“What are those destroyers?”
The captain answered.
“The new H class, sir.”
“Got them, renamed last year. Is that the Harwich flotilla?”
There was silence. Christopher put his glasses on the flotilla.
“Beg pardon, sir. That is Sheldrake third in line – I was on St Vincent with her sub and I see him on her bridge. She is a Harwich ship.”
Sheldrake was making twenty knots, her stem obscured in a cloud of spray, stern buried deep with the wake making it impossible to read her name. The wind was whipping her pennants.
“Well spotted, Sub.”
Christopher was delighted – a compliment from the admiral was rare and his captain would be pleased that he had drawn it, showing the efficiency of his bridge party, even the least of them wide-awake.
Two days later and the fleet manoeuvres off Portland had come to an end and the expected message came from the Admiralty, ordering the ships to disperse. What came as a shock was the addendum. The Reserve ships and men would remain in commission and would take up stations according to their orders given in event of war; the Grand Fleet was to steam to Scotland, to Queensferry in the Firth of Forth and Scapa Flow, far to the north.
“All ships to wartime basis.”
Admiral Jellicoe sent the order and was then surprised at how literally it was taken. All flammable and superfluous items were jettisoned; this included the bulk of wardroom furniture, all of the wooden chairs and tables and cupboards ripped out and thrown over the side. The corticene – the naval form of linoleum - floor covering, held down by an inflammable glue, was torn up and disposed of and the floors were stripped down to bare metal. Officers’ cabins were gutted, some ships going so far as to throw out their mattresses.
Iron Duke herself did not go to that extreme – a flagship had to be able to offer hospitality and that demanded a wardroom with reasonable comforts. As the most modern of the Fleet, she had sprinklers fitted and could hope to control fires, which provided another excuse.
News came through sparsely. The Admiralty sent its warning telegram and the crew was told that a state of war with Germany was likely to eventuate. Then they waited, out of contact with events and hoping to hear something by wireless as they steamed north at high speed.
There were the normal panics through the night as unlit fishing boats were spotted at the last minute and mistaken initially for torpedo craft. Admiral Jellicoe had memories of the Russian Fleet in 1905 identifying Dogger Bank trawlers as Japanese torpedo boats and strictly forbade any ship to open fire except at certainly identified targets. No fishermen were rammed or shot, which was a source of some pleasure when daylight came.
“Thank God it’s August, Sub! Light early in the morning!”
Additional destroyers and light cruisers were sent to Dover and Harwich to control the Channel.
Hector McDuff, suffering on the old Good Hope, deep in the South Atlantic was informed of the state of war and could not see that it would make any difference. They were cruising off the Falkland Islands in the depth of the Antarctic winter, freezing and praying only for a break in the incessant storms and that Admiral Craddock might allow a return to Cape Town and more clement weather. The waves broke over the high bows of the big cruiser and flowed along the decks almost as far as the bridge. Every exposed metal surface was covered with ice. Long icicles drooped from the gun barrels. At intervals in every watch deckhands were sent out to chip away the frozen encrustations, in part simply to reduce the massive weight high above the waterline, but also in the hope that the guns could be made serviceable.
The squadron was to be reinforced, they had heard, and they were to remain off Cape Horn to pick up any German merchantmen attempting to leave the Pacific for home waters. They were also to block the route into the Atlantic for the German Tsingtao squadron, in the unlikely event that it should escape the British and Australian Far Eastern flotillas, led as they were by the great battlecruiser Australia.
The captain had called his officers together in Port Stanley, had explained their function, told them what he expected of them in time of war.
“Mostly, gentlemen, we shall show the flag in the ports of South America. Just to remind them who rules the seas, you know. We shall coal out of Port Stanley and can expect to remain on station here for some months, until the message comes that the Tsingtao Squadron has been dealt with. We are a backstop, no more. When that first business is over and done with, then we shall probably leave Glasgow or Otranto on station here and base ourselves out of South Africa. The chances seem to be that we shall then be involved with the campaigns that are bound to eventuate in the German colonies. Namibia and Tanganyika have ports and will require naval action. That at least will be warm!”
The Commander performed his duty by asking the correct questions.
“Do we know what the Germans have in Tsingtao, sir?”
“Two eight inch cruisers and two six, according to the last reports. Good Hope outguns them with her nine point twos, of course.”
Hector knew that to be a half-truth. The modern German eight inch guns outranged the nine point twos and in any case, Good Hope had only two big guns, singly mounted fore and aft. The remainder of her guns were six inch, set on the broadside and half of them very close to the waterline and unusable in high seas. The other ships of the squadron, Monmouth and Glasgow, both with six inch at greatest, were to be joined by Otranto, an armed merchant cruiser with four inch guns and no armour at all. The two German armoured cruisers mounted sixteen eight inch guns between them and were known to have won some sort of German naval gunnery competition before sailing out to the China station.
Sublieutenants kept their mouths shut. That rule was inflexible on a large ship. He sat and listened as the Admiral’s intentions were explained.
If the squadron met the Germans, they were to sink them – as simple as that. The Royal Navy did not lose battles at sea, had not done so for a century and was not about to start now. The spirit of Nelson was watching them. Admiral Kit Craddock had done remarkably well in the Boxer Uprising and was not about to fail in the South Atlantic – they were privileged to sail under his command, the captain said.
The bar was opened, in celebration of the war they had been hoping for and which would make their careers. The captain insisted that the first drink – on his account – should be Navy Rum. He gave the traditional call.
“Up spirits!”
“Stand fast, the Holy Ghost!”
The equally traditional reply was thundered by all present, including the stewards. The tot was taken down in a single gulp, as was also traditional.
Hector managed to force the overproof, neat spirits down – and keep them down – tears coming to his eyes, to the entertainment of those close to him.
“Make a man of you, Sub!”
“Is that what it’s doing, sir? I wondered what was happening!”
There was a roar of laughter, the witticism passed on to all present and much approved of. It was the sort of thing that naval officers found funny.
The squadron had sailed, finding nothing at all at sea during the southern winter, as many of them had hoped.
War came to Kettering in a blaze of excitement. Young men packed the streets and cheered and shouted as they waited through the evening for the confirmation, for the telegram to arrive from London that the glorious hour was come. They roared as the announcement was made from the town hall and the church bells rang. They bellowed the national anthem, repeatedly, and shouted they would hang the Kaiser and march to Berlin to do so.