FIG. 4.—DIAGRAM TO ILLUSTRATE APPROXIMATE MOVEMENTS OF ‘WERRIBEE’ IN ACTION WITH SUBMARINE ON FEBRUARY 9, 1916.]
With the experience which had been gained from all these engagements in various areas it was possible to form some idea of the requisite standardized equipment with which Q-ships should be supplied. First of all, inasmuch as the enemy was being better armed, at least one modern 4-inch gun was necessary, in addition to any 12-pounder. Long-range action, especially in the Mediterranean, was probable at times, for the enemy would not always consent to engage close to. Secondly, it was highly important that the ship should remain afloat, even though seriously holed. It might happen—and later on it actually did occur—that the enemy might suppose the ship was just about to founder, thus making it quite safe to close her in order to read her name. Then would come the one great chance for the Q-ship to destroy the enemy. Therefore, to this end, it became certain that these ships should be given cargoes of barrels, or timber, carefully stowed, so that it would be no easy task to sink her, and she might perhaps even be salved.
Two days before the end of February, 1916, I happened to be returning from leave in England to my ship, which was in Queenstown for boiler-cleaning. In the Holyhead-Kingstown steamer I found myself in conversation with a junior lieutenant-commander, R.N., who also was returning to his ship at Queenstown. We talked of many things all the way down across Ireland, but this quiet, taciturn officer impressed me less by what he said than by what he left unsaid, and it took me a long time to guess the name of his ship. I thought I knew most of the commanding officers of sloops and trawlers and drifters, and so on, at work off the south and south-west coasts of Ireland, but I had neither seen this officer nor heard his name before. At the beginning of the war he was unknown to the public; in fact, not until three weeks after the end of this February did he win distinction, but to-day his name is known and respected in every navy of the world, and his career as a naval officer is different from anything ever recorded in the pages of history.
This was Lieut.-Commander Gordon Campbell, who just before the war was a lieutenant in command of an old-fashioned destroyer based on Devonport. On October 21, 1915—the date is particularly fortunate as having been the 110th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar—Lieutenant Campbell commissioned the tramp steamer _Lodorer_ at Devonport as a Q-ship, but on passage thence to Queenstown changed her name to _Farnborough_, as it had become gossip that she had been armed for special service. Through that trying winter the little _Farnborough_ endured gale after gale, and her young captain, attired in the rig of a typical tramp skipper, with his smart crew trained now to look slovenly yet be mentally alert all the time, never for a moment wavered in the belief that one day would come his opportunity. He had organized his ship to a pitch of perfection, and nothing was lacking except the appearance of a U-boat.