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 4 x 8 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 4 x 8, while men kept coming mysteriously out of
the block until a round dozen were 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.
It was a little surprise the admiral of the port had prepared for us,
and nothing could have been better prepared to give us the true flavor
of submarine warfare. We had had all the sensation of being chased,
fired on and captured--everything except being sunk in mid-ocean. Now
we were to have the other experience of chasing and capturing the enemy.
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 400 horsepower.
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 batch, 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. Each quartermaster was directly
responsible for six men, while the commander and his second were
responsible for five each. 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.
It is with this periscope that the vessel is navigated. The submarine
sails at a depth at which the fighting periscope shows about eighteen
inches above the surface, while the commander, standing on two iron
grips, with his head, shoulders and body in the turret and his legs
sticking down into the cabin, keeps his eyes glued to the sights of the
periscope, which he constantly turns from side to side to take in all
points of the limited horizon. The part of the fighting periscope that
extends above the water is a brass rod about two and one-half inches in
diameter, while its eye is only three-quarters of an inch in diameter.
It is on this tiny opening that both the safety and fighting ability of
the vessel depend.
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.
I met the next day another officer whose mustache and eyebrows were
black as jet, but whose hair was silver white. He was thirty-eight
years old. For six years and a half he had been a submarine officer, he
told me.
"Why did you quit it?" I asked him.
"Too old," he said.
"Is there an age limit?" I asked.
"No," he replied, "but a man knows when he is too old for the work."
Yet nothing would induce those who have not yet found themselves too
old to leave it. One would think the sailors, at any rate, would find
the life tiresome or too dangerous. I talked to several of them about
it, but they all agreed that they would not change.
"Is this life better than on a battleship?" I asked one sailor.
"Oh, yes," he replied. "I would not go back to a battleship."
"What makes it better?" I asked.
"It is more tranquil," he answered.
Tranquil, sixty feet under water and your life hanging on a gauge that
needs a good heavy wallop to make it work.
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.