The Gift of Life
When columnist ‘Alpha of the Plough’ was asked to select his most memorable moment of the Great War, he told the story of HMS Formidable.
1915
King George V 1910-1936
From the National Museum of the US Navy, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
HMS Formidable, sometime before her unhappy end in the small hours of New Year’s Day, 1915. The photo was used by the German Empire as propaganda celebrating their victories of 1915; but as Gardiner’s reflection shows, the ship will not be remembered for those who torpedoed her, nor for any act of war.
Introduction
Asked which event of the Great War had made the deepest impression on him, columnist ‘Alpha of the Plough’ recalled the fate of HMS Formidable, twice torpedoed by a German U-Boat during night-time exercises off the Devon coast on January 1st, 1915. The Captain, 34 officers and 512 crew died; 157 men were picked up from the water or made it ashore in two boats.
HE had won by ballot a place in one of the boats. The ship was going down, but he was to be saved. One pictures the scene. The boat is waiting to take him to the shore and safety. He looks at the old comrades who have lost in the ballot and who stand there doomed to death. He feels the passion for life surging within him. He sees the cold, dark sea waiting to engulf its victims. And in that great moment — the greatest moment that can come to any man — he makes the triumphant choice. He turns to one of his comrades. “You’ve got parents,” he says. “I haven’t.” And with that word — so heroic in its simplicity — he makes the other take his place in the boat and signs his own death warrant. I see him on the deck among his doomed fellows, watching the disappearing boat until the final plunge comes and all is over. The sea never took a braver man to its bosom. “Greater love hath no man than this.”
From ‘Pebbles on the Shore’, a selection of essays by Alfred George Gardiner (1865-1946), who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Alpha of the Plough.’
