The Invasion of 1910

His meeting with Frölich had been most unfortunate, for he knew that he was now a marked man.

At first the sentries disbelieved him, but, speaking German fluently, he argued with them, and was at last allowed to go free. His one object was to get the map into the hands of the Intelligence Department, but the difficulties were, he soon saw, almost insurmountable. Picquets and sentries held every road and every bridge, while the railway line between Fakenham and Aylsham had been destroyed in several places, as well as that between Melton Constable and Norwich.

Through the whole night he wandered on, hoping to find some weak point in the cordon about Weybourne, but in vain. The Germans were everywhere keeping a sharp vigil to prevent anyone getting out with information, and taking prisoners all upon whom rested the slightest suspicion.

Near dawn, however, he found his opportunity, for at the junction of the three roads near the little hamlet of Stody, a mile south of Hunworth, he came upon a sleeping Uhlan, whose companions had evidently gone forward into Briningham village. The horse was grazing quietly at the roadside, and the man, tired out, lay stretched upon the bank, his helmet by his side, his sabre still at his belt.

Macdonald crept up slowly. If the man woke and discovered him he would be again challenged. Should he take the man’s big revolver and shoot him as he lay?

No. That was a coward’s action, an unjustifiable murder, he decided.

He would take the horse, and risk it by making a dash for life.

Therefore, on tiptoe he crept up, passing the prostrate man, till he approached the horse, and in a second, old though he was, he was nevertheless in the saddle. But none too soon. The jingle of the bit awakened the Uhlan suddenly, and he sprang up in time to see the stranger mount.

In an instant he took in the situation, and before the colonel could settle himself in the saddle he raised his revolver and fired.

The ball struck the colonel in the left shoulder, shattering it, but the gallant man who was risking his life for his country only winced, cursed his luck beneath his breath, set his teeth, and with the blood pouring from the wound, made a dash for life, and succeeded in getting clean away ere the alarm could be raised.

Twelve hours later the valuable information the colonel had so valiantly gained at such risk was in the hands of the Intelligence Department at Whitehall, and had been transmitted back to Norwich and Colchester.

That the Fourth German Army Corps were in a position as strong as those who had landed at Lowestoft could not be denied, and the military authorities could not disguise from themselves the extreme gravity of the situation.

CHAPTER V

OUR FLEET TAKEN UNAWARES

The first news of the great naval battle, as generally happens in war, was confused and distorted. It did not clearly show how the victory had been gained by the one side, or what had brought defeat upon the other. Only gradually did the true facts appear. The following account, however, of the sudden attack made by the Germans upon the British Fleet represents as near an approach as can ever be made, writing after events, to the real truth:

On the fateful evening of September 1, it appears that the North Sea Fleet lay peacefully at anchor off Rosyth, in the Firth of Forth. It mustered sixteen battleships, four of them of the famous Dreadnought class, and all powerful vessels. With it, and attached to it, was a squadron of armoured cruisers eight ships strong, but no destroyers, as its torpedo flotilla was taking part in the torpedo manœuvres in the Irish Sea. Some excitement had been caused in the fleet by orders received on the previous day, directing it to remain under steam ready to put to sea at an hour’s notice. Officers and men had read the reports in the papers announcing some friction with Germany, and had recalled with ironical amusement certain speeches of the Premier, in which he had declared that since his advent to power war was impossible between civilised nations. On the morning of the First, however, the orders to hold the fleet in readiness were cancelled, and Admiral Lord Ebbfleet was instructed to wait at his anchorage the arrival of reinforcements from the reserve divisions at the great naval ports. The Admiral had reported some shortage of coal and ammunition, and had asked for further supplies of both. A promise was made him that more coal should be sent to Rosyth, but ammunition, he was told, it would be inconvenient and unnecessary to forward at this juncture. There was no reason for precipitation or alarm, a cipher telegram from Whitehall ran: Any sign of either would irritate Germany and endanger the situation. He was peremptorily enjoined to refrain from any act of preparation for war. The estimates could not be exceeded without good reason, and the necessary economies of the Admiralty had left no margin for unexpected expenses. Even the commissioning of the reserve ships, he was told, was not to be considered in any sense as pointing to the imminence of war; it was merely a test of the readiness of the fleet.

This remarkable despatch and the series of telegrams which accompanied it were produced at the Parliamentary investigation after the war, and caused simple stupefaction. There was not a hint in them of the peril which menaced the North Sea Fleet. Not the safety of England, but the feelings of the enemy, were considered. And yet the same utter absence of precautions had characterised the policy of the Government during the Fashoda crisis, when Mr. Goschen indignantly denied to an approving House of Commons the suggestion that the dockyards had been busy or that special efforts to prepare for war had been needed. In the North Sea crisis again, the safety of England had been left to chance, and the British fleets carefully withdrawn from the waters of the North Sea, or placed in a position of such weakness that their defeat was a probability.

Lord Ebbfleet, the Admiral, however, was wiser than the Admiralty. There were too many busybodies about, and the ships were too plainly under observation, to make the full battle toilet. But all that afternoon his crews were active in removing the woodwork, which could not, unfortunately, be sent ashore or thrown into the water – that would have caused excessive suspicion. He would personally have preferred to weigh anchor and proceed to sea, but his instructions forbade this. A great admiral at such a juncture might have disobeyed, and acted on his own responsibility; but Lord Ebbfleet, though brave and capable, was not a Nelson. Still, as well as he could, he made ready for war, and far into the night the crews worked with a will.

Torpedo-nets were got out in all the large ships; the guns were loaded; the watch manned and armed ship; the ships’ torpedo boats were hoisted out and patrolled the neighbouring waters; all ships had steam up ready to proceed to sea, though the Admiralty had repeatedly censured Lord Ebbfleet for the heinous offence of wasting coal. Unhappily, the fortifications on the Firth of Forth were practically unmanned and dismantled. Many of the guns had been sold in 1906 to effect economies. In accordance with the policy of trusting to luck and the kindness of the Germans, in fear, also, of provoking Germany, no steps had been taken to mobilise their garrisons. Under the latest scheme of defence which the experts in London had produced, it had been settled that fortifications were not needed to protect the bases used by the fleet. The garrison artillery had gone – sacrificed to the demand for economy. It was considered amply sufficient to man the works with mobilised Volunteers when the need arose. That the enemy might come like a thief in the night had seemingly not occurred to the Government, the House of Commons, or the Army reformers.

Thus the Admiral had to trust entirely to his own ships and guns. The very searchlights on the coast defences were not manned; everything after the usual English fashion was left to luck and the last minute. And, truth to tell, the pacific assurances of the Ministerial Press had lulled anxiety to rest everywhere, save, perhaps, in the endangered fleet. The nation wished to slumber, and it welcomed the leading articles which told it that all disquietude was ridiculous.

It was equally disastrous that no destroyers accompanied the fleet. The three North Sea flotillas of twenty-four boats were conducting exercises in the Irish Sea, whither they had been despatched after the grand naval manœuvres were over. No flotilla of destroyers, and not even a single one of those worn-out, broken-down torpedo boats which the Admiralty had persisted in maintaining as a sham defence for the British coast, was stationed in the Forth. For patrol work the Admiral had nothing but his armoured cruisers and the little launches carried in his warships, which were practically useless for the work of meeting destroyers. The mine defences on the coast had been abolished in 1905, with the promise that torpedo boats and submarines should take their place. Unluckily, the Admiralty had sold off the stock of mines for what it would fetch, before it had provided either the torpedo boats or the submarines, and now five years after this act of supreme wisdom and economy there was still no mobile defence permanently stationed north of Harwich.

At nightfall six of the battleships’ steam torpedo boats were stationed outside the Forth Bridge, east of the anchorage, to keep a vigilant watch, while farther out to sea was the fast cruiser Leicestershire with all lights out, in mid-channel, just under the island of Inchkeith. Abreast of her and close inshore, where the approach of hostile torpedo craft was most to be feared, were three small ships’ torpedo boats to the north and another three to the south, so that, in all, twelve torpedo boats and one cruiser were in the outpost line, to prevent any such surprise as that of the Russian fleet at Port Arthur on the night of February 8, 1904. Thus began this most eventful night in the annals of the British Navy.

Hour after hour passed, while the lieutenants in charge of the torpedo boats incessantly swept the horizon with night glasses; and on the bridge of the Leicestershire a small group of officers and signalmen directed their telescopes and glasses out to sea. The great cruiser in the darkness showed not a glimmer of light; gently her engines moved her to and fro upon her beat; she looked through the blackness like a monstrous destroyer herself; and as she went to and fro her guns were always kept trained out seawards, with the watch ready. Towards 2 a.m. the tide began to set strongly into the Forth, and at the same time the weather became misty. Captain Cornwall, noting with uneasiness that the horizon was becoming obscured, and that the field of vision was narrowing, exclaimed to his fellow-watchers on the bridge that it was an ideal night for destroyers – if they should come.

Barely had he spoken thus when he was called aft to the wireless telegraphy instruments. Out of the night Hertzian waves were coming in. The mysterious message was not in the British code; it was not in the international code; and it bore no intelligible meaning. It was in no language that could be recognised – was evidently a cipher. For two or three minutes the recorder rattled off dots and dashes, and then the aërial impulse ceased. Immediately, with a noise like the rattle of pistol shots, the Leicestershire’s transmitters began to send the news of this strange signal back to the flagship at the anchorage. The special tuning of the British instruments kept for fleet work would prevent a stranger taking in her news.

While the Leicestershire’s wireless instruments were signalling, a steamer was made out approaching Inchkeith. From her build she was a tramp; she carried the usual lights, and seemed to be heading for Queensferry. A flashlight signal was made to her to ask her name and nationality, and to direct her not to approach, as manœuvres were in progress. She made not the faintest response to these signals – a by no means unusual case with British and foreign merchant steamers. In the dim light she looked to be of about 2500 tons displacement as she steered straight for the Leicestershire. Captain Cornwall ordered one of the inshore torpedo boats to proceed to her, and examine her, and direct her, if she was not British, to go into Leith, thus taking upon his shoulders the considerable responsibility of interfering with a foreign ship in time of peace. But she paid no attention to the torpedo boat. She was about 3000 yards off the Leicestershire when the order to the boat was given, and she had now approached within 1500 yards. Disquieted by her proceedings, Captain Cornwall ordered one of the 3-pounders to fire a shot across her bow, and then, as this did not stop her, followed it up with two shots from a 3-pounder directed against her hull.

At the first shot across her bows she swung round, now little more than a thousand yards away from the British cruiser, bringing her broadside to bear. There was the noise of a dull report like the discharge of torpedo tubes, as an instant later the 3-pounder shells struck her hull. Immediately, at Captain Cornwall’s order, the Leicestershire opened fire with all her guns that would bear. Through the water came two streaks of bubbles and foam, moving with lightning speed. One passed right ahead of the Leicestershire; the other swept towards the British cruiser’s stern; there was a heavy explosion; the whole hull of the cruiser was violently shaken and lifted perceptibly up in the water; a spout of water and smoke rose up astern, and the engines ceased to work. The Leicestershire had been torpedoed by the stranger.

The stranger caught the cruiser’s fire and reeled under it. The British gunners took their revenge. The searchlights came on; four 7.5’s, in less time than it takes to tell, planted shell after shell upon her waterline, and the steamer began slowly to founder. Clouds of smoke and steam rose from her; her engine was apparently disabled, and the British launches closed about her to seize those of her crew that survived. In ten minutes all was over. The steamer had disappeared, her side torn open by a dozen 7.5-in. shells charged with lyddite. But the Leicestershire was in serious plight. The damage done by the German torpedo was of the gravest nature. The British cruiser was heavily down by the stern; her port engine and propeller would no longer revolve; two compartments on the port quarter had filled, and water was leaking into the port engine-room. Very slowly, with the help of the starboard engine, Captain Cornwall took her in towards Leith and beached his ship on the shoals near the new harbour.

The opening act had been cleverly thought out by the German staff. While the torpedo boats were picking up the crew of the steamer, three divisions of German torpedo craft, each six boats strong, had passed into the Forth under the shadow of the northern coast. They glided like shadows through the darkness, and they do not seem to have been seen by the British vessels off Inchkeith, whose crews’ attention was riveted upon the Leicestershire. A fourth division, moving rapidly in the shadow of the southern coast, was seen by the Leicestershire and by the British launches about her and with her, and at once she opened fire upon the dim forms. But, bereft of motive power, she could not use her battery to advantage, and though it was thought that one of the destroyers disappeared in the water, the others sped up the estuary, towards the British fleet.

Warned by wireless telegraphy that destroyers had been sighted, the British crews were on the qui vive. There was not time at this eleventh hour to weigh and put out to sea; the only possible course was to meet the attack at anchorage. The fleet was anchored off Rosyth, the battleships in two lines ahead, headed by the flagships Vanguard and Captain. The Vanguard and Captain, the leading ships in the starboard and port lines respectively, were just abreast of the Beamer Rock and Port Edgar. The seven armoured cruisers were moored in the St. Margaret’s Hope Anchorage. To torpedo craft coming from the sea and passing under the Forth Bridge, the fleet thus offered a narrow front, and comparatively few of its guns would bear.

About 2.30 a.m. on Sunday morning, the lookout of the Vanguard detected white foam, as from the bows of a destroyer, just under Battery Point; a few seconds later, the same sign was seen to the south of Inchgarvie, and as the bugles sounded and the 12-in. guns in the three forward turrets of the British flagship opened, and the searchlights played their steady glare upon the dark waters just under the Forth Bridge, the forms of destroyers or torpedo boats fast approaching were unmistakably seen.

In a moment the air trembled with the concussion of heavy guns; the quick-firers of the fleet opened a terrific fire; and straight at the battleships came eighteen German destroyers and large torpedo boats, keeping perfect station, at impetuous speed. The sea boiled about them; the night seemed ablaze with the flashing of the great guns and the brilliant flame of exploding shells. Now one destroyer careened and disappeared; now another flew into splinters, as the gunners sent home their huge projectiles. Above all the din and tumult could be heard the rapid hammering of the pom-poms, as they beat from the bridges with their steady stream of projectiles upon the approaching craft.

Four destroyers went to the bottom in that furious onrush; ten entered the British lines, and passed down them with the great ships on either side, not more than 200 yards away, and every gun depressed as much as it could be, vomiting flame and steel upon the enemy; the others turned back. The thud of torpedo firing followed; but the boats amid that tempest of projectiles, with the blinding glare of the searchlights in their gunners’ eyes, aimed uncertainly. Clear and unforgettable the figures of officers and men stood out of the blackness, as the searchlights caught the boats. Some could be seen heaving heavy weights overboard; others were busy at the torpedo tubes; but in the blaze of light the pom-poms mowed them down, and tore the upper works of the destroyers to flinders. Funnels were cut off and vanished into space; a conning-tower was blown visibly away by a 12-in. shell which caught it fairly, and as the smitten boat sank there was a series of terrific explosions.

Fifth ship in the starboard British line from the Vanguard lay the great battleship Indefatigable, after the four “Dreadnoughts” one of the four powerful units in the fleet. Four torpedoes were fired at her by the German destroyers; three of the four missed her, two of them only by a hair’s breadth, but the fourth cut through the steel net and caught her fairly abreast of the port engine-room, about the level of the platform deck. The Germans were using their very powerful 17.7-in. Schwartzkopf torpedo, fitted with net-cutters, and carrying a charge of 265 lb. of gun-cotton, the heaviest employed in any navy, and nearly a hundred pounds heavier than that of the largest British torpedo.

The effect of the explosion was terrific. Though the Indefatigable had been specially constructed to resist torpedo attack, her bulkheads were not designed to withstand so great a mass of explosive, and the torpedo breached the plating of the wing compartments, the wing passage, and the coal-bunker, which lay immediately behind it. The whole structure of the ship was shaken and much injured in the neighbourhood of the explosion, and water began to pour through the shattered bulkheads into the port engine-room.

The pumps got to work, but could not keep the inrush down; the ship rapidly listed to the port side, and though “out collision mat” was ordered at once, and a mat got over the huge, gaping hole in the battleship’s side, the water continued to gain. Slipping her anchors, at the order of the Admiral, the Indefatigable proceeded a few hundred yards with her starboard screw to the shelving, sandy beach of Society Bank, where she dropped aground. Had the harbour works at Rosyth been complete, the value of them to the nation at this moment would have been inestimable, for there would have been plenty of time to get her into the dock which was under construction there. But in the desire to effect apparent economies the works since 1905 had been languidly pushed.

The calamities of the British fleet did not end with the torpedoing of the Indefatigable. A few seconds later some object drifting in the water, probably a mine – though in the confusion it was impossible to say what exactly happened – struck the Resistance just forward of the fore barbette. It must have drifted down inside the torpedo nets, between the hull and the network. There was an explosion of terrific violence, which rent a great breach in the side of the ship near the starboard fore torpedo tube, caused an irresistible inrush of water, and compelled her captain also to slip his anchors and beach his ship.

Two of the British battle squadron were out of action in the space of less than five minutes from the opening of fire.

Already the shattered remnants of the German torpedo flotilla were retiring; a single boat was steaming off as fast as she had come, but astern of her four wrecks lay in the midst of the British fleet devoid of motive power, mere helpless targets for the guns.

As they floated in the glare of the searchlights with the water sputtering about them, in the hail of projectiles, first one and then another, and finally all four, raised the white flag. Four German boats had surrendered; four more had been seen to sink in the midst of the fleet; one was limping slowly off under a rain of shells from the smaller guns of the Vanguard.

The British cruiser Londonderry was ordered to slip and give chase to her, and steamed off in pursuit down the Forth. A caution to “beware of mines” was flashed by the Admiral, and was needed. The German destroyers must have carried with them, and thrown overboard in their approach, a large number of these deadly agents, which were floating in all directions, greatly hampering the Londonderry in her chase.

But with the help of her searchlights she picked her way past some half-dozen mines which were seen on the surface, and she was so fortunate as not to strike any of those which had been anchored in the channel. Gathering speed, she overhauled the damaged destroyer. The crew could offer little resistance to the guns of a powerful cruiser.

A few shots from the three-pounders and a single shell from one of the Londonderry’s 7.5’s did the work. The German torpedo boat began to sink by the stern; her engines stopped; her rudder was driven by the explosion of the big projectile over to starboard, and the impulse of the speed at which she was travelling brought her head round towards the British vessel. The boat was almost flush with the water as one of her crew raised the white flag, and the fifth German boat surrendered.

The prisoners were rescued from the water with shaken nerves and quaking limbs, as men who had passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, who had endured the hail of shells and faced the danger of drowning.

So soon as the survivors of that most daring and gallant attack had been recovered from the water, and possession had been taken of the battered hulls in which they had made their onset, the Admiral ordered his torpedo launches to drag the channel for mines.

And while the dragging was proceeding, the prisoners were taken on board the flagship and interrogated. They would disclose little other than the fact that, according to them, war had been already declared. The ship which had attacked the Leicestershire, they said, was a tramp fitted for mine-laying and equipped with three torpedo tubes. Half of them were more or less seriously wounded; all admitted that the slaughter on board their boats caused by the British fire had been terrific. One lieutenant stated that all the men at one of his torpedo tubes had been mown down twice by the hail of small shells from the pom-poms, while a 12-in. shell which had hit the stern of his boat had blown it completely away. Yet the remnant of the boat had still floated.

Lord Ebbfleet surveyed the scene with rueful eyes. The Indefatigable and Resistance, two of his powerful battleships, were out of action, and could take no more part in operations for weeks. The Leicestershire was in the same plight. From sixteen battleships his force had fallen to fourteen; his armoured cruiser squadron was reduced from eight ships to seven. To remain in the anchorage without destroyers and torpedo boats to keep a lookout would be to court further torpedo attacks, and perhaps the even more insidious danger from German submarines, and might well imperil the safety of the British reserve ships. Only one course remained – to weigh and proceed to sea, endeavouring to pass south to meet the reserve ships.

Efforts to communicate his intention to the Admiralty failed. The roar of firing had awakened Leith and Edinburgh; people were pouring into the streets to know what this strange and sudden commotion meant, and what was the cause of the storm.

The windows at Queensferry had been shattered; the place was shaken as by a great earthquake. The three heavy bursts of firing, the continuous disquieting flashes of the searchlights, and the great hull of the Leicestershire ashore off Leith, indicated that something untoward had befallen the fleet.

For a moment it was thought that the Admiral had fallen to manœuvres at a most unseasonable hour, or that some accident had occurred on board the injured cruiser. Then suddenly the truth dawned upon the people. The crowd ashore, constantly increasing, as it gazed in alarm towards the anchorage, realised that war had begun, and that for the first time since the Dutch sailed up the Medway, more than two hundred years before, the sanctity of a British anchorage had been invaded by an enemy.

The coastguardsmen, who had been placed under the control of the civil authorities as the result of one of the numerous reforms effected in the interests of economy, had for the most part forgotten the art of quick signalling or quick reading of naval signals, else they might have interpreted to the crowd the history of that night, as it was flashed to the wireless station at Rosyth, for transmission to London.