Читать книгу Our Navy at war онлайн

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"What are you talking about?" asked the voyager. "How do you know?"

"Well," was the confident answer, "it is now 4:05 o'clock. The destroyers are ordered to meet this convoy at 4:15, and they will be on time."

The party went out on deck to watch, and on the minute, at 4:15, destroyers hove in sight. Swinging into line, on each side of the convoy, the saucy little vessels, heaving foam and spray from bow to stern, spanked along through the heavy seas.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed the doubting Thomas, "if these little destroyers can come three hundred miles to sea in any kind of weather, keep their schedule, and locate a convoy on the dot, I will believe anything I hear regarding the Navy." That's just an example of the way our destroyer boys went at the job, and they kept it up until the last horn blew.

Their skill in navigation, in locating convoys or vessels in distress or boats containing survivors was positively uncanny. When the President Lincoln was sunk five hundred miles at sea, the Smith and the Warrington, two hundred and fifty miles away, hurried to the rescue. A wireless message stating the locality was all they had to steer by. It was 11 p. m. when they arrived. Boats and rafts had drifted fifteen miles. But so accurately had the destroyer officers estimated the drift that in the darkness they almost ran into the rafts!