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One happened to be the skipper of one of the trawlers which had been sunk and he vehemently denied the charge that they had been guilty of laying or sweeping mines. They were attending to their trawls when they were surprised and captured. The skipper was an interesting, typical sea-dog from the waters of the North Sea, and a thorough God-fearing man. He related a story which made our blood boil.
From thence, he had a fair view of the Devon and Cornish coasts in the distance all the way to the Lizard, the scene being like an ever- changing panorama, with plenty of life and movement about in the vessels the Greenock was continually passing either outwards or homewards bound; while the little trawlers and fishing-boats clustered in groups here and there, and there was the occasional smoke from some steamer steaming along the horizon, like a dark finger-post above the level of the sea in the distance.
A private wherry anchored opposite the village above the Thelma was the only craft in the river, and a few trawlers and coasting steamers far out were the only vessels to be seen at sea. Nothing could have less suggested the likelihood of anything in the shape of "adventure," and I caught my whiting and dabs in blissful peace of mind.
On the tilting-ground of the castle the fishermen had gathered, sixteen hundred strong. There were trawlers among them, Manx, Irish, and English, prowling through the crowd, and scooping up the odds and ends of gossip as their boats on the bottom scraped up the little fish. Occasionally they were observed by the herring-fishers, and then there were high words and free fights.
A little later, however, another trawler observed the wash of a submarine crossing her stern about two hundred yards away. The trawler star-boarded, got into the wake of the submarine and tried to ram her at full speed. She failed to do this, as the U-boat was at too great a depth. The enemy disappeared, and again the trawlers gathered and "starred."
An engagement took place lasting forty-five minutes, during which the Russians sank the auxiliary cruiser Herzmann, capturing her crew and two other craft, one of which was believed to have been a destroyer. In the confusion all of the merchant ships reached the Swedish coast and other destroyers and armed trawlers accompanying them made good their escape.
Elijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by flanks of ships and trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, beyond new Wapping street past Benson's ferry, and by the threemasted schooner Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks. Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell's yard.
They lay there like shadows, but before long they knew that the night was alive for a hundred miles with silent talk about them. At dawn His Majesty's trawlers Golden Feather and Peggy Nutten foamed up, but the shadows had disappeared. The trawlers were ordered to search the coast thoroughly for any submarine stores that might have been left there. "Thoroughly" in this war means a great deal.
I see trawlers fishing and mine-sweeping whenever I raise my eyes from my writing. Their crews know that they work in the shadow of death in what they describe in the dock-side taverns as the greatest sport in the world. Praise of the big ships often causes us to forget the little ships. I admire the one and reverence the other.
I am on the light cruiser of a famous Commodore, and I have just been creeping and climbing through a submarine. The waters round are crowded with those light craft, destroyers, submarines, mine-sweepers, trawlers, patrol boats, on which for the moment at any rate the fortunes of the naval war turns.
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