July 12, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
TI 
i6 
P. Z." 
By the Author of Jl Qrand Fleet Chaplains Note ^ook 
A T the moment of writing this, we are in the throes 
/% of a P.Z., in the North Sea. 
Z_Jm That is sufficiently vague, I hope, with regard to 
X .^.the locaUty ; and as for the date, it will be many 
weeks before this can appear in print, so in this respect also 
I am not giving much away. 
For the same reason of cautiousness I shall refrain from 
giving any accurate and detailed account of a P.Z., which of 
course would be of untold value to the enemy. There is, 
besides, another reason why I purposely abstain from sucli 
a description — and that is, because I could not do it if I tried, 
owing to my profound and entire ignorance of such a highly 
technical subject. 
I deal only in generalities, and in my own little naval 
Curiosity Shop collect merely such trifles as take my fancy, 
without pretending to possess any skilled knowledge about 
them, hoping only that the articles please also those who 
deal with me. 
But what is a P.Z. ? 
I put this same question to a watch-keeper, in the very 
early days of my naval career. He glared at me with a bitter 
and melancholv glare, and replied briefly : 
" Hell's delight ! " 
However, this did not help me very much, so I turned to the 
Meet Engineer — (they were not called Engineer Commanders 
in those days) , and put the same question to him. 
He said : " What is a P.Z. ? Why, a quick method of 
getting rid of several hundred tons of good coal ! " 
This also left me just as much in the dark. A facetious 
Cornishman ne.xt volunteered the information that the letters 
stood for Penzance ; which I knew was quite true, having 
seen them on the brown mainsails of Cornish trawlers in 
Mounts Bay ; but the remark was made in such an evident 
spirit of«raillery that I searched around for a fitting retort, 
and could think of nothing better to say than that the letters 
also stood for Poor Zany ; but this was such a weak effort at 
repartee, and Zany is such an unconvincing word after all, 
that I left it unsaid, and the honours remained with him. 
And it was not until my desire for knowledge had led me into 
further researches that 1 found out at last a P.Z. is what 
corresponds at sea to a sham fight ashore. 
There is no mystery attachecl to tlie two letters ; they do not 
" stand for " anything at all, but are simply taken from a signal 
book where similar groups of letters in many permutations 
and combinations indicate a vast number of naval orders 
and phrases in a short and convenient form. We are, as I said, 
in the midst of a P.Z. now. An impressionist picture of our 
fleet at the present moment would paint a wide stretch of grey 
tumbling waters, over which a countless number of ships of all 
sizes and classes are tearing at high speed in every possible 
direction and apparently quite aimlessly. I say a " countless" 
number, because if you were to stand on deck and look around 
to try and count them you would find they are Uke the stars 
on a summer night, which appear to grow in number the 
longer you gaze at them. Look steadily at the horizon until 
your eyes ache with looking, and you will see another large 
squadron you had overlooked at the first count ; they are only 
just visible, dimly merging into the hazy tones of sea and sky, 
and, as you watch them, they disappear again. 
Nothing more definite than this breaks the horizon. There 
is no land in sight anywhere. This, by the way, is what the 
Germans describe as "the British fleet hiding securely in 
its well-defended harbours " ; and a certain section of our 
own public seems more than half inclined to believe them ; 
which, of course, is just what the Germans want. But in a 
sense, after all, thev are correct. The seas themselves arc 
Britain's harbours, well defended by her steel walls now as by 
her wooden walls of old ; and in these wide harbours we cer- 
tainly have done a very fair share of " lurking " since the 
war began ; and although we should be delighted to extend 
the hospitality of our " hiding-places " to the enemy, we 
have had them all to ourselves save on extremely rare occa- 
sions. 
The rapid and complicated movements of the ships dashing 
so wildly about on all sides are, of course, meaningless only 
to the uninstructed. They remind one of nothing so much 
as those curious water-beetles which can be seen on a stagnant 
pond on any summer's day, gyrating over the surface as though 
skating on ice, and continually passing and repassing one 
another, circling rapidly over the water in apparent con- 
fusion, though they never collide, nor get in each others 
way. 
In reality, the bewildering movements of the ships are as 
full of purpose and as scientifically co-ordinated as the 
figures of that dance beloved of all blue jackets and known to 
them as the Dee Awlberts — that is, the D'Alberts. 
One portion of the fleet represents the enemy, and we— 
tiie other portion — represent ourselves ; and we experiment 
with the other fellows in various ways, much in the same 
manner as a professor of jiu-jitsu might practise his old 
tricks or learn new ones on the vile body of his apprentice. 
Sometimes it happens that the apprentice succeeds in 
throwing the professor — and thtn wc metaphorically scratch 
our heads and wonder what we did wrong, or whether some 
other dodge, might be more effectual. A P.Z. in the old days 
was a much more alarming affair than it is now, becavise 
it was so rare an occurence, at least on the grand scale. 
On some stations it was just an annual treat, like a Sunday- 
school picnic — which it much resembled indeed in many 
respects, notably the light-hearted tendency of many of the 
party to run away and lose themselves. 
I remember, for example, a P.Z. in the Mediterranean, a 
dozen years ago, when the Atlantic Fleet came up " the 
Straits " to play with us. We met them somewhere oft Lagos, 
and the two fleets at once proceeded to play " Here \Ve 
Come Gathering Nuts and May"— a P.Z. is really very 
much like that game ! 
But unfortunately— well, have you ever seen the game in 
question as sometimes played at the Sunday School treats 
referred to above, where the children forget the rules in their 
happy carelessness and get all mixed up ? We were just like 
that ; and we finished up the battle with all the ships of both 
fleets booming along at full speed on parallel courses, inextric- 
ably confused, friend and foe side by side, steaming hell-for- 
kather in a mad race for a non-existent goal ! How we 
all escaped ramming each other is more than I can say ; but 
the' situation was well summed up by our Rear Admiral — 
(he is an Admiral of the Fleet now, and doubtless remembers 
the incident)— who signalled to his nearest opponent— 
Is this the battle of Armageddon ? 
On another and more recent occasion an amusing con- 
tretemps occured with curious results. It really happened 
during manoeuvres, but these are nothing more than a 
glorified P.Z. The fleets were carefully placed in their 
prearranged dispositions with adefinite object, namely to prove 
that the set scheme of the enemy force could be successfully 
counterchecked in spveral different ways. 
But unhappily for the plan the Admiral commanding the 
" enemy " force was a man of ideas as well as of action ; and 
no sooner had the . order been given to begin hostilities 
than he at once sailed from his base and mopped up his 
opponents piecemeal, thereby disproving all the accepted 
theories and bringing the manoeuvres to a sudden close 
before they were properly started. It was just as though 
the Dragon had swallowed St. George at the first onset and 
consequently spoiled the whole of a combat that promised 
to be most interesting and instructive ! 
A P.Z. nowadays is a very serious and strenuous affair, 
entaihng as much preparation as one of those trench raids 
which figure so unimportantly in the communiques but mean 
so much previous working up in reality. And after the schemes 
have been carefully worked out on paper by the various 
admirals' staffs there is a great deal more preparatory work 
while actually at sea before the opposing fleets meet for their 
sham battle. Everyone on board has a share in it. I have 
even a small one myself. But naturally it is the admirals 
and captains who find the most excitement in such exercises— 
which are rather like living chess, where ybu can't exactly say 
you are not taking part in the game so long as you are dressed 
up to represent a White Knight or a Black Bishop, but the 
people who get the most fun out of it are those who move 
the pieces about the board. 
Perhaps the Gunnery Lieutenants also manage to suck a 
little excitement out of the proceedings ; for they are a 
separate class of human beings, who can always succeed in 
raising a thrill provided they are allowed to waggle their guns 
about and point them at the horizon or another ship or the 
moon or— well, anytliing. Then they will come down to the 
wardroom and sit up half the night talking about straddles 
and ladders and spotting and plotting, only switching off 
occasionally to turn the current of high voltage anathemas on 
to the officer of K turret, or the T.S., or the voice-pipe num- 
bers—unhappy criminals who bow their heads meekly before 
the storm of wrath but survive it somehow and never seem a 
penny the worse for it. , ■ xi. f ^ t> 7 ■ 
But to the Hoi Polloi, there is no denying the fact, a P.Z. is 
rather a boring affair. The Navigator doesn't hke it, he- 
cause it keeps him on the bridge for several hours without any 
