“Then they ordered us to attack, so we bustled off full bore.  Being navigator, also having control of all the guns, I was on the bridge all the time, and remained for twelve hours without leaving it at all.  When we got fairly close I sighted a good-looking Hun destroyer, which I thought I’d like to strafe.  You know, it’s awful fun to know that you can blaze off at a real ship, and do as much damage as you like.  Well, I’d just got their range on the guns, and we’d just fired one round, when some more of our destroyers coming from the opposite direction got between us and the enemy and completely blanketed us, so we had to stop, which was rather rot.  Shortly afterwards they recalled us, so we bustled back again.  How any destroyer got out of it is perfectly wonderful.

“Literally there were hundreds of progs (shells falling) all round us, from a 15-inch to a 4-inch, and you know what a big splash a 15-inch bursting in the water does make.  We got washed through by the spray.  Just as we were getting back, a whole salvo of big shells fell just in front of us and short of our big ships.  The skipper and I did rapid calculations as to how long it would take them to reload, fire again, time of flight, etc., as we had to go right through the spot.  We came to the conclusion that, as they were short a bit, they would probably go up a bit, and (they?) didn’t, but luckily they altered deflection, and the next fell right astern of us.  Anyhow, we managed to come out of that row without the ship or a man on board being touched.

WHAT THE BIG SHIPS STAND

“It’s extraordinary the amount of knocking about the big ships can stand.  One saw them hit, and they seemed to be one mass of flame and smoke, and you think they’re gone, but when the smoke clears away they are apparently none the worse and still firing away.  But to see a ship blow up is a terrible and wonderful sight; an enormous volume of flame and smoke almost 200 feet high and great pieces of metal, etc., blown sky-high, and then when the smoke clears not a sign of the ship.  We saw one other extraordinary sight.  Of course, you know the North Sea is very shallow.  We came across a Hun cruiser absolutely on end, his stern on the bottom and his bow sticking up about 30 feet in the water; and a little farther on a destroyer in precisely the same position.

“I couldn’t be certain, but I rather think I saw your old ship crashing along and blazing away, but I expect you have heard from some of your pals.  But the night was far and away the worse time of all.  It was pitch dark, and, of course, absolutely no lights, and the firing seems so much more at night, as you could see the flashes lighting up the sky, and it seemed to make much more noise, and you could see ships on fire and blowing up.  Of course we showed absolutely no lights.  One expected to be surprised any moment, and eventually we were.