In the next few minutes a pair of light cruisers left harbour at speed, ignoring the regulations governing ships in harbour. Soon after that the paymaster returned, his message run, another in hand.
“It’s not mines, sir. Submarine attack. Hogue has gone as well. Sent a message saying she was hit by two torpedoes. Cressy sent she was trying to ram the submarine.”
“Hogue and Aboukir both gone down?”
“Turned turtle, sir.”
“Jesus.”
The four made their way to the Commodore’s offices and the wireless receivers there. The Port Captain was waiting there.
“Captain Smallwood – can you get to sea?”
“In dockyard hands, sir. They started the boiler clean overnight. I can ask, but I doubt we can sail for thirty-six hours yet.”
“No matter. It will all be over by the end of the day. Cressy’s hit as well, signalled that she is going down.”
“More than two thousand men in those ships, sir. Too many of them boys, thinking on it. Cold in the North Sea already. Is there any word of casualties?”
“Not yet. They will be massive.”
The four from Sheldrake said nothing more. It was too soon to ask after Dacres, the more because of his position – he would remain aboard until the last, getting the men into boats and life rafts and organising the making of extempore floats and particularly trying to save the boys, of whom there were so many on the old Reserve ships. His chances were slight, rightly so – he must put his own safety last.
Chapter Twelve
“Latest count gives about eight hundred rescued. Crews of the three ships amounted to about twenty-two hundred, perhaps a few more. Most of the boys were lost – couldn’t survive in North Sea waters; too cold for them, they don’t have the reserves of older men. It is, I quote, ‘hoped’ that some were picked up by Dutch and possibly Belgian fishing boats and taken to their home ports and not yet reported.”
Captain Smallwood’s voice was dead – flat and horrified.
“First indications are that the ships had too few watertight compartments – their spaces were so big that that they flooded massively and turned over. It is not even known if all watertight doors were closed. It is suspected that the watertight doors might have been left open so that men and boys below decks had a chance to get out.”
Simon shook his head.
“Difficult to order them shut, sir, knowing that would drown many of those off watch… We didn’t join the Navy to duck the hard decisions, sir.”
“Well said. Saving the ship must come first. They were in waters known to be mined and there was a fear of submarines – even if we did not know before this just what a few torpedoes could do. Most of the watertight doors should have been kept shut other than when passage through was needed to save the ship; they should have been locked down the moment the first torpedo hit. There will be an Inquiry into these losses – I hope they will bring out that issue, even if it does blacken the name of dead officers.”
“They won’t, sir. It will be a whitewash. The Admiralty had been told repeatedly that the Live Bait Squadron should not have been where they were. The Board of Inquiry will not be permitted to criticise Their Lordships and their political master. The only people to take blame will be the dead and junior.”
“You are right, but far too cynical for your age, Number One! We will be released from the yard tomorrow morning. Waiting for sailing orders now. I would expect us to be sent to the Dover Patrol – they are talking of beefing it up with more small ships. There is a likelihood that we shall be ordered to close escort of the troopers, with instructions to watch for torpedo tracks and put ourselves in their way if needs be to protect the soldiers.”
“Suicide patrol, in effect, sir.”
“The Admiralty is panicking, Sturton. Until three days ago, they had entirely discounted the submarine. They did nothing worthwhile at Heligoland, after all. Now, suddenly, the submarine is a major menace – and they have no answer to it. The sole course available is to escort all valuable ships and to have additional patrols out to keep the submarines submerged and slow. There is a great panic to produce depth bombs and hydrophones and ships to carry them – but that cannot be done overnight. The soldiers must be carried to France – the position there is best described as chaotic still.”
“I had thought that the Battle of the Marne had stopped the German advance, sir, had put an end to the Schlieffen Plan?”
“Probably. It seems that the advance on Paris has most likely come to an end but both sides are spreading out east and west. There is a complete mess in Belgium – individual battalions and brigades here, there and everywhere and both sides pushing men in to try to stabilise a front. In the east, the word is that the French have fortified trenches all the way to the Swiss border. The Germans still occupy large chunks of northern France. No telling what will happen next – but General French is calling for more men and guns to cross the Channel.”
“Have we got more trained men?”
“No. A large navy predicates a small army. A country the size of Britain cannot run to both services. The needs of Empire demanded a great navy and so we ended up with a laughably small army, highly trained in musketry but tiny. The Kaiser has called it a ‘contemptible, little army’, which it is for size if not for training and effectiveness in the field. Trouble is, we cannot pull the garrisons out of Ireland and we have to retain some British forces in India and the lesser colonies, so a good half of our relatively few men are not available for France. Australia, New Zealand and Canada are sending men – but they haven’t got huge populations. South Africa is sending some battalions – but there’s a question mark there, only thirteen years after the end of the Boer War! There has been an uprising by some Boer farmers, we are told, though only small and quickly suppressed. For the rest, the volunteers are coming home from all over the world, and they are signing up by the hundred thousand in all four Home Countries, including all parts of Ireland, south as much as north.”
Simon nodded – volunteers were all very well, but they had to be trained.
“What of the Territorials, sir? There were a good few thousand of them, were there not?”
“Mostly in France by now, it would seem. Together with the reservists, they need no great training before going out. Still a bare hundred thousand, from all I gather. The French and Russians and Germans measure their armies in the millions. About the only thing to be said for the BEF is the standard of training of the infantry. Apparently, our riflemen are better marksmen than any of the others, due to most of them being long-service professionals, often with more than ten years of practice in the butts.”
“Does that compensate for the extra machine guns the Germans have, sir?”
“No. Nor for the Krupp guns, of which they have more and bigger than we do. The hope seems to be that German conscripts will be worn down more quickly than our hardened professionals. It might work out.”
“Talking of manpower, sir – what about India?”
“Millions of men there, Sturton. The Indian Army is already very big. We could probably bring a quarter of a million Indians across before Christmas. Good fighting men as well. Do we want to? What happens after we win? Could we then keep India?”
They contemplated that question and chose not to discuss it further.
“No word of Dacres, sir?”
“Nothing. His name is not on the lists of known survivors. He might be one of those picked up by British fishing boats and landed anywhere along the coast – there were a few dozen known to have been brought back that way. He could be in Holland. Chances ain’t that good, I fear.”