“Awake, for morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the stone that put the stars to flight,
And lo, the Roger of the Quay ordains
That submarines shall seek forthwith the Bight.
By the start of 1915, with preparations under way in France for what turned out to be the Second Battle of Ypres, and with the Grand Fleet huddled in their anchorage escape Flow, the E submarine commanders were kept in the public’s attention by the sheer enthusiasm and determination of Keyes. Then, suddenly, Keyes was gone. “O where, O where is the commodore gone?” asked the Muckrag:
In fact, Keyes had been appointed to be Chief of Staff to the admiral commanding the Anglo-French fleet outside the Dardanelles. It was a critical appointment, and – unlike so many of his colleagues – Keyes believed in submarines and knew what they could do. So E11, E14 and E15 were ordered to sail immediately, with their depot ship Adamant through the Bay of Biscay and the Straits of Gibraltar, to follow him.
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Copyright
© Richard Hough 2013
Richard Hough has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Oxford University Press in 1983
This edition published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2013