LAND & WATER 
June 14, 1917 
An Affair of Machinery 
By tbe Author of Ji QranS. FIcel Chaplain s Note ^ook 
A[.1T TLE little while ago I was ashore for an after- 
noon, and hnding nothing more exciting to do I 
went over a distillcrj'. The gentleman who 
_sl)owed me round was partitularly careful to 
..\plain that none of the produce of the stills at any stage 
»)( Its manufacture was lit for present consumption. After 
telling you this, it seems ;dniost unneccessary to state that the 
locality was somewhere in Scotland. 
It was a fairly large distillery, and a good deal of machinery 
was installed for various purposes. 
" IJo you employ an cngmeer to look after all this ?" 
1 (juestioncd my guiUc. 
■' No ]>recisely an engineer," he replied ; " we mak' shift wi' 
ha I -breeds " ! Well, the Navy has^grown to such an enormous 
e.\tent since the war that we have supplemented the regular 
na\al staft of active-service engineers by drawing largely 
upDU volunteers from engineering works and firms ashore ; 
and so, if these temporary officers will allow me to use the 
expression without oftcnce, we too " mak' shift wi' ha'f- 
breeds " to assist our needs. 
Only " half-breeds " so far as naval routine and ship life 
are concerned, be it well understood ; in most cases the 
■' Engineer Lieutenant, R.N., Tempy "is a regular deus ex 
muchina — (as a classical quip 1 think that is rather smart !) — 
and an engineering expert of all sorts of qualifications. Some- 
times, perhaps, he is just a httle apt to make his first appear- 
ance in the engine-room rather with the air of an Kdison 
asked to take charge of a clockwork mouse ; but in a ven^' 
brief space of time he discovers that there are as good engin- 
eering fish in the sea as ever stayed out of it, and there are 
])roblems and difficulties in a ship enough to engage all the 
attention and skill of tlie best man going. So, adapting himself 
to his new surroundings, he quickly becomes indistinguishable 
from the pukka old Navy hand, and proves himself a 
thundering good messmate into the bargain. 
Vou might think, perhaps, that in these days of turbine 
engines and oil fuel there can be very httle to do beyond 
turning a few taps and switches ; everything is so simple. 
Exactlv ! There was a man, once up.on a time, who said he 
knew all about women ; they were simple creatures, perfectly 
easy to understand, and what knocked him was how people 
could make any difficulty about the matter. He fell in love after 
that, and then he began to learn. Well, to be attached to one 
of the fair is very like being appointed to a ship ; and you 
ne\er know how little you know until you find out by 
fxp'.'rience ! 
Now ours happens to be the best steaming ship in the whole 
o( the Grand Fleet. I trust that the mention of this fact 
will not disclose her identity, though 1 am afraid it will ; 
especially if I add to that she is also the best shooting ship 
and the cleanest ship and the happiest ship. This practically 
gives the whole show away. No matter ! 
But to be the best steaming ship in the Fleet means much 
the sam'j as when you say that you have got the finest crop of 
potatoes in the whole allotment-patch ; that is, it means that 
you have worked hardest at it. F'or the engines of a battle- 
ship and their attendant engineers resemble the various 
members of a football team, who must learn laboriously to 
transform themselves into one single working unit before they 
are any use at all as a team, however good they may be 
individually. 
We rattled and hurtled along — at Jutland. And down 
below the engines hummed a ciuiet tunc ; for turbine ships 
are not noisy vulgarians like those of the old " Push-and- 
Pull " order. And the words of the quiet tunc which the 
turbines hummed were " Come along, you other ships, can't 
you keep up with me, can't you keep u]) with me ?" 
And the other shijte heaved their shoulders and shoved 
forward through the water and did their best, and somehow 
managed to keep up. IJut why ? Because down below 
were the experts, tlic engineers, watching the machinery in 
the same spirit of utter detachment as a bacteriologist examin- 
ing a microbe culture. The incessant roar of the huge turret 
guns overhead was nothing to them, nor the chance of an 
imminent and very impleasant death. Their business was 
to attend the engines and to supervise the sweating, toiling 
men in engine-room and stokehole. 
And so they passed that day, half-breeds rind full-breeds 
together, temporary men and acti\c-service. But to the half- 
Invrds is the greater credit due ; because, when all's said and 
(\nw, if you enter the .service for a full due yoti do so with 
your eyes o])en and realise that you area " hired assassin " with 
risks concomitant to the position : Imf it U a very different 
matter for a man who has hitherto woiked at his profession 
in a motor-factory or a cotton-mill. 
A ><ignal from the Adnural flicked out on the air ; he wanted 
to detach a sfiuadron, and wanted that squadron to steam 
most remarkably quickly. And if you could have looked 
down from the seaplane which at the "moment was flyihg higli 
over the fleet, you would have seen a jwrt of the line suddenly 
swerve aside, just as part of a flock of starlings will sometimes 
swerv^e, and all the ship, would have been seen to forge ahead 
with instantaneously increased speed, like a bunch of sj); inters 
at the head of a race spurting and breaking away from the 
ruck behind. 
'f 
That meant that down below in .every several ship there 
was an engineer officer with a hand on a valve and an eye on a 
revolution indicatoi;, and apparently fifty other hands and a 
hundred other eyes all fixed on as many different adjustments, 
playing delicately and skilfully as a virtuoso on his beloved 
instrument. 
Not infrequently one hears, in wardroom circles, the 
flight and interchange of what old Homer used to call " winged 
words ;" shafts aimed with great skill and accuracy and 
pointed in such a special manner that though they hit the 
mark and p.metrate yet they never cause the slightest pain 
nor leave the slightest trace of a scar. For it must be 
understood that naval wit most frequently takes the form of 
remarks such as an outsider would construe as ' deliberate 
insults of a personal nature ; and so perhaps they may be, 
in outward form ; but in their inward and spiritual meaning 
they merely indicate a proper feeling of good fellowshi]i. 
It is very much on the same lines as when a fond mother calls 
her babe " Little Ugly, ' having exhausted all the words in her 
vocabulary to express handsomeness and beauty ; or when 
a schoolboy addresses his chiun as " You silly rotter," 
meaning that he is the finest fellow in exi.stence. 
Possibly this is not a very ex;Uted form of humour ; but 
you cannot expect us all to be Sheridans or Chestertons— 
especially m war time, when we have to make the best of the 
scanty materials at our command in the conversational line. 
So you will understand perfectly what is meant when an 
executive lieutenant addresses an engineering ditto in such 
terms as these : 
" Look here you! Who gave you permission to sit on the 
same settee as me ? Get down to your stokehole— proper 
place for the likes of you !" 
To which the correct retort is—" And why aren't you up 
on deck, or on the bridge ? What's the use of my keeping the 
ship m the state of high efficiency down below, if you just 
slack about herq and are too tired to stroll about on the bridge 
while the quartermaster does the work ?" 
" On the bridge ?" Comes the Retort Courteous. " Why 
haven't I been up there the whole blessed fftrenoon, getting 
half blinded by the disgusting smoke vou have been chucking 
up through the foremost funnel ? Bad stoking, that's what 
It IS ! I can see I shall have to come below myself and teach 
you your job !" 
Or, with special reference to one of the " half-breeds " 
sitting quietly in the corner of the wardroom— well within 
earshot, of course — " Well I must say it's pretty hard on the 
Chief, having to put up with these engineering stiffs from the 
beach. Oh, there you are, Carburet ! Sorrv, I didn't know 
you were anywhere near !" (Which is, of course, obviously 
and openly untrue !). 
To this, the Counterclicck-not-at-all-t|uarrclsomc may take 
the form of bodily assault ; and as Mr. Carburet is frapiently 
a hefty s])ccimeii well exercised in a strenu<ms life ashore, 
the result is not always to tl)(e advantage of the R.N. 
In any case, perfect amity charactcrtses the whole of the 
IJioceedmgs frf)m start to fiiw^h. 
Once, long ago. in one of the i>cry old-fashioned shi])s, I 
heard the First Lieutojiant gently attyempting to pull the leg 
"f ;i Senior engineer by asking liiiii : 
" Why can't you build our ships like they do those Clyde 
Puffers, where the captain \n\ts the links over by himself and 
works everything in the engine-room from the bridge ? Then 
we could do without you fellows altogether !" 
1 forget the precise wording of the Reproof Valiant in this 
case ; but> jiowadays, in a very modern ship, there is little that 
does not come directly or indirectly under the charge of the 
engineering staff. 
Boats, which used to be laboriously hoisted by hand, taking 
nearly the whole of a ship's company to raise a cutter to the 
davit iieads, are now swiftly hrtisted in by motors. Turrets 
are an amazing mass of hydraulic or electrical contrivances ; 
