Chapter 16: Ships That Pass

The first of our submarines met an unknown fate as it disappeared somewhere near New Guinea. There has been much speculation as to what happened to it, but its size can be guessed at when I mention that a naval officer told rife he thought it probable that a shark had eaten it. A2 was the same type, but it achieved lasting fame in that it passed under the mine-field, through the Narrows, across the Sea of Marmora, and into the port of Constantinople. Right between the teeth of the Turkish forts and fleet it sank seven Turkish troopships and returned safely. 

A certain town in Australia that was called ' Germanton ' has been rechristened ' Holbrook ' in honour of the commander of this gallant little craft.

Every one has heard the story of the destruction of the Emden by the Australian cruiser Sydney, but it is worth bringing to notice that the captain of the Emden was of a different type from the pirates who have made the German sailor the most loathed creature that breathes. It is hard to believe that he was a German, for it seems incredible that a German sailor would refrain from sinking a ship because there was a woman on board. One can imagine that he would be ostracized by his brother officers of the wardroom, for he actually had accompanying him a spare ship on which to put the crews of the ships he sank.

One can hardly imagine him sitting at mess with the much-decorated murderer of the women and
children of the Lusitania, and it is the latter who the popular hero in Germany. There are none
more ready than the Australian soldiers to show chivalry to an honourable foe, and when the
Sydney brought Captain Mueller and the crew of Emden among the troopships these prisoners were cheered again and again. 

They could not understand their reception, but the lads from Australia admired these brave men for their plucky fight and clever exploits. Would they, had they not been captured early in the war, have changed become like the vile, cowardly sharks that infest the seas in U-boats ?

The Great War is writing history on such a large scale that the old classic stories of heroism and devotion to duty will be forgotten by the next generation. The story of the Birkenhead has always been considered the highest illustration of discipline and steadiness in the face of death evinced by any troops, but the citizen soldiers from the young Australian democracy have in this war given on two occasions proof that they possessed the same qualities. 

The Southland has been written in letters of gold on the pages of Australia's history. When the sneaking U-boat delivered its deadly blow in the entrails of this crowded troopship, there was no more excitement than if the alarm-bugles had summoned them to an ordinary parade. Some of the boys fell in on deck without their life-belts, but were sent below to get them. They had to go, many of them, to the fourth deck, but they scorned to show anxiety by proceeding at any other pace than a walk. It was soon evident that there were not enough boats left to take all off, and so none would enter them and leave their comrades to go down with the ship. They began to sing ' Australia Will Be There'

• Rally round the banner of your country, 
  • Take the field with brothers o'er the foam 
  • On land or sea, wherever you be, 
  • Keep your eye on Germany. 
  • For England home and beauty 
  • Have no cause to fear
  • Should old acquaintance be forgot
  • No-no-no, no, no Australia will be the-re-re-re! 
    • Australia will be there !'

Some one called out, 'Where and the answer came from many throats-' In hell, in five minutes !' and it looked like it. But nothing in a future life could hold any terrors for the man who had campaigned during a summer in Egypt., In the end volunteers were taken into the stoke-hole and the Southland was beached. The colonel was drowned and there were a few other casualties, but most escaped without a wetting, so what looked like an adventure turned out to be a pretty tame affair after all. But Australia will ever remember how those boys stood fast with the dark waters of death washing their feet and, like Stoics, waited calmly for whatever Fate would send them. This epic of Australian fortitude was written in September 1915, and is part of the Dardanelles story.

But the, latest troops from Australia are of the same heroic stuff as those who wrote the name 'Anzac' with their blood on the Gallipoli beach. For the Southland incident was duplicated in almost every particular on the Ballarat in April 1917. This story was enacted in the waters of the English Channel, and there were no casualties, for the work of rescue by torpedo-boats was made easy, as each man calmly waited his turn and enlivened the monotony meanwhile with ragtime, and again and again did the strains of ' Australia Will Be There !' ring out over the waters. 

As they sang ' So Long, Letty,' many substituted their own Christian names, and it looked as if it might be 'so long' in reality. But they knew that to an Australian girl there would be no 'sadness of farewell ' when she realised that her lover had been carried heavenward by the guardian angel that waits to bear upward the soul of a hero.

' Big Lizzie' (the Queen Elizabeth) was for many months queen of the waters round Gallipoli. Her tongue boomed louder than any other, and it was always known when she spoke. She was the
latest thing in dreadnoughts then, just commissioned, and the largest ship afloat. Though since
that time the British navy has added several giants that dwarf even her immense proportions.

The boys in the trenches and on the beach at Anzac never failed to thrill with pride as they heard her baying forth her iron hate against the oppressor. We knew that wherever her ton weight shells fell there would be much weeping and gnashing of teeth among the enemy. We readily believed all the stories told of her prowess, no matter how impossible they seemed. No one doubted even when we heard that she had sunk a boat in the Sea of Marmora twenty-seven miles away, firing right over a mountain. 

She was there before our eyes an epitome of the might and power of the British navy that had policed the seas of the world, sweeping them clear of the surface pirate and also confining the depredation, of the underwater assassin, so that all nations, except the robber ones, might trade in safety.

How true it is that the British navy has been the guarantor of the freedom of the seas, so that even
in British ports over the whole wide world all nations should have equality of trade ! Never has this power been used selfishly : take for instance, the British dominions of the South Seas, where American goods can be sold cheaper than those of Britain, for the shorter distance more than compensates for the small preference in tariff. The most unprotected coast of the American continent has been kept free of invaders ; its large helpless cities are unshelled, because 'out there' in the North Sea the British navy maintains an eternal vigilance.

After some valuable battleships were sent to the bottom b%- the German submarines it was
realised that ' Big Lizzie' was too vulnerable and valuable to be kept in these waters ; so in the
later months her place was taken by some weird craft that excited great curiosity among the sailor-
men. These were the ' monitors,' which were just floating platforms for big guns. They were built
originally for the rivers of South America, but it was discovered that their shallow draught made
them impervious to torpedo attack ; and as they are able to get close in shore, their big guns made
havoc of the Turkish defences. 

They do not travel at high speed and appear to waddle a good deal, but they have been most invaluable right Along, and were of great assistance lately to the Italians in holding up the German drive. They have been used also around Ostend, and are of prime importance wherever the flank of an army is on the sea. I have picked up portions of shells and seen the shrapnel lying like hail in sand-hills in Arabia (more than twenty miles from the Suez Canal, which was the nearest waterway).

We also passed some other amazing-looking craft which were being towed down the Red Sea. They looked like armoured houseboats, and were for use up the Tigris. I should not like to have been boxed up in one, for it looked as if they would have to use a can-opener to get you out, and it did not appear to me as though the sides were bulletproof. But trust the Admiralty to know what they are doing ! Pages could be filled with the mere cataloguing of the various kinds of ships used by the navy in this war, and I am told that these river ' tanks ' were the prime factor in the advance in Mesopotamia.

A marine court would decide that the River Clyde was not a ship at all but a fortress. There was a naval engagement in this war when two ships were refused their share of the prize money for the capture of German ships because they were anchored, the sea lawyers decreeing that they were forts.

But the old, sea-beaten collier River Clyde deserves to be remembered as a ship that has passed, for before she grounded on the beach she carried in her womb as brave a company of heroes as have ever emblazoned their deeds on a nation's roll of honour. The wooden horse that carried Ulysses and the heroic Greeks into the heart of ancient Troy did not enclose a braver band that were these modern youths shut within the iron sides of the old tramp steamer which bore them into the camp of their enemies somewhere near the supposed site of the Homeric city.

Doors had been cut in the sides of the old steamer, and lighters were moored alongside with launches. When she ran aground these lighters were towed round so as to form a gangway to the shore, and the troops poured down on to them. The Turks were as prepared in this case to repel an attack as at Anzac, and held their fire until the ship was hard and fast. They then had a huge target at pointblank range on which to concentrate leaden hail from machine-guns and rifles aided by the shells from the Asiatic forts. Few lived in that eager first rush-some jumped into the sea to wade or swim, but were shot in the water or drowned under weight of their equipment. 

Again and again the lighters broke from their moorings, and many brave swimmers defied death to secure them. One boy won the Victoria Cross for repeatedly attempting to carry a rope in his mouth to the shore. But the crosses earned that day if they were awarded would give to the glorious Twenty-Ninth Division a distinction that none would begrudge them. The regiments of the Hampshires, Dublin, and Munster Fusiliers added in a few hours more glory to their colours than past achievements had given even such proud historic names as theirs.

The landing at Cape Helles and the wooden horse- are beacons of the Gallipoli campaign that - shine undimmed alongside the Australian-New Zealand landing at Anzac which, as a rising sun, proclaimed the dawn of the day of their nationhood.

Another 'ship that passed,' and in its passing wrought havoc on the enemy was one too small to support a man. It was a tiny raft, and it was propelled by one-man power, who swam ashore from a destroyer, towing this craft which was to bluff the Turks into believing that a whole army was descending upon them. 

The man was Lieutenant Freyberg, and on the raft he carried the armament that was to keep a large Turkish force standing to arms at Bulair (the northern-most neck of the Peninsula) when they might have been preventing the landing on the other beaches. The weapons this gallant young officer used were merely some flares which he lit at intervals along the beach, and then went naked inland to overlook the army he was attacking.

Leaving them to endure for the rest of that night the continual strain of a momentarily expected
attack, he then swam out to sea, for five miles, searching anxiously for the destroyer that was
to pick him up. After several more hours of floating he was sighted by the rescuing ship and
taken on board, exhausted, and half dead. The Turkish papers stated that ' the strong attack at
Bulair was repulsed with heavy losses by our brave defenders.' 

This hero, who is a New Zealander, and now Brigadier-General Freyberg, V.C., is well-known in California and was at Leland-Stanford University.