Page:The Invasion of 1910.djvu/92

 heaving heavy weights overboard; others were busy at the torpedo tubes; but in the blaze of light the pom-poms mowed them down, and tore the upper works of the destroyers to flinders. Funnels were cut off and vanished into space; a conning-tower was blown visibly away by a 12-in. shell which caught it fairly, and as the smitten boat sank there was a series of terrific explosions.

Fifth ship in the starboard British line from the Vanguard lay the great battleship Indefatigable, after the four "Dreadnoughts" one of the four powerful units in the fleet. Four torpedoes were fired at her by the German destroyers; three of the four missed her, two of them only by a hair's breadth, but the fourth cut through the steel net and caught her fairly abreast of the port engine-room, about the level of the platform deck. The Germans were using their very powerful 17.7-in. Schwartzkopf torpedo, fitted with net-cutters, and carrying a charge of 265 lb. of gun-cotton, the heaviest employed in any navy, and nearly a hundred pounds heavier than that of the largest British torpedo.

The effect of the explosion was terrific. Though the Indefatigable had been specially constructed to resist torpedo attack, her bulkheads were not designed to withstand so great a mass of explosive, and the torpedo breached the plating of the wing compartments, the wing passage, and the coal-bunker, which lay immediately behind it. The whole structure of the ship was shaken and much injured in the neighbourhood of the explosion, and water began to pour through the shattered bulkheads into the port engine-room.

The pumps got to work, but could not keep the inrush down; the ship rapidly listed to the port side, and though "out collision mat" was ordered at once, and a mat got over the huge, gaping hole in the battleship's side, the water continued to gain. Slipping her anchors, at the order of the Admiral, the Indefatigable proceeded a few hundred yards with her starboard screw to the shelving, sandy beach of Society Bank, where she dropped aground. Had the harbour works at Rosyth