A STRANGE DOCUMENT
BY TONY WRIGHT nerfherder2001 (at) hotmail.com
FROM A LETTER TO A WELL KNOWN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST FROM A SOURCE AT THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE. File Ref – MOD/WOW3/PO24a/HGW/JW
London 18th September 2004
Jeff,
Was just searching through the files we were discussing the other day and I came across this manuscript. I remembered you were researching THAT war and thought you might be interested in this. Perhaps I should draw your attention to Chapter 7, as it directly relates to your current interest. In case you were wondering, the chap responsible for the files at that time slapped an order on it after being tipped off by the publisher. Policy at the time forbade discussion of the subject in any form once things had calmed down, as you will know. So, unfortunately, the poor old bugger never did get his memoirs published. Not the definitive proof you were after alone, maybe, but interesting in the light of recent rumours I referred to in that excellent restaurant the other night. Put it together with the other stuff I gave you and make your own mind up.
I don’t need to tell you that I know nothing of this,
Cheers!
H.
NEPTUNE’S WARRIOR by Capt. J.C.B.Smythe (Retd.)
Chapter 7. The Demise of a Brave Ship by One Proud to Serve on Her.
Attentive readers will be aware that, by the turn of the century, I was already familiar with the peculiar things that can happen in the service of this great nation’s Navy.
As a young, fresh officer in 1891, and aforementioned in this humble collection of reminiscences, I had served aboard the HMS Scorpion on her voyage to Noble’s Isle. There I had seen sights to chill the blood, but, as I have touched upon this subject earlier, I shall say no more.
Nothing, however, could prepare me for the events that occurred a few years into the new reign of His Majesty King Edward. Shortly after these events I saw, in a popular news sheet of the time by the name of ‘The Pall Mall Budget’ or some such, an account of the War which mentioned in passing the brave stand made by HMS ‘Thunder Child’. I then vowed to put forth my own account of this struggle, having been ‘in the thick of it’ as the popular saying goes. Now I can fulfil that solemn vow.
By the time of my transfer to the ‘Thunder Child’, I had made the rank of 1st Lieutenant and had some considerable experience with men and ships. The ‘Thunder Child’ was a queer type of vessel, cigar shaped and low laying, but her crew were of the most robust and hardy type that I ever had the honour of serving with.
Built in Chatham in 1879, ‘Thunder Child’ was only one of only two in the Polyphemus Class designed by the late Admiral of the Fleet Sartorius. Her sister ship the ‘Polyphemus’ was the other. Both were Ironclad Torpedo Ram ships of 2,640 tons each, thrust through the water by twin screws at a top speed of 18 knots. They were both initially armed with five torpedo tubes, six Hotchkiss machine guns and, of course, a formidable ram. In 1882,they were both commissioned and served for long stretches in the Mediterranean.
It was shortly before the coming of the Martians that they separated. The ‘Thunder Child’ was returned to Chatham for refitting where I joined her, whilst ‘Polyphemus’ remained on active duty for refitting at a later date. ‘Thunder Child ‘ was fitted with 12 pdr guns, fore and aft, as it was hoped to make her more flexible in battle.
I had been in my new position for a few months when news of the spreading chaos in the South East of England reached us. Rumours were rife, what was the nature of this new threat? Several times I had to ‘calm the fever’, as it were. The lack of news and that human malady they call ‘curiosity’ caused tongues to wag among the lower ranks. The general feeling in those early days, though, was that we would crush this new terror like we would crush any other insurrection within the British Empire, swiftly and cleanly, with the minimum of fuss.
After the Surrey defeats and the Martian advance, we hurriedly put to sea to join a small Channel Defence Fleet. There were three other Ironclads that I distinctly remember in this fleet, namely the ‘Miskatonic’, the ‘Carrie’ and the ‘Cavor’. The ‘Cavor’ I later served aboard as my first command. My extraordinary experiences with the experimental metal cladding the ‘boffins’ gave her will be laid down in another chapter.
The ‘Thunder Child’, at any rate, soon lay off the Essex Coast amongst the most extraordinary flotilla of assorted ships and boats which were gathered to carry a seemingly unending stream of humanity across to the continent and safety.
I remember well, as if I could forget that dreadful time, standing on the Quarterdeck at the side of the Captain, as the great man muttered darkly under his breath at the seemingly suicidal manoeuvrings of this strange collection of vessels. We watched with baited breath as this fishing smack narrowly avoided that yacht, as people crammed into small boats struggled against the waves, with varying success.
That night, at dinner, we discussed the latest turn of events.
‘Apparently, the Army are taking heavy casualties in Surrey’, said the Ship’s Doctor quietly.
‘London will be next, I’ll wager’, intoned the Commander toying a wineglass.
There was silence for a moment.
‘Dash it all…I’d much rather be at the front line giving those…those…things a taste of British steel. In a matter of days we have been reduced to scurrying rabbits while those b______s stalk about the country on their metal legs… murdering!’ exclaimed the Doctor, his unseemly outburst suddenly breaking the hushed atmosphere of the dining room.
The Captain spoke up. ‘Our place is here. They have not, so far, made it to the coast. We may yet be the last line of defence, Gentlemen’. He paused to look about the room, it seemed he saved a special glance for the Doctor.
‘I will not hear any more of this, especially in front of the men. We are all champing at the bit, I am sure, but I am also of the mind that our time will come.’ The Captain spoke quietly, that is, as quietly as a bear like man with a booming voice can speak. He spoke in a calming manner, though, and presently the conversation turned to other things.
I glanced at the Doctor and his thin, red face grinned sheepishly at me, his anger at his perceived inaction abated. Dinner resumed as usual.
I did not join in the forced, but otherwise light, banter. My thoughts were with my wife and daughter at home. Were they safe? I tried to calm my fears in the knowledge that my wife’s brother (a dependable fellow if ever there was one) would likely ensure their safety and, soon, I felt a little better. In my bunk later, though, I gazed at their pictures and I am not ashamed to say that I prayed to the Almighty that he would keep them safe from the clutches of evil.
The next day I awoke at dawn to the thump of faraway guns. Hurriedly, I dressed
And went to the quarterdeck. The Captain was already there. Indeed, despite his usual upright bearing, his huge bearded face gave away the fact that he must have been up all night.
‘What’s happening, Sir?’ I asked.
He turned his great, owl-like visage towards me.
‘Looks like our friends are heading this way. Gunfire coming from the coastal gun batteries’. He nodded landwards then returned his gaze to a distant point on the horizon.
Above the land, plumes of smoke rose lazily into the air. At intervals there came distant thumping as the Army guns bravely fought this unseen menace. The chaos in the water around us continued. Foam churned as a myriad of floating transport carried frantic, crying figures over the channel. How long the continent would be safe I did not know. How long before green flashes would be seen above the skies of France, Spain or Germany? Would those in the New World or our Antipodean cousins, perhaps, soon gaze with dread at those ghostly streaks of light tearing up the black blanket of night? Why should the Martians stop here unless we stopped them? I wondered how many other minds had pondered this.
A steward brought in hot black coffee and we sipped it silently as we watched the billowing smoke and tried to imagine the terrible struggle that was taking place on land. It seemed to me that the guns thumped with the regularity of a great beast’s heart. The heart of England… an England fighting for its very life. I’m sure that, like me, every soul on board the ‘Thunder Child’ willed that great heart to beat stronger and stronger, to give our England the strength to shake of this dreadful virus that had invaded its body. More than one silent prayer was, I could tell by the rapt faces around me, said in those quiet moments.
It was my practice to take a turn around the ship a few times a day, to ‘grease the wheels’. After I had finished my coffee, I made my excuses and did so, shrugging off the melancholy and thinking businesslike thoughts.
In the lower quarters, I saw a small knot of men standing around talking in low tones.
‘Lacking something to do, Gentlemen?’ I asked sharply, causing a jolt in one or two of them. Most of them drifted away into the bowels in the ship on some likely most urgent errand. One Able Seaman, however, remained behind.
‘What is it, Jenkins?’ I peered at him with the beadiest eye I could muster. It was a trick I had seen a Master-At-Arms use early in my career and, after much practice, I found that it always worked most admirably in putting off complainers and malingerers.
The boy, painfully slight and looking barely of age to be in the Service, approached me slowly.
‘Well, spit it out, lad’, I said eyeing him again.
The boy stood for a moment wringing his hands as if searching for the right words.
‘Sir,’ he took a deep breath. ‘Sir, me an’ the lads was a-wonderin’ … wha’ with the Marshuns an’ all… Well, Sir … wha’ chance do we ‘ave ? We’ve ‘erd terrible things about them … murderin’ an’ killin’ … Big machines we’ve ‘erd abaht … an’ ‘orrible guns of fire…’
The boy was obviously terribly afraid and my heart went out to him. Of course, I could not pander to him, that would not have done at all.
‘Jenkins, what did you join His Majesty’s Navy for?’ I asked him sternly.
The boy thought for a moment, then answered.
‘Sir, I joined up ‘cause I wanted to see the world an’ have adventures like my Father an’ his Father before ‘im.’ He looked at me hopefully, as if wondering if this was what I wanted to hear.
‘And adventures you shall have, Jenkins’ I answered. ‘Out there no more than a few miles away is adventure. Just think what stories you will be able to tell your children, and your Grandchildren. You can tell them that you served on the triumphant ‘Thunder Child’ when she helped drive the Martian invaders clean back to where they came from. You can tell them that you saw those machines fall one by one as we showed them what real British grit can do. You can tell them that you helped to preserve the great British Empire for them and their children.’ I waited and watched him.
Presently, a small smile flickered across his boyish face.
‘Right you are, Sir! I’ll be sure to do jus’ that!’ Jenkins exclaimed and, flicking a quick salute in my direction scampered off, his too big uniform flapping on his thin frame. Smiling despite myself, I returned the salute to his scrawny back. At that, I returned to my duties.
It seems that perhaps my talk with Jenkins must have had a better effect than I could have hoped, as no more word of dissent or unease reached my ears. Indeed, morale seems to have risen, along with the healthy tension that goes with a wish to get ‘stuck in’ before a battle.
The ship’s company waited with baited breath but, for a time, no sign of the Martian Invasion showed, barring the ever increasing palls of smoke and the thump of the guns away to the distance. We had more news, London had fallen and part of His Majesty’s Government had retreated to the Midlands to direct operations. The Martians did indeed have huge machines in which they stalked the land although we had yet to see one. We did not have long to wait.
The morning was taken trying to instil some semblance of order into the general rout that was taking place in our stretch of water. Boat hit boat, we would intervene in the ensuing chaos and get jabbered at for our pains in English, Danish, French or whatever language the Captains of these motley vessels spoke. As the day drew on the smoke from the coast grew thicker and the thump of the guns more intermittent. I did not think this was a good sign.
Soon after 2 o’ clock in the afternoon we saw the first of them. The bright sun glinted at first on a small metallic object on the horizon and, suddenly, the alert rang out.
Coming swiftly down the coast was a Martian Tripod, even at that distance we could only gape at the immense size of it.
On the Quarterdeck the Captain swore into his beard.
At the enemy’s approach, some guns to the South began a quick thumping. The game was afoot!
As we watched, two more of the Martians appeared, single file, a rapidly as the first.
With the slick ease of a greased wheel, ‘Thunder Child’ sprang to life, the Captain barking orders that were obeyed with astonishing speed and precision. Beside him, my heart thudded in my chest as adrenaline surged through my system. My God, nothing we had heard had prepared us for the sight of those monstrous machines that filed towards our strange armada along the coast.
My esteemed reader will doubtless have read descriptions of these diabolical things but I shall attempt my own as descriptions seem to differ to varying degrees.
Each machine was something in the area of 100 feet high. Like a great shining ovoid that perched, somewhat precariously it seemed to me, on three delicate looking legs. For their speed, theirs was not a graceful motion, rather rolling gait, strange to behold and hard to describe. A writer once described it as ‘like a milking stool walking’ or some such. It was a little like that but also not so. The spindly legs of the machines crawled, spider like, as they propelled the contraptions and little puffs of some kind of green steam or smoke sprayed from the joints as they bent. The machines had a kind of cabin projecting from the forward part of the ovoid which swayed, gracefully, about on a stalk not unlike a swan’s neck. I understand, from information since received, that this ‘head’ or ‘cabin’ was where the Martian drivers lurked. From under the ‘head’ dangled a small forest of metal cables or tentacles that waved about expressively as the thing moved. These loathsome giants periodically emitted an uncanny, wailing howl that I took to be their method of communication. I have since learned that this may not, in fact, be the case, although I do not profess to comprehend the details given later by the scientists.
The first of these machines waded out to sea toward us and our little charges that, with renewed vigour at the site of these invaders, frantically battled their way toward safety. The Captain barked more orders and ‘Thunder Child’ headed at full power towards the behemoth that staggered towards the panicking vessels so near to freedom.
The twin smoke stacks belched sparks and billowing black clouds as we rushed headlong towards our quarry. The Captain ashen faced but with a clear, calm voice spoke.
‘We are not to fire until I give the order.’
‘Sir?’ I asked, not a little confused.
‘We will charge the closest machine first. Wait for my signal.’ That said, he turned and stared resolutely at the enemy ahead.
We steamed on. The distance between our ship and the machine closed rapidly. The Martian in his craft was directing a strange beam at some of the small vessels, those that it touched turned to fire instantly or exploded in a fearful fashion. Great clouds of steam and smoke probed the already soot streaked sky. I fancied that the little white waves that broke against the monster’s spindly legs glowed with some unearthly light.
It must have tired quickly of this game, because it swung its ‘head’ round swiftly as if looking for more worthy prey. Soon enough it alighted on a large steamer that was painfully pulling out to sea behind us crammed full with people. As it headed towards the overloaded vessel, it suddenly seemed to spot us as we sped towards it. The machine stopped dead and seemed to look with some surprise at the low slung, grey shape that approached it.
‘D__n it! On my order!’ Bellowed the Captain, as if to stay any gunner’s itchy fingers. ‘Go and keep an eye on those gunners, Smythe.’
‘Sir!’ I said and rushed out on deck..
Men were there, staring transfixed at the looming shape above us.
‘Why doesn’t it attack, Sir?’ asked a familiar reedy voice. I turned and saw Jenkins at my side, his face a mask of horror at the apparition before us.
‘ We’ve got it surprised, Jenkins’ I said, wondering the very same thing.
As I spoke, the Martian raised its head, seemed to look directly into my eyes and fired some form of projectile from a gun it unhitched from it’s body. The canister glanced harmlessly off the armoured sides of our great ship and span off into the sea, discharging as it went a dense, black smoke. The other Martians approached us now as our nearest adversary raised a large metallic box in one of its repulsive tentacles. As the Martians’ terrible Flame Ray pierced the side of the ‘Thunder Child’, throwing great clouds of steam and showers of white hot metal in all directions, the Captain bellowed ‘FIRE!’ and our forward guns boomed.
The ship lurched alarmingly like a wounded animal but the Gunner’s aim was true. The first Martian machine seemed to wheel about on one leg, then crash with a great spray of water into the depths. A whoop of joy issued from the men assembled on the deck and turning towards the steamer, I could see distant figures jumping on her deck and waving their arms.
Dense black fog and intense heat radiated from the side of our plucky ship but still she sped on, turning a little to confront the second form looming nearby.
‘See, Jenkins, your grandchildren will thrill to this yarn!’ I said, excited as the rest at our success.
‘Reckon as they will, Sir’, breathed the boy.
As she went, the ‘Thunder Child’s’ guns spoke again and again. Shells splashed into the water, some even hit other human vessels but we were oblivious to this, concentrating as we were on the second Martian that was heading toward us at an alarming rate.
A few shells ineffectually burst around the Martian’s ‘head’ as it swung its awful weapon around wildly, trying to strike a bead on us.
Then, that deadly flame leapt out at us and I suddenly found myself thrown, like a child’s doll, far up into the air and out to sea. Even as I flew, though, I saw the deck explode into shards of metal and splinters of wood as if at a quarter speed. The blast obliterated the giant spindly tower as the ‘Thunder child’ played her last card. She, outraged, took a terrible revenge against her attacker and scattered it to the four winds. Through the hissing of the superheated water around the shattered ship, I fancied I heard poor, young Jenkins scream as he was torn from his body and sent to the place where all brave sailors go to their final rest.
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Of that awful day, there is not much more to relate. As the valiant Ironclad Torpedo Ram ‘Thunder Child’ breathed her last, she had indeed taken with her the one that had melted her brave heart. With her supreme sacrifice and that of her crew, she facilitated the escape of many thousands of terrified, helpless people. For a few brief moments, She showed humankind that there could still be hope, even against the greatest adversity.
As I floated, vulnerable but strangely tranquil, in the still seething water, I could swear that I saw a giant flat, metallic shape, not unlike a tea saucer and bigger than the largest dirigible, float slowly overhead. This vision was quickly lost to my burning eyes as it suddenly accelerated towards land.
I was rescued, bleeding, severely burned and half drowned a short time later. My war was over. I recovered eventually, as will be seen, and resumed my career. To this day, though, I often wake in the still of night, soaked with sweat and sobbing. My ears still sometimes ring with the remembrance of the last, agonised scream of the ‘Thunder Child’s’ passing.
Of the ‘Thunder Child’s’ entire crew I, alone, survived to mourn her.
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Revised 12/05/2004
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