Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte
On recovery I found myself being well rubbed with rum in a bunk on T.B. 26 and she was getting alongside this yacht to deliver me to the tender care of these people who have done every possible thing imaginable for me. I somehow got a cut on the head, getting clear of the ship I expect this evidently bled and accounts for loss of senses. They pumped salt and water into me until I objected. I now have normal temperature nearly healed head and drank beer for lunch and hope in a day or so to hear of a new ship. This outfit is run by Lady Beatty the wife of the Admiral! Commander! 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron. I like her very much and much appreciate her kindness. Sir Alfred Cripp is onboard with another surgeon McNair two top five nurses from Park Lane. I am the only patient here – The “Liberty” another yacht has come and some are in the hospital. You see I have the best that London can produce, it is strange how I am always coming into this. Sorry to have inflicted so much self on you, but there is little else please write to Her Ladyship and thank her also to Cripp he is a very good sort. Mail going – nurse coming, So must close up.’
While Compton-Hall’s history, Submarines and the War at Sea 1914-18, adds to the overall picture:
‘At 3.45 p.m. on 5 September 1914, on a fine sunny day one month after war had broken out, the 25-knot light cruiser H.M.S. Pathfinder suddenly blew up in her own home waters just off the Scottish coast at the entrance to the Firth of Forth.
Damage-control methods at the time were rudimentary and little practised. The explosion below the bridge touched off ammunition in the forward magazine. Most of the men forward were killed outright and there were heavy casualties elsewhere. The Captain, Martin Leake, was blasted into an upper-deck meat-safe and a sailor was blown into the aftermost funnel.
In the wardroom the ‘almighty crash’ was followed by a breathless silence for several drawn-out seconds. Then the crockery in the pantry fell to the deck, the lights went out, and the deck shuddered underfoot as bulkheads below started to give way. Boats were jammed in their crutches or shattered. In moments the base of No. 2 funnel was awash (No. 1 had gone) and the water was filthy with a scum of coal dust and oil.
Barely four minutes after the initial detonation the 2940-ton patrol leader plunged bow down. For a little while her stem rested on the seabed and her stern, cocked up at an angle of 60°, hung as if suspended above the surface. Then, slowly at first but with gathering speed as more bulkheads carried away, the whole hulk slid to the bottom.
There were many non-swimmers in the company (the Navy had been lax about instruction) and no lifejackets. Although the destroyers Stag and Express, both ’30-knotters,’ raced to the spot, only a dozen of Pathfinder’s 268 officers and men survived to relate their unprecedented experience. Leake, of course, was the last, as far as he could determine, to leave the sinking ship: his loyal Secretary or ‘Scratch,’ Assistant Paymaster Alan Bath, stopped to unlace his master’s boots before both officers jumped.
The ship was poorly prepared for underwater attack, but by no means exceptional in that. When the Fleet first heard the news by wireless, at 4 p.m., it was assumed that she had run onto a mine; but Pathfinder’s Chief Boatswain’s Mate, the ‘Buffer,’ had seen what he rightly took to be a periscope and the track of a torpedo. Indeed the latter was still faintly visible when the ship went down. His hail from the forecastle to the bridge was promptly answered by the Officer of the Watch who put the helm hard over and rang the engine telegraphs to full astern starboard and full ahead port in order to speed up his emergency turn towards the sighting. His prompt action was too late. The engine-room watchkeeper at the throttles disbelieved the port telegraph order - full astern would have been understandable - and, assuming that someone on the bridge had lost his head, did not obey. But, in any case, the engines would not have saved the ship: at the miserable economic speed of 6 knots - the best she could do on patrol for five days a week with small coal bunkers - manoeuvring was sluggish and it would have taken ten minutes to work up to full power.
Thereafter the minimum speed for H.M. ships on patrol was fixed at 15 knots, but on this occasion there was no way of avoiding the carefully aimed ‘eel’ fired from what was then considered an abnormally long range of about 1200 metres (1300 yards). It was the first time anywhere that a submarine torpedo warhead had struck home.
Some grisly details emerged. The Stag lost her main circulating water supply: a diver found the inlet blocked by a man’s leg. The Royal Navy was starkly confronted with its first glimpse of real modern warfare as opposed to peacetime simulation.’
But this harsh introduction to realities of modern warfare was not the only shock to emerge from the incident, for, in October 1914, a suspected German spy was arrested in Ireland - in fact the man who had been responsible for sending a coded message alerting the Germans to Pathfinder’s pending departure from the Firth of Forth - Carl Hans Lody was subsequently executed in the Tower of London, the first man to gain that dubious distinction since Lord Lovat of Jacobite Rebellion fame.
Grand Fleet command 1915-17 - destruction of the German raider “Leopard”
Following the loss of the Pathfinder, Martin-Leake came ashore to a training appointment in Portland, where he served until taking command of the cruiser Achilles in early 1915. Although not present at Jutland, Achilles lend valuable support to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron in the North Sea and shared in the sinking the German raider Leopard off the Shetlands in March 1917. Martin-Leake’s report takes up the story:
‘At 3.45 p.m. Dundee and the raider commenced an action simultaneously. Achilles at once joined in, at a range of 5,300 yards, the raider firing at her, but with more intensity at Dundee, whose safety was due to the prompt manner in which Commander Selwyn Mitchell Day, R.N.R., answered the raider's first hostile act, and the initial success she gained in getting raking hits; hers was the dangerous position, and she extracted herself with the utmost credit.
On opening fire the raider at once enveloped herself in smoke of a light colour. At 3.55 p.m. she fired a torpedo at Achilles, which broke surface off the port quarter. A submarine was reported at the same time in this direction, and speed was increased from 16 to 20 knots. Hits were now being obtained, and the raider was on fire forward. About this time she was hit in the bow (on the gripe) by a torpedo from Achilles.
About 4.00 p.m. fire was checked, the raider being well on fire, with occasional explosions forward. Soon after this, Dundee took station astern of Achilles, and was then ordered to steer west. At 4.23 p.m. she reported a submarine between herself and the raider. Consequently, fire was again opened on the raider and continued until, at 4.33 p.m., she listed to port and sank, more or less horizontally, a mass of flames, and red hot forward, leaving no visible survivors.’
Martin-Leake was mentioned in despatches by Admiral Sir David Beatty, who cited his sound judgement ‘in rounding up and destroying the vessel which was capable of doing so much damage to our commerce’ (London Gazette 18 April 1919 refers).
Chief of Staff and liaison with the United States Navy
Relinquishing his command of the Achilles in June 1917, Martin-Leake was awarded the D.S.O. and advanced to Commodore 2nd Class, in which rank he was next appointed Chief of Staff to the C.-in-C. Ireland at Queenstown, his duties including liaison with the U. S. Navy, and he remained similarly employed until the War’s end, gaining the American D.S.M. (Navy) (London Gazette 12 December 1919 refers).
Placed on the Retired List at his own request in November 1921, he was awarded the C.B. in the following year and died at his family seat, Marshalls in Hertfordshire, in January 1928; some of the Admiral’s papers are held in Hertfordshire Archives.
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