May 31. 1917 
LAND & WATER 
The Cruise of the " Washpot " 
By Bennet Copplestone 
17 
There are more things in Heaven and. Earth and upon 
■the Sea, Horatio Nelson, than were dreamt uf in your ■ 
philosophy. — Hamlei (revised). 
I MET him last summer in an hotel at Portsmouth, whither, 
if you have patience, and will sit in the smoking room 
long enough, all your friends in the service will drift 
ill to you. 
1 had known him as the captain of a battleship, yet he 
appeared before me wearing the three plaited rings and loop 
of a Commander R.N.A. 
" So you have come down in tJie world," said I. 
" Not a bit. 1 have been devilish lucky. There are lots 
of men senior to me, even Admirals, with nothing better than 
armed hners on the Atlantic patrol. While I, a junior 
Captain (retired; have a real fighting tub of my own. She's 
as broad as she's long and will steam five soUd knots when my 
Engineer Lieutenant whacks her up. The Washpot is a real 
peach." 
" It's a queer name." 
" When we feel polite and respectful we call her Moah. 
But to the lower deck she has always been the Blurry 
Washpol. In the confidential Navy List she is the Princess 
Something or Other." 
" And what is the Washpot ? " I asked patiently. 
" A monitor," said her commander proudly. " One of the 
latest model, warranted proof against mines and mouldies. 
A sure warranty, for I have tried her with both. But though 
a crazy brute to steer the Washpot is a lovely gun plat- 
form. You should see her two big guns." 
'•' I have heard of those weird craft," said I, 
" The best or the worst ? " he enquired. " The best 
is very good, but the worst is unspeakable. It took us five 
hours to persuade her into dock here. She sort of shied at 
the gates. When I take her out she may go ashore at Eastnej' 
jr Ryde or butt into one of the old Spithead forts, one never 
knows. She takes her own course, bless her, and waddles' 
sideways at live knots. But she's a lovely gun platform — 
when she doesn't turn round and round as we fire." 
" A bit cranky to navigate," I obseiVed. 
" One d(K>sn't navigate the Moab," said he calmly ; "She 
just butts along on her own. It is up to other craft to get 
out of her way. If they aren't pretty slippy when she's 
around she just heaves her fat rump into them. 
" She does not sound very useful." 
" Not useful ! " protested the Moab's owner indignantly. 
" Not useful ! . I tell you she's a peach when slie ^ets into 
position and the guns begin to shoot. She gave Fritz beans 
only last week. 1 laughed all the tiiiic she was firing. 
, -" Suppose that you explain things a bit," said I. 
" The Moah is a shallow draijght monitor for coast bom- 
bardment \" he said, as if that sentence e.vplained everything. 
That is the worst of the Navy ; they expect one to under- 
stand their mysteries without any telling. Presently my 
friend the Commander K.N.R. became more communicative 
and revealed to me the Cruise of the Washpot. 
* * * * 
" In the early days of the war," said the Commander, 
" we used some river craft which had Been built for Brazil. 
They were dainty enough monitors, but their guns, six inch, 
were too light for big work, and their bottoms went scat when 
they bumped against mines. So we designed othen, great 
round flat brutes with under water protection, but we had 
no time to build the guns for them. 
" The ll'as/j/)o/, seems to-be a sporthig ship." 
" She is that. Especially in a tideway. She can make 
. four knots sideways? to five knots ahead. In the Straits 
where the tides cross she will turn round and round for 
hoyrs togetlier. Sooner or later. a heavy tug, cursing and laugh- 
ing, has to come and tow us clear. Three of us were out in 
mid Channel once,, cuft.sying round one another like the 
' Tliree Graces,' bang in the centre of our own mine iield. 
We had to pull clear as best we could, for no one would help 
us out. Oh, we are jolly useful when in position, but it's 
the devil's own Job to get us there. Driving pigs is a play 
to it." ■ ■ ■ 
" Have you done much work with these remarkable 
vessels ? " I asked. 
"Lots. We can go anywhere. You may not believe me," 
he added solemnly, " but we are much improved by being 
, torpedoed." 
" Go steady," I implored. . " As you are strong, be merci- 
ful to me, a landsman." ■ 
" Fact," declared he, " 1 will prove it to voii. The Moab 
is in dock yonder for repairs. You can see her to-morrow. 
About ten days ago we- went out with the Dover Patrol, 
just to tell Fritz that we were ahve and to give him some ^ 
repair jobs at Zeebrugge and at another place. First \ye 
went up Schleswig way to make things lively at where 
the big airship sheds are. There were three monitors — the 
Moab and two sisters with obscene names — a crowd o{ 
destroyers and steam drifters whose job it was to s,weep for 
mines and submarines and to protect us from surface attack. 
There were light ^pjuisers, too.. But none of tliem except, us 
could do much harm to Fritz. We had the guns. The 
Admiral ordered us to keep well away from the rest of the 
flotilla. We could bang into each otiier as inucli as ws 
liked, he said. But he wasn't going to have his precious 
drifters rammed by armoured tea trays. It took us three 
days to work up to the .north-east beyond Heligoland, and 
while we waddled along indifferent to periscopes, tlie des- 
troyers and drifters put the fear of God into Fritz's U-boats. 
I musn't tell you how they did it. It was a fine morning when 
we reached our objective — the airship sheds at . 
We lay out a few miles from the coast — a nice range fo^ 
our big guns — while the fast craft roamed about inshore of 
us. We did not worry much about Fritz's batteries. We 
were so far away and lay so low that his gunners could scarcely 
see us, while we could make out his sheds fine ; they were 
as big as Olympia, four of them, double sheds. I manfeuvred 
to fire straight ahead, for if one trains a monitor's guns on 
either beam the recoil soon makes her slew, which is the deuce. 
F'ritz got busy on the fast craft inshore lon^ before we were 
ready to strike into the orchestra. I don't believe that at 
first he could see us at all. We were so many miles distant, 
hull down on his horizon — what there was to us of hulls — and 
from the observation posts on the low hills must have looked 
mere blobs on the shining sea. ..It was early morning in July, 
and the sun away to the north of east lighted up the tin roofs 
of the airship sh'eds so that they glittered like great con- 
servatories — the jewel of a mark. The three of us were lying 
a mile or so apart, all bow on to the land, and when we had all 
taken and checked the range carefully we let fly salvoes 
one after another. It was great. To Fritz the siiells 
must have seemed to come from nowhere, just sj)at out 
of space to biff him in the eye. My first two shots went over. 
I saw the smoke of the bursts on the hillside, b'ut the ne.xt 
salvo landed full on a shed and sent it to Heaven in a htter 
of girders and corrugated iron. There was n'> flash, so that 
the shed was empty of a Zcpj). When we had straffed all the 
sheds which had taken Fritz six months to put up, we searched 
, for the shore batteries which had already begun to notice. Tliey 
mounted nothing bigger than 9.2 inch, pretty guns but 'out- 
classed by our sweet monsters. We didn't seem to find 
them. Fritz mounts his shore guns on armoured platforms, 
running upon rails. Wt could not silence them, but they had a 
forlorn job firing at us. As a mark we were rotten and at the 
distan<;e he could not reach us except with a high pitched shot. 
All the while I was wondering what had become of the 
Zepps which ought by rights to have been in the sheds we had 
come to rummage. As it was sheer waste of good shell 
to hunt any more moving batteries we laid off the guns and 
took to Zepp gazing. I climbed up the tripod mast to the 
lookout platform which we call the spotting top. It sounds 
good. The small craft were still raging about inshore making 
a show of being busy ; it is a little way they have. FVitz 
was still pitching his g.2 .shell about us, but nothing came of 
it all. I had nothing to do but smoke up there in the .spotting 
top and look for Zepps which did not come. The sea was like 
a pond and the sky cloudless. It was all rather jolly and 
peaceful but deadly dulf ; I began to wish that F>itz would hit 
us or do something to make one remember there was a war. 
About an houi' after the action began a destroyer ran up to 
say that the sheds had been thoroughly busted up and a 
German torpedo boat sunk. There was nothing more doing 
and we began to think of making a shift. While we lay around 
waiting for the Admiral's orders the lookout- man near me 
cilled and pointed away to the west, towards England, and 
following his eye I saw first one, then two, then half a dozen 
airships flying fast and low towards their burrows which we 
had destroyed. We had a small gun, mounted for high- 
angle fire, just to kelp Zepps from trying to drop bombs on 
to us, but they were much too far away for a pop gun like 
that. So for a rag, I got down to the turret, trained the two 
big guns at extreme elevation on to the Zepps. and let 
fly a salvo of common shell, set with time-fuse, into the brown 
' of them. It was worth the waste of shell to see them scatter. 
" Go on " said I, for he had ^topped to laugh. 
