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   A FLEET IN BEING


   NOTES OF TWO TRIPS WITH THE CHANNEL SQUADRON


   BY



   RUDYARD KIPLING



   MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
   ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
   1914



   _COPYRIGHT_.
   _First Edition, December_ 1898.
   _Reprinted, December_ 1898; _January, February, May,
      and October_ 1899, 1910, 1914.






   A FLEET IN BEING




   CHAPTER I


   '.... _the sailor men_
   _That sail upon the seas_,
   _To fight the Wars and keep the Laws_,
   _And live on yellow_ peas'


   'A Gunroom Ditty-Box.' G. S. BOWLES.


Some thirty of her Majesty's men-of-war were involved in this matter;
say a dozen battleships of the most recent, and seventeen or eighteen
cruisers; but my concern was limited to one of a new type commanded by
an old friend. I had some dim knowledge of the interior of a warship,
but none of the new world into which I stepped from a Portsmouth wherry
one wonderful summer evening in '97.

With the exception of the Captain, the Chief Engineer, and maybe a
few petty officers, nobody was more than twenty-eight years old. They
ranged in the ward-room from this resourceful age to twenty-six or seven
clear-cut, clean-shaved young faces with all manner of varied experience
behind them. When one comes to think, it is only just that a light
20-knot cruiser should be handled, under guidance of an older head,
by affable young gentlemen prepared, even sinfully delighted, to take
chances not set down in books. She was new, they were new, the Admiral
was new, and we were all off to the Manoeuvres together--thirty keels
next day threading their way in and out between a hundred and twenty
moored vessels not so fortunate. We opened the ball, for the benefit of
some foreign warships, with a piece of rather pretty steering. A consort
was coming up a waterlane, between two lines of shipping, just behind us;
and we nipped in immediately ahead of her, precisely as a hansom turning
out of Bond Street nips in in front of a City 'bus. Distance on water
is deceptive, and when I vowed that at one crisis I could have spat on
the wicked ram of our next astern, pointed straight at our naked turning
side, the ward-room laughed.

'Oh, that's nothing,' said a gentleman of twenty-two. 'Wait till
we have to keep station to-night. It's my middle watch.'

'Close water-tight doors, then,' said a Sub-Lieutenant. 'I say'
(this to the passenger) 'if you find a second-class cruiser's ram in
the small of your back at midnight don't be alarmed.'


   FASCINATING GAME OF GENERAL POST

We were then strung out in a six-mile line, thirty ships, all heading
Westwards. As soon as we found room the Flagship began to signal, and
there followed a most fascinating game of general post. When I came to
know our signalmen on the human side I appreciated it even more. The
Admiral wreathed himself with flags, strings of them; the signalman
on our high little, narrow little bridge, telescope jammed to his eye,
read out the letters of that order; the Quartermaster spun the infantine
wheel; the Officer of the Bridge rumbled requests down the speaking-tube
to the engine-room, and away we fled to take up station at such and
such a distance from our neighbours, ahead and astern, at such and such
an angle on the Admiral, his bow or beam. The end of it was a miracle
to lay eyes. The long line became four parallel lines of strength and
beauty, a mile and a quarter from flank to flank, and thus we abode till
evening. Two hundred yards or so behind us the ram of our next astern
planed through the still water; an equal distance in front of us lay the
oily water from the screw of our next ahead. So it was ordered, and so we
did, as though glued into position. But our Captain took up the parable
and bade me observe how slack we were, by reason of recent festivities,
compared to what we should be in a few days. 'Now we're all over the
shop. The ships haven't worked together, and station-keeping isn't
as easy as it looks.' Later on I found this was perfectly true.


   A VARYING STRAIN

One thing more than all the rest impresses the passenger on a Queen's
ship. She is seldom for three whole hours at the same speed. The liner
clear of her dock strikes her pace and holds it to her journey's end,
but the man-of-war must always have two or three knots up her sleeve in
case the Admiral demands a spurt; she must also be ready to drop three or
four knots at the wave of a flag; and on occasion she must lie still and
meditate. This means a varying strain on all the mechanism, and constant
strain on the people who control it.

I counted seven speeds in one watch, ranging from eight knots to
seventeen, which, with eleven, was our point of maximum vibration. At
eight knots you heard the vicious little twin-screws jigitting like
restive horses; at seventeen they pegged away into the sea like a pair
of short-gaited trotting ponies on a hard road. But one felt, even in
dreams, that she was being held back. Those who talk of a liner's
freedom from breakdown should take a 7,000 horsepower boat and hit her
and hold her for a fortnight all across the salt seas.


   IN CLUB AND COTERIES

After a while I went to the galley to get light on these and other
matters. Once forward of the deck torpedo-tubes you enter another and
a fascinating world of seamen-gunners, artificers, cooks, Marines (we
had twenty and a sergeant), ship's boys, signalmen, and the general
democracy. Here the men smoke at the permitted times, and in clubs
and coteries gossip and say what they please of each other and their
superiors. Their speech is soft (if everyone spoke aloud you could
not hear yourself think on a cruiser), their gestures are few (if a
man swung his arms about he would interfere with his neighbour), their
steps are noiseless as they pop in and out of the forward flats; they
are at all times immensely interesting, and, as a rule, delightfully
amusing. Their slang borrows from the engine-room, the working parts of
guns, the drill-book, and the last music-hall song. It is delivered in
a tight-lipped undertone; the more excruciatingly funny parts without a
shade of expression. The first thing that strikes a casual observer is
their superb health; next, their quiet adequateness; and thirdly, a grave
courtesy. But under the shell of the new Navy beats the heart of the old.
All Marryat's immortals are there, better fed, better tended, better
educated, but at heart unchanged. I heard Swinburne laying down the law
to his juniors by the ash-shoot; Chucks was there, too, inquiring in the
politest manner in the world what a friend meant by spreading his limbs
about the landscape; and a lineal descendant of Dispart fussed over a
4in. gun that some one had been rude to. They were men of the world, at
once curiously simple and curiously wily (this makes the charm of the
Naval man of all ranks), coming and going about their businesses like
shadows.


   NOT FROM THE ADMIRALTY STANDPOINT

They were all keenly interested in the Manoeuvres--not from the Admiralty
standpoint, but the personal. Many of them had served under one or other
of the Admirals, and they enlightened their fellows, as you shall later
hear.

Then night fell, and Our Fleet blazed 'like a lot of chemists'
shops adrift,' as one truthfully put it--six lights to each ship;
bewildering the tramps. There was a cove of refuge, by one of the forward
4-in. guns, within touch of the traffic to the bridge, the break of
the foc'sle, the crowded populations below, and the light banter near
the galley. My vigil here was cheered by the society of a Marine, who
delivered a lecture on the thickness of the skulls of the inhabitants of
South America, as tested by his own hands. It ended thus: 'An' so I
got ten days in one o' their stinkin' prisons. Fed me on grapes they
did, along with one o' their own murderers. Funny people them South
Americans. Oh, 'adn't killed any one. We only skirmished through
their bloomin' Suburbs lookin' for fun like.'

'Fun! _We've_ got all the fun we want!' growled a voice in the
shadow. A stoker had risen silently as a seal for a breath of air, and
stood, chest to the breeze, scanning the Fleet lights.

''Ullo! Wot's the matter with _your_ condenser?' said the Marine.
'You'd better take your mucky 'ands off them hammick-cloths or
you'll be spoke to.'

'Our bunkers,' said the figure, addressing his grievance to the
sea-line, 'are stuck all about like a lot o' women's pockets.
They're stuck about like a lot o' bunion-plasters. That's what our
bunkers are.' He slipped back into the darkness. Presently a signalman
pattered by to relieve his mate on the bridge.

'You'll be 'ung,' said the Marine, who was a wit, and by the same
token something of a prophet.

'Not if you're anywhere in the crowd I won't,' was the retort,
always in a cautious, 'don't-wake-him' undertone. 'Wot are you
doin' 'ere?'

'Never you mind. You go on up to the 'igh an' lofty bridge an'
persecute your vocation. My Gawd! I wouldn't be a signalman, not for
ever so.'

When I met my friend next morning 'persecuting his vocation' as
sentry over the lifebuoy aft neither he nor I recognised each other; but
I owe him some very nice tales.


WHEELING, CIRCLING, AND RETURNING

Next day both Fleets were exercised at steam tactics, which is a noble
game; but I was too interested in the life of my own cruiser, unfolding
hour by hour, to be intelligently interested in evolutions. All I remember
is that we were eternally taking up positions at fifteen knots an hour
amid a crowd of other cruisers, all precisely alike, all still as death,
each with a wedge of white foam under her nose; wheeling, circling, and
returning. The battleships danced stately quadrilles by themselves in
another part of the deep. We of the light horse did barn-dances about
the windy floors; and precisely as couples in the ball-room fling a word
over their shoulders, so we and our friends, whirling past to take up
fresh stations, snapped out an unofficial sentence or two by means of
our bridge-semaphores. Cruisers are wondrous human. In the afternoon the
battleships overtook us, their white upperworks showing like icebergs as
they topped the sea-line. Then we sobered our faces, and the engineers
had rest, and at a wave of the Admiral's flag off Land's End our
Fleet was split in twain. One half would go outside Ireland, toying with
the weight of the Atlantic _en route_, to Blacksod Bay, while we turned
up the Irish Channel to Lough Swilly. There we would coal, and wait for
War. After that it would be blind man's bluff within a three hundred
and fifty mile ring of the Atlantic. We of Lough Swilly would try to
catch the Blacksod Fleet, which was supposed to have a rendezvous of its
own somewhere out at sea, before it could return to the shelter of the
Bay.


THE EXPERTS OF THE LOWER DECK

There was, however, one small flaw in the rules, and as soon as they were
in possession of the plan of campaign the experts of the lower deck put
their horny thumbs on it--thus:

'Look 'ere. Their Admiral 'as to go out from Blacksod to some
rendezvous known only to 'isself. Ain't that so?'

'We've 'eard all that.' This from an impertinent, new to War.

'Leavin' a cruiser be'ind 'im--_Blake_ most likely, or
_Blenheim_--to bring 'im word of the outbreak of 'ostilities.
Ain't that so?'

'Get _on_. What are you drivin' at?'

'You'll see. When that cruiser overtakes 'im 'e 'as to navigate
back to Blacksod from 'is precious rendezvous to get 'ome again
before we intercepts the beggar.'

'Well?'

'Now I put it to you. What's to prevent 'im rendezvousin' out
_slow_ in order to be overtook by that cruiser; an' rendezvousin'
back quick to Black-sod, before we intercepts 'im? I don't see that
_'is_ steamin' rate is anywhere laid down. You mark my word, 'e'll
take precious good care to be overtook by that cruiser of 'is. We
won't catch 'im. There's an 'ole in the rules an' 'e'll
slip through. _I_ know 'im if you don't!'

The voice went on to describe ''im,' the Admiral of our enemy--as
a wily person, who would make the Admiralty sit up.

And truly, it came out in the end that the other Admiral had done almost
exactly what his foc'sle friends expected. He went to his rendezvous
slow