- Author
- Bingham, Barry, The Hon. VC, Commander, RN
- Subjects
- Ship histories and stories, History - WW1
- Tags
- None noted.
- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- September 1979 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
Curiously enough, when our speed gave out, we found ourselves brought to a standstill at a spot only two miles west of the Nomad, our only comrade in misfortune.
But though crippled, we had guns that were still intact, and a hostile destroyer, swooping down on what she thought an easy prey, was greeted with volleys of salvoes from our invaluable semi-automatic guns. After such a warm reception, the German destroyer sheered off post-haste.
While lying helpless and broken down, we saw the opposing forces of battle-cruisers retracing their tracks to the NW, fighting on parallel courses. The rival squadrons quickly disappeared behind the horizon, engaged furiously, and we were now left with the ocean to ourselves. But it was not to be for long. Fifteen minutes later my yeoman-ofsignals reported: ‘German battleship on the horizon, shaping course in our direction’. This was more than I had ever bargained for, and using my own glasses, I was dumbfounded to see that it was in truth the main body of the German High Sea Fleet, steaming at top speed in a NW direction and following the wake of their own battlecruisers.
Their course necessarily led them first past the Nomad, and in another ten minutes the slaughter began. They literally smothered the destroyer with salvoes. Of my divisional mate nothing could be seen: great columns of spray and smoke alone gave an indication of her whereabouts. I shall never forget the sight, and mercifully it was a matter of a few minutes before the ship sank; at the time it seemed impossible that any one on board could have survived.
Of what was in store for us there was now not the vestige of a doubt, and the problem was, how to keep all hands occupied for the few minutes that remained before the crash must come.
While the sub-lieutenant and myself were ‘ditching’ all charts, confidential books, and documents the first lieutenant and the men were executing my orders in providing biscuit and water for the boats; lowering these to the water’s edge; hoisting out Carley floats; and generally preparing for the moment when we should be obliged to leave the ship.
These orders were rapidly executed, and there was still time on our hands; for nothing had as yet happened. By a brilliant inspiration, Bethell then suggested to me that the cables might be ranged on deck – ostensibly for use in case of a friendly tow, but in reality to keep the men busy to the last. This suggestion I readily accepted, and the hands were still thus employed when the end came.
From a distance of about five miles, the Germans commenced with their secondary armament, and very soon we were enveloped in a deluge of shellfire. Any reply from our own guns was absolutely out of the question at a range beyond the possibilities of our light shells; to have answered any one of our numerous assailants would have been as effective as the use of a peashooter against a wall of steel.
Just about this time we fired our last torpedo at the High Sea Fleet and it was seen to run well.
It was a matter of two or three minutes only before the Nestor, enwrapped in a cloud of smoke and spray, the centre of a whirlwind of shrieking shells, received not a few heavy and vital hits, and the ship began slowly to settle by the stern and then to take up a heavy list to starboard.
Her decks now showed the first signs of havoc amongst life and limb.
It was clear that the doomed Nestor was sinking rapidly, and at that moment I gave my last order as her commander, ‘Abandon ship’.
The motor boat and Carley floats were quickly filled, and as the dinghy was badly broken up by shellfire, there seemed to remain for me only the possibility of a place in the whaler.
Bethell was standing beside me, and I turned to him with the question, ‘Now where shall we go?’ His answer was only characteristic of that gallant spirit, ‘To Heaven, I trust, sir!’
At that moment he turned aside to attend to a mortally wounded signalman and was seen no more amidst a cloud of fumes from a bursting shell.
I clambered into the whaler, where I found about eight others waiting, and we remained alongside until the last possible moment, hailing the partially submerged ship vigorously in the unlikely event of any survivors being still on board. Finally we pushed off clear.
The whaler, however had also been hit, probably at the same time as the dinghy, and before we had gone half a dozen strokes she filled and sank. We then struck out, I luckily having my ‘Miranda’ lifesaving waistcoat on, for the well-loaded motor boat, lying some fifty yards ahead of the Nestor, where some of us were pulled in, the rest supporting themselves by holding on to the gunwale.
Looking now towards the Nestor, we saw the water lapping over the decks, and the forecastle high in the air, still the target of the German gun-layers, some of whose projectiles fell uncomfortably near to us in the motor boat and rafts.
In about three minutes, the destroyer suddenly raised herself into an absolutely perpendicular position, and thus slid down, stern first, to the bottom of the North Sea, leaving a quantity of oil and wreckage to mark the spot where she had last rested.
As she sank, her sharp stem and stockless anchors alone visible, we gave our gallant but cruelly short-lived Nestor three rousing cheers and ‘God Save the King’. A reverential pause followed, broken almost immediately by the voice of a typical AB, ‘Are we downhearted? No!’ Then ‘Wot abart ‘Tipperary’?’
His words and spirit were infectious and all joined lustily in the chorus of that hackneyed but inspiring modern war song.
The song was thus in no small degree responsible for a frame of mind in which it was possible calmly to face the situation of finding oneself afloat, sixty odd miles from the nearest shore, in an overladen, leaking broken-down motor boat, with nothing in sight except the enemy’s High Sea Fleet vanishing in the distance.