June 13, 19 1 8 
Land & Water 
1 1 
''Suddenly — !" : By Lewis R. Freeman, r.n.v.r. 
1 
F there is one word which recurs oftener than another 
in the present-day sailor's tale of what has befallen 
him, it is "suddenly!" 
Naval life in the North Sea would be comic in the 
swiftness of its transitions — if it was not so 
tragic. Perhaps, indeed, it is the sombre background against 
■which they stand out which makes the flashes of comedy seem 
the more comic, Uke an incident in connection with the 
torpedoing of a cruiser I was told of a few days ago. 
"It was not so long after Christmas," said the one of the 
half-dozen surviving officers who told me the story, "and 
there were a few of the festal decorations stuck up here and 
there, mostly wreaths of holly and mistletoe sent from home. 
Eight' or ten of us were sitting in the ward-room after dinner, 
having a bit of a sing-song to the music of the staff- 
surgeon's mandolin and the engineer-commander's guitar. 
The "mouldie" hit us full and fair amidships, and e.xplodea 
with a thud that made itself felt in the ward-room with a 
sort of convulsive jerk. 
" Everything loose flew off on a tangent, among them being 
a curtain-pole and a wreath of holly. The curtain went 
into a heap on the deck, but the wreath — by the freakiest of 
coincidences — made a fair ringer of the P.M.O.'s curly pate. 
He was a chap with a hair-trigger sense of humour and a 
nose for scenting the ridiculous that was almost subUme. 
■Clapping the prickly garland on his brow at an even 
more rakish angle than it had landed at, he threw down his 
mandolin, draped the fallen curtain over his shoulders like 
a Roman toga, and seized the poker of the empty tile stove. 
Recovering, with a quick grab, the mandolin from beneath 
the divan, where it had rolled, he tucked it under his chin 
like a \'ioUn, and began sawing violently across its protesting 
strings with the poker as a bow. Swaying undulantly from 
the waist like a virtuoso, he began shouting at the top of his 
voice : ' Nero fiddling while Rome is burning ! Christians 
take cover I Thumbs down ! Thumbs dSwn ! ' We were 
hard hit, and the most of us realised it was only a matter of 
minutes before she went down ; but I don't think there iivas 
a man of us that wasn't laughing as he made for the door. 
I could laugh yet at the mere thinking of it if it wasn't for 
the fact that — that the P.M.O. was not in any of the boats 
that were picked up by the destroyers a couple of hours 
later. The last I remember of him was seeing him brush off 
the holly wreath and make after us for the door, the 'toga' 
slipping down about his heels, and the mandolin and poker 
grasped in either hand. He headed for'ard — he always 
thought to look after a chap with a twisted knee he had 
been treating in the sick bay — and no one ev£r recalled 
seeing him on the upper deck. The "mouldie" shored us 
right open, and it wasn't ten minutes between the time 
poor was playing Nero, and when — for the ship, for 
him and for a couple of hundred others — it was 'Thumbs 
down I ' in dead earnest." 
Swift Transition 
There was another instance of a swift transition which 
I recall, in which the tragedy was unilluminated with even a 
flash of comic reUef. One evening during a fortnight 
which I spent upon a certain famous battleship a young 
captain from the destroyer flotilla came aboard to dine with 
a former shipmate. Tall, slender, dark, and with that 
magnetic winsomeness so characteristic of a certain type of 
Celt, he impressed me as one of the most attractive and 
thoroughly likable -personalities I had ever met. He told 
me — with all modesty, but yet with singular effectiveness — 
destroyer yarns in which he or some of his friends had figured, 
and ended by extending me a hearty invitation to "come 
out for a jaunt" on his "little pet" some day. 
Almost immediately after dinner he asked for a boat to 
return to his flotilla anchorage, saying that there was a 
probabihty that he would be getting away on some kind of a 
stunt before morning. They held him over for two or three 
songs, which he sang to his own accompaniment. " Nirvana" 
and "Aileen Alanah." I remember especially the latter, 
vibrant with that haunting appeal which only an Irishman 
can put into it. He renewed his invitation for me to "join 
him for a jaunt some day" the last thing before he disappeared 
down the wrigghng Jacob's ladder to the bobbing 
picket-boat. 
It was about noon the next day that the officer of the day 
Jonnged into an easy chair by the fire and remarked — in the 
usual casual ward-room manner — that a signal had been 
picked up saying that a destroyer was pounding to pieces on 
the rocks somewhere "outside," and that some mine-sweeping 
sloops, sent to i^s assistance, were just passing through the 
booms. There was no particular discussion of an event 
which, if not quite an everyday happening, was still frequent 
enough not to arouse more than passing comment. "Hope 
all hands were saved," and "Can't afford to lose destroyers 
nowadays" (comments which I had heard on half a dozen 
similar occasions), were all fhat I recall being made on this 
one. The more imminent interest of luncheon put an end 
to further speculation. That evening there was word that 
the destroyer was a total loss, and that only one man — found 
half-frozen in a niche of a cliff — had been saved. 
Back on my own ship a fortnight later, an interval of three 
or four days, with nothing specially to do, brought to my 
mind the invitation I had received from the young Irish 
lieutenant-commander to pay him a visit on his destroyer, 
and I started making inquiries as to how I could get in touch 
with him. "You'll save time and trouble by taking a boat, 
going over to the destroyer anchorage, and looking your 
man up in person," some one suggested. "What did you 
say his name was ? " 
"K ," I answered; "he commands the 'X .' " 
"You won't find either of them, then," was the quiet 
reply. " K was lost when his destroyer piled up on the 
rocks — Skerries, I believe — about the first of the month. 
Going out in the night, and probably caught in a bad tide- 
rip, and lost bearings in a snow storm. Only man saved 
half-crazy ; can't shed any light at all on what happened. 
Rotten place, that neck of the Pentlands, where the tides 
play 'Ring-a-ring of roses." Destroyer men call it the 
'Hell Hole.' Beach paved as thick with wreckage — some 
of it dating back to the time of the Vikings — as the other 
place by the same name is with 'good intentions.' Knew 
K well. Shipmates with him on the old 'A .' One 
of the best. Ever hear him sing ' Nirvana ? ' " 
" He sang it the night I met him at dinner on the '- 
I answered, "and, from what you have told me, I should 
judge it must have been the last time he had a chance 
to sing it before the snowstorm, the tide-rip, and the Pentland 
Skerries conspired to advance him one more rung up the 
ladder toward the peace of his own Nirvana." 
A Destroyer Yarn 
Then there was the story the Cockney lad on the after 
searchlight platform told me one night when the ship was 
wallowing in a mid- winter gale somewhere off the coast of 
Norway. The darkness was inky, ' Stygian, giving a queer 
suggestion of "palpability" that almost impelled one to lift 
one's hand and try to brush it aside like a curtain that had 
brushed one's face. Ahead and astern the other battleships 
of the division were blotted to blankness in the night, but 
abeam to starboard, a tremulous dusky greyness in the 
enshrouding capacity indicated where a screening destroyer, 
labouring in the lock-step of the might}' seas, was wrestling 
like a game but weary terrier with a bone in its teeth. 
The very consciousness of that eyeball-searing shaft of 
searchlight, on tap at the turn of a lever,* seemed to make 
the blackness all the blacker. 
Sheltering from the wind in the lee of the searchlight, my 
companion showed me how — by closing the eyes for several 
seconds and then opening them suddenly, with the hollowed 
hands shading them like looking through binoculars — the 
never-so-faint glow that sometimes hovered above the 
destroyer's funnels could be fixed. 
"That there woggly shiver," he said, leaning close, and 
indicating with outstretched hand the fliittering halo dancing 
on the curtain of the night, "is when they'se feedin' 'er with 
more oil, an' the light has a streak o' smoke to play agin. 
An' that blinkin' shadow jnmpin' up 'gainst the hght 
ev'ry UT while — d'yu twig wot that ritely is ? No. That's 
the top o' a big sea loomin' up higher'n 'er funnels. W'en 
you 'gins to see that scmi-'clipse like, take it from me it's 
jolly well time they eased 'er down. If they keeps drivin' 
'er at much more'n halt-speed into 'ead seas — seas like them 
wot's gittin' up now — ten to one somethin' goin' to carry 
'way, and even money somethin' wurse may pay for it." 
"Like what, for instance ? " I queried, taking up the slack 
in the hood of my "lammy" coat, and buttoning down a 
yawning sleeve that was scooping an uncomfortable amount 
of brine laden wind. 
"Like. wot 'appcn'd to the blinkin' ol' Ovd w'en I wus a- 
