With the Battle Cruisers by Filson Young

Author:Filson Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Ebooks
Published: 2016-11-17T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX

A NEW YEAR

THE New Year found the Lion at the latter end of a dinner-party given by the Admiral to all the officers, including warrant officers, in the ship. Sixty-three of us sat down in the dining cabin, and the gaiety was in proportion to the numbers. There were about twenty speeches, some of which would make very amusing reading if one could recall them; but there is only one that I can remember in full. It was that of the Boatswain. Reduced to a truly unwonted shyness, he spoke as follows:

“Admiral and gentlemen” (long pause). “I mean to say” (long pause punctuated by “Hear! hear!”). “What I mean to say is” (loud and prolonged applause). “Well, all I say is, I hope we don’t go to sea to-night!”

It was quite the best speech of the evening and was received with terrific acclamation. I remember at a late hour risking the perils of the many ladders up to the bridge, conveying a bottle of champagne and other dainties to the officer of the watch, who was keeping his solitary and uneventful harbour duties on the bridge, where only rumours of the gaiety below reached him. I remember also that there was a heavy scrap in the wardroom afterwards, in which the evolution “out staff” was performed with some difficulty, after a prolonged and stubborn resistance at the cost of a good deal of broken furniture.

The first weeks of the year were marked by a kind of reaction, subtle but inevitable, from the high and continuous hopes of the first months of the war. With the coming of a new year it began to be realized that the war might last, not only through that, but conceivably through another and another year. After the victory of the Falkland Islands and the raid on Hartlepool and Scarborough, naval activity seemed to have fizzled out, so far as the big ships were concerned; the enemy submarines were extending their operations, and the Admiralty seemed to have no policy for dealing with them. The loss of the Formidable, of which we heard on New Year’s Day, was another sign that the obvious lessons of the war were not being learned, and added, with the Hogue, Aboukir, Cressy, Audacious and Bulwark, another to the record of ships lost without any advantage in return. And it was characteristic that the Admiralty, even in the little parish magazine of “Secret Intelligence” that was served out to Commanding Officers afloat, continued to report the Audacious as being with the Second Battle Squadron, although everyone in the fleet knew she had been sunk in November, and the fact had been published in the American Press. It was a good example of the somewhat childish point of view of Intelligence, in which it seemed to be held a clever thing to tell a lie, in the general hope that someone might be deceived. It was one of the more innocent of the ways in which we tried to imitate the Germans.

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