Читать книгу Down Under with the Prince - Everard Cotes - Страница 3

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One March morning of last year, an ordinary train moved out of Waterloo Station for Portsmouth, and among the ordinary people it carried were at least two or three who were going further. They sat together and smoked, and exchanged experiences and speculations. As the train slowed down at Portsmouth Harbour they looked from the carriage windows and saw the fighting tops of a big battle-cruiser lifted grey against the sky above the houses of the foreshore, and one said to another "There she is."

There she was, the Renown, in alongside, waiting to sail with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to Australasia. It was the day before and already the function was in the quickened air. Scraps of coloured bunting fluttered and flew on the wharf sheds. Dockyard officials gave orders with more responsibility than ever immediately under their caps. The travellers from Waterloo went up the gangway to the quarter-deck, successfully passed the officer of the watch, and found their quarters. They were the journalists of the tour, there on behalf of the people at home, that multitudinous "public" which, for lack of accommodation on the Renown, must see the Prince's tour in the convex mirror of the daily press.

Next day the function flowered. The Royal train rolled in. The red carpet was spread and the Chief Passenger went up the gangway, with every sign and circumstance by which his country could mark the occasion of his going.

Gently the grey turrets slid out from the crowded wharf into the leaden expanse of harbour. "Auld Lang Syne" rang into the chill wind that rocked the rowing-boats lining the fairway. Ant-like figures swarmed into the tall rigging of Nelson's flagship, which lay, bedecked all over, her old oak sides stiff in checkered squares of black and white, while her ancient muzzle-loaders banged off a smoky salvo—the senior ship of the British Navy wishing Godspeed to her fighting junior on Royal Service starting. The hundred and twenty thousand horse-power steam turbines of the battle-cruiser quickened their rhythmic throb. The still shouting crowds ashore faded to dark stains on the Southsea beach. The red and gold of the Royal standard fluttered down from the main, and the Renown put out to sea, starting on this pleasant commission with the same certitude and the same cheeriness, the same discipline and the same lightness of heart, the same directness of purpose, and above all things the same absence of fuss, with which she had often gone upon errands perilous. The voyage, so much anticipated and chronicled, had begun, and the convincing thing was that it was going to be, from the Renown's point of view, precisely like other voyages. That impression came with the first turn of the propeller and remained, it may be said at once, until the last. The circumstance and ceremonial of the departure, the pomp of Royalty and the glitter of an Imperial mission had all merged, before the sun set in the cloud-bank of that March afternoon, in the sense of function and routine, detached and disregarding, that controls life in His Majesty's ships at sea.

The Renown is the most recent, the fastest, and the best armed battle-cruiser in the world. She received at her christening the proud traditions, extending over three hundred years, of the battles of the British Navy, having had no less than seven fighting predecessors of the same name, beginning with the gallant little wooden frigate Renommée, captured in 1653 from the French and transferred to the British squadrons where she became the first of the famous Renowns. The present vessel was built as lately as 1916, when British need was great. She remains a record of what those strenuous times could do.

For all her thirty-two thousand tons and gigantic armament of mammoth guns this great battle-cruiser slides through the water with the smoothness of the otter. She moved steadily at eighteen knots an hour from the time she left Portsmouth, a pace which, for this last word in fighting machines, is mere half-speed, though it is as fast as most suburban trains can travel. She is so big that surprisingly little motion is noticeable at sea, though waves wash freely over forecastle and quarter-deck, contracting the space available for the exercise and training of the large fighting crew she carries. This intimacy with the ocean is an impression acquired early and vividly by the civilian on board a fighting ship. A voyage on a big liner is a quite super-marine experience by comparison, with a picturesque and phosphorescent basis some distance below a sleepy deck-chair, and not necessarily observed at all. A battleship penetrates rather than sails the sea, and takes very little interest in keeping any part of herself dry. It is impossible to ignore the ocean on such a vessel. The Renown was no less amphibian than others of her class. The accommodation contrived for the Prince was itself liable to ruthless visitation, and even the cabin on the superstructure, which held the chroniclers of his Odyssey, and was the highest inhabited spot beneath the bridge, occasionally took considerably more than enough water to dilute the ink.

Naturally there was nothing in her mission to interfere with the Renown's ordinary routine at sea. Training, gun-drill and inspections went on as usual and it was impossible not to be penetrated with the fact that these things were admirably done. For the passengers the day began with breakfast in the ward-room at eight. Soon after nine the whole ship's company assembled in divisions, in different parts of the vessel. Kits were inspected and the day's duty commenced. One realized, as one watched the proceedings, how completely the war has abolished the old navy methods of stiffness and pipeclay. The relations between officers and men are of the pleasantest and most human character. Nobody is asked to do anything not of definite importance to the welfare of the ship, or to the training and the making fit of the men. The navigation, the keeping of the watches, the working of the complicated machinery by which the vessel is driven, steered and lighted, the handling of the gigantic guns, and the running of such supplementary services as those of supply and wireless, proceed upon simple matter-of-fact business principles, under the direction of the Captain, who controls the organization as a whole. Immediately under the Captain are the Navigation Commander, the Administration Commander, the Engineer Commander, the Gunnery Lieutenant-Commander, the Torpedo Lieutenant-Commander, the Principal Medical Officer, and the Paymaster, each an expert in the particular branch he is responsible for. Unquestionably an expert too is the ship's parson who, himself belonging to the upper deck, is related, by his duties, so closely to the lower, as to afford a personal link between the two, which no less sympathetic or more official intermediary could supply. Each of the departments I have named is manned by its own staff of officers and men, who are all trained to carry out definite functions with cheerfulness, confidence and goodwill. On the Renown the same healthy spirit was to be found in every one aboard, from the Flag-Lieutenant down to the humblest stoker. It is an early inoculation of Osborne and Exmouth and apparently expands in the system with promotion.

At general divisions on Sundays, the entire ship's company assembled for inspection on the decks, each officer at the head of his respective contingent. A finer sight than these divisions it would be impossible to find, the men well-set-up, and bearing decorations won in every naval engagement during the war, from Zeebrugge to the Falkland Islands, and from the Dardanelles to Jutland, wearing too in many cases the red triple stripe upon the sleeve which tells of fifteen years of good service under the White Ensign.

A battle-cruiser has many aspects. It is a fortress with parade grounds and cricket pitches, a monastery with divagations in port, a school of many things besides arithmetic, and a community that could teach social law to Mr. Hyndman. It is above all from this point of view the home, the castle and the club of the officers and men who inhabit it, and the centre of these significances is the ward-room. The Renown's had an ante-room which enshrined the files, not greatly disturbed, of a few newspapers, and was a most comfortable smoking-room, but it was about the tables and chairs, the Mess President's mallet and the unwearied piano of the ward-room itself that the hoariest traditions of His Majesty's Navy most conspicuously flourished and the atmospheric essence of the Senior Service most happily clung.

There is a variety of the game of Patience played with cards called "Knock." It was plainly invented, in a moment of drowsy leave, by a sub-lieutenant to whom had arrived the felicity of ordering, by a stroke upon the table, Commander X or Lieutenant-Commander Y to "pass the wine" in penalty for having read an urgent signal from the bridge and omitted to excuse himself to him, the said Sub-Lieutenant, and Mess President for the week, though youngest officer present. Various were the offences thus visited across the field of the repast, which had a goal at each end, kept, so to speak, by the Chaplain, with his grace before and after meat. In that consecrated interval no lady's name may be pronounced, and nothing of any sort may be perused. The Spell with which the ward-room guards its daily history at once paralyses the pen. There is really no way of learning much about these things except by entering the Navy or persuading a battle-cruiser to give you a berth in her, opportunities which occur but seldom to any of us. The relaxations of that genial and athletic place form a tempting theme, but it is better for the publishers that a modest number of these volumes should reach the libraries than that a whole edition should be sunk at sea.

All this announced and admitted however, this was the voyage to Australasia of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and the Renown, at least in the public eye, must be subordinated to her duty.

The Prince was to be met quite often, going about the ship, like anybody else, with always an unaffected word and pleasant smile for those he ran up against. He did a good deal of reading and other work in his state-room in the morning, but in the afternoon he often shared in the recreations of the officers, playing squash racquets in a small court that had been rigged up upon the superstructure, shooting at clay discs thrown out from the ship's side by means of a spring trap, or running and doing Swedish exercises on the poop. H.R.H. ordinarily messed with the Captain and the members of the Royal Staff, in the cuddy, which had been enlarged and pleasantly decorated in ivory and green for the purpose; but he was also an honorary member of the ward-room and gun-room messes and sometimes dined with one or other of them. On other nights he often had officers or passengers to dine with himself and his staff, in the simplest and most informal way, his guests coming away with the pleasantest impressions of unpretentious good fellowship and cheery company. On these occasions the Prince himself proposed the health of the King, and about this ceremony, simply and modestly as it was observed, hung an odd little Imperial thrill. Republics are worthy forms of Government, but they impose upon no man the duty of toasting his own father. It was a gesture that somehow placed the youthful host momentarily apart—one imagines his having to reconquer the effect of it as often as he makes it.

The Prince is keen upon naval affairs and soon knew the ship from one end to the other. He often accompanied the Captain on inspections and took a hand in all sorts of duties, down to those of the oil furnaces. He sampled the men's food, tasted their grog and would often have a cheery chat with them. There was no attempt to sequester the Chief Passenger. He shared and contributed to the life of the ship.