A Naval Lien tenant, 1914-1918. By Etienne. (Methuen. 8s. 6d.
net.)—The 'Southampton,' in which the author served till after Jutland, was present at all four of the principal navel actions of the war. The light cruisers attached to the Grand Fleet were never idle except when they were refitting, as the 'Southampton's' track chart shows. The author may fairly claim, then, to have seen a good deal of the war in the North Sea. ff' writes well and amusingly, and is careful to describe only wh*t he saw ; he gives some of his own photographs'and a few plans. He begins with the naval visit to Kiel M June, l914,—a stsauffe prelude to the war—and goes on to narrato the concentration of the Grand Fleet at Scapa and the early adventures with submarines. He attributes the escape of the enemy cruisers from Scarborough to bad luck—a sudden storm and a signal that was misinterpreted. His account of Jutland is most interesting: The ' Southampton ' was with the battle-cruisers in the first phase of the action. In the night action she torpedoed and sank the ' Frauenlob,' but she earns under the fire of four enemy !hips and lost eighty-nine men in a few minutes. He does not try to answer the questions raised by the battle, but he says that Admiral Scheer made his escape southward by crossing the stem of the Grand Fleet about midnight, and that the range of visibility was then only about two miles. The enemy owed much to that sea-mist.
Previous page
