Some time later the Belgian ferryboat Oudenbourgh was sailing from Ostend to Ramsgate. Halfway across the Straits of Dover the duty officer noticed ‘something happening in the water’ half a mile south of her usual course. Because he was unable to make out if somebody was not perhaps drowning he gave orders for the ship to make for the spot where the water was so fiercely churned up. Nearly 200 passengers watched the strange spectacle from the windward side: in some places the water was splashing up in vertical columns, in others something like a black body was flung up with it; over an area about 300 metres across the sea’s surface was intensely agitated and seething, and a loud rumble and roar was heard to come from the depth. It was just as if a small volcano was erupting under water. As the Oudenbourgh slowly drew near the spot a gigantic precipitous wave suddenly rose up some ten metres from her bows and there was a frightful explosion. The whole ship rose sharply and a shower of near-boiling water descended on her deck; simultaneously a powerful black body smacked down on her foredeck, writhing and screaming in agony: it was a mutilated and scalded Newt. The captain ordered full steam astern to prevent the ship sailing straight into the middle of that exploding inferno but by now explosions were occurring all over the place and the surface was strewn with pieces of dismembered Newts. Eventually the ship was turned about, and the Oudenbourgh made off north at full steam. Just then there was a terrifying explosion and a huge column of water and steam, perhaps 100 metres high, shot up some 600 metres astern. The Oudenbourgh headed straight for Harwich, radioing warnings in all directions: ‘Warning, warning, warning! Great danger of submarine explosions on Ostend-Ramsgate route. Cause unknown. All craft advised to avoid the area!’ Meanwhile the rumble and roar continued, almost as if naval exercises were taking place; but because of the spouts of water and steam there was nothing to be seen. By then torpedo-boats and destroyers had set out from Dover and Calais at full steam and squadrons of military aircraft were making for the spot. However, all they found on arrival was the surface muddied with yellow slime and covered with dead fish and mangled Newts.
At first it was thought that some mines had blown up in the Channel. But when the coasts on both sides of the Straits were cordoned off by troops, and when the British Prime Minister (for only the fourth time in world history) cut short his weekend on Saturday evening to hurry back to London people began to suspect that this was an affair of extremely serious international import. The newspapers carried the most sensational stories, but strangely enough for once they fell far short of the facts: no one even suspected that for a few critical days Europe, and with her the whole world, was hovering on the brink of a warlike conflagration. It was only some years later, when Sir Thomas Mulberry, a member of the British Cabinet at the time, lost his parliamentary seat at the general election and thereupon published his political memoirs that the public was able to find out what had actually happened. Except that by then no one was interested any more.
In essence this was what happened. Both France and England had begun, each from her own side, to build submarine Newt fortifications in the English Channel; these would make it possible, in the event of war, to close the Channel altogether. Subsequently, of course, each power accused the other of having started the business; the truth, however, seems to be that both of them commenced work at the same time, for fear that their neighbour and ally across the water might get there first. In short, two colossal concrete fortresses grew up under the waters of the Straits of Dover, facing each other, equipped with heavy guns, torpedo launchers, extensive minefields and in general all the latest achievements of human progress in the martial arts. On the British side this terrible submarine fortress was manned by two divisions of heavy Newts and some 30,000 worker Newts; on the French side there were three divisions of first-rate combat Newts.
It appears that on that critical day a working party of British Newts encountered some French salamanders on the sea-bed and that some disagreement arose between them. The French version was that their peacefully working Newts had been attacked by the British Newts who had tried to drive them off; the armed British Newts (it was claimed) had tried to drag some French Newts away with them, and these of course offered resistance. Thereupon the British military salamanders opened up at the French worker Newts with hand-grenades and trench-mortars, forcing the French Newts to resort to the same weapons. The French government felt obliged to demand full satisfaction from His Britannic Majesty’s Government as well as the evacuation of the contentious sector of sea-bed; it also required assurances that similar incidents would not be repeated.
The British government, on the other hand, in a special Note to the government of the French Republic, stated that French militarised Newts had invaded the British half of the Channel and begun to lay mines there. The British Newts had drawn their attention to the fact that they were on British working territory; thereupon the French salamanders, armed as they were to the teeth, had responded by throwing hand-grenades, killing a number of British worker Newts. His Majesty’s Government much to its regret felt compelled to demand from the government of the French Republic full satisfaction and a guarantee that French military Newts would not in future encroach on the British half of the English Channel.
The French government thereupon declared that it could not tolerate a neighbouring country constructing submarine fortifications in the immediate vicinity of the French coasts. As far as the misunderstanding on the Channel floor was concerned, the government of the Republic proposed that the dispute be submitted, in the spirit of the London Convention, to the adjudication of the International Court at the Hague.
The British government replied that it could not and did not intend to subject the security of the British shores to any external adjudication. As the attacked country it once more emphatically demanded an apology, compensation for the damage caused, and guarantees for the future. Simultaneously the British Mediterranean Fleet, stationed at Malta, set sail at full steam for the west; the Atlantic Fleet received orders to concentrate at Portsmouth and Yarmouth.
The French government ordered the mobilisation of five age classes of its navy.
It seemed that neither country was any longer able to withdraw; after all, it was clear that what was at stake was no more and no less than control of the entire Channel. At that critical moment Sir Thomas Mulberry made a surprising discovery: no worker or combat Newts actually existed (at least de jure) on the British side, as a law passed (some time before) under Sir Samuel Mandeville, prohibiting the employment of even a single salamander on the coasts or in the territorial waters of the British Isles, was still in force. Consequently the British government could not officially maintain that French Newts had attacked British Newts; the whole affair therefore shrank to the issue of whether French salamanders, either deliberately or unwittingly, had encroached on the seabed of British territorial waters. The authorities of the French Republic promised to Investigate the matter; the British government did not even suggest submission of the dispute to the International Court at the Hague. The British and French Admiralties subsequently agreed that the submarine fortifications of the two sides should be separated by a neutral strip five kilometres wide - an arrangement which quite extraordinarily strengthened the friendship between the two states.