Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

WAR IN THE UNDERSEAS

The Last of a Pirate
G. H. Davis

WAR IN THE UNDERSEAS

BY

HAROLD F. B. WHEELER

F.R.Hist.S.

AUTHOR OF

‘DARING DEEDS OF MERCHANT SEAMEN’

‘STIRRING DEEDS OF BRITAIN’S SEA-DOGS’ ETC.

FOUNDER OF ‘HISTORY’

NEW YORK

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Printed in Great Britain

by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh

DEDICATED

TO

GEOFFREY CHARLES TASKAR KEYES

IN THE SINCERE HOPE THAT IF OPPORTUNITY BE HIS HE MAY EMULATE THE DARING OF HIS FATHER, WHOSE ACHIEVEMENT AT ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND WILL BE RELATED BY OLD BOYS TO THEIR JUNIORS UNTIL THE OCEAN HIGHWAY IS AS DRY AS A DUSTY ROAD

Foreword

Sea-power strangled Germany and saved the world. Even when the Kaiser’s legions were riding roughshod over the greater part of Europe its grip was slowly throttling them. Despite the murderous mission of mine and U-boat, it kept the armies of the Allies supplied with men and munitions, and scoured the world for both. When the British Fleet took up its war stations in the summer of 1914 it became the Heart of Things for civilization. It continued to be so when the major portion of the swaggering High Sea Fleet came out to meet Beatty under the white flag in the chilly days of November 1918. It remains so to-day.

The officers and men of the Royal Navy whose march is the Underseas played a perilous and noble part in the Great Conflict. British submarines poked their inquisitive noses into the wet triangle of Heligoland Bight three hours after hostilities were declared; they watched while the Men of Mons crossed the Channel to stay the hand of the invader; they pierced the Dardanelles when mightier units remained impotent; they threaded their way through the icy waters of the Baltic despite the vigilance of a tireless enemy; they fought U-boats, a feat deemed to be impossible; they dodged mines, land batteries, and surface craft, and depleted the High Sea Fleet of many valuable fighting forces. In addition, they had to contend with their own peculiar troubles—shoals, collisions, breakdowns, and a hundred and one ills which a landsman never suspects. Some set out on their duties and failed to come back. They lie many fathoms deep. Their commanders have made their last report. Sea-power has its price.

I am under special obligation to several officers of British submarines for assistance willingly rendered, despite the arduous nature of their duties. Their generous enthusiasm exhibits that “real love for the Grand Old Service it is an honour and pleasure to serve in,” as Admiral Beatty wrote to me the other day.

HAROLD F. B. WHEELER

Contents

Illustrations

CHAPTER I
Clearing the Decks

“Society must not remain passive in face of the deliberate provocation of a blind and outrageous tyrant. The common interests of mankind must direct the impulses of political bodies: European society has no other essential purpose.”—Schiller.

Surprise is the soul of war. The submarine illustrates this elemental principle, and its astounding development is the most amazing fact of the World Struggle. Given favourable circumstances it can attack when least expected, pounce on its prey at such time as may be most convenient to itself, and return to its lair without so much as being sighted. What has become a vital means to the most important military ends was once described by the British Admiralty as “the weapon of the weaker Power.” To a large extent, of course, it is par excellence the type of vessel necessary to bidders for Sea Supremacy who would wrest maritime predominance from a stronger Power. On the other hand, it has rendered yeoman service to the British Navy, as many of the following pages will show. Germany, a nation of copyists but also of improvers, diverted the submersible from the path of virtue which previous to the outbreak of hostilities it was expected to pursue. It is safe to say that few people in Great Britain entertained the suspicion that underwater craft would be used by any belligerent for the purpose of piracy.

Up to August 1914 the submarine was intimately associated in the public mind with death and disaster—death for the crew and disaster for the vessel. It is so easy to forget that Science claims martyrs and Progress exacts sacrifice. These are two of the certainties of an uncertain world. The early stages of aviation also were notable for the wreck of hopes, machines, and men. To-day aircraft share with submarines and tanks the honour of having altered the aspect of war. The motor-car, once the laughing-stock of everybody other than the enthusiast, and now grown into a Juggernaut mounting powerful guns, is the foster-father of the three, for the perfection of the internal combustion engine alone made the submarine and the aeroplane practicable.

For good or for ill, the underwater boat has passed from the experimental to the practical. In the hands of the Germans it became a particularly sinister and formidable weapon. The truth is not in us if we attempt to disguise the fact. When there was not so much as a cloud the size of a man’s hand on the European sky, and the Betrayer was pursuing the path of peaceful penetration all undisturbed and almost unsuspected, the submarine was regarded by many eminent authorities as a somewhat precocious weakling in the naval nursery. They refused to believe that it would grow up. Even Mr H. G. Wells, who has loosed so many lucky shafts, unhesitatingly damned it in his Anticipations. He saw few possibilities in the craft, and virtually limited its use to narrow waterways and harbours.

There were others, however, who thought otherwise, and the controversy between the rival schools of thought was brought to a head by a fierce battle fought in Printing House Square. Sir Percy Scott, who had previously held more than a watching brief for the heavy fathers of the Fleet, bluntly told the nation through the columns of the Times that the day of the Dreadnought and the Super-Dreadnought was over. With a scratch of the pen he relegated battleships to the scrap-heap—until other experts brought their guns to bear on the subject. Almost on the conclusion of this war of words the war of actuality began. I do not think I am wrong in saying that the former ended in an inconclusive peace. Practice has proved the efficiency of both surface and underwater craft, but particularly of vessels that do not submerge.

Admiral Sir Percy Scott’s prophecy remains unfulfilled. The big-gun ship has asserted itself in no uncertain language. It is interesting to note, however, that the ruling of one who took part in the discussion, and whose personal experience in the early stages of the evolution of a practical submarine entitled him to special consideration, has been entirely negatived. Rear-Admiral R. H. S. Bacon,[^[1]] the principal designer of the first British type, asserted that “the idea of attack of commerce by submarines is barbarous and, on account of the danger of involving neutrals, impolitic.” It is obvious from this that the late commander of the Dover Patrol never contemplated any departure from the acknowledged principles of civilized warfare. The unexpected happened, as it is particularly liable to do in war. One of the main purposes of the enemy’s submarines in the World War was piracy, unrestrained, unrestricted, and unashamed. It failed to justify Germany’s hope.

Probably Lord Fisher was the first seaman holding high position to actually warn the British Government of the likelihood of Germany’s illegitimate use of the submarine. Early in 1914 he handed to Mr Asquith and the First Lord of the Admiralty a memorandum pointing out, among other things, that the enemy would use underwater boats against our commerce.[^[2]] His prescience was forestalled thirteen years before by Commander Sir Trevor Dawson, who had prophesied that the enemy would attack our merchant fleet in much the same way as the Boers were then attacking the army in the Transvaal. “Submarine boats,” he told a meeting of engineers, “have sufficient speed and radius of action to place themselves in the trade routes before the darkness gives place to day, and they would be capable of doing almost incalculable destruction against unsuspecting and defenceless victims.”

Originally Germany was by no means enamoured of the new craft. Her first two submarines did not appear until 1905–6; Great Britain’s initial venture was launched at Barrow-in-Furness in 1901. The latter, the first of a batch of five, was ordered on the advice of Lord Goschen. Even then the official attitude was sceptical, not altogether without reason. Mr H. O. Arnold-Forster, speaking in the House of Commons on the 18th March, 1901, after admitting that “there is no disguising the fact that if you can add speed to the other qualities of the submarine boat, it might in certain circumstances become a very formidable vessel,” adopted what one might call a misery-loves-company attitude. “We are comforted,” he averred, “by the judgment of the United States and Germany, which is hostile to these inventions, which I confess I desire shall never prosper.”

Dr Flamm, Professor of Ship Construction at the Technical High School at Charlottenburg, who should and probably does know better, has aided and abetted certain other publicists in foisting on the public of the Fatherland the presumption that the submarine is a German invention. This is not the place for a full history of the underwater craft from its early to its latest stages, but perhaps it is permissible to give a few particulars regarding the toilsome growth of this most formidable type of vessel.

The first underwater craft of which there is anything approaching authentic record was the invention of Cornelius Drebbel, a Dutchman who forsook his own country for England. According to one C. van der Woude, writing in 1645, Drebbel rowed in his submerged boat from Westminster to Greenwich. Legend or truth has it that this “Famous Mechanician and Chymist” managed to keep the air more or less sweet in his craft by means of a secret “Chymical liquor,” and that the structure was covered with skin of some kind to make it watertight. Drebbel, who also professed to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion, is stated to have hit upon the idea of his invention by the simple process of keeping his eyes open. He noticed some fishermen towing behind their smacks a number of baskets heavily laden with their staple commodity. When the ropes were not taut the vessels naturally rose a little in the water. He came to the conclusion that a boat could be weighted in much the same way to remain entirely below the surface, and propelled by means similar to a rowing-boat. It is even said that King James travelled at a depth of from twelve to fifteen feet in one of the two vessels constructed by Drebbel, whose invention is referred to in Ben Jonson’s Staple of News.

The submarine may be said to have remained in this essentially elementary stage until 1775, when David Bushnell, an American, launched a little one-man submarine after five years of planning and preparation. The shape of the vessel resembled a walnut held upright, the torpedo being carried outside near the top. At the bottom was an aperture fitted with a valve for admitting water, while a couple of pumps were provided for ejecting it. About 200 lb. of lead served as ballast, which could be lowered by ropes for the purpose of giving immediate increase of buoyancy should emergency require it. “When the skilful operator had obtained an equilibrium,” Bushnell writes, “he could row upward and downward, or continue at any particular depth, with an oar placed near the top of the vessel, formed upon the principle of the screw, the axis of the oar entering the vessel; by turning the oar one way he raised the vessel, by turning it the other way he depressed it.” A similar apparatus, worked by hand or foot, whichever was the more convenient, propelled the submarine forward or backward. The rudder could also be utilized as a paddle.

Bushnell provided his little wooden craft with what he called a crown and we should designate a conning-tower. In this there were several glass windows. Neither artificial light nor means of freshening the air was carried, though the submarine could remain submerged for thirty minutes before the condition of the atmosphere made it necessary to ascend sufficiently near the surface to enable the two ventilator pipes to be brought into action. The water-gauge and compass were rendered discernible by means of phosphorus.

The torpedo—Bushnell termed it a magazine—was an oak box containing 150 lb. of gunpowder and a clockwork apparatus which was set in operation immediately the affair was unshipped. It was attached to a wooden screw carried in a tube in the brim of the ‘crown.’ Having arrived beneath an enemy vessel, the screw was fixed in the victim’s hull from within the submarine, and the ‘U-boat’ made off. At the time required the mechanism fired what to all intents and purposes was a gun-lock, and the torpedo blew up.

The wooden screw was the least successful of the various appliances. An attempt was made in 1776 to annihilate H.M.S. Eagle, then lying off Governor’s Island, New York. The operator apparently tried to drive his screw into iron, and quite naturally failed. Writing to Thomas Jefferson on the subject, Bushnell suggests that had the operator shifted the submarine a few inches he could have carried out his operation, even though the bottom was covered with copper. Two other unsuccessful trials were made in the Hudson River. Owing to ill-health and lack of means, the inventor then abandoned his submarine, though in the following year he attempted to ‘discharge’ one of his magazines from a whaleboat, the object of attack being H.M.S. Cerberus. It failed to reach the British frigate, and blew up a prize schooner anchored astern of her. Washington was fully alive to the possibilities of Bushnell’s invention, but was evidently of opinion that it was too crude to warrant his serious attention. Writing to Jefferson, he says: “I thought, and still think, that it was an effort of genius, but that too many things were necessary to be combined to expect much from the issue against an enemy who are always upon guard.” Incidentally this was a remarkable testimonial to the men on look-out duty on the British vessels. Keen sight is still a recognized weapon against submarine attack.

In 1797 Robert Fulton, also an American, brought his fertile brain to bear on the submarine, possibly on hearing or reading of David Bushnell’s boat. One would have anticipated that the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars would be propitious for the introduction of new plans and methods calculated to bring a seemingly never-ending state of hostilities to an end. Novel propositions were certainly brought forward; few were utilized. Fulton, an artist by profession, simply bubbled over with ideas connected with maritime operations. Moreover, he had extraordinary tenacity and enthusiasm. Set-backs seemed to give him added momentum. He tried to do business with Napoleon in France, with Pitt in England, with Schimmelpenninck on behalf of Holland, not always without success, before returning to the United States and running the steamer Clermont at five miles an hour on the Hudson.

At the end of 1797 the enterprising American proposed to the French Directory to construct a submarine, to be christened the Nautilus, or, as he frequently spelled it, the Nautulus. So great was his faith in the project for “A Machine which flatters me with much hope of being Able to Annihilate” the British Navy, that he was willing to be remunerated by results, viz., 4000 francs per gun for every ship of forty guns and upward that he destroyed, and half that amount per gun for smaller vessels. All captures were to become the property of “the Nautulus Company.” A little chary of being caught red-handed by the enemy and dealt with as a pirate, he asked that he might be given a commission in the Service, which would ensure for him and his crew the treatment of belligerents. Pléville le Pelley, Minister of Marine, deeming that such warfare was “atrocious,” and yet not altogether unkindly disposed toward it, refused the latter request, which would obviously give the submarine official sanction. The proposed payment by results he reduced by fifty per cent. All the arrangements were subsequently cancelled.

Nothing further was done until July 1798, when Bruix was Minister of Marine. Fulton renewed his proposition, and certain inquiries by scientists of repute were made at the instigation of Bruix. The report was distinctly favourable, but again there was disagreement as to terms. Fulton, impatient of delay, built the Nautilus. This little vessel, twenty feet long and five feet beam, was launched at Rouen in July 1800. On the trial trip the inventor and two companions made two dives in the boat, the time of submersion varying from eight minutes to seventeen minutes. Proceeding to Havre, Fulton made various improvements in the Nautilus, including the introduction of a screw propeller worked by hand, and the addition of wings placed horizontally in the bows for the purpose of ascending or descending. While at Havre the submarine remained below over an hour at a depth of fifteen feet with her crew and a lighted candle. On another occasion the Nautilus was submerged for six hours, air being supplied by means of a little tube projecting above the water.

For sailing on the surface the boat was fitted with a single jury-mast carrying a mainsail jib, which could be unshipped when submarine navigation was required. By admitting water she sank to the required depth, and was then propelled by the method already referred to. A glass dome, a compass, a pump for expelling the water when necessary, and a gauge for testing depth, which Fulton called a bathometer, constituted the ‘works.’ The torpedo was an apparatus made of copper filled with gunpowder, “arranged in such a manner that if it strikes a vessel or the vessel runs against it, the explosion will take place and the bottom of the vessel be blown in or so shattered as to ensure her destruction.”[^[3]] The weapon was to be fixed to the bottom of the victim by means of a barbed point on the chain used for towing it.

Fulton approached Napoleon, who authorized Forfait, the latest Minister of Marine, to advance the sum of 10,000 francs for the purpose of perfecting the Nautilus. He also granted Fulton an interview. When, in the autumn of 1801, he expressed a wish to see the submarine, the vessel had been broken up. Here the matter ended, and the ingenious American turned his thoughts in the direction of steam navigation. The Nautilus was his one and only experiment in underwater craft.[^[4]]

The first ship to be actually sunk during hostilities by submarine was the Federal 13–gun frigate Housatonic, of 1264 tons. She went down off Charleston on the 17th February, 1864, during the American Civil War, as the result of being attacked by a spar-torpedo carried by the Confederate submarine Hunley, so named after her designer, Captain Horace L. Hunley. Unfortunately the underwater boat was also a victim, and she carried with her her fourth crew to meet with death as a consequence of misadventure. On the first occasion the boat was swamped and eight men were drowned, on the second a similar disaster overtook her, with the loss of six of her crew, on the third she descended and failed to come up. Small wonder that the Hunley came to be known as ‘the Peripatetic Coffin.’

The shape of the Hunley was cylindrical. For’ard and aft were water ballast tanks operated by valves, and additional stability was given by a sort of false keel consisting of pieces of cast iron bolted inside so as to be easily detachable should it be necessary to reach the surface quickly. On each side of the propeller, worked by the hand-power of eight men, were two iron blades which could be moved so as to change the depth of the vessel. The pilot steered from a position near the fore hatchway.

The torpedo, a copper cylinder containing explosive and percussion and primer mechanism, was fired by triggers. It was carried on a boom, twenty-two feet long, attached to the bow. The speed was seldom more than four miles an hour on a calm day. As there was no means of replenishing the air other than by coming to the surface and lifting one of the hatchways, it was obviously a fair-weather ship.

On the afternoon of the 17th February, 1864, the Hunley set out on her final trip. While attacking the submarine was only partly submerged, and one of the hatches was uncovered; why will never be known. She made straight toward the Housatonic, with the evident intention of striking the vessel near the magazines with her torpedo. There was an explosion, the ship heeled to port, and went down by the stern. When divers examined the extent of her injuries the plucky little Hunley was found with her nose buried in the gaping wound in her victim’s hull. Her crew were dead, but apparently the officer was saved.

Other submarines or partly submersible boats were used by the defenders of the Southern cause. They were usually termed ‘Davids’ because they were built to sink the Goliaths of the Federal Navy. The New Ironsides, the Minnesota, and the Memphis were all damaged as a result of their operations.

The only weapon of the submerged submarine is the torpedo. The World War brought no surprise in this direction. For surface work the calibre of the guns mounted on the disappearing platforms has increased very considerably. In 1914 a 14–pdr. was considered ample armament. With added displacement, gun-power has grown enormously. Some German underwater craft in 1918 carried 5.9–in. guns—that is to say, weapons larger than those used by many destroyers.

During the past decade torpedoes and submarines have made almost parallel progress. Of the various types of the former, the Whitehead is first favourite in the Navies of Great Britain, Japan, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, while France uses both the Whitehead and the Schneider, and Germany was exclusively devoted to the Schwartzkopf (Blackhead). The extreme effective range of each may be taken as from 10,000 to 12,000 yards. The essential difference between a torpedo and the usual run of naval ammunition for guns is that the torpedo retains its propellant, while the shell does not. The torpedo is really an explosive submarine mine forced through the water at a rate varying from 28 knots to 42 knots by twin-screws worked by compressed air engines. Any deviation from the course is automatically corrected by a gyroscope. Some torpedoes are now fitted with an apparatus which causes the torpedo to go in circles should it miss its mark and meet with the wash of passing ships. There is the added possibility, therefore, that the weapon may strike a vessel at which it was not aimed when a squadron is proceeding in line ahead.

To a certain extent the submarine has enabled the torpedo to come into its own. It is not at all an easy task to hit a rapidly moving ship from a platform also ploughing the water at a great rate. Among other things the speed and distance of the opponent have to be taken into consideration, and the missile aimed ahead of the enemy so that it and the target shall arrive at a given point at the same moment. The late Mr Robert Whitehead’s invention, an improvement on that of Commandant Lupuis, of the Austrian Navy, who had sold his patent to the former, was tested by the British Admiralty at Sheerness in 1871. Although extremely crude when compared with its successor of to-day, the sum of £15,000 was paid for the English rights. It was first put to a practical test in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, when Lieutenant Rozhdestvensky, who afterward suffered defeat at the hands of the Japanese in May 1905, sank a Turkish warship by its means.

Viscount Jellicoe has told us that the arrival of the submarine led to certain alterations in strategy. I quote from an interview which the former First Sea Lord granted to a representative of the Associated Press in the spring of 1917. Sir John, as he then was, said: “The most striking feature of the change in our historic naval policy resulting from the illegal use of submarines, and from the fact that the enemy surface ships have been driven from the sea, is that we have been compelled to abandon a definite offensive policy for one which may be called an offensive defensive, since our only active enemy is the submarine engaged in piracy and murder.” Mr Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty in August 1914, put the matter a little more bluntly. “But for the submarine and the mine.” he wrote, “the British Navy would, at the outset of the war, have been able to force the fighting to an issue on their old battleground—outside the enemy’s ports.”

This did not mean that every other type of ship had been rendered obsolete or even obsolescent by the coming of the vessel that can float on or under the waves. Admiral von Capelle, Secretary of State for the German Imperial Navy, told the Main Committee of the Reichstag that the submarine was an “important and effective weapon,” but added that “big battleships are not wholly indispensable. Their construction depends on the procedure of other nations.”[^[5]] For instance, the submarine has emphasized the importance of the torpedo-boat destroyer, which some seamen thought it would supersede. The T.B.D. has more than maintained its own. Not only is it useful for acting independently, fighting its own breed, but as the safeguard of the battleships and battle-cruisers at sea, and also as the keenest weapon against submarines, the naval maid-of-all-work has proved extraordinarily efficient.[^[6]]

In the general operations of naval warfare it cannot be said that the enemy U-boats were particularly successful. In the five battles that were fought the work of German submarines was negligible so far as actual fighting was concerned. In two of them, namely Coronel and the Falklands, they were unrepresented on account of the actions taking place many thousands of miles from European waters. This limitation of range of action is a difficulty that time and experiment were beginning to solve when hostilities came to an abrupt conclusion.

The battles of Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank are profoundly interesting to the student of War in the Underseas. Sir David Beatty, who commanded the Battle Cruiser Squadron in the first big naval engagement in which submarines were used, while admitting that he did not lose sight of “the risk” from them, says in his dispatch that “our high speed ... made submarine attack difficult, and the smoothness of the sea made their detection comparatively easy.” These two antidotes will be noted by the reader. The same distinguished officer, perched on the fore-bridge of the Lion in his shirt-sleeves while pursuing the German Fleet near the Dogger Bank, personally observed the wash of a periscope on his starboard bow. By turning immediately to port he entirely upset the calculations of the enemy commander, who was not afforded a further opportunity to torpedo the flagship. A like manœuvre defeated a similar projected attack on the Queen Mary in the Bight. The helm is therefore a third instrument of defence. Apparently the service rendered by enemy U-boats at these two battles was worthless. If they fired at all they missed. On the other hand, any attempt to sink them likewise failed.

In the dispatches on the Battle of Jutland, which a well-known Admiral tells me were severely edited before publication, there are several references to enemy submarines, none to our own. The first attempted attack took place about half an hour after Sir David Beatty had opened fire, and immediately following the entry of the 5th Battle Squadron into the fight. The destroyer Landrail sighted a periscope on her port quarter. With the Lydiard she formed a smoke-screen which “undoubtedly preserved the battle-cruisers from closer submarine attack.” The light cruiser Nottingham also reported a submarine to starboard. We are also informed that “Fearless and the 1st Flotilla were very usefully employed as a submarine screen during the earlier part of May 31.” The Marlborough, flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir Cecil Burney’s First Battle Squadron, after having been torpedoed—whether by submarine or other craft is not mentioned—drove off a U-boat attack while proceeding to harbour for repairs. “The British Fleet,” adds Sir John Jellicoe, “remained in the proximity of the battlefield and near the line of approach to German ports until 11 a.m. on June 1, in spite of the disadvantages of long distances from fleet bases and the danger incurred in waters adjacent to enemy coasts from submarines and torpedo craft.” In the British list of enemy vessels put out of action, one submarine figures as sunk.

Admiral Beatty justly remarks that the German losses were “eloquent testimony to the very high standard of gunnery and torpedo efficiency of His Majesty’s ships.” Of the twenty-one vessels lost or severely damaged, it would appear as though nine were accounted for by torpedoes, although this does not necessarily mean that they had not been engaged by gunfire as well. At Dogger Bank, it may be recollected, a torpedo finally settled the Blücher, which had already been rendered hors de combat by shell fired from more old-fashioned weapons.

The German High Sea Fleet adopted a prolonged attitude of caution after Jutland, but the All-Highest thought it well to issue an Imperial Order calculated to inspire the officers and men of the submarine flotillas. “The impending decisive battle” mentioned in the following message, which is dated Main Headquarters, 1st February, 1917, evidently refers to the ‘unlimited’ phase of U-boat warfare and not to a general action, as one might imagine at first glance. This highly interesting document runs:

To my Navy

In the impending decisive battle the task falls on my Navy of turning the English war method of starvation, with which our most hated and most obstinate enemy intends to overthrow the German people, against him and his Allies by combating their sea traffic with all the means in our power.

In this work the submarine will stand in the first rank. I expect that this weapon, technically developed with wise foresight at our admirable yards, in co-operation with all our other naval fighting weapons, and supported by the spirit which during the whole course of the war has enabled us to perform brilliant deeds, will break our enemy’s war designs.

Wilhelm

The defensive policy of the Imperial Navy was summed up by a writer in the Deutsche Tageszeitung seven months after the publication of the above. “Above all else,” he wrote, “the German High Sea Fleet has rendered possible the conduct of the submarine war. Without it the enemy would have threatened our submarine bases and restricted our submarine warfare, or made it impossible.” It was not a valorous rôle to play, but there was wisdom in it.

The submarine campaign passed through several phases. In its earliest stages it was mainly directed by Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, the predominant personality associated with the growth of the Imperial Navy. In December 1914 this Bluebeard of the Seas asserted that as England wished to starve Germany, “we might play the same game and encircle England, torpedoing every British ship, every ship belonging to the Allies that approached any British or Scottish port, and thereby cut off the greater part of England’s food supply.” The ‘game’ was started on the 18th February, 1915, and enthusiastically applauded throughout the German Empire. All the waters surrounding the United Kingdom, and “all English seas,” were declared to be a war area. Every vessel of the British Mercantile Marine was to be destroyed, “and it will not always be possible to avoid danger to the crews and passengers thereon.”[^[7]] Peaceful shipping was warned that there was a possibility of neutrals being “confused with ships serving warlike purposes” if they ventured within the danger zone. Great Britain had declared the North Sea a military area in November 1914, and every care was taken to respect the rights of neutral shipping. The enemy, on the contrary, speedily showed utter disregard of international law. The submarine programme was started before the day advertised for the opening performance.

The sinking of the Lusitania on the 7th May, 1915, with the loss of 1225 lives, showed in no uncertain way that the Germans intended nothing less than an orgy of cold-blooded devilry. In the following month the always strident German Navy League stated that the fleet which it had done so much to bring into being “was not in a position to break the endless chain of transports carrying munitions in such a manner as blockade regulations had hitherto required.” To search ships was “in most cases impossible.” In the same manifesto the sinking of the giant Cunarder was ‘explained’ by arguing that as submarines had no means to compel vessels to stop, and there was ammunition on board, sinking without warning was justified. “Such must continue to be the case, and the Army has a just claim to this service of the Fleet.”

As a protest against armed traders, the campaign was intensified on the 1st March, 1916. These ships were “not entitled to be regarded as peaceful merchantmen.” The plain English of the move was that Germany wanted some kind of excuse for ordering her submarines to sink vessels at sight. According to her, none other than naval ships had the least excuse to assume so much as the defensive. In President Wilson’s so-called Sussex note of the 18th April, 1916, attention is called to the “relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use of submarines without regard to what the Government of the United States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of international law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity.”

The third phase was that of “unlimited submarine war,” announced on the last day of January 1917. “Within the barred zones around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the Eastern Mediterranean, all sea traffic will henceforth be oppressed by all means.” Neutral ships in those areas would traverse the waters “at their own risk.” To a large extent they had done so before. Notwithstanding repeated ‘regrets’ and pledges given by Germany to the United States, murder on the high seas was now to be an acknowledged weapon of German warfare. It culminated in a declaration of war on the part of the United States on the 6th April, 1917, by which time over 230 Americans had lost their lives by the enemy’s illegal measures. The date is worth remembering; it will loom big in the history books of to-morrow. Zimmermann, Germany’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, had already expressed the opinion that ruthless submarine warfare promised “to compel England to make peace in a few months.”[^[8]] In this expectation, as in several others, he miscalculated.

The Lord Chancellor declared that submarine warfare, as carried on by the enemy, was absolutely illegal by international law, and was mere piracy.[^[9]] As to mines, which were also greatly favoured by the Huns and sown by their U-boats, it may be mentioned that such weapons laid to maintain a general commercial blockade are equally illegal, although perfectly legitimate outside naval bases. This was a small matter to the Kaiser and his satellites, who were out to win at any and all costs. No British mines were placed in position until many weeks after the declaration of hostilities, although the enemy had scattered them indiscriminately in the trade routes either before or immediately following the outbreak of war. When we resorted to the use of mines they were anchored in all cases, and constructed to become harmless if they broke loose.

The reply of England and of France to these measures was to stop supplies from entering Germany by means of a blockade controlled by cruiser cordon. “The law and custom of nations in regard to attacks on commerce,” to quote the British Declaration to Neutral Governments,[^[10]] “have always presumed that the first duty of the captor of a merchant vessel is to bring it before a Prize Court, where it may be tried, where the regularity of the capture may be challenged, and where neutrals may recover their cargoes.” With delicate consideration for the convenience of neutrals, which some folk held to be wisdom and others lunacy, the British Government declared their intention “to refrain altogether from the exercise of the right to confiscate ships or cargoes which belligerents have always claimed in respect of breaches of blockade. They restrict their claim to the stopping of cargoes destined for or coming from the enemy’s territory.”[^[11]]

Much ado was made about the stoppage of food for the civil population of the Central Empires. It was barbarous, inhuman, and so on. Yet the principle had been upheld by both Bismarck and Caprivi, and practised at the siege of Paris. As Sir Edward Grey delightfully put it, this method of bringing pressure to bear on an enemy country “therefore presumably is not repugnant to German morality.”[^[12]]

A great deal has been said and written to show that the Prussian Government was not the German People, that instead of Representation there was Misrepresentation. It is still extremely difficult to secure reliable information on any subject connected with intimate Germany, and the contemporary views of so-called neutrals are often more than suspect. A study of German newspapers at the time certainly led one to believe that opposition to the submarine campaign had been more or less negligible. A change of view only came when the people realized that ruthlessness did not pay, and it was the business of the British Navy to demonstrate this—as it did. Meantime the German official accounts of sinkings were grossly exaggerated, and the nation had no means of discovering the loss of submarines other than when relatives serving in them failed to return to their families. There was no one to contradict the grossly exaggerated statement made by Dr Helfferich, Minister for the Interior, that in the first two months of unrestricted U-boat warfare over 1,600,000 tons of shipping had been sunk at the cost of the loss of a mere half-dozen submarines.[^[13]]

Dr Michaelis, a more noisy sabre-rattler than his predecessor in the Chancellorship, asserted that “the submarine warfare is accomplishing all, and more than all, that was expected of it.”[^[14]] Like many other of his countrymen, to him the crews of the Imperial Pirate Service were more of the nature of soldiers than of sailors. Certainly their callous behaviour suggested that they were strangers to the proverbial comradeship of the sea, and one with the glorious band that hacked a way through Belgium, drove their bayonets through babies, and crucified their prisoners. Loud cheers followed the remark that “We can look forward to the further labours of our brave submarine warriors with complete confidence,” and also to a reference to greetings sent home to the Fatherland by “our troops on all fronts on land and sea, in the air and under the sea.”

As to the thoroughness with which commanders of U-boats performed their task, there is no need to speak. There is plentiful evidence to prove that so elementary a duty as that of examining a ship’s papers seldom interested them. They had no respect for law or life. Witness a case[^[15]] that has a direct bearing on this matter. It arose in connexion with the salving of the s.s. Ambon, a neutral vessel bound for the Dutch East Indies, after having been torpedoed on the 21st February, 1916, when about seven miles off Start Point. A shell was fired from an enemy submarine. Immediately the engines of the steamship were stopped, a lifeboat was lowered, and the chief engineer sent off with the ship’s papers and instructions. The latter included a copy of a telegram from the owners advising that the steamer was to call at a certain port on a specified day, in accordance with an agreement between the Dutch and German Governments. The German commander did not so much as look at the documents, and peremptorily told the crew to leave the Ambon. “My orders admit of no variation,” he remarked. They were “to sink every ship in the blockade area.” The steamer was then torpedoed, but did not founder, and was subsequently towed into Plymouth.

Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
A U-boat gliding, submerged, over her victim.
Montague Black

No reliance whatever could be placed on Germany’s word, as neutrals early discovered to their cost. Having provided a so-called ‘safe’ zone, the Dutch steamer Amsterdam was torpedoed within it. At Germany’s own suggestion, an International Committee, composed of Dutch, Swedish, and German naval officers, was formed to investigate the circumstances. Their finding was that the vessel had been sunk in the ‘safe’ zone.

There was a time when the French authorities seemed to be in favour of the submarine above all other types of naval ships. The result was that France lost her position in the race for second place in the world’s fleets, though it is to her credit that in 1888 she launched the Gymnote, the first modern submarine to be commissioned. Nordenfeldt, of gun fame, had already achieved a certain amount of success with steam-driven underwater boats, but they had many disadvantages when compared with those of Mr John P. Holland, who hailed from the same country as Fulton. The first submarines built for the British Government were of the Holland type, of 120 tons displacement when submerged, and having a speed of five knots when travelling below. Germany’s pioneer U-boat was built in 1890. In 1918 she boasted giant diving cruisers of 5000 tons, with a radius of action of 8000 miles, and mounting 5.9–in. guns.

As to the vexed question of the number of submarines possessed by Great Britain and Germany respectively at the beginning of the war, one can only say that authorities differ. According to an interview granted by Mr Winston Churchill to M. Hugues le Roux which appeared in Le Matin in the first week of February 1915, we then had more underwater boats than the enemy, but Lord Jellicoe afterward asserted that in August 1914 “the German Navy possessed a great many more oversea submarines than we did.”[^[16]] Unless there is a subtle distinction between the general term used by the then First Lord and the oversea type referred to by the former Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, it is impossible to reconcile the two statements, for it is obvious that the leeway mentioned by the latter cannot have been made up in five months.

According to the Berlin official naval annual Nautilus, published in June 1914, the total number of completed German submarines up to the previous month was twenty-eight. Commander Carlyon Bellairs, R.N., M.P., estimated them at “fifty built, building, and projected.” Austria had six ready, four under construction at Pola, and five on the stocks in Germany. In the five years immediately preceding the beginning of the struggle Germany certainly spent more on underwater craft than Great Britain, the figure for the former being £5,354,206, and for the latter £4,159,670.

CHAPTER II
Life as a Latter-day Pirate

“The unrestricted U-boat war means a very strong naval offensive against the Entente.”—Admiral von Capelle.

Writing in the early summer of 1915, a neutral who visited the once busy ports of Danzig, Stettin, Hamburg, and Bremen remarked that “wherever one goes in these cities, wherever one takes one’s meals, one hears the word Unterseeboot. Amazing, and often untrue, stories are told of the number of submarines that are being constructed, the size and speed of the latest ones, and the great number of English ships that have been sunk, but whose loss has been ‘concealed from the British public.’” The submarine barometer was Set Fair. It soon dropped to Change.

Within six months the industrious and outspoken Captain Persius was confessing in the Berliner Tageblatt that “regarding the effectiveness of our U-boats in the trade war, one hears frequently nowadays views that bear little resemblance to the views uttered a year ago. Then, alas, hopes were extravagant, owing to a disregard of facts which the informed expert, indeed, observed, but which remained concealed from the layman”—a confession of failure, notwithstanding the offer of substantial rewards for every merchant vessel sunk, and pensions for each man in a submarine which destroyed a transport.

Twenty months later Admiral von Scheer asserted that German submarine losses were more than equalized by new construction. Note the definite acknowledgment of losses and of the necessity for replacing them. In April 1918 Admiral von Capelle, Imperial Secretary of State for the Navy, endeavoured to explain the declining maritime death-rate of the enemy by assuring the Main Committee of the Reichstag that the average loss of British ships from submarine attacks alone, during 1917, was 600,000 tons per month. The truth of the matter was that the average loss from all causes was not more than 333,000 gross tons. According to an official statement circulated to the German Press on the 4th of the following June, food conditions in England were “extraordinarily bad,” because the U-boat campaign was “having the intended result of constantly diminishing England’s food supply.” In actual fact, the U-boats were then having a particularly rough time. So far as the German Independent Socialists were concerned, they did not “look forward with complete confidence,” as Dr Michaelis had professed to do in July 1917, “to the further labours of our brave submarine warriors.” Herr Vogtherr, a member of the party, bluntly remarked that “it cannot be seen that U-boat warfare has brought peace nearer. Meanwhile we continue to destroy tonnage which we shall need after the war in order to obtain necessary raw materials.” As to the latter clause, the British Mercantile Marine has already had something to say. It lost 14,661 gallant fellows through enemy action.

According to the statement of a member of the crew of the British destroyer which rammed U 12, some of the prisoners at least were thankful to be in despised England. They said that the coxswain had been a North Sea pilot for fifteen years previous to the outbreak of war, and though the veriest tyro in matters relating to underwater craft, was compelled to take service, presumably because he was well acquainted with the east coast of the United Kingdom. The story of crews being forced with the gentle persuasion of a revolver to board other U-boats while their own was docked to undergo repairs was not necessarily exaggerated. There is evidence that on occasion German seamen were shot for refusing to go on board a submarine. The mate of the Brazilian steamer Rio Branco, when taking the ship’s papers to the commander of an enemy U-boat, asked a member of the crew what life was like as a latter-day pirate. He replied in a single word usually taken to denote eternal misery, and added that although he and his mates would like to mutiny, opportunity was never afforded them, because they were shot on the slightest pretext. There is no reason to doubt that crews were sent to sea with insufficient training, and that their moral steadily declined as Allied efforts to tackle the foe developed.

With a stoical philosophy which may have been specially intended for neutral consumption,[^[17]] Lieutenant-Commander Claus Hansen informed the Kiel representative of the New York World that “We need neither doctors nor undertakers aboard U 16; if anything goes wrong with our craft when below no doctor can help; and we carry our coffin with us.” One can thoroughly appreciate his remark that the work “is fearfully trying on the nerves. Every man does not stand it.”

The same article also furnishes other interesting particulars of the life of a modern pirate which bear prima facie evidence of truth. “We steer entirely by chart and compass,” the commander averred. “As the air heats it gets poor, and, mixed with odours of oil from machinery, the atmosphere becomes fearful. An overpowering sleepiness often attacks new men, who require the utmost will-power to remain awake. Day after day in such cramped quarters, where there is hardly room to stretch the legs, where one must be constantly alert, is a tremendous strain on the nerves. I have sat or stood for eight hours with my eyes glued to the periscope, peering into the brilliant glass until my eyes and head have ached. When the crew is worn out, we seek a good sleep and rest under the water, the boat often rocking gently, with a movement like that of a cradle. Before ascending I always order silence for several minutes, to determine whether one can hear any propellers in the vicinity through the shell-like sides of the submarine, which act like a sounding-board.”

Hansen gave the interviewer to understand that lying dormant many fathoms deep was not exactly a treat to his crew. “When the weather or the proximity of the enemy make it necessary to remain down so long that the air becomes unusually bad, every man except those actually on duty is ordered to lie down, and to remain absolutely quiet, making no unnecessary movements, as movement causes the lungs to use more oxygen, and oxygen must be saved, just as the famished man in the desert tries to make the most of his last drop of water. As there can be no fire, because fire burns oxygen, and the electric power from the accumulators is too precious to be wasted for cooking, we have to dine cold when cruising.” This chat, it is necessary to add, took place in March 1915. Since then many improvements have been made in submarines, including ventilation and roominess.

At this particular period everything possible was being done to arouse the enthusiasm of the German nation for the Underseas War. Carefully written articles by naval men, syndicated by official or semi-official Press bureaux, made their appearance with almost bewildering frequency. German submarines had found their way to the Dardanelles, a feat attended by much metaphorical trumpet-blowing and flag-waving. To quote Captain von Kühlewetter, a devout worshipper at the shrine of Tirpitz:

“The layman can hardly imagine what it means for a craft of only 1000 tons displacement, about 230 feet long and 19 or 20 feet beam at its widest point, to make with a crew of thirty a trip as far as from Hamburg to New York. The little vessel can only travel at moderate speed in order that the petrol may last. It is always ready to meet the enemy without help of any kind on a journey through hostile waters for the entire distance. And these submarines did meet the enemy often.”

There is a charming naïveté about the narrative of a U-boat man who spent some time reconnoitring the coast of Scotland. His vessel left her base in company with several others, including U 15, which failed to return. “She fell before the enemy” is his pathetic little epitaph to her memory. Each of the ten days spent on the trip was divided into four shifts for alternate sleep and work. For variety there was “a little while under, a little while on top.” The only sensational phase of the cruise appears to have been when “one after another had to leave his place for a minute and take a peep through the periscope. It was the prettiest picture I ever saw. Up there, like a flock of peaceful lambs, lay an English squadron without a care, as if there were no German sea-wolves in armoured clothing. For two hours we lay there under water on the outposts. We could with certainty have succeeded in bringing under a big cruiser, but we must not. We were on patrol. Our boat had other work to do. It was a lot to expect from our commander. So near to the enemy, and the torpedo must remain in its tube! He must have felt like a hunter who, before deer-stalking begins, suddenly sights a fine buck thirty paces in front of him.”

The reference to British cruisers resembling peaceful lambs is delicious. The writer seems to have forgotten that so far as ‘armoured clothing’ goes they are considerably better provided than the toughest submarine afloat. And what kind of a wolf was it to let such easy prey escape? One surmises a reason connected with the British patrol rather than with its German counterfeit.

An American sailor-boy was taken on board U 39 after that submarine had torpedoed his ship. The lad afterward characterized the unenviable experience as “a dog’s life in a steel can,” accompanied by a constant succession of rings of the gong that sent every member to his appointed station as though the Last Trump had blown. The usual menu was stew and coffee, the liquid refreshment being varied on occasion by the substitution of raspberry juice.

Three captains—a Briton, an American, and a Norwegian—were made prisoners on U 49. For days they were confined in a tiny cabin containing three bunks. They took turns in the solitary chair that was the only furniture other than a folding table. As no light was allowed, conversation and change of position were their only occupations. They found plenty to talk about, but even desultory chatter becomes irksome when it is centred around the topic, What will happen? Still, misery loves company, even if it does not appreciate cramp. The prisoners were kept in this Dark Hole of the Underseas except for occasional airings on deck when the craft was running awash and there was ‘nothin’ doin’’ in the piracy or anti-piracy line. Even then they were closely watched by armed guards. Their rations consisted of an unpalatable concoction called stew, black bread, rancid butter, and alleged marmalade, any one of which might have been guaranteed to engender mal de mer.

When off the coast of Spain the commander of U 49 hailed a Swedish steamer. The captain must have been deeply relieved when he found that his services were merely required as temporary gaoler. He was peremptorily told to take charge of the prisoners, and land them in the neighbourhood of Camarina. Neither ship nor cargo was interfered with. Never were mariners more pleased to set foot on solid earth.

This particular barbarian was not quite so callous as the presiding genius of U 34. Four of the crew of the trawler Victoria, of Milford, which he had sunk, were picked up by the submarine. Six of their comrades had passed to where there is no sea, and required no favours from enemy or friend. As though they were not sufficiently well acquainted with the ways of U 34, the survivors were summoned on deck the following morning to receive a further object-lesson in humanity as the Hun understands it. They were compelled to watch the death and burial of a Cardiff trawler. “England,” explained one of the German officers, “began the war, and we shall sink every ship we see flying the British flag.” When the latest victim of U 34 had gone to her watery grave, the men were given a handful of biscuits, placed in a boat, and left to the mercy of the sea.

Apparently U-boats were not keen on fine weather. “A smooth sea and a lull in the wind are very disagreeable for U-boats,” said Dr Helfferich, the Vice-Chancellor, “especially in view of the enemy’s defensive measures, particularly as regards aircraft. Some U-boat commanders are of opinion that U-boat warfare can be carried on with still better results when the weather is not too fine and the nights are longer.”

A certain submarine left her lair at Zeebrugge a few days before Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes and his band of heroes gave an enforced holiday to those that remained. She had not proceeded any great distance before she encountered a mine. It did not completely put her ‘out of mess,’ but sent her staggering backward in inky darkness to the bottom. The electric light had failed with the quickness of a candle meeting a sudden draught. To restore the current was obviously the first thing to do. It was not easy working with the aid of torches, the boat tipped up on end, her stern buried deep in the bed of the sea. Primitive man, his tail not yet worn off, would have fared better. Eventually the supply was restored, and it became possible to make a more thorough survey of the damage. The engineers found that the shock had paralysed the nervous system of the machinery. Not only was the boat leaking badly, but the pumps refused to blow out the ballast tanks.

On an even keel the problem would be easier to tackle. The men were therefore ordered to assemble in the stern and rush forward on the word of command. Their combined movement had the desired effect. Slowly the extra weight in the bow caused the ooze to loose its grip. The submarine sank down with languid grace. There was now nothing to hamper movement. Each member of the crew had a pair of hands ready for service instead of having to employ one for the purpose of hanging on.

The engineers tried to start the motors. They refused to budge. Sea-water found its way into the accumulators, adding a further terror to the overwrought men by the introduction of poison gas in an atmosphere already charged with death. Pirates might laugh when they saw British sailors struggling for life in icy water, might derive entertainment from shelling frail craft laden to the gunwale with survivors from ships sunk in pursuance of the German cult of frightfulness, but they failed to appreciate the humour of the situation when they were the victims and the tragedy was enacted 100 feet beneath the surface. The traditional Nero would never have fiddled had he felt the scorch of the flames that burnt Rome. There is little enough of the alleged glory of war in being trapped like a rat. Much of its glamour in any circumstance is imaginary, and exists chiefly in the minds of scribblers. This is not pacificism, but fact.

The sea mounted higher and higher in the lonely prison cell. Officers and crew tried to staunch the inflow, to stop the leaks with tow and other likely material. These devices held for a little, then burst away. Some sought to make their escape through the conning-tower, as Goodhart of the British Navy had done;[^[18]] others tried to force a way out via the torpedo-tubes. Bolts were wrenched off, fastenings filed through. The doors held firm. The mighty efforts of the men met with no reward. They fell back exhausted and covered with sweat. The pressure from without would have thwarted a score of Samsons. The hatches remained immovable.

They read the handwriting on the curved walls of their prison: “No hope!” The crew must have cursed the Hohenzollerns then. Despair robbed them of reason. One fellow went mad, then another, followed by a third. A man plunged into the water, now up to his knees. His overwrought brain could stand the terrible strain no longer. He drowned in two feet of water. Nobody moved to pull him out. The place became a Bedlam. A comrade tried to shoot himself. The revolver merely clicked. In a passion of rage he flung both weapon and himself into the rising flood. Death was the most desired of all things.

A plate burst, letting in a Niagara. The swirl of waters increased the pressure of air against the hatches. One of them burst open. Those who remained alive were carried off their feet and hurled through the aperture. The blind forces of Nature succeeded where man had failed. A mangled mass of human flotsam was flung to the surface. Two maimed bodies alone had life in them when a British trawler steamed by. A boat was lowered, the half-dead forms fished out of the sea. Then the enemy, potential victims of these men but an hour before, did what they could to alleviate their agony. That is the spirit and the tradition of the British Sea Service, though the sufferer be the Devil himself.

A survivor of a neutral ship blown up by a U-boat, who was kept swimming about for ten minutes before being rescued because the officers wanted to take some snap-shots, avowed that he and his mates were compelled to lend a hand with the ammunition. That was the Huns’ method of making them pay their way. Their ‘dungeon,’ to quote the narrator, was “furnished with tubes, pressure gauges, flywheels, torpedoes, and the floor paved with shells.” The life he characterized as “monotonous.” During their stay of twelve days five vessels were sunk.

As “a recognition of meritorious work during the war” the Kaiser created a special decoration for officers, petty officers, and crews of submarines on the completion of their third voyage. That did not make them any the more enamoured of mines and wasserbomben.

CHAPTER III
Germany’s Submersible Fleet

“The submarine is the hunted to-day.”—Sir Eric Geddes.

In the first phase of the Underseas War torpedoes were the favourite weapons of the U-boat. The work was done more effectively and quicker than was possible with the comparatively small guns then mounted. Later, the number of ships attacked by shellfire rapidly increased. This was due to several reasons. The second method of attack was considerably less expensive, for a torpedo costs anything from £750 to £1000. Comparatively few merchant vessels had any means of defence, for ramming was seldom practicable, and other dodges, such as obscuring the vessel by voluminous smoke from the funnels, and steering stern on, thus presenting a relatively small target, were equally uncertain. Altogether the submarine had things very much her own way. She could carry an augmented provision of ammunition, and the difficulties of supply were more easily met. It takes longer to make a torpedo than to turn a shell; to train a torpedo expert than a gunner. If no British patrol were at hand, the German commander could safely risk waging war on the surface. He did not have to return to his base so frequently for the purpose of replenishing empty magazines, and he was saving money for the dear Fatherland. With increasing range of action the necessity for conserving torpedoes became more pronounced. The menace grew to such proportions in the Mediterranean that it was found necessary to send vessels by the long Cape route instead of via the Suez Canal.

When slow-moving John Bull at last bestirred himself and decided to arm merchantmen, the risks of an exposed U-boat were considerably increased. The torpedo again came into her own. As Mr Winston Churchill told the House of Commons,[^[19]] “the effect of putting guns on a merchant ship is to drive the submarine to abandon the use of the gun, to lose its surface speed, and to fall back on the much slower speed under water and the use of the torpedo. The torpedo, compared with the gun, is a weapon of much more limited application.”

Germany’s maritime faith being based on the U-boat, despite the Kaiser’s dictum that “our future lies on the water,” many keen scientific brains there had a part in its recent evolution. Whereas in 1914 the latest type, such as U 30, could travel 300 miles submerged or 3500 miles entirely on the surface—the latter trip an impossibility, of course, with the British Navy in being—at least 8800 miles were traversed by the submarine which in 1918 bombarded Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, on the west coast of Africa. This is assuming that she returned to her home port in Europe.

The following table, in which round figures are used, will help us to appraise Germany’s progress in the construction of U-boats previous to the outbreak of hostilities. It is based on what is considered to be reliable evidence, although the difficulty of obtaining accurate figures will be appreciated. I shall refer to the larger types later.

U 1 (1905).—Submerged displacement, 236 tons. Surface engines, 250 H.P.; electric motors, 100 H.P. Speed, 10 knots on surface, 7 knots submerged. Surface range, from 700 to 800 miles. Armament, one torpedo-tube in bow. Complement, nine officers and men.

U 2–U 8 (1907–10).—Submerged displacement, 250 tons. Surface engines, 400 H.P.; electric motors, 160 H.P. Speed, 12 knots on surface, 8 knots submerged. Surface range, 1000 miles. Armament, two torpedo-tubes in bow. Fitted with submarine signalling apparatus. Complement, eleven officers and men.

U 9–U 18 (1910–12).—Submerged displacement, 300 tons. Surface engines, 600 H.P. Speed, 13 knots on surface, 8 knots submerged. Surface range, 1500 miles. Armament, two torpedo-tubes in bow, one torpedo-tube in stern. With U 13 anti-aircraft weapons were introduced.

U 19–U 20 (1912–13).—Submerged displacement, 450 tons. Surface engines, 650 H.P.; electric motors, 300 H.P. Speed, 13½ knots on surface, 8 knots submerged. Surface range, 2000 miles. Armament, two torpedo-tubes in bow, one torpedo-tube in stern, two 14–pdr. Q.F. guns. Complement, seventeen officers and men.

U 21–U 24 (1912–13).—Submerged displacement, 800 tons. Surface engines, 1200 H.P.; electric motors, 500 H.P. Speed, 14 knots on surface, 9 knots submerged. Surface range, 3000 miles. Armament, two torpedo-tubes in bow, two torpedo-tubes in stern, one 14–pdr. Q.F. gun, two 1–pdr. anti-aircraft guns. Complement, twenty-five officers and men.

The Interior of a German Submarine
Showing the internal combustion engines for surface work, and the motor-generators for driving the propellers when submerged.

U 25–U 30 (1913–14).—Submerged displacement, 900 tons. Surface engines, 2000 H.P.; electric motors, 900 H.P. Speed, 18 knots on surface, 10 knots submerged. Surface range, 4000 miles. Submerged range, 300 miles. Armament, two torpedo-tubes in bow, two torpedo-tubes in stern, two 14–pdr. Q.F. guns, two 1–pdr. anti-aircraft guns. Complement, thirty to thirty-five officers and men. Upper works lightly armoured. Fitted with wireless.

German U-boats are really submersibles. That is to say, the outer shell conforms to the shape of an ordinary ship, with a broad deck, whereas British submarines resemble a fat cigar. Internally they are cylindrical, the space intervening between the compartments and the shell affording accommodation for the ballast tanks. The theory is that vessels built to this design are more seaworthy and easier to handle. U 36, which was building when war broke out, was divided into ten compartments, below which were the steel cylinders containing compressed air for freshening the atmosphere, oil fuel, lubricating oil, and water-ballast tanks, and the accumulators for driving the dynamos when travelling beneath the surface. The officers’ combined ward-room and sleeping quarters were for’ard, immediately behind the bow torpedo compartment. Adjoining were the crew’s quarters, divided by a steel bulkhead from the control chamber, situated below the conning-tower. In the control chamber the steering wheel, periscope, projection table on which a surface view was thrown after the manner of a camera obscura, water-pressure dial, and other delicate and necessary instruments for the safety and navigation of the ship were distributed. Proceeding toward the stern, the petty officers’ quarters, the machine-room with its heavy oil engines for surface work and electric motors for progression when submerged, and the stern torpedo compartment were to be found. U 36 was one of the “new Super-Dreadnought submarines,” to quote an American correspondent who saw them under construction at Kiel. On these, he added, “the Germans appear to be banking.”

The autumn of 1915 witnessed the introduction of mine-laying submersibles. The trotyl-filled cylinders were dropped on recognized trade routes without the slightest regard for the rights of neutrals. The mines were kept in a special chamber, ingeniously contrived so that it could be flooded without the water entering elsewhere, and released through a trap-door. Thus another weapon was added to the submarine’s armoury. It answered all too well. “They can follow your mine-sweeper,” said Sir Edward Carson, “and as quickly as you sweep up mines they can lay new ones without your knowing or suspecting.” In 1914 the enemy had only one means of sowing these canisters of death, namely, by surface vessels. It will be recollected that the Königin Luise was sunk in the North Sea on the morning of the 5th August while on this hazardous duty. Germany’s opportunity for hurting us in this manner was of short duration. The British Navy asserted itself, with the result that the enemy was perforce compelled to find a new method. He resorted to the use of specially fitted submarines.

In due course 4.1–in. guns, mounted on disappearing platforms, made their début, followed by U-boats provided with two 5.9–in. guns. With increase of gun-power came a necessary increase in size, and with both several distinct advantages and disadvantages. The boats were less easy to manœuvre, required augmented crews, and offered a larger area for attack. Against these minus qualities must be set those of increase of cruising range, and the possibility of spoil, the sole excuse of the old-time pirate. Hitherto his more scientific successor could only sink his victim. Now, given favourable conditions, he might carry off goods useful to the Fatherland. One German U-boat secured twenty-two tons of copper from merchantmen destroyed during a 5000–mile cruise.

Germany waxed particularly enthusiastic over her diving cruisers. These boats displaced 5000 tons, were from 350 feet to 400 feet long, had a much accelerated submerged and surface speed, were protected by an armour belt of tough steel plate, and mounted a couple of 5.9–in. guns. Some of these submersibles seem to have been driven by steam when in surface trim, others by the usual Diesel engines. On the 11th May, 1918, a British Atlantic escort submarine came across one of these fine fellows travelling awash, likely enough anxious to have a shot at the merchant convoy which the representative of His Majesty’s Navy was on her way to pick up. A heavy sea was running at the time, but at intervals between the waves the periscope revealed the position of his rival to the British commander. One torpedo sufficed. The Tauchkreuzer went down, carrying with her the sixty or seventy men who constituted her company. There were no survivors. She had the distinction of being the first of the type to be destroyed.

Germany’s merchant service, prizes of war, or driven off the seven seas and growing barnacles in neutral or home ports, virtually ceased to exist at the outbreak of hostilities. The mammoth liners which formerly competed with our own no longer sailed the seas with their holds full of cheap goods and their saloons alive with travellers bent on ‘peaceful penetration’—and other things. It rankled in the bosoms of her shipping magnates that the much-vaunted High Sea Fleet was impotent to prevent Britain ‘carrying on’ commercially while conducting campaigns in all parts of the world. It was true that Germany’s U-boats were making inroads on the maritime resources of her enemy, that when hostilities were over they might compete on more than even terms because of these losses, but to-day rankled though to-morrow was full of hope. Likewise the Economic Conference in Paris had declared its firm intention to impose special conditions on German shipping after the war. After the war! The Director-General of the North German Lloyd Line said that the English were not so unpractical as to reject a favourable freightage or passage.

I cannot give you the name of the man or woman who first suggested the possibilities of the submarine for business purposes. The idea was certainly not a particularly novel one. All I can say definitely is that the concern which owned the pioneer vessels was called the Ocean Navigation Company, and that the president was Herr Alfred Lohmann. If British merchantmen could use American ports, why not German commercial submarines? The Deutschland was built with this object in view. Officially she was described as “a vessel engaged in the freight trade between Bremen and Boston and other Eastern Atlantic ports.”

She left Heligoland on the 23rd June, 1916, and arrived at Norfolk News, Virginia, seventeen days later. The German Press quite naturally went into ecstasies over the achievement. Yet it was not quite such a unique event as they imagined. Ten submarines built in Montreal had crossed the Atlantic nine months before. The Deutschland duly discharged her cargo, stayed three weeks or so, and returned to Germany. The Kaiser showed his pleasure by conferring decorations on Herr Lohmann and the crew. Germany was again a maritime nation—of sorts.

The submersible had travelled no fewer than 8500 nautical miles. She made a second voyage to America in October. This time her port of arrival was New London, Connecticut. When starting on her return journey she managed to get in collision with one of the escorting tugs, which sank with the loss of seven of her crew. The Deutschland was the pioneer of seven similar boats said to be in course of construction. A sister vessel, the Bremen, was launched and started on a voyage. She is now some two years overdue.

Official Germany revealed no great faith in the possibilities of the commercial submarine, though this does not necessarily mean that the autocrats of the Wilhelmstrasse showed their real belief. It sometimes suited them to lie. According to the Frankfurter Zeitung, £15,000,000 per annum was earmarked for the fostering of Germany’s moribund merchant service in the next decade.

In October 1916 the depredations of U 53 off the American coast were hailed by the population of Berlin and other German towns as a sure prelude to peace. She was the first armed U-boat to cross the Atlantic, but the German nation saw her multiplied by scores, if not by hundreds. Many optimistic folk held the belief, based on the wonderful tales that were told of huge Allied shipping losses, that the war would be over before the dawn of a new year. Britons are not the only people who have hugged delusions. After having put in at Newport News for a few hours and been visited by various notabilities, U 53 took up a position off the Nantucket Lightship, so well known to all Atlantic voyagers. She then calmly proceeded to sink half a dozen ships—British, Dutch, and Norwegian—under the nose of U.S. destroyers. According to accounts that were published in American newspapers at the time, the submersible had four torpedo-tubes, one 4–in. gun forward and one 3–in. gun aft, three periscopes, wireless apparatus, and engines of 1200 h.p. that enabled her to travel on the surface at eighteen knots. Her submerged speed was understood to be some four knots less.

U-boats were built at the Vulkan and Blohm and Voss shipyards of Hamburg; at Hoboken, in the former yards of the Société John Cockerill;[^[20]] at Puers, near Termonde; and at the great naval bases of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. Here the parts were assembled, for it is fairly evident that the thousand and one units of a modern submersible were constructed on many lathes in many parts of the Fatherland. For example, it is believed that UC 5, the small mine-layer of 200 tons displacement captured by the British Navy and exhibited off the Thames Embankment, was brought in sections to Zeebrugge and put together there.

When German liners were compelled to keep in American ports owing to the pressure of British sea-power, there seemed not the slightest likelihood that the United States would become an active participant in the war. In 1917 these selfsame steamers were traversing 3000 miles of ocean with armed tourists bound for Germany, giving the lie direct to the Imperial Chancellor’s hopeful message that Uncle Sam could not “send and maintain an army in Europe without injuring the transport and supply of the existing Entente armies and jeopardizing the feeding of the Entente people.” The mercantile marine of the United States is small, but with the aid of former German vessels and British ships her troops defied the submarine menace and were landed by the hundred thousand in France as America’s splendid contribution toward the liberation of the world. The spectacular appearance of the Deutschland and U 53 fade into insignificance before this amazing triumph.

Speaking at a luncheon given in London[^[21]] in honour of American Press representatives visiting England, Vice-Admiral Sims remarked that some of his countrymen regarded it as a miracle of their Navy that it had got a million and a half troops across the Atlantic in a few months and had protected them on the way. “We didn’t do that,” he avowed. “Great Britain did. She brought over two-thirds of them and escorted a half. We escort only one-third of the merchant vessels that come here.”

America has been most generous in her appreciation of the part played by Britain in the war.

CHAPTER IV
Pygmies among Giants

“This is the first time since the Creation that all the world has been obliged to unite to crush the Devil.”—Rudyard Kipling.

Two weeks after the declaration of war Count von Reventlow was cock-a-hoop regarding the “attitude of reserve” of what he was kind enough to term the “alleged sea-commanding Fleet of the greatest naval Power in the world.” “This fleet,” he asserted, “has now been lying idle for more than a fortnight, so far from the German coast that no cruiser and no German lightship has been able to discover it, and it is repeatedly declared officially, ‘German waters are free of the enemy.’”

Whether the Count was aware of the fact or not, British submarines were watching in the vicinity of the ironclad fortress of Heligoland three hours after hostilities had begun. Had the High Sea Fleet ventured out it would have been greeted with anything but an “attitude of reserve,” as part of it found to its cost on the 28th August, 1914. The initiative on that splendid occasion was taken by the British, who compelled the enemy to give battle by means of a delightful little ruse in which submarines not only played the leading part, but had “supplied the information on which these operations were based.”

At midnight on the 26th August Commodore Roger Keyes hoisted his broad pennant on the Lurcher, a small T.B.D. of only 765 tons, and accompanied by the Firedrake, of similar displacement, escorted eight submarines to sea. On the night of the 27th the vessels parted company, the submarines to take up positions preparatory to the following day’s work. Destroyer flotillas, the Battle Cruiser Squadron, the First Light Cruiser Squadron, and the Seventh Cruiser Squadron also left their various bases and made toward the Bight.

At dawn the Lurcher and the Firedrake carefully searched for U-boats the area that would be traversed by the battle-cruisers in the succeeding operations, and then began to spread the net into which it was hoped the Germans would fall. E 6, E 7, and E 8, travelling awash, proceeded in the direction of Heligoland, the destroyers following at some distance. They were “exposing themselves with the object of inducing the enemy to chase them to the westward.” In this decoy work the submarines were eminently successful. In the ensuing action they played no active part. “On approaching Heligoland,” to quote the Commodore’s dispatch, “the visibility, which had been very good to seaward, reduced to 5000 to 6000 yards, and this added considerably to the anxieties and responsibilities of the Commanding Officers of Submarines, who handled their vessels with coolness and judgment in an area which was necessarily occupied by friends as well as foes. Low visibility and calm sea are the most unfavourable conditions under which Submarines can operate, and no opportunity occurred of closing with the Enemy’s Cruisers to within torpedo range.” The German U-boats were no more fortunate. Three of them attacked the Battle Cruiser Squadron before it was engaged, to be frustrated by rapid manœuvring and the attention of four destroyers. The use of the helm also saved the Queen Mary and the Lowestoft during the battle.

The most enthralling incident in the fight centres around E 4, whose commander witnessed the sinking of the German torpedo-boat U 187 through his periscope. British destroyers immediately lowered their boats to pick up survivors. They were rewarded by salvoes from a cruiser. Lieutenant-Commander Ernest W. Leir prepared to torpedo the vessel, but before he could do so she had altered course and got out of range. Having covered the retirement of the destroyers, he went to the rescue of the boats, which had necessarily been abandoned. The story of what followed is well told by a lieutenant in a letter to the Morning Post.

“The Defender,” he writes, “having sunk an enemy, lowered a whaler to pick up her swimming survivors; before the whaler got back an enemy’s cruiser came up and chased the Defender, and thus she abandoned her whaler. Imagine their feelings; alone in an open boat without food; twenty-five miles from the nearest land, and that land the enemy’s fortress, with nothing but fog and foes around them. Suddenly a whirl alongside, and up, if you please, pops His Britannic Majesty’s submarine E 4, opens his conning-tower, takes them all on board, shuts up again, dives, and brings them home 250 miles! Is not that magnificent? No novelist would dare face the critics with an episode like that in his book, except, perhaps, Jules Verne; and all true!”

Another survivor asserts that while he was in the whaler about two hundred shells burst within twenty yards without doing the slightest damage to the company. A lieutenant and nine men of the Defender were stowed below in E 4, while a German officer, six unwounded men, and twenty-six others who had sustained injuries of various kinds were provided with water, biscuit, and a compass, and told to make for land. A German officer and two A.B.s were taken prisoners of war. “Lieutenant-Commander Leir’s action,” the Commodore justly remarks, “in remaining on the surface in the vicinity of the enemy, and in a visibility that would have placed his vessel within easy gun range of an enemy appearing out of the mist, was altogether admirable.” The enemy suffered the loss of three cruisers and a destroyer, and one cruiser and at least seven torpedo-boats were badly mauled.

Reference has already been made to the running fight in the North Sea on the 24th of the following January, when Sir David Beatty very effectively prevented a raid on the North-east Coast, and to the Battle of Jutland.[^[22]] The former affair, characterized by the Germans as having been broken off by the British, and in which they sank a hypothetical battle-cruiser, ended in the loss of the Blücher and serious damage to two other enemy battle-cruisers. The enemy squadron escaped because Sir David Beatty had chased them to the verge of “an area where danger from German submarines and mines prevented further pursuit.” The Germans were so keen on meeting the hated British that they sheered off immediately they sighted our ships and laid a straight course for home. Although the Lion and the destroyer Meteor were disabled, they reached harbour safely and the necessary repairs were speedily effected.

These are some of the high lights of a picture which has in it many dark and sombre shadows. Enemy submarines exacted a heavy toll of the British Navy. It would be a tedious business to detail the loss of every man-of-war lost by enemy action. Casualty lists make uncongenial reading, but it is well to bear in mind that Germany’s campaign was not entirely devoted to commerce-destroying. I shall therefore deal with some of the more outstanding triumphs of her attempt to control the Empire of the Ocean from below before dealing with the victories of her British rivals in the Realm of the Underseas.

H.M.S. Pathfinder was the first naval vessel to be lost by submarine action in the Great War. When the news was given to the public, it was announced that this fast light cruiser of 2700 tons had struck a mine “about twenty miles off the East Coast,” a geographical expression conveying the minimum of information. The intimation sent to relatives of those who lost their lives stated that the ship had been sunk by a submarine, which was the case. The discrepancy in the two statements was due to a belief that the Pathfinder had been blown up in the manner originally described. Subsequent investigation proved this to be incorrect. It was not contradicted at once because the Admiralty held that possibly the intelligence might hamper operations for catching the offender. It must have occurred to many people, however, that a notice issued shortly after the original communiqué, that all aids to navigation on the East Coast of England and Scotland were liable to be removed, was more or less connected with the loss of the cruiser and the presence of enemy submarines. When letters from survivors began to appear in the newspapers it was clear that a torpedo had caused the loss of the ship, which foundered twelve miles north of St Abb’s Head, Berwickshire. The approach of the weapon was observed by some of those on board, and the order was given for the engines to be stopped and reversed. It was too late. The explosion took place close to the bridge, causing the magazine to blow up.

“I saw a flash” says a survivor, “and the ship seemed to lift right out of the water. Down went the mast and forward funnel and fore part of the ship, and all the men there must have been blown to atoms.” When the order to man the boats was given it was found that only one boat was left whole; it capsized on reaching the water. Nothing could be done to save the Pathfinder, now partly on fire and in extremis. The death-knell of hope rang out sharp and clear: “Every man for himself.” Officers and crew jumped overboard and made for anything floatable that had been flung adrift by the explosion or thrown out by the men themselves when the last dread order had been given. Wonderful work was done by a lieutenant and a chief petty officer. Both of them powerful swimmers, they paddled about collecting wreckage, and pushing it toward those in need of help. One of the most miraculous escapes was that of Staff-Surgeon T. A. Smyth, who got jammed beneath a gun, was carried down with the ship, and escaped with a few bruises.

The dramatic swiftness attending the loss of the Aboukir, the Hogue, and the Cressy accentuated the ruthless nature of the sea campaign in the public mind. The three armoured cruisers were struck down within an hour by the same submarine. They were patrolling in company, and two of them were lost while going to the assistance of the Aboukir, which was believed to have struck a mine.

Sixty officers and over 1400 men, many of them reservists, perished as a sequel to Otto Weddigen’s prowess and their own humanity, or more than the total British losses at the battles of the Glorious First of June, St Vincent, the Nile, and Trafalgar. From a naval point of view the loss of the ships was unimportant. One is apt to forget that men-of-war have often a floating population equal to many a place in the United Kingdom which prides itself on being called a town. If several hundred inhabitants of such a spot were wiped out in a few minutes it would be regarded as a terrible happening. The tragedy of the affair would come home to us because a similar thing might occur where we live. Yet often enough a naval disaster arouses nothing more than scant sympathy and a mere comment. During the Great War those at sea in our big ships faced such disasters every hour of every day and every night.

Fortunately the Aboukir, the Hogue, and the Cressy did not constitute the “British North Sea Fleet,” as ultra-patriotic German newspapers inferred. According to his own statement, the commander of U 9 was eighteen nautical miles to the north-west of the Hook of Holland when he first sighted the cruisers, time 6.10 a.m. The vessels were proceeding slowly in line ahead, and the first torpedo struck the Aboukir, which was the middle ship. The reverberations of the explosion could be felt in the submarine, for “the shot had gone straight and true.” The Aboukir’s consorts closed on her, intent on offering assistance, but, as Weddigen points out, this was playing his game. They were torpedoed in rapid succession. “I had scarcely to move out of my position, which was a great aid, since it helped to keep me from detection.” One shot from the Cressy, he adds, “came unpleasantly near to us.” The commander pays a generous tribute to his foes: “They were brave, true to their country’s sea traditions.” In one thing only was he unsuccessful. The cruisers were unattended by a covering force of destroyers, but while U 9 was returning to her lair he came across some of these vessels. By exposing his periscope at intervals Weddigen hoped to entice them into a zone where capture or destruction by German warships was probable. Although the destroyers failed to put an end to his career, he likewise failed to get the flies into the spider’s parlour.

The Admiralty held that the commanders of the Hogue and the Cressy committed a pardonable error of judgment, and noted that “the conditions which prevail when one vessel of a squadron is injured in a mine-field or is exposed to submarine attack are analogous to those which occur in an action, and that the rule of leaving disabled ships to their own resources is applicable, so far at any rate as large vessels are concerned.”

The Hawke, a cruiser of 7350 tons, with an armament of two 9.2–in., ten 6–in., twelve 6–pdr., and five 3–pdr. guns, plus two 18–in. submerged torpedo-tubes, was characterized by some of those in the Service as an unlucky ship. She had collided with the White Star liner Olympic when that vessel was on her maiden voyage, an incident deemed quite sufficient to justify sinister prophecies of an untimely end. On that occasion she lost her ram, which was replaced by a straight stem. On the 15th October, 1914, when the war was only a little over two months old, she was torpedoed by U 29, with the loss of some three hundred officers and men. Her enemies were subsequently decorated with the Iron Cross at the hands of the Crown Princess.

H.M.S. Theseus, a vessel of the same class which was patrolling with the Hawke in northern waters at the time, was attacked first, but managed to escape. The submarine then aimed at the Hawke, hitting her amidships on the starboard side aft of the fore funnel, and probably blowing up the magazine, as in the case of the Pathfinder. She settled very rapidly, “at God knows what angle,” according to an eye-witness. She had nearly a hundred watertight doors, but even they can buckle and jam, and are not explosive-proof. When the order was given to abandon ship a few of the crew managed to get into one of the boats, while about forty others scrambled on to a raft. Commander Bernhard Pratt-Barlow was of the company. “There are too many on this raft,” he remarked, “I will swim to another.” He dived in, but was never seen again. It was merely prolonging the agony for most of those who remained. Before night many of the poor fellows had succumbed to exposure and the bitter cold. After being on the raft for twenty-three hours the survivors were picked up by a destroyer, and after recovery proceeded to Portsmouth for a new kit. The last seven words epitomize the splendid spirit of the British Navy.

The Hermes, an old cruiser used as a sea-plane-carrying ship, was sunk in the Straits of Dover in October 1914, while returning from Dunkirk. She was the victim of two torpedoes fired by a U-boat. The sea was choppy, which may account for the submarine’s escape, for she was not seen. As the Hermes was near the warships engaged in bombarding the Dunes in support of the Belgians, it is more than likely that the enemy vessel had been hopeful of catching larger fry, an expectation which did not materialize. One sailor who endeavoured to make himself more or less comfortable on an upturned table was asked if he was training for the next Derby, while two fellows in similar straits informed their friends in the water that they were Oxford and Cambridge. The Hermes must have been what is called a ‘matey’ ship. The majority of her company were saved.

Another loss to the Navy in 1914 was the Niger, a torpedo gunboat built in 1892 and sister ship to the Speedy, mined on the 3rd September.

The little vessel of 810 tons was torpedoed while on patrol duty by the first U-boat which succeeded in dealing destruction in the Downs. Despite a high wind and a heavy sea, all the officers and seventy-seven men were saved, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of three Deal boats and the fact that many of the bluejackets were wearing life-saving collars. The submarine was seen approaching from the direction of South Sand Head Lightship, but as the Niger was anchored she was an easy prey. At the moment of impact the wireless operator was actually sending the S O S signal. When the explosion occurred Lieutenant-Commander A. T. Muir was on the navigation bridge, which, despite severe injuries, he vacated only after every other person had left the sinking vessel.

The gunboat was struck abaft the foremast. Although the bow was soon under water, she kept afloat for quite twenty minutes, probably because orders had been given for the watertight doors to be closed. One poor fellow was lugged through one of the portholes; another scrambled aboard after he had been rescued, hauled down the flag, and returned to the boat.

The torpedoing of the Formidable was an inauspicious omen for 1915. This, the fourth ship to bear the name of one of Hawke’s prizes in the battle of Quiberon Bay, was a pre-Dreadnought of 15,000 tons, armed with four 12–in. and twelve 6–in. guns, twenty-six smaller weapons, and four submerged torpedo-tubes. She was encountering a south-west gale in the Channel at 2.20 a.m. on New Year’s Day when a torpedo struck her abaft the starboard magazine and abreast of No. 1 stokehold. The Formidable was the first victim of a submarine attack in the darkness of night. While boats were being got away, and chairs, tables, and other floating articles thrown overboard for use as life-savers, a torpedo exploded on her port side. Captain Loxley, puffing at a cigarette, gave orders from the bridge as coolly and collectedly as though the Formidable was making her way to Portsmouth Harbour on an even keel in the piping times of peace. “Into the water with you! She’s going!” he sang out. “Good-bye, lads. Every man for himself, and may God help you all!” He went down with his vessel and as goodly a company of sea-dogs as ever trod the deck of a British battleship. Over five hundred officers and men were coffined in the Formidable or drowned in attempting to get away.[^[23]] The loss of this useful, if obsolescent, vessel was severely criticized by Admiral Lord Charles Beresford.[^[24]] He commented on the fact that the squadron of which the battleship was a unit had started from port with destroyers and afterward sent them back, also that the ship had slackened speed in an area known to be infested with submarines.

Although it was announced that the battleship Russell struck a mine in the Mediterranean, the Germans claimed that she was sunk by one of their U-boats. This was the second pre-Dreadnought and the third flagship to pay the price of Admiralty during the war. The Russell, named after one of six famous admirals, was commissioned in 1903, and completed her career on the 27th April, 1916. She carried four 12–in., twelve 6–in., ten 12–pdr., and two 3–pdr. guns, and four torpedo-tubes. Although Rear-Admiral S. R. Fremantle, M.V.O., the captain, twenty-four other officers, and 676 men were saved, over 100 of her complement were reported as missing.

Of the five capital ships lost by Britain in the Dardanelles campaign, the Ocean and the Irresistible were lost by mines or torpedoed from the shore, the Goliath was torpedoed in a destroyer attack, and the Triumph and the Majestic were submarined. On the 22nd May, 1915, the periscope of a U-boat was sighted from the battleship Prince George. A couple of rounds made the submersible take cover. That was the first occasion on which enemy underwater craft had put in an appearance in the vicinity of the Gallipoli peninsula. Three days later the Swiftsure was on the verge of being attacked, but her gunners proved too wide-awake and drove off the enemy. A little later the submarine discharged a torpedo at the Vengeance, and missed. On the 26th the enemy was seen again, escaped, and plugged two or three torpedoes into the Triumph, lying stationary off the now famous, or infamous, Gaba Tepe. Her nets were down, but the weapons went through them with almost as much ease as a circus clown jumps through a hoop covered with tissue-paper. Henceforth devotees of this form of protection had little to say. The battleship disappeared in fifteen minutes, fortunately without a heavy roll of casualties. Three officers and fifty-three of her considerable company were lost. Like the Swiftsure, her sister ship, the Triumph was built for the Chilian Government and purchased by Britain.

An enemy submarine exacted another toll on the following day, when the Majestic, one of the oldest battleships on active service, was sunk while supporting the troops against an attack by the Turks. Within four minutes of the explosion, says a member of the French Expeditionary Force who witnessed the catastrophe, the Majestic turned completely over and went down. “It was a terrible moment,” he adds, “but it was also sublime when 600 men, facing death mute and strong, were thrown into the sea, covered and caught in the torpedo nets, which ensnared them like an immense cast-net among the gigantic eddies and the profound sobs of their dear annihilated battleship. I shall never forget that infernal instant when submarines, aeroplanes, cannons, and quick-firing guns dealt death around me. And yet this vision only lasted the space of a flash of lightning, for we too looked death in the face, and in our own ship’s boats we took part in the finest rescue that the palette of an artist ever represented.”

So the French have forgiven us for Nelson and Trafalgar!

The last battleship to be sunk by a U-boat in the World War was H.M.S. Britannia, lost near Gibraltar on the 9th November, 1918. Two explosions occurred, killing some forty of the crew. An hour and a half later, while she was still afloat, the periscope of a submersible was spotted. The guns of the stricken leviathan were trained and fired, with what success is uncertain. Then two destroyers dropped depth charges where the enemy was seen to submerge. If her ugly sides ever rose again they certainly did not do so in the vicinity of the Britannia. Shortly afterward the battleship turned turtle in deep water.

CHAPTER V
Tragedy in the Middle Seas

“Germany must for all time to come maintain her claim to sea-power.”—Lt.-Gen. Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven, Deputy Chief of the German General Staff.

The Adriatic afforded much interesting naval news. The strategy of the Austrians was exactly that of the High Sea Fleet—tip-and-run raids and avoidance of battle whenever possible. During the blockade of the Austro-Hungarian naval ports of Pola and Cattaro previous to Italy’s becoming an active participant in the war, the battleships and cruisers of the French Fleet were frequent objects of attacks on the part of enemy underwater craft. The armoured cruiser Leon Gambetta escaped being submarined on the 2nd September, 1914, only to fall a victim on the 27th April, 1915. The Austrian U 5, a small boat with a surface displacement of 235 tons, commanded by Lieutenant von Trapp, picked her up some twenty miles south-west of Cape Leuca. It was a brilliant moonlight night, the armoured cruiser was steaming slowly, and hitherto no U-boat in the Adriatic had betrayed activity after the passing of day. The great black shape, with its four massive funnels, stood out a mammoth silhouette as the first torpedo sped on its devastating errand. It struck the port side, wrecked the dynamos, and plunged the ship in darkness, precluding the possibility of a momentary flash of a search-light to discover the assailant. The wireless was also put out of action by the same cause. A second torpedo wrought havoc in one of the boiler-rooms. “From the heeling of the cruiser,” says a Vienna account, “Lieutenant Trapp concluded that a further torpedo was unnecessary.”

An effort was made to beach the ship. This failing, it became the difficult task of Captain Andre to provide for the safety of his crew, a task not only hampered by lack of illumination, but by the boats having been swung inboard to ensure the more effective use of anti-torpedo guns. “The boats are for you; we officers will remain,” Admiral Sénès told the crew without the slightest affectation of heroism, although neither he nor any single individual on the quarterdeck was to be saved. He called the men his children, told them to keep steady and take to the boats. “Forward, sailors of France!” he cried. “My destiny is here,” said Commander Depérière, the worthy colleague of so gallant an officer. “I die with my ship. Vive la France!” Portable torches were used to show the way to the wounded and the sick. To make escape easier the captain issued orders to fill the starboard compartments so as to counterbalance the intake of water on the other side. He did not want the great ship to turn turtle before mes enfants had been afforded an opportunity to escape. One officer, anxious to restrain any undue haste that would retard escape, took out a cigar from his case, lit it, and puffed away as calmly as though he were in Toulon Harbour instead of standing in a foot of water on a ship that was rapidly sinking under him. “Vive la France!” shouted the officers on the bridge; “Vive la France!” echoed the many who had failed to get away. With that ringing cheer of Victory and not of Defeat, the Leon Gambetta and 684 officers and men of the gallant company disappeared out of the night into the greater darkness. From first to last the tragedy took just ten minutes.

Those who were saved owed their lives to the fine courage of the commanders of Italian torpedo-boats and destroyers, who ran the risk of being mistaken for French men-of-war.[^[25]] Jean and Jacques are never at a loss when it comes to paying a compliment. Had they been British sailors who were pulled out of the water, a gruff but well-meant “Much obliged” would probably have sufficed. Frenchmen are more artistic. They cried “Vive l’Italie!” As for U 5, when she returned to Cattaro she was naturally received with honours.

The Danton, a French battleship with a displacement of 18,028 tons, completed at Brest in the spring of 1909, was on the point of celebrating the seventh anniversary of her launching when she was struck down in the Mediterranean on the 19th March, 1917. She had taken many months to build, but took only thirty minutes to sink. Destruction comes easier to man than construction. Two torpedoes accomplished her end. Fortunately the catastrophe occurred in the afternoon, and the tragedy of the personnel of the Leon Gambetta was not repeated, although even then 296 of her company lost their lives. The destroyer Massue and patrol vessels rescued the remaining 806 officers and men.

The story of how Lieutenant-Captain Robert Moraht sent the Danton to her doom was subsequently told by himself. The following is based on his lively narrative.

At midday the U-boat was off the south-west point of Sardinia, and those of the crew not actually required for the working of the ship were enjoying a breath of fresh air on deck with a delightful sense of having nothing whatever to do. Moraht was below, when the whistle of the speaking-tube blew a short, sharp blast. He answered the summons readily enough. “A steamer on the port bow,” came the message, spoken in a tone of some urgency. Almost before the commander had taken his ear from the instrument the men were clattering down the ladders and taking up action stations. Reaching the conning-tower with some difficulty by reason of the undue haste, Moraht distinctly saw the outlines of the vessel whose appearance had so suddenly changed their programme for the afternoon. The commander picked it up with his glasses. “French battleship!” announced a fellow officer who was standing at the telescope. At the moment the commander’s thoughts were centred on whether the U-boat had been seen, whether hunter and hare were both aware of the other’s presence.

Apparently not. The Danton kept on her zigzag course, as yet far out of range. Had she sighted the submarine she could have got clear away; there was little chance now, for Moraht had submerged. Presently a destroyer made her appearance, likewise zigzagging, and in advance of the battleship. The U-boat was nearer the object of her vengeance, and likewise nearer danger. Destroyers are to submarines what terriers are to rats. Moraht felt a shade uncomfortable. Besides, a battleship in the Mediterranean, or any other sea for the matter of that, does not go about blind. Keen eyes look out for her safety and their own. What the men on the destroyer might miss, those on the Danton might find. The commander of the submarine was sparing in the use of the periscope. There is a tell-tale wake when that apparatus is above the surface that human device cannot dispel. The waters, parted by the tube, embrace as though long separated, leaving a trail of emotion behind. Moraht popped it up now and again as necessity compelled, took his bearings, lowered it, and checked his course.

The weather conditions on this ‘Mediterranean Front’ changed in favour of the Germans, as they usually did in France, according to popular belief, whenever the Allies took the offensive. Listen to the commander: “A considerable lightening of the mist was rolling up from the north-west, and the wind was freshening; thick white tufts of foam stood on the deep blue sea. That was the light we wanted. Anyhow, nobody saw us. The destroyer raced past without suspicion about 600 yards off, then the giant ship herself came before our bow. Everything was just right to-day. ‘Both tubes, attention! No. 1—let go! No. 2—let go.’”

The periscope vanished, its wash was replaced by that of the torpedoes and a liberal accompaniment of bubbles. The weapons, at an interval of five seconds between them, tore the ship asunder. Later, from a safer distance, Moraht took a peep at his victim in her death-agony. The rudder was hard to port, proof that the twin harbingers of destruction had been seen and a fruitless attempt made to dodge them. The torpedoes could scarcely have performed their duty more loyally. The Danton’s massive keel was where her turrets ought to have been; her bulgy side, with casemates resembling a fortress, revealed “two holes like barn doors.”

Moraht says that his boat ‘buck-jumped’ after the shots. This means that the compensating tanks, which fill with water to make up for loss of displacement when a torpedo leaves the tube, did not act quickly enough. As a consequence the periscope and the upper part of the superstructure appeared above the surface for a second or two. The Massue dropped depth charges, and the ‘buck-jump’ may not have been entirely unconnected with them.

To-day the submarine that robbed the Allies of a fine ship mounting four 12–in., a dozen 9.4–in., and sixteen 2.9–in. guns does not figure as a fighting unit in what remains of the German Navy. She has joined the Danton,

Visiting the bottom of the monstrous world.

Austrian submarines depleted the ranks of Italy’s naval forces by several ships, but the hereditary enemy of the Land of Dante lost considerably more at the hands of Italy, which also policed some 300 miles of coast with flotillas of hydroplanes in addition to the regular naval units. During a reconnaissance in force in the Upper Adriatic, the Amalfi, an armoured cruiser of 9958 tons displacement, carrying four 10–in. and eight 7.5–in. guns, was torpedoed at dawn on the 7th July, 1915. According to information received, it was the intention of the Austrians to bombard the Italian coast. While searching the Dalmatian littoral for the enemy, with the idea of bringing him to battle before he could carry out his object, the cruiser was lost. The ship listed heavily to port almost immediately, and sank in less than thirty minutes. Nearly all her officers and crew, numbering 684, were saved. Before giving orders to leave the ship the commander lined up his men on the quarterdeck and shouted, “Long live the King! Long live Italy!” The response was not less hearty than if they had been given a week’s leave.

One instance of extraordinary bravery stands out conspicuously, though the discipline was exemplary in every respect. While in the water the chief engineer was drawn toward the revolving propellers, and one of his arms was completely severed. A surgeon witnessed the incident when swimming at no great distance away. With powerful strokes he reached the injured officer, took off his own belt, applied it as a tourniquet, and then supported the sufferer until help arrived. The surgeon was on the verge of collapse, but he had performed a feat probably unique in the annals of first aid.

The second armoured ship to be lost by Italy was torpedoed three weeks later in the same sea. She bore the honoured name of Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose presentation swords of gold were kept on board as treasures beyond price. The cruiser formed part of a squadron that had been bombarding the railway and fortifications at Cattaro, where a number of Austrian battleships had taken refuge, unwilling to face four Italian vessels which had outlived their youth. The enemy adopted much more stealthy tactics. As the Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Vettor Pisani, the Varese, and the Ferruccio were steaming away they sent out a flotilla of submarines. The first attack was skilfully fended. Subjected to a withering fire, in which the Giuseppe Garibaldi joined, two of the U-boats sought safety in flight. U 4 was so badly damaged that she sank. A fourth either lay ‘doggo’ for a time or returned to the attack a little later. Her first torpedo, fired at the close range of about 500 yards, missed, but the second did such damage, despite the cruiser’s belt of 6–in. armour, that saving her was out of the question. The majority of her crew of 540 were rescued.

When Germany and Austria arranged to drench Europe in blood in pursuit of Teutonic ambitions, the Austro-Hungarian Navy possessed three completed Dreadnoughts, of which the Viribus Unitis was one. This powerful battleship of 22,000 tons, carrying twelve 13–in. guns, twelve 5.9–in. quick-firers, six torpedo-tubes, and a complement of nearly 1000 officers and men, was attacked in Pola Harbour by an intrepid French submarine, which succeeded in damaging her to such an extent that she was rendered useless for a considerable time. Had she been at sea it is probable the Viribus Unitis would have sunk, but plenty of assistance was handy, and she reached dry dock with a very ugly wound in her hull and certain portions of her engines so badly wrecked that the workshops at Trieste had to get busy to provide new parts. This was in December 1914. She was still in Pola Harbour in May 1918, when a little Italian motor-boat penetrated the mine-field, cables, and steel nets guarding the entrance and completed the discomfiture of the great vessel. Captain Pellegrini and three volunteers discharged two torpedoes at the Viribus Unitis, and after seeing them take effect, sank their own tiny craft to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemy. This was the thirteenth operation by the Italian Navy against enemy bases, and was completely successful. Apparently the Dreadnought was resurrected, for she was again sunk in November 1918 by means of a time-charge laid by two Italian officers.

Italy also lost several fine destroyers by attack from Austrian or German U-boats. The Impetuoso was submarined in the Straits of Otranto on the 10th July, 1916, with small loss of personnel, but the fate which befell the Nembo was more tragic and more romantic. The Nembo was escorting a transport to Valona. The submarine was sighted on board the destroyer, whose commander at once changed course so as to cover his charge, which had some 3000 soldiers on board. He succeeded in doing this, and the torpedo intended for the transport struck the Nembo with full force. She at once began to settle, but the indomitable officer swung his ship round with the intention of ramming his assailant. Loss of speed and gain of water on the part of the destroyer gave the U-boat time to submerge, but the commander still had another card to play. He ordered depth charges to be dropped overboard. There was a mammoth upheaval of water, followed by the reappearance of the enemy showing evident signs of distress. Shortly afterward destroyer and submarine went to a common grave, the Nembo carrying with her most of her gallant crew, while eleven men from U 16 managed to scramble into one of the destroyer’s boats that floated by without a solitary occupant.

Vienna newspapers, like those of Berlin, endeavoured to bolster up the naval cause of the Central Powers by deliberately manufacturing desirable news. In January 1915 the Austrians were told that their E 12 had sunk the French battleship Courbet, a Dreadnought armed with a dozen 12–in. guns. That was sufficiently wide of the mark in all conscience, for it was absolutely untrue, but the loss of the Jean Bart by colliding with her when going to her assistance was tagged on to make the victory still more complete. E 12 certainly did succeed in hitting the Jean Bart with a torpedo, but the material damage was of slight importance and was speedily repaired. At the time the Courbet was many miles away from the scene of the imaginary action—“in excellent trim,” as the French Ministry of Marine stated. On another occasion the French battleship Vérité was alleged to have been seriously damaged by a German submarine.

This tale of disaster, terrible in the loss of great ships and greater men, is at the worst only a record of what is legitimate in modern naval warfare. Those who thought, like Nobel, that the more violent the agencies to be employed in conflict the more likelihood of preserving peace had their fond delusions shattered in the saturnalia of the centuries. Likewise those who sow the wind often reap the whirlwind.

CHAPTER VI
Horton, E 9, and Others

“If the submarine had succeeded our Army in France would have withered away.”—D. Lloyd George.

Previous pages have had much to say about U-boats. The northern mists, from the obscurity of which the Grand Fleet occasionally emerged into the broad sunlight of publicity, were as nothing compared with the fog of war which veiled the hourly activities of British and Allied submarines. Scouting is notoriously hazardous and necessarily private. Our underseas craft had sufficient of it. In the performance of this task they also tackled much other business, tracked and sent to the bottom vessels of their own species though not of their own tribe, wormed their way through waters sealed to surface ships, ferreted a course through strings of floating mines, dodged unanchored infernal machines, convoyed in safety hundreds of thousands of troops, and stalked men-of-war. They proved themselves friends to all but the Ishmael of the seas; and when opportunity served they snatched him from a watery grave when he ought to have perished.

The first German warship to be sunk by a British submarine was the Hela. She fell to E 9 on the 13th September, 1914. Heaven knows it was not for lack of searching for legitimate prey that nothing had been secured by our underwater craft ere the second month of the war. Like Villeneuve’s ships before Trafalgar, if any German vessels occasionally took an airing they also took good care to keep near home. The Hela, a light cruiser of 2040 tons displacement, with a complement of 178, of little consequence for fighting purposes because her heaviest guns were 15½-pdrs., was only six miles south of Heligoland when she was torpedoed by Lieutenant-Commander Max K. Horton.

E 9, it may be well to note, had already won her spurs in the prelude to the battle of Heligoland Bight. Two torpedoes were fired, with an interval of fifteen seconds between. One hit. Greatly daring, about a quarter of an hour later Horton took just the suspicion of a glance in her direction through the periscope, and saw that she was heeling over to starboard. When he again ventured to use his ‘eye’ there was no Hela, and a trawler had gone to the rescue of her crew. “What we are so proud about is that it is the first torpedo fired from a [British] submarine that made a hit,” one of the crew wrote, “and it has been a great competition among all our boats to get first one in, and of course we consider ourselves ‘the cock of the submarine flotilla’ now.”

A number of German torpedo-boats hunted for E 9 during several hours after the destruction of the cruiser. Yet the following day saw her calmly at work examining the outer anchorage of the island fortress, “a service attended by considerable risk.” An exceptionally heavy westerly gale was blowing on the 14th and continued for a week. On a lee shore, with short, steep seas, the lot of the submarines in the Bight was both hazardous and unpleasant. “There was no rest to be obtained,” says the Commodore, “and when cruising at a depth of sixty feet the submarines were rolling considerably, and pumping—i.e. vertically moving about twenty feet.” Officers and men were granted prize bounty amounting to £1050 for sinking the Hela, an exploit which the crew regarded as avenging the Pathfinder.

Further insight into the hazardous life of those who operated in the Bight is afforded by the following extract from another official report:

“When a submarine is submerged, her captain alone is able to see what is taking place. The success of the enterprise and the safety of the vessel depend on his skill and nerve and the prompt, precise execution of his orders by the officers and men under his command. Our submarines have been pioneers in waters that have been mined. They have been subjected to skilful and well-thought-out anti-submarine tactics by a highly trained and determined enemy, attacked by gunfire and torpedo, driven to lie at the bottom at a great depth to preserve battery power, hunted for hours at a time by hostile torpedo craft, and at times forced to dive under our own warships to avoid interfering with their movements. Sudden alterations of course and depth, the swirl of propellers overhead and the concussion of bursting shells, give an indication to the crew of the risks to which they are being exposed, and it speaks well for the moral of these young officers and men, and their gallant faith in their captains, that they have invariably carried out their duties quietly, keenly, and confidently under conditions that might well have tried the hardened veteran.”

On the 6th of the succeeding month E 9 was ‘at it again.’ She was patrolling off the estuary of the Ems, near the much-advertised island of Borkum, which boasted some of the most powerful guns ever mounted for coast defence. Presently the enemy’s torpedo-boat S 126 came along, entirely unsuspecting.[^[26]]

Horton was really after bigger game, but when out shooting pheasants one does not disdain a pigeon if nothing else is available. He was keen on a battleship, and only a little while before had spotted a fair-sized cruiser, an excellent ‘second best.’ When enthusiasm was at its height, and triumph reasonably sure, circumstances compelled him to dive. We are not told what those circumstances were. Perhaps we should not be far wrong if we ventured the opinion that they were intimately connected with the noisome presence of fleeter craft whose pet particular prey is the British submarine. When the officer had another opportunity to observe what was going on in the upper world, the larger ship had gone out of sight and a smaller vessel come into view.

Within a hundred yards of E 9 was S 126, followed at some distance by a second T.B. Horton waited until the leader had travelled another 500 yards, ensuring a ‘comfortable’ range, and then fired. The commander evidently believed in even numbers, for he discharged two ‘rooties’ at his quarry, as he had done when attacking the Hela. It was just as well that he did, for one missed. The other struck the enemy amidships and worked deadly havoc. Coastguards on the Dutch island of Schiermonnikoog, opposite Borkum, and some seven miles from the scene, heard the roar of the explosion, and saw a great column of water shoot up near the forepart of the ship. In three minutes all that remained of S 126 was flotsam. She went down bow foremost, like a leaping salmon. As the stern rose her men took to the water. Most of them appear to have been rescued by a cruiser which came up a little later, but did not consider it advisable to make a long stay. “Look at her!” Horton cried. “The beggar’s going down!” as though it was the most surprising thing in the world for a ship to sink after having a 21–in. torpedo plugged in her side.

The second torpedo-boat, unwilling to run the risk of sharing her consort’s fate, made off, leaving the shipwrecked crew of thirty-six to fend for themselves. The lost vessel, launched in 1905, had a displacement of 420 tons, and carried three 6–pdr. guns and three torpedo-tubes.

The Second Exploit of E 9
When Lieutenant-Commander Max K. Horton torpedoed S 126 in the mouth of the Ems
E. S. Hodgson

When E 9 swung into Harwich safe and sound the crews of destroyers and other craft based there knew that Horton and his gallant little band had scored another hit. No wireless conveyed the intelligence. She was displaying the White Ensign, plus two unofficial flags that are the pride and glory of the Submarine Squadron. These little bits of bunting, one yellow and the other white, bore the death’s-head and cross-bones so intimately associated with the pirate of yester-year, and more appropriate to the Huns. The former represented the ‘tuft’ of the Hela, the latter that of the latest victim. The officers and crew received further prize money to the tune of £350 for ‘digging out’ S 126. Horton was awarded the D.S.O., and noted for early promotion. On the last day of 1914 he became Commander.

The news was spread abroad by Germany that the action had taken place in Dutch territorial waters, within a mile of the shore. The Dutch Naval Staff promptly contradicted this report, pointing out that sands extend for two and a half miles from Schiermonnikoog, off which it was alleged E 9 had committed this grave misdeed.

Horton’s succeeding coup took place in the Baltic, and rightly belongs to a later chapter. I introduce it here because it will better help us to appreciate his worth.

Shortly after the Germans had occupied Libau, Russia’s most southerly port in the Baltic, a certain mysterious submarine made her presence felt in the Mediterranean of the North. An official bulletin from Petrograd stated that the boat was British, and that she had sunk the pre-Dreadnought Pommern off Danzig on the 2nd July, 1915. The Censor in London removed the reference to the nationality of the submarine, but a little later it leaked out that E 9 had resumed operations and was responsible for the disaster. In reply to a question put by Commander Bellairs, Dr Macnamara answered that no official report had been transmitted to the Admiralty, “but from a semi-official communication received from the Russian Government it appears that the name of the officer referred to is Commander Max K. Horton, D.S.O.,” which statement was received with enthusiastic cheers by the House of Commons.

The Pommern was completed in 1907, and displaced 13,200 tons. She carried four 11–in. and fourteen 6.7–in. guns, and a crew of over seven hundred officers and men. The Pommern was the first German battleship to be sunk in the war. The coveted Order of St George (Fourth Class) was bestowed on the Commander by Tsar Nicholas. The German Government vigorously denied that a battleship had been lost, but

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again,

and all the contradictions in the world failed to resurrect the Pommern.

The energetic E boats did not remain in obscurity very long. In the following month the enemy endeavoured to secure naval control of the Gulf of Riga. Their first attempt, made on the 8th August with nine battleships, twelve cruisers, and a brave showing of torpedo-boats, was a complete failure. It was followed up eight days later by a more ambitious force. Favoured by heavy sea fog, the enemy cleared a channel through the mines and net defences at the entrance within forty-eight hours, and were then ready to penetrate farther. If we accept the assertion of the Russians, the Germans paid dearly for their adventure. Against their own losses of two gunboats and several torpedo craft they assessed those of the Germans at two cruisers, and eight torpedo-boats either sunk or badly damaged. In addition, the Moltke, a battle-cruiser, was torpedoed by E 1. She was not mortally wounded, and was towed back to harbour, where she remained until Beatty claimed her. The Huns gained nothing and lost much in this attempt to dominate the Gulf.

On the 19th August, 1916, Lieut.-Commander Robert R. Turner of E 23 attacked an enemy battleship. The vessel, a member of the Nassau family, the first type of Dreadnought to be built in a German yard, was powerfully armed with twelve 11–in., twelve 5.9–in., and sixteen 21–pdr. guns, in addition to half a dozen submerged torpedo-tubes. The displacement was 18,600 tons, and the speed 19–20 knots, but experts held that the class was a failure when compared with our own earlier Dreadnoughts.

The first torpedo fired by E 23 badly damaged the battleship. Of that there is not the slightest doubt. Five destroyers immediately went to her assistance. While these were engaged in escorting her, a second torpedo hit the target, and the officer in command of the submarine reported that he “believed she was sunk.” Then began a war of contradiction. The Germans stated that one of their submarines had attacked a British destroyer and a cruiser, both of which went down shortly afterward. They admitted that the submarine was rammed, but added the rider that she had returned to harbour ‘badly damaged.’ The question of the loss of a second U-boat was carefully hedged. “The statement can only be verified when all reports from our submarines are to hand”—an ingenious ruse. The report anent British losses was without foundation.

As in the above case, it is not always possible to ascertain the result of a shot. Many other instances of likely losses could be cited. A British submarine saw four battleships of the Kaiser class off the Danish coast. After making all ready to attack, the boat broke surface of her own accord owing to the exceedingly heavy swell. This terrible risk was run quite accidentally, but she got under again. Four torpedoes were discharged at a range of 4000 yards at the third ship in the line. Two explosions proved that the weapons had performed their tasks, and the commander was of opinion that the third and fourth ships had both been hit. He was about to verify his belief when a destroyer was heard racing in his direction, followed by others. For two hours they patrolled in search of the boat that had shot this ‘bolt from the blue.’ They failed to find her. Two depth charges nearly did, but not quite, and a sweep dragged ominously over her hull. Puzzle: Did the battleships founder? The Marineamt in Berlin knows but does not say. In fifty-one months of conflict British submarines successfully attacked forty-three enemy warships.

A British submarine, referred to in a Dutch official communication as C 55, was patrolling in the North Sea on the 27th July, 1917, when she picked up a German steamer. This was the Batavier II, of 1328 tons net, proceeding in the direction of Hamburg. The North Sea, or ‘German Ocean’ as those who dwell on its eastern fringe fondly call it, had not been darkened by a mercantile ship of that nationality for many long months, and even the Batavier II was British-built and had been captured from the Dutch. The submarine overhauled her, and after having sustained damage by gunfire, she was captured, her crew escaping in their boats. A prize crew took possession of the vessel and endeavoured to bring her to port. The idea had to be abandoned because she made so much water. The opening of her sea-cocks speedily sent her beneath the waves. Twenty-eight survivors of the steamer’s crew were subsequently landed at Texel.

According to the Dutch Navy Department, the steamer was towing the motor-ship Zeemeeuw at the time, and at the opening of the engagement both vessels were outside territorial waters. When they were abandoned they had again entered the three-mile limit. The prize crew succeeded in getting the Batavier II outside, but owing to her disability and a strong current she again drifted within the Dutch sphere of influence. A Dutch torpedo-boat then hoisted the signal “Respect neutrality,” and the submarine retired. The Zeemeeuw was taken in tow and conducted to Nieuwediep.

Less than a month later the Renate Leonhardt, another German steamer, attempted to run the blockade. Instead she ran ashore near the Helder, and after being refloated was met on the high seas by a British submarine, which made short work of her. The crew were picked up and taken to Holland.

Let me close this chapter with a contrast. Fiendish brutality characterized the behaviour of most German U-boat commanders. It mattered not whether the ship attacked was sailing under the colours of the Allies or of neutrals. To them war was a biological necessity, a phase in the development of life, to be waged relentlessly and vitriolic ally. The more cruel the method, the shorter the conflict. That was the Prussian theory, and the Great Conflict proved it false. To the German the neutral country was only neutral when it was working for the Fatherland. Often enough, even in these circumstances, he preferred to regard it as an open enemy. The lanes of the ocean are strewn with the wrecks of neutral craft and dead men assassinated by “our sea-warriors” in their hideous attempt at world-conquest. I quote a report received from the commander of a British submarine. The statements are corroborated by the neutrals of the world:

“On the morning of March 14 [1917] His Majesty’s submarine E —, when proceeding on the surface in the North Sea, sighted two suspicious craft ahead. On approaching them, however, she found them to be ship’s boats sailing south, and containing some thirty members of the crew of the Dutch steamship L. M. Casteig, which had been torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine some distance to the northward over twenty-four hours previously.

“After ascertaining that there was both food and water in the boats, E — took them in tow at once, and proceeded toward the Dutch coast at the greatest possible speed consistent with safety, in view of the state of the weather. Some four hours later the Norwegian steamship Norden was sighted, and as she showed some natural reluctance about approaching the submarine, not knowing that it was a British one, the boats containing the Dutch crew cast off the tow and pulled toward her. E — kept the boats in sight until they were seen to have been picked up by the Norden, and then proceeded on the course which had been interrupted for this act of mercy.”

Mercy as a biological necessity of war! It is a suggestive thought, of British origin. It compares favourably with the treatment of forty of the crew of the s.s. Belgian Prince, who were lined up on U 44 and drowned as the submersible plunged. About a fortnight later Paul Wagenführ, the instigator of this diabolical outrage, was drowned with his confederates. U 44 was their coffin.

CHAPTER VII
Submarine v. Submarine

“Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy.”

Shakespeare

At the beginning of the war it was freely stated that the one ship a submarine could not fight was the submarine. This theory, like so many others, went by the board in the process of time. Finally the notion was completely reversed. Allied underwater craft ferreted out many an enemy submersible. Indeed, if we accept the authority of Rear-Admiral S. S. Robison, of the United States Navy, they did “more than any other class of vessel” to defeat the U-boats.

The French and Italians name the units of their underseas navy. They are not vague, impersonal things denoted by a letter and a number, after the fashion of an inhabitant of Portland Prison. The first recorded action between submarines took place in June 1915. It remains one of the mysteries of the war. The Italian submarine Medusa, after carrying out several daring reconnaissances, was torpedoed by an Austrian submersible of almost similar type and size. The Medusa was quite a small boat, built at Spezzia in 1911, with a displacement of 241 tons on the surface and 295 tons below water. Her crew numbered seventeen. She was scouting in the Adriatic when the incident occurred, and we must presume her to have been comparatively close to the enemy without being aware of the fact, otherwise her action is unaccountable. For some reason or other she came to the surface, whereupon the commander of the Austrian U-boat sighted her through his periscope and torpedoed her. An officer and four men were picked up. According to a later report, divers were sent down to examine the condition of the Medusa with a view to salvage operations. They made the startling discovery that the wreck of an Austrian submersible was lying close to that of the Italian, suggesting that the two vessels had participated in a duel in which both had got a fatal shot home and neither was the victor.

In August of the same year an Italian destroyer was escorting a submarine, when the commander of the former became aware that his ship was the object of attention on the part of an Austrian U-boat. He could see the periscope just sticking out of the water. Judging by her movements the enemy was manœuvring for a favourable position from which to strike. The destroyer sought to cover her charge, and did so. At the same time the submarine took advantage of the protection thus afforded, and played the same game as her rival. Everything being ready for the projected attack, the destroyer changed course so as to give her consort an unlimited field for operations. The Austrian opened fire from one of her bow tubes, and scored a miss. The Italian, not satisfied with the target presented, made no reply. Both tried to out-manœuvre the other, and admirably succeeded for an hour and a half. It was the most skilful game of ‘touch’ ever played. At last the Italian secured a slight advantage and fired. Almost at the same moment her adversary did the same, but whereas the Italian escaped without a scratch, the Austrian received the full force of the blow amidships. Not a man of the crew of U 12 survived, though the destroyer reached the spot shortly after the submersible had disappeared.

On one of those evenings which the tourist in Venice calls perfect because the sea and sky seem to have less imperfection in them than most things deemed of the earth earthy, the commander of an Italian submarine was taking a look round. A wilderness of blue water, calm as the proverbial millpond, had met his gaze all day, and was becoming tedious. Perfection depends so much on the point of view. To him the sea which pleases and fascinates the traveller was a medium for work, and had become the abomination of desolation by reason of enforced inaction. He had almost completed the circle of his observations when a blot representing something maritime appeared squatting on the waters. He held on his course, his eyes strained on the far-away object. As the submarine and ‘it’ grew nearer, ‘it’ assumed definite shape. A submersible of Austrian origin without doubt, lying on the surface as listless as a dead whale. At first men were busy on the deck, then they disappeared one by one down the hatches until there was not a living soul visible. Apparently the Italian boat had not been seen. By great good fortune it might escape observation if the enemy did not bring his periscopes into early service.

The Italian broke surface, stealthily approached, found the range. There must be no mistake, no ‘giving the show away,’ and likewise no hesitation. She was discovered nevertheless, though not through lack of caution on the commander’s part. One of the enemy’s ‘eyes’ moved in her direction, revealing its owner’s dire peril, and at the same time making the Italian’s task more risky. At the moment the Austrian was broadside on—a lovely target. Slowly the Austrian began to turn so as to bring her torpedo-tubes to bear on her rival. A few more seconds would have sufficed, but the Italian officer got his blow in first. It literally disembowelled his enemy, and she sank like a stone.

Ramming submarines was formerly regarded as the special prerogative of surface vessels. Submersibles were certainly more inclined to fight duels by other means, but several instances could be cited of British commanders who did not hesitate to turn and rend an enemy without so much as a shot or a torpedo being fired. A British submarine was patrolling her beat in the North Sea. Suddenly her commander caught sight of a couple of periscopes that had no right to be there. He tackled the U-boat, ramming the nose of his vessel so far into her side that he could not back it out again. It was a horrible predicament for both of them. Thanks to the German’s effort the British submarine got clear. By pumping out the ballast tanks the U-boat managed to rise to the surface, bringing her assailant with her. The wounded vessel slowly drew away, making water rapidly. Already the bow was submerged, and she betrayed an unhealthy list to starboard. Less than two minutes later the stricken pirate gave a lurch and disappeared.

On another occasion a British submarine and a German U-boat sought to come to grips for nearly half an hour. As soon as one had taken up a position the other dodged. At last the British commander ventured a torpedo. It missed by a few feet. Again the game of hide-and-seek began with renewed zest. It went on for exactly eight minutes, when another torpedo went speeding through the water in the direction of the U-boat. There was a terrific noise as the weapon struck the enemy’s stern, which rose completely out of the water with, judging by the smoke, one or more of the aft compartments on fire. Another U-boat had finished her career. She rose almost as straight as a church steeple, then slid under.

One of our submarines chased a U-boat for nearly two hours before she finally sent her quarry to the bottom. When the commander first became aware of the enemy’s presence the latter was making ready for a cruise on the surface. She was then too far away to warrant a shot, and consequently there was every likelihood that the German would escape unless swift measures were taken for dealing with her. The British officer dogged the U-boat with grim determination, then struck a patch of shallow water. If he could safely navigate this he knew that the other’s ‘number was up’; if he avoided it by taking a circuitous route he was equally confident that the enemy would escape. He took the risk, bumping the bottom heavily several times, and stealthily approached to a distance of 550 yards. Two torpedoes were fired simultaneously. From his place of safety, several fathoms below, the commander heard them explode. When he took a peep no submersible was visible, though the water was bubbling where she had floated a few minutes before.

Some of the commanders of British submarines are exceedingly cryptic in their reports. They give the barest information and the fewest possible details. Here is one in its brief entirety:

10.30 a.m.—Sighted enemy submarine, so dived and altered course.

10.47 a.m.—Enemy picked up in periscope.

10.50 a.m.—Again altered course.

10.52 a.m.—Stern tube torpedo fired.

10.53 a.m.—Sharp explosion heard.

11.10 a.m.—Came to surface and sighted oil right ahead, with three men swimming in it. Two were picked up, but the third sank before we could reach him. Dived. Survivors stated that submarine U — was hit in a full tank just before conning-tower and sank very rapidly by the head, rolling over at the same time.

Here is a chapter of thrilling heroism told in less than fifty words:

10 a.m.—Sighted hostile submarine. Attacked same.

10.30 a.m.—Torpedoed submarine. Hit with one torpedo amidships. Submarine seen to blow up and disappear. Surface to look for survivors. Put down immediately by destroyers, who fired at me.

Had the periscope been in good health—it was suffering from a stiff neck that took three men to move—the commander might have bagged one or two of the destroyers in addition to the submarine. As it was he dared not risk the operation, particularly as he knew that the surface craft would be scouring the sea in every direction and dropping pills all round him. He put a distance of four miles between himself and the scene of his prowess, then awaited events. Depth charges were used in great profusion. He lay at the bottom and heeded them not, though the noise of discharge was heard right enough. For hours he listened to vessels passing above, and once a wire sweep scraped along the port side with an ominous grating. It was not particularly inviting waiting for something to happen, but the commander had the satisfaction of knowing that he had scored a victory over his rival. Through the ill-behaved periscope he had seen a torpedo take effect forward of the conning-tower, send up a tall column of water and yellow smoke, and had watched the U-boat disappear.

While returning home after an arduous cruise, a British submarine, travelling on the surface, came across a U-boat prowling about for merchantmen. She also was unsubmerged, and apparently so engrossed in searching the horizon for fat cargoes that the patrol was not noticed. The Britisher went under, took careful aim, fired a couple of torpedoes, and waited. The weapons took effect. After the German had disappeared, the submarine came up and searched for possible survivors. One was bobbing up and down in the water. He was the captain of the U-boat.

The Nereide, an Italian submarine of 297 tons, was unloading supplies for the garrison at Pelagosa when an Austrian U-boat suddenly appeared. Although the commander of the Nereide made instant preparation to meet the enemy he had insufficient time at his disposal. Two torpedoes struck the boat and she went down with her crew.

Another of these unusual encounters occurred on the 19th June, 1917, when the French submarine Ariane was sunk by a U-boat in the Mediterranean. The vessel carried a crew of about thirty, of whom nine were saved.

I began this chapter by quoting a remark of Rear-Admiral Robison. I will end it with another anent Britain’s stalking submarines, whose duty he regarded as the most hazardous occupation of the war. He stated that at Harwich, in June 1918, “there was a record of twenty-five submarines which had gone out of port and had not come back.”

CHAPTER VIII
A Chapter of Accidents

“In the future as in the past, the German people will have to seek firm cohesion in its glorious Army and in its belaurelled young Fleet.”—Lt.-Gen. Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven.

All kinds of queer accidents happen to submarines. It was one thing to have a ‘joy-ride’ standing on the conning-tower of a spick-and-span craft in the neighbourhood of Haslar, and quite another to be compelled to lie ‘doggo’ hundreds of miles from the base owing to the near presence of German torpedo-boats out for slaughter. The following story has been told before, but may be thought worthy of repetition because it reveals the calm philosophy which is the submarine man’s sheet-anchor. Without it he would speedily be reduced to nothing more than a nervous wreck.

A British submarine, intent on business intimately connected with the enemy, broke surface at an awkward moment. A shell whizzed close enough to assure the commander that somebody was on the watch for the Paul Prys of the British Navy. She went under, and after lying quiet for four hours again ascended for the purpose of finding out things. She discovered them all right, although they were not exactly of the kind she sought. One of the shots made a hole that necessitated a certain amount of plugging in double quick time. The submarine submerged until after dark, then made off to report. “What did you do while you were at the bottom?” an inquisitive friend asked the commander as he was stretching his legs on the quay and forming a miniature smoke screen with whiffs of Navy Cut. “I did fine,” was the answer; “we played auction bridge all the time, and I made 4s. 11½d.”

The officers and crew of a French submarine had a much more exciting experience while engaged on similar duty in the early days of the war. They were proceeding cautiously toward the entrance of an enemy harbour. The periscope showed a delightful bag, but unfortunately the battleships that constituted it were protected by nets sufficiently substantial to make poaching impossible. There was no sign of movement other than in the smoke issuing languidly from the funnels. While the commander was taking observations, the ships began to show signs of life, and, with a number of torpedo-boats, denoted by their actions that they had every intention of weighing anchor. Here was an opportunity in a thousand, an unexpected one too, and the French officer seized it with avidity. As the enemy approached, he decided to go ahead a short distance so as to make assurance doubly sure. He wanted his aim to be absolutely certain. The submarine had not proceeded more than a few yards when there was a nasty jar. The rudder had become fixed as in a vice. It was caught so tightly in a steel cable that the boat could not budge an inch. The crews of the T.B.s knew exactly what had happened, though how they came by the knowledge remains their secret. The vessels raced to the spot, hoping that the submarine was sufficiently near the surface to be rammed. Providentially she was not, though her crew heard the thrashing of the screws as they passed perilously close to her carcase. Immediately they had gone a furious hail of shells ploughed the sea, and one or two torpedoes were discharged by the enemy on the off chance that they might hit the intruder. It was a hot spot, despite the cold water. One who was on board says it was a miracle they were not struck. “We thought we were done for,” he adds, “and we patiently awaited the explosion which would deliver us from the cruel suspense.”

Meanwhile something had to be done, and quickly. Death by being blown to pieces is infinitely preferable to suffocation. The one is speedy and certain; the other slow and agonizing. The water tanks were filled until they could hold no more. It was hoped that the added weight would force the craft down and snap the cable. Nothing happened. Then some one suggested that if the steering wheel were compelled to move, possibly the wire would snap. If it failed to do so, and merely smashed the rudder, it could scarcely add to their anxieties. A doomed ship might as well be without steering gear as otherwise.

Half a dozen men exerted their full strength on the spokes. The wheel remained rigid for one, two, three seconds, then spun round with a sudden jerk that was not good for the equilibrium of the sailors but entirely satisfactory from every other point of view. The submarine went down several fathoms before she was brought under control.

The commander thought it was time to make tracks for a healthier clime without further spying. Risks are to be run only when necessary. Some hours later he ventured to use his periscope, only to find that an enemy vessel was no great distance off, evidently on the watch for such as he. The craft reached her base somewhat overdue. “All’s well that ends well,” but there is often a painful interim.

Explosions in underwater boats are not frequent, though they have occurred. Several men were either killed or injured in a disaster of this nature in a U.S. submarine cruising off Cavite, in the Philippines. The ‘blow’ was due to gasoline fumes, but the cause of ignition is unknown. U.S. submarine E 2 also sank as the result of a similar mishap in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in January 1916.

Spain, a neutral country, was treated by the Germans as though she were an admitted combatant on the side of the Allies. Yet after torpedoing Spanish ships and leaving their crews to look after themselves as best they could, U-boat commanders were very thankful to take shelter in her ports on more than one occasion, despite the risk of internment. Here is a typical case. A French seaplane caught sight of U 56 while on the prowl in the Mediterranean, dropped what bombs she possessed on the shadowy target, and proceeded on her way. She could do no more. U 56 found herself in difficulties. Damage had been done to the diving gear. The second officer was for ‘risking it’ and making an attempt to reach home. The commander thought otherwise, and as he had the casting vote in this as in other matters, the submarine limped into Santander. Kissvetter, the officer in question, after seeing that his ship was safely berthed, lined up his crew and marched them to the naval headquarters of the port. On giving his parole, he indulged in a lively chat with the officer in charge, during the course of which he was good enough to volunteer the information that the British bluejackets who had taken part in the raids on Zeebrugge and Ostend[^[27]] had displayed great valour.

Another French aeroplane distinguished itself in a similar manner off the Moroccan coast. It succeeded in so badly damaging U 39 that the submarine could not reach Cartagena unassisted. There was an ugly dent in her bow, the upper structure was damaged, and part of the machinery put out of commission. Although his craft had sustained these injuries, the commander found no difficulty in submerging, which proves that the more modern U-boat was not so easily defeated as some people imagined. Presumably the submarine waited until another of her tribe was due to come along, possibly at dusk, and then made her presence known. At any rate, a sister boat towed her within easy distance of Cartagena Harbour, cast off, and disappeared. In response to signals of distress, a tug took the battered submersible in charge and berthed her alongside a Spanish cruiser. Commander Metzger, wearing the Iron Cross, was taken with his crew of forty men to Madrid and interned.

“Kamerad! Kamerad!”
Photo by W. S. Wiggins, U.S.S. Fanning
Reproduced by courtesy of the Naval Exhibition

Fog is usually accepted as one of the plagues of the sea, but on occasion it proved an excellent friend to the enemy when British patrol craft were hot on the scent. This was not the case, however, with a small German submarine which went ashore near Hellevoetsluis in perfectly clear weather. The officer seems to have lost his bearings completely. After spending several fruitless hours hoping that the incoming tide would refloat his ship, the crew of fifteen men were compelled to abandon her.

Their action was certainly less desperate than the means adopted by the officers and men of a German mine-laying submarine which grounded on the French coast to the west of Calais. She ‘touched bottom’ at high tide, the worst possible time to choose for such a performance, and remained as immovable as a rock. At daybreak the coastguards saw the boat lying like a stranded whale, and promptly secured her. The officers and men offered no resistance. They had made their plans when they realized that the ‘game was up.’ By flooding the submarine with inflammable oil and applying a match they effectively prevented the boat from passing into the service of the French Navy.

Occasionally the hunter got more than he bargained for and was ‘hoist with his own petard.’ The pirate commander of a U-boat was congratulating himself on having disposed of a British steamer with the minimum of trouble, when the victim blew up. He had attacked a vessel loaded with ammunition without knowing what was in her hold, and at comparatively short range. The explosion was so violent that it upset the stability of the submersible, and did so much damage in other ways that for a time it was believed she would founder. She was a sorry spectacle when the cliffs and frowning guns of Heligoland were sighted through the periscope.

In the early days of submarines their constitution could only be described as delicate. At each stage of progress the craft has taken on strength, until it has now anything but a fragile frame. That was one of the reasons why the British Admiralty was chary of issuing definite statements as to U-boat losses. Oil rising to the surface might be a sign that a submarine had been wounded, but was no definite guarantee that the patient would bleed to death. U-boats had a little trick of letting out oil when attacked in the hope that it would deceive the enemy. Take the case of a certain British submarine which had the very undesirable misfortune to barge into a German mine. These submerged canisters were filled with a heavy charge of trotyl. You will better appreciate what this means when I add that T.N.T. has a bursting force when confined of 128,000 lb. per square inch. Yet this British-built ship is still afloat, and her crew alive to tell the tale. Vessel and men owed their escape from death to a mighty good bulkhead. She struck the mine bow on. Bulkheads 1 and 2 were burst open; her two fore torpedo-tubes, both loaded, were so twisted and jammed that they were rendered useless; the glass of the dials of the various recording instruments was scattered in all directions; every member of the crew was knocked flat, and the vessel sent to the bottom, nose foremost. A landsman would have said it was the end of all things; the men most concerned merely admitted that it was ‘a nasty jar.’

When they had regained their feet the crew went back to their allotted stations to await orders. There was no need for them to puzzle why their craft was in this predicament. Neither a sunken wreck nor a submerged rock goes off with a bang. Meanwhile, there were some nasty leaks to divert the mind. They would be attended to later, when orders had been given. Discipline, like explosive, is a mighty force.

The commander picked himself up, carefully brushed his uniform with his hands, and went to his post. “Let all things be done decently and in order” is the acknowledged, if unwritten, motto of British submarines. The officer’s action was the outward and visible sign that he had not forgotten it. He gave instructions for the pumps to be set in motion—if they were capable of movement. Everything depended on the answer. There were moments of tense anxiety before it came. No one, even the bravest of the brave, likes to be drowned like a rat in a trap. The motors were going. They had not stopped. But the pumps?

They started! With the beating of their pulse hope flowed in where before it had been on the ebb. The submarine came to the surface as game as ever, though terribly bruised. If “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” a kindly Providence most assuredly watched over this craft. In enemy waters, three hundred odd miles from home, with a broken nose and internal injuries, she had not too much strength for the journey. She accomplished it satisfactorily enough, and was back again in her old haunts within a few weeks.

There is a particularly poignant note of tragedy in a strange mishap that befell another British submarine. The why and the wherefore of the accident have now been revealed. She was on her trials, and the ventilating shafts had been left open, flooding the rear compartments and drowning thirty-one men. She took an unexpected plunge of thirty-eight feet, stuck fast in the mud, and positively refused to budge. She lay like a dead thing. Every conceivable means of resurrection was tried; each failed. One has read of wonderful life-saving devices that are supposed to be donned by submarine men when their boat is in difficulties. They look like smoke-helmets. All that is required is to don one of these affairs, enter the conning-tower, open the lid, and pop up like a cork. It sounds simple, even entertaining, and might be introduced as a side show at an exhibition as a change from the Flip-Flap. Whatever other submarines may have of this kind, this particular boat either did not possess or could not use.

Officers and crew watched the hands of the clock complete the circle several times. There was little else to do. One does not talk much when waiting for eternity. Each felt that he was a doomed man, that ere long his wife would be a widow and his children fatherless. There was ‘a war on,’ but was this war? No enemy had done this, unless Destiny be an enemy. The forty-two men who still lived were within a comparatively short distance of the Scottish shore.

A terrible way out suggested itself to Commander Francis Herbert Heaveningham Goodhart. It is a formidable name to remember in its lengthy entirety, but one to make a note of. No future Book of Sea Heroes will omit it and be reasonably complete. The surname, although it is without an ‘e,’ fitted the man and the deed. He already had the D.S.O. to his credit; his next award, the Albert Medal in gold, was posthumous. Now you know the tragedy of the story. The story of the tragedy remains to be told.

Goodhart’s “terrible way out” was this. The conning-tower of a submarine may be cut off from the boat by a trap-door. He proposed that a tin cylinder with a message giving full particulars of the position of the craft, the approximate length of time the men could hold out, and other details should be given to him, and that he should be blown up with it through the conning-tower. To effect this it was necessary to partly fill the chamber with water, turn on the high-pressure air, and release the clips that secured the lid. Placing the little cylinder in his belt, Goodhart set out on his last desperate adventure. Together with the commanding officer, who was to open and close the hatch, he stepped into the conning-tower. “If I don’t get up, the tin cylinder will,” he remarked quite casually to his colleague.

Water was admitted, then air. The lid fell back, and Goodhart made his escape. At this point Destiny, the unknown and the unknowable, intervened. It reversed the order of affairs that man had so carefully planned. Goodhart was flung back against the structure and killed outright. At the same moment the officer who was to retire into the submarine was shot upward and reached the surface. According to the official account in the London Gazette, “Commander Goodhart displayed extreme and heroic daring, and thoroughly realized the forlorn nature of his act.” This does not go quite far enough. Had it not been for the dead man’s attempt the instructions which were of such vital consequence to the imprisoned men would never have reached the rescuers. In due course fresh air, food, and water were sent to those below by methods private to the printed page. That night the survivors slept on shore as a slight compensation for their long and awful vigil.

In October 1916 the Danish submarine Dykkeren met with a somewhat similar mishap, although the cause of her sudden disappearance was a collision with a Norwegian steamer in the Sound. Divers entrusted with the salvage operations hammered messages of good cheer in the Morse code on the side of the sunken boat, to which the prisoners promptly responded. The commander alone lost his life. He was found dead in the conning-tower.

The pirate chiefs of Germany did not have it all their own way even when the absence of Allied patrol vessels, mines, and anti-submarine nets rendered existence a little less worrying than was usually the case with these pariahs of the deep. Lieutenant-Commander Schneider, who had won renown in the Fatherland as an instrument of the ‘Blockade,’ was swept overboard from his conning-tower while his craft was travelling awash. When his body was recovered life was extinct. It was consigned to the deep, whither the Commander had sent many another during his career as a pirate. Some men from a U-boat in the Baltic were investigating the papers of a schooner, when a German cruiser put in an appearance. Being uncertain whether the submarine was a foreigner or not, as no colours were displayed, the man-of-war ventured too close, and crashed into the bow of the stationary vessel. Both U-boat and cruiser were compelled to retire for repairs. Off Norway a German submarine mistook another of her own nationality for a British representative of the underseas and promptly torpedoed her.

CHAPTER IX
Sea-hawk and Sword-fish

“The present submarine difficulty is the result of our undisputed supremacy upon the sea surface. The whole ingenuity, building power, and resource of Germany are devoted to submarine methods, because they cannot otherwise seriously damage us.”—Lord Montagu of Beaulieu.

They call them ‘blimps’ in the Navy. The term conveys to the landsman about as much information as ‘Blighty’ to a Chinaman. Blimps are speedy little airships driven by a single propeller, with a gondola capable of holding two or three men and a supply of munitions of war. These miniature Zeppelins are handy little craft not given to high flying and acrobatic feats, therefore less interesting to the general public than aeroplanes, though not less useful to the commonwealth. They were the guardian angels of the Merchant Service in the war. As such they played an important part in combating the submarine evil. These tractor balloons, with envelopes conforming to the shape of a fish, can hover over a suspected spot for hours at a time, which a seaplane cannot do. On the other hand, they are useless for raiding purposes on account of their vulnerability. Blimps are submarine spotters, and frequently submarine sinkers.

From the height at which it is accustomed to travel, the blimp, given fair weather conditions, is able to see the shadowy form of a ‘dip chick’ when not so much as her periscope is showing, and it can cover a fairly wide area of observation. If you stand on the bank of a broad and deep brook you will not be able to see so far into the water as if you were standing on a bridge that spans it and leaning over the parapet. That is why a gull looks for its food above the sea, and having glimpsed a toothsome, or rather beaksome, morsel, dives after it. This is also the secret of the spotter’s sight. Many a German and Austrian U-boat disappeared in a welter of oil and bubbles by reason of the fact.

It was during Lord Jellicoe’s term of office as First Sea Lord that increasing attention was paid to aircraft as an ally of the Senior Service. At the same time it is only fair to mention that when the British Expeditionary Force crossed to France in 1914, aircraft patrolled the marches of the sea between the French, Belgian, and English coasts.

The Navy and the Army have their own schemes of warfare, but in one particular plan of operations there is marked similarity. Just as the land is divided into sectors for fighting purposes, so the sea is divided into sections for the purpose of patrol. Destroyers and hydroplanes, auxiliaries and trawlers, airships and seaplanes have their beats mapped out for them like a City policeman. This does not mean that every square yard of salt water is covered—an obvious impossibility—but it does mean that as many square yards are watched as is humanly and practicably possible. In one month 90,000 miles were travelled by seaplanes on patrol, and 80,000 miles by airships.

When the war was very young, a seaplane containing an officer and a petty officer was scouting. Without any preliminary warning the engine broke down, and they were compelled to descend and drift on the surface with a heavy sea running. Of rescue there seemed to be little hope. Fog completely enveloped them. A survey of the damage proved that patching up was altogether out of the question. Nothing short of a lathe would suffice. The airmen fell back on tobacco, “the lonely man’s friend.” Even this comfort speedily failed them. Cigarettes and sea-sickness do not go well together. The poor fellows held on and watched their machine gradually break up. They were horribly ill, and on the verge of despair, when the throb of machinery suddenly fell on their ears, and a destroyer peered in through the opaque surroundings of their little world. They were no longer face to face with death. Other men have not always been so fortunate. One does not necessarily have to be washed overboard to be “lost at sea.”

A couple of seaplanes on outpost duty were watching the waters below with great interest when one of them sighted a submarine travelling on the surface. They were up a good height, but the observers duly noted a couple of men on the conning-tower. Apparently the Germans were too intent on the business in hand to observe the sky-pilots, who kept on a steady course. They suffered a rude awakening a few minutes later. A weighty bomb fell plumb on the starboard side of the sea pest, midway between the conning-tower and the stern. That bomb ‘did its bit’ for King and Country. Slowly but surely the U-boat heeled over, ceased to make progress, and lay like a log on the water. Then the bow rose at an awkward angle, and the vessel began to settle rapidly. Another bomb, released by the second seaplane, burst close to the conning-tower, followed by a third bomb, “to make assurance doubly sure.” This particular submarine was not handed over to Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt.

America did much excellent work in helping the British Navy to rid the seas of underwater pests. An ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve attached to the Aviation Service was patrolling in a British seaplane with a British observer. Within thirty minutes of having started, “we sighted the periscope of a submarine directly in front of us,” he reports. “Immediately I opened the engine full out and attacked, dropping a bomb which landed a few feet ahead of the periscope and directly in line with it. A moment later a great quantity of air bubbles came to the surface. The water all about began to boil. I turned and attacked again. This time I dropped a bomb of twice the size. It landed nearly in the centre of the first disturbance. A mass of oil now appeared on the surface in addition to the débris left by the bomb itself. The second disturbance continued for some time. Then I circled round for two hours before returning to warn merchant ships in the vicinity and inform a destroyer escorting a British submarine of what I had done and seen.”

From his point of vantage the look-out of a British airship noticed a steamer limping along in a manner which distinctly suggested that she was in difficulties. That had been a fairly familiar sight since the opening of Germany’s illegal warfare. The cause of her crippled condition was evidently of enemy origin, though her assailant was invisible. Sea-wolves did not make a regular habit of gloating over their victims. That little hobby was only indulged in when the ‘coast’ was clear. The coxswain headed the airship in the direction of the stricken steamer, but before reaching her tugs had made their welcome appearance and lent the assistance of a stout steel hawser that worked wonders.

As a precaution against surprise the airship accompanied the miniature squadron. They proceeded quietly enough for a time, making fair speed, when a U-boat broke surface about five miles off. Signalling by wireless the position of the pest to all and sundry, the airship accelerated her engine and lowered to a height from which she could make the best use of her weapons. The submarine was not taken entirely unawares; she submerged before the sea-hawk was immediately above. Two bombs, released simultaneously, caused a terrible commotion and effected a kill. A destroyer which had picked up the wireless subsequently dragged the spot, and signalled the cheering news, “You’ve undoubtedly bagged her.”

Better luck attended this effort than befell the pilot of a seaplane who came across a large submersible travelling awash. Here early demise seemed a certainty. Unfortunately there is many a slip ’twixt the bomb and the U-boat. One packet of high explosive fell ahead and another astern of the grey monster. The third was a marvellous shot. It did the aviator’s heart good to see it strike. It landed directly in the centre of the deck. He had scored a bull’s-eye. I am afraid I cannot quote what he said when the missile failed to detonate. His anger was not appeased by the knowledge that his supply of ammunition was exhausted. The enemy submerged, descended to the lowest depths, and made off.

Observation balloons, towed by destroyers, although they obviously lack the initiative of airship and seaplane, have their uses like their more energetic brethren of the sky. On one occasion an observer telephoned that there was a U-boat in the neighbourhood. Depth charges were thrown overboard, but achieved nothing more than causing the boat to shift her position. She passed from mortal ken so far as her hunters were concerned. Later on, however, the submarine came to the surface and began shelling a poor little helpless sailing vessel that could neither escape nor offer effective resistance. The destroyer opened fire, and as a submersible is no match for this type of vessel, she promptly went below. Her rapidity of movement failed to evade Nemesis, though her smartness in this respect was highly commendable. Guided by the balloon, the parent ship took up the trail, and nine ‘pills’ were sent overboard with the compliments of the captain. Then followed such a display of oil as is rarely seen. No fake oil squirt ever succeeded in covering a mile of sea with the colours of the rainbow. The U-boat had gone to her doom.

The task undertaken by blimps and seaplanes in their daily warfare against the pirates was far from selfish. The Mistress of the Seas and her Allies kept guard over the welfare of neutral nations as well as of their own. While journeying homeward the Danish steamer Odense was met by a German submersible. It signalled her to stop. The order was complied with without hesitation, but instead of making an examination of the ship’s papers the U-boat opened fire, killing two of the crew. The enemy commander then ordered the survivors into the boat. This was really inviting them to commit suicide, for the weather was such as to render the likelihood of the men’s being saved extremely remote. While this little tragedy of the sea was being acted, a British submarine put in an appearance, apparently from nowhere. She had been summoned by aircraft. The U-boat did not stay to fire further shells into the steamer. Not long afterward a British patrol ship on its ceaseless vigil came across the Danes in their cockleshell, took them on board, gave them warm food and dry clothes, and amply demonstrated the fact that the British Navy was neither spiteful nor cruel because it did not own the globe.

A British coastal airship was scouting for a convoy bound westward. The voyage had been uneventful, when a look-out spied the track of a torpedo aimed with deadly certainty at one of the steamers. With marvellous agility the course of the airship was altered and traversed the trail still outlined on the water. It is said that she travelled at a rate approaching ninety miles an hour. There was the gaunt form of the submarine right enough, though submerged. Well-placed bombs did the rest.

Another airship, quietly sailing in the upper air, also came across a British convoy. The reply to the pilot’s request for news was entirely unsatisfactory from his point of view. No U-boats had been seen or reported. Things were slow. They continued so for several hours after the two branches of the Service had parted, but brightened up a bit when a wireless message was received that a merchantman was being attacked by a pirate. Details as to position proved correct. The submersible was floating awash. Blimps being preeminently handy affairs which readily respond to helm and engine control, the airship was hovering over the U-boat before the latter was completely submerged. It boded ill for the intended victim, whose ballast tanks were slower in filling than the airship’s mechanical appliances in accelerating. The first bomb was a good shot, but not a hit. It fell three feet short of the mark, and exploded astern of the propellers. That it did the enemy no good was evident. Streams of oil, too voluminous to be make-believe, spurted to the surface. The second bomb was a direct hit aft of the conning-tower, causing the stern to rise upward. It would have been waste of good ammunition to spend more on the wreck that lay below. She slowly turned turtle, and was no more seen. Another U-boat had paid the price of her perfidy. The blimp had scored a full triumph that admitted of no question.

A seaplane was patrolling her section, keeping a sharp eye on possibilities in the nether regions that failed to eventuate. Presumed periscopes are sometimes in reality nothing more than mops or spars. After the novelty of flying has worn off it is apt to become a trifle boring without action. As the pilot was proceeding on his way, doubtless thinking that his luck was most decidedly out, he picked up a wireless message. Judging by its purport it was evidently sent by a U-boat no great distance off. He had not proceeded very far before he spotted his prey, comfortably squatting on the surface about a mile ahead. The seaplane was ‘all out’ in a trice. Sea-hawk and sword-fish exchanged greetings, the one with a bomb, the other with a shell. The latter burst quite harmlessly within fifty feet of the aircraft, then splashed over the sea like a shower of pebbles. The bomb went more than one better. It fell on the U-boat and tore a great rent in her deck. While this battle royal was proceeding, three German U-boats, three torpedo-boats, and a couple of seaplanes were speeding in the direction of the firing. The weather was somewhat misty, but they sighted the solitary seaplane and tried to wing her. The pilot treated them with contempt, and calmly proceeded with the business immediately in hand. The firing in his direction became so heavy that it formed a barrage through which the German aircraft were totally unable to penetrate. The officer gave his enemy another dose of bomb, photographed her as she was going down, took a picture of her friends, and having exhausted his ammunition, returned to report.

A gunner on a British submarine cruising off Denmark proved himself a better shot than his German rivals in the afore-mentioned incident. Two enemy seaplanes saw the boat and dropped their highly explosive eggs. The bombs burst, made a great noise, but did no damage. A shell from the submarine sped straight and true and one of the seaplanes was brought down, whereupon her companion, realizing that the locality was unhealthy, beat a hasty and undignified retreat.

German airmen naturally endeavoured to turn the tables on us. They hunted for British submarines in addition to doing scouting work for their own. Within a month of the outbreak of war an enemy airman and his mechanic got what was at once the greatest shock in their lives and the means of the aforesaid lives being preserved. Their machine had broken down, and they were using it as a raft, when one of His Britannic Majesty’s submarines rose to the surface. Instead of making war on them as a ‘biological necessity,’ the commander rescued the two men and took them into Harwich, after their damaged craft had been satisfactorily disposed of.

During the afternoon of the 6th July, 1918, a British submarine was on guard off the East Coast when five hostile seaplanes swooped down on her and made a vigorous attack with bombs and machine-guns. According to the German official account, the action took place off the mouth of the Thames, and two submarines were severely damaged, one of which, when last observed, was in a sinking condition. The report rather reminds one of occasions when Teutonic imagination has robbed the Grand Fleet of battle-cruisers. As it happened, the British craft sustained only minor injuries, and was towed into harbour by another submarine—presumably the one which the enemy had seen. She had suffered no inconvenience whatever from the seaplanes’ attentions. Unhappily an officer and five men were killed in this attack.

Some time since the Berlin Press made much ado about a British submarine being sunk by a German airship. It was when Zeppelins were considered to be rather more substantial assets in the Wilhelmstrasse than they subsequently became. A little later the ‘sunken’ submarine returned to her base without so much as a scratch on her bulgy sides, and reported that she had been in action with a hostile airship, which she had damaged and driven off. So much for the Truth as propagated in Berlin.