the instructions of the Navy Department, they were to report to Vice-Admiral Bayly for duty. It is doing no injustice to Sir Lewis to say that our men regarded this first meeting with some misgiving. The Admiral's reputation in the British navy was well known to them. They knew that he was one of the ablest officers in the service; but they had also heard that he was an extremely exacting man, somewhat taciturn in his manner, and not inclined to be over familiar with his subordinates--a man who did not easily give his friends.h.i.+p or his respect, and altogether, in the anxious minds of these ambitious young Americans, he was a somewhat forbidding figure. And the appearance of the Admiral, standing in his doorway awaiting their arrival, rather accentuated these preconceptions. He was a medium-sized man, with somewhat swarthy, weather-beaten face and black hair just turning grey; he stood there gazing rather quizzically at the Americans as they came trudging up the hill, his hands behind his back, his bright eyes keenly taking in every detail of the men, his face not showing the slightest trace of a smile. This struck our young men at first as a somewhat grim reception; the att.i.tude of the Admiral suggested that he was slightly in doubt as to the value of his new recruits, that he was entirely willing to be convinced, but that only deeds and not fine speeches of greeting would convince him. Yet Admiral Bayly welcomed our men with the utmost courtesy and dignity, and his face, as he began shaking hands, broke into a quiet, non-committal smile; there was nothing about his manner that was effusive, there were no unnecessary words, yet there was a real cordiality that put our men at ease and made them feel at home in this strange environment. They knew, of course, that they had come to Ireland, not for social diversions, but for the serious business of fighting the Hun, and that indeed was the only thought which could then find place in Admiral Bayly's mind. Up to this time the welcome to the Americans had taken the form of lofty oratorical flights, with emphasis upon the blood ties of Anglo-Saxondom, and the significance to civilization of America and Great Britain fighting side by side; but this was not the kind of a greeting our men received from Admiral Bayly.

The Admiral himself, with his somewhat worn uniform and his lack of ceremony, formed a marked contrast to the official reception by the Lord Mayor and his suite in their insignia of office. Entirely characteristic also was the fact that, instead of making a long speech, he made no speech at all. His chief interest in the Americans at that time was the a.s.sistance which they were likely to bring to the Allied cause; after courteously greeting the officers, the first question he asked about these forces was:

"When will you be ready to go to sea?"

Even under the most favourable conditions that is an embarra.s.sing question to ask of a destroyer commander. There is no type of s.h.i.+p that is so chronically in need of overhauling. Even in peace times the destroyer usually has under way a long list of repairs; our first contingent had sailed without having had much opportunity to refit, and had had an extremely nasty voyage. The fact was that it had been rather severely battered up, although the flotilla was in excellent condition, considering its hard experience on the ocean and the six months of hard work which it had previously had on our coast. One s.h.i.+p had lost its fire-room ventilator, another had had condenser troubles on the way across, and there had been other difficulties. Commander Taussig, however, had sized up Admiral Bayly as a man to whom it would be a tactical error to make excuses, and promptly replied:

"We are ready now, sir, that is, as soon as we finish refuelling. Of course you know how destroyers are--always wanting something done to them. But this is war, and we are ready to make the best of things and go to sea immediately."

The Admiral was naturally pleased with the spirit indicated by this statement, and, with his customary consideration for his juniors, said:

"I will give you four days from the time of arrival. Will that be sufficient?"

"Yes," answered Taussig, "that will be more than ample time."

As we discovered afterward, the Admiral had a system of always "testing out" new men, and it is not improbable that this preliminary interview was a part of this process.

During the period of preparation there were certain essential preliminaries: it was necessary to make and to receive many calls, a certain amount of tea drinking was inevitable, and there were many invitations to dinners and to clubs that could not be ignored. Our officers made a state visit to Cork, going up in Admiral Bayly's barge, and returned the felicitations of the Mayor and his retinue.

Naturally both the Americans and their s.h.i.+ps became objects of great interest to their new allies. It was, I think, the first time that a destroyer flotilla had ever visited Great Britain, and the very appearance of the vessels themselves aroused the greatest curiosity.

They bore only a general resemblance to the destroyers of the British navy. The shape of their hulls, the number and location of smoke pipes, the positions of guns, torpedo tubes, bridges, deckhouse, and other details gave them quite a contrasting profile. The fact that they were designed to operate under different conditions from the British s.h.i.+ps accounted for many of these divergences. We build our destroyers with the widest possible cruising radius; they are expected to go to the West Indies, to operate from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and in general to feel at home anywhere in the great stretch of waters that surround our country. British destroyers, on the other hand, are intended to operate chiefly in the restricted waters around the British Isles, where the fuelling and refitting facilities are so extensive that they do not have to devote much s.p.a.ce to supplies of this kind. The result is that our destroyers can keep the sea longer than the British; on the other hand, the British are faster than ours, and they can also turn more quickly.

These differences were of course a subject of much discussion among the observers at Queenstown, and even of animated argument. Naturally, the interest of the destroyer officers of the two services in the respective merits of their vessels was very keen. They examined minutely all features that were new to them in the design and arrangement of guns, torpedoes, depth charges, and machines, freely exchanged information, and discussed proposed improvements in the friendliest possible spirit.

Strangely enough, although the American destroyers carried greater fuel supplies than the British, they were rather more dainty and graceful in their lines, a fact which inspired a famous retort which rapidly pa.s.sed through the ranks of both navies.

"You know," remarked a British officer to an American, "I like the British destroyers better than the American. They look so much st.u.r.dier.

Yours seem to me rather feminine in appearance."

"Yes," replied the American, "that's so, but you must remember what Kipling says, 'The female of the species is more deadly than the male.'"

The work of the Americans really began on the Sunday which followed their arrival; by this time they had established cordial relations with Admiral Bayly and were prepared to trust themselves unreservedly in his hands. He summoned the officers on this Sunday morning and talked with them a few moments before they started for the submarine zone; the time of their departure had been definitely fixed for the next day. In the matter of ceremonial greetings the Admiral was not strong, but when it came to discussing the business in hand he was the master of a convincing eloquence. The subject of his discourse was the responsibility that lay before our men; he spoke in sharp, staccato tones, making his points with the utmost precision, using no verbal flourishes or unnecessary words--looking at our men perhaps a little fiercely, and certainly impressing them with the fact that the work which lay before them was to be no summer holiday. As soon as the destroyers pa.s.sed beyond the harbour defences, the Admiral began, death constantly lay before the men until they returned. There was only one safe rule to follow; days and even weeks might go by without seeing a submarine, but the men must a.s.sume that one was constantly watching them, looking for a favourable opportunity to discharge its torpedo.

"You must not relax attention for an instant, or you may lose an opportunity to destroy a submarine or give her a chance to destroy you."

It was the present intention to send the American destroyers out for periods of six days, giving them two days' rest between trips, and about once a month they were to have five days in port for boiler cleaning.

And now the Admiral gave some details about the practical work at sea.

Beware, he said, about ramming periscopes; these were frequently mere decoys for bombs and should be sh.e.l.led. In picking up survivors of torpedoed vessels the men must be careful not to stop until thoroughly convinced that there were no submarines in the neighbourhood: "You must not risk the loss of your vessel in order to save the lives of a few people."

The Admiral proclaimed the grim philosophy of this war when he told our men that it would be their first duty, should they see a s.h.i.+p torpedoed, not to go to the rescue of the survivors, but to go after the submarine.

The three imperative duties of the destroyers were, in the order named: first, to destroy submarines; second, to convoy and protect merchant s.h.i.+pping; and third, to save the lives of the pa.s.sengers and crews of torpedoed s.h.i.+ps. No commander should ever miss an opportunity to destroy a submarine merely because there were a few men and women in small boats or in the water who might be saved. Admiral Bayly explained that to do this would be false economy: sinking a submarine meant saving far more lives than might be involved in a particular instance, for this vessel, if spared, would simply go on constantly destroying human beings. The Admiral then gave a large number of instructions in short, pithy sentences: "Do not use searchlights; do not show any lights whatever at night; do not strike any matches; never steam at a slower rate than thirteen knots; always zigzag, thereby preventing the submarine from plotting your position; always approach a torpedoed vessel with the sun astern; make only short signals; do not repeat the names of vessels; carefully watch all fis.h.i.+ng vessels--they may be submarines in disguise--they even put up masts, sails, and funnels in this attempt to conceal their true character." The Admiral closed his remarks with a warning based upon his estimate of the character and methods of the enemy. In substance he said that were it not for the violations of the dictates of humanity and the well-established chivalry of the sea, he would have the greatest respect for the German submarine commanders. He cautioned our officers not to underrate them, and particularly emphasized their cleverness at what he termed "the art of irregularity."

He explained this by saying that up to that time he had been unable to deduce from their operations any definite plan or tactics, and advised our commanders also to guard against any regularity of movement; they should never, for example, patrol from one corner to another of their a.s.signed squares in the submarine zone, or adopt any other uniform practice which the enemy might soon perceive and of which he would probably take advantage.