CHAPTER THREE

 

WAR SERVICE

 

By the time that the “Beagles” had sailed “up the Straits” in September, 1913, Cunningham in Scorpion had spent three very hard years indeed in the North Sea undergoing the most intensive training and he was one of the most experienced destroyer captains in the Service. Like several other commanding officers in the flotilla he was promised that, after a year away, he would be recalled to England to take command of one of the larger, faster better armed destroyers then building – but fate was to interfere with this plan.

 

Details provided by the Ministry of Defence show that Arthur’s name was on the books of Blenheim (then in Chatham) on 30^th September, 1913, and on those of Egmmont (in Malta) on the following day. Such a rapid physical translation was impossible in those days, of course, and the explanation is that Art sailed for the Med in Scorpion, as Frank wrote, but as a passenger (thus remaining on Blenheim’s books) to supplement the technical staff of the base ship Egmont, which had been deputed to look after the destroyer flotilla until Blenheim resumed her role of nursemaid in February, 1914. Such petty detail is of little significance, however: the notable fact is that, after seven months in Malta, Arthur joined Scorpion as a regular member of the ship’s company. It may have been just a turn of fortune’s wheel that pitched Art into this ship, but it is equally possible that he made his own luck. For a year and a half Art had been able to appraise the performance of Scorpion and her commander and he was wise enough in the ways of the Navy to know that a half crown or a tot slipped to the “Jaunty” (the Chief Petty Officer who supervised appointments) could, on occasion, produce the right “draft chit.”

 

The “Beagles” of which Scorpion was one, represented the first attempt by the Admiralty to produce a homogenous class of ship by insisting on a standard specification. They were laid down in answer to the latest German boats but were actually inferior to their rivals in speed (they were three knots slower) and armament (they had one 4” gun compared to two 3.5” weapons). However, they were equipped with the new, large 21” torpedoes which were fired from tubes placed over the stern and amidships. Oil was in short supply when these destroyers were built so the designers reverted to coal firing which, combined with turbine propulsion proved to be an unfortunate choice. Nevertheless, despite the drawbacks, the “Beagles” were popular commands for they were fine seaboats, had excellent endurance and reasonable accommodation for a complement of approximately 100 men.

 

Scorpion was built by Fairfields of Glasgow in 1910 and, like her class mates, displaced 950 tons and was capable of a top speed of 27 knots. The young Lieutenant Cunningham was surprised and delighted to be appointed her first captain but he would have been amazed to learn that he would remain in command of the ship for a record period of seven years. Cunningham claimed not to be unduly sentimental about ships but forty years later, when an Admiral of the Fleet, said that he could still have found his way about the Scorpion’s upper deck blindfolded, and in his autobiography he paid tribute to the “quite wonderful” officers and men he had as shipmates who shared “many memorable experiences in war and peace.”

 

Cunningham was a “taut hand”, as Art well knew before he joined Scorpion, but he had a great sense of fun. Indeed, there is a family story that Arthur, on the “Captain’s Report”, told such an ingenious and ingenuous tale to excuse his misdemeanour that “A.B.C” ( as the captain was universally known) burst out laughing and dismissed the charge. Cunningham had the knack of getting the best out of his men as, for example, in coaling, in which activity  Scorpion, for several years, held the flotilla record of loading 120 tons an hour, all of which had to be shovelled into 2 cwt. bags, hoisted on board, and emptied into the bunkers. Success in operations like these required the willing cooperation of every manjack as well as first class organisation. A visitor to the ship noted that Cunningham rarely raised his voice: “Perhaps” he commented “Scorpion was so highly trained that it was unnecessary.”

 

Art enjoyed the last few months of peacetime sailing in Scorpion to Corfu, the Agean Islands and the Eastern Mediterranean, and the ship was in Alexandria towards the end of July when rumours of war sent her hotfoot back to Malta. Order to commence hostilities against Germany were received in the Mediterranean on 5^th August, by which date Scorpion was ready for anything, with warheads fitted to her torpedoes and ready-use ammunition stacked around the guns. On the following day the destroyer sailed on her first war operation.

 

Germany had maintained the battlecruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau in the Mediterranean since the end of 1912 and it was to guard against this threat that the Admiralty had sent three battlecruisers and four armoured cruisers to Malta, a force which would be escorted by the destroyer flotilla of which Scorpion was a member. Shortly before war was declared the German ships left Pola, where the Goeben was under repair, and on 4^th August appeared off the North African coast where they bombarded the ports of Bone and Phillipeville and then melted into the blue. The C.in C. of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne (“Arky Barky” to his men), who had been promoted beyond his merits through long service in the Royal Yachts and the influence of the Royal Family, thought that the enemy ships would make for home or for Cattaro, the Austrian base, and dispatched squadrons to close the Straits of Gibraltar and the entrance to the Adriatic. In fact Admiral Souchon, “Arky Barky”’s opposite number, was steering east towards Turkey and when, after a series of misjudgements by the British, Goeben and Breslau reached Constantinople unharmed, their sudden appearance off the Golden Horn was the conclusive factor which persuaded the Turkish government to join the Germans in their war against the Entente.

 

Scorpion left Malta, on the second day of the war, as part of the squadron, including four heavy cruisers, ordered to secure the entrance to the Adriatic and, surprisingly, on the night of the 7/8^th August, the German ships were encountered, they having refuelled at Messina ready for the last leg of their dash to Turkey. Great was the excitement aboard Scorpion as the ship’s company was ordered to be ready for battle at 6 am the next morning and tension grew throughout the night as destroyer after destroyer dropped back, short of fuel, leaving only Art’s ship and two flotilla mates steaming hard in the wake of the cruisers. Aboard the flagship, Defence, a dramatic discussion was taking place as Captain Fawcet Wray tried to persuade his senior officer, Rear Admiral Troubridge, that to give battle, as he intended, would be contrary to orders not to engage a “superior force”. After two hours of argument, Troubridge conceded to his Flag Captain and gave the command for the force to turn away, an action which led to his court martial on the cumbersome charge that “he did through negligence or other default, forbear to pursue the chase of His Imperial Majesty’s ship Goeben, being an enemy then flying.” It was a disgusted Cunningham and a disconsolate crew which steamed their ship to the island of Zante to refuel.

 

Worse was to follow this unhappy episode for Scorpion as, in a classic case of ‘shutting the door after the horse has gone”, she was dispatched, with half the flotilla, to patrol the entrance to the Dardanelles to ensure that the Goeben and Breslau did not try to re-enter the Mediterranean which, as Souchon intended to use his ships against the Russians in the Black Sea, was hardly likely. The patrol continued throughout the winter of 1914/15 in the worst weather that the normally benign Agean could produce with strong south west winds and a heavy swell being replaced at intervals with two or three day blizzards shrieking out of the north east accompanied by sleet, snow and a bitter cold which reduced the old hands recalling winters in the North Sea to silence. Scorpion spent two days at sea on each patrol followed by two days at anchor, at two hours notice for steam, off the island of Tenedos, succoured by the faithful Blenheim, and with only infrequent short visits to Mudros for respite. There were two periods of excitement during that hard winter, the first being the occasion when Scorpion and Wolverine were sent into the Gulf of Smyrna to dispatch a Turkish minelayer and the other a spell of ten days at Malta for rest and a minor refit. Art and his shipmates enjoyed their stay on the island of “yells, bells and smells” to the full for, as Cunningham commented mildly, “officers and men ran a bit wild.”

 

During late 1914 and early 1915, “buzzes” began to circulate in the ship about the future function of the old battleships, French as well as British, which began to appear, one by one in the Eastern Mediterranean. They were, of course, part of the build up to the Gallipoli campaign for which the prelude was a premature bombardment in the Straits in November, 1914, which warned the Turks of what was afoot, and which began in earnest at the end of February, 1915. Much has been written about this campaign but, as Scorpion played an active if minor role throughout, perhaps an explanation in the broadest terms is necessary here. The plan which Churchill proposed to the War Council was that pre-Dreadnought battleships (including Art’s old ship Prince of Wales) should steam up the Dardanelles, destroying the forts on either shore as they went, and appear off Constantinople, when, so Churchill argued, the Turks would capitulate under the threat of the naval guns, the wavering neutral Balkan states – Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania – would rush to support the Allied cause and a valuable lifeline would be established for the hard pressed Russians. Unfortunately, the race was lost at the first hurdle as the forts could not be reduced until the protecting minefields were swept and this could not be done until the covering, waspish, mobile howitzer batteries were dispersed – and this proved to be impossible by naval shell fire alone. The Army was then summoned to the Navy’s assistance and troops were landed on the peninsula to take the forts from the rear but, although bridgeheads were established at the most terrible cost in lives, the soldiers were held by fierce Turkish resistance and, In January, 1916, Gallipoli was evacuated.

 

The Scorpion was involved from the first day of the campaign to the last – protecting minesweepers, landing troops and supplies, providing fire support for the soldiers on shore, rescuing survivors from stricken battleships, destroying a stranded submarine before it could fall into enemy hands – and it was off Gallipoli that Cunningham began to build the outstanding reputation which would carry him to the highest rank in the Navy. For Art there was excitement and danger every day and it is a great shame that the diary which he kept, of which I had a glimpse many years ago, has now been lost. There is no doubt that Arthur was happy in Scorpion which had none of the impersonality of the battleship or the dull, routine grind of the depot ship, and in which, like the ships companies of most small vessels, officers and men were bound together in following a common purpose. Art was liked by all although he remained a thorn in the side of authority and was nicknamed “The Importunate Widow” by the First Lieutenant because of his propensity to argue and his frequent appearances on “Requestmen and Defaulters” parades. Later on Cunningham himself, promoted Commander, was to dub Art “The Giddy Harumfrodite”, which is the title of a Rudyard Kipling poem in praise of the Marines – “Soldier and Sailor, too” – and which must refer to his competence in the amphibious operations of the Gallipoli campaign or the somewhat piratical expeditions which followed.

 

Perhaps Scorpion’s most valuable services were given in the difficult period which followed the sinking of the battleships Triumph and Majestic by U 21, the first U boat into the Mediterranean, when, as a consequence, the other capital ships were withdrawn in a panic to the safety of Mudros. This left the little destroyers as the sole guardians of the Army’s flanks and in this role they won, as Roger Keyes, the Fleet’s Chief of Staff, wrote “the admiration and affection of the troops for their comradeship and valiant service.” On one occasion, In June, 1915, with the Army planning to attack, Scorpion, Wolverine and Renard were called upon to deal with the enemy trenches winding down to the sea. Scorpion fired for two hours with her 4” and 12 pounder guns demolishing the trenches and firing at the fleeing Turks over open sights. The ground attack which followed was successful but that same night, fearful of a riposte by the enemy, the Army called Scorpion in again. At midnight a hail of rifle and machine gun bullets swept the ship, which was anchored close inshore, and the searchlights were shot out. In response to an S.O.S which said the Turks were massing in their front lines, all the Scorpion’s guns opened fire, using a light in the British trenches as an aiming point and applying the required degree of deflection. The Turkish attack collapsed and at dawn some three or four hundred dead were reported in front of the Allied positions.

 

On 5^th August, 1915, Scorpion was at anchor in Port Kephalo, the desolate harbour of the island of Imbros, awaiting the start of a massive offensive which would at last, it was hoped, sweep the Turks into the sea, when steaming across the bay, fresh from England, came the 6” gunned monitor M.30, and aboard her was Frank Hanna, now commissioned and a Lieutenant. In defiance of naval protocol but with the connivance of Scorpion’s First Lieutenant, who turned a blind eye, Frank contrived a meeting with his brother. At first Art was shy in the unaccustomed setting of an officer’s cabin and bashful as a steward brought tea and cakes, but he soon warmed to the situation and kept everyone amused with his colourful yarns. As the brothers joked and reminisced men of the Xith. (Northern) Division were filing aboard the craft which were to carry them into battle and soon after dark the lighters set out, each towed by a destroyer and accompanied by a picket boat, to sail the short distance to Suvla Bay where the troops were to attempt that most difficult of military operations, a night landing on an enemy shore. At 11 pm M.30 also steamed off into the dark night and , as she headed north east for Suvla, her crew could hear on the starboard hand the heavy fighting at Helles where Scorpion was stationed as temporary flagship for Rear Admiral Nicholson. A lonely, slim figure stood on the beach at Port Kephalo where he had been watching the troops depart and that night General Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, wrote in his diary:

 

“The empty harbour frightens me. Nothing

in legend stranger or more terrible than

the silent departure of this silent army.”

 

The August offensive failed, of course, and with that failure fled the last hope of a successful campaign, although the fighting was to continue for another five months. For Art, though, there was excitement enough, even after the last soldier had left the Gallipoli peninsula, for Scorpion was sent, after a month of patrolling between Rhodes and Nikaria, to establish a base at Port Laki, on the island of Leros in the Dodecanese.

 

Commander Cunningham was now placed in command of a small force consisting of two destroyers, Scorpion and Wolverine, three trawlers, two drifters and a collier, and given a roving commission. Cunningham’s instructions were that his force was to patrol the area between Samos and Rhodes, investigating the numerous islands and the mainland harbours for evidence of use by submarines, and generally to annoy the Turks in every possible way. And here must be introduced the most extraordinary figure of Professor J.L. Myres, Wykeham Professor of Ancient History at Oxford and Fellow of New College, who became A.B.C’s confidant and advisor. Myres, who was given a commission as a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, spoke Greek like a native and had organised an effective intelligence system in the area, mainly manned by Greek fishermen. But this didn’t satisfy Myres’ warlike soul and, at about the time Scorpion arrived at Laki, he recruited a force of Greek “irregulars” for although Greece was nominally neutral, there was then, as now, plenty of men from that country willing to fight the Turks. Myres was proud of the force that he led, although outsiders insisted they were all bandits and brigands, and he intended that they should be used on the Turkish mainland. So it came about that on many occasions during the spring and summer of 1916 Myres was conveyed in Scorpion to the Turkish coast (as the log records), whilst his cut-throats travelled in the other vessels of Cunningham’s flotilla, there to be landed at the dead of night. Come the dawn Myres and his men overran any military outpost in the vicinity, then rounded up two or three hundred head of cattle bred for the Turkish army and drove them back to the beach where they were loaded on the waiting trawlers and shipped off to face a noble death in the Allied cause.

 

Between spells of seaborne cattle rustling and hunting for non-existent submarines, Scorpion would slip off to Port Iero in Mytylene (now Lesbos) to store, and there, if Art’s luck was in, would be M.30, at that time operating on the Smyrna Patrol. Frank always sent a parcel of food and cigarettes over to Scorpion if a meeting between the brothers could not be engineered. Both ships were in Port Iero on 16^th May, 1916, but they sailed in the afternoon, Scorpion bound for Laki and M.30 for Long Island in the Gulf of Smyrna. Later that night Scorpion began to intercept messages that Frank’s ship was in trouble and at 11 pm Art was informed that M.30 had been sunk but that his brother was safe. Strangely, Arthur always maintained that his younger brothers, Walter and Hugh, would survive the war but that Frank or he would be killed – a prophecy that, sadly, would be fulfilled.

 

Scorpion’s examination of harbours on the Turkish coast proved to be dangerous work for many of the villages were protected by entrenchments which were manned as the ship approached. In looking at the many ports with bottle neck entrances Cunningham found that his vessel was usually allowed to enter unmolested but would be subjected to heavy small arms fire as she left, the Turks using rifles of all calibres and varying dates of manufacture; the most feared being the ancient Grass which fired a heavy leaden bullet about half an inch in diameter. Protective mattresses piled around the bridge offered little effective protection against the enemy’s weapons so the ubiquitous depot ship Blenheim supplied loop-holed steel plates, but these took so long to erect and made efficient handling of the ship so difficult when in place that they were rarely used.

 

In June Professor Myres reported that caiques carrying information to the Turks were using the small harbour of Gumishlu on the Budrum peninsula to the north of Kos, and Cunningham decided to investigate. Using the picket boat that had been “borrowed”, “A.B.C” and his warrant Gunner went in on a reconnaissance in the dark, but sparks from the funnel having given them away, they were met by heavy rifle fire and were lucky to make their escape. When the coxswain was shot through the back the boat swerved alarmingly and would have run ashore had not Cunningham grabbed the wheel himself and steered the craft to safety. Obviously retribution was called for or, at least, a further examination of Gumishlu, so, on the following morning, 19^th June, Scorpion anchored close inshore and was soon engaged. The events of that morning were recorded in the ship’s log with the usual economy of words:

 

11.7 a.m. Enemy opened rifle fire

11.10 a.m. Hands to action stations. All guns engaged enemy and destroyed storehouses and enemy’s entrenchments. Casualties 1 seaman and 2 stokers. 1 12 pdr. empty cylinder lost overboard by accident.

12 noon. Ceased fire.

 

The seaman wounded was Arthur and, as Cunningham wrote that the three men hit were all members of the 4” gun crew, it is possible that all hands were being trained to use the destroyer’s main weapon. The “Certificate for Hurts and Wounds” issued to Art states that he was struck by a spent Turkish bullet which punched a hole three quarters of an inch square in his left foot. Scorpion did not carry a doctor so that it was not until a week later, when the ship steamed into Mudros, that Art received full medical attention aboard the Blenheim which he knew so well. Art was still under treatment in September when his brother arrived in Mudros in the cruiser Grafton, which he had joined after M.30 was sunk, and , one Sunday morning, Frank sailed over to the depot ship laden with clothes, food and money. Art was his usual cheerful self during this, the last meeting of the brothers, and laughed as he showed Frank the hole in his foot and described how “he had been told off for shedding blood on the clean deck” when he had been wounded.

 

Scorpion returned to the United Kingdom in July, but Art did not follow until the end of September to enjoy a well earned leave after three years of hard service abroad. There followed a spell of almost three months in Chatham Barracks ( possibly Art was still not fit for active service) before he joined his last ship, the destroyer Laforey, at Harwich, on 20^th January, 1917. Laforey was larger than Scorpion, was three knots faster, and was more heavily armed as she mounted three 4” guns, one 2 pdr. and four torpedo tubes. Apart from a short period in the Mediterranean during the Gallipoli campaign, this ship had spent the war as part of the famous Harwich force and during this time she was commanded by the eccentric Commander “Daddy” Edwards whose usual signal of “Follow father” to the other ships when the flotilla left port, instead of the formal and correct “Proceed in execution of previous orders” was much admired and copied by young destroyer officers anxious to acquire a dashing reputation. However, Edwards left Laforey just before Art joined, to be replaced by Lieutenant Durham and, as other experienced officers were replaced at this particular period, it seems that the ship was experiencing a wartime re-commissioning. After Art had spent two months in Laforey with the Harwich Force, his ship was seconded to the Dover Patrol with Laertes, Lance and Llewllyn, and sailed to Dover on 5^th March to join other “L” class ships already there. Admiral Tyrwhitt did not like his ship being dispatched to the Straits where he thought the local commander, Vice Admiral Bacon, “knocked them up,” whereas Bacon was looking for permanent reinforcements and did not treat the newcomers with the consideration he showed the old hands who had been with him throughout his tenure of command.

 

Laforey arrived in the Channel at a crucial time in the submarine war when England was in danger if being brought to her knees by the marauding U-boats, many of which used the bases at Ostend and Zeebrugge. Bacon relied on net and mine barrages to deny the Straits to enemy underwater craft and he refused to accept the Admiralty view that, despite all the devices that were employed, U-boats still traversed the Channel, as in fact they did at night on the surface. Bacon’s defensive attitude led finally to his supercession by the more aggressive Roger Keyes at the end of the year.

 

An enormous volume of traffic used the two cross-Channel highways, Dover-Calais and Folkestone-Bologne, running to an elaborate timetable constructed weeks in advance. For the destroyer captains there was none of the freedom of action that Cunningham had enjoyed in the Scorpion as there was a well established routine to which they adhered. Each ship spent 24 hours at sea followed by a similar period in the uncomfortable, open harbour at Dover during which time full steam was kept on the engines so that the frequent emergencies could be dealt with; it was not unusual for a destroyer to spend 16 successive nights at sea. Every 17 days there was a three day boiler cleaning period and once every four months the ship spent 20 days in dockyard hands.

 

Twelve days after Laforey arrived at Dover she was on patrol, with Paragon, Llewellyn and Laertes, along the net barrage between the Goodwin Sands and the Ruytingen when at 10.50 pm Paragon was torpedoed and sank quite quickly. When Laforey and Llewellyn switched on their searchlights to find survivors, the latter ship was also “tin fished” but, unlike Paragon, she managed to struggle back to Dover albeit minus her bows. Lieutenant Durham, of Laforey, signalled to Dover at 11.13 pm that Paragon had been sunk and at 11.28 pm added the words “Sunk by submarine”. Later still, at 01.7 am on 18^th March, Durham told Dover that survivors had reported sighting destroyers. Poor Admiral Bacon, thoroughly muddled, at first spent spare destroyers to sea to meet a surface attack and then countermanded his orders and instituted anti-submarine measures. In his history of the Dover Patrol, Bacon wrote a rather uncharitable footnote saying :”An excellent example of how inaccurate wording of signals may cause totally wrong dispositions to be made.” In fact the attack had been carried out by the German 6^th Destroyer Flotilla which had not been spotted in the total darkness. One of the difficulties of the Dover Patrol was that the Germans held the initiative and could attack at a time and place of their choosing, and it is surprising that the enemy surface forces did not make better use of their geographical advantage.

 

A typical day for a destroyer of the Patrol was to sail from Dover in the early morning, pick up transports at Folkestone and escort them to Boulogne, steam to Calais to bring hospital or leave ships home to Dover, and then make one more Folkestone-Boulogne crossing before returning to base to take up a night patrol station. On 23^rd March, 1917, Laforey, her daytime tasks completed, left Boulogne for Dover in late afternoon in company with Laertes and Lark. The ships were steaming at 22 knots in arrowhead formation, Laforey on the port quarter of the senior ship Laertes, when at 4.30 pm, there was a massive explosion which blew Art’s ship in half, the stern section sinking immediately and the bow section floating for some little time. Considering the heavy seas and the speed of the ships a submarine attack was unlikely and the opinion of all concerned was that Laforey had struck a mine. Laertes and Lark lowered boats at once to search for survivors, as did Melpomene who arrived at the scene soon after the explosion. When the search was called off at 5.30 pm only three officers and fourteen men had been plucked from the sea and Able Seaman Arthur Hanna, aged 29, was not one of them. A survivor who served under Frank in the submarine decoy vessel Telford said that Art’s messdeck amidships was immediately over the seat of the explosion and that, being off duty at the time, he would have died at once.

 

Frank heard of the sinking of Art’s destroyer on the bridge of Grafton, off Salonica, when he was handed the transcription of an Admiralty radio news item by his commanding officer, Captain Henry Grace (“W.G.”’s son). When Frank told Grace that his brother was serving in Laforey he replied “Well, Hanna, it’s a glorious end – may we all have a similar.” Frank was badly affected by Arthur’s death for, while fighting his way to a commission and, eventually, a command of his own, in the class ridden Navy of the time, he felt that his younger brother stood for everything that was free. Towards the end of his life, in the grip of tuberculosis, Frank wrote that the lighter, more jovial side of his existence had departed with Art.

 

Commander Cunningham wrote a letter of condolence to Frank saying how hard it was that Art should be killed “after all he went through out here.” One supposes that a good commanding officer writes to the relatives of all shipmates who die, even those of A.Bs who had left the ship six months previously – but I like to feel that “A.B.C.” had a special remembrance of the irrepressible seaman he nicknamed “The Giddy Harumfrodite.”

 

The young have little interest in family history so I missed many an opportunity of asking Mum, Dad or Aunt Frances ( who lived with or near us for several years) about the uncle who had died so long before I was born. But I recall that on the rare occasions that a relative spoke about Art, he or she always had a smile on their face. Latterly I asked Aunts Rene and Phyllis what they could tell me about Arthur. Neither could remember a great deal – they were very young when they knew him – but both of them, independently, said that Art was “great fun”. And they smiled.

 

Arthur liked to adopt a simple pose and, when asked a tricky question, would often reply, in his joking way “I am but a common sailor and my heart is on the deep.” Let that be his epitaph.