10 
LAND d? WATER 
September 19, 1918 
"Toy Dreadnoughts": By Herman Whitaker 
■"■ ^HEY were never designed for such uses. Their 
I wealth of polished teak and mahogany, glittering 
I brass, would have blinded the skipper of an ocean 
■ tramp. Their cabins were luxurious boudoirs for 
-^^ the pretty women and children they carried in 
summer weather up and down Long Island Sound. Until, 
like the black bursting of a typhoon, the war swept them into 
its seething cauldron, their snowy decks had known no harder 
usage than the patter of dainty feet, dancing under canopies 
of coloured lanterns. Up to the moment that Uncle Sam 
stretched out his lean sinewy hand and gathered them all 
in, they were merelj? the pleasure baubles of our American 
multi-millionaires. But the morning after — well, a perfectly 
ruthless captain 
and a shameless 
crew descended 
on the particular 
ve?sel upon 
whic 1, later, I 
was to make a 
cruise, and when 
the shadows of 
evening de- 
scended upon 
their labours, five 
carloads of fancy 
woodwork lay on 
the decks. 
Stripped like a 
boxer for action, 
guns bolted to her 
snowy decks, 
depth mines 
poised astern, she 
led the "Suicide 
Fleet"— so 
named by those 
who watched it — 
out of Hampton 
Roads. 
A baker's dozen 
of yachts going 
to war — it did 
seem ridiculous. 
Against one 
German raider 
they would have 
stood about as much chance as Leif Ericcson's galley, 
or the pinta of Columbus. It seemed, almost, that 
any respectable war vessel which happened to meet them en 
route would run them in as a policeman rounds up lost children, 
and return them home to their mother ship. But they sailed on 
to the French waters in which, ever since, they have carried 
out a remarkable duty. Working in conjunction with the 
British and American flotillas in English waters, they grabbed' 
transports, supply and merchant ships from their hands, 
and convoyed them safely into French ports. Also, and 
this is equally important, for a ship's bottom is as valuable 
empty as fuU, the^' escorted them back again ; saw them as 
it were, across the yard and past the dog. In fact these 
"toy dreadnoughts" formed part of our first battle Hne ; 
the real front on which Americans were killing and being 
killed before the first soldier embarked from our shores. 
This latter fact was not quite as well established as it 
ought to have been in my mind when I called on the admiral 
of this unique fleet for the first time. His eyes flashed under 
straight grey brows when I spoke of a recent visit to the 
"American front." "You are. there now," he said, very 
quietly. "Go for a cruise with us and you'll soon find it 
out." 
I did. An hour later saw me with one of his captains 
speeding in a swift motor boat out to where three of his 
"dreadnoughts" lay at anchor in the harbour. Surely they 
did look small. But just as a little man's courage adds to 
his inches, so their performance in the past year caused them 
to loom in my imagination large as battle-qruisers. When, 
stepping aboard the largest, I noted the guns fore and aft, the 
quick-firers on the boat deck above, nests of depth mines astern, 
I realised the secret of their, success — the guns and mines could 
not be more effective if fired from a ship half a mUe long. 
The officers were as remarkable in their own. way as the 
ship. Only the captain was a regular navy man. The other 
Copyright in U.S.A. by Herman Whitaker. 
six from the naval reserve, counted a stockbroker, bond 
clerk, Staten Island Ferry engineer, Montana cattle man. 
AU had been following pursuits of peace before the war. 
One, I believe, had never seen the sea before he came on 
board. Yet now, after a year's study, backed by arduous 
practical applications, they were capable officers. 
The crew was still more remarkable. Fully a third of the 
men before the mast were Harvard, Yale or Princeton stu- 
dents, scions of the wealthiest American families, shipped 
for the duration of the war. One quartermaster, a man over 
forty years of age, had once been tax-commissioner of the 
State of New jc Jersey, and had served two terms in 
that ^state's legislature. It was quite startling to hear the 
cultivated college 
speech issuing 
from a group of 
tarry sailors. In- 
deed, the yacht 
might easOy have 
furnished a motif 
for one of those 
old-style Gilbert 
and Sullivan 
musical comedies, 
in which an ad- 
miral is "shan- 
ghaied" and 
shipped before 
the mast in a 
vessel manned by 
chorus girls. She 
needed only to' 
pick up a ship- 
wrecked heroine 
and an unprin- 
cipled adventurer 
to go right into 
the "movies." 
Apart from this 
possibility, how- 
ever, there was 
little comedy 
aboard the yacht. 
Hard work and 
worse weather 
have been the lot 
of these lads 
brought up in luxury, yet they have thrived on it. 
Tall, straight and strong, they look as fine a lot of sailor- 
men as ever hauled on a rope. 
Before we sailed, the captains of all the ships in our con- 
voy came aboard for a conference. They represented almost 
all of the Allied and neutral marine services. AU of 
them had been "dipped" once or twice, yet they were still 
pursuing the path of duty in those dangerous seas.* They 
accepted with quiet nods their places in convoy, and listened 
quietly to directions in case of attack. Not till the captain 
spoke of fog did the worry which dogs their footsteps day 
and night make itself manifest. 
"Let's hope. that won't be added to our troubles," one 
said. 
Another added, "We have enough as it is." 
Quiet they were, unheroic, commonplace, prosaic, yet the 
life laistory of any one of them would out-thrill a Dumas 
romance. I am in a position to write one chapter which 
began when, next morning, the dreaded fog caught us in 
a dangerous passage between shore and outer shoals. A 
heavy sea had given us a miserable roll, and I was trying to 
sleep off some sea-sick qualms in the cabin below, when the 
screws suddenly stopped, then went full speed astern. 
When that happens in the war zone, you don't stand on the 
order of your going, you simply go. I went up on deck in 
three hops, just in time to see the fog roU back like a theatre 
curtain from a tall tower uprising from a smother of foam.- 
It takes time to stop a ship's headway, and for a couple of 
minutes it was an open question whether or not we should 
bump that perfectly good French hghthouse off the map. 
We were far closer than was comfortable, when she began to 
back off. 
Some of the others were not so lucky. The French pilot 
on the leading ship had made his turn around the lighthouse 
just a bit too soon, and he was on the beach. Another had 
bumped a reef with little damage to her false bottom. But 
HUNTING THE PIRATES 
No. 2 Gun of an American destroyer in action against a submarine. 
Topical Press 
