Veterans of the Dardanelles—“The range of them”—The Falkland affair—The “double bluff” on von Spee—The intercepted British wireless—Sturdee’s trap—Story book of strategy—The Germans go down with their colours flying—Only a disordered wardroom—The chaplain’s anecdote—All a lark for the midshipman—Souvenirs of action.

What Englishman, let alone an American, knows the names of even all the British Dreadnoughts? With a few exceptions, the units of the Grand Fleet seem anonymous. The Warspite was quite unknown to the fame which her sister ship the Queen Elizabeth had won. For “Lizzie” was back in the fold from the Dardanelles; and so was the Inflexible, flagship of the battle of the Falkland Islands. Of all the ships which Sir John Jellicoe had sent away on special missions, the Inflexible had had the grandest Odyssey. She, too, had been at the Dardanelles.

The Queen Elizabeth was disappointing so far as wounds went. She had been so much in the public eye that one expected to find her badly battered, and she had suffered little, indeed, for the amount of sport she had had in tossing her fifteen-inch shells across the Gallipoli peninsula into the Turkish batteries and the amount of risk she had run from Turkish mines. Some of these monster shells contained only eleven thousand shrapnel bullets. A strange business for a fifteen-inch naval gun to be firing shrapnel. A year ago no one could have imagined that one day the most powerful British ship, built with the single thought of overwhelming an enemy’s Dreadnought, would ever be trying to force the Dardanelles.

The trouble was that she could not fire an army corps ashore along with her shells to take possession of any batteries she put out of action. She had some grand target practice; she escaped the mines; she kept out of reach of the German shells, and returned to report to Sir John with just enough scars to give zest to the recollection of her extraordinary adventure. All the fleet was relieved to see her back in her proper place. It is not the business of super-Dreadnoughts to be steaming around mine-fields, but to be surrounded by destroyers and light cruisers and submarines safeguarding her giant guns which are depressed and elevated as easily as if they were drum-sticks. One had an abrasion, a tracery of dents.

“That was from a Turkish shell,” said an officer. “And you are standing where a shell hit.”

One looked down to see an irregular outline of fresh planking.

“An accident when we did not happen to be out of their reach. We had the range of them,” he added.

“The range of them” is a great phrase. Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee used it in speaking of the battle of the Falkland Islands. “The range of them” seems a sure prescription for victory. Nothing in all the history of the war appeals to me as quite so smooth a bit of tactics as the Falkland affair. It was so smooth that it was velvety; and it is worth telling again, as I understand it. Sir Frederick is another young admiral. Otherwise, how could the British navy have entrusted him with so important a task? He is a different type from Beatty, who in an army one judges might have been in the cavalry. Along with the peculiar charm and alertness which we associate with sailors—they imbibe it from the salt air and from meeting all kinds of weather and all kinds of men, I think—he has the quality of the scholar, with a suspicion of merriness in his eye.

He was Chief of Staff at the Admiralty in the early stages of the war, which means, I take it, that he assisted in planning the moves on the chessboard. It fell to him to act; to apply the strategy and tactics which he planned for others at sea while he sat at a desk. It was his wit against von Spee’s, who was not deficient in this respect. If he had been he might not have steamed into the trap. The trouble was that von Spee had some wit, but not enough. It would have been better for him if he had been as guileless as a parson.

Sir Frederick is so gentle-mannered that one would never suspect him of a “double bluff,” which was what he played on von Spee. After von Spee’s victory over Cradock, Sturdee slipped across to the South Atlantic, without any one knowing that he had gone, with a squadron strong enough to do unto von Spee what von Spee had done unto Cradock.

But before you wing your bird you must flush him. The thing was to find von Spee and force him to give battle; for the South Atlantic is broad and von Spee, it is supposed, was in an Emden mood and bent on reaching harbour in German Southwest Africa, whence he could sally out to destroy British shipping on the Cape route. When he intercepted a British wireless message—Sturdee had left off the sender’s name and location—telling the plodding old Canopus seeking home or assistance before von Spee overtook her, that she would be perfectly safe in the harbour at Port William, as guns had been erected for her protection, von Spee guessed that this was a bluff, and rightly. But it was only Bluff Number One. He steamed to the Falklands with a view to finishing off the old Canopus on the way across to Africa. There he fell foul of Bluff Number Two. Sturdee did not have to seek him; he came to Sturdee.

There was no convenient Dogger Bank fog in that latitude to cover his flight. Sturdee had the speed of von Spee and he had to fight. It was the one bit of strategy of the war which is like that of the story books and worked out as the strategy always does in proper story books. Practically the twelve-inch guns of the Inflexible and the Invincible had only to keep their distance and hang on to the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau in order to do the trick. Light-weights or middle-weights have no business trafficking with heavy-weights in naval warfare.

“Von Spee made a brave fight,” said Sir Frederick, “but we kept him at a distance that suited us, without letting him get out of range.”

He had had the fortune to prove an established principle in action. It was all in the course of duty, which is the way that all the officers and all the men look at their work. Only a few ships have had a chance to fight and these are emblazoned on the public memory. But they did no better and no worse, probably, than the others would have done. If the public singles out ships, the navy does not. Whatever is done and whoever does it, why, it is to the credit of the family, according to the spirit of service that promotes uniformity of efficiency. Leaders and ships which have won renown are resolved into the whole in that harbour where the fleet is the thing; and the good opinion they most desire is that of their fellows. If they have that, they will earn the public’s when the test comes.

Belonging to the class of the first of battle-cruisers is the Inflexible, which received a few taps in the Falklands and a blow that was nearly the death of her in the Dardanelles. Tribute enough for its courage—the tribute of a chivalrous enemy—von Spee’s squadron receives from the officers and men of the Inflexible, who saw them go down into the sea tinged with sunset red with their colours still flying. Then in the sunset red the British saved as many of those afloat as they could.

Those dripping German officers who had seen one of their battered turrets carried away bodily into the sea by a British twelve-inch shell, who had endured a fury of concussions and destruction, with steel missiles cracking steel structures into fragments, came on board the Inflexible looking for signs of some blows delivered in return for the crushing blows that had beaten their ships into the sea and saw none until they were invited into the wardroom, which was in chaos—and then they smiled.

At least, they had sent one shell home. The sight was sweet to them, so sweet that, in respect to the feeling of the vanquished, the victor held silence with a knightly consideration. But where had the shell entered? There was no sign of any hole. Then they learned that the fire of the guns of the starboard turret midships over the wardroom, which was on the port side, had deposited a great many things on the floor which did not belong there; and their expression changed. Even this comfort was taken from them. “We had the range of you!” the British explained.

The chaplain of the Inflexible was bound to have an anecdote. I don’t know why, except that a chaplain’s is not a fighting part and he may look on. His place was down behind the armour with the doctor, waiting for wounded. He stood in his particular steel cave listening to the tremendous blasts of her guns which shook the Inflexible’s frame, and still no wounded arrived. Then he ran up a ladder to the deck and had a look around and saw the little points of the German ships with the shells sweeping toward them and the smoke of explosions which burst on board them. It was not the British who needed his prayers that day, but the Germans.

Perhaps the spirit of the Inflexible’s story was best given by a midshipman with the down still on his cheek. Considering how young the British take their officer-beginners to sea, the admirals are not young, at least, in point of sea service. He got more out of the action than his elders; his impressions of the long cruises and the actions had the vividness of boyhood. Down in one of the caves, doing his part as the shells were sent up to feed the thundering guns above, the whispered news of the progress of the battle was passed on at intervals till, finally, the guns were silent. Then he hurried on deck in the elation of victory, succeeded by the desire to save those whom they had fought. It had all been so simple; so like drill. You had only to go on shooting—that was all.

Yes, he had been lucky. From the Falklands to the Dardanelles, which was a more picturesque business than the battle. Any minute off the Straits you did not know but a submarine would have a try at you or you might bump into a mine. And the Inflexible did bump into one. She had two thousand tons of water on board. It was fast work to keep the remainder of the sea from coming in, too, and the same kind of dramatic experience as the Lion’s in reaching port. Yes, he had been very lucky. It was all a lark to that boy.

“It never occurs to midshipmen to be afraid of anything,” said one of the officers. “The more danger, the better they like it.”

In the wardroom was a piece of the mine or the torpedo, whichever it was, that struck the Inflexible; a strange, twisted, annealed bit of metal. Every ship which had been in action had some souvenir which the enemy had sent on board in anger and which was preserved with a collector’s enthusiasm.

The Inflexible seemed as good as ever she was. Such is the way of naval warfare. Either it is to the bottom of the sea or to dry docks and repairs. There is nothing half way. So it is well to take care that you have “the range of them.”