Foreign News: In Weymouth Bay

It was thick-o’-fog and a drizzle fell in Weymouth Bay one day last week. Quiet in the fog, whispering at anchor, lay scores of great grey ghosts—Britain’s reserve fleet, assembled from shipyards throughout the British Isles for royal review. The older salts were pointing and saying: “Remember?”

Remember the Cardiff? Nearly 21 years ago she steamed proudly (her nose was wet; she never learned how to take a header) up the broad Firth of Forth, with the Friedrich der Grosse and the other beaten Germans in her wake—a wagging Welsh terrier leading a pack of drooping greyhounds.

Remember the Iron Duke? A stout old whale, with twelve-inch steel skin.* Forward of her two tall funnels, forward of her bridge-balancing tripod mast, in a heavily armored conning tower, calm little Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, stood giving orders during the biggest battle of them all, Jutland.

Remember the Warwick? On St. George’s Eve, 1918, she put out to sea for Zeebrugge, leading 74 scarecrow vessels— a nearly obsolete cruiser, some ferryboats, three old light cruisers loaded with concrete, two ancient submarines packed with explosives, and a swarm of tiny motor launches and smoke-boats. Their job was to block the Bruges Canal, from which U-boats had been darting on their deadly errands. As they set out, Vice Admiral Roger Keyes signaled the others: “St. George for England,” and one answered: “May we give the dragon’s tail a damned good twist.”

And they did. With part of his hobgoblin flotilla, Vice Admiral Keyes attacked the canal’s protecting mole to create a diversion (one of the submarines rammed the mole’s viaduct, exploded as planned), while the three concrete-laden block-boats steamed into the mouth of the canal, touched off explosives and sank in the channel. The losses were appalling, the instances of gallantry uncountable. One of the diverting boats alone sustained 182 casualties. One man, shot through the middle, wrapped his vessel’s ensign around him, went on fighting. Two officers, both painfully wounded in the legs, crawled about giving orders. Another stood cheering and waving on the few survivors of his company after a shell had shot away his hand. One of the small boats had trouble making fast to the mole. In the face of machine-gun fire, the commander of her landing party calmly climbed on to the mole, made fast a grappling iron, fell riddled into the sea.

The famed raid on Zeebrugge failed to rivet up the Bruges Canal, but it showed the world something and left Britain proud. When the diplomats have failed and the smoke gets thick, something happens to the blood of English men of action. Crecy, Blenheim, Waterloo, the Armada, Cape Trafalgar, Jutland have shown that it is not equipment but spirit which wins battles for Britain. It did not matter, therefore, that when King George VI, who personally owns more ships than anyone else in the world,* went out into the fog and drizzle in Weymouth Bay last week, what he saw was 133 ghosts—some of them round-bellied, rust-patched, long since war-weary. What counted was their complement of 12,000 newly assembled reservists, swelling Britain’s total mobilized sea force to 162,000 men.

In the dim, empty hangars of the aircraft carrier Courageous, the King inspected 1,500 reservists who just ten days before had dropped jobs as miners, postmen, spot welders, turncocks, chefs, whatnots. The crews had drawn lots for the privilege of being reviewed. The King chatted with some, found they had been landlubbers for 16 years. But they all said they were ready for come-Hell. After lunch he boarded the royal barge, toured the entire fleet—past many a proud name: Brazen and Brilliant; Dauntless, Vivacious, Wakeful and Ardent; Dragon and Basilisk; Skate, Sturgeon, and Swordfish; Antelope; Emerald, Pearl, Cornelian and Ruby; Wren, Mallard and Kittiwake. The crews, told they could stand at ease, leaned on the rail and shouted themselves froggy.

King George, trained as a naval officer and a veteran of Jutland, displays many of the solid, unimaginative qualities which make British fighters what they are. One of those qualities consists of seeing everything through insular eyes—Britain’s way is the only way, the world over. When someone commiserated the King on the poor weather last week, he said, philosophically and without a moment’s hesitation: “It’s the same everywhere.”

*Her steel hide was flayed under the terms of the London Naval Treaty, 1931-32.

*Home Fleet: 63 vessels; Mediterranean Fleet: 111; East Indies Squadron: 9; Africa Squadron: 8; America & West Indies Squadron: 8; Royal Canadian Navy: 15; Royal Australian Navy: 14; China Squadron: 70; Singapore Squadron: 13; British home ports and miscellaneous: 138; Reserve: 103 (augmented last week by 30 vessels borrowed from other fleets). These are technically all King George’s private property.