The Silent Watchers England's Navy during the Great War: What It Is, and What We Owe to It — Reading Notes

The Lieutenant of Marines watched the flashes, and as he read grinned capaciously. “It is some wag with a signal lantern,” said he. “It reads: Question—Daddy,—what—did—you—do—in—the—Great—War?”

“I wonder,” observed the Sub-Lieutenant, “what new answer the lower deck has found to that question. Before the battle their reply was: ‘I was kept doubling round the decks, sonny.’”

“There goes the signal again,” said the Pongo; “and here comes the answer.” He read it out slowly as it flashed word after word: “‘=I laid the guns true, sonny.=’”

“And a dashed good answer, too,” cried the Commander heartily.

“That would make a grand fleet signal before a general action,” remarked the Gunnery Lieutenant. “I don’t care much for Nelson’s Trafalgar signal. It was too high-flown and sentimental for the lower deck. It was aimed at the history books, rather than at old tarry-breeks of the fleet a hundred years ago. No—there could not be a better signal than just ‘Lay the Guns True’—carry out your orders precisely, intelligently, faultlessly. What do you say, my Hun of a classical volunteer?”

“It could not be bettered,” said Cæsar.

“I will make a note of it,” said the Gunnery Lieutenant, “against the day, when as a future Jellicoe, I myself shall lead a new Grand Fleet into action.”

A BAND OF BROTHERS “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”—_King Henry V._

My boyhood was spent in Devon, the land of Drake and the home of the Elizabethan Navy. A deep passion for the Sea Service is in my blood, though, owing to family circumstances, I was not able to indulge my earliest ambition to become myself one of the band of brothers who serve under the White Ensign. My elder brother lived and died afloat. Two of my sons, happier than their father, are privileged to play their parts in the great ships of the Fleets. So that, though not in the Service, I am of it, by ties of blood and by ties of the earliest association. Whenever I have sought to penetrate its mysteries and to interpret them to my fellow countrymen, my motive has never been that of mere idle curiosity.

The Royal Navy wields, and has always wielded, a great material force, but the secret of its strength lies not in the machines with which it has equipped itself in the various stages of its development. Vast and terrible as are the ships and the guns, they would be of little worth if their design and skilful employment were not inspired by that spiritual force, compounded of tradition, training, devotion and discipline, which I call the Soul of the Navy. In the design of its weapons, in its mastery of their use, above all in its consummate seamanship, the Royal Navy has in all ages surpassed its opponents; but it has done these things not through some fortuitous gift of the Sea Gods, but because of the never-failing development of its own spirit. It has always been at a great price, in the sacrifice of ease and in the outpouring of the lives of men, that the Navy has won for itself and for us the freedom of the seas. Those who reckon navies in ships and guns, in weight of metal and in broadside fire, while leaving out of account the spirit and training and devotion of the men, can never understand the Soul of the Navy. For all these material things are the expression of the Soul; they are not the Soul itself.

The Navy is still the old English Navy of the southern maritime counties of England. It has become the Navy of Great Britain, the Navy of the British Empire, but in spirit, and to a large extent in hereditary personnel, it remains the English Navy of the Narrow Seas. Many counties play a great part in its equipment, but to me it is always the Navy of my own land of Devon; officers and men are the lineal successors of those bold West Country seamen who in their frail barks ranged the wide seas hundreds of years ago and first taught to us and to the world the meaning of the expression “sea communications.”

There is not an officer in the permanent service of the Fleets of to-day who was not trained in Devon. On the southern seaboard of that county, set upon a steep slope overlooking the mouth of the most lovely of rivers, stands the Naval College in which are being trained those who will guide our future Fleets. A little way to the west lies one of the greatest of naval ports and arsenals. From my county of Devon comes half the Navy of to-day, half the men of the Fleet, be they warrant officers, seamen or engineers. The atmosphere of Devon, soft and sleepy as it may appear to a stranger, is electric with the spirit of Drake, which is the spirit of Nelson, which is the spirit of the boys of Dartmouth. For generation after generation, in the old wooden hulks _Britannia_ and _Hindustan_, and afterwards in the Naval College on the heights, the cadets during their most impressionable years have breathed in the spirit of the Navy. I have often visited them there and loved them; my brother, who worked among them and taught them, died there, and is buried in the little cemetery which crowns the hill where, years ago in a blinding snowstorm, I stood beside his open grave and heard the Last Post wail above his body. I have always envied him that great privilege, to die in the service of the Navy and to be buried within hail of the boys whom he loved.

The cadets of Dartmouth have learned that the Sea Service is an exacting and most jealous mistress who brooks no rival. They have learned that the Service is everything and themselves nothing. They have learned that only by humbly submitting themselves to be absorbed into the Service can they be deemed to be worthy of that Service. The discipline of the Navy is no cast-iron system imposed by force and punishment upon unwilling men; there is nothing in it of Prussian Militarism. It is rather the willing subordination of proud free men to the dominating interests of a Service to which they have dedicated their lives. The note of their discipline is “The Service first, last, and all the time.” The Navy resembles somewhat a religious Order, but in the individual subordination of body, heart, brains and soul there is nothing of servitude. The Naval officer is infinitely proud and infinitely humble. Infinitely proud of his Service, infinitely humble in himself. If an officer through error, however pardonable, loses his ship—and very young officers have command of ships—and in the stern, though always sympathetic, judgment of his fellows he must temporarily be put upon the shelf, he does not grumble or repine. He does not write letters to the papers upon his grievances. He accepts the judgment loyally, even proudly, and strives to merit a return to active employment. No fleshpots in the outer world, no honours or success in civil employment, ever compensate the naval officer for the loss of his career at sea.

From the circumstances of their lives, so largely spent among their fellows at sea or in naval harbours, and from their upbringing in naval homes and training ships, officers and men grow into a class set apart, dedicated as Followers of the Sea, in whose eyes the dwellers in cities appear as silly chatterers and hucksterers, always seeking after some vain thing, be it wealth or rank or fame. The discipline of the Navy is, like its Soul, apart and distinct from anything which we know on land. It is very strict but also very human. There is nothing in it of Caste. “I expect,” said Drake, “the gentlemen to draw with the mariners.” Drake allowed of no distinction between “gentlemen” and “mariners” except that “gentlemen” were expected always to surpass the “mariners” in tireless activity, cheerful endurance of hardships, and unshakable valour in action. Drake could bear tenderly with the diseased grumbling of a scurvy-stricken mariner, but the gentleman adventurer who “groused” was in grievous peril of a rope and a yard arm. The gentlemen adventurers have given place to professional naval officers, the mariners have become the long-service trained seamen in their various grades who have given their lives to the Navy, but the spirit of Drake endures to this day. The Gentlemen are expected to draw with the Mariners.

When a thousand lives and a great ship may be lost by the lapse from vigilance of one man, very strict discipline is a vital necessity. But as with officers so with men it is the discipline of cheerful, willing obedience. The spirit of the Navy is not the spirit of a Caste. It burns as brightly in the seaman as in the lieutenant, in the ship’s boy as in the midshipman, in the warrant officer as in the “Owner.” It is a discipline hammered out by the ceaseless fight with the sea. The Navy is always on active service; it is always waging an unending warfare with the forces of the sea; the change from a state of peace to a state of war means only the addition of one more foe—and if he be a gallant and chivalrous foe he is welcomed gladly as one worthy to kill and to be killed.

Catch boys young, inure them to Naval discipline, and teach them the value of it, and to them it will become part of the essential fabric of their lives. A good example of how men of Naval training cling to the discipline of the Service as to a firm unbreakable rope was shown in Captain Scott’s South Polar expeditions. Some of the officers, and practically the whole of the crews, were lent by the Navy, but the expeditions themselves were under auspices which were not naval. At sea Captain Scott’s legal authority was that of a merchant skipper, on land during his exploring expeditions he had no legal authority at all. Yet all the officers and men, knowing that their lives depended upon willing subordination, agreed that the discipline both at sea and on land should be that of the Navy to which most of them belonged. The ships were run exactly as if they had flown the White Ensign, and as if their companions were under the Navy Act. Strict though it may be, there is nothing arbitrary about naval discipline, and those who have tested it in peace and war know its quality of infinite endurance under any strain.

The Navy is a small Service, small in numbers, and to this very smallness is partly due the beauty of its Soul. For it is a picked Service, and only by severe selection in their youth can those be chosen who are worthy to remain among its permanent members. The professional officers and men number only some 150,000, and the great temporary war expansion—after the inclusion of Naval Reservists, Naval Volunteers, and the Division for service on land, did little more than treble the active list. The Navy, even then, bore upon its rolls names less than one-twelfth as numerous as in those legions who were drafted into the Army. Yet this small professional Navy, by reason of its Soul and the vast machines which that Soul secretes and employs with supreme efficiency, dominated throughout the war the seas of the whole world. The Navy has for so long been a wonder and a miracle that we have ceased to be thrilled by it; we take it for granted; but it remains no less a wonder and a miracle.

Many causes have combined to make this little group—this few, this happy few, this band of brothers—the most splendid human force which the world has ever seen. The Naval Service is largely hereditary. Officers and men come from among those who have served the sea for generations. In the Navy List of to-day one may read names which were borne upon the ships’ books of hundreds of years ago. And since the tradition of the sea plays perhaps the greatest part in the development of the Naval Soul, this continuity of family service, on the lower deck as in the wardroom and gun room, needs first to be emphasised. The young son of an officer, of a warrant-officer, of a seaman, or of a marine, enters the Service already more than half trained. He has the spirit of the Service in his blood, and its collective honour is already his own private honour. I remember years ago a naval officer said to me sorrowfully, “My only son must go into the Service, and yet I fear that he is hardly fit for it. He is delicate, shy, almost timid. But what can one do?”

“Is it necessary?” I asked foolishly. He stared at me: “We have served from father to son since the reign of Charles II.” So the boy entered the _Britannia_, and I heard no more of him until one morning, years after, I saw in an Honours List a name which I knew, that of a young Lieutenant who had won the rare naval V.C. in the Mediterranean. It was my friend’s son; blood had triumphed; the delicate, shy, almost timid lad had made good.

The Navy catches its men when they are young, unspoiled, malleable, and moulds them with deft fingers as a sculptor works his clay. Officers enter in their early teens—now as boys at Osborne who afterwards become naval cadets at Dartmouth. Formerly they spent a year or two longer at school and entered direct as cadets to the _Britannia_. The system is essentially the same now as it has been for generations. The material must be good and young, the best of it is retained and the less good rejected. The best is moulded and stamped in the Dartmouth workshop, and emerges after the bright years of early boyhood with the naval hall mark upon it. The seamen enter as boys into training-ships, and they, too, are moulded and stamped into the naval pattern. It is a very exacting but a very just education. No one who has been admitted to the privilege of training need be rejected except by his own fault, and if he is not worthy to be continued in training, he is emphatically not worthy to serve in the Fleets.

Of late years this system, which requires abundance of time for its full working out, has proved to be deficient in elasticity. It takes some seven years to make a cadet into a sub-lieutenant, while a great battleship can be built and equipped in little more than two years. The German North Sea menace caused a rapid expansion in the output of ships, especially of big ships, which far outstripped the training of junior officers needed for their service. The Osborne-Dartmouth system had not failed, far from it, but it was too slow for the requirements of the Navy under the new conditions. In order to keep up with the demand, the supply of naval cadets was increased and speeded up by the admission of young men from the public schools at the age when they had been accustomed to enter for permanent Army commissions. A large addition was also made to the roll of subalterns of Marines—who received training both for sea and land work—and in this way the ranks of the junior officers afloat were rapidly expanded. There was no departure from the Navy’s traditional policy of catching boys young and moulding them specially and exclusively for the Sea Service; the new methods were avowedly additional and temporary, to be modified or withdrawn when the need for urgent expansion had disappeared. The Navy was clearly right. It was obliged to make a change in its system, but it made it to as small an extent as would meet the conditions of the moment. The second best was tacked on to the first best, but the first best was retained in being to be reverted to exclusively as soon as might be. To catch boys young, preferably those with the sea tradition in their blood, to teach them during their most impressionable years that the Navy must always be to them as their father, mother and wedded wife—the exacting mistress which demands of them the whole of their affections, energies and service, to dedicate them in tender years to their Sea Goddess—this must always be the way to preserve, in its purest undimmed water, that pearl of great price, the Soul of the Navy.

It follows from the circumstances of their training and life that the Navy is a Family of which the members are bound together by the closest of ties of individual friendship and association. It is a Service in which everybody knows everybody else, not only by name and reputation but by personal contact. During the long years of residence at Osborne and Dartmouth, and afterwards in the Fleets, at the Greenwich Naval College, at the Portsmouth schools of instruction, officers widely separated by years and rank learn to know one another and to weigh one another in the most just of balances—that of actual service. Those of us who have passed many years in the world of affairs, know that the only reputation worth having is that which we earn among those of our own profession or craft. And none of us upon land are known and weighed with the intimate certainty and impartiality which is possible to the Sea Service. We are not seen at close contact and under all conditions of work and play, and never in the white light which an ever-present peril casts upon our worth and hardihood. No fictitious reputation is possible in the Navy itself as it is possible in the world outside. Officers may, through the exercise of influence, be placed in positions over the heads of others of greater worth, they may be written and talked about by civilians in the newspapers as among the most brilliant in their profession—especially in time of peace—but the Navy, which has known them from youth to age inside and out, is not deceived. The Navy laughs at many of the reputations which we poor civilians ignorantly honour. No naval reputation is of any value whatever unless it be endorsed by the Navy itself. And the Navy does not talk. How many newspaper readers, for instance, had heard of Admiral Jellicoe before he was placed in command of the Grand Fleet at the outbreak of war? But the Navy knew all about him and endorsed the choice.

What I write of officers applies with equal force to the men, to the long-service ratings, the petty officers and warrant officers who form the backbone of the Service. They, too, are caught young, drawn wherever possible from sea families, moulded and trained into the naval pattern, stamped after many years with the hall mark of the Service. It is a system which has bred a mutual confidence and respect between officers and men as unyielding as armour-plate. Before the battle of May 31st, 1916, the Grand Fleet had gone forth looking for Fritz many times and finding him not. Little was expected, but if the unexpected did happen, then officers believed in their long-service ratings as profoundly as did these dear old grumblers in their leaders. Many times in the wardrooms of the battle squadrons the prospects of action would be discussed and always in the same way.

“No, it’s not likely to be anything, but if it is what we’ve been waiting for, I have every confidence in our long-service ratings if the Huns are really out for blood. You know what I mean—those grizzled old G.L.I.s (gun-layers, first-class), and gunners’ mates and horny-handed old A.B.s whom we curse all day for their damned obstinacy. The Huns think that two years make a gunlayer; we know that even twelve years are not enough. Our long-service ratings would pull the country through, even if we hadn’t the mechanical advantage over Fritz which we actually possess. And the combination of the long-service ratings and the two-Power standard will, when we get to work upon him, give Fritz furiously to think.”