_A Chapter of Accidents_
“_In the future as in the past, the German people will have to seek
firm cohesion in its glorious Army and in its belaurelled young
Fleet._”—LT.-GEN. BARON VON FREYTAG-LORINGHOVEN.
All kinds of queer accidents happen to submarines. It was one thing to
have a ‘joy-ride’ standing on the conning-tower of a spick-and-span
craft in the neighbourhood of Haslar, and quite another to be compelled
to lie ‘doggo’ hundreds of miles from the base owing to the near
presence of German torpedo-boats out for slaughter. The following story
has been told before, but may be thought worthy of repetition because it
reveals the calm philosophy which is the submarine man’s sheet-anchor.
Without it he would speedily be reduced to nothing more than a nervous
wreck.
A British submarine, intent on business intimately connected with the
enemy, broke surface at an awkward moment. A shell whizzed close enough
to assure the commander that somebody was on the watch for the Paul Prys
of the British Navy. She went under, and after lying quiet for four
hours again ascended for the purpose of finding out things. She
discovered them all right, although they were not exactly of the kind
she sought. One of the shots made a hole that necessitated a certain
amount of plugging in double quick time. The submarine submerged until
after dark, then made off to report. “What did you do while you were at
the bottom?” an inquisitive friend asked the commander as he was
stretching his legs on the quay and forming a miniature smoke screen
with whiffs of Navy Cut. “I did fine,” was the answer; “we played
auction bridge all the time, and I made 4s. 11½d.”
The officers and crew of a French submarine had a much more exciting
experience while engaged on similar duty in the early days of the war.
They were proceeding cautiously toward the entrance of an enemy harbour.
The periscope showed a delightful bag, but unfortunately the battleships
that constituted it were protected by nets sufficiently substantial to
make poaching impossible. There was no sign of movement other than in
the smoke issuing languidly from the funnels. While the commander was
taking observations, the ships began to show signs of life, and, with a
number of torpedo-boats, denoted by their actions that they had every
intention of weighing anchor. Here was an opportunity in a thousand, an
unexpected one too, and the French officer seized it with avidity. As
the enemy approached, he decided to go ahead a short distance so as to
make assurance doubly sure. He wanted his aim to be absolutely certain.
The submarine had not proceeded more than a few yards when there was a
nasty jar. The rudder had become fixed as in a vice. It was caught so
tightly in a steel cable that the boat could not budge an inch. The
crews of the T.B.s knew exactly what had happened, though how they came
by the knowledge remains their secret. The vessels raced to the spot,
hoping that the submarine was sufficiently near the surface to be
rammed. Providentially she was not, though her crew heard the thrashing
of the screws as they passed perilously close to her carcase.
Immediately they had gone a furious hail of shells ploughed the sea, and
one or two torpedoes were discharged by the enemy on the off chance that
they might hit the intruder. It was a hot spot, despite the cold water.
One who was on board says it was a miracle they were not struck. “We
thought we were done for,” he adds, “and we patiently awaited the
explosion which would deliver us from the cruel suspense.”
Meanwhile something had to be done, and quickly. Death by being blown to
pieces is infinitely preferable to suffocation. The one is speedy and
certain; the other slow and agonizing. The water tanks were filled until
they could hold no more. It was hoped that the added weight would force
the craft down and snap the cable. Nothing happened. Then some one
suggested that if the steering wheel were compelled to move, possibly
the wire would snap. If it failed to do so, and merely smashed the
rudder, it could scarcely add to their anxieties. A doomed ship might as
well be without steering gear as otherwise.
Half a dozen men exerted their full strength on the spokes. The wheel
remained rigid for one, two, three seconds, then spun round with a
sudden jerk that was not good for the equilibrium of the sailors but
entirely satisfactory from every other point of view. The submarine went
down several fathoms before she was brought under control.
The commander thought it was time to make tracks for a healthier clime
without further spying. Risks are to be run only when necessary. Some
hours later he ventured to use his periscope, only to find that an enemy
vessel was no great distance off, evidently on the watch for such as he.
The craft reached her base somewhat overdue. “All’s well that ends
well,” but there is often a painful interim.
Explosions in underwater boats are not frequent, though they have
occurred. Several men were either killed or injured in a disaster of
this nature in a U.S. submarine cruising off Cavite, in the Philippines.
The ‘blow’ was due to gasoline fumes, but the cause of ignition is
unknown. U.S. submarine E 2 also sank as the result of a similar mishap
in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in January 1916.
Spain, a neutral country, was treated by the Germans as though she were
an admitted combatant on the side of the Allies. Yet after torpedoing
Spanish ships and leaving their crews to look after themselves as best
they could, U-boat commanders were very thankful to take shelter in her
ports on more than one occasion, despite the risk of internment. Here is
a typical case. A French seaplane caught sight of U 56 while on the
prowl in the Mediterranean, dropped what bombs she possessed on the
shadowy target, and proceeded on her way. She could do no more. U 56
found herself in difficulties. Damage had been done to the diving gear.
The second officer was for ‘risking it’ and making an attempt to reach
home. The commander thought otherwise, and as he had the casting vote in
this as in other matters, the submarine limped into Santander.
Kissvetter, the officer in question, after seeing that his ship was
safely berthed, lined up his crew and marched them to the naval
headquarters of the port. On giving his parole, he indulged in a lively
chat with the officer in charge, during the course of which he was good
enough to volunteer the information that the British bluejackets who had
taken part in the raids on Zeebrugge and Ostend[27] had displayed great
valour.
Another French aeroplane distinguished itself in a similar manner off
the Moroccan coast. It succeeded in so badly damaging U 39 that the
submarine could not reach Cartagena unassisted. There was an ugly dent
in her bow, the upper structure was damaged, and part of the machinery
put out of commission. Although his craft had sustained these injuries,
the commander found no difficulty in submerging, which proves that the
more modern U-boat was not so easily defeated as some people imagined.
Presumably the submarine waited until another of her tribe was due to
come along, possibly at dusk, and then made her presence known. At any
rate, a sister boat towed her within easy distance of Cartagena Harbour,
cast off, and disappeared. In response to signals of distress, a tug
took the battered submersible in charge and berthed her alongside a
Spanish cruiser. Commander Metzger, wearing the Iron Cross, was taken
with his crew of forty men to Madrid and interned.
[Illustration:
“Kamerad! Kamerad!”
Photo by W. S. Wiggins, U.S.S. _Fanning_
_Reproduced by courtesy of the Naval Exhibition_
]
Fog is usually accepted as one of the plagues of the sea, but on
occasion it proved an excellent friend to the enemy when British patrol
craft were hot on the scent. This was not the case, however, with a
small German submarine which went ashore near Hellevoetsluis in
perfectly clear weather. The officer seems to have lost his bearings
completely. After spending several fruitless hours hoping that the
incoming tide would refloat his ship, the crew of fifteen men were
compelled to abandon her.
Their action was certainly less desperate than the means adopted by the
officers and men of a German mine-laying submarine which grounded on the
French coast to the west of Calais. She ‘touched bottom’ at high tide,
the worst possible time to choose for such a performance, and remained
as immovable as a rock. At daybreak the coastguards saw the boat lying
like a stranded whale, and promptly secured her. The officers and men
offered no resistance. They had made their plans when they realized that
the ‘game was up.’ By flooding the submarine with inflammable oil and
applying a match they effectively prevented the boat from passing into
the service of the French Navy.
Occasionally the hunter got more than he bargained for and was ‘hoist
with his own petard.’ The pirate commander of a U-boat was
congratulating himself on having disposed of a British steamer with the
minimum of trouble, when the victim blew up. He had attacked a vessel
loaded with ammunition without knowing what was in her hold, and at
comparatively short range. The explosion was so violent that it upset
the stability of the submersible, and did so much damage in other ways
that for a time it was believed she would founder. She was a sorry
spectacle when the cliffs and frowning guns of Heligoland were sighted
through the periscope.
In the early days of submarines their constitution could only be
described as delicate. At each stage of progress the craft has taken on
strength, until it has now anything but a fragile frame. That was one of
the reasons why the British Admiralty was chary of issuing definite
statements as to U-boat losses. Oil rising to the surface might be a
sign that a submarine had been wounded, but was no definite guarantee
that the patient would bleed to death. U-boats had a little trick of
letting out oil when attacked in the hope that it would deceive the
enemy. Take the case of a certain British submarine which had the very
undesirable misfortune to barge into a German mine. These submerged
canisters were filled with a heavy charge of trotyl. You will better
appreciate what this means when I add that T.N.T. has a bursting force
when confined of 128,000 lb. per square inch. Yet this British-built
ship is still afloat, and her crew alive to tell the tale. Vessel and
men owed their escape from death to a mighty good bulkhead. She struck
the mine bow on. Bulkheads 1 and 2 were burst open; her two fore
torpedo-tubes, both loaded, were so twisted and jammed that they were
rendered useless; the glass of the dials of the various recording
instruments was scattered in all directions; every member of the crew
was knocked flat, and the vessel sent to the bottom, nose foremost. A
landsman would have said it was the end of all things; the men most
concerned merely admitted that it was ‘a nasty jar.’
When they had regained their feet the crew went back to their allotted
stations to await orders. There was no need for them to puzzle why their
craft was in this predicament. Neither a sunken wreck nor a submerged
rock goes off with a bang. Meanwhile, there were some nasty leaks to
divert the mind. They would be attended to later, when orders had been
given. Discipline, like explosive, is a mighty force.
The commander picked himself up, carefully brushed his uniform with his
hands, and went to his post. “Let all things be done decently and in
order” is the acknowledged, if unwritten, motto of British submarines.
The officer’s action was the outward and visible sign that he had not
forgotten it. He gave instructions for the pumps to be set in motion—if
they were capable of movement. Everything depended on the answer. There
were moments of tense anxiety before it came. No one, even the bravest
of the brave, likes to be drowned like a rat in a trap. The motors were
going. They had not stopped. But the pumps?
They started! With the beating of their pulse hope flowed in where
before it had been on the ebb. The submarine came to the surface as game
as ever, though terribly bruised. If “God tempers the wind to the shorn
lamb,” a kindly Providence most assuredly watched over this craft. In
enemy waters, three hundred odd miles from home, with a broken nose and
internal injuries, she had not too much strength for the journey. She
accomplished it satisfactorily enough, and was back again in her old
haunts within a few weeks.
There is a particularly poignant note of tragedy in a strange mishap
that befell another British submarine. The why and the wherefore of the
accident have now been revealed. She was on her trials, and the
ventilating shafts had been left open, flooding the rear compartments
and drowning thirty-one men. She took an unexpected plunge of
thirty-eight feet, stuck fast in the mud, and positively refused to
budge. She lay like a dead thing. Every conceivable means of
resurrection was tried; each failed. One has read of wonderful
life-saving devices that are supposed to be donned by submarine men when
their boat is in difficulties. They look like smoke-helmets. All that is
required is to don one of these affairs, enter the conning-tower, open
the lid, and pop up like a cork. It sounds simple, even entertaining,
and might be introduced as a side show at an exhibition as a change from
the Flip-Flap. Whatever other submarines may have of this kind, this
particular boat either did not possess or could not use.
Officers and crew watched the hands of the clock complete the circle
several times. There was little else to do. One does not talk much when
waiting for eternity. Each felt that he was a doomed man, that ere long
his wife would be a widow and his children fatherless. There was ‘a war
on,’ but was this war? No enemy had done this, unless Destiny be an
enemy. The forty-two men who still lived were within a comparatively
short distance of the Scottish shore.
A terrible way out suggested itself to Commander Francis Herbert
Heaveningham Goodhart. It is a formidable name to remember in its
lengthy entirety, but one to make a note of. No future Book of Sea
Heroes will omit it and be reasonably complete. The surname, although it
is without an ‘e,’ fitted the man and the deed. He already had the
D.S.O. to his credit; his next award, the Albert Medal in gold, was
posthumous. Now you know the tragedy of the story. The story of the
tragedy remains to be told.
Goodhart’s “terrible way out” was this. The conning-tower of a submarine
may be cut off from the boat by a trap-door. He proposed that a tin
cylinder with a message giving full particulars of the position of the
craft, the approximate length of time the men could hold out, and other
details should be given to him, and that he should be blown up with it
through the conning-tower. To effect this it was necessary to partly
fill the chamber with water, turn on the high-pressure air, and release
the clips that secured the lid. Placing the little cylinder in his belt,
Goodhart set out on his last desperate adventure. Together with the
commanding officer, who was to open and close the hatch, he stepped into
the conning-tower. “If I don’t get up, the tin cylinder will,” he
remarked quite casually to his colleague.
Water was admitted, then air. The lid fell back, and Goodhart made his
escape. At this point Destiny, the unknown and the unknowable,
intervened. It reversed the order of affairs that man had so carefully
planned. Goodhart was flung back against the structure and killed
outright. At the same moment the officer who was to retire into the
submarine was shot upward and reached the surface. According to the
official account in the _London Gazette_, “Commander Goodhart displayed
extreme and heroic daring, and thoroughly realized the forlorn nature of
his act.” This does not go quite far enough. Had it not been for the
dead man’s attempt the instructions which were of such vital consequence
to the imprisoned men would never have reached the rescuers. In due
course fresh air, food, and water were sent to those below by methods
private to the printed page. That night the survivors slept on shore as
a slight compensation for their long and awful vigil.
In October 1916 the Danish submarine _Dykkeren_ met with a somewhat
similar mishap, although the cause of her sudden disappearance was a
collision with a Norwegian steamer in the Sound. Divers entrusted with
the salvage operations hammered messages of good cheer in the Morse code
on the side of the sunken boat, to which the prisoners promptly
responded. The commander alone lost his life. He was found dead in the
conning-tower.
The pirate chiefs of Germany did not have it all their own way even when
the absence of Allied patrol vessels, mines, and anti-submarine nets
rendered existence a little less worrying than was usually the case with
these pariahs of the deep. Lieutenant-Commander Schneider, who had won
renown in the Fatherland as an instrument of the ‘Blockade,’ was swept
overboard from his conning-tower while his craft was travelling awash.
When his body was recovered life was extinct. It was consigned to the
deep, whither the Commander had sent many another during his career as a
pirate. Some men from a U-boat in the Baltic were investigating the
papers of a schooner, when a German cruiser put in an appearance. Being
uncertain whether the submarine was a foreigner or not, as no colours
were displayed, the man-of-war ventured too close, and crashed into the
bow of the stationary vessel. Both U-boat and cruiser were compelled to
retire for repairs. Off Norway a German submarine mistook another of her
own nationality for a British representative of the underseas and
promptly torpedoed her.