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[Page 26]
position the battleships and cruisers always screened by the protecting destroyers which zig zagged up and down the line like so many terriers noxing for a rat closed in to Durazzo to within 11,000 yards steaming a northerly course almost parallel with the coast.
All ships then opened fire on the town and harbour, and kept it up for some twenty minutes when no response coming from the ports at Durazzo the line turned sixteen points and proceeded to give that unfortunate town a second dose at more or less the same range.
The line had not proceeded very far on this second offensive, when there was a loud explosion on the "Weymouth", and the best part of her stern disappeared. After all the enemy was not going to take our attention lying down and had dispatched their one ewe lamb - at that moment in the harbour - in the person of a submarine to see what she could do in the way of retaliation. It was a sporting chance, and had we seemed the second "mouldy" not missed as it did, the Austrians might have scored one good English cruiser to their account, but as it was, c'est une autre histoire and in this wise.
Strange to say although the "Weymouth" had lost about twenty feet of the stern, her propellers and rudder were untouched, and she was rendered neither unmanageable or unseaworthy. Dropping out of the line and escorted by T.B.D.'s she headed for Brindisi.
With the Ewe lamb of a submarine it went rather hard. She was literally bombed to pieces, that is with depth charges. Surrounded by a dozen destroyers she had no chance, and was promptly dissolved amid the blood and iron their guardian her quondam master was once so glib at talking of about, but to give him his due we all agreed that the captain of that particular submarine was a sportsman and a gallant man. The "Weymouth" escorted by innumerable small craft, M.L's American chasers and Italian, T.B.'s of most of them which had come up from their patrol grounds some miles to the southward and who darted around her like so many swarming bees round a hive reached Brindisi safely under her own steam.
The bombardment of Durazzo now ceased while Italian M.L's and American chasers entered the harbour. This they found entirely deserted, the Austrians having evacuated the place the previous day rendering innocuous any articllery they were unable to remove and burning what stores they were compelled to leave behind. In thinking of this afterwards the laugh was rather on us.