Mine sweeping in the late war was a growth. Certainly at the beginning of hostilities no one realized the extent to which mines would be employed, the damage they would do or the far-reaching measures which would be instituted to circumvent the menace, for no one had ever had experience with them on such a vast scale. When, and if, the next general war comes, naval authorities will begin where they left off, add the total of peace-time invention and counter-invention, take a new start, and find themselves confronted with as many new angles in this phase of warfare as were met in 1914. There will be type ships built and building; there will be bases, existing and potential; but the matter of bases will depend largely on the specific fields of war and shipping and mining activities, which no one can accurately foresee. Such was the problem for Great Britain at the start of the World War.
As need arose there was established a series of naval auxiliary bases around the coast of the British Isles. The minesweeping and patrol-boat base at Granton, Scotland, was one of these. War had not been under way long when submarines and mines rose up like sea dragons to haunt the leaders of the fleets. Squadrons of ships could maneuver in and out of port, join issue with opposing squadrons, win or lose battles, and gain fame; but behind all this, shall we say, figureheading, went hand in hand the auxiliary work, little heralded, little sung, little known about in detail except by those entrusted with the work.
For this duty every manner of craft was drawn into service. Greatest in number were the trawlers and drifters— humble fishing craft. Small steamers of various design, whalers, pleasure yachts, motor boats—all came into usage. As the war progressed there came on the sea a smart style of craft of small tonnage known as sloops, reasonably fast, shallow of draft, built quickly, and in considerable numbers. They were named after flowers and consequently called the “Flower Class.” These larger steamers came to be known as fleet sweepers and worked with the Grand Fleet, or in conjunction with that organization on detached assignment. A number of them operated at various times out of Granton Base.
In the destroyer flotillas at Harwich we had dashed around the lower reaches of the North Sea, scouting with the light cruiser squadron there, churning up the water at 35 miles an hour between the long sands and Helgoland. It was indeed a change to come to a little vessel called the Chikara, where men lived an entirely different kind of life. The Chikara, some 150 feet long, had been a common fish carrier for the trawler fleet off Iceland before the war, now taken over for mine sweeping—in humble verbiage, a Grimsby trawler. She carried a crew of from 15 to 18 men with a naval reserve lieutenant in command, the vessel being a division leader of from four to eight sweepers.
Granton, a suburb of Edinburgh, had an artificial harbor jutting out into the Firth of Forth—two long stone breakwaters enclosing a large area of water, with a long wide pier extending out like a tongue in the middle. On the pier was a small barrack building with administrative offices. A retired captain up for the war, later to be advanced to rear admiral, was in command—a fine old gentleman. For executive officer we had a regular service commander. The majority of the officers around the base and attached to the various vessels were from the Royal Naval Reserve or the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The R. N. R. officers were professional seamen up for the war from their merchant ships but the R. N. V. R. officers were landsmen pure and simple, naval militia. While some of the latter had been real seamen, most of them were amateurs. But they learned.
Only the leading trawlers had wireless on board. Each one had a “skipper” in charge, holding the rank of a warrant officer. Most of the crews were fishermen who had fared in this type of vessel all their lives and knew all the ins and outs of trawling, which in some measure is akin to mine sweeping. There were a few special ratings, as signalmen, wireless operators, and gunner’s mates. Sweeping duties were about as follows: five days sweeping; five days anchored in the roads off the base; five days more of sweeping; then five days at dock for recreation, overhaul, taking on fuel and supplies. This routine was broken up by emergencies. It might be that a submarine would be reported hovering off the Forth and the stand-by vessels would stand out in search of it. Special sweeps might have to be made when we got a scare of excessive mines. A convoy job might send the extra division out at top speed.
Sweeping for mines, as I saw, required no great technical knowledge. Rather good sense, considerable nerve, simple precaution, knowledge of sea conditions, and the rest was a matter of chance and persistent, tiring work. Always we steamed in pairs, except occasionally we went three abreast, the middle vessel towing a warp on each beam. Between each pair of vessels a wire was passed, the vessels steaming perhaps a quarter of a mile apart, each towing one end of the warp. This formed a huge letter U of the wire, which was intended to cross the anchor cable of a mine, sever it, and drag the mine to the surface. This wire came aboard the towing vessel through a sheave block in a high gallows frame on the bow, in to a winch on deck, where it could be hove in or veered at will. From another gallows frame aft another wire led out with a wooden, iron-bound frame known as a kite made fast to the end. This slid on a runner down the sweeping warp, so if one wanted to sweep deep it was only necessary to lower the kite to the desired depth, allowing for the slant aft while towing. We swept only during daylight.
The Granton vessels operated from May Island north and south. We would spread out six or eight boats abreast, sweeps between, running all day to the southeast as far as St. Abb’s Head and back to May Island, anchoring in the lee of the Island for the night. Next morning we would resume operations, sweeping northward to St. Andrews, or to the mouth of the Tay at Dundee, sometimes to Peterhead or Montrose. Often we went as far south as the Tyne. We were a part of a sweeping system which aimed to keep a channel swept free of mines along the whole North Sea coast, safe for the passage of merchant vessels or other craft. We in the trawlers never operated with the Grand Fleet or any part of it directly.
Sometimes a passing vessel would report a mine or be struck by one and come limping into port. Out we would go to the area where the mine was reported, for we came to know that if one mine had been planted there would be more. We had the understanding, how authoritative I do not know, that when a submarine dropped mines it was usually in groups of six or twelve, so there was no peace till the remaining mines of a group were located and destroyed.
If, steaming along, the warp became suddenly taut and the sweepers tended to veer toward each other, we knew we had a mine. The mine might come to the surface with a jerk and float menacingly between the sweepers. By prearranged signal one of the sweepers would let go its end of the sweep, the other heave it in, while men with rifles would fire on the mine until, full of holes in its shell, it sank, or, one of the horns being struck, it exploded. If the mine did not come to the surface the sweepers would saw the sweep back and forth, attempting to explode the mine under the water or shake it loose from its moorings. A mountain of water and smoke told us if the operation was successful, or perhaps a 4-pronged black object would sneak up to the surface. Sometimes a mine was hauled close aboard in the sweep; sometimes it exploded by accident almost on one or the other of the vessels. We never had any injuries in our division but some of the men in other vessels were blown to pieces in this manner. I remember watching the rifle fire on a mine one day when a horn was struck and the mine exploded, sending up a shower of black smoke, foamy water, and fragments of metal. A moment later we got a shower of iron. I reached out and caught a piece in my hand, dropping it as quickly—it was still stinging hot. We received a bonus for every mine we destroyed.
One day after the usual sweep we ran into the Forth, heading for the anchorage in the lee of May Island. It had been an uneventful day, a sweep down to St. Abb’s Head and back with never a mine. The weather was freshening, overcast, inclined to drizzle, a dreary North Sea day. At dark we had hauled in our sweeps, formed in single line ahead, as we always did when proceeding anywhere, the Chikara leading. Before we reached the anchorage it was utterly dark. Behind us gleamed the lights of the sweepers following in our wake, bobbing green and red and white. Our course led around the north end of the island where even a greater darkness seemed to spread over the region. At this moment the night was filled with a terrifying rumble, a flare of light, shouting, then ominous silence. The vessel next to the Chikara had hit a mine, blown up! We stopped, backed, lowered the large fish boat, which indeed was our only boat, and the crew pulled away lustily for the scene of the explosion. We came up to one man hanging on a plank. We found no more. The other sweepers had now come up and lowered their boats. For an hour boats pulled here and there in the darkness but in the end rescued only half the crew. The others had been blown to pieces or drowned.
The remaining sweepers continued on to the anchorage, a forlorn and somewhat excited lot. Nothing more could be done that night. The next day there was work ahead, more mines to search out and destroy, but we would do it without our late helper.
One day we received news that the little patrol boat-sweeper Nelli-D had run aground off Elyness when coming to an anchorage, and her magazine, located in the forepeak, had exploded—another naval casualty. Soon after, a gale swept across the North Sea. Too violent was the weather for us to put our sweeps down, so we ran in under the lee of the north shore of the Forth. We had not been secured long when a wireless message flashed through to us to proceed to the middle of the Forth, half way between May Island and Inchkeith, where two floating mines were reported adrift in the ship channel. We found the mines—two 4-horned ones —but the sea was so rough we dared not approach them. All day we lay to, firing rifles at the mines, now submerged, now rolling viciously on the crests of the waves. Night came on; we hauled off, afraid to leave, afraid to search in the darkness. All night we sat and drifted with the wind and sea, off to one side to parallel the probable course of the mines. Next day they were gone. We never saw them again. Nor did we ever hear what became of them. The difficulty of that episode was in its disquieting effect on the nerves.
An inbound oil tanker strikes a mine. The thunderous concussion leaves her with a hole in the forepeak big enough to drive a horse through. The forward cargo tank is pumped free of oil, and there the vessel rides, her stem high, down by the stern, so that the gap in the bow is just at the water line, lap-lapping the water in slowly, but this can be taken care of by pumps. Safe? Perhaps, but the principles of ballasting and equilibrium are shot to the winds—with a gale making from the northeastward nothing is certain. By this time we in the Chikara have the news, drop our sweep, and come alongside the injured steamer. We lower our boat, send a signalman on board, a course is laid, and in we go—convoy duty. So it goes.
Somewhere off St. Abb’s Head a small boat, a lifeboat, bursts out of the fog from seaward, the men in it are picked up by a patrol boat. Such a sight was a familiar one in those days. This is how it happened. A submarine had emerged out of the sea, fired a shot across the bow of the steamer to which this lifeboat belonged. The captain had hove to, and, under threatening orders, taken to the boat with his crew. A mining party from the submarine had boarded the steamer (they could not afford to waste a torpedo) and planted a charge in the bilge somewhere. Boom! While the ship settled slowly, the submarine, jubilant in the success of its efforts, merged back into the misty waters from whence it came. The abandoned boat with the crew headed for the nearest land. But the steamer was loaded below and on deck with lumber and would not sink. We in the sweepers came upon it awash, drifting sluggishly in a heavy sea, untenable by man, a menace to navigation, but still a valuable ship and cargo. Three lines we got aboard and three sweepers started towing for Leith. Struggling under difficulties, fighting wind and sea, lines parting, only with hardship made fast again, thus we go. But we cannot make it. Off May Island a destroyer out of the naval-base at Rosyth happens along. With her added heavy wire warp, her thousands of horsepower, the sinking steamer is gradually worked into the more quiet waters of the Forth, slowly up to port and a waiting dock. The ship is saved, the crew is saved, the submarine’s mine was this time in vain, and the sweepers peg up another hole—for salvage duty.
A division of fleet sweepers wirelessed in for help one day. They had been across the North Sea sweeping on the Dogger Bank and en route home they had come on 32 Dutch fishing luggers, hovering and fishing on forbidden ground in a suspicious manner. We let go our sweeps and proceeded offshore the 30 or 40 miles to the rendezvous, where we found the “foreigners” wallowing around, looking for all the world like the craft that wallowed around those waters in the days when Tromp swept the seas with his mighty broom. We took them in tow, threes in tandem (the Chikara had six), and each with his prizes ran back to our base.
Another day we swept. Oh, the monotony of it! Off the mouth of the Tay we picked up an urgent priority message: “All vessels proceed to safe anchorage!” Not knowing what it was all about, the commanding officer ordered in all sweeps and the little flotilla ran in and brought up off ancient St. Andrew. We knew nothing. Did the golf players we saw on the distant greens (the birthplace of golf) know any more than we did? A thousand rumors filled our minds. Next morning we ran in to the Forth. By us came limping the battleship Warspite, much battered. A light cruiser, smoke begrimed, stacks white with salt spray, sped up the channel, upperworks torn and shell-ripped. Destroyers were coming in now. It was June, 1916; the Battle of Jutland had been fought, the ships were returning. For a day or two no sweeping was done. Uncertainty was in the air. The might of Britain’s sea power was in question. Then we started off again on our routine duties; for battle or no battle, the shipping lane had to be kept clear.
Our sweeping led us by Bell Rock, anciently known as Inchcape. I recalled the legend of the pirate who muffled old Inchcape’s bell and doused its light to lure on his victims to their ruin, only to wreck his own vessel and cry in anguish to the relentless sea as he sank beneath its frothy crests. So now had a modern war doused the lights from the modern lighthouse on the rock, muffled the bell and siren; and before us lay the wreck of the cruiser Argyle, whose gray hull, now rusting, loomed up in the misty North Sea airs, a reminder of war’s hazards and penalties.
Between Berwick Law and St. Abb’s Head we passed close aboard the tumbling ruins of Tantallon Towers where Marmion swore vengeance against the Douglas. Marmion and Douglas, in their sons, had now joined hands in this latest of wars, and were swearing vengeance on their common enemy from over the seas whose manner of warring was far removed from lance and moat and falling portcullis.
In those same waters, my Scottish fishermen mine-sweeping shipmates told me (for I had not read as much naval history as I was later to do), John Paul Jones had laid his frigate alongside many a small coaster, set the crew on the near-by beaches, scuttled their vessels, braced up his own yards, and filled and stood away down the misty sea, almost before he was known to be about.
As a stranger in a strange land and a lover of history, I liked better to examine into the history of that gone before than to work along in the history that was in the making. It is a human failing. I liked to hear my shipmates tell about those places of interest which we visited or passed in our cruisings. There was the bluff we passed each time we ran out to sea from the base on the north shore where Alexander, ancient King of Scotland, was said to have tumbled to his death, and the bluff is named after his mishap. Across the Forth, in a green meadow, the field of Prestonpans had decided the political fate of the loved Bonnie Prince Charlie. There was Newhaven, hard by the city of Edinburgh, where fish and the fishwives had given the local folk many a legend and many a song. “Oh, who will buy my herring red?” And at Bonnie Dundee, where we overhauled our little sweeper, the West Port was something. Hadn’t it been unhooked for the freeing of Clavering and his bonneted horsemen? There was the chapel in the church at Dunfermline—-holy of holies for a Scotsman, unless he were jealously thinking of the mighty Wallace. I sought long for the grave of King Robert the Bruce, and at long last pausing in doubt to look down, found myself standing on a metal marker, big as a man and in one’s likeness, in the floor of the nave, which informed me that I stood on the very grave of the King!
Speaking of kings, one day the then King of the realm visited Granton Base. What a commotion! The Chikara was coaling ship across the jetty by chance that day—emergency demanded it. But rising from our grimy task to wipe away the soot from our sweating faces we heard the bugles’ blast, saw the guard of honor present arms as the old admiral led His Majesty, flanked by General Sir John French (at that time somewhat in eclipse) around on an inspection tour of our nonmilitary little base. What British cheers, what flag fluttering, what emotion! We Americans do not know or realize the very personal feelings which a British subject has for his sovereign.
Air raid! Air raid! A messenger boat circled round the sweeper fleet anchored off Granton one night. Darken ship had long gone, the watches had been mustered, piped down, midnight was approaching. Almost before we were informed search-lights began spotting in the sky—flares from Rosyth, from Leith, from Edinburgh, from hidden gun emplacements. Some one thought he heard the hum of motors. A distant gun boomed into the night. A long beam of light swept in a wide arc, suddenly stopped, swayed back and forth, narrowed its motions down, became stationary, shone on a long, yellowish object. We could hear the far-away rumble of salvo after salvo. This, the Zeppelin raider which had been sighted, swept on over the city through the night. Heavier thunder told us the bombs were being dropped. Then more salvos, a confused and futile flashing of light beams—but no more was seen of the raider. Next day the press carried a report of an air raid “over a city in North Britain.” The bombs had hit within the city. Little harm was done. One had fallen on the sloping rocks beside Edinburgh Castle, had barely missed that ancient citadel.
Out of Granton Base worked the “mystery” ships Ready and Steady, two little auxiliary topsail schooners. Innocent looking sailing vessels were they, such as plied in great numbers in those days about the North Sea, loaded with “pit-props,” (mine timbers) from Norway. These two vessels cruised casually around the sea, but behind movable bulwarks each carried a 3-inch gun for submarine baiting. The crews of these vessels were largely recruited from the sweepers. There wasn’t a man in the base but would have given a month’s pay to be assigned to one of them, just to see the fun, to meet the Germans— mine sweeping became such a bore. When the Steady limped back into port one day with battered hull and a wounded crew and reported a fight with a U-boat they had lured to the surface (and said they sank), the enthusiasm of the volunteers knew no bounds. It was like a disease. But all could not go.
For “skipper” of the Chikara we had a Scotch fisherman from Banff. All his life he had hauled nets out of the sea from Iceland to Yarmouth, had become master of his own trawler, and when war had come he put on a uniform, emblazoned his cap with a crown and anchor device surrounded by laurel leaves, and kept the seas in the selfsame trawlers, but to trawl for mines instead of fish. This grizzled old man was a product of a rough sea, but strangely, he was a good man, a pious soul. He took a liking to me because I was an American, I learned. He asked me if I had been to Salt Lake City. When I said yes, his interest increased. He asked me if I had been in the Mormon Tabernacle, and when I said yes, his enthusiasm rose like a bullish stock market. For, he told me, he was a Mormon, longed only to visit this shrine of his religion. He told me he had been converted to the faith by missionaries of the church who had set about proselyting in northern Scotland. As Mohammedans pray for a pilgrimage to Mecca, as the Crusaders longed to visit the Holy City a thousand years ago, so did this rugged heather-tanged fisherman long to tread the threshold of the Temple in this far western city of America. Strange indeed!
While the personnel of the base and vessels attached to it were a well-mixed British lot, mainly they took the Scottish tenor, the heathery slant, and well I liked it, since it was consistent to study the Scot in his native land. The men in the Chikara lived in their folkish ways, had their folkish contacts ashore, and joked about the mail which came from across the Tweed as being “foreign mail.”
Our mate was another hardy product of the North Sea fisheries who had made a trip or two in deep-water ships. He was forever telling of his hard-hearted Scotch captain who gave out short dabs of grub to the men and had this to say about it:
When y’r gangin’ oot ye get y’r groot,
When y’r gangin’ hame ye get the same—
Ye get y’r whack and ye get nay mare.
What once had been the fish-hold of the Chikara was now the crew’s quarters, messroom, and wireless-room. When gathered there one day a sudden boom knocked us all head over heels. A mine had exploded in our sweep close aboard. The concussion below was greater by far than experienced on deck. I’ve often wondered how close it would have had to come to start the rivets in the plating.
Daily our crew practiced at the 3-inch gun mounted on our foredeck. We called it the 12-pounder. We were fitted out to fight against a submarine as well as sweep for the mines such might lay, but this gun would have proved of little use against the later U-boats with larger caliber guns, as we found out to many a man’s sorrow before the end of the war. The nearest we ever came to contact was when we saw a periscope cutting through the water abeam of us once, but it was gone before we could let go the sweep and give chase.
Between May Island and Inchkeith a number of submarine defense nets stretched across the Forth, leaving open only a passage for steamer traffic. Each day a drifter from Granton Base ran out to examine the nets, known as boom defenses, barriers against enemy submarines, protection for the war vessels basing at Rosyth. The First Battle Cruiser Squadron and minor vessels based there at this time. When a British submarine disappeared off May Island one day and turned up inside Inchkeith, negotiating the nets while submerged, so we were told, it was something to think about. We knew that submarines had run into the Forth part way to lay mines; why couldn’t they run into the warship anchorage and do illimitable damage before discovered and destroyed? Well, so they might have, I suppose, but they didn’t. Many a scheme might be tried and many a success achieved in war, spectacular, even disastrous. But success in war does not hinge on spectacular individual achievements, no matter what the individual disaster wrought. A submarine might actually have gone in and torpedoed a capital ship in the base, but this could hardly have changed the inevitable result of the war, which hinged on influences as wide as the world and as numerous as the people in it. No single submarine attack, nor air raid, nor naval battle (unless general) will win a modern war if it does not accomplish the destruction of an entire sea power, which seems not to be a probability in itself.
To have made Rosyth or Scapa Flow untenable, to have made impossible the smothering influence of sea power round about, to the end that German sea power would have been released, given freedom of action, which in turn would have changed the status of all world shipping— that would have been an effective achievement. To have sunk one, two, or three ships would not, could not, have achieved this.
Granton Base was only one of many bases, each doing its small part of a big job. From Dover, Harwich, the Wash, the Humber, Tynemouth, Firth of Forth; from Land’s End to the eastward to Sheerness, northward to Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow; from Calais to Ushant, and from Ushant to Gibraltar and beyond even to the Levant, this sort of patrolling and mine sweeping went on day after day, week after week, month after month. The power to keep this work going endlessly, persistently, effectively, till finally economic smothering brought an end to the sound of machine gun and heavy artillery —the answer is too well known to the strategists to enlarge on here. This is only a simple narrative of recollections, the story of the patrolling and mine-sweeping duties of a few of the fleet of “Little Gray Ships,” as the journalists of the day liked to call them.