EVERYBODY knows of the deeds of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron, and of its magnificent patrol-the Patrol of the Royal Naval Reserve-between Sootland and Iceland, which, through every minute of the war, in fair weather and in the foulest of the foul, toothcombed sea-traffic, and maintained the blockade, until there was no longer any need for its activities: but who has ever heard of the Ninth Cruiser Squadron ?

Most properly, nobody. Its very existence, which began on August 4, 1914, was kept unknown, mysterious: the hush of the high seas closed it in, and it had ceased to exist, its useful functions over, some considerable time before the music and the shouting of 11th November 1918.

Its last gasp, therefore, was

VOL. CCVII.-NO. MCCLI.

I.

drawn in the same mystery and war-silence as its first.

The squadron was composed, in about equal proportions, of armed merchant cruisers and of naval oruisers: the latter being those too old (fortunately for them) to be attached to the live-bait squadron, thus escaping fellowship with the Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue; but still, in spite of their very grey hairs, considered able to keep the sea, and to control the South American and South African trade routes, for this was the venue of the "Ninth C.S."

The base of the squadron was "The Flagship, at Sea"; our home was on the wave; our station-limits, the blue, the ever-shifting meeting-point of sea and sky. For us existed no comfortable harbour, with gun defences and boom defences and destroyer patrol, and sub

A

marine patrol and trawler patrol. We moved on the face of the waters by day and by night, without haste (except on high occasions, for coal was precious), without rest; with some of our aching eyes fixed on the far round horizon for ships, and some, still more aching, on the near wave-crests for submarines, our guns loaded, our fingers (so to speak) on the triggers.

The ceaseless watch was never interrupted, not even by the diversification due to the holding-up of ships-this latter a daily and a nightly proceeding, undertaken almost thankfully as a break in the monotony-not even by the coalings, which had to take place every eight or ten days at Madeira, under the "friendly neutrality" (which afterwards became complete alliance) of Portugal. At work at sea, or coaling in harbour, the guns remained manned, the look-outs incessantly looking out.

When the menace of submarines round Madeira became really distinct and close, we moved south: first to St Vincent, in the Cape de Verde Islands, that horrid, torrid group of wind-swept oinders; and lastly, to the even hotter, but at least verdant harbour of Sierra Leone-"the best 'ole of all," as it was defended by a boom!

The oruisers with which we started in 1914 had already, for several years, been reolining in senile decay on various sorap-heaps, or else were in gentle employment as "overflow-ships" to orowded naval

depots, training ships for stokers (though never leaving harbour), and so forth.

But, with the first trump of war, like Sam Weller's "werry old donkey," they were lugged up off their death-bed to "take sixteen gen'lemen to Greenwich on a tax-cart." Anything for air and exercise, indeed!

Out they went at once into the broad Atlantio, and gallantly did they attempt to recover the spring of a youth now nearly twenty years behind them. After about a year of it, the first of the old ships to get away, the Amphitrite and Argonaut, were relieved, and steamed home at the very respectable speed of 16 knots; each of them having covered nearly 30,000 miles since leaving England, and each having consumed nearly 25,000 tons of coal in so doing. But when you consider that this speed could be exceeded by at least six knots by the foe we were out to catch-the Karlsıühe— and that the outranging by her guns of ours was in like proportion, you will wonder, as we did, why that particular foe, knowing these facts, did not come over to our side of the Atlantic to "take us on."

What fat cargoes might not the Germans then have snatched, waddling home from the Plate and from the Cape, slow, helpless! But they kept maddeningly olear of us, and made up all their "bags" over 1000 miles away.

As to the armed merchant oruisers, the other half of our squadron, they, of course, were

the mightiest bluff of all: a fact scarcely yet comprehended, and not even dimly imagined in the autumn of 1914.

of the waves, being caparisoned for the fray, impatiently foaming at the bit, neighing, and saying "Ha, ha" among the captains (R.N.)! Every side of every basin in the docks held against it a vast dark hull. Overhead, in the roofs of the equally vast and dark sheds that flanked

was added to the position by the thought that the Merchant Navy was defending itself, and the realisation that there was something in the Royal Naval Reserve after all.

There was, indeed, as we of the White Ensign speedily disoovered-and a splendid something, too; but as to their ships, we, who helped to man and "run" them on man-of-war principles, had few illusions as to their capabilities. Our hearts were big, we were thoroughly keen for a trial; but faith in our 14,000-ton leviathans was largely tempered with hope for a happy ending to any encounter with a real oruiser constructed for fighting. There was a sporting chance, we supposed-there always is -so" Vive le Sport!"

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The Port of Liverpool, where the conversion of their most cherished and most enormous monsters into fighting ships reached its maddest height during that first month of the war, was a wonderfully thrilling sight. No one could regard all that day-and-night energy without being convinced that it must be producing some great new things; that here was the Sea Horse of Britain, taken from the peaceable ploughing

enormous piles of ships' stores removed from them, there looked down the brilliant and unrelenting eyes of the aro lights, cold and green. There was neither night-time, nor daytime, nor meal-time; nothing but working-time, at twentyfour hours per diem.

some

Every orifice in those hulls entry - ports, coaling - ports, cargo-ports-carried a gangway from it down to the wharf; and along these there surged in both directions an intensely busy army in single file, closed up. Some hurried into the ships empty-handed; hurried out of them, bearing on their shoulders burdens of cabin - fittings, inlaid woodpanelling, china, glass, every conceivable and inconceivable article designed for the comfort of the pampered passenger, or merely for his "look-see "—all now suddenly become useless and contemptible in the face of the real thing.

Each man's face, shining with sweat, white with sleeplessness, radiated forth that strange delight in destruction which inhabits all of us; while from within the rapidly emptying shells of the great ships there resounded on all sides the wild exciting din of demolishment

the bang, whang, orash, smash, of those who hammered, and wrenched, and levered, and forcibly unscrewed.

The work was not, however, so destructive as it sounded. Every article and every panel was marked with the name of the ship and the part of her from whence it came-even its consecutive number, as panelling. In those hopeful days we thought the things would each soon be going back again into its place! Each description of removed fittings was piled in monster pyramids, according to its class, abreast of the ship whence it had been eviscerated. The amounts of these, for any one ship, were staggering to the ordinary uncalculating mind. From the Aquitania, for example, the weight of glass-ware alone came to no less than 40 tons. (This fact, however, will carry easy belief with any one who has handled the water decanters and tumblers usual to passenger steamers.)

Upon a certain Monday evening arrived from her "trade" our ship, a luxuriously equipped hotel, soft and "oushy" at every turn, fair to see, attractively painted; her funnels in strongly contrasting glossy black and the most vermilion of fresh red-lead. "Ah," said her former Scotch captain reminiscently, later on, on regarding a coloured picture of his ship-of-peace, "Yon's a bonny funneli"

On the following Sunday morning we left the docks, stark and stripped, grey all over, as nearly a man-of-war

as was possible to be bluffed, white ensign and pendant complete.

Within the intervening 132 hours, the ship had been gutted of all her cabins on every deck; stripped of all panelling everywhere; eight 6-inch guns had been mounted, the ship's framework and supporting deck had been strengthened to match; and magazines and shell-rooms had been built. Besides this, stores for the ship, food for her company, her guns, and her boilers, had been hoisted in by the hundred ton-coal, indeed, by the thousand ton; officers and men had been appointed, had joined, and taken charge.

Aladdin's lamp must have begun to think about hiding its pale ineffectual fire!

A short gun-trial outside the Bar lightship, which passed us sound as regards guns and fittings: a last letter home in the mysteriously veiled language that later became so easy and expected-and we were away! The then unaccustomed secrecy as to the vessel's destination and route was interpreted in several places as meaning that we were bound to a northern port, to add one more to the troopships well known then to be engaged in hurrying thousands of Russian troops across to the north of Scotland. For, with the snow still on their beards, and the ice of Archangel in their bones (as it were, chilled beef), they had been actually seen passing southward by train through England on their way to the Front!

We were in reality bound,

that Sunday evening, to join the Ninth Cruiser Squadron; and accordingly, first, northabout round Ireland we fared, then southward-ho! for the open sea near the Canary Islands, where the tracks of the Atlantic trade routes from South America and South Africa converge.

Од On Wednesday morning, early, a sailing-ship was sighted on our starboard bow. We were then in the chops of the Channel, well southward of Ireland, and we altered course slightly to bear down on her. As we approached she hoisted the German merchant flag and "made her number." She was the Excelsior, a barque of about 2500 tons, homeward bound to Bremen from New Orleans with a cargo ehiefly of tobacco, and was forty days

out.

Consequently she knew nothing about the war; but when informed, by by international code, of the state of affairs and that she was our prize, she made no difficulties whatever; nor did there appear to be very much excitement on board.

It was too rough at the time to send a boat to visit her, taking a prize crew, so she was ordered to haul as elose to the wind (which was south-westerly) as she could, and to prepare to be taken into port in our company. We altered course suitably, and promptly and meekly she followed us. It was a bloodless victory!

A wireless message to the nearest admiral soon brought

But

Our next experience of warlike conditions took place on arrival at the Canaries, in seeing the serried rows of German and Austrian merchant steamers anchored at Las Palmas and at Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, and afraid to move one yard outside those neutral Spanish waters. Many others of the same soared company we saw later on, who had taken refuge at the Azores, at Madeira, and in the Cape de Verde Islands, where they lay sheltering and sweltering until Portugal, to which country these groups belong, "came in" to the war. those in the Spanish harbours remained at anchor for over four years, their bottoms rusting, their engines deteriorating, their coal and stores dwindling, their cargoes gradually being sold to pay for the upkeep of their diminishing crew, objectlessons of sea-power. Even had they been able to get olear away from their island anchorages, each would have become a homeless wanderer a Flying Dutchman-barred from every home port and from every German colony. We felt like terriers looking at a eage of rats! They were for us a spectacle as thrilling as