FICTIO N.
ECHOES FROM THE FLEET.*
ME. COPE CORNFOBD'B volume is timely in its appearance, and it has an excellent " send off " in the preface from Lord Charles Beresford, who vouches for the accuracy of its pre- sentment, adding that "it teaches what is always my last word on the matter : Trust the Navy, for the Navy will never fail you." A few weeks ago we noticed in these columns another volume of naval sketches and studies, Naval Occasions, by " Bartirueus"; but while the moral is essentially the same, especially in regard to the invisibility with which the Navy works and performs its most vital functions, the methods of the two writers are widely different. " Bartimeus," though building on fact and on first-hand experience, subjects his materials to a more dramatic and imagina- tive treatment, and for the most part leaves his readers to draw the moral. Mr. Cope Cornford, on the other hand, deals more largely in direct transcripts from life, though, as we gather in more than one case, he is reproducing the narrative at second hand. And so far from practising any rigorous self-effacement or detachment, he never misses an opportunity of "rubbing in" the moral in the plainest and frankest manner. This method is not so artistic, and the author's uncompromising, not to say ferocious, distrust of party politicians will undoubtedly limit the range of his appeal. It is true that Mr. Cope Cornford makes this clear at the outset in his "Prologue "—a duologue between an Admiral and a. Prime Minister, schoolmates in their youth, in which the patriotism of the sailor is contrasted with the adroit vote-catching opportunism of the statesman, very much to the prejudice of the latter. We admire Mr. Cope Cornford's sincerity and straightforwardness, but his pleas for a big Navy would have lost none of their cogency if he had controlled his invective. With this reservation, we have little to find fault with in these concise yet vivid sketches. Some of them, though written long before the war, and without any effort at sensationalism, are quite poignantly topical, for the reason which we noted in dealing with the sketches of " Bartimeus "—that in the Navy the conditions of
service in peace approximate far more closely than in the Army to those which prevail in war time. This applies to the story of the lost battleship and to the account of life on a submarine and the never-ending vigilance exacted from its
commander and crew. Remarkable prescience, again, is shown in"Counsels of War," written in 1909, in which the relative efficiency of the big-gun battleship and the submarine is discussed in the form of an informal conversation over a lobster lunch between a Rear-Admiral, a. Gunnery Lieuten ant,
a submarine officer, and an ingenuous civilian. We may quote the concluding passage, which follows on a remark from the civilian to the effect that the progress of mechanical science must affect the nature of the problem :—
"'There are two problems,' returned the Rear-Admiral. 'Mechanical science can perfect the instruments of a surgeon. Can it tell him how to use them ?'—' I never thought of that,' said the Civilian.—'Has it ever occurred to you, asked the Gunnery Officer, 'that all the writing about naval matters is done by civilians ? Why don't naval officers write?'—' Somebody has to do the actual practical work, after all,' replied the Rear- Admiral. In the pause, the three officers looked across the darken- ing water to the distant thicket of masts and funnels, graven upon the red sky, where a squadron lay at anchor. The Civilian thought that a shade descended between himself and the three silent figures. They had something which he had not. They were kind to him, yet he could never learn their secret. 'It seems a pity that the public don't understand more about these things,' sug- gested the Civilian, tentatively. For instance, much of what you have been saying to-day is new to me:—' We've never had any help from the public yet,' said the Rear-Admiral, curtly.—' How can this country possibly understand a fighting service?' said the Gunnery Officer. The shadows seemed to thicken between the Civilian and the three sailors. Peering into it, he beheld the dim vision of old sea-battles, the smoke and fire, the wreckage and the slain bodies of men. He spoke, and hoard his voice as if another
were talking. sometimes wonder why—why you do It
• Echoes from the Fleet. By L. Cope Cornford. With a Prefaceby Admiral Lead Charism Berastord. London: Williams and Norma*. [2s. net.] isn't the pay, at any rate,' said the Rear-Admiral. 'The pay of officers is actually less now than it was in the time of Nelson.'- ' They say—the British public says- we are out for prize-money,' remarked the Submarine Officer, wearily. 'They actually say that.' —' We don't complain,' said the Gunnery Officer. ' But I own we should like to feel that our wives and children were not left defenceless, in case of war.'—' Then why . . ?' repeated the Civilian, and paused. The Senior Officer rose, holding out his hand. Good-bye. The shell-fish were really delicious—so fresh,' said the Rear-Admiral."
On the imaginative side Mr. Cope Cornford reaches his highest level in the episode called " Super-wireless," a fantasy on the psychics of radio-telegraphy. A mysterious message of warning to an Admiral on the high seas coincides with a curious wave of expectancy which affects many of the men in the Fleet, and is reinforced by a vision of a mysterious vessel which hails the flagship in the words of a strange tongue, and is immediately followed by an official message announcing the outbreak of war. This is the most ambitious effort in the volume, and it is impressive in its way, though there is a certain inevitable theatricality in the introduction of the phantom ship—inevitable because of the familiar stage representations of The Flying Dutchman. In homelier vein we have "A Coastguard Wedding" and "A Near Thing," which tells how a bluejacket resolves to disregard a signal recalling him to his ship in order to marry his young woman, repents when he finds that she will not cast in her lot with a deserter, and is suddenly enabled to Garry out his resolve lawfully by a fresh signal extending his leave. But we like Mr. Cope Cornford beat of all in his narrative vein, concise yet circumstantial, as when he describes the scene on board a trooper on the eve of starting for India with a fresh draft, or recounts such fine but unrecorded feats of sea- manship as the voyage of the Cresset '—a true story, though the names of the ships have been changed. The ' Cresset' was "a poor, old, rusty, neglected little vessel" on the Australian station, "a mere fabric of red rust, held together by a few patches of decaying metal." Yet after some wholly inadequate repairs she was sent out from Sydney in the summer of 1911, under a Captain holding his first command:— " There are not many men in the Navy who know how to sail a ship ; but among them are the crew of the Cresset, the one hundred and four men who sailed in that tragic ship in the summer of 1911. It was a highly educational voyage. The ship must be sailed; but before she could be sailed the crew must learn sail- drill and the names of ropes, and how to go aloft without falling overboard. The ship must steam; but before she could steam the engine-room staff must pack the joint of the main steam-pipe, and repair the furnaces of the boilers, and the draught-plate, and the feed-pipe, and generally wrap things up and doctor them, and all with exceeding caution, because the boilers were so delicate. The officers and crew did not know then, what they discovered after- wards, that beneath the boilers the plating of the ship's bottom had rusted away, so that only the wood sheathing and a sheet of copper remained between them and the deep, in waters studded with uncharted reefs. But the ship must also be made clean and kept clean ; and how were these things to be accomplished, when she kept falling to pieces under their hands? You cannot at the same time mend a ship and clean her. But the Captain deter- mined that all these things should be done, and done they were, under a scorching sun, in fair weather and foul. Luckily for that painted wreck, she met no very heavy weather, which would have crumpled her up as a kick crumples up a rusty biscuit tin. The men of Gotham put to sea in a bowl; but the men of the Cruse, put to sea in a sieve."
The record of this memorable voyage is thus summed up on pp. 205-6 :—
"From her departure from Sydney to her arrival at Noumea the Cresset had been at sea for one hundred and nine days, out of one hundred and eighty-two days. During the whole of that time the men had been kept at work upon necessary repairs in addition to the proper work of the ship. The Cresset, wholly unseaworthy as she was, had successfully executed a punitive mission in circum- stances of considerable danger; had been exposed to the chance of swift and certain destruction by the guns of a foreign warship ; had sailed and steamed thousands of miles with scarce a mishap, upholding British prestige and serving as the instrument of law and order among the savages of the Pacific; had suffered the loss of her propeller; and had arrived at Sydney in a condition so clean and so efficient that the inspecting officer particularly com- mended her smart condition."
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