"NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS"
by Walter Wood
CHAPTER XXII
THE RUSSIAN OUTRAGE


MIDNIGHT on the Dogger, three days before full moon, late in October: the weather hazy, with Scotch mist at times, but nothing to prevent ships' lights being seen at a considerable distance. On the ground 200 miles east-by-north of Spurn, in 23 fathoms of water, thirty steam-trawlers of the Gamecock Fleet, with about a dozen steamboats belonging to Messrs. Leyman & Company, were fishing peacefully. For ten years the Gamecock vessels had trawled on the same ground, which for a quarter of a century had been a rendezvous for fishing craft. With or near the fleet were two of the hospital steamers of the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen and three carriers, all engaged in trawling, with their gear down and steaming at about two and a half knots an hour. Without exception the mizzen was set, and in some cases the mainsail also. The regulation lights were burning and other lights were showing, for many of the crews were gutting and boxing the fish in readiness to ferry to the homeward-bound carrier in the morning. The fishing numbers and the letters indicating the ports of registry were visible, and there was no mistaking the nature of the busy little fleet of steam-trawlers, industriously employed. They were working in the neighbourhood of an old smack which, anchored, served as a mark-boat. Ordinarily the admiral would have been in command, but he was ashore for a brief spell, and in his absence the vice-admiral controlled the fleet, flying his flag in the RUFF. From the little un-romantic flagship and the mark-boat rockets had been fired, to direct the fishing.

There was nothing whatever in that region of water in the form of a ship of war until the Russian Baltic Fleet appeared on the horizon, commanded by Admiral Rozhdestvensky. The fleet, which had been solemnly blessed by the Czar, had sailed from Libau on 15th October 1904; shortly before midnight on Friday, the 22nd, it bore down, in two sections, on the Gamecock Fleet. One section passed without doing more than direct searchlights on the trawlers and show coloured lights.

The fishermen looked with interest at the warships, some of them pausing in their work. Toil on the Dogger is monotonous, and it is not every day or night that battle squadrons pass. Some of the men laughed and joked and enjoyed the spectacle of the searchlights and coloured lights as they might have relished an entertainment ashore.

The first squadron of the Baltic Fleet steamed in-offensively through and beyond the fishing-vessels. The second squadron, consisting of four battleships, steamed just across the head of the trawlers, plying their searchlights. Then a bugle rang out in the night, and instantly guns and machine-guns rapped and rattled, and upon the helpless fishing-craft a hail of missiles fell.Some accounts put the duration of the cannonade at twenty minutes; certainly for ten the broadside blazed frantically. If the gunners had been cool and taken aim there could not have been a steamboat left upon the ground; but they were frenzied with fright, paralysed with terror of the unseenbut suspected, for reports had been current that the Baltic Fleet was to waylaid and destroyed in the North Sea by Japanese torpedo-craft.


For a few startled seconds the fishermen believed that the ships of war had suddenly opened a sham fight; then cries of terror and amzement mingled with the din of the discharges, and hoarse voices gave the order to get the gear up or let it go, while engine-room telegraphs rang wildly for "Full speed ahead." Anything and anyhow to get away from a neighbourhood which had swiftly become an area of destruction and death. As well might harnessed hares have tried to run from greyhounds. The trawlers were held in place by their heavy unwieldy gear, which cannot be easily hauled or cut away. In the old days a few blows with a hatchet or jack-knife would have cut the trawl-warp and set the smack free; but steel ropes are far different and tougher matters, and the steamboats of the Gamecock Fleet were literally held prisoners while the blundering battleships steamed past them and kept up a monstrous bombardment.

Some fifty peaceful little trawling vessels, an industrious fleet spread over an area of seven or eight miles, utterly defenceless, unable even to run away - and at the mercy of giant warships that brstled with guns, great and small. How much ammunition was expended is not known, but for fully ten minutes the sea was pitted with the hail of missiles and the neighbouring steamboats were riddled. From the bridges and decksof the warships, only two or three hundred yards away from their defenceless targets, officers, petty officers, and men must have seen the nature of the craft that formed the fleet. There were the regulation lights burning, and the decks were illuminated with powerful lamps which gave light enough for the men to see their work of gutting and packing their latest catches. The human figures were clearly visible, even the heaps of fish in the pounds could have been seen, yet so blindly panic-stricken were the men-of-war's men that they did not for a moment stop their murderous cannonading.

Not a shot was fired in answer; the Russians heard the startled cries of inoffensive men; they must have heard the screams of some of the wounded; they could not fail to see the discharge of green rockets from the vice-admiral's vessel and other trawlers; still they held to their mad business and blazed away until they had steamed through the fishing-area and saw nothing around them but the open waters, and no ship of any kind except the creations of their own imaginations.

The Czar-blessed Baltic battleships lumbered on their way towards the Straits of Dover, never stopping to inquire into the havoc they had wrought. There is no reason why, in their senseless fright, the responsible officers should not have wiped out the fishing-fleet completely and left one or two survivors to make their way to land or be picked up, to tell the amazing story. They had done enormous mischief; yet little compared with what might have been caused under proper fire discipline.

Shot and shell and rifle calibre bullets had put the entire Gamecock Fleet out of action in a few minutes. The great and complicated work of trawling had been paralysed and one of the nation'simportant food sources had been stopped.
Two men were lying dead, others were seriously injured; many were suffering from shock; yet on board the attacking warships not an individual had been so much as scratched by hostile fire. No one can tell, however, what were the feelings of the admiral who was responsible for the outrage, and who must have known before he left the fishing-area how terribly he had blundered.


One trawler, the CRANE, was sunk; her skipper, Henry Smith, and her boatswain, William Arthur Leggett, were slain; six men, William Smith, John Nixon, Harry Hoggart, Arthur Rea, Albert A. Almond and John Ryder, were wounded, Hoggart being permanently incapacitated.Skipper Whelpton, of the trawler MINO, was so severely shaken that he died six months later. Five trawlers, the MINO, the MOULMEIN, the GULL, the SNIPE, and the MAJESTIC, were damaged by shot, while other vessels were damaged by the explosion of shells close to them. In several cases trawling-gear was lost or damaged.

These were the bare and startling facts that were made known at Hull on the Sunday afternoon following the outrage. The shot-riddled MINO reached the port, bearing the bodies of the two men who had been killed in the CRANE before she foundered. Other crippled trawlers came in from the Dogger, bringing the wounded with them; but the uninjured craft remained at sea and. as soon as they could do so, resuned their ceaseless work.

The cannonading, amazing and incredible, gave an opportunity for the display of that unostentatious heroism which is inseparable from North Sea fishing. Many acts of bravery were put on the record, and none were more valiant than those which were chronicled in connection with the CRANE. Hers was a pitiful tragedy, yet the gloom was relieved by the courage and resource of her own survivors and the fishermen who boarded her when she was foundering. Amongst those who escaped injury was the sipper's son, Joseph Alfred Smith, whose arm was grazed by one of the Russian shots. The boy had gone to sea for the first time. Few North Sea men have had a sterner baptism than his.

One of the very first stories of the outrage was told by the mate of the CRANE, when he was still on the Dogger, and speaking to Skipper J.W.White, of the Mission steamer JOSEPH AND SARAH MILES, to which the wounded were taken. " We had just hauled and shot away again," he said, "and were in the fish-pound cleaning the fish and passing jokes about the war vessels, which we could see quite plain, and heard their firing, when suddenly something hit us. The third hand said,'Skipper, our fish-boxes are on fire; I'm going below out of this,' and walked forward, the skipper, who was on the bridge, laughing at him for being frightened. We were hit again forward, and someone called out and said, 'The bosun is shot.' I went forward to look, and found the boatswain bleeding and a hole through our bulwarks, and the fore companionway knocked away. I went to tell the skipper. Before I got aft a shot went through the engine-casing, and I began to feel frightened. I could see that the skipper was not on the bridge. I went aft, passed the chief, who was bleeding, gave him my neckcloth to stop the blood, went right aft and saw the skipper lying on the grating. I said, 'Oh, my God, he is shot!' I picked him up and saw that his head was battered to pieces. I dropped him, rushed down the forecastle, and saw the boatswain lying on the floor, with his head battered in.

"Another shot came and hit us, I didn't know where. All hands were shouting out they were shot. I jumped on the bridge to blow the whistle, but that abd the steampipe were knocked away. I tried to alter the wheel, but the wheel-gear was smashed. I then found we were sinking. I went to the boat, cut the grips,plugged her up, and put the painter on the winch to heave her aft, but found some of the winch smashed. The something hit me on the back. I saw the GULL launch her boat. I dragged the skipper forward and got the third hand up on the deck and went for the chief. He was unconscious. By this time the GULL's boat came alongside and we put in the skipper and bosun, and got in ourselves - how, I don't know.

"When the boy came to me and said, 'Where is my father?' that was a pill I could not swallow. For the life of me I could not tell the boy what had happened to his father.

"The searchlights made everything like day. The fireman, while he was in the engine-room, saw the warship that was firing on us - saw her through the hole they made in the ship's side. They made a target of us. They meant doing for us. They needed no lights to see what we were. The searchlights told them plain enough."

The Mission surgeon, Dr. Anklesaria, who was on board the JOSEPH AND SARAH MILES, said that the damaged trawlers were naturally on the look out for their own Mission ship, the ALPHA, but before they could find her they sighted the MILES, and steamed up and shouted for help, saying that some of the wounded were bleeding to death. "We hauled up our gear at once and launched our boat," he wrote, and soon, with two of the Mission crew, he was taken on board the GULL, to which the dead and wounded had been taken. "I have never witnessed such a gory sight. Two men lay on deck with their heads nearly blown to pieces. In the cabin the scene was more heartrending still, when I saw six men stretched about anyhow, bleeding and groaning with the agony of their wounds. Under the circumstances, I had them all removed on board our ship. With all these wounded men on board, our floating hospital looked like a veritable battlefield. Indeed, it presented a most pathetic sight. It kept me busy with knife and needle the whole of that day, and it was not until late in the night that I had the satisfaction of seeing them all safe and snug in their cots, as far as circumstances allowed."

When it was seen that the CRANE was sinking, Charles Beer, mate, Harry Smirk, chief engineer, and Edwin Costello, boatswain of the GULL, went off in a boat to rescue the survivors. When they got on board the CRANE they found the living members of the crew lying about injured. The vessel was in total darkness, and it was known that at any moment she might founder; yet Costello went into the horrible little forecastle to bring up Leggett's dead body. This he succeeded in doing, and was going below again to see how much damage had been done by shot and shell, when his comrades shouted to him to come back instantly, as the trawler was sinking. She went down almost immediately.Beer, Smirk, ArthurRea, engineer of the CRANE, Smith, the mate, and Costello received the Albert Medal for gallantry. With the exception of Costello, who was prevented by illness from visiting London, the men attended Buckingham Palace on the morning of Saturday, 13th May 1905, and the decoration was conferred upon them by Edward VII., who had been deeply interested in the outrage. Smith, who took charge of the CRANE when the skipper was killed, refused to leave her till every man had been taken off. Rea showed unyielding courage when, in spite of the fact that the little ship was actually foundering, he groped back to the engine room, which was in total darkness, and tried to put the engines on to full speed ahead. The stokehole was flooded with water, and Rea could do nothing. He went on deck, where the skipper was lying dead, and all the survivors were wounded except the boy.


Such, told briefly, is the story of the Dogger Bank outrage - an event which became officially known as the "North Sea Incident." It was alleged, on the part of the Russians, that there was reason to suppose that Japanes destroyers were lurking in the North Sea - Russia and Japan were then at war - but there was nothing whatever to justify the supposition, still less to mistake peaceful fishing-vessels for ships of war of any sort.

The news of the occurrence threw the whole country into a state of dangerous excitement. The King telegraphed to the Mayor of Hull, speaking of the "unwarrantable" action of the Russians; "urgent representations" were at once made by the Foreign Office to the Russian Government, and such was the general clamour that the Czar sent a message expressing regret and promising "complete satisfaction, as soon as the circumstances were cleared up."

Meanwhile the important question as to damage done by the outrage and the compensation to be paid by the Russian Government was considered by the Board of Trade Commissioners, Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, G.C.B., and Mr. Butler Aspinall, K.C. Many complicated questions arose. The claims were divided by the Commissioners into classes, with the assessment they made in each case. These were as follows:-


Nature of claim.	Amount claimed.	Amount assessed.
Loss by death of relative.	10,670 - 0 - 0	5,800 - 0 - 0
Wounds by gunfire.	17,472 - 0 - 0	6,700 - 0 - 0
Personal injuries indirectly due to gunfire	310 - 0 - 0	137 - 0 - 0
Loss of clothes and other effects (including incidental expenses in one instance)	177 - 9 - 6	177 - 9 - 6
Loss of earnings and wages due to detention,absence from fishing-ground for repair, etc.	362 - 0 - 0	172 - 0 - 0
Physical indisposition after exposure to unusual danger and loss of earning power due to shock.	1,110 - 0 - 0	1,110 - 0 - 0
Saving life and property.	2,500 - 0 - 0	650 - 0 - 0
Complete loss of vessel and consequent loss of her earnings.	8,342 -18 - 8	6,834 -18 - 8
Examination and repair of vessels damaged by reason of the firing.	10,351 -10 - 0	9,141 - 0 - 0
Loss of fishing-gear.	646 - 6 - 6	646 - 6 - 6
Demurrage whilst vessels were detained in harbour for examination, repairs, etc.	7,552 - 0 - 0	5,676 - 0 - 0
Loss of and disturbed fishing, 21st to 22nd October 1904, and following days,loss of rebate, etc.	2,458 - 9 - 8	2,202 - 9 - 8
Diminution in catch. Loss on sales. Loss on freight. Loss of services of skipper killed. Increased management expense due to unprecedented nature of the incident.	38,476 - 0 - 0	17,779 -10 - 0
Surveyors' fees and miscellaneous expenses due to the incident.	1,319 -16 - 4	915 - 6 - 4
Sub Total	101,748 -10 - 8	57,942 - 6 - 8
Costs of solicitors and accountants	2,081 -12 - 5	2,081 -12 - 5
Total	103,830 - 3 - 1	60,023 - 19 -1

The claims submitted included the following :-

Damage to the Gamecock Fleet £58,000
Repair of the Mission ship ALPHA £5,042
J. K. Green, skipper of the GULL, shock £150
J. K. Green, saving lives of the crew of the CRANE £2,000
John Nixon, chief engineer of the CRANE £1,500
A. Rea, second engineer, CRANE £1,000
A. E. Almond, trimmer, CRANE £1,000
W. Whelpton, skipper of the MINO, shock £150
W. Whelpton, salving the MINO £500
Seventeen other claims £485

These claims were not settled in full, however, the total sum paid by the Russian Government being £65,000, far below the original total. The lower sum,however, as will be seen from the Commissioners tables, was assessed by the Commissioners themselves. The mate of the CRANE received £2000 and £18 for clothing; John Ryde, deck hand was paid £1500 with £12 for clothing; John Nixon received £500, with clothing allowance; Arthur Rea, £400; and A. Almond, £300. The Mission to Depp Sea Fishermen suffered loss in consequence of the award. The amount given to them, £3906, was less by £79 than the actual expenditure on the ALPHA in consequence of the incident. The receipt of these considerable sums of money by men who had not been accustomed to the control of large amounts proved far from an unmixed blessing, and in one or two cases the compensation allowances were recklessly squandered.

An International Commission of Inquiry into the "North Sea Incident" was subsequently held in Paris, at the Foreign Office, under the presidency of Admiral Fournier of the French Navy. The report of the Commission established the British case, declaring that there was no complicity on the part of the British trawlers, fixing the responsibility of the cannonade on Admiral Rozhdestvensky, and describing his proceedings as unjustifiable. The report plainly stated that there were no torpedo-boats present on the Dogger Bank on the night of the incident, thus discrediting entirely the positive statements of Russian officers on this important point.

Nearly two years after the cannonade a statue was unveiled at Hull in memory of the lost. It represents a fisherman, and is about 18ft. high. The inscription is: "Erected by public subscription to the memory of George Henry Smith (skipper) and William Richard Legget (third hand), of the steam-tawler CRANE, who lost their lives through the action of the Russian Baltic Fleet in the North Sea, October 22, 1904, and Walter Whelpton, skipper of the trawler MINO, who died through shock, May 1905."