The difference between the work of the Shipping Board of the Allied Naval Armistice Commission and that of the other sub-commissions was well defined by one of its members when he facetiously described it as "the only branch of the business that pays dividends." The work of the sub-commissions for the inspection of warships, seaplane and airship stations and forts, in that it was for the purpose of seeing that certain disarmament or demolition had been carried out, was largely destructive; that of the Shipping Board, on the other hand, which had as its end the return to the Allies of all of their merchant ships interned in German harbours, was constructive. The Shipping Board began to "pay dividends" (in the form of steamers dispatched for home ports) almost from the day of the arrival of the Hercules in Wilhelmshaven, and these continued steadily until the last of the interned ships surviving—a number had, unfortunately, been lost in mine-sweeping and other dangerous work in which the Germans had employed them—had found its way At the outbreak of the war there were ninety-six Allied vessels in German harbours, and all of these were promptly placed under embargo. Of these, eighty were British, fourteen Belgian, and two French. As all of the French and Belgian ships were small craft, their tonnage was practically negligible. Besides these embargoed ships, the Allied Commission had been directed to demand and arrange for the return of the thirty-one—twenty-one British, eight Belgian, one American, and one Brazilian—Allied ships which had been condemned in German Prize Courts since the outbreak of the war. Ten of these, it was subsequently learned when the question came up in conference, had been sunk, the Germans having made a practice of using Allied ships in their hands for all work involving great risk. The question of the return of mercantile tonnage was taken up in the course of the first conference in the Hercules at Kiel. Admiral Goette was requested to produce a complete list of all Allied and American ships lying at the time in German ports, including all mercantile vessels which had been condemned in Prize Courts. This In respect to the ships considered unseaworthy, Admiral Goette was requested to arrange for all machinery, boilers, tanks, and spaces to be opened up, and the equipment made ready for inspection by the Sub-Commission for Shipping. Following this inspection, immediate facilities for dry docking and the carrying out of such repairs as the Sub-Commission considered necessary to prepare each vessel for sea were to be provided. Indeed, protests, as preliminaries to acquiescence, formed the major part of the German notes on the shipping question, as will be seen from the following extracts. "I herewith bring officially to your notice," the President of the German Sub-Commission wrote after the first conference, The same formula, it will be observed, was followed in connection with each subject under consideration. There was first the protest, then an intimation that the wish of the Allies should be carried out in spite of the fact there was no obligation to do so, and finally the invariable "patting of themselves on the back" on the part of the Germans for the "loyalty of spirit" thus displayed. There was a subtle appeal to British sportsmanship in this paragraph from one of the communications of the President of the German Shipping Commission. "I again request you to signify your approval that the German embargo steamer, Marie (ex Dave Hill), now lying in Batavia, in recognition of her signal services during the war, both from the military point of view and seamanship, should be permitted first to put in with her crew to a German port; the ship will then, after handing over her German fittings, be delivered as quickly as arranged in the Tyne." It was not stated what the "signal services" of the Marie had been in the war, nor for whom they had been performed; but I am under the impression she was the ship which was credited with the very fine exploit of running the British blockade Owing to the difficulty in securing crews to take the ships to the Tyne, Admiral Goette requested that the Allied Commission should furnish in advance a guarantee of safety for those who could be induced to make the voyage. Admiral Browning's reply was a counter-demand for a guarantee of safety for the parties landing from the Hercules to carry out their inspections of German ships and air stations. "The word of my Commission is given here and now," he said, "in the presence of many witnesses, for the security of any German subject who may, in the course of the execution of the armistice, land in Great Britain. It is not customary to give written assurances regarding the honourable observation of the law of nations, but in the case of Germany we are obliged to ask for guarantees in writing because of the description which has been furnished us of the state of the country. We are obliged to ask before we Admiral Goette conceded this demand, and then went on to press his own in a statement highly illuminative of the abject position the German naval authorities found themselves in their relations with both the men of the warships and merchant sailors. "I wish to explain," he said, "that the request which we make is not to be construed into an expression of suspicion or distrust. It is merely in the interests of the men themselves, as we experienced in the case of the personnel of the submarines taken to English ports that the men were obviously under great apprehension that something might happen to them on coming into English parts. The guarantee is merely wanted as something definite to show the crews, as we have great difficulty in getting the men to believe us. That is why we also suggest that the German Commission should receive the minutes of the conference, as they would be quite enough for our purpose in order to be able to show the men in print that the declaration has been actually made." The mutual guarantees were subsequently given in writing as follows:—
Guarantees having been provided, the following instructions were handed to the German Commission regarding the carrying out of inspections under the terms of the armistice:— 1. The Allied Naval Commission shall be received on board each mercantile vessel to be inspected by officers of approximately equivalent rank and conducted through the vessel, visiting such places and compartments as the Allied Commission may wish. 2. All compartments are to be adequately lighted. 3. All vessels shall be cleared of men before and during the inspection, with the exception of those necessary to open up machinery, doors, hatches, etc. The Allied inspection parties were instructed as follows:— (a) To satisfy themselves that all Allied vessels are bunkered, ballasted, and sufficiently manned for the passage to the Tyne, in the case of British and Belgian vessels, and to Dunkerque, in the case of French vessels. (b) To ensure that the necessary repairs and dry docking of unseaworthy ships are carried out by the German authorities. (c) To ascertain that sufficient deck and engine stores are provided for the passage. (d) That all ships' papers, including Log Book and Register, confiscated on internment are returned. (e) That ammunition and explosives are landed from the vessels which have been used for war purposes. The arrival of the lists of embargo and prize ships showed them to be scattered about among a large number of ports on both the North Sea and the Baltic. As lack of time precluded the possibility of visiting Danzig or any other Baltic ports east of Kiel, it was arranged that all seaworthy ships in these ports should proceed to Kiel for inspection. After completing the inspection of Admiral Goette's report at the first conference respecting conditions at Hamburg and the vicinity had made it appear probable that a visit to the Elbe would be entirely out of the question, and even after guarantees of safety had arrived it still seemed that venturing there would be attended by uncertainty if not danger. "In the Elbe," the President of the German Commission had said, "power is entirely in the hands of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council, and Naval Officers have no authority or influence whatever. One of the chief supports of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council is the light cruiser Augsburg. There are also some torpedo-boats, mine-sweeping vessels and other small craft there which should be disarmed; but officers at Wilhelmshaven have no power to see to it, nor can they give any definite information as to what is there.... The Elbe is It is by no means improbable that Admiral Goette was quite sincere in this summary of conditions on the Elbe; indeed, so far as the lack of authority on the part of Naval Officers was concerned, it was an accurate statement of the case. But in assuming that this would necessarily make it impossible for the Allied Shipping Board to carry out their work he proved quite wrong. Contemptuous as they were of their ex-officers, the men, far from displaying any desire to interfere with the work of the Commission, proved themselves no less willing than their mates in Wilhelmshaven to help in any way they could. The Workmen's and Soldiers' Council took over the protection of the party from the moment of its arrival, and, save for a single incident which could hardly have been classed as "preventable," nothing of an untoward nature occurred in the course of the visit. IN THE ELBE, HAMBURG RAILROAD STATION AT HAMBURG At Hamburg the party put up at the Hotel Atlantic, The rooms were large and furnished with all their pre-war luxuriousness. The linen was abundant and of fine quality. The steam heaters had to be turned off to prevent the rooms becoming overheated. The response from the hot-water taps was immediate. The brass fittings were still in place, and there were no signs of ersatz towels, sheets, or even lace curtains. Soap was the only thing missing, but that difficulty was common to all Germany. Food (even on one of the days which was meatless) was both abundant and wholesome—"well up to the average in a first-class English hotel," as one of the members put it. There was an ample and varied wine list to order from, including—besides many Rhine and Hungarian brands—several French and Italian brandies and liqueurs. There was some discussion The inspection of the twenty-four British ships in the Elbe revealed the fact that it had been the German practice to convert the best of the embargo steamers into mine-layers, net-layers, seaplane carriers, and other types of war auxiliaries. These had been kept in the best of condition, and, allowing for the hard service they had been engaged in, were in practically as good shape as when first seized. The second-grade steamers and sailing vessels had merely been laid up and left to go to rack and ruin. Stripped of everything in the way of metal or gear that was likely to prove of use elsewhere, unpainted, uncared-for and covered with four-and-a-half years' accumulation of rust and filth, they presented a sorry sight. Although yielding little in the way of There was one very interesting discovery made in connection with the inspection of these laid-up ships in the Elbe. A number of them were found to have been filled with concrete, with the evident intention of using them as block ships. Naturally, no explanation of what had been in the wind to prompt this action was volunteered, but the fact that the work had been done at a comparatively recent date pointed strongly to the probability that the Germans, stung to the quick by the blocking of Zeebrugge and Ostend, were preparing a reply, most likely against the entrance to the Tyne. One has only to look at the chart to understand that the latter is a readily "blockable" estuary—to any adequately equipped force able to reach the proper point. Needless to say, such a contingency was not unprovided against, and it would have been a near-miracle if even the most dare-devil leadership could have brought such a force halfway across the North Sea. Whether the armistice put an end to uncompleted preparations, or whether the plan was given up in despair before that time (perhaps through a failure to secure the necessary force of volunteers), there was nothing Fortunately, the concrete had been put into these ships in the form of blocks instead of being poured, so that the clearing of their holds was not a serious matter. The drives in motor-cars through the streets of Hamburg revealed the same well-dressed, well-fed crowds which had been so much in evidence in Wilhelmshaven, and not even in the docks or shipyards were there any signs of the starvation we had been assured prevailed in all the great industrial centres. The people were mildly curious but not in the least unfriendly. The only occasion on which anything unpleasant occurred was when a navvy, splashed by the mud from one of the leading cars, petulantly slammed his shovel through the glass of the next in line. The nerves and tempers of the three French shipping commissioners were the only things beside the glass which suffered seriously as a consequence of this contretemps. The Workmen's and Soldiers' guards promptly asserted their authority by arresting the captious culprit, profuse apologies for the indignity were offered by the German officers conducting the party at the time, and later the President of their Shipping Commission called on Commodore There was a refreshing naÏvetÉ in the explanation offered by one of the German officers of the reason for this little incident. "It was all the fault of the chauffeur," he said. "The man used to drive for Admiral X—— of the General Staff, and he forgot that he must no longer let his car throw mud on the street workmen." The German naval officer who received the Allied party on one of the British merchantmen was found in a state of considerable excitement. He had been fired at from the darkness the night before, he said, and missed by a hair. Interpreting this as a warning against wearing his naval uniform ashore, he had dressed in civil attire that morning, brought his uniform along in a parcel, and changed into it on board. "You'd pity any one but a Hun for having to do a thing like that," was the dry comment of one of the British members of the party when this tale of woe was translated to him. An instance of the unquenchable optimism of the German industrialist regarding the eagerly awaited future when the seas and the markets of the world are again open to him was furnished in the course of a visit to the great Blohm and Voss yards, which occupy about the same position "It is quite true the ship will be in a state to make the voyage to the Tyne by the time you say," replied Herr M——, the Director who was showing the party round, "but it will take a number of days longer to put it in the same state it was when placed under embargo. It would be a short-sighted policy on our part to send a badly repaired ship out of our yards at the present time, for it would be certain to react seriously in the matter of future orders. You must bear in mind, sir, that we have a world-wide reputation for thoroughness to maintain." He appeared far from reassured when he was told that the condition he sent the British ships home in would have no effect whatever upon his future business with the rest of the world; moreover, he must have found that the longer he pondered that plain statement the less comfort there was to be extracted from it. It is astonishing how few Germans appear to realize that there are other The inspection of the eight interned vessels at Bremerhaven brought out nothing of more than routine interest, but the visit to the great home port of the North German Lloyd on the Weser, just as had the one to that of the Hamburg-Amerika Line on the Elbe, offered an incomparable opportunity to see at first hand the staggering blow which the war had dealt to German shipping and—through shipping—to German foreign trade. Although the fact that I had been attached for the moment to the sub-commissions inspecting seaplane and Zeppelin stations prevented my visiting Hamburg and Bremerhaven with the Shipping Board, an illuminating glimpse of the latter was offered me during the passage of the Weser in the course of the journey to Nordholz. Although the day was overcast and there was some mistiness on the water, one could still see far enough up and down stream during the passage to note the effects of the complete stagnation which had settled from the outbreak of the war upon this second of Germany's great maritime ports. The name Bremerhaven had appeared in raised gilt letters across the stern of every one The lines of the Norddeutscher-Lloyd were stretched like the tentacles of an octopus over the Herr Heiniken was a hard-headed, clear-seeing man, and one shudders to think how much truth there was in the words quoted. But the slower, more round-about "trade route" to world-power That river full of rotting ships was more than quiet—it was dead. The anchorage of the interned High Sea Fleet, off the inner entrance to Gutter Sound in Scapa Flow, was the first cemetery I had seen of the ships of the power whose ruler had proclaimed that its future was upon the sea. Bremerhaven was another graveyard of that ambient ambition. And the rusting hulks of the remains of the "N.D.L." fleet was not all that The whole atmosphere of the stagnant waterfront was brooding and gloomy, and as we drew near to the landing I was conscious of a pronounced depression, for no man who loves the sea can remain unmoved at the sight of neglected ships. To this mood the cheery chatter of a young American Ensign, who had just sauntered out on deck after warming his toes at the charcoal "There's a lot of funny things chalked up on the walls around the docks," he said, running his eyes over the signs along the front, "but the one word that is written over the whole darn layout is 'Ichabod.' 'N.D.L.' is the only other to run 'one-two-three' with it. By the look of things I take it that stands for 'No D——m Luck.'" |