An Awfully Big Adventure by Bartimeus — Read

The disguise adopted by such of his Majesty's ships as were selected to cope with the U-boat menace, varied according to the changing fashions. In the early days of the war the rôle of care-free tramp, steering a steady course, and minus look-outs or gun, was sufficient to lure the enemy to close quarters on the surface. But as the peculiar methods of warfare adopted by the German Government harked back to piracy and rape, so the custom of the seas reverted to the arming of merchantmen for defensive purposes.

For purpose of offence against the enemy, with which this story of a King's ship is concerned, a dummy gun sufficed; at all events for preliminaries. It was mounted prominently aft, attended by a conspicuously vigilant gunner. To outward appearances the ship was then an armed British merchant vessel, steering a zigzag course for home at a good speed, conscious that she was in the danger zone, and, by virtue of her unmistakable gun and position, liable to be torpedoed at sight according to the code of customs and chivalry of the sea -- as revised by Germany. Torpedoed at sight she was, at eight o'clock of a misty summer morning, in a blinding rain storm and heavy sea. The torpedo was fired at apparently close range, since it jumped out of the water when one hundred yards from the ship; it struck the engine-room near the water-line, flooding the boiler-room, engine-room, and adjacent hold. The Stoker Petty Officer on duty in the engine-room was killed outright by the explosion, and the Third Engineer, who held a commission as Engineer Sub-Lieutenant, in the Naval Reserve, was half-stunned and badly wounded by flying splinters and fragments of coal. Despite the inrush of water, he contrived to reach the hatchway, and arrived on deck reeling with shock, half-flayed, and bleeding, to stagger to his post in the second act of the grim drama.