Voices of Silence (24 page)

          ‘’Ware mine!’

‘Starboard your helm!’ . . . ‘Full speed ahead!’

The squat craft duly swings: –

A hand’s breath off, a thing of dread

The sullen breaker flings.

Carefully, slowly, patiently,

The men of Grimsby town

Grope their way on the rolling sea –

The storm-swept, treach’rous grey North Sea –

Keeping the death-rate down.

Cold is the wind as the Gates of Death,

Howling a dirge with its biting breath,

Tearing rude music from rigging taut –

The tune with deadly omen fraught:

‘Look to yourselves, oh, sailors bold –

I am the one ye know of old!

I make my sport with such as ye –

The game that is played on every sea

With death as the loser’s penalty!’

Valiantly, stoutly, manfully,

The trawlers fight the gale;

Buoyant they ride on the rolling sea –

The storm-swept, treach’rous grey North Sea –

Lashed by the North Wind’s flail.

Cruel the waves of that ocean drear,

Whelming the heart with a palsying fear,

Hurling their might on the stagg’ring craft,

Crashing aboard of her fore and aft,

Buffeting, pounding, a dreadful force,

Sweeping her decks as she hugs her course.

Little they care, come wind or wave,

The men of Grimsby Town;

There are mines to destroy and lives to save,

And they take the risk, these sailormen brave,

With a laugh and a joke, or a rollicking stave,

As the gear goes plunging down.

Honour the trawler’s crew,

For Fear they never knew!

Now on their quest they go

With measured tack and slow –

Seeking the hidden fate

Strewn with a devilish hate.

Death may come in a terrible form,

Death in a calm or death in a storm,

Death without warning, stark and grim,

Death with a tearing of limb from limb,

Death in a horrible, hideous guise: –

Such is the minesweepers’ sacrifice!

Careless of terrors and scornful of ease,

Stolid and steadfast, they sweep the seas.

Cheerfully, simply, fearlessly,

The men of Grimsby Town

Do their bit on the rolling sea –

The storm-swept, treach’rous grey North Sea –

Doing their duty unflinchingly

Keeping the death-rate down.

H. Ingamells

By paths unknown to Nelson’s days,

Our swift flotillas prowl below,

We go upon our various ways

Where Drake and Howard might not go.

Unheard, intangible as air,

Unseen, yet seeing all things plain,

While ships and wild-eyed seamen stare

We pass and strike and pass again.

No sun upon our wake is seen,

No night looks down upon our deeds,

But broken half-lights, strangely green,

Gleam tangled in the swaying weeds.

Dim vistas loom before our eyes,

Vast shapes across our vision flee,

And, round about our feet, there lies

The twilit silence of the sea.

Beside our tracks, half-guessed at, dim,

The creatures of the ocean browse,

Yet none so dreadful, none so grim,

As those we carry in our bows.

The navies of forgotten kings

Lie scattered on the ocean-bed;

We float among prodigious things,

We, that are neither quick nor dead.

There, in their never-ending sleep,

The sailors of a bygone day

Dream of the land they died to keep –

A land more permanent than they.

And we, who have new ways of war,

Strange means of death beyond their ken,

Oh, may we fight as fought before

Our fathers, who begat us men!

So, where the tides and tempest rust

The shattered argosies of Spain,

We praise the gods that now entrust

This England to our charge again.

Then, with thanksgiving, as is meet

From such as hold their lives in pawn,

We glimmer upwards, till we greet

The grey relentless Channel dawn.

J.L. Crommelin Brown

‘It’s a submarine!’ the lookout cried,

‘A porpoise’, said the mate.

‘A set of mines hooked to a shark’,

The boatsmen were not late.

The skipper threw the safe away,

The first luff’s feet were cool.

The navigator cleared the stern

Lashed to a sliding rule.

From the engine-room another,

With a left-hand monkey-wrench,

And through the starboard mess-hall door

Flew a sailor on a bench.

The boatswain piped a phoney call,

And loudly he did bellow,

While high and dry on the pilot-house

Stood Doc with his umbrella.

Some one hit a jingle,

For the throttle opened wide,

The fish-boat quivered fore and aft,

Went astern, and saved our hide.

Safety first is a landman’s cry,

I’m sure you will agree.

On the poggy trawler do your bit

And believe just half you see.

Frank G. Bigelow

Sing us a song of the Northern Seas –

(Where the ships patrol and the gunners freeze)

Of sight and fights and Jack’s delights –

The pudding and beef and gravy;

Sing us a song to clearly show

That the boys in blue are the ones to go

And they wait like hounds for a skulking foe –

Sing us a song of the Navy.

J.M. Ryan

Our gentle pirate ancestors from off the Frisian Isles,

Kept station where we now patrol so many weary miles:

There were no International Laws of Hall or Halleck then,

They only knew the simple rule of ‘Death to beaten men’.

And what they judged a lawful prize was any sail they saw

From Scarboro’ to the sandy isles along the Saxon shore.

We differ from our ancestors’ conception of a prize,

And we cruise about like Agag ’neath Sir Samuel Evans’ eyes;

But on one eternal subject we would certainly agree:

It’s seldom you can see a mile across the Northern sea,

For as the misty clouds came down and settled wet and cold,

The sodden halliards creaked and strained as to the swell they rolled.

Each yellow-bearded pirate knew beyond the veil of white

The prize of all the prizes must be passing out of sight;

And drearily they waited while metheglin in a skin

Was passed along the benches, and the oars came sliding in;

Then scramasax and battleaxe were polished up anew,

And they waited for the fog to lift, the same as me and you;

Though we’re waiting on the bottom at the twenty fathom line,

We are burnishing torpedoes to a Sunday morning shine.

The sailor pauses as he quaffs his tot of Navy rum,

And listens to a noise that drowns the circulator’s hum:

‘D’y ’ear those blank propellers, Bill –
the blinking female dog
–

That’s Tirpitz in the ’Indenburg gone past us in the fog!’

John G. Bower

The day closed in a wrath of cloud. The gale –

Like a fierce beast that shuns the light of day,

Skulking within the jungle till his prey

Steals forth at dusk to water at the well, –

Now leapt upon her, howling. Steep and swift,

The black sea boiled about her sky-flung bows,

And in the shrouds, the winds in mad carouse

Screamed: and in the sky’s pall was no rift.

And it was cold. Oh, bitter cold it was,

The wind-whipped spray-drops froze before they fell

And tinkled on the iron decks like hail;

And every rope and block was cased in glass.

And ever wild and wilder grew the night.

Great seas lunged at her, bellowing in wrath,

Contemptuous, to sweep her from their path.

And not in all that waste one friendly light.

Alone, spray-blinded, through the clamorous murk,

By skill and courage besting the hungry sea,

Mocking the tempest’s fury, staggered she.

The storm is foiled: now for the Devil’s work!

The swinging bows crash down into the trough,

And with a sudden flame the sea is riven,

And a dull roar outroars the tempest even.

Her engine’s pulse is stilled. It is enough.

Oh, have you ever seen a foundered horse –

His great heart broken by a task too great

For his endurance, but unbroken yet

His spirit – striving to complete his course?

Falling at last, eyes glazed and nostrils wide,

And have not ached with pity? Pity now

A brave ship shattered by a coward blow

That once had spurned the waters in her pride.

And can you picture – you who dwell secure

In sheltered houses, warm and filled with light, –

The loneliness and terror of that fight

In shrieking darkness? Feel with them (the sure

Foundation of their very world destroyed),

The sluggish lifting of the lifeless hull,

Wallowing ever deeper till, with a dull

Half-sob she plunges and the seas are void.

Yet – Oh be sure, they did not pass alone

Into the darkness all uncomforted;

For round them hovered England’s mighty Dead

To greet them: and a pale poop lanthorn shone

Lighting them homeward, and a voice rang clear –

As when he cheered his own devoted band –

‘Heaven’s as near by sea as by the land’,

Sir Humphrey Gilbert hailed them: ‘Be of cheer!’

N.M.F. Corbett

I wish that I could be a Hun, to dive about the sea,

I wouldn’t go for merchantmen, a man-of-war for me;

There are lots of proper targets for attacking, little Fritz,

But you seem to like the merchantmen, and blowing them to bits.

I suppose it must be easy fruit to get an Iron Cross

By strafing sail and cargo ships, but don’t you feel the loss

Of the wonderful excitement when you face a man-of-war,

And tearing past you overhead the big propellers roar?

When you know that it’s a case of ‘May the fish run good and true’,

For if they don’t it’s ten to one it’s R.I.P. for you?

Although perhaps you can’t be blamed – your motives may be pure –

You’re rather new to submarines – in fact, an amateur;

But we’d like to take your job awhile and show you how it’s done,

And leave you on the long patrol to wait your brother Hun.

You wouldn’t like the job, my lad – the motors turning slow,

You wouldn’t like the winter-time – storm and wind and snow,

You’d find it weary waiting, Fritz – unless your faith is strong –

Up and down on the long patrol – How long, O Lord, How long?

We don’t patrol for merchant ships, there’s none but neutrals there,

Up and down on the old patrol, you can hear the E-boat’s prayer:

‘Give us a ten-knot breeze, O Lord, with a clear and blazing sky,

And help our eyes at the periscope as the High Sea Fleet goes by.’

John G. Bower

The dull grey paint of war

Covering the shining brass and gleaming decks

That once re-echoed to the steps of youth.

That was before

The storms of destiny made ghastly wrecks

Of Peace, the Right and Truth.

Impromptu dances, coloured lights and laughter,

Lovers watching the phosphorescent waves;

Now gaping guns, a whistling shell; and after

So many wandering graves.

H. Smalley Sarson

In a world that is neither night nor day,

A quiet twilight land,

With fifty fathoms over you

And the surge of seas to cover you,

You rest on the kindly sand.

Above, the earth is March or May,

And skies are fair in spring,

But all the seasons are one with you,

Summer and winter have done with you,

And wars, and everything.

Surely this is a goodly gift,

To sleep so sound and sure

That neither spite nor weariness,

Passion, nor pain, nor dreariness

Can touch you any more.

In drifting spume and flying scud,

When the great tides shoreward sweep,

The seas that are all in all to you

Whisper and move and call to you,

Whisper and call and weep.

J.L. Crommelin Brown

The man who’s down below

Sees nothing of the show;

He’s only got to do his bit and wait:

With his eye upon the dial,

It’s a devil of a trial

Blindly to bear the onsets of his fate.

Yes, he’s buried in the deep,

And he can’t have even a peep

At the things that make the blood run fast and proud:

His prison walls are thick,

And a lesser man were sick

To know he could not mingle with the crowd.