her tanks, let herself go, and then, by an automatic safety device,
fetch up all by herself. So the tank man applied the air-pressure, blew
his tanks free of all water, closed his outer valves and brought her up.
She was now stretched out on the surface--not quite motionless, for the
first of the breeze predicted the night before was on and we could feel
that she was rolling a little. A peek through the periscope while she
was up disclosed further evidence of the breeze--tossing white crests,
two coasters hustling for harbor under short sail, an inbound fisherman
with reefed mainsail making great leaps for home. Looking through the
periscope so, it was easy enough to understand the feeling of power
which might well come to the master of a submarine in war time. The sub
can be lying there--in dark or bright water will make no difference; on
such a day no eye is going to discern the white bone of the moving
periscope; and he can be standing there, with a quick peek now and then
to see what is going on above him; and by and by she can come swinging
along majestically in her arrogance and power--the greatest battleship
afloat, with guns to level a great city, or the biggest and speediest
ship ever built--and he can be there and when he gets good and
ready--Woof! she's gone. War-ship or liner, she's gone and all aboard
gone with her; and the submarine skipper can go along about his business
of getting the next one.
However, the automatic device was set for action at the required depth
and the word given.
In this same middle compartment--the operating compartment of the
ship--was a man with the spiritual face of one who keeps lonely, intense
vigils. He sat on a camp-stool, and his business seemed to be not ever
to let his rapt gaze wander from several rows of gauges which were
screwed to the bulkhead before him. Since I first stepped down into the
sub I had spotted him, and had been wondering if his ascetic look was
born with him or was a development of his job--whatever his job might
be. Now I learned what his job was. He was the man who stood by the
automatic safety devices. If anything happened to the regular gadgets
and it was life or death to get her at once to the surface, he was the
man who pressed a button, or moved a switch, or in some highly
mechanical way applied the mysterious power which would get her safe to
the surface.
The skipper gave the word, the main ballast lad opened his outer valves,
and down she started. We knew this, as always, by the moving green
finger on the wide-faced gauge. Downward she kept on going, and to a man
not too long shipmates with the creature she certainly did seem to be
going down in a hurry. She was nearing the appointed depth; she made the
appointed depth, and--went on by. "What's this!" said one observer to
himself, and directed an interested eye toward the saint-like lad on the
camp-stool.
But it was only for a few feet. The indicator slacked up, fluttered,
stopped dead. And then--without the husky tank boy to lift a finger--we
heard the rumph-h and rumbling of the valve-seats as the sea-water was
driven out of her ballast-tanks; and then up she started. Soon there she
was--did it all by herself--atop of the water. And the face of the young
fellow of the automatic devices was like the face of the devout
missionary who has just put something over on the heathen.
Later, when you express the feeling of almost holy comfort which these
little automatic safety devices give you, the manager--the same with the
stop-watch and the note-book--says, "Puh! Look here," and sits down and
details--drawing good working plans of them on a pad while he talks--three
different ways by which a submarine crew can beat the game should any
evil happen to the ordinary and regular means of getting to the surface.
She has a turn at porpoising then; that is from a moderate depth the
diving-rudder man shoots her near enough to the surface for the captain
to have a look through the periscope--a long-enough look to plot the
enemy on a chart, but not long enough to give that enemy much of a
chance to pick him up; and then under again. And then up for another
peek; and quickly under again, the captain at the periscope taking each
time a fresh bearing of the enemy, who is supposed to be at some
distance and steaming at good speed. After two or three such quick
sights, changing course after each sight, it will be time to discharge a
torpedo or two at her. And--the layman may note it--with expert men at
the periscope and diving-rudder, a porpoising sub can sight, discharge
her torpedo, and dive--all within five seconds.
Steaming back to harbor after our trial run that day, we caught the
first rip of the gale which the gummed-over moon and the low barometer
had forecast the night before. It was too rough to tie her up to the
supply-ship, so the sub was anchored--they carry anchors too--a short
distance away, with three men left on her for an anchor watch, the idea
being to take them off later for a hot meal. But after the rest of us
were safe and warm and well fed aboard the mother ship, the increasing
winds came bowling over the increasing seas, and the crew of the sub had
to wait.
At intervals we could hear them emitting beseeching, doleful, disgusted
moans and shrieks and howls from her air-whistle. But it was too rough
for any little choo-choo boat to be battling around. It was 9.30 that
night before they could safely be taken off. They were a moderately
good-natured lot; but that was the blear-eyed trouble with making sub
trial trips with bad weather coming on--a man never knew about his
regular meals.
The supply-ship was quite a little institution herself. Approaching her
from shore the night before, her lights beneath the dull moon and thin,
drifting clouds had loomed up like a dancing-hall across the lonesome
harbor waters. When we got aboard, we found her the relic of what had
once been a fine block of a three-masted coaster; but moored forward and
aft she was now, as if for all time, and no longer showing stout spars
and weather-beaten canvas--nothing but two floors of white-painted
boarding above her old bulwarks.
She was a boarding-place, a sort of club, for the crew and attendants,
as well as a supply station for the submarines which in these New
England waters were being tried out for one of the warring Powers.
Voices and cigar-smoke as we stepped aboard, and more or less quiet
breathing, with partly closed and open living and sleeping rooms,
denoted that men were discussing, arguing, sleeping, and otherwise
passing a normal evening. Looking farther, we saw that down in the
insides of her--where formerly she stowed noble freights of coal or
lumber or, sometimes, hay and ice--were now a boiler and engine room,
and a good, big repair-shop.
This night, while the gale came howling and the sea rolling and the
solid rain sweeping against the sober old sides of our supply-ship--on
this night, the finest kind to be sitting in a warm cabin, we sat and,
while the smoke rolled high, aired our views of the real things in the
world; and the most real thing in the world just then being a submarine,
we got this:
"Danger? Of course, there's some danger. So is there danger in
bank-fishing, in log-jamming down in Maine, in mining deep down, and in
aeroplaning.
"You want to get a sub right. A sub is a ship modelled different from
most ships, of course, and built stronger to stand pressure, but only a
ship, after all, with special tanks in her. She's on top of the water
and wants to go down. Good. She fills her tanks and down she goes. She's
down and wants to come up. All right. She empties her tanks and up she
comes. She's got to. She couldn't stay down with her tanks empty if she
wanted to--not unless she blew a hole in her side, or left her hatches
open.
"Of course if her tanks don't work right! But we showed you three
different ways to-day how she can beat that game. And anyway, no matter
what happens, unless you're cruising deep, it's only a few feet to the
top. Not like a crazy aeroplane a thousand feet up in the air! Something
happens in an aeroplane, and where are you? With a busted stay or bamboo
strut and you a mile in the air, where are you? Volplane? Maybe. But if
you didn't--down you'd come atumbling like a hoop out of the clouds.
That's 90 per cent--yes, maybe 99 per cent--of the submarine game: See
that everything is right mechanically with your sub, then get a competent
crew and--well, you're ready."
That is for the submariner's point of view. As for the danger from a
shore-goer's point of view: Ashore we make the mistake, perhaps, of
thinking of a submarine as a heavy, logy body fighting always for her
life beneath an unfriendly ocean; whereas she is a light-moving easily
controlled creature cruising in a rather friendly element.
The ocean is always trying to lift her atop and not hold her under
water. A submarine could be sent under with a positive buoyancy so
small--that is, with so little more than enough in her tanks to sink
her--that an ordinary man standing on the sea bottom could catch her as
she came floating down and bounce her up and off merely by the strength
of his arms. Consider a submarine under water as we would a toy balloon
in the air, say. Weight that toy balloon so that it just falls to earth.
Kick that toy balloon and what does it do? Doesn't it bounce along, and
after a few feet fall easily down again, and up and on and down again?
Picture a strong wind driving that toy balloon along the street, and the
balloon, as it bumps along, meeting an obstacle: Will the balloon smash
itself against the obstacle, or what will it do? What that balloon does
is pretty much what a submarine would do if, while running along full
speed under water, she suddenly ran into shoal water. She would go
bumping along on the bottom; and, meeting an obstacle, if not too high,
she would be more likely to bounce over it than to smash herself against
it.
But sometimes they do run into things and fetch up?
That is right, they do. Let our naval men tell of the old C plunger--the
first class of sub in our navy--which hit an excursion steamer down the
James River way one time. She was a wooden steamer about 150 feet long,
and the C's bow went clear through the steamer's sides. The steamer's
engineer was sitting by his levers, reading the sporting page of his
favorite daily, when he heard a crash and found himself on the
engine-room floor. Looking around, he saw a wedge of steel sticking
through the side of his ship. He did not know what it was, but he could
see right away it didn't have a friendly look; so he hopscotched across
the engine-room floor and up a handy ladder to the deck, taking his
assistant along in his wake. After rescuing the passengers it took three
tugboats to pry sub and steamer apart.
Our C boat must have hit her a pretty good wallop, for as they fell
apart the steamer sank. They ran the little old C up to the navy-yard to
see how much she was damaged. Surely after that smash she must be shaken
up--her bow torpedo-tubes at least must be out of alignment! But not a
thing wrong anywhere; they didn't even have to put her in dry dock. Out
and about her business she went next morning.
Later another of the same class came nosing up out of the depths, and
bumped head on and into a breakwater down that same country--a solid
stone wall of a breakwater. What did she do? She bounced off, and, after
a look around, also went on about her business.
* * * * *
In the morning our sub up-anchored for her run across the open bay. On
the conning-tower was rigged a little bridge of slim brass stanchions
and thin wire-rope rail, with the canvas as high as a man's chin for
protection; and away she went in a wind that was still blowing hard
enough to drive home-bound Gloucester fishermen down to storm trysails
and sea enough to jump an out-bound destroyer of a thousand tons under
easy steam to her lower plates whenever she lifted forward.
There was not a soul standing around on the main deck of the destroyer
as we passed her, nor on her high forward turtle-deck, which was being
washed clean; and surely not much comfort being bounced around on
transoms in that destroyer below, nor too much dryness on her flying
bridge. And yet here was our little sub--full speed and all--heading
straight into high-curling seas and making fine weather of it.
Plunging her bow under, and through she'd go; and when she did the seas
would go swashing up atop of her make-believe deck and come rolling down
her round-top plates and squishing through the hundreds of round holes
in her deck sides. But steady? Up on her little bridge we did not half
the time have to hold on to her little steel-rope rail lines to keep our
balance. She kept on going, hooked-up all the way, seas and wind and all
to hinder her, and finished her five-hour run without so much as wetting
our coat fronts up on the conning-tower bridge. A great little sea
boat--a submarine.
Now for the personnel of the crew. The crew of the sub described were
not sailors. The captain was an old seagoer--yes; and it would be a safe
guess that the diving-rudder man had a seagoing experience; and one
other perhaps; but the fellows who stood by the other things below came
straight from the boat works. They had helped, most of them, to build
her: which was one good reason for having them along on her trial trip.
And there are thousands of young fellows working around garages and in
machine-shops and electric-light plants ashore who are the very men
needed for submarines. There will always have to be a sailor or two in a
submarine; or there should be, for a real sailor is always a handy man
to have around--he knows things that nobody else knows.
And so, if hanging around there are any young fellows with a taste for
adventure and a trend for naval warfare, these submarines look to be the
thing. They are only little fellows now, and, as they stand to-day,
limited as to range and power of offense, but stay by and grow up with
them, and by and by be with them when they will be as big as the
battleships and of a radius of action that will stretch from here
to--well, as far as they like; drawing their energy from the sun above
them, or the sea-tides about them, and not having to see enemy ships to
be able to fight them--equipped with devices not now invented but which
will serve to feel those other ships and, feeling them, to plot their
direction and distance!
Imagine a fleet of those lads battling under water some day--allowing no
surface craft to live--feeling each other out and plotting direction and
distance as they feel, and then letting go broadsides of torpedoes ten
or a hundred times as powerful as anything we now have; and at the same
time the air full of war-planes battling above them.
Infants, sea babies, is what they are to-day. But wait till they grow
up!
* * * * * *
Transcriber's Note:
Typographical errors corrected:
Page 84: changed ay to aye
Page 191: moved quotes from end of paragraph to end of quote
Page 202: changed serivce to service
Page 208: changed underguard to under guard
Page 253: added missing word "to" after "evil happen."