This war is like an iceberg. We, the public, only see an eighth of it
above water. The rest is out of sight and, as with the berg, one
guesses its extent by great blocks that break off and shoot up to the
surface from some underlying out-running spur a quarter of a mile
away. So with this war sudden tales come to light which reveal
unsuspected activities in unexpected quarters. One takes it for
granted such things are always going on somewhere, but the actual
emergence of the record is always astonishing.
Once upon a time, there were certain E type boats who worked the Sea
of Marmara with thoroughness and humanity; for the two, in English
hands, are compatible. The road to their hunting-grounds was strewn
with peril, the waters they inhabited were full of eyes that gave them
no rest, and what they lost or expended in wear and tear of the chase
could not be made good till they had run the gauntlet to their base
again. The full tale of their improvisations and "makee-does" will
probably never come to light, though fragments can be picked up at
intervals in the proper places as the men concerned come and go. The
Admiralty gives only the bones, but those are not so dry, of the
boat's official story.
When E14, Commander E. Courtney-Boyle, went to her work in the Sea of
Marmara, she, like her sister, "proceeded" on her gas-engine up the
Dardanelles; and a gas-engine by night between steep cliffs has been
described by the Lower-deck as a "full brass band in a railway
cutting." So a fort picked her up with a searchlight and missed her
with artillery. She dived under the minefield that guarded the
Straits, and when she rose at dawn in the narrowest part of the
channel, which is about one mile and a half across, all the forts
fired at her. The water, too, was thick with steamboat patrols, out of
which E14 selected a Turkish gunboat and gave her a torpedo. She had
just time to see the great column of water shoot as high as the
gunboat's mast when she had to dip again as "the men in a small
steamboat were leaning over trying to catch hold of the top of my
periscope."
"SIX HOURS OF BLIND DEATH"
This sentence, which might have come out of a French exercise book, is
all Lieutenant-Commander Courtney-Boyle sees fit to tell, and that
officer will never understand why one taxpayer at least demands his
arrest after the war till he shall have given the full tale. Did he
sight the shadowy underline of the small steamboat green through the
deadlights? Or did she suddenly swim into his vision from behind, and
obscure, without warning, his periscope with a single brown clutching
hand? Was she alone, or one of a mob of splashing, shouting small
craft? He may well have been too busy to note, for there were patrols
all around him, a minefield of curious design and undefined area
somewhere in front, and steam trawlers vigorously sweeping for him
astern and ahead. And when E14 had burrowed and bumped and scraped
through six hours of blind death, she found the Sea of Marmara
crawling with craft, and was kept down almost continuously and grew
hot and stuffy in consequence. Nor could she charge her batteries in
peace, so at the end of another hectic, hunted day of starting them up
and breaking off and diving--which is bad for the temper--she decided
to quit those infested waters near the coast and charge up somewhere
off the traffic routes.
This accomplished, after a long, hot run, which did the motors no
good, she went back to her beat, where she picked up three destroyers
convoying a couple of troopships. But it was a glassy calm and the
destroyers "came for me." She got off a long-range torpedo at one
transport, and ducked before she could judge results. She apologises
for this on the grounds that one of her periscopes had been
damaged--not, as one would expect, by the gentleman leaning out of the
little steamboat, but by some casual shot--calibre not specified--the
day before. "And so," says E14, "I could not risk my remaining one
being bent." However, she heard a thud, and the depth-gauges--those
great clock-hands on the white-faced circles--"flicked," which is
another sign of dreadful certainty down under. When she rose again she
saw a destroyer convoying one burning transport to the nearest beach.
That afternoon she met a sister-boat (now gone to Valhalla), who told
her that she was almost out of torpedoes, and they arranged a
rendezvous for next day, but "before we could communicate we had to
dive, and I did not see her again." There must be many such meetings
in the Trade, under all skies--boat rising beside boat at the point
agreed upon for interchange of news and materials; the talk shouted
aloud with the speakers' eyes always on the horizon and all hands
standing by to dive, even in the middle of a sentence.