Full Speed Ahead: Tales from the Log of a Correspondent with Our NavyBeston, Henry
History
Full Speed Ahead: Tales from the Log of a Correspondent with Our Navy
Beston, Henry
United States. Navy; World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations
We got through the night somehow or other. The next morning the
ocean was a dirty brown-grey, and knots and wisps of cloud were
tearing by close over the water. Every once in a while a great,
hollow-bellied wave would come rolling out of the hullaballoo and
break thundering over us. On all the boats the lookout on the bridge
had to be lashed in place, and every once in a while a couple of tons
of water would come tumbling past him. Nobody at the job stayed dry
for more than three minutes; a bathing suit would have been more to
the point than oilers. Shaken, you ask? No, not very bad, a few
assorted bruises and a wrenched thumb, though poor Jonesie on the Z3
had a wave knock him up against the rail and smash in a couple of
ribs. But no being sick for him, he kept to his feet and carried on
in spite of the pain, in spite of being in a boat which registered a
roll of seventy degrees. I used to watch the old hooker rolling
under me. You've never been on a submarine when she's rolling--talk
about rolling--oh boy! We all say seventy degrees because that's as
far as our instruments register. There were times when I almost
thought she was on her way to make a complete revolution. You can
imagine what it was like inside. To begin with, the oily air was
none too sweet, because every time we opened a hatch we shipped
enough water to make the old hooker look like a start at a swimming
tank, and then she was lurching so continuously and violently that to
move six feet was an expedition. But the men were wonderful,
wonderful! Each man at his allotted task, and--what's that English
word, ... carrying on. Our little cook couldn't do a thing with the
stove, might as well have tried to cook on a miniature earthquake,
but he saw that all of us had something to eat, doing his bit, game
as could be."
He paused again. The embankment was fading in the dark. A waiter
appeared, and drew down the thick, light-proof curtains.
"Yes, the men were wonderful--wonderful. And there wasn't very much
sickness. Let's see, how far had I got--since it was impossible to
make any headway we lay to for forty-eight hours. The deck began to
go the second morning, some of the plates being ripped right off.
And blow--well as I told you in the beginning, I never saw anything
like it. The disk of the sea was just one great, ragged mass of foam
all being hurled through space by a wind screaming by with the voice
and force of a million express trains. Perhaps you are wondering why
we didn't submerge. Simply couldn't use up our electricity. It
takes oil running on the surface to create the electric power, and we
had a long, long journey ahead. Then ice began to form on the
superstructure, and we had to get out a crew to chop it off. It was
something of a job; there wasn't much to hang on to, and the waves
were still breaking over us. But we freed her of the danger, and she
went on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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