Chapter X: Part II: VI (4)

The flood tide making over the shoals sets in with a _thrussh_ of broken water alee of the wreck. The salvors' cutter, from which the mate is sounding and marking bottom, spins in widening circles in the eddies and shows the strength of early springs. As yet the stream binds the wreck hard to the bank, setting broad on from seaward, but relief will come when the spent water turns east on the last of the flood. Survey completed, the salvage officers clamber to the deck again. The leak in number three is their only concern; if that can be overcome, there seems no bar to a successful programme. The commander questions the mate as to the depth of water alongside, is assured of draught, and signals his vessel to heave up and come on. The strength and onrush of the tidal race makes the manoeuvre difficult, and it is on second attempt, with a wide sweep and backing on plane of the current, she drives unhandily to position. The impact of her boarding, for all the guardian fenders, jars and stirs the wreck, but brings a confident look to the salvors' faces; as readily shaken as that, they assure themselves the responding hull will come off with 'a bit of a pinch' on the angle of withdrawal that they have planned on the tidal chart.

With hawsers and warps barely fast, the great pumps are hove up in air and swung over the hatchway of the doubtful hold. But for the general order to carry on, there are few directions and little admonition. Every man of the busy group of mechanics and riggers has 'a brick for the wall,' and the wriggling lengths of armoured hose are coupled and launched over the coamings as quickly as the massive motors are lowered. Foundering with splash and gurgle, like uncouth sea-monsters in their appanage of tortuous rubber tentacles, the sheen of their polished bulk looms through the green translucent flood of solid seawater, the grave and surely augmented tide that they are trimmed to master. Again, the seeming hopelessness of the task, the handicap of man against element, presents a doubt to one's mind. Two shell-like casings of steel, a line of piping and cab-tyre coils for power leads--to compete with the infiltration of an ocean; there are even small fish darting in the flood of it, a radiating Medusa floats in and out the weltering 'tween-decks, waving loathsome feelers as though in mockery of human efforts!

Like a war-whoop to the onslaught the dynamos of the salvage vessel start motion, and hum in _crescendo_ to a high tenor tone; the vibrations of their speed and cycle are joined in conduct to the empty hull of the wreck, and she quickens with a throb and stir as of her arteries coursing. There is no preparatory trickle at outboard end of the hose ejections; with a rush and roar, a clean, solid flood pours over, an uninterrupted cascade at seven tons from each per minute!

The carpenter sounds the depth with rod and chalked lanyard, then lowers a tethered float to water-level of the flooded compartment. In this way he sets a starting mark for the competition, a gauge for the throw of the pumps. In interest with the issue, the salvage men gather round the hatchway, and all eyes are turned to the bobbing cork disc to note the progress of the contest. Stirring and drifting to slack of the line, the float seems serenely indifferent to its important motion; wayward and buoyant, it trims, this way and that, then steadies suddenly on a taut restraint; slowly it seems to rise in the water as though drawn by an invisible hand. It spins a little to lay of the cord, then hangs, moisture dropping and forming rings on the glassy surface of the well! By no seeming effort but the pulse-like quiver of the hose, the level falls away. A bolt-head on the plating shows under water, then tips an upper edge above; a minute later the round is exposed and drying in a slant of the sun.

The tense regard with which we have scanned the guide-mark gives way to jest and relief when it is seen that drainage is assured; a facetious mechanic at the hose-end makes motions as of pulling a bar handle to draw a foaming glass. "Sop it up, old sport!" says the rigger, patting the pipes. "Sop it up an' spit! Ol' Neptune ain't arf thusty!"

During our engagement, _Titan_ has not been idle. There remains only an hour or two of flood tide and much has to be done. Leaving steam-pumps to cope with the more moderate leakage at the after section, she has hauled forward on the rising tide on the shoal side of the wreck. At the bows she has applied suction to the prisoned water in the fore holds, and a new stream pours overside in foaming ejection. The roar and throb of her power motors adds further volume and vibration to the rousing treatment by which the nerves of the stranded hulk seem braced. Stirred by the new life on her, the old ship may well forget she has no stern and only part a bottom. Already the decks, gaunt and red-rusted as they are, take on a cheering look of service and animation. The seamen in the rigging and workmen crowded round the hatchways might be the dockers boarded for a day's work on the loading, and only the thunder of the motors and crash of the sluicing torrent remain foreign to a normal ship-day.

The sun has gone west when the tidal current surging past shows a change in direction. We throw sightly flotsam overboard and note the drift that takes the refuse astern. No longer the green slimy plates of the hull show above water, the tide has lapped their sea-growth and ripples high on a cleaner surface. With high water approaching we draw near the point of balance in buoyancy, and the salving tenders tighten up headfasts and stern ropes in readiness for a slip or drag. The sea-tug that has till now been a quiet partner in operations, smokes up and backs in astern to pass a hawser to the wreck. She drops away with a good scope, and lies handy to tow at orders.

Tirelessly, droning and throbbing with insistent monotony, the pumps continue their labour and draw the weight of water that holds the wreck down. At number three hold the flood below is no longer a still and placid well. The penned and mastered water seethes and whirls in impotent fury at the suction that draws and churns only to expel. Some solid matter, seaweed perhaps, has drifted to the leak and stems a volume of the incoming water; there seems a prospect that a single pump may keep the level.

In somewhat tense expectancy, we await a crisis in the operations. There is a feeling that all these masterly movements should lead to a spectacular resurrection--a stir and tremor in the frame of her, reviving sea-throes, a lurch, a list, a mighty heave, and a staggering relaunch to the deeps.

Precise and businesslike, modern salvage avoids such a flourishing end to their labours. As skilful surgeons, they object strongly to excitement. Their frail and tortured sea-patients can rarely stand more than gentle suasion. As surely as the tide they work by, the factors of weight and displacement and trim have been figured and calculated. . . . The commander draws our attention to a quiet and steady rise in the bows, the knightheads perceptibly edging nearer to a wisp of standing cloud. Without a jar or surge the wreck becomes a floating ship; she lists a little, as the towing hawser creaks and strains, and we draw off gently to seaward.

THE DRY DOCK

A DOWNPOUR of steady, insistent rain makes quagmire of the paths on the dockside, and the half-light of a cheerless early morning gives little guidance to progress among the raffle of discarded ship-gear that lies about the yard. Stumbling over shores and stagings, skirting gaunt mounds of damaged plates and angles, we reach the sea-gate where the ship victims of mine and torpedo are moored in readiness for treatment in the great sea-hospital. In the uncertain light and under wet lowering skies, they make a dismal picture. The symmetry of conventional docking--ships moored in line and heading in the same direction--that is an orderly feature of the harbours, is not possible in the overcrowded basin. There is need to pack the vessels closely. They lie at awkward angles, the stern of one overhanging the bows of another. Masts and funnels and deck erections, upstanding at varied rakes, emphasize the confused berthing and draw the eye to the condition of the mass of damaged shipping. Not all of the vessels are shattered hulks. A number are here for hull-cleaning or overhaul, but their high sides with the rust and barnacles and weedy green scum, make as drab a feature in the combination as the listed hulls of the cripples.

Though nominally daylight, the arc-lamps of the pier-head still splutter in wet contacts and spread a sickly glow over the oilskin-clad group of dockmen and officials gathered to enter the ships. A chill breeze from the sea blows in and carries reek and cinder of north-country coal to thicken the lash of the rain. The waft comes from heeling dock tugs that strain at their hawsers, spurring the muddy tide to froth in their task of moving the helpless vessels in the basin. The long expanse of flooded dock, brimming to the uppermost ledge, lies open for their entry; the bruised and shattered stern of a large ship is pointed over the sill at an awkward angle that marks an absence of steam-power aboard to control her wayward sheer. The dockmaster, in ill mood with her cantrips, roars admonition and appeal to the smoking tugs to "lie over t' s'uth'ard and right her!" By check, and the powerful heave of a shore capstan, she warps in and straightens to the line of the docks. As she draws on to her berth the high bows of a second cripple swing over from the tiers, and the tugs back out to fasten on and drag her to the gate.

With entry of the ships, the glistening pier-head becomes thronged by tidesmen and their gear; like a drill-yard, with the lusty stamp of the marching lines of dockmen trailing heavy hawsers and handing check and hauling ropes. In an hour or so the gangs of the ship-repair section will be ready to 'turn to' at the new jobs, and the ships must be settled and ready against the wail of the starting 'buzzer.' Shrill whistle signals, orders and hails add to the stir of the labourers, and clatter of the warping capstan joins in with ready chorus. Not least of the medley is the bull roar of the harassed dockmaster, who finds a need in the press for more than one pair of hands at the reins to guide and halt his tandem charges.

The ships are marked in company, to settle bow to stern, with no room to spare, in the length of the dock. Conduct must be ruled in duplicate to exact the full measure of utility from every foot of space. On the last tide a pair of sound ships were floated out to service, braced and bound and refitted for further duty as stout obverse to the 'Sure Shield.' Keel-blocks and beds for the new patients have been set up and rearranged in the brief interval of occupancy, and now, quick on the wash of the outgoers, are new cases for the shearing plate-cutters and the swing of hammers.

Mindful to conserve their precious dry-dock space to the limit of good service, the repair section select the vessels with rare judgment. It is no haphazard turn of the wheel that brings an American freighter, shattered in stern section, to the same operating-table as an east-coast tramp (having her engines in scrap, boilers fractured, and the frames of her midships blown to sea-bottom). The combined measure of their length and the similarity of extent in hull damage has brought them to the one line of blocks. Odd cases, and regular ship-cleaning and minor repairs may be allotted to single-ship dry docks, but here, in sea-hospital with a twin-berth, there is a need for parallel treatment. The two ships must be considered as one, and all efforts be promoted towards refloating them, when hull repairs are completed, on one opening of the sea-gate.

In this, strangely, they are assisted by the enemy. True, his accommodation could well be spared, but it does have an influence on repair procedure. The exact and uniformly graded proportions of the enemy explosive reproduces a correspondingly like extent and nature in ship damage. Location and sea-trim may vary the fractures in proportion to resistance but, with the vessels on the blocks together, working time may be adjusted to these conditions and a balance be struck that will further a simultaneous completion.

So the dockmaster ranges his pair on the centre line of the keel-blocks, sets tight the hawsers that hold them in position, and bars the sea-entry with a massive caisson. Presently he passes an order to the pumpman, and the power-house echoes to the easy thrust of his giant engine.

The keel-blocks have been set to meet the general lines of the vessels, with only a marginal allowance for the contour of damaged plating. To remedy any error divers, with their gear and escort, are ready on the dockside, and they go below with first fall in the water-level. The carpenters straggle out from sheltered corners and bear a hand. Riggers and dockmen have placed the ships, and it remains for the 'tradesmen' to bed them down and prop against a list by shores and blocks. They are ill content with the vile weather and their job in the open, where the rain lashes down pitilessly, soaking their working clothes. Doubtless they envy the dry divers their suits of proofed rubber, when they are called on to manhandle the heavy timber shores from the mud and litter of the dockside and launch them out towards the steel sides of the settling vessels. There the tide-workers on deck secure them by lanyards, and the spars hang in even order, sighted on doublings of the plates, ready to pin the ships on a steady keel when the water drains away.

With the timbers held in place, the carpenters split up to small parties and stand by to set a further locking strain by prise of block and wedge. The dockmaster blows a whistle signal at the far end of the basin, and casts up his hand as though arresting movement; the thrust of the main pump stills, and he swings his arm. At the sign, the carpenters ram home . . . the thunder of their forehammers on the hardwood wedges rings out in chorus that draws a quavering echo from the empty, hard-pressed hulls.

Settled and bedded and pinned, the ships are left till the water drains away and to await the coming of the shipwrights and repairing gangs. The carpenters shoulder their long-handled top-mauls and scatter to a shelter from the steady, continuous downpour. Up from the floors with their work completed, the divers doff their heavy head-gear and sit a while, _resting_ comfortably under the thrash of the same persistent rain. Anon, their awkward garb discarded, they walk off, striding with a crook at the knees, like farmer folk on ploughed land. The great pumps now pulsate at full speed, drawing water to their sluices in an eddying current that spins the flotsam and bares ledge after ledge of the solid dock masonry. From gaping wounds of the crippled vessels a full tide of seawater gushes and spurts to join the troubled wash below. The beams and side-planking, and temporary measures of the salvage section, uncover and come to sight, showing with what patience and laborious care the divers have striven to stem an inrush.

On the second ship the receding water-line exposes the damage to her engine- and boiler-rooms. A litter of coal and oily scum showers from angles of the wrecked bunker and stokehold to the floor of the dock, and leaves the fractured beams and tubes to stand out in gaunt twist and deformity. Through the breaches the shattered cylinders and broken columns of the engines lie distorted in a piled raffle of wrenched pipe sections, valves and levers, footplates, skeleton ladders, and shafting. The mass of distorted metal has still a shine and token of polish, and these signs of late care and attention only serve to make the ruin seem the more complete and irremediable.

An hour later a strident power syren sounds out from roof of the repair 'shops.' The workmen, hurrying to 'check in' at the gates, scarcely glance at their new jobs on the blocks of the dry-dock. To them it seems quite a commonplace that the round of their industry should suffer no halt, that the two seaworthy ships they completed yesterday should be so quickly replaced by the same type of casualty for their attention. The magnitude of the task--the vast extent of plating to be sheared and rebuilt, the beams to be withdrawn or straightened in place, the litter to be cleared--holds no misgivings. Short on the stroke of 'turn to' they straggle down the dockside to start the round anew. With critical eye, foremen and surveyors chalk off the cypher of their verdicts on the rusted displaced remnants; the gangs apportion and assemble with tools and gear; the huge travelling cranes rumble along on their railways, and lower slings and hooks in readiness for a load of damaged steel.

With the men lined out to the gangways and filing down the dock steps, chain linking in trial over the crane sheaves, and the bustle of preparation on ship and shore, everything seems set for an instant beginning--but no hammer falls as yet. There is, first, a sad freight to be discharged; not all the crew of the ship with the wrecked engines have gone to the pay-table. Three sombre closed wagons are waiting by the dockside, and towards them down the long gangways from the ship, the bodies of an engineer and some of the stokehold crew are being carried. The weltering flood that held them has drained to the dock, and busy hands have searched in the wreckage where they died at their post.

We have no flags to honour, no processional march to accompany our dead. Their poor bodies, dripping and fouled, are draped in a simple coarse shroud that hardly conceals the line of their mangled limbs. Awkwardly the carriers stumble on the sodden planking and rest arms and knees on the guiding hand-lines. The workmen pause on the ship and gangways and look respectfully, if curiously, at the limp burdens as they are carried by.

Here and there a man speaks of the dead, but the most are silent, with lowering looks, set teeth--a sharp intake of the breath. . . . Who knows? Perhaps the spirits of the murdered seamen may come by a payment at the hands of the shipwright gangs. The best monument to their memory will stand as another keel on the deep--a quick ripost to the enemy, in his victim repaired and strengthened and returned to sea.

Lowering looks, set teeth, a hissing intake of the breath are the right accompaniment to a blow struck hard home; the thunder of hammers and drills, the hiss and sparkle of shearing cutters, that breaks out when the wagons have gone, marks a start to their monument!

XIV

ON CAMOUFLAGE--AND SHIPS' NAMES

EARLY in the war the rappel of 'Business as usual' was as deadly at sea as elsewhere. Arrogant and super-confident in our pride of sea-place, we made little effort to trim and adapt our practice to rapidly altering conditions; there were few visible signs to disquiet us, we hardly deviated from our peaceful sea-path, and had no concern for interference. We carried our lights ablaze, advertised our doings in plain wireless, announced our sailings and arrivals, and even devoted more than usual attention to keeping our ships as span in brave new paint and glistening varnish as the hearts of impressionable passengers could desire.

We had difficulties with our manning. The seamen were off, at first tuck of drum, to what they reckoned a more active part in the great game of war--the strictly Naval Service--and we were left with weak crews of new and raw hands to carry on the sea-trade. So, from the very first of it, we engaged in a moral camouflage in our efforts to keep up appearances, and show the neutrals with whom we did business that such a thing as war could hardly disturb the smooth running of our master machine--the Merchants' Service!

Some there were among us who saw the peril in such prominence, and took modest (and somewhat hesitating) steps to keep out of the limelight, by setting lonely courses on the sea, restraining the comradely gossip of wireless operators, and toning down appearances from brilliant polish to the more sombre part suiting a sea in war-time. Deck lights were painted over and obscured, funnel and masts were allowed to grey to neutral tints, the brown ash that discomposes fine paint at sea was looked upon with a new and friendly eye. The bias of chief mates (in a service where promotion is the due for a clean and tidy ship) was, with difficulty, overcome, and a new era of keen look-out and sea-trim started.

There was but moderate support for these bold iconoclasts who dared thus to affront our high fetish. Ship painting and decoration and upkeep were sacrosanct rites that even masters must conform to; the enactments of the Medes and Persians were but idle rules, mere by-laws, compared to the formulae and prescriptions that governed the tone of our pantry cupboards and the shades of cunning grain-work. We were peaceful merchantmen; what was the use of our dressing up like a parish-rigged man-o'-war? As to the lights--darkening ship would upset the passengers; there would be rumours and apprehension. They would travel in less 'nervous' vessels!

The mine that shattered _Manchester Commerce_ stirred the base of our happy conventions; the cruise of the _Emden_ set it swaying perilously; the torpedoes that sank _Falaba_ and _Lusitania_ blew the whole sham edifice to the winds, and we began to think of our ships in other terms than those of freight and passenger rates. Our conceptions of peaceful merchantmen were not the enemy's!

We set about to make our vessels less conspicuous. Grey! We painted our hulls and funnels grey. In many colours of grey. The nuances of our coatings were accidental. Poor quality paint and variable untimely mixings contributed, but it was mainly by crew troubles (deficiency and incapacity) that we came by our first camouflage. As needs must, we painted sections at a time--a patch here, a plate or two there--laid on in the way that real sailors would call 'inside-out'! We sported suits of many colours, an infinite variety of shades. Quite suddenly we realized that grey, in such an ample range--red-greys, blue-greys, brown-greys, green-greys--intermixed on our hulls, gave an excellent low-visibility colour that blended into the misty northern landscape.

Bolshevik now in our methods, we worked on other schemes to trick the murderer's eye. Convention again beset our path. The great god Symmetry--whom we had worshipped to our undoing--was torn from his high place. The glamour of Balances, that we had thought so fine and shipshape, fell from our eyes, and we saw treachery in every regular disposition. Pairs--in masts, ventilators, rails and stanchions, boat-groupings, samson posts, even in the shrouds and rigging--were spies to the enemy, and we rearranged and screened and altered as best we could, in every way that would serve to give a false indication of our course and speed. Freighters and colliers (that we had scorned because of ugly forward rake of mast and funnel) became the leaders of our fashion. We wedged our masts forward (where we could) and slung a gaff on the fore side of the foremast; we planked the funnel to look more or less upright; we painted a curling bow wash over the propellor and a black elaborate stern on the bows. We trimmed our ships by the head, and flattered ourselves that, Janus-like, we were heading all ways!

Few, including the enemy, were greatly deceived. At that point where alterations of apparent course were important--to put the putting Fritz off his stroke--the deck-houses and erections with their beamwise fronts or ends would be plainly noted, and a true line of course be readily deduced. With all our new zeal, we stopped short of altering standing structures, but we could paint, and we made efforts to shield our weakness by varied applications. Our device was old enough, a return to the chequer of ancient sea-forts and the line of painted gun-ports with which we used to decorate our clipper sailing ships. (That also was a camouflage of its day--an effort to overawe Chinese and Malay pirates by the painted resemblance to the gun-deck of a frigate.) We saw the eye-disturbing value of a bold criss-cross, and those of us who had paint to spare made a 'Hobson-jobson' of awning spars and transverse bulkheads.

These were our sea-efforts--rude trials effected with great difficulty in the stress of the new sea-warfare. We could only see ourselves from a surface point of view, and, in our empirics, we had no official assistance. During our brief stay in port it was impossible to procure day-labouring gangs--even the 'gulls' of the dockside were busy at sea. On a voyage, gun crews and extra look-outs left few hands of the watch available for experiments; in any case, our rationed paint covered little more than would keep the rust in check. We were relieved when new stars of marine coloration arose, competent shore concerns that, on Government instruction, arrayed us in a novel war paint. Our rough and amateurish tricks gave way to the ordered schemes of the dockyard; our ships were armed for us in a protective coat of many colours.

Upon us like an avalanche came this real camouflage. Somewhere behind it all a genius of pantomimic transformation blazed his rainbow wand and fixed us. As we came in from sea, dazzle-painters swarmed on us, bespattered creatures with no bowels of compassion, who painted over our cherished glass and teakwood and brass port-rims--the last lingering evidences of our gentility. Hourly we watched our trim ships take on the hues of a swingman's roundabouts. We learned of fancy colours known only in high art--alizarin and grey-pink, purple-lake and Hooker's green. The designs of our mantling held us in a maze of expectation. Bends and ecarteles, indents and rayons, gyrony and counter-flory, appeared on our topsides; curves and arrow-heads were figured on boats and davits and deck fittings; apparently senseless dabs and patches were measured and imprinted on funnel curve and rounding of the ventilators; inboard and outboard we were streaked and crossed and curved.

With our arming of guns there was need for instruction in their service and maintenance; artificial smoke-screens required that we should be efficient in their use; our Otters called for some measure of seamanship in adjustment and control. So far all governmental appliances for our defence relied on our understanding and operation, but this new protective coloration, held aloof from our confidence, it was quite self-contained, there was no rule to be learnt; we were to be shipmates with a new contrivance, to the operation of which we had no control. For want of point in discussion, we criticized freely. We surpassed ourselves in adjectival review; we stared in horror and amazement as each newly bedizened vessel passed down the river. In comparison and simile we racked memory for text to the gaudy creations. "Water running under a bridge.". . . "Forced draught on a woolly sheep's back.". . . "Mural decoration in a busy butcher's shop.". . . "Strike _me_ a rosy bloody pink!" said one of the hands, "if this 'ere don't remind me o' jaundice an' malaria an' a touch o' th' sun, an' me in a perishin' dago 'orspittel!"

While naming the new riot of colour grotesque--a monstrosity, an outrage, myopic madness--we were ready enough to grasp at anything that might help us in the fight at sea. We scanned our ships from all points and angles to unveil the hidden imposition. Fervently we hoped that there would be more in it than met our eye--that our preposterous livery was not only an effort to make Gargantuan faces at the Boche! Only the most splendid results could justify our bewilderment.

Out on the sea we came to a better estimate of the value of our novel war-paint. In certain lights and positions we seemed to be steering odd courses--it was very difficult to tell accurately the line of a vessel's progress. The low visibility that we seamen had sought was sacrificed to enhance a bold disruption of perspective. While our efforts at deception, based more or less on a one-colour scheme of greys, may have rendered our ships less visible against certain favouring backgrounds of sea and sky, there were other weather conditions in which we would stand out sharply revealed. Abandoning the effort to cloak a stealthy sea-passage, our newly constituted Department of Marine Camouflage decked us out in a bold pattern, skilfully arranged to disrupt our perspective, and give a false impression of our line of course. With a torpedo travelling to the limit of its run--striking anything that may lie in its course, range is of little account. Deflection, on the other hand, is everything in the torpedo-man's problem--the correct estimation of a point of contact of two rapidly moving bodies. He relies for a solution on an accurate judgment of his target's course; it became the business of the dazzle-painters to complicate his working by a feint in colour and design. The new camouflage has so distorted our sheer and disrupted the colour in the mass as to make our vessels less easy to hit. If not invisible against average backgrounds, the dazzlers have done their work so well that we are at least partially lost in every elongation.

The mystery withheld from us--the system of our decoration--has done much to ease the rigours of our war-time sea-life. In argument and discussion on its origin and purpose we have found a topic, almost as unfailing in its interest as the record day's run of the old sailing ships. We are agreed that it is a brave martial coat we wear, but are divided in our theories of production. How is it done? By what shrewd system are we controlled that no two ships are quite alike in their splendour? We know that instructions come from a department of the Admiralty to the dockyard painters, in many cases by telegraph. Is there a system of abbreviations, a colourist's shorthand, or are there maritime Heralds in Whitehall who blazon our arms for the guidance of the rude dockside painters? It can be worked out in fine and sonorous proportions:

For s.s. CORNCRIX

_Party per pale, a pale; first, gules, a fesse
dancette, sable; second, vert, bendy, lozengy,
purpure cottised with nodules of the first; third,
sable, three billets bendwise in fesse, or: sur
tout de tout, a barber's pole cockbilled on a
sinking gasometer, all proper._ For motto: "_Doing
them in the eye._"

One wonders if our old conservatism, our clinging to the past, shall persist long after the time of strife has gone; if, in the years when war is a memory and the time comes to deck our ships in pre-war symmetry and grace of black hulls and white-painted deck-work and red funnels and all the gallant show of it, some old masters among us may object to the change.

"Well, have it as you like," they may say. "I was brought up in the good old-fashioned cubist system o' ship painting--fine patterns o' reds an' greens an' Ricketts' blue, an' brandy-ball stripes an' that! None o' your damned newfangled ideas of one-colour sections for me! . . . _Huh!_. . . And black hulls, too! . . . Black! A funeral outfit! . . . No, sir! I may be wrong, but anyway, I'm too old now to chop and change about!"

If we have become reconciled to the weird patterns of our war-paint, every instinct of seafaring that is in us rebels against the new naming of our ships. Is it but another form of camouflage--like the loving Indian mother abusing her dear children for deception of a malicious listening Djinn? _War Cowslip_, _War Dance_, _War Dreamer!_ War Hell! Are our new standard ships being thus badly named, that the enemy may look upon them as pariahs, unworthy of shell or torpedo? Perhaps, as a thoughtful war measure, it may be chargeful of pregnant meaning; our new war names for the ships may be germane to some distant world movement, the first tender shoot of which we cannot yet recognize! More than likely, it is the result of the fine war-time frolic of fitting the cubest of square pegs in the roundest of holes. How is it done? Is there, in the hutments of St. James's Park, an otherwise estimable and blameless greengrocer, officially charged with the task of finding names for vessels, 015537-68 inclusive, presently on the Controller's lists and due to be launched?

We sailors are jealous for our vessels. Abuse us if you will, but have a care for what you may say of our ships. We alone are entitled to call them bitches, wet brutes, stubborn craft, but we will stand for no such liberties from the beach; strikes have occurred on very much less sufficient ground. Ridicule in the naming of our ships is intolerable. If _War_ is to be the prefix, why cannot our greengrocer find suitable words in the chronicles of strife? Can there be anything less martial than the _War Rambler_, _War Linnet_, _War Titmouse_, _War Gossamer_? Why not the _War Teashop_, the _War Picture House_, the--the--the _War Lollipop_? Are we rationed in ships' names? Is there a Controller of Marine Nomenclature? The thing is absurd!

If our controllers had sense they would see the danger in thus flouting our sentiment; they would value the recruiting agency of a good name; they would recognize that the naming of a ship should be done with as great care as that of an heir to an earldom. Is the torpedoed bos'n of the _Eumaeus_ going to boast of a new post on the _War Bandbox_? What are the feelings of the captain of a _Ruritania_ when he goes to the yards to take over a _War Whistler_? Why _War_? If sober, businesslike argument be needed, it is confusing; it introduces a repetition of initial syllable that makes for dangerous tangles in the scheme of direction and control.

It is all quite unnecessary. There are names and enough. Fine names! Seamanlike names! Good names! Names that any sailor would be proud to have on his worsted jersey! Names that he would shout out in the market-place! Names that the enemy would read as monuments to his infamy! Names of ships that we knew and loved and stood by to the bitter end.

XV

FLAGS AND BROTHERHOOD OF THE SEA

UNLIKE the marches of the land, with guard and counterguard, we had no frontiers on the sea. There were no bounds to the nations and their continents outside of seven or ten fathoms of blue water. We all travelled on the one highway that had few by-paths on which trespassers might be prosecuted. And our highway was no primrose path, swept and garnished and safeguarded; it had perils enough in gale and tempest, fog, ice, blinding snow, dark moonless nights, rock and shoal and sandbar. Remote from ordered assistance in our necessity, we relied on favour of a chance passer-by, on a fallible sea-wanderer like ourselves. So, for our needs, we formed a sea-bond, an International Alliance against our common hazards of wind and sea and fire, an assurance of succour and support in emergency and distress. Out of our hunger for sea-companionship grew a union that had few rules or written compacts, and no bounds to action other than the simply humane traditions and customs of the sea. There were no statutory penalties for infringement of the rules unwritten; we could not, as true seamen, conceive so black a case. We had no Articles of our Association, no charters, no covenants; our only documents were the International Code of Signals and the Rule of the Road at Sea. With these we were content; we understood faith and a blood-bond as brother seamen, and we put out on our adventures, stoutly warranted against what might come.

In the Code of Signals we had a language of our own, more immediate and attractive than Volapuek or Esperanto. The dire fate of the builders of the Tower held no terror for us, for our intercourse was that of sight and recognition, not of speech. Our code was one of bright colours and bold striking design--flags and pendants fluttering pleasantly in the wind or, in calmer weather, drooping at the halyards with a lift for closer recognition. The symbol of our masonry was a bold red pendant with two vertical bars of white upon it. We had fine hoists for hail and farewell; tragic turn of the colours for a serious emergency, hurried two-flag sets for urgent calls, leisurely symbols of three for finished periods.

'_Can you_' required three flags to itself; _me_ or _I_ or _it_ came all within our range. We told our names and those of our ports by a long charge of four; we could cross our _t's_ and dot our _i's_ by beckon of a single square. We lowered slowly and rehoisted ('knuckles to the staff, you young fool!') our National Ensign, as we would raise our hat ashore. It was all an easy, courteous and graceful mode of converse, linguistically and grammatically correct, for we had no concern with accent or composition, taking our polished phrases from the book. It suited well the great family of the sea, for, were we a Turk of Galatz and you an Iceland brigantine, we could pass the time of day or tell one another, simply and intelligibly, the details of our ports and ladings. Distance, within broad limits, was small hindrance to our gossip; there were few eyes on the round of the sea, to read into our confidences. We could put a hail ashore, too. Passing within sight of San Miguel, we could have a message on the home doorsteps on the morrow, by hoisting our 'numbers'; the naked lightkeeper on the Daedalus could tell us of the northern winds by a string of colours thrown out from the upper gallery.

Good news, bad news, reports, ice, weather, our food-supply, the wages of our seamen, the whereabouts of pirates and cannibals, the bank rate, high politics (we had S.L.R. for Nuncio)--we had them all grouped and classed and ready for instant reference. Medicine, stocks, the law (G.F.H., King's Bench; these sharps who never will take a plain seaman's clear word on salvage or the weather, or the way the fog-whistle was duly and properly sounded!) Figures! We could measure and weigh and divide and subtract; we could turn your Greek _Daktylas_ into a Japanese _Cho_ or _Tcho_, or Turkish _Parmaks_ into the _Draas_ of Tripoli! Some few world measures had to be appendixed; a _Doppelzentner_ was Z.N.L. What is a _Doppelzentner_?

As evidence of our brotherly regard, our peaceful intent, we had few warlike phrases. True, we had hoists to warn of pirates, and we could beg a loan, by signal, of powder and cannon-balls--to supplement our four rusty Snyders, with which we could defend our property, but there was no group in our international vocabulary that could read, "I am torpedoing you without warning!" Seamanlike and simple, we saw only one form of warfare at sea, and based our signals on that. "Keep courage! I am coming to your assistance at utmost speed!". . . "I shall stand by during the night!". . . "Water is gaining on me! I am sinking!" . . . "Boat is approaching your quarter!" These, and others alike, were our war signals, framed to meet our ideas of the greatest peril we might encounter in our conflict with the elements.

Of all this we write in a sad past tense. Our sea-bond is shattered. There is no longer a brotherhood on the sea. The latest of our recruits has betrayed us. The old book is useless, for it contains no reading of the German's avowal, "Come on the deck of my submarine. I am about to submerge!" . . . "Stand by, you helpless swine in the boats, while I shell you and scatter your silly blood and brains!"

No longer will the receipt of a call of distress be the instant signal (whatever the weather or your own plight) for putting the helm over. We have shut the book! We are grown hardened and distrustful. S.O.S. may be the fiend who has just torpedoed a crowded Red Cross, and endeavours by his lying wireless to lure a Samaritan to the net. A heaving boat, or a lone raft with a staff and a scrap, may only be closed with fearful caution; they may be magnets for a minefield.

". . . still he called aloud, for he was in the
track of steamers. And presently he saw a steamer.
She carried no lights, but he described her form,
a darker shape upon the sea and sky, and saw the
sparks volley from her funnel.

"He shrieked till his voice broke, but the steamer
went on and vanished. The Irishman was furiously
enraged, but it was of no use to be angry. He went
on calling. So did the other four castaways, but
their cries were growing fainter and less
frequent.

"Then there loomed another steamer, and she, too,
went on. By this time, perhaps, an hour had gone
by, and the Arab firemen had fallen silent. The
Irishman could see them no longer. He never saw
them again. A third steamer hove in sight, and
she, too, went on. The Irishman cursed her with
the passionate intensity peculiar to the seaman,
and went on calling. It was a desperate
business. . . ."

The shame of it!

_Lusitania_, _Coquet_, _Serapis_, _Thracia_, _Mariston_, _The Belgian Prince_, _Umaria_ . . .

". . . The commanding officer of the submarine,
leaning on the rail of the conning-tower, looked
down upon his victims.

"Crouched upon the thwarts in the sunlight, up to
their knees in water, which, stained crimson, was
flowing through the shell-holes in the planking,
soaked with blood, holding their wounds, staring
with hunted eyes, was the heap of stricken men.

"The German ordered the boat away. The shore was
fifteen miles distant. . . ."

He ordered the boat away! The shame of it! The abasing, dishonouring shame of it!

Bitterly, tarnished--we realize our portion in the guilt, our share in this black infamy--that seamen should do this thing!

What of the future? What will be the position of the German on the sea when peace returns, let the settlement by catholic conclave be what it may?

Sailorfolk have long memories! Living a life apart from their land-fellows, they have but scant regard for the round of events that, on the shore, would be canvassed and discussed, consented--and forgotten. There is no busy competing commercial intrigue, no fickle market, no grudging dalliance on the sea. We stand fast to our own old sea-justice; we have no shades of mercy or condonation, no degrees of tolerance for this bastard betrayer of our unwritten sea-laws. No brotherhood of the sea can be conceived to which he may be re-admitted. Not even the dethronement of the Hohenzollern can purge the deeds of his marine Satraps, for their crimes are individual and personal and professional.

In the League of Nations a purged and democratic Germany may have a station, but there is no redemption for a Judas on the sea. There, by every nation, every seafarer, he will remain a shunned and abhorred Ishmael for all time.