three hundred yards away as we were going down. But in my judgment,
it was too dark to see anything distinctly, and my notion is that he
saw a bit of wreckage, perhaps a hatch."
The next man to whom I talked was a chunky little stoker who might
have stepped out of the pages of one of Jacobs' stories. I shall not
aim to reproduce his dialect--it was of the "wot abaht it" order.
"We were heading into Falmouth with a cargo of steel and barbed wire.
I had a lot of special supplies which I bought myself in New York,
some sugar, two very nice 'ams and one of those round Dutch cheeses.
I was always thinking to myself how glad my old woman would be to see
all those vittles. Just as we got off the Scillies, one of those
bloody swine hit us with a torpedo between the boiler room and the
thwart ship bunker, forward of the engine room, and about sixteen
feet below the water line. Understand? I was in the boiler room.
Down came the bunker doors, off went the tank tops in the engine
room, two of the boilers threw out a mess of burning coal, and the
water came pouring in like a flood. Let me tell you that cold sea
water soon got bloody hot, the room was filled with steam, couldn't
see anything. I expected the boilers to blow up any minute. I
yelled out for my mates. Suddenly I heard one of 'em say: 'Where's
the ladder?' and there was pore Jem with his face and chest burned
cruel by the flying coal, and he had two ribs broke too, though we
didn't know it at the time. Says 'e, 'Where's Ed?' and just then Ed
came wading through the scalding water, pawing for the ladder. So up
we all went, never expecting to reach the top. Then when we got into
a boat, we 'eard that the wireless had been carried away, and that
we'd have to wait for somebody to pick us up. So we waited for two
days and a Yankee destroyer found us. Yes, both my mates are getting
better, though sister 'ere tells me that pore Ed may lose his eye."
Sometimes the torpedo was seen and avoided by a quick turn of the
wheel. There were other occasions when the torpedo seems to follow a
ship. I remember reading this tale. "At 2.14 I saw the torpedo and
felt certain that it would mean a hit either in the engine or the
fire room, so I ordered full speed ahead, and put the rudder over
hard left. At a distance of between two and three hundred yards, the
torpedo took a sheer to the left, but righted itself. For an instant
it appeared as if the torpedo might pass astern, but porpoising
again, it turned toward the ship and struck us close by the
propellers."
So much for blind chances. One hears curious tales. The column of
water caused by the explosion tossed onto the forward hatch of one
merchant ship a twisted half of the torpedo; there was a French boat
struck by a torpedo which did not explode, but lay there at the side
violently churning, and clinging to the boat as if it were possessed
of some sinister intelligence. I heard of a boat laden with high
explosives within whose hold a number of motor trucks had been
arranged. A torpedo got her at the mouth of the channel. An
explosion similar to the one at Halifax raked the sea, the vessel,
blown into fragments, disappeared from sight in the twinkling of an
eye, and an instant later there fell like bolides from the startled
firmament a number of immense motor trucks, one of which actually
crashed on to the deck of another vessel!
Meanwhile, I suppose, some hundred and fifty feet or more below,
"Fritz," seated at a neat folding table, wrote it all down in his log.
X
THE END OF A SUBMARINE
Two days before, in a spot somewhat south of the area we were going
out to patrol, a submarine had attacked a convoy and sunk a horse
boat. I had the story of the affair months afterwards from an
American sailor who had seen it all from a nearby ship. This sailor,
no other than my friend Giles, had been stationed in the lookout when
he heard a thundering pound, and looking to port, he saw a column of
water hanging just amidships of the torpedoed vessel, a column that
broke crashing over the decks. In about three minutes the ship broke
in two, the bow and the stern rising like the points of a shallow V,
and in five minutes she sank. The sea was strewn with straw; there
were broken stanchions floating in the confused water, and a number
of horses could be seen swimming about. "All you could see was their
heads; they looked awful small in all that water. Some of the horses
had men hanging to them. There was a lot of yelling for help." The
other ships of the convoy had run for dear life; the destroyers had
raced about like hornets whose nest is disturbed, but the submarine
escaped.
We left a certain harbour at about three in the afternoon. Many of
the destroyers were out at sea taking in a big troop convoy and the
harbour seemed unusually still. The town also partook of this quiet,
the long lateral lines of climbing houses staring out blankly at us
like unresponsive acquaintances. Very few folk were to be seen on
the street. We were bound forth on an adventure that was drama
itself, a drama which even then the Fates, unknown to us, were
swiftly weaving into a tragedy of vengeance, yet I shall never forget
how casual and undramatic the Esplanade appeared. A loafer or two
lounged by the door of the public house, a little group of sailors
passed, a jaunting car went swiftly on its way to the station; there
was nothing to suggest that these isles were beleaguered; nothing
told of the remorseless enemy at the gates of the sea.
All night long under a gloomy, starless sky we patrolled waters dark
as the very waves of the Styx. The hope that nourished us was the
thought of finding a submarine on the surface, but we heard no noise
through the mysterious dark, and a long, interminable dawn revealed
to us nothing but the high crumbling cliffs of a lonely and
ill-reputed bay. Where were _they_ then, I have often wondered?
When had they their last look at the sun? Had they any consciousness
of the end which time was bringing to them with a giant's hurrying
step? At about six o'clock we swung off to the southward, and in a
short time the coast had faded from sight.
From six o'clock to about half past ten we swept in great circles and
lines the mist encircled disk of the pale sea which had been
entrusted to our keeping. We were at hand to answer any appeal for
aid which might flutter through the air, to investigate any
suspicious wreckage; above all, to fulfill our function of
destruction. I have spoken elsewhere of the terror which lurks in
the word _destroyer_. We were hunters; beaters of the ambush of the
sea. About us lay the besieged waters, yellow green in colour, vexed
with tide rips and mottled with shadows of haze and appearances of
shoal.
We were on the bridge. Suddenly a voice called down the tube from
the lookout on the mast:
"Smoke on the horizon just off the port bow, sir."
In a little while a vague smudginess made itself seen along the humid
southeast, and some fifteen minutes later there emerged from this
smudge the advance vessels of a convoy. Now one by one, now in twos
and threes, the vessels of the convoy climbed over the dim edge of
the world, a handful of destroyers accompanying the fleet. Almost
every ship was camouflaged, though the largest of all, a great ocean
drudge of a cargo boat, still preserved her decency of dull grey. A
southeast wind blowing from behind the convoy sent the smoke of the
funnels over the bows and down the western sky. There was something
indescribably furtive about the whole business. The ships were going
at their very fastest, but to us they seemed to be going very slowly,
to be drifting almost, across the southern sky. "We advanced," as
our report read later, "to take up a position with the convoy." The
watch, always keen on the 660, redoubled its vigilance. The bait was
there; the hunt was on. Now, if ever, was the time for submarines.
I remember somebody saying, "We may see a sub." The destroyer
advanced to within three miles of the convoy, which was then across
her bow. The morning was sunny and clear; the sun high in the north.
"Periscope! Port bow," suddenly cried the surgeon of the ship, then
on watch on the bridge. "About three hundred yards away, near that
sort of a barrel thing over there. See it? It's gone now."
Powerful glasses swept the suspected area. The captain, cool as ice,
took his stand by the wheel.
"There it is again, sir. About seventy-five yards nearer this way."
This time it was seen by all who stood by. The periscope was
extraordinarily small, hardly larger than a stout hoe handle, and not
more than two feet above the choppy sea.
"Full speed ahead," said the captain. "Sound general quarters."
I do not think there was a heart there that was not beating high, but
outwardly things went on just as calmly as they had before the
periscope had been sighted.
The fans of the extra boilers began to roar. The general quarters
alarm, a continuous ringing, sounded its shrill call. Men tumbled to
their stations from every corner of the ship, some going to the
torpedo tubes, some to the guns, others to the depth charges at the
stern. The wake of the destroyer, now tearing along at full speed,
resembled a mill race. And now the destroyer began a beautiful
manoeuvre. She became the killer, the avenger of blood. Leaving her
direct course, she turned hard over to port, and at the point where
her curve cut the estimated course of the German, she tossed over a
buoy to mark the spot at which the German had been seen and released
a depth bomb. The iron can rolled out of its chocks, and fell with a
little splash into the foaming wake. The buoy, a mere wooden
platform with a bit of rag, tied to an upright stick wobbled sillily
behind. For about four seconds nothing happened. Then the seas
behind us gave a curious, convulsive lift, one might have thought
that the ocean had drawn a spasmodic breath; over this lifted water
fled a frightful glassy tremor, and an instant later there broke
forth with a thundering pound a huge turbid geyser which subsided,
splashing noisily into streaks and eddies of foam and purplish dust.
The destroyer then dropped three more in a circle round the first--a
swift cycle of thundering crashes. Meanwhile the convoy, warned by
our signal and by the uproar turned tail and fled from the spot.
Great streamers of heavy black smoke poured from the many funnels,
revealing the search for speed. In the area we had bombed, a number
of dead fish began to be seen floating in the scum. By this time
some of the vessels from the escort of the convoy had rushed to our
assistance, and round and round the buoy they tore, dropping charge
after charge. The ocean now became literally speckled with dead
whiting, and I saw something that looked like an enormous eel
floating belly upwards.
[Illustration: The last of a German U-boat. The depth bomb that
destroyed her was dropped by the destroyer shown in a corner of the
picture]
The convoy disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Little by little the
excitement died away. Finally the only vessel left in sight on the
broad shield of the sea was another American destroyer, our partner
on patrol. The 305 was fitted with listening devices, and she agreed
to remain behind to keep an eye and ear open. We were to have a word
from her every half hour.
From twelve noon to two o'clock there were no tidings of importance.
At 2:20, however, this laconic message sent us hurrying back to the
scene of the morning's combat.
"Signs of oil coming to surface."
What had happened in the darkness below those yellow green waves? I
am of the opinion that our first bomb, dropped directly upon her,
crushed the submarine in like an egg-shell, that she had then sunk to
the bottom, and developed a slow leak.
The 660 returned through a choppy sea to the battleground of the
morning. We caught sight of the other destroyer from afar. She lay
on the flank of a great area defiled by the bodies of fish, purple
T.N.T. dust and various bits of muddy wreckage which the explosions
had shaken free from the ooze. Gulls, already attracted to the spot,
were circling about, uttering hoarse cries. In the heart of this
disturbed area lay a great still pool of shining water and into this
pool, from somewhere in the depths, huge bubbles of molasses-brown
oil were rising. Reaching the surface, these bubbles spread into
filmy pan cakes round whose edges little waves curled and broke.
XI
"FISHING"
A young executive officer who had discovered that I came from his
part of the world, took me there for tea. I fancy that few of the
destroyer folk will forget the principal hotel at the Navy's Irish
base. We sat in worn plush chairs in a vast rectangular salon lit by
three giant sash windows of horrible proportions. Walls newly decked
with paper of a lustrous, fiery red showered down upon us their
imaginary warmth. The room was cold, horribly cold, and a minuscule
fire of coke burning in a tiny grate seemed to be making no effort
whatsoever to improve conditions. The little glow of fire in the
nest of clinkers leered with a dull malevolence. Cold--a shivery
cold. My eye fled to the pictures on the fiery wall. How in the
d----l did these particular pictures ever land in this particular
corner of south Ireland? Two were photographic studies of ragged
Alabama darkies, pictures of the kind that used to be printed on
calendars in the eighteen nineties. One was entitled "I want you, ma
honey" (this being addressed to a watermelon), the other being called
"I'se just tired of school." These two were varied by an engraving
of a race horse, some Charles I cavaliers, and a framed newspaper
photograph of the 71st New York Guards en route for Tampa in 1898!
Sugar excepted, there is still plenty of good food in Ireland. The
Exec. and I sat down to a very decent tea. I told all that I knew
about the Exec.'s friends, that A was in a machine gun company; B in
the naval aviation; C in the intelligence department and so forth.
And when I had done my share of the talking, I demanded of the Exec,
what he thought of his work "over there."
He answered abruptly, as if he had long before settled the question
in his own mind:
"It's a game. Some of the sporting fishermen in the flotilla say
that it's much like fishing ... now you use this bait, now that, now
this rod, now another, and all the time you are following ...
following the fish.... It's a game, the biggest game in all the
world, for it has the biggest stakes in all the world. There's far
more strategy to it than one would suspect. You see, it's not enough
to hang round till a periscope pops up; we've got to fish out the
periscope."
"Fishing, then," said I. "Well, how and where do you fish?"
"On the chequer board of the Irish Sea and the Channel. You see the
surface of the endangered waters is divided up into a number of
squares or areas, and over each area some kind of a patrol boat
stands guard. She may be a destroyer, ... perhaps a 'sloop.' Now
let's suppose she's out there looking for 'fish.'"
"Yes, even as a fisherman might wade out into a river in which he
knows that fish are to be caught. But how is your destroyer
fisherman to know just what fish are to be caught, and in just what
bays and inlets he ought to troll?"
"That's the function of the Naval Intelligence. Have you realized
the immense organization which Britain has created especially to
fight the submarine? You'll find it all in the war cabinet report
for 1917. Before the war, there were only twenty vessels employed as
mine sweepers and on auxiliary patrol duties; to-day the number of
such craft is about 3,800, and is constantly increasing. And don't
forget the sea planes, balloons, and all the other parts of the
outfit. So while our destroyer fisherman is casting about in square
x, let us say, all these scouting friends of his are trying to find
the 'fish' for him. So every once in a while he gets a message via
wireless, 'fish seen off bay blank,' 'fish reported in latitude A and
longitude B.' ... If these messages refer to spots in his
neighbourhood, you can be sure that he keeps an extra sharp lookout.
So no matter where the fish goes, there is certain to be a fisher."
_During a recent month the mileage steamed by the auxiliary patrol
forces in British home waters exceeded six million miles_.
"Now while you are beating the waters for them, what about the fish
himself?"
"The fish himself? Well, the ocean is a pretty big place, and the
fish has the tremendous advantage of being invisible. A submarine
need only show _three inches_ of periscope if the weather is calm.
She can travel a hundred miles completely submerged, and she can
remain on the bottom for a full forty-eight hours. Squatting on the
bottom is called "lying doggo." But she has to come up to breathe
and recharge her batteries, and this she does at night. Hence the
keenness of the night patrol. And here is another parallel to
fishing. You know that when the wind is from a certain direction,
you will find the fish in a certain pool, whilst if the wind blows
from another quarter, you will find the fish in another place? Same
way with submarines. Let the wind blow from a certain direction, and
they will run up and down the surface off a certain lee shore. You
can just bet that that strip of shore is well patrolled. Moreover,
submarines can't go fooling round all over the sea, they _have_ to
concentrate in certain squares, say the areas which lie outside big
ports or through which a great marine highway lies."
"Suppose that you manage to injure a fish, what then?"
"Well, if the fish isn't too badly injured, he will probably make for
one of the shallows, and lie doggo till he has time to effect
repairs. Result, every shallow is watched as carefully as a miser
watches his gold. And sea planes have a special patrol of the coast
to keep them off the shallows by the shore."
"Sometimes, then, in the murk of night, a destroyer must bump into
one by sheer good luck?"
"Oh, yes, indeed. Not long ago, a British destroyer racing through a
pitch dark rainy night cut a sub almost in half. There was a
tremendous bump that knocked the people on the bridge over backward,
a lot of yelling, and then a wild salvo of rain blotted everything
out. I think they managed to rescue one of the Germans. Pity they
didn't get the fish itself. You know it's a great stunt to get your
enemy's codes. We get them once in a while. Ever seen a pink
booklet on any of your destroyer trips? It's a translation of a
German book of instructions to submarine commanders. On British
boats they call it 'Baby-Killing at a Glance or the Hun's Vade
Mecum.' Great name, isn't it? Tells how to attack convoys and all
that sort of thing. Lots of interesting tricks like squatting in the
path of the sun so that the lookout, blinded by the glare, shan't see
you; playing dead and so on. That playing-dead stunt, if it ever did
work, which I greatly doubt, is certainly no favourite now."
"Playing dead? Just what do you mean?"
"Why, a destroyer would chase a sub into the shallows and bomb her.
Then 'Fritz' would release a tremendous mess of oil to make believe
that he was terribly injured, and lie doggo for hours and hours. The
destroyer, of course, seeing the oil, and hearing nothing from
'Fritz' was expected to conclude that 'Fritz' had landed in Valhalla,
and go away. Then when she had gone away, 'Fritz,' quite uninjured,
went back to his job."
"And now that stunt is out of fashion?"
"You bet it is. Our instructions are to bomb until we get tangible
results. Before it announces the end of a sub, the Admiralty has to
have unmistakable evidence of the sub's destruction. Not long ago,
they say a sub played dead somewhere off the Channel, sent up oil,
and waited for the fishers to go. In a few seconds, 'Fritz' got a
depth bomb right on his ear, and up he came to the top, the most
surprised and angry Hun that ever was seen. Bagged him, boat and
all. He must have had a head of solid ivory.
"Got to be cruising along, now. It's four o'clock, and our tender
must be waiting for me at the pier."
"Going fishing?" I asked politely.
"You bet!" he answered with a grin.
XII
AMUSEMENTS
On every vessel in the Navy there is a phonograph, and on some
destroyers there are two phonographs, one for the officers, and one
for the men. The motion of the destroyer rarely permits the use of
the machine at sea, but when the vessel lies quietly at her mooring
buoy, you are likely to hear a battered old opera record sounding
through the port holes of the ward room, and "When the midnight choo
choo leaves for Alabam'" rising raucously out of the crew's quarters.
When music fails, there are always plenty of magazines, thanks to
good souls who read Mr. Burleson's offer and affix the harmless,
necessary two cent stamps. Each batch is full of splendid
novelettes. We gloat over the esoteric mysteries of the "American
Buddhist," and wonder who sent it, we read the "Osteopath's
Quarterly," the "Western Hog Breeder," and "Needlework." Petty
officers with agricultural ambitions, and there are always a few on
every boat, descend on the agricultural journals like wolves on the
fold.
No notice of Queenstown, no history of the Navy would be complete
without a word about golf. It is _the_ Navy game. Golf clubs are to
be found in every cabin; in the tiny libraries Harry Vardon rubs
shoulders with naval historians and professors of thermodynamics. If
you take the train, you are sure to find a carriage full of golfers
bound for a course on the home side of the river. I remember seeing
the captain of an American submarine just about to start upon the
most dangerous kind of an errand one could possibly imagine. It was
midnight; it was raining, the great Atlantic surges were sweeping
into the bay in a manner which told of rough weather outside. Just
as he was about to disappear into the clamorous bowels of his craft,
the captain paused for an instant on the ladder, and shouted back to
us, "Tell Sanderson to put that mashie in my room when he's through
with it."
Were it not for the great "United States Naval Men's Club," I fear
that Jack ashore would have had but a dull time, for our amusements
were limited to a dingy cinema exploiting American "serials" several
years old, and a shed in which a company of odd people played
pretentious melodramas of the "Worst Woman in London" type on a tiny
Sunday school stage. Alas, there were not enough people in the
company to complete the cast of characters, so the poor leading lady
was forever disappearing into the wings as the wronged daughter of a
ducal house, only to appear again in a few minutes as the dark female
poisoner, whilst the little leading man with a Kerry Brogue was
forever rushing back and forth between the old white-haired servitor
and the Earl of Darnleycourt. Once in a while Jack came to these
performances, bought the best seat, and left the theatre before the
performance was ended. The British Tars, however, sat through it
respectably and solemnly to the end.
The Men's Club was to be found at one end of the town close by the
water's edge. It was quite the most successful and attractive thing
of its kind I have ever visited. The largest building was a
factory-like affair of brick which once housed some swimming baths,
then became a theatre, and finally failed and lay down to die; the
smaller buildings were substantial huts of the Y.M.C.A. kind which
had been attached to the original structure. This institution
provided some several thousand sailors with a canteen, an excellent
restaurant, a theatre, a library, a recreation room, and, if
necessary, a lodging. Best of all, one could go to the Club and
actually be warm and comfortable in the American style, a boon not to
be lightly regarded in these islands where people all winter long
huddle in freezing rooms round lilliputian grates. Enlisted men
controlled the club, maintained it, and selected their stewards,
cooks and attendants from their own ranks. Upon everybody concerned,
the Club reflects the highest credit.