revolt. Indeed, one admiral who braved the trial was landed on his quarter-deck only just soon enough to give him time to reach his cabin before disaster overtook him. The German type of balloon, with its sausage-shaped body and clumsy parachute tail, was wholly incapable of facing the stern conditions of the North Sea. Nevertheless, it was the only thing available for trial at the outset, and like a vast aerial dachshund, it was dragged through the windy skies as long as it could be kept on the lead. Through its sufferings came success, but this would never have been realised except for the vigorous support of Admiral de Robeck, who constituted himself a father of balloons in the Fleet, and for the energy and initiative of a few picked officers of the Naval Air Service, who were sent north with the elastic order, "Do the best you can." The first operations in home waters in which the balloons took part were off the Belgian coast, and bore some resemblance to those in the Dardanelles. Yet, between Gallipoli and the Belgian coast there was a wide difference. The conditions off the latter were seldom ideal; fog and mist were prevalent, and the shore bristled with guns. Moreover, the sallyports of the German ships lay near at hand, and generally, there was too much possibility of unpleasantness for the leisurely methods of the earlier days to be employed with safety. Whatever ship was to operate, it was desirable that she should be able to produce, or dispose of, a balloon with the maximum celerity. To this end, the City of Oxford was designed. Like Manica, she was originally a tramp steamer, and having suffered a similar mutilation, she was provided with an inflation system of a startling, even alarming, design. This consisted of a number of "low pressure " (150 lb.) tanks, holding in all a hundred thousand cubic feet of hydrogen, which is enough to fill a balloon. They were connected to a huge standpipe in the centre of the foredeck, and were able, if called upon, to deliver the whole quantity of gas in a single mighty belch. Deflation was slower, the gas being pumped back into the tanks; but in cases of emergency the balloon could be instantly ripped. For some reason the apparatus made a special appeal to the officer in command, possibly because of its favourable comparison with the cruder system of the Manica, in which it had taken two hours to inflate a balloon. At any rate, he was frequently to be seen, stop-watch in hand, exhorting the man at the gas controls to greater deeds in the effort to beat his own record; and daily on his decks the balloon burst quicker and quicker into bud. It was natural that this strange performance should attract the attention of the authorities on shore, and in due course a signal was received that a very eminent official was coming on board to see what it was all about. He duly arrived, and misled perhaps by a national reputation for discretion, invited the commanding officer, who was a Scotsman, to give a display. One can only record that everything worked admirably. The balloon appeared with such suddenness that the high official shied like a startled horse, and the roar of its birth could be heard many miles away. The commanding officer was well satisfied; so apparently was the high official, who immediately left the ship. Shortly afterwards the City of Oxford received a letter from Their Lordships of the Admiralty, thanking the Scotsman for his exhibition, but expressly forbidding him to repeat it. Apparently this was the record performance; at any rate, there is no trace of a yet swifter inflation, and the City of Oxford settled down to work with the monitors off the Belgian coast. Theirs was no easy task. From Nieuport to the Scheldt the long muzzles of the enemy's guns peered out to sea, and every device for protection and concealment was employed. Camouflage, dummy redoubts, and false flashes served to mislead; earthworks of enormous strength to protect; and aeroplanes, submarines, and even fast surface craft, to counter attack. The whole system on this coast was, in fact, so formidable and elaborate that the king, always interested in such matters, paid a special visit to inspect it after the war. It was because the enemy recognised his right wing to be a sensitive spot that he protected it so thoroughly, and for the same reason he took care, when molested, to hit back with the maximum vigour. Lying out on the flat leadcoloured sea, the monitors presented an almost ideal target; and as heavier and heavier pieces were mounted on shore, they were pressed farther and farther out, till the limit of their extreme range was reached. Knowing the trajectory of their guns, the Germans had been at pains to bring up others which would outrange them, and, having done so, considered that the matter should be at an end. So it might have been, but for some fertile brain which conceived the idea of mounting 12-inch naval guns near Dunkirk, from which position they could reach the Germans easily. The simple device of painting the monitor white and providing her with an extra canvas funnel deceived the Germans into the belief that she was a new and more devastating brand; and while the City of Oxford spotted for the guns on shore, the monitor, lying well out of range, industriously fired blank. It does not seem to have occurred to the enemy to notice which way the shells were coming from, and they spent a great deal of ammunition trying to reach her. At length, desperate at the pounding, they sent forth a call for their light forces to come out servers whisked heavenwards and deal with their persecutors, and the gay deceivers might have met with a certain, if glorious, end, had not the City of Oxford picked up the signal, together with the reply that the German ships were coming. It seemed wise to depart, for three knots, though a round speed in its class, is not much use against destroyers; so after passing the glad news on to Harwich, the balloon-ship and the monitor waddled off home, leaving the Germans with their curiosity unsatisfied, and several days' supply of ammunition blown into the sea. It was at about this time that experiments were beginning with the Grand Fleet. The first ship to be fitted with a kite balloon was the aircraft carrier Campania. Being an ex - Cunard liner, there was plenty of space in her, and in due course Campania received this notable addition to her complement of seaplanes. It must be admitted that his new command caused her captain some anxiety. Seaplanes he recked of; indeed he flew one himself, and though they had their disadvantages, he knew pretty well what to expect. But entrusted with this gigantic bubble on the end of a string, his seaman's heart descended into his boots. Visions of seaplanes entangled in the cable crowded his dreams of sheets of flame and frightful explosions from stray sparks from the funnel, and of ob and vanishing into space. Nor were his nightmares entirely without foundation. The equipment was primitive, and the balloons were called upon to face a buffeting that they were not designed to stand. One ripped its cable from the winch and landed in Norway; a second broke free and was lost for ever, and other setbacks of a like kind occurred. Yet Campania's captain persisted in his task: sending up observers when the weather was good, and ballast only when conditions were dangerous. No lives were lost, nor was any one injured, while from every failure something new was learnt. Work was going on apace at the Admiralty also, and new types of balloon began to emerge. The sausage was transformed into an egg, and the egg sprouted queer-looking fins and shed its tail of parachutes. Finally came the three-tailed "M" type, the invention of a Frenchman, far superior to anything that had gone before. The Fleet began to take notice. Up till now the balloons had been regarded mainly with amusement: it was entertaining to watch them, and pleasant to organise sweepstakes on the time that would elapse before they broke away. No one was very anxious to go up in one, the prospects of a free run and a bath in the North Sea being insufficiently attractive, even in summer. But with the arrival of the new type came a change. The balloons remained obstinately on their cables, and the sweep money was as a rule unclaimed. Campania towed them at will, and observed for battle practice, moving at full speed. It was no more than a beginning; but with the latent possibilities in view, even a beginning was something. Admiral de Robeck was now with the Grand Fleet, and at his request certain officers were sent up: men endowed with experience, not only of balloons but of human nature as well—men of standing in civil life, keen, patient, and of imperturbable good humour; junior in rank, perhaps, but capable of reasoning with a captain on his own quarterdeck without causing offence. From this material he established a special staff in his flagship, the King George V., and a similar organisation with the battle cruisers at Rosyth. His instructions to the balloon officers were simple: Prove what you can do," he said, “and I'll back you to the limit." And this he did, always with a twinkle in his eye. If people were rude to balloons it seemed to amuse him; if they came with a tale of disaster, he only laughed. In the same spirit his officers set to work. Where younger men would have been discouraged, they smiled cheerfully, and one by one the hesitating ships agreed to take a balloon and give it a trial. The "balloonatics," as they came to be called, had simple wants. Give them, they said, but a 66 drifter and a few hands; let them direct the ship's company for a few minutes, and they would guarantee to have the balloon riding from the deck with an observer one or two thousand feet up on the end of a reliable telephone. On the whole, the operations were surprisingly simple. The balloons were brought from their parent ship flying on a two-legged cable at about three hundred feet, and using one leg of this cable, simply strode across to the battleship, where they were hauled down on a bollard, and attached to their own special winch. Once in the air again they gave no trouble, following every movement of the ships without in any way affecting the navigation, and providing observation points that were almost ideal. Their effect on the shooting gave a definite proof of their utility, the efficiency in spotting being increased by 25 per cent when trained observers were used. The sailor will always accept facts, and whereas, when cables snapped and balloons vanished, many captains felt-and said-they did not want balloons, now, with results before them, they for the most part changed their minds. Such a question could not be settled in a single day, and each set-back as well as each success reacted on the demand, which for a time grew and shrank like an excited concertina, causing those at the Admiralty who were responsible for supply an anxious - time. Balloons do not grow on trees, nor are winches produced in a single day. On the one hand hung the probability of urgent demands from the Services-for both naval and army balloons were produced from a common source - and on the other loomed the Treasury, frowning darkly. Steel cables tugged against red tape, and though it was the latter that usually parted, there were some awkward moments. More than one head became permanently whitened that the Fleet might have balloons, notably that of an officer who had taken courageous, though unofficial, action to meet meet a specially urgent demand, and as a reminder not to throw spanners into the Government machine, plies that properly belonged to other people, and raising no protest when urged to furnish two more balloons for every one blown away. But when by degrees the true authorship of the messages dawned on them, they adopted a less conciliatory tone, and quite a promising combat might have developed had not an over-conscientious signalman one day delivered a telegram exactly as addressed, and astonished Admiral Beatty by presenting him with the following curt command: Vice-Admiral, Battle Cruiser Fleet. You are to render forthwith a return of all balloons on received a personal account for charge, stating their condition. no less a sum than £90,000, "for balloons ordered without Their Lordships' sanction." With all their technical troubles, the balloon officers with the Fleet were in a strong position in the matter of extracting supplies, having ViceAdmirals to back them. Being, for the most part, unscrupulous persons, they did not fail to make use of the fact in dealing with their colleagues at the Admiralty, and bombarded the latter with peremptory signals, purporting to come from high authority, but, in fact, emanating from a no more eminent pen than that of Flight Commander A- or Lieutenant B. For a time the harassed gentlemen at Whitehall replied meekly, forwarding sup Sub-Lieut. J—, Room 231, Admiralty. The Admiral's reply is lost in the mists of time, but it is known that he had the signal framed and hung in his cabin. Through the medium of the Admiralty, and later, the Air Ministry, the Royal Naval Air Service supplied not only the balloons, but also the personnel required to man them and to operate the balloon ships and depots on shore. It must have been a strange experience for a civilian, snatched from his private calling, to find himself, a few weeks later, being dragged through the sky above the North Sea. As the demand increased, the difficulty of finding the necessary complement |