SUBMARINING
(1917-1918)
Jutland proved to all hands in the German Navy that they had no chance
whatever against Jellicoe's Grand Fleet. But the great mass of the
German people never heard this truth; and even their navy hoped to win
under the water a victory it had found impossible on top. So, for the
last two years of the war, the Germans worked their hardest at what
they called the "Submarine Blockade." As this "Blockade" forced the
United States into war, and as its failure showed the Germans that, in
the end, they had no more chance under water than on top, we can all
see now that Jutland turned the scale.
The British fleets blockading Germany of course seized and kept for the
Government, as spoils of war, whatever warlike stores (guns, shells,
and so on) they could lay their hands on. But all the other goods the
Navy stopped the Government bought, paying fair market prices. So the
American and other neutrals trying to trade with the enemy had really
nothing to complain of; for a blockade at sea is very like a siege on
land, and nobody has ever pretended that a besieging army has not a
perfect right to stop any supplies of any kind from reaching the
besieged. Moreover, the crews of the ships trying to break the British
blockade were always very kindly treated, though their ships were
trying to help the enemy and make fortunes for their owners at the
expense of freedom.
But when we turn to the German "Submarine Blockade" of the British
Isles we find something quite different; for the German submarines sank
every ship they could, and they generally were as utterly careless
about the lives of the crews as they were about the cargo, no matter
what the cargo was. In short, Germany tried everything, no matter how
wrong, that could possibly hurt the hated British. She did let some
neutral ships go by without attacking them. But that was only because
she did not want to turn all the neutrals into enemies; and nothing
proves better what a fiendish crime her "Submarine Blockade" really was
than the fact that it forced even the Peace Party in the United States
to change its mind about the war.
For thirty-two months this Peace Party kept the United States out of a
war waged by Germany against the freedom of the world. There were a
good many reasons why. Most Americans knew next to nothing about the
affairs of Europe; and Germans had long been busy poisoning their minds
against the French and British. Then, Washington and other Presidents
had often advised them not to meddle with anything outside of America;
and President Wilson had even said there was such a thing as being "too
proud to fight."
Of course the Pacifists were against all war, even when their refusing
to fight on the side of right forced them to help the side of wrong.
They had plenty of money, some of it German, and they made almost as
much trouble as the Germans and pro-Germans themselves. Then, the
Germans, pro-Germans, and Pacifists raised the bogey of trouble for the
United States at home, while there did not seem to be much danger of
getting hurt from abroad. Finally, business was booming as it had
never boomed before. The Americans made twelve-and-a-half thousands of
millions of dollars out of the war, clear net profit up to the end of
1918.
The War Party said the whole war was about a question of right and
wrong, and that the French and British were right, while the Germans
were wrong. They said that Americans were safe because the British
Navy barred the way, that all the British oversea Dominions had fought
from the first, though not obliged to send a ship, a dollar, or a man
except of their own free will. They said that every American patriot
should be very proud to fight for the freedom of the world and very
much ashamed to let the French and British uphold the cause of right
alone. They said that the German submarines had already murdered many
Americans, that many other Americans, ashamed to see their country
hanging back, were already enlisting in Canada, England, and France,
and that although business was certainly booming, beyond the wildest
dreams of the keenest money-makers before the war, yet this vast wealth
was too much like blood-money, since the French and British were
suffering immense losses in lives and money and in everything but
honour, while the Americans, losing nothing in lives, were making vast
hoards of money out of a cause that really was their own--the cause of
right and freedom.
Slowly but surely the War Party gained, as more and more members of the
Peace Party began to see the truth. But still, after twenty-seven
months, the most popular cry among those who voted President Wilson in
for a second term was "he kept us out of war." Three months later the
German "Submarine Blockade" began (February 1917). Then, two months
later still, most of the Peace Party, seeing that their own ships would
be sunk just as readily as French or British ships, gave their vote for
war.
It was a glorious moment in world-history when British, French, and
Americans at last stood side by side. The American Navy led the way,
joining the hunt for German submarines with a keenness whetted by
having been held back so long. The Army followed, bit by bit, until
two million men had gone to Europe, thanks chiefly to the British ships
that took them there. The Nation backed both Army and Navy with vast
sums of money, which it could so easily afford, and with patriotic work
of every splendid kind.
But the war lasted only nineteen months longer; and in that time the
Americans were not able to do anything like what the Allies had done
before and still were doing. The entire American loss in men (killed,
wounded, and prisoners) was over one-quarter million. But Canada's
loss of over two hundred thousand was ten times as great in proportion;
for there are twelve-and-a-half times as many people in the United
States as there are in Canada. In the same way the losses of France
and Great Britain were each more than twenty times greater than that of
the United States. In ships and money the difference is far more
striking still. The British alone lost one-and-a-half times as many
ships as all the rest of the world put together. But the Americans
have actually gained, owing to the number of interned German vessels
they seized in their ports. As for money: the British, the French, and
all the Allies have spent so much in fighting for the freedom of the
world that neither they nor their children, nor their children's
children, can ever pay the vast debt off; while the United States have
made, on their own showing, the twelve-and-a-half "billions" mentioned
already.
These few facts (there are hundreds more) will show you a little of
what the Great War means to the world, what the British Navy meant to
the war, and what Jutland meant to both the war and the world, by
sweeping the German Navy off the surface of the sea, and so bringing on
the "Submarine Blockade" that itself forced the American Government to
fight in self-defence.
[Illustration: British Submarine.]
The Germans, wishing to kill off their victims one at a time, were
ready for the French and Russian Navies, but not for the British. They
had less than forty sea-going submarines when the war began. But
nearly four hundred took part, or were ready to take part, before the
war was over, while many more were building.
We have already noted the weak points of submarines. They are "tender"
because they must be thin. An old collier that couldn't steam faster
than you could walk sank a submarine by barging into it, end-on--one
can hardly call it ramming. Submarines are slower on the surface than
dreadnoughts, cruisers, and destroyers; and, after doing a total of ten
or twelve hours under water, they have to recharge their batteries; for
they run by oil engines on the surface and by electricity submerged,
and the crew would be smothered if the oil engines tried to charge
batteries without coming up.
Then, firing torpedoes is not at all like firing big guns. At a range
of five miles a shell will still be making 2000 feet a second or 1400
miles an hour. At the same range a torpedo like those used at Jutland
would be making only 50 feet a second or 35 miles an hour. Thus shells
whizz through the air forty times faster than torpedoes sneak through
the water. A torpedo, in fact, is itself very like a submarine, more
or less cigar-shaped, and with its own engine, screw, and rudder.
Hitting with a torpedo really means arranging a collision between it
and the ship you are aiming at. When you and the ship and your torpedo
and the water are all moving in different ways you can see that hitting
is not so easy. The shorter the range the better. But you cannot see
at all unless your periscope, with its little mirror, is high and dry
out of the water; and periscopes are soon spotted by a sharp look-out
at very short range. The best torpedoes are over twenty feet long and
as many inches through, and they will go ten miles. But the longer the
range the slower the pace and the less the chance of hitting. The
engine is driven by air, which is compressed so hard into the middle of
the torpedo that it actually bulges out the steel a tiny fraction of an
inch. You may set the air-valve fast or slow, and the torpedo will go
accordingly. But if you want to make pretty sure you must get within
less than a mile, with the ship's broadside toward you, set the torpedo
for the right depth, the right pace to keep it going as fast as
possible just long enough to hit, and of course the right aim. Then,
if all goes well, the cap, or "war head" of the torpedo, on hitting the
ship, will set off the fuse that sets off the tremendous charge of high
explosive; and this may knock a hole in the side big enough to drive a
street car through. But there are many more misses than hits.
Yet the German and Austrian raiders, mines, and submarines sank fifteen
million tons of shipping, which is not far short of a third of all the
merchant tonnage in the world; and the submarines sank more than the
mines and raiders sank together. (Ships are measured by finding out
how many cubic feet of space they contain and counting so many feet to
the ton. Thus you get a much better idea of how much shipping a
country has by counting in tons rather than by the number of ships; for
twenty-five ships of one thousand tons each have only half as much
sea-power as one ship of fifty thousand tons.) The British loss was
nine millions, half as much again as was lost by all the rest of the
world put together. Raiders like the cruiser _Emden_, or the armed and
disguised merchant vessel _Möwe_, did a great deal of harm at the
beginning of the war, as we have seen already. Mines did even more
harm, and did it all through. But submarines did most.
Our title "Submarining" means any kind of underwater attack, by mines
as well as by torpedoes, so we must take a glance at the mines before
coming to the submarines.
Most mines are somewhat like big buoys with little horns all over the
top. Each horn ends in a cap which, when hit, sets off the charge.
Mines coupled together by a steel rope are more dangerous than two
separate mines would be, as they are bound to be drawn in against any
ship that strikes any part of the rope. The only safeguard a ship
could carry was a paravane. A paravane is made up of a strong steel
hawser (rope) that serves as a fender, and of two razor-edged blades
that serve to cut the mine-moorings free. It is altogether under water
and is shaped like a V, with the point jutting out on the end of steel
struts ahead of the bows, the two strokes running clear of the sides,
and their ends well winged out astern, where the two sharp blades stand
straight up, one from each end. The lines by which mines are anchored
were thus guided clear of the ship till they reached the blades, where
they were cut. The mines then rose to the surface, where they could be
set off at a safe distance. Dragging a paravane through the water made
the ship go slow. But that was better than being blown up.
Minefields cannot, of course, be crossed at all. You might as well try
to walk over armies of porcupines in your bare feet. Some minefields
were very big. One British field ran from the Orkneys right across to
Norway, to stop the German submarines from getting out round the north
of Scotland. The American Navy did magnificent work at this field, the
greater part of which was laid by American, not by British, vessels at
the latter end of 1917 and earlier part of 1918. Other minefields
blocked the Channel. But here the Germans once played a very clever
trick which might have cost the British dear. A British minefield had
been laid, some fifty feet deep, to catch submarines without being in
the way of vessels on the surface. Two days after it had been secretly
laid at night the _Nubian_, a British destroyer, had her bows blown off
on the very same spot. The German submarine mine-layers had crept in
by night and laid a shallow German minefield, exactly over the deep
British minefield, to catch those who were trying to catch them. That,
however, is not the end of the story. Just after the _Nubian_ had been
towed into Portsmouth with her bows blown off, the _Zulu_, a destroyer
of the same class, was towed in with her stern blown off. So perfectly
were both these vessels built that, when they had each been cut in
half, the good halves made an absolutely perfect new destroyer, which,
under her compound name of _Zubian_, did excellent work against the
Germans during the famous fights at Zeebrugge and Ostend.
A mine laid by a German submarine blew up the cruiser _Hampshire_ that
was taking Kitchener to Russia by way of the Orkneys on the 5th of
June, 1916. Kitchener was drowned and only twelve men, who floated in
on a raft, were saved. Submarines lurking about at night would
sometimes put mines right in the track of vessels. And sometimes swift
mine-laying ships on the surface would do even more deadly harm,
rolling a hundred mines off a little railway on deck. At other times
mines would be loosed from the shore or from ships at anchor, so as to
float in among vessels with the tide or down the current of a stream.
One of these was tried against the British in West Africa by a German
missionary. Others were sent against the French and British vessels in
the Dardanelles, sometimes blowing them up.
But the enemy never had it all his own way. British submarines did
wonderful work in spite of the mines. Commander Holbrook won the V.C.
by feeling his perilous way through five lines of Turkish mines, though
the currents were very tricky, and more than once the side of his "sub"
actually touched the steel ropes holding the mines to their anchors.
When he reached Constantinople he torpedoed and sank the Turkish
battleship that was supposed to be guarding these very mines! Then he
dived back through the five rows of mines and rejoined the fleet
without a scratch.
Another British submarine stole into the Sea of Marmora with a couple
of land mines to blow up the railway near Constantinople. Lieutenant
D'Oyley-Hughes then swam ashore, pushing a little raft to which the
mines were lashed. He was quite alone, but armed with a bayonet ground
like a razor and an automatic seven-shooter. He also carried a
flash-light and whistle. He shouldered first one mine and then the
other, each the weight of a big man, took them up the hill, and put
them under a little brickwork bridge within a hundred and fifty yards
of the Turkish sentries, who were talking round their fire. Though he
muffled the fuse pistol it was heard by the Turks, who came running
toward him, firing as hard as they could. He let them have his first
clip of seven shots slap in the face and then raced a mile along the
line, doubled back a bit down the cliff, and swam off toward the
submarine. His whistle was not heard at first, as the submarine was in
the next bay; and he had to swim a mile before he came across her
backing out under fire from the Turks. But he slipped into her conning
tower safely, and no one on the British side was hurt.
So great is the danger from mines, unless they are watched and tackled
the whole time, that thousands of mine-sweeping vessels were always at
work, manned by British fishermen who had been handling gigantic nets
and mile-long steel hawsers (ropes) ever since they had gone afloat as
boys. These North Sea fishermen, in whom the Viking blood runs strong,
had always put in eleven months sea time every year of their lives. So
storm and fog and clammy numbing cold had no terrors for them as they
worked their "sweepers" to and fro, fishing for the deadly mines.
Sometimes, for all their skill and care, a mine would foul their tackle
and blow them to pieces. But usually they could "gentle" a mine to the
surface and set it off by rifle shots at a safe distance. Sometimes,
however, a hitch would happen and the mine would come close alongside.
Once a mine actually came aboard, caught fast in the tackle. The
skipper (captain) ordered all hands into the boats, and then himself
cut it clear after a whole hour's work, during which one false touch or
even the slightest jolt would have blown his ship to smithereens. The
wonder of it is that more men were not killed in keeping the seaways so
carefully swept, night and day, all the year round, for tens of
thousands of miles, during the fifty-one months of the war.
[Illustration: Minesweeper at work.]
Still more dangerous was the fishing for those vilest of devil-fish,
the German submarines. The fishermen "shot" enormous steel nets just
as you shoot a fishing net, letting them hang a bit slack so as to be
the more entangling. Then, just as you feel your rod quiver when a
fish takes your fly, so these anglers for Germans would feel the quiver
from a nosing submarine caught in the toils. Very few submarines ever
escaped; for the slack of the waving net was apt to foul the screw, and
there they were held till the last struggle ceased and the last man was
smothered inside.
The fishermen would sometimes have rescued their ruthless enemies if
they could have disentangled them in time. But this could rarely be
done; and the Germans met a just fate. One day a submarine came up
alongside a British trawler which was engaged in its regular fishing,
was quite unarmed, and had a crew of old men and young boys. The
Germans took all the fresh fish they wanted, sank the trawler, smashed
up her boats, and put the fishermen on the submarine's deck. Then they
slammed-to the hatch of the conning tower and sank very slowly, washing
the fishermen off. Then they rose again to laugh at them drowning. An
avenging destroyer came racing along and picked up the sole survivor.
But the German jokers, seeing it coming, had gone. No wonder the
seafaring British sometimes "saw red" to such a degree that they would
do anything to get in a blow! And sometimes they did get it in, when
the Germans least thought it was coming. When a skipper suddenly found
a German U-boat (_Unterseeboot_ or under-sea-boat) rising beside him,
just as his engine-room mechanic had come up with a hammer in his hand,
he called out, "look sharp and blind her!" Without a moment's
hesitation the mechanic jumped on her deck and smashed her periscope to
pieces, thus leaving her the blinded prey of gathering destroyers.
The Germans put their wits to work with hellish cunning. They wanted
to surround Great Britain with a sea of death so full of mines and
submarines that no ship could live. The mines were not placed at
random, but where they would either kill their victims best or make
them try another way where the lurking submarines could kill them. The
sea-roads into great ports like London and Liverpool converge, just as
railway tracks converge toward some great central junction. So
submarines lying in wait near these crowded waters had a great
advantage in the earlier part of the war, when people still believed
that the Germans would not sink unarmed merchantmen on purpose,
especially when women and children were known to be on board.
On the 7th of May, 1915, the _Lusitania_, from New York for Liverpool,
was rounding the south of Ireland, when the starboard (right-hand)
look-out in the crow's nest (away up the mast) called to his mate on
the port side, "Good God, Frank, here's a torpedo!" The next minute it
struck and exploded, fifteen feet under water, with a noise like the
slamming of a big heavy door. Another minute and a second torpedo
struck and exploded. Meanwhile the crew had dashed to their danger
posts and begun duties for which they had been carefully drilled,
though very few people ever thought the Germans would torpedo a
passenger steamer known to be full of women and children, carrying many
Americans, and completely unarmed. The ship at once took a list to
starboard (tilt to the right) so that the deck soon became as steep as
a railway embankment. This made it impossible to lower boats on the up
side, as they would have swung inboard, slithered across the steeply
sloping deck, and upset. The captain, cool and ready as British
captains always are, gave his orders from the up end of the bridge,
while the other officers were helping the passengers into the boats.
The sea soon came lapping over the down side of the deck, and people
began slipping into it. The full boats shoved off; but not half of
them on the down side were clear before the gigantic ship, with an
appalling plunge, sank head first. It all happened so quickly that
many had not been able to get on deck before this final plunge. They
must have been crushed by the hurtling of all loose gear when the ship
stood on her bows going down, then smothered and drowned, if not
smashed dead at the first. The captain stood on the bridge to the
last, went down with the ship, came up again among the wreckage, and
was saved after hours in the water. He will never forget the long,
piercing wail of despair from hundreds of victims as the gallant ship
went down.
This made it clear to all but those who did not want to understand that
Germany was going to defy the laws of the sea, at least as far as she
could without changing President Wilson's Government into an enemy. So
things went on, getting worse and worse, for another two years. The
British, French, and Italians had never prepared for a war like this.
They were ready to fight submarines that fought their own men-of-war,
as well as those that tried to sink transports carrying soldiers and
arms to the many different fronts. But who would have thought that
even the Germans would sink every merchantman without the least care
for the lives of the crew? The rest of the world thought the days of
pirates and cut-throats were over among all civilized nations. But the
Germans did not. So the Allies, the British especially, built more and
more destroyers to fight the German submarines. The Germans, of
course, built more and more submarines; and so the fight went on,
growing ever fiercer.
It was up-hill work for the British to guard thousands of ships over
millions of miles against the hidden foe, who sometimes struck without
being seen at all. A ship is a small thing on millions of square
miles. A slinking submarine is very much lower and harder to see on
the surface. A periscope is far harder still. The ordinary periscope
is simply a tube, a few inches in diameter, with a mirror in the upper
end reflecting the outside view on the corresponding mirror at the
lower end, where the captain watches his chance for a shot. No wonder
the Germans got on well for so long. It was over two years before
British merchantmen were armed. There was a shortage of guns; and the
neutral American Government would not allow any armed merchantmen into
their ports, though many and many a life was lost because a vessel was
unarmed. But, bit by bit, the merchantmen were forced to arm or die
like sheep before the German wolves; and once they had a gun they soon
learnt how to use it.
One gun over the stern was all that most ships had. It was mounted
astern because the best chance of escape was to turn away and go full
speed, zig-zagging every which way as you went, firing at the chasing
submarine; This made vessels harder for submarines to hit, not only on
account of the zig-zags, but because the ship, going the same way as
the torpedo, made fast and short shots harder to get; also because the
backwash of the screw helped to put torpedoes off their course; and
finally because the target was itself firing back at the submarine.
Even so, however, it was often touch-and-go; and very few people ever
enjoyed the fun of being fired at as much as that little Canadian girl
of six, who, seeing a torpedo shimmering past the ship's side, called
out, "Oh, Mummy, look at the pretty fish!" Once a fast torpedo was hit
and exploded by a shell from the vessel its submarine was chasing. But
this was a perfect fluke.
More to the point was the readiness of the merchantman _Valeria_ and of
Commander Stockwell's destroyer to turn happy accidents to the best
account on the spur of the moment. The _Valeria_ bumped over a rising
submarine at three o 'clock one summer morning off the coast of
Ireland. Instantly all hands ran to "action stations," when the gunner
saw, to his delight, that the periscope had been broken off and so the
submarine was blind. His first shot hit the hull. His second was a
miss. But his third struck the base of the conning tower; on which the
submarine sank, nothing but bubbles and oil remaining to mark the spot
where she went down. Stockwell's adventure was rather different. He
had marked a submarine slinking round in the early dawn, and, knowing
the spot the Germans liked best outside of Liverpool, watched his
chance over it. Suddenly he felt his destroyer being lifted up, tilted
over, and slid aside. The "sub" had risen right under it! Swinging
clear in a moment he let go a depth charge; and the sea-quake that
followed had plenty of signs to show that the "sub" had gone down.
1917 was the great year of submarine war: the Germans straining every
nerve to kill off all the ships that went to or from the Allied ports,
the Allies trying their best to kill off all the submarines. The
Mediterranean was bad, the North Atlantic was worse, the west coasts of
the British Islands worst of all. The American Navy came in and did
splendid service off the south coast of Ireland, in the Bay of Biscay,
and along the North Atlantic seaways between French and British and
American ports. More and more destroyers were put into service, aided
by "chasers"--very much smaller vessels with only one gun and a few
men, but so cheap and easily built that they could be turned out in
swarms to help in worrying the submarines to death. The "scooters" and
"Porte's babies," as we saw in Chapter XXIV, were, however, even better
than these swarming "chasers."
The enormous steel nets were also used more than ever. You can fancy
what they were like by thinking of a gigantic fishing-net many miles
long, with armed steamers instead of floats. In the entrances to some
harbours there were sea-gates made by swinging open a bit of the net by
means of its steamers to let traffic go through, and then swinging it
back again. The mine-fields were made bigger than ever; it was then
that the vast one, mostly laid by the Americans, was begun from the
Orkneys to Norway. Mines were also laid by British submarines and by
daring fast surface mine-layers round Heligoland and other places off
the German coast. In this way the waters in which submarines could
work were made narrower and narrower and were better and better guarded.
But more and more submarines were launched, and they still sneaked out
to sea along the Dutch and Norwegian coasts where the Navy could not
stop them because they used to slink through "territorial waters," that
is, within three miles of the coast, where the sea belonged to the
nearest country, just the same as the land. The Navy, however, had
lines of patrols always on the watch from the Orkneys to the Shetlands,
on to Iceland, over to Norway, and north to the Arctic ice. The narrow
waters of the English Channel were watched by the famous Dover Patrol
under Sir Roger Keyes. From Folkestone to Cap Griz Nez in France there
was an unbroken line of the strongest searchlights on vessels anchored
to ride out the biggest gales. Seven miles west was another line.
Between were hundreds of patrol boats always ready, night or day, to
fire at anything on the surface or to drop depth charges on anything
that dived. A depth charge is a sort of mine that can be set to go off
at a certain depth, say thirty to sixty feet down, when it makes a
sea-quake that knocks the submarine out of gear and sinks it, even if
it does not actually hit it. Besides all these guards on the surface
there were nets and mines underneath. That is why the British army in
France never had its line of communication with England cut for one
single day all through the war.
Now and then the Germans tried a destroyer raid from their ports on the
Belgian coast, or even from their own coast; for they would sneak
through Dutch waters within the three-mile limit as well as through the
Danish or Norwegian. They played a game of tip-and-run, their gunners
firing at any surface craft they saw (for they knew no Germans could be
anywhere but underneath) and their captains streaking back home at the
first sign of the British Navy. On the night of the 20th of April,
1917, they were racing back, after sinking some small craft, when an
avenging flotilla of British destroyers began to overhaul them. Seeing
that one of the Germans might escape in the dark, the _Broke_ (named
after Captain Broke of the _Shannon_ in the War of 1812) turned and
rammed her amidships. The Germans fought well, swarming aboard the
_Broke_ and fighting hand to hand, as in the days of boarding. But
Midshipman Giles stood up to the first of them, who was soon killed by
a bluejacket's cutlass; and then, after a tremendous tussle with swords
and pistols and anything else that was handy, every German was either
driven overboard or killed on the spot, except two that surrendered.
A year later (on St. George's Day) the _Vindictive_ led the famous raid
on Zeebrugge under Captain Carpenter, V.C. The idea was to destroy the
principal German base in Belgium from which aircraft and submarines
were always starting. For weeks beforehand the crews that had
volunteered to go on this desperate adventure were carefully trained in
secret. The plan was to block the mouth of the Bruges Canal, by
sinking three vessels filled with concrete, while the _Vindictive_
smashed up the batteries on the mole (long solid wharf) guarding the
entrance, and an old submarine, loaded like a gigantic torpedo, blew up
the supports for the bridge that connected the mole with the land.
Twice the little expedition sailed and had to put back because the wind
had shifted; for the smoke screen would not hide the block ships,
unless the wind had just the proper slant. At last it started for the
real thing; a great night of aircraft going ahead to bomb the defences
and a squadron of monitors staying some miles astern to pour in shells
at the same time. The crash of air bombs and the thudding of the
distant monitors were quite familiar sounds to the German garrison,
whose "archies" (anti-aircraft guns) barked hoarsely back, while the
bigger guns roared at where they thought the monitors might be.
(Monitors are slow, strong, heavy, and very "bargy" craft, useful only
as platforms for big guns against land defences.)
Suddenly, to the Germans' wild astonishment, Zeebrugge harbour was full
of a smoke screen, of concrete-loaded block-ships, and of darting motor
boats; while the old cruiser _Vindictive_ made straight for the mole.
Instantly the monitors and aircraft were left alone, while every German
gun that could be brought to bear was turned on to this new and far
more dangerous enemy at hand. But the British won through. The three
block-ships were sunk. The submarine used as a torpedo blew up the
bridge joining the mole to the land; and the smoke screen worked fairly
well. Still, the tornado of German shells was almost more than flesh
and blood could stand. Meanwhile the old _Vindictive_ ran alongside
the mole and dropped her eighteen special gangways bang against it. In
a moment her forlorn hope--her whole crew was one great forlorn
hope--swarmed on to the mole, over the splintering gangways, while her
guns roared defiance at the huge German batteries. The ground swell
made the _Vindictive_ roll and racked her breaking gangways terribly.
The storm of German shells and the hail of machine-gun bullets seemed
almost to be sweeping everything before them. An officer awaiting his
turn on deck asked, "What are all those men lying down for?" and was
answered, "All dead, Sir"; killed before they had started. Several
gangways were smashed to pieces, the men on them falling between the
_Vindictive_ and the mole. The Germans on the mole fired furiously to
keep the storming party back. But, with an eager courage no Viking
could have beaten, and with a trained skill no Viking could have
equalled, every seaman and Marine in that heroic party who was not
killed or disabled pressed on till the flaming battery was silenced.
Then the survivors swarmed back with all the wounded they could find,
climbed over the few broken gangways still holding together, and turned
to the work of getting clear. At last the _Vindictive_, though a mere
mangled wreck, got off and limped home victorious with all that was
left of the equally daring flotilla of small craft.
Zeebrugge was the bigger base on the Belgian coast. But Ostend
remained; and both were connected by canals with Bruges, which stood
several miles inland. The whole formed a triple base shaped like the
letter V, with Bruges at the bottom, Zeebrugge (sea-Bruges) to the
right, and Ostend to the left. To close only Zeebrugge was to leave
the back door open. So Ostend was raided, and smashed later on, the
old _Vindictive_, now past her fighting days, being sunk full of
concrete. From all that remained of her still above water the
hero-king, Albert, was cheered into Ostend after the Armistice by the
Belgian Boy Scouts, as he steamed past with Sir Roger Keyes to land,
with his heroine-queen, on the soil so long fouled by German pirates.
These raids spoilt German chances from the nearest ports to Britain.
But they did not stop the submarine campaign; and there was still
plenty of work for camouflage, convoys, and "Q" ships.
Camouflage at sea is a very different thing from camouflage on land.
On land camouflage is meant to make one thing look like something else
or to hide it altogether. But no kind of camouflage will hide a ship.
Nor is there any point in making a boat look like anything else; for
everybody knows that ships are the only things at sea. Camouflage
afloat was therefore meant to confuse the submarine commander's aim by
deceiving his eye as to his target's speed and course. By painting
cunning arrangements of stripes and splashes of different colours a
ship's course and speed could be so disguised that the torpedoist was
puzzled in getting his sights on her and in working out the range and
speed. If an old-fashioned sailor could have suddenly been dropped on
to the deck of a transport in the midst of a convoy of camouflaged
ships he would have thought all their helmsmen were drunk or stark,
staring mad; for they would have seemed to be steering every which way
at large and not one on any proper course at all.
When this was added to their other troubles the submarines thought
twice before risking an attack on a convoy of ships guarded by
cruisers, as well as by destroyers ahead and on both sides, zig-zagging
about on the hunt for submarines, much as a good sporting dog quarters
likely ground for game. A "mothering" cruiser would keep station
astern, where she could have her weather eye on every one. In narrow
waters like the English Channel there would also be an airship
overhead, a little in advance, with seaplanes on the flanks. These
aircraft could spot a submarine almost a hundred feet down in fair
weather, just as seabirds spot fish. If a submarine did show up, it
was kept in sight till the destroyers charged near enough to ram,
shell, or torpedo it on the surface, or sea-quake it to death with a
depth bomb if submerged. Three hundred and seven ships brought wheat
from different parts of America to Britain, France, and Italy under
special convoy in the summer of 1918, and only one was lost.
"Q" ships, those ships of mystery and such strange romance as former
navies never dreamt of, were meant to lure the German devils to their
doom. One Q ship was a dirty old collier so well disguised as a common
tramp (steamer belonging to no regular line) that she completely took
in a British cruiser, whose boarding officer was intensely surprised to
find her skipper was one of his own former shipmates. After five
months of thrashing to and fro in the wintry North Atlantic a torpedo
sped across her bows and she knew her chance had come. Instantly her
alarm signals, quietly given, brought all hands to action stations,
some in deck-houses, others in hen-coops, but each with his finger on
the trigger or his hand on a ready spare shell. Presently the
submarine broke surface and fired a shot across the Q ship's bow. On
this the well-trained crew ran about in panic, while the captain
screeched at them and waved his arms about like mad. Then the
submarine came up within three cables (ten to the nautical mile of 2000
yards); whereupon the captain blew his whistle, just as Drake did long
ago, the Navy's White Ensign fluttered up to the masthead, the
hen-coops and deck-houses fell flat, and a hurricane of shells and
Maxim bullets knocked the "sub" out in three minutes' firing.
But, as the war went on, still better Q dodges had to be invented. One
day an old Q tramp, loaded chock-a-block with light-weight lumber,
quietly let herself be torpedoed, just giving the wheel a knowing touch
to take the torpedo well abaft the engine-room, where it would do least
harm. The "panic-party" then left the ship quite crewless so far as
anybody outside of her could see. But the "sub" was taking no risks
that day. She circled the Q, almost grazing her, but keeping fifteen
feet under. The Q captain, only ten yards off, was sorely tempted to
fire. But shells striking water play queer tricks. So he held his
fire; though the quarterdeck was awash instead of nearly twenty feet
clear, and the ship's lucky black cat, blown overboard by the
explosion, swam straight on to it out of the sea. Then the sub came
up, little more than a cable's length away; and the Q captain at last
sent a wireless call for help in case he should sink too soon. When
the conning tower rose clear the German commander opened the hatch and
smiled at his work. He was still cautious; for his gun crew began to
appear. But the Q caught him; knocking his head off with the very
first shot, and riddling the whole sub in no time.
The same Q captain, Gordon Campbell, V.C., went out again in another Q
ship which was also disguised as a tramp. When a submarine attacked
her she zig-zagged away in wild alarm, firing only her one
merchantman's gun, and slowing down so as to get overhauled. Knowing
the sub would catch his message Campbell wirelessed "Help! Come quick!
Submarine chasing and shelling." Presently the Q stopped, done up, and
the "panic-party" left her to her fate. This fate really did seem, and
might have been, certain; for she was on fire from the shelling and her
after magazine blew up with terrible force, killing the stern gun's
crew and blowing the gun overboard. Moreover, the jar of this
explosion set off the alarm; so down came all disguises and out came
the guns. But Campbell, still determined to kill off that sub,
wirelessed in the secret code to keep all vessels off the horizon, lest
the sub should get scared and run away. Meanwhile she was diving, not
liking the explosions; and she presently sent a torpedo straight home.
Then the second "panic-party" left; and the Q ship lay wallowing in the
trough of the sea, with two holes in her side, a big fire blazing, and
ammunition boxes blowing up every few minutes. For nearly an hour the
sub hovered round, a good distance off, and ended by rising astern to
shell this obstinate Q ship to death. But even then the dauntless Q
men still aboard never gave a sign of life. The wounded lay in their
agonizing pain without making a sound, and stiff as soldiers at
_Attention!_ The rest stood by their guns and torpedoes, ready for
anything. In the meantime another dangerous fire was blazing, more
ammunition was blowing up, and the engulfing sea was creeping ever near
and nearer yet. At last the submarine, quite satisfied, ceased firing.
Then she closed, and Campbell fired two torpedoes, but missed with
both. After this he wirelessed for help. But when British and
American destroyers came tearing up they found him, cool as ever,
arranging for a third "panic-party" to jump overboard and leave him
alone with three men to try one more shot with the only gun left free
by the fire. He failed this time. But two of his men earnt the V.C.
as well as any men have ever earnt it; and his gallant Q herself went
down with colours flying.
The news soon passed round the underworld of "sub-dom"; and the Germans
swore they would never be caught again. So when another sub chased and
shelled an old tub of a sailing ship her commander took good care to
make sure he had not caught another Q. First and second panic parties,
or what he thought were panic parties, did not satisfy him. But at
last, when he had seen the ship's papers and had counted the crew, he
laughed at his own mistake and came close alongside, ordering the boats
away in spite of the skipper's entreaties to be allowed to go back and
get his wife, who was crying her eyes out on deck with her baby in her
arms. When the boats rowed off the poor woman went mad, rushing about
wildly, with piercing shrieks, and finally, just as the German was
coming on board, throwing her baby straight into his conning tower.
What the Germans thought of this will never be known; for the baby was
made of rubber filled with high explosive, and it blew the sub to
smithereens.