It is, of course, very rare that a civilian has the chance to be present on a submarine when the latter is making either a real or a feigned attack. Fred B. Pitney, a correspondent of the New York Tribune, was fortunate enough to have this experience, fortunate especially because it was all a game arranged for his special benefit by a French admiral. He writes of this interesting experience in the Tribune of Sunday, May 27, 1917, and at the same time gives a vivid description of a French submarine.

It appears that Mr. Pitney was on a small vessel put at his disposal by the French Ministry of Marine to view the defences of a French naval base. This boat was attacked by what seemed to be an enemy submarine, but later turned out to be a French one which was giving this special performance for Mr. Pitney's information. We read:

Our officers were experts at watching for submarines, and though the little white wave made by the periscope disappeared, they caught the white wake of the torpedo coming toward the port quarter and sheered off to escape it. The torpedo passed harmlessly by our stern, but the adventure was not ended, for hardly a minute later we heard a shot from off the starboard quarter and, turning in that direction, saw that the submarine had come to the surface and was busily firing at us to bring us to.

We stopped without any foolish waste of time in argument. I asked if a boat would be sent to us, or if we would have to get out our boat.

"They carry a small folding boat," said the officer to whom I had been talking, "but we will have to send our boat."

While we were getting our boat over the side, the submarine moved closer in, keeping her gun bearing on us all the time, most uncomfortably. The gun stood uncovered on the deck, just abaft the turret. It was thickly coated with grease to protect it when the vessel submerged. It is only the very latest type of submarines that have disappearing guns which go under cover when the vessel submerges and are fired from within the ship, which makes all the more surprising the speed with which a submarine can come to the surface, the men get out on deck, fire the gun, get in again and the vessel once more submerges.

I was in the first boatload that went over to the submarine. From a distance it looked like nothing so much as a rather long piece of 4x8 floating on the water, with another block set on top of it and a length of lath nailed on the block. It lost none of these characteristics as we neared it. It only gained a couple of ropes along the sides of the 4x8, while men kept coming mysteriously out of the block until a round dozen was waiting to receive us. The really surprising thing was that the men turned out to be perfectly good French sailors, with a most exceedingly polite French lieutenant to help us aboard the little craft....



The vessel we were in was a 500-ton cruising submarine. It had just come from eight months' guarding the Channel, and showed all the battering of eight months of a very rough and stormy career with no time for a lie-up for repairs. It was interesting to see the commander hand the depth gauge a wallop to start it working and find out if the centre of the boat was really nine feet higher than either end. We were fifty-four feet under water and diving when the commander performed that little experiment and we continued to dive while the gauge spun around and finally stopped at a place which indicated approximately that our back was not broken. I suppose that was one of the things my friend the lieutenant referred to when he said life on a submarine was such a sporting proposition.

We boarded the submarine over the tail end and balanced our way up the long narrow block, like walking a tight rope, to the turret, where we descended through a hole like the opening into a gas main into a small round compartment about six feet in diameter exactly in the midship section, which was the largest compartment in the ship. Running each way from it the length of the vessel were long corridors, some two feet wide. On each side of the corridors were rows of tiny compartments, which were the living and working rooms of the ship. Naturally, most of the space was given up to the working rooms.

The officers' quarters consisted of four tiny compartments, two on each side of the after corridor. The first two were the mess room and chart room, and the second pair were the cabins of the commander—a lieutenant—and his second in command, an ensign. Behind them was an electric kitchen, and next came the engines, first two sets of Diesel engines, one on each side of the corridor, each of four hundred horse-power. These were for running on the surface. Then came four bunks for the quartermasters and last the electric motors for running under the surface. The motors were run from storage batteries and were half the power of the Diesel engines. The quarters of the crew were along the sides of the forward corridor. The floors of the corridor were an unbroken series of trap doors, covering the storage tanks for drinking water, food, and the ship's supplies. The torpedo tubes were forward of the men's quarters. Ten torpedoes were carried. The ammunition for the deck gun was stored immediately beneath the gun, which was mounted between the turret and the first hatch, abaft the turret. Besides the turret there were three hatches in the deck, one forward and two aft.

There were thirty-four men in the crew. The men are counted every two hours, as there is great danger of men being lost overboard when running on the surface, and in bad weather they are sometimes counted as often as every half hour.

The turret was divided in two sections. In the after part was the main hatch and behind it a stationary periscope, standing about thirty inches above the surface of the water when the deck was submerged and only the periscope showing. There was no opening in the forward section of the turret, but the fighting periscope, which could be drawn down into the interior or pushed up to ten feet above the surface when the vessel was completely submerged, extended through the top.

For two hours, turn and turn about, the commander and his second stand watch on the iron grips in the turret, one eye on the periscope, the other on the compass. And this goes on for weeks on end. It is only when they lie for a few hours fifty to seventy-five feet below the surface that they can get some rest. And even then there is no real rest, for one or the other of them must be constantly on duty, testing pipes and gauges, air pressure, water pressure, and a thousand other things.

When we dropped through the hatch into the interior of the submarine and the cover was clamped down over our heads the commander at once ordered me back into the turret.

"Hurry, if you want to see her dive," he said.

I climbed into the after section of the turret and fastened my eye to the periscope. Around the top of the turret was a circle of bulls' eyes and I was conscious of the water dashing against them while the spray washed over the glass of the periscope. The little vessel rolled very slightly on the surface, though there was quite a bit of sea running. I watched the horizon through the periscope and watched for the dive, expecting a distinct sensation, but the first thing I noticed was that even the slight roll had ceased and I was surprised to see that the bulls' eyes were completely under water. The next thing there was no more horizon. The periscope also was covered and we were completely beneath the surface.

"Did it make you sick?" the commander asked, when I climbed down from the turret, and when I told him "no" he was surprised, for he said most men were made sick by their first dive.

The thing most astonishing to me about that experience was how a submerged submarine can thread its way through a mine field. For though the water is luminous and translucent one can hardly make out the black hull of the boat under the turret and a mine would have to be on top of you before you could see it. The men who watch for mines must have a sense for them as well as particularly powerful sight.

We continued to dive until we were sixty-eight feet below the surface, too deep to strike any mine, and there we ran tranquilly on our electric engines, while the commander navigated the vessel and the second in command opened champagne in the two by four mess room. After half an hour of underwater work we came near enough the surface for our fighting periscope to stick twenty inches out of the water and searched the lonely horizon for a ship to attack.

It was not long before we sighted a mine trawler, steaming for the harbour, and speeded up to overtake her.

"Pikers!" said our commander, as we circled twice around the trawler; "they can't find us."

Five men on the trawler were scanning the sea with glasses looking for submarines. We could follow all their motions, could tell when they thought they had found us and see their disappointment at their mistakes, but though we were never more than five hundred yards from them, I did not think they were pikers because they did not find us. I had tried that hunt for the tiny wave of a periscope.

"No use wasting a torpedo on those fellows," said our commander. "We will use the gun on them."

"How far away can you use a torpedo?" I asked.

"Two hundred yards is the best distance," he said. "Never more than five hundred. A torpedo is pure guesswork at more than five hundred yards."

We crossed the bow of the trawler, circled around to her starboard quarter and came to the surface, fired nine shots and submerged again in forty-five seconds.

The prey secured, we ran submerged through the mine field and past the net barrier to come to the surface well within the harbour and proceed peacefully to our mooring under the shelter of the guns of the land forts.

Life and work on a German submarine is known to us, of course, only from descriptions in German publications. One of these appeared, previous to our entry in the war, in various journals and was translated and republished by the New York Evening Post. It reads partly as follows:

"U-47 will take provisions and clear for sea. Extreme economical radius."

A first lieutenant, with acting rank of commander, takes the order in the grey dawn of a February day. The hulk of an old corvette with the Iron Cross of 1870 on her stubby foremast is his quarters in port, and on the corvette's deck he is presently saluted by his first engineer and the officer of the watch. On the pier the crew of U-47 await him. At their feet the narrow grey submarine lies alongside, straining a little at her cables.

"Well, we've our orders at last," begins the commander, addressing his crew of thirty, and the crew grin. For this is U-47's first experience of active service. She has done nothing save trial trips hitherto, and has just been overhauled for her first fighting cruise. Her commander snaps out a number of orders. Provisions are to be taken in "up to the neck," fresh water is to be put aboard, and engine-room supplies to be supplemented.

A mere plank is the gangway to the little vessel. As the commander, followed by his officers, comes aboard, a sailor hands to each a ball of cotton-waste, the sign and symbol of a submarine officer, which never leaves his hand. For the steel walls of his craft, the doors, and the companion-ladder all sweat oil, and at every touch the hands must be wiped dry. The doorways are narrow round holes. Through one of the holes aft the commander descends by a breakneck iron ladder into the black hole lit by electric glow-lamps. The air is heavy with the smell of oil, and to the unaccustomed longshoreman it is almost choking, though the hatches are off. The submarine man breathes this air as if it were the purest ozone. Here in the engine-room aft men must live and strain every nerve even if for days at a time every crack whereby the fresh air could get in is hermetically sealed. On their tense watchfulness thirty lives depend.

Here, too, are slung some hammocks, and in them one watch tries, and, what is more, succeeds in sleeping, though the men moving about bump them with head and elbows at every turn, and the low and narrow vault is full of the hum and purr of machinery. In length the vault is about ten feet, but if a man of normal stature stands in the middle and raises his arms to about half shoulder height his hands will touch the cold, moist steel walls on either side. A network of wires runs overhead, and there is a juggler's outfit of handles, levers, and instruments. The commander inspects everything minutely, then creeps through a hole into the central control station, where the chief engineer is at his post. With just about enough assistance to run a fairly simple machine ashore the chief engineer of a submarine is expected to control, correct, and, if necessary, repair at sea an infinitely complex machinery which must not break down for an instant if thirty men are to return alive to the hulk.

Forward is another narrow steel vault serving at once as engine-room and crew's quarters. Next to it is a place like a cupboard, where the cook has just room to stand in front of his doll's house galley-stove. It is electrically heated, that the already oppressive air may not be further vitiated by smoke or fumes. A German submarine in any case smells perpetually of coffee and cabbage. Two little cabins of the size of a decent clothes-chest take the deck and engine-room officers, four of them. Another box cabin is reserved for the commander—when he has time to occupy it.

At daybreak the commander comes on deck in coat and trousers of black leather lined with wool, a protection against oil, cold, and sea-water. The crew at their stations await the command to cast off.

"Machines clear," calls a voice from the control-station and "Clear ship," snaps the order from the bridge. Then "Cast-off!" The cables slap on to the landing-stage, the engines begin to purr, and U-47 slides away into open water.

A few cable-lengths away another submarine appears homeward bound. She is the U-20 returning from a long cruise in which she succeeded in sinking a ship bound with a cargo of frozen mutton for England.

"Good luck, old sheep-butcher," sings the commander of U-47 as the sister-ship passes within hail.

The seas are heavier now, and U-47 rolls unpleasantly as she makes the light-ship and answers the last salute from a friendly hand. The two officers on the bridge turn once to look at the light-ship already astern, then their eyes look seaward. It is rough, stormy weather. If the egg-shell goes ahead two or three days without a stop, the officers in charge will get no sleep for just that long. If it gets any rougher they will be tied to the bridge-rails to avoid being swept overboard. If they are hungry, plates of soup will be brought to them on the bridge, and the North Sea will attend to its salting for them.

Frequently this "meal" is interrupted by some announcement from the watch, such as: "Smoke on the horizon off the port bow." Then—so we are told:

The commander drops his plate, shouts a short, crisp command, and an electric alarm whirs inside the egg-shell. The ship buzzes like a hive. Then water begins to gurgle into the ballast-tanks, and U-47 sinks until only her periscope shows.

"The steamship is a Dutchman, sir," calls the watch officer. The commander inspects her with the aid of a periscope. She has no wireless and is bound for the Continent. So he can come up and is glad, because moving under the water consumes electricity, and the usefulness of a submarine is measured by her electric power.

After fifty-four hours of waking nerve tension, sleep becomes a necessity. So the ballast-tanks are filled and the nutshell sinks to the sandy bottom. This is the time for sleep aboard a submarine, because a sleeping man consumes less of the precious oxygen than one awake and busy. So a submarine man has three principal lessons to learn—to keep every faculty at tension when he is awake, to keep stern silence when he is ashore (there is a warning against talkativeness in all the German railway-carriages now), and to sleep instantly when he gets a legitimate opportunity. His sleep and the economy of oxygen may save the ship. However, the commander allows half an hour's grace for music. There is a gramophone, of course, and the "ship's band" performs on all manner of instruments. At worst, a comb with a bit of tissue paper is pressed into service.

Another American who suffered an enforced voyage on an unterseeboot made public later some of his experiences. His captor's craft was a good sized one—about 250 feet long, with a crew of 35 men and mounting two 4-1/2 inch guns. She could make 18 knots on the surface and 11 submerged and had a radius of 3200 miles of action. Her accommodations were not uncomfortable. Each officer had a separate cabin while the crew were bunked along either side of a narrow passage. The ventilation was excellent, and her officers declared that they could stand twenty-four hours continuous submergence without discomfort, after that for six hours it was uncomfortable, and thereafter intolerable because of the exudation of moisture—or sweating—from every part. At such times all below have to wear leather suits. The food was varied and cooked on an electric stove. The original stores included preserved pork and beef, vegetables, tinned soups, fruits, raisins, biscuits, butter, marmalade, milk, tea, and coffee. But the pleasures of the table depended greatly on the number of their prizes, for whenever possible they made every ship captured contribute heavily to their larder before sinking her. Of the tactics followed the observer writes:

It appears that 55 per cent., or more than half, of the torpedoes fired miss their mark, and with this average they seem satisfied. Once they let go at a ship two torpedoes at 3000 yards' range, and both missed, the range being too long but they did not care to come any nearer, as they believed the ship to be well armed.

They prefer to fire at 500 to 700 yards, which means that at this range the track or "wake" of a projectile would be discernible for, say, twenty-five to thirty seconds—not much time, indeed, for any ship to get out of the way. At 100 yards' range or less they do not care to fire unless compelled to, as the torpedo is nearly always discharged when the submarine is lying ahead of the object, i. e., to hit the ship coming up to it; it follows that a gun forward is more useful than one aft, the gun aft being of real service when a submarine starts shelling, which she will do for choice from aft the ship rather than from forward of her, where she would be in danger of being run over and rammed.



CHAPTER XVI

SUBMARINE WARFARE

At the moment of writing these words the outcome of the greatest war the world has ever known is believed by many to hang upon the success with which the Allies can meet and defeat the campaign of the German submarines. The German people believe this absolutely. The Allies and their sympathizers grudgingly admit that they are only too fearful that it may be true.

To such a marvellous degree of military efficiency has the ingenuity of man brought these boats which so recently as our Civil War were still in the vaguest experimental stage and scarcely possessed of any offensive power whatsoever!

Nevertheless these machines had reached a degree of development, and had demonstrated their dangerous character so early in the war that it was amazing that the British were so slow in comprehending the use that might be made of them in cutting off British commerce. It is true that the first submarine actions redounded in their results entirely to British credit. In September of 1914 a British submarine ran gallantly into Heligoland Bay and sank the German light cruiser Hela at her moorings. Shortly after the Germans sought retaliation by attacking a British squadron, but the effort miscarried. The British cruiser Birmingham caught a glimpse of her wake and with a well-aimed shot destroyed her periscope. The submarine dived, but shortly afterwards came up again making what was called a porpoise dive—that is to say, she came up just long enough for the officer in the conning tower to locate the enemy, then submerged again. Brief, however, as had been the appearance of the conning tower, the British put a shell into it and in a few minutes the submarine and most of her crew were at the bottom of the sea.

Soon after followed the attack upon and sinking of the three cruisers by the submarine under the command of Lieutenant Commander Otto von Weddigen, the narrative of which we have already told. But while after that attacks upon British armed ships were many, successes were few. There were no German ships at sea for the British to attack in turn, but some very gallant work was done by their submarines against Austrian and Turkish warships in the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles. All this time the Germans were preparing for that warfare upon the merchant shipping of all countries which at the end they came to believe would force the conclusion of the war. It seems curious that during this early period the Allies were able to devise no method of meeting this form of attack. When the United States entered the war more than three years later they looked to us for the instant invention of some effective anti-submarine weapon. If they were disappointed at our failure at once to produce one, they should have remembered at least that they too were baffled by the situation although it was presented to them long before it became part of our problems.

About no feature of the war have the belligerents thrown more of mystery than about the circumstances attending submarine attacks upon battleships and armed transports and the method employed of meeting them. Even when later in the war the Germans apparently driven to frenzy made special efforts to sink hospital and Red Cross ships the facts were concealed by the censors, and accounts of the efforts made to balk such inhuman and unchristian practices diligently suppressed. In the end it seemed that the British, who of course led all naval activities, had reached the conclusion that only by the maintenance of an enormous fleet of patrol boats could the submarines be kept in check. This method they have applied unremittingly. Alfred Noyes in a publication authorized by the British government has thus picturesquely told some of the incidents connected with this service:

It is difficult to convey in words the wide sweep and subtle co-ordination of this ocean hunting; for the beginning of any tale may be known only to an admiral in a London office, the middle of it only to a commander at Kirkwall, and the end of it only to a trawler skipper off the coast of Ireland. But here and there it is possible to piece the fragments together into a complete adventure, as in the following record of a successful chase, where the glorious facts outrun all the imaginations of the wildest melodrama.

There were suspicious vessels at anchor, one moonless night, in a small bay near the Mumbles. They lay there like shadows, but before long they knew that the night was alive for a hundred miles with silent talk about them. At dawn His Majesty's trawlers Golden Feather and Peggy Nutten foamed up, but the shadows had disappeared.

The trawlers were ordered to search the coast thoroughly for any submarine stores that might have been left there. "Thoroughly" in this war means a great deal. It means that even the bottom of the sea must be searched. This was done by grapnels; but the bottom was rocky and seemed unfit for a base. Nothing was found but a battered old lobster pot, crammed with seaweed and little green crabs.

Probably these appearances were more than usually deceitful; for shortly afterward watchers on the coast reported a strange fishing boat, with patched brown sails, heading for the suspected bay. Before the patrols came up, however, she seemed to be alarmed. The brown sails were suddenly taken in; the disguised conning tower was revealed, and this innocent fishing boat, gracefully submerging, left only the smiling and spotless April seas to the bewildered eyes of the coast guard.

In the meantime signals were pulsing and flashing on land and sea, and the U-boat had hardly dipped when, over the smooth green swell, a great sea hawk came whirring up to join the hunt, a hawk with light yellow wings and a body of service grey—the latest type of seaplane. It was one of those oily seas in which a watcher from the air may follow a submarine for miles, as an olive green shadow under the lighter green. The U-boat doubled twice; but it was half an hour before her sunken shadow was lost to sight under choppy blue waters, and long before that time she was evidently at ease in her mind and pursuing a steady course. For the moment her trail was then lost, and the hawk, having reported her course, dropped out of the tale.



The next morning in the direction indicated by that report several patrol boats heard the sound of gunfire and overhauled a steamer which had been attacked by a submarine. They gave chase by "starring" to all the points of the compass, but could not locate the enemy. A little later, however, another trawler observed the wash of a submarine crossing her stern about two hundred yards away. The trawler star-boarded, got into the wake of the submarine and tried to ram her at full speed. She failed to do this, as the U-boat was at too great a depth. The enemy disappeared, and again the trawlers gathered and "starred."



In the meantime, certain nets had been shot, and, though the inclosed waters were very wide, it was quite certain that the submarine was contained within them. Some hours later another trawler heard firing and rushed toward the sound. About sunset she sighted a submarine which was just dipping. The trawler opened fire at once without result. The light was very bad and it was very difficult to trace the enemy, but the trawler continued the search, and about midnight she observed a small light close to the water. She steamed within a few yards of it and hailed, thinking it was a small boat. There was a considerable amount of wreckage about, which was afterward proved to be the remains of a patrol vessel sunk by the submarine. There was no reply to the hail, and the light instantly disappeared. For the third time the patrols gathered and "starred" from this new point.

And here the tale was taken up by a sailor who was in command of another trawler at the time. I give it, so far as possible, in his own words.

"About 4 o'clock in the morning I was called by Deckhand William Brown to come on deck and see if an object sighted was a submarine. I did so, and saw a submarine about a mile distant on the port bow. I gave the order, 'Hard a-starboard.' The ship was turned until the gun was able to bear on the submarine, and it was kept bearing. At the same time I ordered hands to station, and about ten minutes afterward I gave the order to fire. The submarine immediately altered her course from W. to N. N. W., and went away from us very fast. I burned lights to attract the attention of the drifters, and we followed at our utmost speed, making about eight knots and shipping light sprays. We fired another shot about two minutes later, but it was breaking dawn, and we were unable to see the fall of the shots. After the second shot the submarine submerged. I hoisted warning signals and about half an hour later I saw a large steamer turning round, distant between two and three miles on our starboard beam. I headed toward her, keeping the gun trained on her, as I expected, judging by her action, that she had smelt the submarine. When we were about a mile and a half from the steamer I saw the submarine half a mile astern of her. We opened fire again, and gave her four shots, with about two minutes between 'em. The submarine then dodged behind the off quarter of the steamer."

He paused to light his pipe, and added, quite gravely, "When she had disappeared behind the steamer I gave the order 'Cease fire,' to avoid hitting the larger vessel."

I made a mental note of his thoughtfulness; but, not for worlds would I have shown any doubt of his power to blast his way, if necessary, through all the wood and iron in the universe; and I was glad that the blue clouds of our smoke mingled for a moment between us.

"I saw two white boats off the port quarter," he continued. "But I paid no attention to them. I ordered the helm to be star-boarded a bit more, and told the gunner to train his gun on the bow of the steamer; for I expected the submarine to show there next. A few minutes later she did so, and when she drew ahead I gave the order to fire. I should say we were about a mile and a quarter away. We gave him two more shots and they dropped very close, as the spray rose over his conning tower. He altered his course directly away from us, and we continued to fire. The third shot smothered his conning tower with spray. I did not see the fourth and fifth shots pitch. There was no splash visible, although it was then broad daylight; so I believe they must have hit him. A few moments after this the submarine disappeared.

"I turned, then, toward the two white boats and hailed them. The chief officer of the steamer was in charge of one. They were returning to their ship, and told me that we had hit the submarine. We escorted them through the nets and parted very good friends."

"But how did you get the scalp of this U-boat?" I asked.

"We signalled to the admiral, and sent the Daffy to investigate. She found the place, all right. It was a choppy sea, but there was one smooth patch in it, just where we told 'em the submarine had disappeared; a big patch of water like wavy satin, two or three hundred yards of it, coloured like the stripes on mackerel, all blue and green with oil. They took a specimen of the oil."

"Did it satisfy the Admiralty?"

"No. Nothing satisfies the Admiralty but certainties. They count the minimum losses of the enemy, and the maximum of their own. Very proper, too. Then you know where you are. But, mind you, I don't believe we finished him off that morning. Oil don't prove that. It only proves we hit him. I believe it was the 'Maggie and Rose' that killed him, or the 'Hawthorn.' No; it wasn't either. It was the 'Loch Awe.'"

"How was that?"

"Well, as Commander White was telling you, we'd shot out nets to the north and south of him. There were two or three hundred miles, perhaps, in which he might wriggle about; but he couldn't get out of the trap, even if he knew where to look for the danger. He tried to run for home, and that's what finished him. They'll tell you all about that on the 'Loch Awe.'"

So the next day I heard the end of the yarn from a sandy-haired skipper in a trawler whose old romantic name was dark with new significance. He was terribly logical. In his cabin—a comfortable room with a fine big stove—he had a picture of his wife and daughters, all very rigid and uncomfortable. He also had three books. They included neither Burns nor Scott. One was the Bible, thumbed by his grandfather and his father till the paper had worn yellow and thin at the sides. The second, I am sorry to say, was called The Beautiful White Devil. The third was an odd volume of Froude in the Everyman edition. It dealt with the Armada.

"I was towin' my nets wi' the rest o' my group," he said, "till about 3 o'clock i' the mornin' on yon occasion. It was fine weather wi' a kind o' haar. All at once, my ship gaed six points aff her coorse, frae S. E. to E. N. E., and I jaloused that the nets had been fouled by some muckle movin' body. I gave orders to pit the wheel hard a-port, but she wouldna answer. Suddenly the strain on the nets stoppit.

"I needna tell you what had happened. Of course, it was preceesely what the Admiralty had arranged tae happen when gentlemen in undersea boats try to cut their way through our nets. Mind ye, thae nets are verra expensive."

A different situation, however, has lately developed in the more unequal fight between submarines and merchant vessels. There the submarine unquestionably has gained and maintained supremacy. Two factors are primarily responsible for this: lack of speed and lack of armament on the part of the merchantman. Of course, recently the latter condition has been changed and apparently with good success. But even at best, an armed merchantman has a rather slim chance at escape. Neither space nor available equipment permits a general arming of merchantmen to a sufficient degree to make it possible for the latter to attack a submarine from any considerable distance. Then, too, what chance has a merchant vessel unprotected by patrol boats to escape the torpedo of a hidden submarine? How successfully this question will finally be solved, the future only will show. At present it bids fair to become one of the deciding factors in determining the final issue of this war.

The first authentically known case of an attack without warning by a German submarine against an allied merchantman was the torpedoing of the French steamship Amiral Ganteaume on October 26, 1914, in the English Channel. The steamer was sunk and thirty of its passengers and crew were lost. A number of other attacks followed during the remainder of 1914 and in January, 1915. Then came on February 3, 1915, the now famous pronouncement of the German Government declaring "all the waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, a war zone," and announcing that on and after Feb. 18th, Germany "will attempt to destroy every enemy ship found in that war zone, without its being always possible to avoid the danger that will thus threaten neutral persons and ships." Germany gave warning that "it cannot be responsible hereafter for the safety of crews, passengers, and cargoes of such ships," and it furthermore "calls the attention of neutrals to the fact that it would be well for their ships to avoid entering this zone, for, although the German naval forces are instructed to avoid all violence to neutral ships, in so far as these can be recognized, the order given by the British Government to hoist neutral flags and the contingencies of naval warfare might be the cause of these ships becoming the victims of an attack directed against the vessels of the enemy."

This was the beginning of the submarine controversy between Germany and the United States and resulted in a note from the United States Government in which it was stated that the latter viewed the possibilities created by the German note

with such grave concern, that it feels it to be its privilege, and, indeed, its duty, in the circumstances to request the Imperial German Government to consider before action is taken the critical situation in respect of the relation between this country and Germany which might arise were the German naval forces, in carrying out the policy foreshadowed in the Admiralty's proclamation, to destroy any merchant vessel of the United States or cause the death of American citizens:—To declare and exercise a right to attack and destroy any vessel entering a prescribed area of the high seas without first certainly determining its belligerent nationality and the contraband character of its cargo would be an act so unprecedented in naval warfare that this Government is reluctant to believe that the Imperial Government of Germany in this case contemplates it as possible.

After stating that the destruction of American ships or American lives on the high seas would be difficult to reconcile with the friendly relations existing between the two Governments, the note adds that the United States "would be constrained to hold the Imperial Government of Germany to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities, and to take any steps it might feel necessary to take to safeguard American lives and property and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyment of their acknowledged rights on the high seas."

It is not within the province of this book to go in detail into the diplomatic history of the submarine controversy between Germany and the United States. Suffice it to say, therefore, that from the very beginning the controversy held many possibilities of the disastrous ending which finally came to pass when diplomatic relations were broken off between the two countries on February 3, 1917, and a state of war was declared by President Wilson's proclamation of April 6, 1917.

The period between Germany's first War Zone Declaration and the President's proclamation—two months and three days more than two years—was crowded with incidents in which submarines and submarine warfare held the centre of the stage. It would be impossible within the compass of this story to give a complete survey of all the boats that were sunk and of all the lives that were lost. Nor would it be possible to recount all the deeds of heroism which this new warfare occasioned. Belligerents and neutrals alike were affected. American ships suffered, perhaps, to a lesser degree, than those of other neutrals, partly because of the determined stand taken by the United States Government. On May 1, 1915, the first American steamer, the Gulflight, was sunk. Six days later the world was shocked by the news that the Lusitania, one of the biggest British passenger liners, had been torpedoed without warning on May 7, 1915 and had been sunk with a loss of 1198 lives, of whom 124 were American citizens. Before this nation was goaded into war, more than 200 Americans were slain.

Notes were again exchanged between the two Governments. Though the German government at that time showed an inclination to abandon its position in the submarine controversy under certain conditions, sinkings of passenger and freight steamers without warning continued. All attempts on the part of the United States Government to come to an equitable understanding with Germany failed on account of the latter's refusal to give up submarine warfare, or at least those features of it which, though considered illegal and inhuman by the United States, seemed to be considered most essential by Germany.

Then came the German note of January 31, 1917, stating that "from February 1, 1917, sea traffic will be stopped with every available weapon and without further notice" in certain minutely described "prohibited zones around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the Eastern Mediterranean."

The total tonnage sunk by German submarines from the beginning of the war up to February 1, 1917, has been given by British sources as over three million tons, while German authorities claimed four million. The result of the German edict for unrestricted submarine warfare has been rather appalling, even if it fell far short of German prophesies and hopes. During the first two weeks of February a total of ninety-seven ships with a tonnage of about 210,000 tons were sent to the bottom of the sea. Since then the German submarines have taken an even heavier toll. It has, however, become next to impossible, due to the restrictions of censorship, to compute any accurate figures for later totals, though it has become known from time to time that the Allied as well as the neutral losses have been very much higher during the five months of February to July, 1917 than during any other five months.



The figures of the losses of British merchantmen alone are shown by the following table:

Ships Over 1,600 Under 1,600 Week ending— Tons. Tons. Total.

March 4 14 9 23 March 11 13 4 17 March 18 16 8 24 March 25 18 7 25 April 1 18 13 31 April 8 17 2 19 April 15 19 9 28 April 22 40 15 55 April 29 38 13 51 May 6 24 22 46 May 13 18 5 23 May 20 18 9 27 May 27 18 1 19 June 3 15 3 18 June 10 22 10 32 June 17 27 5 32 June 24 21 7 28 July 1 15 5 20 July 8 14 3 17 July 15 14 4 18 July 22 21 3 24 July 29 18 3 21 Aug. 5 21 2 23 Aug. 12 14 2 16 Aug. 19 15 3 18 Aug. 26 18 5 23 Sept. 2 20 3 23 Sept. 9 12 6 18 Sept. 16 8 20 28 Sept. 23 13 2 15 Sept. 30 11 2 13 Oct. 7 14 2 16 Oct. 14 12 6 18 Oct. 21 17 8 25 Oct. 28 14 4 18 Nov. 4 8 4 12 Nov. 11 1 5 6

The table with its week by week report of the British losses is of importance because at the time it was taken as a barometer indicative of German success or failure. The German admiralty at the moment of declaring the ruthless submarine war promised the people of Germany that they would sink a million tons a month and by so doing would force England to abject surrender in the face of starvation within three months. During that period the whole civilized world looked eagerly for the weekly statement of British losses. Only at one time was the German estimate of a million tons monthly obtained. Most of the time the execution done by the undersea boats amounted to less than half that figure. So far from England being beaten in three months, at the end of ten she was still unshattered, though sorely disturbed by the loss of so much shipping. Her new crops had come on and her statesmen declared that so far as the food supply was concerned they were safe for another year.

During this period of submarine activity the United States entered upon the war and its government immediately turned its attention to meeting the submarine menace. In the first four months literally nothing was accomplished toward this end. A few submarines were reported sunk by merchantmen, but in nearly every instance it was doubtful whether they were actually destroyed or merely submerged purposely in the face of a hostile fire. Americans were looked upon universally as a people of extraordinary inventive genius, and everywhere it was believed that by some sudden lucky thought an American would emerge from a laboratory equipped with a sovereign remedy for the submarine evil. Prominent inventors indeed declared their purpose of undertaking this search and went into retirement to study the problem. From that seclusion none had emerged with a solution at the end of ten months. When the submarine campaign was at its very height no one was able to suggest a better remedy for it than the building of cargo ships in such quantities that, sink as many as they might, the Germans would have to let enough slip through to sufficiently supply England with food and with the necessary munitions of war.

Many cruel sufferings befell seafaring people during the period of German ruthlessness on the high seas. An open boat, overcrowded with refugees, hastily provisioned as the ship to which it belonged was careening to its fate, and tossing on the open sea two or three hundred miles from shore in the icy nights of midwinter was no place of safety or of comfort. Yet the Germans so construed it, holding that when they gave passengers and crew of a ship time to take to the boats, they had fully complied with the international law providing that in the event of sinking a ship its people must first be given an opportunity to assure their safety.

There have been many harrowing stories of the experiences of survivors thus turned adrift. Under the auspices of the British government, Rudyard Kipling wrote a book detailing the agonies which the practice inflicted upon helpless human beings, including many women and children. Some of the survivors have told in graphic story the record of their actual experiences. Among these one of the most vivid is from the pen of a well-known American journalist, Floyd P. Gibbons, correspondent of the Chicago Tribune. He was saved from the British liner, Laconia, sunk by a German submarine, and thus tells the tale of his sufferings and final rescue:

I have serious doubts whether this is a real story. I am not entirely certain that it is not all a dream and that in a few minutes I will wake up back in stateroom B. 19 on the promenade deck of the Cunarder Laconia and hear my cockney steward informing me with an abundance of "and sirs" that it is a fine morning.

I am writing this within thirty minutes after stepping on the dock here in Queenstown from the British mine sweeper which picked up our open lifeboat after an eventful six hours of drifting, and darkness and baling and pulling on the oars and of straining aching eyes toward that empty, meaningless horizon in search of help. But, dream or fact, here it is:

The first-cabin passengers were gathered in the lounge Sunday evening, with the exception of the bridge fiends in the smoking-room. Poor Butterfly was dying wearily on the talking-machine and several couples were dancing.

About the tables in the smoke-room the conversation was limited to the announcement of bids and orders to the stewards. This group had about exhausted available discussion when the ship gave a sudden lurch sideways and forward. There was a muffled noise like the slamming of some large door at a good distance away. The slightness of the shock and the mildness of the report compared with my imagination was disappointing. Every man in the room was on his feet in an instant.

I looked at my watch. It was 10.30.

Then came five blasts on the whistle. We rushed down the corridor leading from the smoking-room at the stern to the lounge, which was amidships. We were running, but there was no panic. The occupants of the lounge were just leaving by the forward doors as we entered.

It was dark when we reached the lower deck. I rushed into my stateroom, grabbed life preservers and overcoat and made my way to the upper deck on that same dark landing.

I saw the chief steward opening an electric switch box in the wall and turning on the switch. Instantly the boat decks were illuminated. That illumination saved lives.

The torpedo had hit us well astern on the starboard side and had missed the engines and the dynamos. I had not noticed the deck lights before. Throughout the voyage our decks had remained dark at night and all cabin portholes were clamped down and all windows covered with opaque paint.

The illumination of the upper deck, on which I stood, made the darkness of the water, sixty feet below, appear all the blacker when I peered over the edge at my station boat, No. 10.

Already the boat was loading up and men and boys were busy with the ropes. I started to help near a davit that seemed to be giving trouble, but was stoutly ordered to get out of the way and get into the boat. We were on the port side, practically opposite the engine well. Up and down the deck passengers and crew were donning lifebelts, throwing on overcoats, and taking positions in the boats. There were a number of women, but only one appeared hysterical....

The boat started downward with a jerk toward the seemingly hungry rising and falling swells. Then we stopped and remained suspended in mid-air while the men at the bow and the stern swore and tusselled with the lowering ropes. The stern of the boat was down, the bow up, leaving us at an angle of about forty-five degrees. We clung to the seats to save ourselves from falling out.



"Who's got a knife? A knife! a knife!" bawled a sweating seaman in the bow.

"Great God! Give him a knife," bawled a half-dressed, gibbering negro stoker who wrung his hands in the stern.

A hatchet was thrust into my hand, and I forwarded it to the bow. There was a flash of sparks as it crashed down on the holding pulley. Many feet and hands pushed the boat from the side of the ship and we sagged down again, this time smacking squarely on the billowy top of a rising swell.

As we pulled away from the side of the ship its receding terrace of lights stretched upward. The ship was slowly turning over. We were opposite that part occupied by the engine rooms. There was a tangle of oars, spars and rigging on the seat and considerable confusion before four of the big sweeps could be manned on either side of the boat.

The gibbering bullet-headed negro was pulling directly behind me and I turned to quiet him as his frantic reaches with his oar were hitting me in the back.

"Get away from her, get away from her," he kept repeating. "When the water hits her hot boilers she'll blow up, and there's just tons and tons of shrapnel in the hold."

His excitement spread to other members of the crew in the boat.

It was the give-way of nerve tension. It was bedlam and nightmare.

We rested on our oars, with all eyes on the still lighted Laconia. The torpedo had struck at 10.30 P. M. It was thirty minutes afterward that another dull thud, which was accompanied by a noticeable drop in the hulk, told its story of the second torpedo that the submarine had despatched through the engine room and the boat's vitals from a distance of two hundred yards.

We watched silently during the next minute, as the tiers of lights dimmed slowly from white to yellow, then a red, and nothing was left but the murky mourning of the night, which hung over all like a pall.

A mean, cheese-coloured crescent of a moon revealed one horn above a ragged bundle of clouds low in the distance. A rim of blackness settled around our little world, relieved only by general leering stars in the zenith, and where the Laconia's lights had shone there remained only the dim outlines of a blacker hulk standing out above the water like a jagged headland, silhouetted against the overcast sky.

The ship sank rapidly at the stern until at last its nose stood straight in the air. Then it slid silently down and out of sight like a piece of disappearing scenery in a panorama spectacle.

Boat No. 3 stood closest to the ship and rocked about in a perilous sea of clashing spars and wreckage. As our boat's crew steadied its head into the wind a black hulk, glistening wet and standing about eight feet above the surface of the water, approached slowly and came to a stop opposite the boat and not six feet from the side of it.

"What ship was dot?" The correct words in throaty English with a German accent came from the dark hulk, according to Chief Steward Ballyn's statement to me later.

"The Laconia," Ballyn answered.

"Vot?"

"The Laconia, Cunard Line," responded the steward.

"Vot did she weigh?" was the next question from the submarine.

"Eighteen thousand tons."

"Any passengers?"

"Seventy-three," replied Ballyn, "men, women, and children, some of them in this boat. She had over two hundred in the crew."

"Did she carry cargo?"

"Yes."

"Well, you'll be all right. The patrol will pick you up soon." And without further sound save for the almost silent fixing of the conning tower lid, the submarine moved off.

There was no assurance of an early pick-up, even tho the promise were from a German source, for the rest of the boats, whose occupants—if they felt and spoke like those in my boat—were more than mildly anxious about their plight and the prospects of rescue.

The fear of some of the boats crashing together produced a general inclination toward further separation on the part of all the little units of survivors, with the result that soon the small craft stretched out for several miles, all of them endeavouring to keep their heads in the wind.

And then we saw the first light—the first sign of help coming—the first searching glow of white brilliance, deep down on the sombre sides of the black pot of night that hung over us.

It was way over there—first a trembling quiver of silver against the blackness; then, drawing closer, it defined itself as a beckoning finger, altho still too far away yet to see our feeble efforts to attract it....

We pulled, pulled, lustily forgetting the strain and pain of innards torn and racked from pain, vomiting—oblivious of blistered hands and wet, half frozen feet.

Then a nodding of that finger of light—a happy, snapping, crap-shooting finger that seemed to say: "Come on, you men," like a dice-player wooing the bones—led us to believe that our lights had been seen. This was the fact, for immediately the coming vessel flashed on its green and red side-lights and we saw it was headed for our position.

"Come alongside port!" was megaphoned to us. And as fast as we could we swung under the stern, while a dozen flashlights blinked down to us and orders began to flow fast and thick.

A score of hands reached out, and we were suspended in the husky tattooed arms of those doughty British jack tars, looking up into the weather-beaten, youthful faces, mumbling thanks and thankfulness and reading in the gold lettering on their pancake hats the legend "H. M. S. Laburnum."

Of course, the submarine fleets of the various navies paid a heavy toll too. It has become, however, increasingly difficult to get any accurate figures of these losses. The British navy, it is known, has lost during 1914, 1915, and 1916 twelve boats, some of which foundered, were wrecked or mined while others simply never returned. The loss of eight German submarines has also been definitely established. Others, however, are known to have been lost, and their number has been greatly increased since the arming of merchantmen. In 1917 it was estimated that the Germans lost one U-boat a week and built three.

Just what sensations a man experiences in a submerged submarine that finds it impossible to rise again, is, of course, more or less of a mystery. For, though submarines, the entire crew of which perished, have been raised later, only one record has ever been known to have been made covering the period during which death by suffocation or drowning stared their occupants in the face. This heroic and pathetic record was written in form of a letter by the commander of a Japanese submarine, Lieutenant Takuma Faotomu, whose boat, with its entire crew, was lost on April 15, 1910, during manoeuvres in Hiroshima Bay. The letter reads in part as follows:



Although there is, indeed, no excuse to make for the sinking of his Imperial Majesty's boat and for the doing away of subordinates through my heedlessness, all on the boat have discharged their duties well and in everything acted calmly until death. Although we are departing in pursuance of our duty to the State, the only regret we have is due to anxiety lest the men of the world may misunderstand the matter, and that thereby a blow may be given to the future development of submarines. While going through gasoline submarine exercise, we submerged too far, and when we attempted to shut the sluice-valve, the chain in the meantime gave way. Then we tried to close the sluice-valve, by hand, but it was too late, the rear part being full of water, and the boat sank at an angle of about twenty-five degrees.

The switchboard being under water, the electric lights gave out. Offensive gas developed and respiration became difficult. The above has been written under the light of the conning-tower when it was 11.45 o'clock. We are now soaked by the water that has made its way in. Our clothes are very wet and we feel cold. I have always expected death whenever I left my home, and therefore my will is already in the drawer at Karasaki. I beg, respectfully, to say to his Majesty that I respectfully request that none of the families left by my subordinates shall suffer. The only matter I am anxious about now is this. Atmospheric pressure is increasing, and I feel as if my tympanum were breaking. At 12.30 o'clock respiration is extraordinarily difficult. I am breathing gasoline. I am intoxicated with gasoline. It is 12.40 o'clock.

Could there be a more touching record of the way in which a brave man met death?

* * * * *

More interest in submarine warfare than ever before was aroused in this country when the German war submarine U-53 unexpectedly made its appearance in the harbour of Newport, R. I., during the afternoon of October 7, 1916. About three hours afterwards, without having taken on any supplies, and after explaining her presence by the desire of delivering a letter addressed to Count von Bernstorff, then German Ambassador at Washington, the U-53 left as suddenly and mysteriously as she had appeared.

This was the first appearance of a foreign war submarine in an American port. It was claimed that the U-53 had made the trip from Wilhelmshaven in seventeen days. She was 213 feet long, equipped with two guns, four torpedo tubes, and an exceptionally strong wireless outfit. Besides her commander, Captain Rose, she was manned by three officers and thirty-three men.

Early the next morning, October 8, it became evident what had brought the U-53 to this side of the Atlantic. At the break of day, she made her re-appearance southeast of Nantucket. The American steamer Kansan of the American Hawaiian Company bound from New York by way of Boston to Genoa was stopped by her, but, after proving her nationality and neutral ownership was allowed to proceed. Five other steamships, three of them British, one Dutch, and one Norwegian were less fortunate. The British freighter Strathend, of 4321 tons was the first victim. Her crew were taken aboard the Nantucket shoals light-ship. Two other British freighters, West Point and Stephano, followed in short order to the bottom of the ocean. The crews of both were saved by United States torpedo boat destroyers who had come from Newport as soon as news of the U-53's activities had been received there. This was also the case with the crews of the Dutch Bloomersdijk and the Norwegian tanker, Christian Knudsen.

Not often in recent years has there been put on American naval officers quite so disagreeable a restraint as duty enforced upon the commanders of the destroyers who watched the destruction of these friendly ships, almost within our own territorial waters, by an arrogant foreigner who gave himself no concern over the rescue of the crews of the sunken ships but seemed to think that the function of the American men of war. It was no secret at the time that sentiment in the Navy was strongly pro-Ally. Probably had it been wholly neutral the mind of any commander would have revolted at this spectacle of wanton destruction of property and callous indifference to human life. It is quite probable that had this event occurred before the invention of wireless telegraphy had robbed the navy commander at sea of all initiative, there might have happened off Nantucket something analogous to the famous action of Commodore Tatnall when with the cry, "Blood is thicker than water" he took a part of his crew to the aid of British vessels sorely pressed by the fire of certain Chinese forts on the Yellow River. As it was it is an open secret that one commander appealed by wireless to Washington for authority to intervene. He did not get it of course. No possible construction of international law could give us rights beyond the three-mile limit. He had at least however the satisfaction when the German commander asked him to move his ship to a point at which it would not interfere with the submarine's fire upon one of the doomed vessels, of telling him to move his own ship and accompanying the suggestion with certain phrases of elaboration thoroughly American.

The rapid development of submarine warfare naturally made it necessary to find ways and means to combat this new weapon of naval warfare. Much difficulty was experienced, especially in the beginning, because there were no precedents and because for a considerable period everything that was tried had necessarily to be of an experimental nature.

To protect harbours and bays was found comparatively easy. Nets were spread across their entrances. They were made of strong wire cables and to judge from the total absence of submarines within the harbours thus guarded they proved a successful deterrent. In most cases they were supported by extensive minefields. The danger of these to submarines, however, is rather a matter of doubt, for submarines can dive successfully under them and by careful navigating escape unharmed.

The general idea of fighting submarines with nets was also adopted for areas of open water which were suspected of being infested with submarines. Recently, serious doubts have been raised concerning the future usefulness of nets. Reports have been published that German submarines have been fitted up with a wire and cable cutting appliance which would make it possible for them to break through nets at will, supposing, of course, that they had been caught by the nets in such a way that no vital parts of the underwater craft had been seriously damaged. A sketch of this wire cutting device was made by the captain of a merchantman, who, while in a small boat after his ship had been torpedoed, had come close enough to the attacking submarine to make the necessary observations. The sketch showed an arrangement consisting of a number of strands of heavy steel hawsers which were stretched from bow to stern, passing through the conning tower and to which were attached a series of heavy circular knives a foot in diameter and placed about a yard apart. Even as early as January, 1915, Mr. Simon Lake, the famous American submarine engineer and inventor, published an article in the Scientific American in which he dwelt at length on means by which a submarine could escape mines and nets. One of the illustrations, accompanying this article, showed a device enabling submarines travelling on the bottom of the sea to lift a net with a pair of projecting arms and thus pass unharmed under it.



Many other devices to trap, sink or capture submarines have been invented. A large number of these, of course, have been found impracticable. Others, however, have been used with success. Few details of any of these have been allowed to become known.

The most dangerous power of submarines, is their ability to approach very closely to their object of attack without making their presence known to their prey. This naturally suggested that a way be found to detect the presence of submarines early enough to make it possible to stave off an attack or even to assume the offensive against the underwater boat. A recent invention, the perfection of which is due to the work of Mr. William Dubilier, an American electrical engineer, and of Professor Tissot, a member of the French Academy of Science, is the microphone. Few details are known about this instrument except that it records sound waves at as great a distance as fifty-five miles. This would permit in most cases the calling of patrol boats or the use of other defensive means before the submarine would be able to execute an attack.

At the present moment it would appear that the most dangerous enemy of the submarine yet discovered is the airplane or the dirigible. Some figures as to the mortality among submarines due to the efforts of aircraft have been published in an earlier chapter. The chief value of aircraft in this work is due to the fact that objects under the water are readily discernible at a considerable depth when viewed from a point directly over them. An illustration familiar to every boy is to be found in the fact that he can see fish at the bottom of a clear stream from a bridge, while from the shore the refraction of the water is such that he can see nothing. From the air the aviator can readily see a submarine at a depth of fifty feet unless the water is unusually rough or turbid. The higher he rises the wider is his sphere of vision. With the lurking craft thus located the airman can either signal to watching destroyers or may bide his time and follow the submarine until it rises to the surface, when a well placed bomb will destroy it. Both of these methods have been adopted with success. For a time the submarines were immune from this form of attack because of the difficulty of finding a bomb which would not explode on striking the surface of the water, thus allowing its force to be dissipated before it reached the submarine, or else would not have its velocity so greatly checked by the water that on reaching the submarine the shock of its impact would not be great enough to explode it at all. Both of these difficulties have been overcome. The new high explosives have such power, taken in connection with the fact that water transmits the force of an explosion undiminished to a great distance, that many of them exploding at the surface will put out of action a submarine at a considerable depth. Furthermore bombs have been invented, which being fired, not merely dropped from an airplane, will go through the water with almost undiminished momentum and explode on striking the target, or after a period fixed by the assailant. Other bombs known as "depth bombs" are fitted with flanges that revolve as they sink, causing an explosion at any desired depth.

About the actual achievements of the airplane as a foe to submarines there hangs a haze of mystery. It has been the policy of the Allied governments to keep secret the record of submarines destroyed and particularly the methods of destruction. But we know that a few have met their fate from bolts dropped from the blue. In The Outlook Lawrence La Tourette Driggs, himself a flying man of no contemptible record, describes the method and result of such an attack. After recounting the steps by which a brother airman attained a position directly above a submerged submarine preparatory to dropping his bomb, he says:

Down shot his plummet of steel and neatly parted the waters ahead of the labouring submarine. But it did not explode. I could see a whirling metal propeller on the torpedo revolve as it sank. It must have missed the craft by twenty feet.

Suddenly a column of water higher than my position in the air stood straight up over the sea, then slipped noiselessly back. By all that is wonderful how did that happen?

As we covered the spot again and again in our circling machines, we were joined by two more pilots, and finally by a fast clipper steam yacht. The surface of the water was literally covered with oil, breaking up the ripple of the waves, and smoothing a huge area into gleaming bronze. Here and there floated a cork belt, odd bunches of cotton waste, a strip of carpet, and a wooden three-legged stool. These fragments alone remained to testify to the corpus delicti.

"Philip," I said half an hour later, as the hot coffee was thawing out our insides, "what kind of a civilized bomb do you call that?"

"That bears the simple little title of trinitrotoluol; call it T. N. T. for short," replied Sergeant Pieron.

"But what made it hang fire so long?" I demanded.

"It's made to work that way. When the bomb begins sinking the little propeller is turned as it is pulled down through the water. It continues turning until it screws to the end. There it touches the fuse-pin and that sets off the high explosive—at any depth you arrange it for."

I regarded him steadfastly. Then I remarked, "But it did not touch the submarine. I saw it miss."

"Yes, you can miss it fifty yards and still crush the submarine." He took up an empty egg shell. "The submarine is hollow like this. She is held rigidly on all her sides by the water. Water is non-compressible like steel. Now when the T. N. T. explodes, even some distance away, the violent expending concussion is communicated to this hollow shell just as though a battering ram struck it. The submarine can't give any because the surrounding water holds her in place. So she crumples up—like this."

Pieron opened his hand and the flakes of egg shell fluttered down until they struck the floor.

Gunfire undoubtedly is still the most reliable preventive against submarine attacks. Comparatively small calibred guns can cause serious damage to submarines even by one well directed shot. Submarines have been sunk both by warships and merchantmen in this way and many more have been forced to desist from attacks. Not every merchantman, of course, can be equipped with the necessary guns and gunners. Neither equipment nor men can be spared in sufficient quantities. But the efficiency of gun protection has been proved beyond all doubt by many authentic reports of successful encounters between armed merchantmen and submarines in which the latter were defeated.

Ramming, too, has been advocated and tried. It is, however, a procedure involving considerable danger to the attacking boat. For one thing all the submarine has to do is to dive quick and deep enough and it is out of harm's way. Then, too, the chances are that the submarine can launch a torpedo in time to reach the ramming vessel before the latter can do any damage.



There have been reports of submarine duels between Austrian and Italian submarines in the Adriatic in which it was claimed that in each at least one submarine was destroyed, and, at least, in one instance both the duellists were sunk. Generally speaking the fact has been established, however, that submarines cannot fight submarines with any degree of success, except in exceptional cases and under exceptional conditions.

Since the outbreak of the war between the United States and Germany the question of combating the submarine has become more acute than ever. The latest development has been along negative rather than affirmative lines. It has apparently been decided that none of the devices, known at present and capable of destroying submarines, is sufficient either alone or in combinations to defeat the submarines decisively. The best means of balancing as much as possible the losses which German submarines are inflicting on the shipping facilities of the Allies at the present seems to be the unlimited and prompt building of large fleets of comparatively small ships. If this can be accomplished in time, the German submarines undoubtedly will find it impossible to destroy a tonnage sufficient to exert any great influence on the final outcome of the war.



CHAPTER XVII

THE FUTURE OF THE SUBMARINE

The world will not always be at war. Interminable as the conflict by which it is now racked seems, and endless as appear the resources of the nations participating in it, the time must come when victory or sheer exhaustion shall compel peace. People talk of that peace being permanent. That is perhaps too sanguine a dream while human nature remains what it is, and nations can still be as covetous, ambitious, and heedless of others' rights as are individuals. But beyond doubt a prolonged period of peace awaits the world. What then is to be the future of the aircraft and the submarine which had to wait for war to secure any recognition from mankind of their prodigious possibilities?

Of the future of the aircraft there can be no doubt. Its uses in peace will be innumerable. Poor old Count Zeppelin, who thought of his invention only as a weapon of war, nevertheless showed how it might be successfully adapted to the needs of peace merely as a byproduct. As for the airplane both for sport and business its opportunities are endless. Easy and inexpensive to build, simple to operate with but little training on the part of the aviator, it will be made the common carrier of all nations. Already the United States is maintaining an aerial mail service in Alaska. Already too, bi- and triplanes are built capable of carrying twenty-five to thirty men besides guns and ammunition. It is easy to foresee the use that can be made of machines of this character in times of peace. Needing no tracks or right of way, requiring no expensive signalling or operative system, asking only that at each end of the route there shall be a huge level field for rising and for landing, these machines will in time take to themselves the passenger business of the world.

But the future of the submarine is more dubious. Always it will be a potent weapon of war. It may indeed force the relegation of dreadnoughts to the scrap heap. But of its peaceful services there is more doubt. That it can be made a cargo carrier is unquestionably true. But to what good? There is no intelligent reason for carrying cargoes slowly under water which might just as well be carried swiftly on the surface unless war compels concealment. Underwater navigation must always be slower and more expensive than surface navigation, nor does it seem probable that the underwater boats can ever equal in size ordinary ships, though undoubtedly their present proportions are going to be greatly increased.

As a result of the German submarine campaign it is possible that the United States may develop a fleet of underwater merchantmen to circumvent the enemy while this war continues, though there has been but little discussion of it. But even so, commonsense would indicate that such a fleet would be abandoned on the restoration of peace. If anything is to be done toward making the submarine a vessel of ordinary everyday use the present double system of motors—the Diesels for surface navigation and the electric for submerged service—will have to be abandoned. Inventors however are diligently working on this problem to-day. Indeed so well known and successful a builder of submarines as Mr. Simon Lake seemed to have faith in their possibilities as merchant craft. As early as February, 1916, he announced that he had taken out a patent on a new form of cargo-carrying submarine which he described as made up of "nests of light-weight circular tanks of comparatively small diameter surrounded by a ship-shape form of hull." What advantage was to accrue from this type of vessel Mr. Lake has not explained. However the Germans who seemed to originate everything successfully demonstrated that the merchant submarine was a practicable and useful craft with which to beat the blockade.

This was proved by the two successful trips made by the unarmed German merchant submarine Deutschland between Germany and the United States in 1916. Loaded with a cargo of dyestuffs and chemicals she left Bremen on June 14, 1916, and arrived in Baltimore early in July. After a short stay, during which she took on a full return cargo, consisting chiefly of rubber and metal, she started on August 1, 1916, for her return trip to Bremen where she arrived safely soon after August 15, 1916. Once more, in October of the same year she made a successful round trip, docking this time in New London. There was considerable talk about additional trips by other German merchant submarines, but none of them were ever carried out. It has never become known whether this was due to the loss of these merchant submarines or to political relations between Germany and the United States which were then gradually assuming a less friendly form.



Of course, it is true that such boats are blockade runners and in a way, therefore, part and parcel of warfare. But they are unarmed merchantmen just the same and their exclusively mercantile character has been officially acknowledged by the United States Government. Under conditions of peace, however, it is very doubtful whether submarine merchantmen would pay, nor does it seem as if they possessed any advantages at all over surface merchant vessels. Nevertheless they represent an entirely new development of submarine navigation and, therefore, deserve attention.

During her stay in the United States, very few people were permitted to get more than a glance of the Deutschland. As a result, comparatively little became known regarding her mechanical details. The Scientific American, however, in its issue of July 22, 1916, gives a fairly detailed description of this first merchant submarine.

From this account we learn that the Deutschland conforms rather closely to the typical German naval U-boat. The hull proper consists of an internal cigar-shaped, cylindrical structure, which extends from stem to stern, and in its largest diameter measures about twenty feet. Enclosing this hull is a lighter false hull, which is perforated, to permit the entrance and exit of the sea-water, and is so shaped as to give the submarine a fairly good ship model for driving at high speed on the surface and at a much lesser speed submerged. The upper portion of the false hull does not present such a flat deck-like appearance as is noticeable in the naval U-boats. In fact, the whole modelling of the Deutschland, as compared with the naval boats, suggests that she has been fulled out somewhat, with a view to obtaining the necessary displacement for cargo carrying.

The interior cylindrical hull is divided by four transverse bulkheads into five separate water-tight compartments. Compartment No. 1, at the bow, contains the anchor cables and electric winches for handling the anchor; also general ship stores, and a certain amount of cargo. Compartment No. 2 is given up entirely to cargo. Compartment No. 3, which is considerably larger than any of the others, contains the living quarters of the officers and crew. At the after end of this compartment, and communicating with it, is the conning tower. Compartment No. 4 is given up entirely to cargo. Compartment No. 5 contains the propelling machinery, consisting of two heavy oil engines and two electric motors. The storage batteries are carried in the bottom of the boat, below the living compartment. For purposes of communication, a gangway, 2 feet 6 inches wide by 6 feet high, is built through each cargo compartment, thus rendering it possible for the crew to pass entirely from one end of the boat to the other.

The length of the Deutschland is about 315 feet; beam 30 feet, and draught 17 feet. For surface propulsion and for charging the batteries, the boat carries two 4-cylinder, Diesel, heavy-oil motors of about 600 H. P. each. The speed at the surface is from 12 to 13 knots; and submerged it is 7 knots. At the surface the displacement of the boat is about 2000 tons, and she has a cargo capacity of about 700 tons.

The freeboard to the main deck, which runs the full length of the boat, but is only about 5-1/2 feet wide, is about 6 feet, and the cockpit at the top of the conning tower is about 15 feet above the water. This cockpit, by the way, is suggestive of the protection afforded a chauffeur in an automobile, there being a shield in front of the quartermaster, so shaped as to throw the wind and spray upwards and clear of his face.

Two periscopes are provided; one at the forward end of the conning tower, and the other, of larger diameter, being forward and on the starboard of the conning tower. An interesting feature is the two folding, steel, wireless masts, about 50 feet in height, both of which fold aft into pockets built in the deck of the ship. The forward one of these masts carries a crow's nest for the lookout.

The commander of the Deutschland, Captain Paul Koenig, was before the war a popular captain of North German Lloyd liners. He has published a very vivid and interesting account of the Deutschland's trip, the Voyage of the Deutschland. In this book, he tells us how he was offered this novel command while the plans were still being drawn and that he immediately accepted, making, however, the proviso "if the thing really comes off."

The men, backing the venture, lost no time and, so Captain Koenig tells us,

in less than two months a telegram called me to Berlin to an important conference. Here I looked at sketches, plans, and working drawings until my eyes swam. Four more months passed which I utilized to the full. I then went to Kiel and saw a remarkable framework of steel slowly take shape upon the stocks across the way at Gaarden. Rotund, snug, and harmless the thing lay there. Inside it were hidden all the countless, complicated, and powerful features of those sketches and working drawings. I cannot boast that the reality as executed in steel and brass was any easier to grasp than the endless network of lines and circles which had bewildered me when inspecting the blueprints.

Those of you who have seen illustrations and photographs of the interior of the "central station" or the "turret" of a submarine, will understand what I mean. And should you have entered a submarine itself and felt yourself hopelessly confused by the bewildering chaos of wheels, vents, screws, cocks, pipes, conduits—above, below, and all about—not to speak of the mysterious levers and weird mechanisms, each of which has some important function to fulfill, you may find some consolation in the thought that my own brains performed a devils' dance at the sight.

But after this monster, with its tangle of tubes and pipes, had been duly christened, and its huge grey-green body had slid majestically into the water, it suddenly became a ship. It swam in its element as though born to it—as though it had never known another.

For the first time I trod the tiny deck and mounted the turret to the navigation platform. From here I glanced down and was surprised to see beneath me a long, slender craft—with gracious lines and dainty contours. Only the sides, where the green body vaulted massively above the water, gave an indication of the huge size of the hull. I felt pride and rapture as my eye took in this picture. The fabric swayed slightly beneath my feet—an impressive combination of power and delicacy.

And now I know that what had at first seemed to me nothing more than the product of some mad phantasy on the part of the technicians was in reality a ship. It was a ship in which oceans might be crossed, a real ship, to which the heart of an old sailor like myself might safely attach itself.

Then came a short period of trial trips and diving tests, all of which were carried off successfully, and at last the day of departure arrived. As soon as the last escort had turned around a final diving test was ordered.

Instantly the response came back from the turret and the central station, and the men hurried to their posts. The oil engines were still hammering away at a mad rate. I left the manhole of the turret. The cover was battened down, the engines stopped at the same moment.

We felt a slight pressure in our ears for a moment. We were cut off from outside and silence reigned. But this silence was merely an illusion—and was due to the change.



"Open the diving-valves! Submerge!"

The valves were flung open and the compressed air escaped hissing from the tanks. At the same time a gigantic, intermittent snorting ensued, like the blowing and belching of some prehistoric monster. There was an uncomfortable pressure in our ears, then the noise became more regular, followed by a buzzing and a shrill hum. All the high notes of the engines in the central station intermingled and made a bewildering noise. It was like a mad diabolical singsong. And yet it was almost like silence after the dull, heavy pounding of the oil-motors—only more insistent and irritating. The penetrating hum in the various vents announced the fact that the diving mechanism was in operation. It moaned and sang lower and lower in the scale of tones. These slowly diminishing and steadily deepening tones give one the physical feeling of mighty volumes of water pouring in and flooding full.

You have the sensation of growing heavier and sinking as the boat grows heavier and sinks, even though you may not be able to see through the turret window, or the periscope, how the bows are gradually submerged and the water climbs higher and higher up the turret until all things without are wrapped in the eerie twilight of the depths.

The faithful lamps burned, however, and then a real silence suddenly ensued. There was no sound but the gentle trembling rhythm of the electric engines.

I then gave the order:

"Submerge to twenty meters!"

"Both engines half steam ahead!"

I was able to follow our submersion by means of the manometer. Through flooding the tanks, the boat is given several tons over-weight and the enclosed ship's space is made heavier than the displaced quantity of water. The titanic fish, therefore, began to sink downward in its element, that is to say, it began, in a certain sense, to fall. At the same time the electric engines are put into motion and the propulsive force of the propellers acts upon the diving rudders and causes the sinking to become a gliding. After the required depth has been reached—something which may easily be read from the manometer that records the depth—all further sinking may be stopped by simply lightening the hull, which is done by forcing out some of the water in the submarine's tanks. The furious growling of the pump is always a sure sign that the required depth is being approached. The noise ceased, only the electric motors continued to purr, and the word came from the central station:

"Twenty meters—even keel!"

"Rudder set!"

So we forged ahead at a depth of twenty meters. Of course we are "blind" under such conditions and can regulate our movements only by means of the depth recorder and that precious little jewel of the boat, our compass. No ray of light reached us any longer from without, the periscope was submerged long ago and the steel safety covers over the windows were closed. We had been metamorphosed completely into a fish.[1]

[Footnote 1: (C)]

Orders were then given to rise again. The Deutschland carried out this manoeuvre with the same facility with which she had taken the initial dive of her long voyage. In record time the ballast tanks were emptied and the change from electric motors to oil engines was completed without further loss of time. The boat was started at top surface speed towards her ultimate goal, the United States.

On the following day the Deutschland barely escaped running foul of a British submarine chaser, disguised as a neutral merchantman. A quick dive alone saved her. When she came up again a wild storm and a heavy sea were raging. Even before the change from the electric motors to the oil engines had been completed, another dangerous looking vessel appeared and before long was recognized as a hostile destroyer by Captain Koenig. He tells us that he "Made one jump into the turret and slammed the cover fast."

"Alarm! Dive quickly! Flood!"

"Set diving rudder!"

"Twenty meters' depth!"

The commands were uttered in almost one breath. But the execution of them!

To attempt to dive with such a sea running was sheer madness, as experience has taught us. What was I to do? The destroyer might have seen us already!

Well, we knew we must get under—and as quickly as possible.

The men in the central below me were working away in silent haste. All the exhausts were opened wide, the compressed air hissed from the tanks—the diving vents were chanting in all possible keys.

I stood with my lips pressed together and stared out of the turret window upon the tossing sea, and watched for the first sign of our going down. But our deck remained still visible and we were continually lifted into the air by some wave. There was not a moment to be lost.

I ordered the diving rudder to be set still more sharply and both engines to drive ahead with full power.

The whole vessel quivered and thrilled under the increased pressure of the engines and made several leaps. She staggered about in the furious seas—but still seemed loath to leave the surface. Then she gave a jerk and her bows suddenly dipped and cut into the flood. She began to sink into the depths at an ever-increasing angle. The coming daylight vanished from the windows of the turret, the manometer in rapid succession showed 2—3—6—10 meters' depth. But the angle of the boat also began to increase.

We staggered about, leaned back, slipped off our feet. We then lost our footing entirely—for the floor of the Deutschland slanted sharply toward the front. I was just able to catch hold of the ocular or eye-piece of the periscope. Down in the central the men were hanging on to the hand-wheels of the diving rudder. A few terrible seconds passed thus.

We had not yet seized the full significance of this new situation when there came a severe shock. We were hurled to the floor and everything that was not fastened down went flying in all directions.

We found ourselves in the queerest attitudes—and stared into one another's faces. There was a grim silence for a moment, then First Officer Krapohl remarked dryly:

"Well, we seem to have arrived!"

This broke the ghastly tension.

We were all rather pale around the gills, but at once tried to get our bearings.

What had happened?

What had caused this unnatural inclination of the boat? And why were the engines above us raving at intervals in a way that made the whole boat roar from stem to stern?

Before any of us had arrived at any solution of the mystery, our Chief Engineer, little Klees, had jumped up from his crouching position, and, swift as lightning, had swept the engine-signal dial around to "Stop!"

And suddenly there was a deep silence.

We slowly assembled our proper legs and arms and thought hard over what had happened.

The vessel had slanted down toward the bows at an angle of about 36 degrees. She was standing, so to speak, on her head. Our bow was fast upon the bottom of the sea—our stern was still oscillating up and down like a mighty pendulum. The manometer showed a depth of about 15 meters.[2]

[Footnote 2: (C)]



However, the Deutschland finally worked herself free and soon was again on the surface. Luck must have been with her, for she had suffered no damage and, in spite of the mountains of water which she must have thrown up, the hostile destroyer had not discovered her. Once more she was off on her way.

So the days went by and before long the merchant submarine had passed, without having been detected, beyond the territory in which British patrol boats were operating. Then came a succession of uneventful days and fine weather. Practically every day diving tests were made. One of these the captain describes as follows:

During these experimental diving tests we were treated to a spectacle of fairy-like loveliness.

I had set the rudder in such a way that the turret was travelling about three yards under water. Overhead the sun shone brilliantly and filled the deeps with a clear radiance. The pure water was luminous with colour—close at hand it was of a light azure blue, of fabulous clearness and transparent as glass. I could see the entire boat from the turret windows. The shimmering pearls of the air-bubbles which rise constantly from the body of the craft played about the entire length of the vessel from deck to bows, and every detail stood out in miraculous sharpness. Farther ahead there was a multi-coloured twilight. It seemed as if the prow kept pushing itself noiselessly into a wall of opalescent green which parted, glistening, and grew to an ethereal, rainbow-like translucency close at hand.

We were spell-bound by this vision of beauty. The fairy-like effect was increased by medusae which, poised in the transparent blue, frequently became entangled in the wires of the mine-guards or the railings and glowed like trembling fires of rose, pale gold, and purple.[3]

[Footnote 3: (C)]

But less pleasant things were in store for the Deutschland's crew. The nearer the boat came to the region of the Gulf Stream, the more violent the weather became. Though she still ran most of the time on the surface, it became necessary to keep all openings battened down. Even the manhole, leading to the turret, could be kept open only for short periods. Naturally the temperature was rising all the time. It was midsummer and the Gulf Stream contributed its share of warmth. No wonder, therefore, that Captain Koenig compares conditions below decks to a "veritable hell," and then continues:

While in the Gulf Stream we had an outer temperature of 28 deg. Celsius. This was about the warmth of the surrounding water. Fresh air no longer entered. In the engine-room two 6-cylinder combustion motors kept hammering away in a maddening two-four time. They hurled the power of their explosions into the whirling crankshafts. The red-hot breath of the consumed gases went crashing out through the exhausts, but the glow of these incessant firings remained in the cylinders and communicated itself to the entire oil-dripping environment of steel. A choking cloud of heat and oily vapour streamed from the engines and spread itself like a leaden pressure through the entire ship.

During these days the temperature mounted to 53 deg. Celsius.

And yet men lived and worked in a hell such as this! The watch off duty, naked to the skin, groaned and writhed in their bunks. It was no longer possible to think of sleep. And when one of the men fell into a dull stupor, then he would be aroused by the sweat which ran incessantly over his forehead and into his eyes, and would awake to new torment.

It was almost like a blessed deliverance when the eight hours of rest were over, and a new watch was called to the central or the engine-room.



But there the real martyrdom began. Clad only in an undershirt and drawers, the men stood at their posts, a cloth wound about their foreheads to keep the running sweat from streaming into their eyes. Their blood hammered and raced in their temples. Every vein boiled as with fever. It was only by the exertion of the most tremendous willpower that it was possible to force the dripping human body to perform its mechanical duty and to remain upright during the four hours of the watch....