It was decreed otherwise for the Corsair and she was to remain six months longer in foreign waters, thereby rounding out a service of almost two years as a naval vessel. Captain John Halligan, chief of staff to Admiral Wilson, was kind enough to end the suspense and vouchsafe the information that the Corsair would go to England and hoist the flag of Rear Admiral S. S. Robison who was about to sail for Kiel to inspect what was left of the German Navy. This was a highly interesting assignment and the Corsair was envied by the other ships. In order to make her fit to serve as a flagship the depleted stock of china, linen, and silver was replaced, after persuasive arguments with the naval storekeeper at Brest. Several officers were detached at this time, which made room on board for an admiral’s staff. These were Ensign J. W. McCoy, Lieutenant S. K. Hall (J.G.), Lieutenant C. R. Smith (J.G.), Lieutenant R. V. Dolan (J.G.), and Ensign A. V. Mason, Assistant Engineer. The new arrivals in the war-room were Ensign E. F. O’Shea and Lieutenant E. B. Erickson, Assistant Paymaster.

On November 18th the Corsair sailed from Brest with the expectation of acting as the flagship representing the United States in the surrender and internment of the naval forces of Imperial Germany. As passengers she carried to England Captain E. P. Jessop, U.S.N., and Commander C. T. Hutchins, Jr., who had been commissioned to examine the German submarines. The orders included a stop at Saint Helens, Isle of Wight, for routing instructions. There the Corsair was told to seek further information from the patrol off Folkstone. War restrictions concerning war channels, mine-fields, pilotage, and closed ports were still in force.

Commander Porter jogged along until Folkstone was reached in the evening, and was there informed that there was no patrol, but that the channel was clear to Dover. A fog came down thick while the Corsair waited off Dover Breakwater for a pilot, but none appeared, so she went on her way through the Strait and past the Goodwin Sands, pausing to inquire at the North Gull light-ship if anybody had seen a Thames pilot thereabouts. Deal was suggested as a good place to look, so the Corsair returned and anchored there at midnight. No pilot could be found, however, so at five o’clock in the morning the skipper hove up his mud-hook and “trailed along” as he said, with some ships that were bound to the northward.

The pace was too slow to suit him, so he joined company with another group of vessels ahead and discovered, a little later, that they were mine-sweepers engaged in clearing the channel. This was considered a fairly good joke on the skipper. He said good-bye to this dangerous flotilla and steamed along alone, anchoring twice in a fog that was like a wool blanket, and fetched up for the night eight miles below Sheerness.

Asking permission of the patrol next morning to proceed up the Thames to Gravesend, the Corsair learned that her destination had been changed to Sheerness. Here she met with a disappointment. The cruiser Chester arrived unexpectedly and was selected as the flagship of Rear Admiral Robison, as was quite proper. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, however, and just after starting north for Rosyth and the Grand Fleet, the Chester was compelled to return with machinery disabled. The Corsair was ordered to proceed to Scotland in place of the cruiser and she left the Thames on November 30th to steam up into the gray North Sea, and the great war base near Edinburgh.

It was fondly believed on board that the yacht would be employed to take the American admiral across to visit the German naval ports, but they found him in the British battleship Hercules with the other admirals of the Allied naval commission, and they all sailed next day in this big ship for Kiel. This was rather hard medicine for the Corsair, to be disappointed again after singing for so long in hearty chorus that on the Kiel Canal they’d float and likewise knock the hell out of Heligoland, and now they were deprived of a sight of these notorious nests of the enemy’s warships.

It was something to remember, however, this visit to the North Sea and a sojourn with the grim squadrons of Admiral Sir David Beatty which had, through four weary, vigilant years held the German High Sea Fleet in check and made safe the surface of the seas for the shipping of the world.

The Corsair dropped anchor at Rosyth on the day that the American battleship division sailed for home, the first-class fighting ships of Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman which had shared the vigil at Scapa Flow in the gloomy Orkneys and had earned that farewell tribute which Admiral Beatty paid the American officers and men when he called them his “comrades of the mist.” A storm of British cheers bade a fare-you-well to the New York and her sister ships as their flag hoists and semaphores and blinkers talked for the last time in the British signal code, which they had used because they were, not an independent American squadron, but the Sixth Battle Division of the Grand Fleet and gladly operating as such.

The Corsair’s crew had seen much of the French Navy on active service, but this was the first opportunity for intimate contact with British ships and sailors. They found a spirit of cordial welcome and there was a pleasant interchange of calls, of entertainment on shipboard, motion-picture shows, and inspection of the mighty fighting craft which bore the scars of Jutland. Shore liberty at Edinburgh was a most interesting diversion, and the American sailors found that the Scotch people were fond of them and proud of the record for behavior left by the thousands of their comrades who had landed from Admiral Rodman’s battleships.

After twelve days in the Firth of Forth, the Corsair was relieved by the Chester and received orders to report at Portland, England. During the voyage north, Commander Porter had navigated through four hundred miles of swept war channels where the abundance of German mines was presumed to require the most ticklish care. The cleared passages were strewn with wrecks and most British merchantmen were anchoring at night. The Corsair had picked her way, not in a reckless spirit, but because she was due to reach her destination at a specified time and it was the habit of the ship to arrive when she was expected. While returning south to Portland, a pilot was taken on at Yarmouth and casual reference was made to the fact that the yacht had chosen the north channel into the mouth of the Thames while coming over from France.

“My word, but you are lucky beggars!” exclaimed the ruddy pilot. “You should have gone in by the south channel, you know. The other one is a bloomin’ muck o’ mines that ain’t been swept. You couldn’t wait a week for a bally pilot, eh? The sportin’ chance! I fancy it’s the proper spirit in a navy, what?”

At Portland the Corsair found the U.S.S. Bushnell which had served as the mother ship of the American submarine flotilla in Bantry Bay. With her waited five mine-sweepers and five submarine chasers all ready and anxious to sail for home. The yachts Harvard and Aphrodite had come over from Brest and were attached to the North Sea patrol. Later in the winter they were sent to Germany. The Aphrodite hit a mine en route, but luckily its action was delayed and, although damaged, she was able to make port. What aroused eager interest at Portland was a group of five German submarines, moored close to the Bushnell, which comprised an installment of the surrendered fleet of U-boats. Their frightfulness was done. Meekly they had crossed the North Sea, at the bidding of the victors, to be tied up all in a row as a rare show for the jeering comment of British and American bluejackets.

To the sailors of the Corsair it was fascinating to inspect and investigate these uncouth sea monsters which they had hunted and bombed with no more mercy than if they had been vermin. Instead of winning the war for Germany, they had turned the tide against her by arousing the United States to launch its armed forces in the cause of the Allies. And they had branded the German name with infamy and reddened German hands with the blood of thousands of slain seamen.

Christmas Day of 1918 was spent in this English harbor of Portland and the occasion was not as joyous as might have been, although the Corsair’s log of December 24th contained this entry:

The home-made poetry inspired by this Christmas in exile seemed to lack the punch of former ballads as sung by the bluejackets’ glee club. One of the productions went like this, with a perceptible tinge of pathos:

On the day after this rather subdued Christmas, the Corsair was informed of her destination, which was Queenstown, Ireland, and her mission was to relieve the U.S.S. Melville as the flagship of Admiral Sims, Commanding the U.S. Naval Forces in European Waters. The Melville, the last word in naval construction as a repair and supply ship, had been nominally the flagship during the service of the destroyer flotillas at Queenstown, although the official headquarters and residence of Admiral Sims were in London. During this time the Melville had quartered Captain J. R. P. Pringle, the American chief of staff and his organization which coöperated with the British Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly in maintaining and directing the destroyer force.

The elaborate and smoothly running machine of operation, supply, equipment, and personnel had come to a halt with the armistice. The destroyers had fled homeward. The barracks and dépôts for material at Passage, a little way up the river, had been almost emptied, and the great naval aviation base on the other side of Queenstown Harbor was like a deserted city. All that remained was what Admiral Bayly called the job of “cleaning up the mess.” For this the American chief of staff was required to linger on the scene, but it was decided to send the Melville home and the Corsair was elected to take the place, or, as her men said, “it was wished on her.”

On December 27th the yacht tied up alongside the Melville in Queenstown Harbor, and three days later Captain Pringle and his staff transferred their offices and living quarters. This group of officers comprised Commander A. P. Fairfield, Lieutenant Commander D. B. Wainwright (Pay Corps), Lieutenant A. C. Davis, Ensign W. B. Feagle. Soon the Corsair was alone as the only American naval vessel in this port which had swarmed with the keen activity of scores of destroyers and thousands of bluejackets. To build up this force and keep it going at top speed had been an enormous task, but it was no slight undertaking to pull it down again. Winter rains and sodden skies made Queenstown even drearier than when the liberty parties of destroyer men had piled ashore to fill the American Sailors’ Club, or surge madly around and around in the roller-skating rink, or live in hope of cracking the head of a Sinn Feiner as the most zestful pastime that could be offered.

Dashing young destroyer officers no longer lingered a little in the pub of the Queen’s Hotel for a smile from a rosy barmaid with the gift of the blarney, and a farewell toast before going to sea again, while the Royal Cork Yacht Club, down by the landing pier, seemed almost forlorn without the sociable evenings when American and British naval officers had swapped yarns of the day’s work and talked the “hush stuff” about mystery ships and U-boats that would never see their own ports again.

High up the steep hillside, the White Ensign flew from the mast in front of Admiral House, and Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly, austere, efficient, but very human, one of the ablest officers of the British Navy, still toiled at his desk or puttered among his flower gardens in the rare hours of leisure, but his occupation as Commander-in-Chief of the Coasts of Ireland was mostly in the past tense. Soon he was to retire, with the stripes of a full admiral on his sleeve and a long list of distinctions following his name, Knight Commander of the Bath, Companion of the Victorian Order, the Legion of Honor of France; but more than these he valued the friendship and high respect of the American naval force at Queenstown, memorable because it was here that, for the first time, the British and the American navies had worked and dared as one, salty brothers-in-arms, to conquer the sea and make it safe against a mutual foe.

All of this the Corsair perceived in retrospect while Captain Pringle finished his fine record of service by disposing of all the odds and ends of work demanded of him before the Stars and Stripes could be hauled down and Queenstown finally abandoned as a base. As soon as the Corsair arrived in port, opportunity was offered the Reserve officers and men to quit the ship and go home, instead of detaining them longer on foreign service. Three officers and thirty men took advantage of the chance and felt, fairly enough, that the war was over and the call of duty no longer imperative. Other officers came to the ship in their places—A. T. Agnew, Assistant Surgeon, who had joined at Rosyth, Ensign C. R. Bloomer, Boatswain A. R. Beach, and Boatswain H. W. Honeck.

It was a long and tedious duty, lasting almost three months, this serving as the flagship at Queenstown, but he also serves who only stands and waits, and this was true of the Corsair. The aftermath of the war was mostly drudgery, with all the fiery incentive and thrilling stimulus removed, but the need was just as urgent and the Navy responded, displaying the spirit which was best exemplified by Rear Admiral Strauss and his mine-laying fleet which placed a barrier of forty thousand mines across the upper end of the North Sea and then manfully, uncomplainingly, spent a whole year in sweeping them up again.

One pleasant souvenir of the stay at Queenstown was a copy of the following letter from Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly:

On March 20th the Corsair left Queenstown for Spithead and Cowes to meet a number of large German merchant ships and, as the flagship of Admiral Sims, represent the United States in the business of transfer to the American flag, as provided in the terms of the armistice. The departure from Ireland caused no heart-breaking regrets, although many congenial friendships had been formed ashore. For weeks the crew had been more interested in sewing stitches in the homeward-bound pennant than in any attractions that foreign ports could afford. Rumor had been misleading as usual, and hopes often deferred.

At Cowes the Corsair found four American destroyers, the Woolsey, Lea, Yarnell, and Tarbell, and the naval tug Gypsum Queen which had been sent to do the work in hand. Drafts of American sailors had been brought from Brest, La Pallice, Queenstown, and English ports to man the German liners after their own crews had been taken out of them. Commander T. G. Ellyson, U.S.N., acted as the representative of Admiral Sims and was in charge of the transfer. While at Cowes he lived on board the Corsair, with his staff. The London Times described the episode as follows:

The duty of taking part in the distribution of German shipping, in which the naval representatives of the United States were concerned, took the Corsair next to Harwich, the important East Coast base of England, at which the main fleet of German submarines was surrendered to Rear Admiral Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt, R.N. It was at Harwich that the British submarines had rested and refitted between their perilous patrol tours across the North Sea when they stalked the U-boat in a deadly game of hide-and-seek which Fritz lacked the courage to play. The British losses had been heavy, many a gallant submarine erased from the list as missing with all hands, but the toll of U-boats had been much greater and the results were worth the price they cost.