The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-09-07
Officers on the Lion Tell Exciting Story of Foil
 ing Submarines
QUEEN ELIZABETH
 SHOWS FEW MARKS
Inflexible Received Rougher Handling in Battle in DardanelIes Than Off Falkland-Destroyers Know How
 to Deal With .Submersibles

London, September 5.-(Sunday, 7:3C his visit to the fleet in the last week the war correspondent after boarding all i the more important ships witnessed a
 magnificent spectacle-that of a whole
 force putting to sea.
 Officers on Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty's flagship. the Lion, which has received the toughest handling in battle of any make of British warship now afloat. gave an exciting account of the
 success of destroyers in foiling all ef-
 forts of submarines to reach the crippled
 Lion as she was being lowed home at
 man cruiser Bluecher.
 All the places in which the Lion was
 hit were not discernable owing to re- construction of the section where the
 shells burst through. In other cases the
 makeshift patches were still visible to the observers.
 Tiger Almost Unmarked The Tiger. sister battle cruiser of
 the IAon type, had little to show in the
 way of marks. On the Queen Eliza
 beth the only signs of her experiences
 at the Dardanelles visible were a sec tion of new blanks on deck where a shell penetrated and dent from a glancing shot on one of her 15-inch guns. The Inflexible, the flagship in the Falkland Islands battle, suffered less in jury there than at the Dardanelles, where she was struck by mine and was under heavy fire from shore. A | piece of the mine is kept in the ward-
 room as a souvenir.
 The correspondent heard repeated and
 sympathetic references to the sacrifices and hardships of the army during the |grilling year of war while the battle |ships marked time in their long wait. "But if battle comes for us, it will mot last long, an officer said. Every
 days waiting only sharpens our eager |ness.'' The only color visible in that vast as- sembly of fighting ships was the blue uniforms of the crews and an occasional |Uignal flag fiuttering from the halyard While on board the flagship of Admiral |6fr John Jellico, a message was brought Ito the commander-in-c chief who called |Secretary and spoke briefly to him. Word Twas passed around that the whole fleet |had been ordered to proceed to sea |Guests on board destroyer at the mouth | |of the harbor watched that unprecedented of naval power make its exit, lied by graceful light cruisers and f1otillas |of destroyers.
 Can Deal With Submarines But are not German submarines wait ling outsider" was asked.
 "No doubt one or two are always there," Ian officer replied, but the destroyers know how to keep them off," he de- Eclared
 The destroyers ran in and out at thei. superior speed as busy as busy bees. They were always on the move, fotilla flights blinking signals to other fiotillas. Eight, sixteen, twenty dreadnaughts |were counted as they went past with clock like regularity and out of smoke jciouds in the harbor more dreadnaughts ,were coming before the King Edward VII land other pre-superdreadnaught class ships had their turn.
 The commander of the destroyer which the correspondent was aboard looked at his watch and said it was time to go, las he must take his appointed place in the fleet. At 30 knots an hour he cut . cross the bow of a battleship, taking his guests to the landing place. As the destroyer rounded the headland the cor had a last glimpse of that seemingly endless column of ships still mot free from the harbor, on it's way on m unknown errand in the North sea. I 1ts numbers and gun power were declara- tive of an Armageddon which over whelmed the imagination should it ever engage the German antagonistic fleet.