Shortly after my arrival at Malta, the Sultan came in for a refit and to give leave, and I was appointed to her for the time being, my own ship, the Agincourt, being in Eastern waters, and in the Sultan I remained for nearly six months. She was then commanded by Captain H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, one of the smartest of our young captains afloat, and on board of her I first made the acquaintance of comrades who were, in the future, amongst my best friends, and who also, incidentally, became some of the most distinguished officers in the Navy. Nearly all of them made their mark in later days. Among the lieutenants were the subsequent Admiral of the Fleet, the late Sir Assheton Curzon Howe, and Prince Louis of Battenberg, now Admiral the Marquis of Milford Haven; whilst amongst the midshipmen were Admirals Sir Stanley Colville and Sir Colin Keppel, both well-known and distinguished officers. There were a good many also who did not persevere long in the Navy. One of the sub-lieutenants, a great friend of mine, was Mr. Frank Alexander, the well-known racing man who left the Service as soon as he was promoted; he followed in the footsteps of his father, Mr. Caledon Alexander, and raced up to the end of his life. Another great friend[76] of mine was Charles le Strange, then a lieutenant. I was destined to serve under him in later years, and through him I had the good fortune of spending some pleasant evenings in the company of that very brilliant man and amusing writer, Laurence Oliphant, his brother-in-law. Not long after I had taken up my abode in the Sultan, she received orders to join the Flag at Vourlah Bay, and, after a short cruise in Grecian waters, the whole Mediterranean Fleet settled down at Besika Bay, as we thought for the winter. Admiral Sir Geoffrey Hornby was then flying his flag on board the Alexandra, with Captain Fitzroy as Flag-Captain, Lieutenant Winsloe (subsequently Commander-in-Chief in the China Station) as Flag-Lieutenant, and the Honourable Hedworth Lambton (now Admiral of the Fleet Sir Hedworth Meux) as his Flag-Mate.
Ever since the commencement of the Russo-Turkish War, our Mediterranean Fleet, subsequently reinforced by the Agincourt and the Achilles, had been in Eastern waters, making Besika Bay, which is situated close to the Dardanelles entrance, their headquarters; and a very trying time it had been to officers and men,—unspeakably so to the latter. The only communication with the outer world, except the mails which were generally about a fortnight old, was the daily Reuter telegram received by the flagship and signalled round the Fleet. It would probably occur to the ordinary mind that the Admiralty might have remembered that the officers and men of a large Fleet, possibly on the verge of a European war, were deserv[77]ing of some consideration in the way of news from day to day. But apparently such an idea never struck them, so the officers duly subscribed for their telegram, which, like most other blessings in this world, had to be paid for. Bets were taken and laid almost daily, as to whether we would, or would not, go up the Dardanelles, and also as to whether we would, or would not, go to war with Russia, and, apparently, the Cabinet of the day were as uncertain as we were. I remember a telegram received only a few days before we actually started,—the alliteration, I suppose, kept it in my memory:—“Cabinet said to be almost unanimous on necessity of proceeding up Dardanelles. Derby doubtful.” As may be remembered, the present Lord Derby’s great-uncle was then Foreign Secretary, and was always supposed to possess what is called “the cross-bench” mind.
It was bad enough for the officers; but they could occasionally get a day’s shooting or hunting, though the shooting was generally spoilt by the number of guns, as what would have provided really good sport and amusement for one ship was not likely to suffice for a large Fleet. But as far as the men were concerned, they had literally nothing to do in the way of amusement. The best sport at Besika was the hunting. The Commander-in-Chief, remembering, I suppose, the great Duke of Wellington’s pack of hounds in the Peninsula, instituted a pack at Besika. Kennels and stables were run up by the ships’ carpenters. The Admiral and many of the senior officers had their own horses, and we small fry used to hire from the Beef[78] Contractor. That functionary,—who probably died a millionaire,—managed to provide almost everything in life, and could always get hold of horses with a fair proportion of legs among them. Captain Hunt Grubbe was the Master, one of the Chaplains in the Fleet, the Reverend H. Gilbert, was Huntsman, and very good fun it all was. There were plenty of foxes, a fine open grass country, and many was the good gallop we had.
The date of the last time I was out with the hounds, February 9th, 1878, became almost a landmark in history. We had had a good run and were a longish way from home, when, the hounds being checked, and the field pulled up, we suddenly heard in the distance the repeated strains of the Officers’ Call. Mounted buglers had been sent to the top of the neighbouring hills to sound the Call, and in a few moments hounds were whipped off and we were all on our way back to the landing place at Besika. On our return to our ship we speedily learnt the reason. Orders had been received from the Admiralty that the Fleet was to proceed up the Dardanelles, so we found our comrades busy preparing for sea, and clearing away for action. Of course, we were the Turk’s best friends; but the Pasha in command of the forts had the reputation of not being over-trustworthy, and it was thought extremely possible that Russian “baksheesh” might induce him to make it very unpleasant for us in the Narrows; so we were taking no chances.
The Fleet sailed the same evening from Besika, but the firman from the Sultan, giving permission to pass[79] the forts, not having arrived, our ships anchored later at the mouth of the Straits. The Government then had to be communicated with to ask,—in the case of the firman never arriving,—whether the Fleet was to force a passage. Eventually, the Members of the Government succeeded in making up their minds, and the Fleet was ordered up, co?te que co?te; so, on the morning of February the 13th the Fleet weighed and steamed up the Dardanelles in the teeth of a northerly gale, and one of the thickest snowstorms I ever saw at sea. My station being at the forecastle guns, I received the full benefit of the snow; even there, in the eyes of the ship, it was only just possible to see “one’s next ahead.” In the ’seventies ten knots was about the highest speed at which a squadron could be man?uvred, so what with the gale and the snowstorm, to say nothing of the strong current that runs through the Dardanelles, it was no great wonder that the Alexandra took the shore. The spot she selected was just opposite the great fort at Chanak, and my ship being the next astern of her was detailed to tow her off. It was an exceedingly difficult job; but the Duke of Edinburgh, who, in the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief, was, of all his Captains, about the best handler of a big ship, succeeded in doing what was necessary, so, after four hours’ hard work, we rejoined the rest of the Fleet close to the entrance of the Sea of Marmora. It was just as well for us that the before-mentioned Pasha had not been “squared,” for, as the mischance above described took place immediately opposite the most heavily armed fort at[80] Chanak in the very narrowest part of the Narrows, I need hardly emphasise the fact that both the ship ashore and the consort trying to tow her off, would have been reduced to matchwood in a very short time by a heavily armed fort firing at a range of a few hundred yards.
Shortly after our arrival in the Sea of Marmora, the Commander-in-Chief divided his forces. The larger portion of the Fleet, including the most powerful units he possessed, were under his own immediate command, and remained in the neighbourhood of Constantinople. What might be termed the Second Division, under Sir John Commerell, was ordered to Gallipoli. The Fleet being thus broken up, resulted so far as I was concerned in my leaving the Sultan and joining the ship to which I had been appointed many months before.
Whilst in the Marmora I made the personal acquaintance of a man whose sensational career excited a great deal of attention a few years afterwards. I allude to the then Prince Alexander of Battenberg, who was at that time serving on the Staff of General Gourko, commanding the Russian Army Corps that, after hard fighting and still greater hardships, had succeeded in crossing the Balkans. The Prince managed to get a few days’ leave, and came on board the Sultan for a short visit to his relative, the Duke of Edinburgh, and his brother, Prince Louis, then a lieutenant on board the Sultan. There was nothing very remarkable about this incident, except for the shameful abuse that was hurled at the Duke of Edinburgh by an obscure London news[81]paper (long since dead!) on account of this very harmless visit. The Duke having married a Russian Grand Duchess, was accused of every sort of villainy—“owing to his well-known (?) Russian proclivities he was capable of allowing a Russian Staff Officer to penetrate the secrets of the British Fleet”; “he was harbouring Russian spies,”—and in fact a very venomous and lying series of imaginative articles appeared, and, as always, a certain amount of the mud thrown stuck. The most ludicrous part of the business was that this most important Russian Staff Officer and reputed spy was, in those days, extremely young, and came on board the Sultan with the full knowledge and consent of the Commander-in-Chief, who, like any other reasonable man, had not the slightest objection to permitting a young officer to have a few days’ rest, in comfort, with a bed to sleep in, and a chance of seeing his relatives. Prince Alexander made himself very agreeable during his short stay on board; perhaps the best-looking member of a very handsome family, he looked absolutely fitted for the romantic career to which Fate later destined him.
It was a long and trying time that we spent at the anchorage off the town of Gallipoli. The map of that part of the world must be so indelibly stamped on the memories of our countrymen by recent hostilities that no topographical description is necessary. The general situation in the winter of 1877-78 was this: There was a small but well-equipped Turkish Army of a strength of between 20,000 and 30,000 men, which, after a successful retreat, had fallen back on the old[82] Bulair lines which date back to Crimean days. The lines cross the neck of the Peninsula, just to the Eastern end of the town of Gallipoli, at the very narrowest part of the neck. Indeed, it is only about eight miles as the crow flies, from sea to sea. The Commander-in-Chief being in the Marmora, the Second Division, under Sir John Commerell, was left at Gallipoli, at the moment a very important strategic position. In case of war with Russia it was thought that the Turkish Army at Bulair, assisted by that portion of the British Fleet, could, at any rate, make certain of holding the all-important Peninsula pending later developments. Sir John Commerell’s Division was disposed as follows:—Half of his Fleet, including his own flagship, the Agincourt, lay at Gallipoli, and the other half at Imbros, on the northern side of the peninsula; and there for months we lay, with slips on our cables and steam up, ready to proceed on the shortest notice to the two extreme flanks of the Bulair line, and thus be in a position to enfilade any advancing troops attempting to attack those lines. Signals were pre-arranged with the Pasha in command at Bulair, and once again the usual bets as to whether war would be declared or not were taken almost daily. During the day, when not on duty, leave was given to officers, but our only amusement was to gallop about the country inside the lines, or ride over to Imbros and play cricket with the Imbros Squadron, where the officers had managed to find quite a decently flat field. At Gallipoli there was nothing of the same kind, but as a set-off we had the joys of town life, as exemplified[83] by a squalid Turkish village, adorned by the illustrious presence of the British Vice-Consul and his family, to say nothing of the inevitable beef contractor and his belongings.
A very short time after we took up our station at Gallipoli we received information to the effect that, before war was actually declared, the Russians would make an attempt to attack the Fleet with torpedoes. Torpedo warfare was then in its earliest infancy, but something could be done with spar torpedoes by an enterprising enemy, and, as a matter of fact, earlier in the war the Russians had succeeded in blowing up and sinking a couple of small Turkish monitors on the Danube. A steamboat patrol was therefore organised, as an additional protection to the Fleet, which otherwise had only its ordinary armament on which to rely. In those days, nets and quick-firing guns were non-existent, and the ordinary armament of our iron-clads was extremely unsuitable for the repelling of night attacks, if delivered by a swarm of steamboats, great and small. In the ’seventies our allowance of steamboats for ships of all sizes was very limited, so between us I doubt whether we, on the Gallipoli side, could have mustered more than half a dozen all told, and as the nights were very long, and the weather nearly always abominable, sometimes two were as many as we could manage to produce on patrol at a time. Though steam-pinnaces were scarce, sub-lieutenants were fairly numerous, and I never could understand why it fell to my lot to be away on patrol duty every night of my life, while my messmates were,[84] in their turn, snoring in their hammocks. But so it was.
Our largest steam-pinnace at that time was very little over thirty feet long, no shelter was provided for the engineer and crew—except tarpaulin screens, for the only part that was decked over was the forecastle where the gun was mounted. The cold was bitter, and in those days neither officers nor men possessed such a thing as a great coat, so the only way to keep comparatively warm was to put on as many garments as one conveniently could, and retain what caloric one could collect inside, by enveloping the whole fabric in oilskins. I contrived to keep going until the end, which was naturally a great deal more than the pinnaces could manage to do without reinforcements being sent from England, and these reinforcements deserve mention. Directly the patrol was started it was pointed out to the Admiralty that more steamboats were urgently needed, and it would be a great advantage that they should be decked nearly all over. The Admiralty behaved with commendable promptitude, and soon afterwards a steamer arrived at Gallipoli with a consignment of boats. We were all agog to see the latest thing in patrol-boats just arriving from England, and no one was more personally interested than I myself, with the hopeful vision of keeping dry in the future. It is hardly believable, but it is none the less true, that our new patrol-boats turned out to be a consignment of Thames pleasure-boats! Their scantling was so thin that one bump against a ladder would certainly have stove them in, and so absolutely unseaworthy[85] were they that they could only be used in the very finest weather,—a very rare commodity in Gallipoli. I suppose that, although England was still at peace, the probabilities of war were near enough to give the profiteer (a breed we now know so fatally well!) his chance, and these boats were the result. Anyhow, they were slightly better than none at all, as they could run about in the daytime, if the weather were fine enough, and thus save our pinnaces. The trouble was to name these curious hybrids, for a boat has to be given some sort of a name for the purpose of manning her. This difficulty was temporarily overcome by endowing them with Christian names, which we were led to believe were those of the female relatives of the Admiral and his Staff. However, this nomenclature did not last long. Even the most hard-hearted and cynical of parents could not endure the knowledge that, owing to the inherent defects of these craft, the familiar names of his daughters were being coupled hourly with all the most abusive epithets in the sailor’s vocabulary.
Though the Armistice was signed at San Stephano between Russia and Turkey in the month of March, relations between England and Russia remained so strained that no relaxation took place in the patrol until many months had passed. In June, on the strength of all the boat work which I had done down to that time, I managed to coax a fortnight’s leave out of the Authorities, and I and another sub-lieutenant went to Constantinople for a holiday. Of course, it was a most interesting moment to be there. Constantinople[86] was swarming with Russian Officers, who had also arranged to get leave from the Front. They mainly consisted of officers of that favoured Corps, the Imperial Guard, and we Britishers were much impressed by the magnificence of their turn-out. They all appeared to be in brand-new and very smart uniforms, and there was nothing about them to show that they had just fought their way through a very trying campaign. The other memory I have of Constantinople is of a very different nature. I went to visit the great mosque of Ste. Sophia, and never shall I forget the horror of it. Thousands of refugees, who had fled before the advance of the Russian troops, were camped out on the floor of the great mosque in every stage of suffering, disease and filth. Wretched women and children were there, without any sort of comfort; smallpox was obviously raging, and the stench, from the lack of all sanitary arrangements, was enough to turn even the strongest stomach. I was not particularly squeamish in those days, but the experience remained in my memory, as a nightmare, for months afterwards.
The leave was all too short, and very soon I was back aboard the ship again, to learn, a few weeks afterwards, that I was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant. There being no available man-of-war going home just then, I, and two more newly promoted Lieutenants, were allowed to take a passage in a steamer and find our way home via Marseilles and Paris. Paris was then in the throes of the 1878 Exhibition, and consequently was very full and rather uncomfortable. However, we did our duty by spending a couple of[87] days in visiting the Exhibition, and presently I found myself back in England and temporarily my own master, for, from the moment I set foot in my native country I became a Lieutenant on half-pay whilst waiting for further employment.
I may as well mention that the half-pay in question amounted to the munificent sum of four shillings per diem,—less than half the daily stipend of the present-day police constable.
Of course I was delighted to be promoted and to get home; but it was with very real regret that I had said good-bye to many of my brother officers in the Agincourt, and most of all was I sorry to be no longer serving under the flag of Sir Edmund Commerell. Surely there never could have been a Flag-Officer more beloved than was Sir Edmund. Literally one of the bravest of the brave, he had won his Victoria Cross in the Crimea. Later, when Commodore of the South African Station, he was very dangerously wounded whilst leading a boat attack up one of the West African rivers. His popularity in the Fleet was unbounded, his officers and men really loved him, and what was more remarkable still, was the hold he had established over the Turk. In the ranks of the Bulair Army they all knew that the British Admiral was an old Crimean Veteran, on the strength of which they spoke of him as Ghazi Commerell Pasha. As an instance of his never-failing courage, I well remember his behaviour on an occasion when his galley had been capsized. The Admiral was passionately fond of boat sailing, and, moreover, was a great expert; so one[88] of his amusements was to take his galley for a spin round the Fleet. On this particular occasion at Gallipoli it was hardly a galley’s day, for it was blowing a strong breeze with nasty squalls. However, away he went. When an Admiral is sailing his boat a very sharp look-out is always kept by the officer of the watch, and so when, after a very heavy squall, his boat was seen to capsize, there was no delay in sending a steamboat away post-haste to pick him up. When the sub-lieutenant in charge of the boat arrived, he naturally selected the Admiral as being the proper person to be rescued first; but nothing would induce him to be touched until every member of the boat’s crew was on board the pinnace. Meanwhile, encumbered as he was with a heavy boat cloak, the dear old gentleman had swallowed such a quantity of salt water, that he was in measurable distance of being drowned.
He was always most anxious to try and do something to alleviate the terrible monotony of the men’s lives at that time. Leave was out of the question, so everything had to be done on board. The Agincourt had a splendidly clear upper deck, so there was no difficulty in laying out a racing track of ten laps to the mile, and many were the exciting contests that took place upon it. The most popular of all was a ten-mile go-as-you-please race between selected candidates from the marines and bluejackets respectively, the conditions being heavy marching order, the bluejackets to be dressed like the marines in busby and tunic, so as to make the conditions absolutely equal.
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Another amusement was what the sailors used to call a sing-song. The upper deck being covered in, the Admiral and his Staff and officers not on duty being present, all the available talent on the ship was mobilised for a so-called musical entertainment. The most successful turn was given by one of the sub-lieutenants, who had some sort of a voice that had been partially trained during his time at Greenwich, and he used to give us the classic song, “We don’t want to fight.” This song, as rendered by the “great McDermott,” was the rage of the London Music Halls during the Russo-Turkish War. It was all very well for the peace party, who are always with us under all circumstances, to jeer at the vulgarity of the song and decry the so-called jingoism that was derived from it; but when sung by a thousand men, who were expecting every moment to be actively employed in taking measures to make it a certainty that “The Russians shall not have Constantinople,” it became rather more than a comic music-hall song. There was a grim earnestness about it as then sung on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war, that made it almost impressive, and eliminated its vulgarity.
Many years afterwards, when Sir Edmund stood as Conservative Candidate for Southampton, with these incidents in my memory, the cleanliness (?) of English electioneering practices was brought intimately home to me. He lost whatever chance he may have had of being elected in a constituency full of seafaring men, on account of a poster that was displayed all over Southampton by the agents of his opponent. The[90] Admiral, one of the kindest and most chivalrous of gentlemen, was portrayed to the electors of Southampton as a prize specimen of the old flogging captain of the early part of the century. The poster actually depicted him, in cocked hat and epaulets, flourishing an enormous cat-o’-nine tails over the bare back, streaming with blood, of a bluejacket seized up to the breech of a gun.
Later on, he was Commander-in-Chief of the North American and West Indian Stations, Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, and afterwards for many years a Groom-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria.