_ I have spoken earlier of meeting cargo boats--tramp steamers, we call them at home--while crossing the Atlantic. In peace times a fellow would naturally expect to see them here, or almost anywhere else on the wide ocean; but to see them in these war days was to set a man wondering about them.
Wondering, because more than 90 per cent of U-boat sinkings are of ships of less than 12 knots' speed; which means that these rusty old junk heaps, wheezing along at maybe 9 or 10, but more likely at 7 or 8 knots, furnish most of the sinkings. They surely must be having great old times getting by the U-boats, and their captains and crews must surely have a view-point of their own!
At this naval base of which I have been writing, you could look almost any day and see 5, 10, or 20 of these cargo boats to moorings. And ashore was a pub--there were other pubs, plenty of them--but to this one particular pub came bunches of these cargo captains to forget things. (Without wishing to offend any prohibition advocate, I have to report that knocking around the world a man cannot help noticing that men who face peril regularly do sometimes take a drink to ease off things.)
A barmaid, answering to the name of Phyllis, presided over this pub, a blond, square-built, capable person, who had always about three or four of these captains standing on their heads. She was not without sentiment, but never letting sentiment interfere with business.
"Phyllis, my dear," a skipper would begin, and get about that far when she--her right hand reaching for the bottle of Scotch and her left for the soda--would be saying: "The same, captain?"--thereby choking off a great rush of words, and forwarding the business for which she drew one pound ten a week.
Before a creature of that kind these cargo captains were bound to preen themselves. They bought at frequent intervals, not at all like the ways of another group--not cargo captains--of whom one of our American warrant officers said: "You buy and buy and buy, and they drink and drink and drink. It comes time for them to buy, and when it does they submerge, and don't come up for air."
These cargo skippers were always coming up for air. They would hunt a man three stories up in his room, wake him out of his sleep, and haul him down-stairs to have just one more. Between drinks, after they got to know a man pretty well, they would talk of their sea experiences; and, after the fashion of all true adventurers, their talk was almost always of the humorous side of things.
There was a skipper there one morning who bid all hands, especially Phyllis, good-by. He was off to Alexandria. He would not be back for three months--more likely five or six months. Phyllis pinned a flower in his coat and off he went. From the pub window they saw him board his ship, and an hour later saw her steam out of the harbor and to sea.
That was at ten in the morning. At five in the afternoon--the lights were just being turned on--those in the pub who happened to be looking out of the window thought they saw this captain's ghost coming up the waterside with his crew trailing behind him. The crew looked as if they had dressed in a hurry and were scampering along to keep warm. But our skipper was wearing all he wore when he left the pub.
He drew nearer. It was no ghost. It was himself, even to the rose in his coat. He hailed Phyllis. She was talking to another skipper. The other skipper turned to see who was butting in, and seeing who it was, said: "To Egypt and back in seven hours--the quickest voyage ever I 'eard of!" Which comment so depressed the voyager that he refused to say anything about what had happened, except that five miles outside of the harbor he had been torpedoed, and they had to take to the boats in a hurry.
The foregoing is by way of introducing the captain who commented on the quick voyage. A few mornings later I was up at the Admiralty House when he came into the waiting-room, let himself carefully down into a mahogany chair, dropped his new soft gray hat into his lap, and looked around.
"A solemn place, ain't it? Would they 'ang a chap, d'y' think, if he was to 'ave a bit of a smoke for 'imself while waitin'?"
I said that I thought the fashion nowadays was to take a man out and stand him up against the wall and shoot him.
He was tall, heavily built, fresh-colored, with a way of seeming to reflect deeply before he replied to anything. By and by he said: "Oh, aye!" and lit his cigarette, but had not taken the second puff when the doorkeeper's feet sounded outside, at which sound he pinched the cigarette hurriedly by the neck, and looked around for somewhere to dump it. There was no ash-tray, and the table being bare mahogany, the floor all polished wood, the fireplace with no fire in it, so brassy and shiny that to put anything there would be treason--he dropped the cigarette into his hat.
The doorkeeper smelled something, but he wasn't one who looked on lowly things when he walked, and so did not see the little spiral of smoke curling up from the hat.
My seafarer was in a great stew. To sit there and watch him was to warm up to him. There he was, a man who regularly faced death by more ways than one at sea, but now in deep fear that this shore-going flunky would catch him smoking a surreptitious cigarette. He stared determinedly at every place except at his hat until the doorkeeper had passed on.
When he looked at his hat the cigarette had burned a hole in it. He viewed the hat sadly. "No gainsayin' it, war is 'ell, ain't it? I paid fourteen bob for that 'at three days back in Cardiff."
I went out to help him buy a new hat. Hat stores were scarce, but life does not end with hat stores; there were fleets of little places where a man could sit down and talk about more important things than hats.
In the hotel smoke-room after lunch there was no sugar for our coffee. His sea-training began to show at once. "The thing you 'ave to learn to do at sea is to go on your own. Nobody doing much for a chap that 'e don't do for hisself, is there?" From his coat pocket he drew an envelope which once held a letter from home--in place of the letter now was sugar. "Preparedness--'ere it is"--and sweetened our coffee from the envelope.
He spoke of his life at sea. "I can't say that I like it--I can't say I don't like it--but it was my life before the war and it 'as to be since. You've seen my ship, 'aven't you, lying to moorings? Nothing great to look at, is she? but the managing director of our company--he has the 'andling of maybe a 'undred more like her--'Let 'em 'ave their grand passenger ships,' 'e says, 'but give me my cargo boats that pays for theirselves every two voyages.' The right idea 'e 'ad, I'll say for 'im. And for my part of it there is no everlastin' polishin' o' brahss and painting o' white work and no buying o' gold-laced uniforms at your own cost. And there's the bonus for me. Oh, aye! A bit of bonus ain't a bit of 'arm, you know, especially when you've a wife that's no eyesore to look at, and little kiddies growin' up.
"Torpedoed? Oh, aye. It's not to be expected of a man to escape that these days. My chum Bob, remember 'im--that was seven hours to Alexandria and back--with a rose in his coat? His fourth time torpedoed, that was. I've been blowed up only three times myself. Nothing much of anything special, the last time and the time before that--a matter of getting into boats and by and by being picked up--no more than that--no. But the first time--maybe it was a novelty-like then. 'Owever, I'd carried a load of coal to Naples and getting twenty-two pounds a ton for coal that cost two pound ten in Cardiff maybe makes it a bit clearer what the managing director 'ad in mind when 'e said: 'let 'em have their grand passenger ships, but give me my little cargo boats.'
"From Naples I go on to Piræus in Greece, and we take a load on there--admiralty stuff, and not to be spoken of--and we put out for 'ome. She was a good old single-crew, this one o' mine. Twenty-five year old--not the worst, though I'd seen better. Well warmed up she could squeeze out eight knots, or maybe eight and a 'alf. I 'ung close to the land along that Greek shore, for if anything should 'appen ther's no sense 'aving too long a row to the beach in boats.
"Very good. We're rollin' along one morning when the radio man came in with a message which read: 'PUT INTO NEAREST PORT. U-BOATS.'
"And without ado we puts into a little place down at the 'eel of Italy, and that night I 'ad a 'ot barth an' a lovely long sleep in my brahss bed which the missus 'ad given me for Christmas the last time 'ome. And a great pleasure it was, I say.
"Next mornin' we put to sea again, and next day after comes another radio, and it says: 'PUT INTO NEAREST PORT. U-BOATS.' And we put into Malta, and that night again I 'ad another 'ot barth and a fine sleep in my brahss bed.
"We resume our voyage from Malta, and a two days later I gets another radio--more U-boats--and I puts into Algiers. Three times in one week that made with me 'aving me 'ot barth and a fine sleep in me brahss bed--grand good luck, I say now, and said it then to the mate, adding to it: 'There's a signal station west of Gibraltar--wouldn't it be delightful passing that signal station to get the word to put back to Gib and stop there for another night and I 'ave another 'ot barth and a lovely sleep in my four-poster bed.' But the mate 'e only says 'e didn't have no brahss bed aboard ship to sleep in, and he saved his 'ot barths, he did,'til he got 'ome to enjoy 'em proper.
"Summer-time it was, and I likes to take my little siesta after lunch--just like the Dons theirselves, y' know--and I'm 'aving me siesta next day after lunch when something woke me up. There's a shelf of books on the wall o' my room--chart-books and the like--and when all at once I see them pilin' down on top of me I say to myself: 'Somethin's 'appened.' And so it 'ad. The mate 'e sticks 'is 'ead in the door and says: 'We're torpedoed, sir.'
"'There goes my bonus,' I says, and goes on deck.
"We carried a 3-inch gun in a little 'ouse aft, and there was the mate firing at the U-boat, which was out of water and maybe two miles away. It was one of those out-of-date guns the navy would have no more to do with, and so they passes it on to us. New good guns would probably be wasted on us, and maybe that's true. None of us aboard ever fired a shot from the gory weapon till this day. The mate fired two shots at the U-boat, but 'e don't 'it anything. The U-boat fires two shots at us and she 'its something. One of 'em pahsses through the chart house, and the other tears a nice little 'ole in 'er for'ard.
"That'll do for that gun practice,' I says.
"'Aren't you goin' to 'ave a go at 'em?' says the mate.
"'You can 'ave all the go at 'em you please,' I says, 'after we leave the ship. Besides you there's 19 men and 4 Eurasians in this crew, and some of 'em will maybe like to see 'ome again--I know I do!'
"We get into the boats, myself takin' along what was left of a second case of Scotch, and good old pre-war Scotch it was, not the gory infant's food they serve these days that a man 'as to take a tumblerful of to know 'e's 'aving a drink at all. I also took along three sofy cushions, hand-worked by the missus, with pink doves and cupids and the like--rare lookin' they was. 'A man might's well be comfortable,' I says.
"I 'ad a cook. 'If comfort's the word,' says the cook, 'I might's well take along the wife's canary,' and 'e takes it along in a cage in one 'and, and a bag of clothes in the other. 'E's in the boat when 'e thinks to go back for a package of seed 'e'd left for the canary on the shelf in the galley. 'Hurry up with your bird-seed,' I says, and as I do a shell comes along and explodes inside of 'er old frame somewheres, and the cook says maybe 'e'll be gettin' along without the seed--the canary not being what you'd call a 'eavy eater, anyway.
"The mate 'ad a cameraw, and when we're clear of the ship he would stand up and set the cameraw on the shoulders of a Eurasian fireman, and take shots of the ship between shells.
"In good time one last shell 'its 'er, and down she goes. The U-boat moves off, and we see no more of 'er.
"It's a fine day and a lovely pink sunset, and there's a beautiful mild sirocco blowing off the African shore to make the 'ot night pleasant as we approach it in the boats. A man could 'ardly arsk to be torpedoed under more pleasant conditions, I say, and we continue to row toward the shore in 'igh 'opes. It's maybe two in the mornin' when we see the side-lights of a ship. She's bound east--a steamer--and we know she's a Britisher, because we're the only chaps carried lights in war zones at that time. Carryin' lights at night o' course made us grand marks for the U-boats, but there was no 'elp for it. A board o' trade regulation, that was, and no gettin' away from what the board o' trade says. We had our choice of carryin' lights and losin' our ships, or not carryin' lights and losin' our jobs. So we lost our ships. After a year and a 'alf of war some bright chap in the board said that maybe it would be a good idea to change the regulation about carrying lights, and they did. And about time, we said.
"Some of the crew were for 'ailing the ship in the night. ''Ail 'ell!' I says. 'D'y' think I want to be took into that rotten 'ole of a Port Said, or maybe Alexandria, and that end of the Mediterranean fair lousy with U-boats. Besides, we'll get 'ome quicker this way,' I says, and allows her to pass on. In the mornin' we run onto the beach, and 'ardly there when a crowd of Ayrabs come gallopin' down on 'orseback to us. 'We'll be killed now,' says the mate, and talks under his breath of stubborn captains, who wouldn't 'ail a friendly ship's light in the dark, but the only killing the Ayrabs do is two young goats for breakfast. And they make coffee that was coffee, and we had a lovely meal on the sand. And by and by they steered us along the shore to where was a French destroyer, which takes us over to Gibraltar, and from Gib we passed on through Spain and France to Havre. Three weeks that took, and I never 'ad such a three weeks in all my life. 'Eroes, ragin' 'eroes--that's wot we were!
"At Havre the French authorities took the mate's pictures out of the cameraw, and they never did give 'em back. Except for that, it was a fine pleasure, that land cruise 'ome.
"Lucky? Oh, aye, you may well say it. Three times in one week I 'ad me 'ot barth and my lovely sleep in me brahss bed--it's not to be looked for with ordinary luck, you know."
* * * * *
One day the destroyer to which I was assigned put to sea. There were other destroyers, and we were to take a fleet of merchantmen from the naval base to such and such a latitude and longitude, and there turn them loose. My friend's ship was of the convoy.
We made such and such a latitude and longitude, and there we turned them loose, signalling the position to them and waiting for acknowledgment. They acknowledged the signal. We then hoisted the three pennants which everywhere at sea means: Pleasant voyage! They answered with the three pennants which everywhere spells: Thank you. And no sooner done than away they belted, each for himself, and let the U-boats get the hindmost.
The hindmost here was the rusty old cargo boat of my friend. I could see her for miles after the others were hull down; and long after I could see her I could picture him--walking his lonely bridge and his ship plugging away at her 7 or maybe 7-1/2 knots across the lonely ocean.
Three times torpedoed and taking it all as part of his work! Some day they may get him and he not come back; and when they do the world will hear little about him. Hero? He a hero? Why a shore-going flunky had him bluffed for smoking a surreptitious cigarette in high quarters! 'Ero? Not 'im. Why 'e don't even wear a uniform.
So there they are, the wheezing old cargo boats and their officers and crew. British, French, Italian, American, but mostly British.
No heroes, but the Lord help their people if they hadn't stayed on the job. _