UNDER THE PERISCOPE
UNDER THE PERISCOPE
BY
MARK BENNETT
(LATE LIEUT. R.N.R.)
[Illustration]
LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
Copyright 1919
TO
C. K.
But for whom this book would never have been written.
PREFACE
For those who have no knowledge of the ways and habits of submarines,
a preface is unnecessary, and my only hope is that this book may
enlighten them on points on which they were formerly in ignorance.
One is often asked, ‘What does it feel like to be below the sea?’
and a host of questions of a similar character, and it is just these
questions that I have endeavoured to answer. The incidents recorded are
all founded on fact, and many of them are personal experiences.
Of my one-time comrades of the Submarine Service, however, I have a
favour to ask. I beg them not to be too critical nor to point out
its deficiencies, but rather to remember that this book was written
while the War was still with us, and that a large amount of detail had
therefore to be omitted.
Moreover, the boat described is of one particular class, and if they
themselves have never served in that class of submarine, ‘more’s the
pity.’
All luck to our successors in the next war, and may they fight in the
open air.
M. B.
PREFATORY NOTE
Mr Bennett’s admirable book tells us of the officers and men of the
Submarine Service and of the working of that wonderful vessel, the
submarine. The author served throughout the war as an officer in H.M.S.
submarine No.----, so that he writes of his own knowledge. Mr Bennett
is a professional sailor; when he is not fighting for king and country
he is an officer in His Majesty’s Mercantile Marine; and yet there is
many a professional writer who may envy Mr Bennett’s skill in the craft
of writing. As a rule, the man who does things is the least capable of
writing about them; but when he can write, he is best of all. And of
such is Mr Bennett.
The naval architect, when (in a rash moment) he gave the submarine
to the Royal Navy, offered a new and a perilous enterprise to the
indomitable spirit of the seaman. How that enterprise is achieved,
with what courage, endurance, cheerfulness, enthusiasm, with what
extraordinary skill, Mr Bennett tells us with a seamanlike modesty and
precision. The task set to the Navy was how to wield a new weapon, an
invisible weapon striking with the torpedo. It was not until 1910 that
a British submarine went without escort into deep water and proved her
capacity to cruise and fight as an independent unit. During the war,
we heard a deal of the German submarine, and very little of our own
Submarine Service. Mr Bennett narrates the story of one submarine, and
in so doing, informs us more vividly and truly than all the official
reports can ever inform us.
With the submarine, Germany very nearly defeated the entire British
Navy, but not quite. The difference between victory and failure resided
not in the submarine, which is machinery, but in the officers and
men. Had the positions been reversed: had the British held the German
strategical position, had the Germans owned the British Grand Fleet;
there would have been very little left of that tremendous armada ere
six months were over. The submarine, handled as Mr Bennett describes,
has in fact made an end of the old Navy.
There is now the Navy that swims, the Navy that flies, and the Navy
that dives. These three are one: and into what this triple machine will
evolve, none knows. But it is enough to know something of the quality
of the officers and men, for these are the masters of the machine.
L. COPE CORNFORD.
LONDON, _April, 1919_.
[_Printed after books were bound._]
CONTENTS
PAGE
UNDER THE PERISCOPE 1
PATROL 3
THE MOTHERS 45
EMPTY SADDLES 47
THE BOGIE MAN 67
‘EXERCISE ATTACKS’ 69
NEPTUNE AND BRITANNIA 103
PERSONNEL 105
THE DOCKYARD 145
‘SURVEY AND DEMAND’ 147
ACTION 191
THE REAL THING 193
THE SEAGULLS 231
‘FOR THOSE IN PERIL ON THE SEA’ 233
UNDER THE PERISCOPE
I
We know the ships of Carthage,
We know how history speaks,
We know the Roman galleys,
The triremes of the Greeks.
We know the cogs and frigates,
The privateers and sloops,
We know the line-of-battle ships,
And lofty Spanish poops.
II
We know the great Armada,
We know the ships of Drake,
We know the three-decked wooden walls,
Of Nelson’s battle wake.
We know the Super-Dreadnoughts,
We know the cruisers lean;
But, save our foes, speak up, who knows
The British Submarine?
PATROL
His Majesty’s Submarine ‘123’ lay alongside her depot ship _Parentis_,
her lean, gray superstructure showing up ghostly white against the dark
outline of the larger vessel.
The night was warm, though dark and overcast, and the light
south-easterly breeze merely ruffled the waters of the harbour, causing
a lap-lapping noise between the two vessels, the only sound that broke
the intense silence of the summer night.
As the great fleet, anchored in the harbour, swung to the turn of the
tide, ‘123’ exposed her broadside, a long low hull bulging outwards
at the centre, and supporting the superstructure, on the fore part of
which the gun was mounted. Amidships rose the conning-tower and the
little bridge, the standard and the two periscopes, pointing up to
Heaven like the fingers of an avenging angel.
The after deck was bare save for the dark rings of the hatches, leading
down to her steel internals.
The anchored fleet showed up in dark blurs and splotches, as far as
the eye could see. Line after line of battleships, battle cruisers,
destroyers and torpedo boats, backed up by a host of merchant ships of
every type and size.
A light gleamed suddenly from the submarine, faded away, flashed out,
and disappeared. Figures moved quietly along the deck, and the sound of
subdued voices rose, broken now and then by the clump of a wet rope’s
end or the clang of a closing deck locker.
Then the conning-tower hatch opened and Lieut. Commander John Raymond,
R.N., in command of H.M. Submarine ‘123,’ rose to view, heaving himself
through the narrow opening by painful sections.
He was a big, strongly-built man of about thirty-three, clad in an
old--a very old--suit of uniform, a muffler, sea-boots, a pair of
binoculars, and his own inborn modesty.
After him came the navigator, an R.N.R. Lieutenant, lovingly clasping
the gyro compass repeater to his bosom, and muttering imprecations the
while on the coil of electric cable which trailed up after him like a
spider’s web.
‘Phew!’ he said, sniffing the air. ‘Dark night.’
The captain glanced quickly fore and aft.
‘All ready, coxswain?’ he queried.
A burly figure now loomed up on the now crowded conning-tower.
‘All ready, sir.’
Raymond leant down and pulled a lanyard, and a bell rang below in the
control room.
‘Sir,’ boomed a voice as a face appeared in the circle of the hatch.
‘All ready below?’
‘All ready, sir.’
‘Group down?’[1]
‘Grouped down, sir.’
‘Let go fore and aft,’ cried Raymond to the waiting men on the
superstructure.
‘All gone, sir.’
At the fore part of the conning-tower a small pedestal rose containing
the magnetic compass and steering gear and a number of small switches.
Raymond pressed two of these and a hooter or ‘Klaxon Horn’ sounded
below, a bell rang, and the twin screws began to revolve.
‘Astern both it is. Helm amidships.’
‘’Midships, sir,’ from the coxswain.
‘Keep a look out aft, Boyd,’ said Raymond, turning to the navigator.
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ came the answer, then ‘all clear aft, sir.’
‘The Klaxon’s sounded again.’
‘Ahead starboard, astern port. Hard-a-starboard!’ snapped Raymond.
‘Hard over, sir,’ chorused the coxswain.
‘123’ stopped coming astern, gathered herself together, and then slowly
surged ahead and swung round as sedately as a dowager.
‘Stop port. Ahead port,’ snorted the ‘Klaxon.’
‘’Midships,’ from Raymond. ‘Steady. Take her out.’
‘Take her out, sir.’
The boat steadied on her course and travelled silently down the
harbour on her electric motors, carefully picking her way between the
dark shapes of the anchored vessels.
Conversation on the bridge was at a premium. Tempers are apt to be
short and livers out of order at one o’clock in the morning.
Presently Raymond looked ahead through his binoculars and jerked the
bell lanyard impatiently.
‘Group up!’ he called down the shaft.
‘Grouped up, sir,’ came the answer.
The subdued churning of the twin screws ceased and as suddenly started
with redoubled energy as the batteries came in series, thrashing up the
water astern and causing the boat to vibrate fore and aft as she leapt
forward to the touch of the grouper switch.
Down in the electric lit interior the L.T.O.[2] and an S.T.[3] were
working the motor switches, ‘making and breaking’ in obedience to the
telegraph lights, to which the ‘Claxtons’ called attention. Right aft
in the engine-room the Chief E.R.A.[4] was hovering over the tail
shafts with an oil can and a lump of dirty waste, with the air of a
demon of the revels.
Forward of him were the air compressors and main motors, and the engine
clutches, and then the great eight-cylinder Diesel engines, a mass of
burnished steel and brasswork in a narrow electric lit tunnel. The
faint hum of the motors and the smell of fuel oil pervaded the air,
but the cheery faces of the stokers on watch robbed the scene of its
romance.
One of them who was whistling ‘Tennessee’ three tones flat, and bending
over a clutch with a dignified expression, straightened up as a man
came down the engine-room hatch.
‘’Ere, Sam, you remember that gell wot----’ he began.
‘’Strewth,’ quoth the new-comer. ‘Ain’t it got dark sudden?’
‘It usually does,’ broke in another voice from behind the engine, ‘at
night-time.’
‘No, I don’t remember any gall,’ replied Sam with some asperity; ‘and
wot’s more, if that clutch ain’t ready pretty damn soon, you’ll be
spoke to.’
‘Way down in Tennessee----’ continued the worker, ignoring the insult,
in a masterly manner.
Through the door in the engine-room bulkhead came the Chief E.R.A. to
hurl an insult at a tardy message-bearer, but the hoot of the telegraph
sent him diving back to his lair almost immediately.
‘Stop ’er,’ cried the L.T.O., working the switches to the accompaniment
of a hiss and crackle of blue sparks.
‘Engines!’ came Raymond’s voice from above. ‘Three hundred revs.!’
‘Engines!’ shouted Furness, the L.T.O., into the engine-room. ‘Three
’undred!’
‘The ‘Chief’ waved a reply, and with a snip of switches the motors
started again. Then the engine clutches came home and the Diesels
began to heave with a fizz bump, fizz bump, fizz, fizz, fizz, as the
needles of the ammeters came back from discharging, past zero and on to
charging.
Once more Hoskins waved a grimy hand and the motor workers broke their
switches. She was away on her engines at ten knots now, her exhaust,
which had started in oily puffs, rapidly thinning astern to a white
semi-transparent vapour.
Into the battery-room at this juncture came the ‘Sub’ of the boat, an
ingenuous youth of nineteen, bearing upon his youthful shoulders as
second in command all the anxieties and troubles of the world.
‘All right, Furness?’ he asked.
‘Yessir, she went off very well.’
‘Good,’ replied Seagrave, looking at the volt-metre on the low-power
switchboard. ‘Keep the lighting down to a hundred and ten.’
He wandered off under the mess tables, clipped up to the steel ceiling
of the compartment to examine the gyro master-compass, a large
mushroom-shaped object of steel and electricity, whose rotor buzzed
round at the rate of over eight thousand revolutions a minute.
On his left were the electric cooking range, lockers and battery
ventilators, and overhead were the great vents which let the air out of
the main ballast tanks when the boat dived.
Presently, satisfied with the ‘Sperry’ compass, he stepped forward
through the watertight door into the control room, a regular holy of
holies, on whose shrine were offered many tins of ‘Brasso’ daily and
much elbow grease and bad language by heated and voluble ‘matlows.’[5]
Here were the levers which opened the great Kingston valves in the
bottom of the boat and flooded the tanks for diving. Here was the
adjusting pump, by means of which water could be pumped from any one
tank to another and into or from the sea. Aft was the periscope, a long
steel tube sticking up through the roof, fitted with an eye-piece and
graduated rings at its lower end. On the port side were the hydroplane
and diving rudder wheels, and the depth and pressure gauges. Forward
was the air manifold, by means of which, on opening the Kingston
valves, air could be blown into the tanks at a pressure of over 75 lbs.
to the square inch, and so force the water out of them when the captain
wished the boat to rise.
In the centre, up through the ceiling, was the conning-tower shaft,
gained by a steel ladder, above which was another periscope and the
torpedo firing gear.
Another watertight door led into the fore compartment where the
battery-ventilating fans were running, and the ceiling was interlaced
with the usual profusion of vents and shafts. Right aft an operator
was tuning the wireless installation, beyond which were the crew’s
lockers and the flag racks. On the port side was the chart table
and two bunks, one high up, and the other formed by a drawer, which
on being pulled out and stayed up, disclosed the bedding all neatly
stowed away. Underfoot, as in the after compartment, was the great
hundred-and-twenty volt battery which fed the hungry motors, and
forward were the air bottles and fuel tanks.
In the bows were the torpedo-tubes, whose brass doors winked in the
electric light, hiding the wicked torpedoes behind their shining faces.
A turn of the bow cap and a pull at a lever, and they would be off at
forty knots to reap a harvest of death and destruction. Abaft the tubes
were spare torpedoes, shining steel cylinders with copper war-heads,
holding sufficient T.N.T. to sink a Dreadnought.
The men were moving quietly about their work, the watch below preparing
to turn in while the remainder were cleaning and adjusting and getting
ready generally for the coming sea trip.
Once out of the harbour, ‘123’ lifted gently to the swell, and with her
hydroplanes turned out and all hatches closed, with the exception of
that from the conning-tower, was cutting through the water like a great
porpoise.
By now the crew had settled down to sea routine, and only the captain,
navigator, and coxswain were on the conning-tower bridge, and an
occasional seaman or stoker up for a breather or smoke-oh.
Boyd, who had been looking aft intently, lowered his binoculars and
glanced at the compass.
‘Bearing’s on, sir,’ he reported. ‘Course is fifty-six.’
‘All right. Steer fifty-six. That’ll do, coxswain. Helmsman to the
wheel.’
The coxswain was relieved and bustled below, and a young A.B. took
the wheel, or rather the electric switch which, by a movement of the
finger, altered the direction of the ship’s head.
‘Wonder if we’ll see anything this time,’ continued the skipper. ‘Fritz
doesn’t seem to be over-anxious about coming out lately. I never seem
to have any luck, but he’ll be a nasty customer to tackle if ever we do
run across him. He won’t give in while he’s got a kick left in him.’
‘Gets a bit monotonous,’ admitted Boyd. ‘My brother’s in France.
Sometimes I wish I were out there too. They do see something of the
scrapping at any rate. What gets on my nerves is this constant being
on the alert and never seeing anything. If you were told you were to
go out and strafe a Hun one wouldn’t mind. It’s the uncertainty of the
business that shakes me.’
‘Now, I can’t allow you to complain of your lot,’ replied Raymond.
‘Here you are in one of the latest inventions of the twentieth century,
and even that doesn’t satisfy you. When you have met George Willie in
his little sardine tin you won’t be quite so anxious.’
‘Two o’clock,’ he continued, glancing at his watch. ‘We’ll dive at
half-past five. Call me at a quarter past.’
‘All right. I’ll stop up till then. No need to wake Seagrave.’
Raymond’s legs disappeared down the hatch.
‘Call me if you see anything,’ he said as he went down, ‘and if you
should run across Fritz, man the gun and Hun him instanter. I’ll be up
before you get the first round off.’
‘Very good, sir. Good-night.’
‘Good-night.’ And the captain vanished below, like a stage demon down a
trap.
Left to himself, Boyd lit a pipe, took a look round with the glasses
and peered into the compass, where a thin circle of light showed up the
figures on its face.
The night was clear now for the clouds had rolled away, but it was
still very dark. All round was the dark rim of the horizon, and
just below, quite close, was the greedy ocean, lapping up over the
superstructure as the boat hurried on. The stars gleamed tranquilly and
the night seemed very still.
A queer feeling this, with only the helmsman and the click of the gyro
compass for company; like being adrift on the open sea in a small
motor-boat. Darkness and the faint chug-chug of the engines leant an
eeriness to the situation, and the proximity of the water only added to
its intensity. Down through the hatch Boyd could see a small circle of
the control room, where a messenger was sitting on a camp-stool reading
a penny magazine with evident enjoyment. Above and all around, nature
and solitude; below, men, the smell of cocoa, the engines of death and
... a penny magazine.
The watch dragged slowly on, and Boyd, seated on the little round stool
screwed into the deck, began to feel the chilliness of the dawn. He
rose and commenced pacing the ‘bridge.’
Not much room to walk here, for the periscope standard rose abaft the
conning-tower hatch, and beyond that were the bridge berthing wires.
Three steps and turn. Three steps and turn....
Then suddenly a broad white finger of light shot up over the horizon on
the port bow, cleaving the darkness with an eerie suddenness.
Boyd rang the bell.
‘Tell the captain that a searchlight is visible from the enemy coast,’
he called to the messenger in the control room.
A minute’s pause, the light wavered, steadied, and went out.
‘Captain says all right, sir,’ came the voice up the hatch.
‘Thank you,’ replied Boyd, relighting his pipe and settling down on the
stool again.
The boat sped on through the darkness. Somewhere away ahead, as
evidenced by that broad beam of light, lay the hostile coast towards
which the lean, grim-looking craft was racing as fast as Heaven and
Hoskins could make her go.
A brawny stoker rose for a breath of air like some giant seal, and,
in deference to the officer, took his stand on the other side of the
bridge. He was followed by the signalman, and the two men lit their
pipes and conversed in low tones.
Not much room up here for four men; the little bridge was crowded now.
When they had gone down, Boyd rang the bell again and muttered the
magic words, ‘food and cocoa,’ to the face that appeared in the circle
of light below, and presently a hand shot up out of the hatch bearing a
steaming mug which he hastily relieved of its burden.
The hand disappeared and returned with a biscuit-tin, and finally
vanished altogether.
The dawn was now paling the eastern sky, and the wedge of fore-deck
began to take shape and harden as the light gained strength. The faint
glow in the compass died out, and the coast ahead became visible: a
distant, mountainous country, looking menacing in the struggling dawn.
The navigator pulled out his watch.
‘Five o’clock,’ he muttered. ‘Better get a star sight before diving.’
Telling the helmsman to ring the bell if he saw anything, he went
below into the control room, where the thump and bang of the engines
smothered all other sounds, and through into the fore compartment,
treading lightly and dodging under the hammocks and over the sleeping
men stretched out on the deck.
Passing through the long green curtains, he stepped into that space
dignified by the high-sounding name of ‘Ward Room,’ where Seagrave
and Raymond were sleeping, and culling from a drawer his sextant and a
watch, returned on deck.
By the time he had taken his sights the dawn was well advanced, and
after a careful look round the horizon he once more rang the bell.
‘Call the captain and tell him it’s five-fifteen, please.’
‘Ay, ay, sir.’
Presently Raymond came up and took a long look at the distant coast.
‘Well, young feller,’ he said, lowering his glasses, ‘seen anything?’
‘Not so as you’d notice it,’ replied Boyd. ‘That light only showed up
for five minutes or so. I got some sights by the way, as the land’s too
far off for decent bearings.’
‘What you’ll suffer from, my lad,’ said Raymond with a grin, ‘is
sextantitis if you carry on as you’re doing now. It’s a very common
complaint among R.N.R. Lieutenants, and comes from the constant habit
of taking sights. The patient rises at one in the morning and tries to
find his latitude with a hambone and a piece of string.’
‘Better to be sure than sorry, anyway,’ answered Boyd.
‘Well, you brought it on yourself. If you only knew what an effort it
costs me to be funny at this hour in the morning you wouldn’t ask for
it. I tell you it completely defeats me. When we get back I shall have
to take a course of something, or drink unpleasant mixtures out of
green bottles.’
‘If it’s whisky you mean I can quite believe you,’ returned Boyd, with
his legs down the hatch. ‘Well, so she goes. Course fifty-six. Fine
weather and no fish.’
‘Give Seagrave a shake when you get below,’ the skipper called after
him. ‘Tell him I’m going to dive in ten minutes.’
‘Achchha, Sahib,’ and Boyd vanished below.
Raymond sat down and lit a pipe, keeping a careful look-out over the
oily swell of smooth water. Presently he pressed the telegraph switches
and the engines stopped.
‘Diving stations!’ he ordered. ‘Shut off for diving! Lower deck
control!’
‘Both engine clutches out, sir,’ bellowed a voice from below.
‘Ay, ay,’ returned the skipper, and then turning to the helmsman,--
‘Down below,’ he added.
The sailor closed the magnetic compass lid and screwed it well home,
unshipped the gyro repeater and decamped to continue his task at the
steering position in the control room.
Raymond took a final look round, and collecting the spare glasses and
all the odd gear about the bridge, clambered down the conning-tower,
shutting the lid after him, and screwing the strong back well into
position. On the order ‘Diving stations,’ the scene below had become
one of ordered confusion. Every man had his own station and duty to
perform, both when diving and rising, and by the time Raymond got below
all was ready.
Hoskins, the Chief E.R.A., was at the air manifold, ready to let the
air out of the smaller tanks and so admit the water.
The L.T.O. and an S.T. stood by to start the motors, while the
remainder were closing battery ventilators, giving a final wrench at
a hatch batten, and standing by the great vent valves. Forward the
T.I.[6] was fussing over a tube door, while in the engine-room the
E.R.A.’s and stokers were saying soothing words to the silent engines.
Over all this Seagrave reigned supreme. This was his ‘pidgeon,’ and he
ran his crew of twenty-three with the capability of a veteran in spite
of his youthful appearance.
Boyd sat working out his sights. He didn’t come into this part of the
business.
‘Shut off for diving, sir,’ came a voice from the engine-room, and ‘All
ready, sir,’ from Seagrave.
The captain pressed a small switch and the periscope slid upwards till
its lower end was at a comfortable height. He applied his eye to it and
looked carefully round.
The voice of the musical stoker filtered in from the engine-room,--
‘Mother takes in wringings-out,
So does sister Anne.
Everybody works in our boat,
But the L.T.O.’
‘You shut yer ’ead,’ came the answer. ‘Pity you ain’t got more to do
than----’
‘Flood 1 and 4,’ ordered Raymond.
‘Open 1 and 4 Kingstons and 1 and 4 main vents!’ shouted Seagrave.
Two stokers wrenched back the Kingston levers, while a couple of seamen
reached up and screwed open the vent valves. The coxswain and second
coxswains took their stand by the hydroplane and diving rudder wheels.
‘Flood 2.’
‘Open No. 2 Kingston and No. 2 main vent,’ from the ‘Sub.’
A hiss and a spurt of water came from the air manifold, and Hoskins
looked over his shoulder as he worked at the spindles.
‘1 and 4 full, sir,’ he reported.
A slight cant forward could now be felt in the boat as the tanks filled
and she settled down in the water.
‘How is she, coxswain?’ asked Raymond with his eye still at the
periscope.
‘Three degrees by the head, sir.’
‘Right. Flood 3.’
‘Open No. 3 Kingston and No. 3 main vent. Close 1 and 4 vents!’ cried
Seagrave.
‘Vents closed, sir,’ came the reports.
‘2 full, sir,’ said Hoskins. A pause, and then ‘3 full, sir,’ he added.
‘How is she now, coxswain?’ asked the captain again.
‘Two degrees by the stern, sir.’
‘Thank you. Close main vents. Another 500 in the fore trim, Seagrave.’
‘Ay, ay, sir; 500 in the fore-trim,’ repeated the ‘Sub.’
‘Horizontal, sir,’ from the coxswain.
The needle of the depth-gauge trembled, moved slowly, reached four feet
and stopped.
‘Four feet,’ announced Seagrave.
‘That’ll do,’ replied Raymond. ‘10,000 in the auxiliary and flood the
buoyancy.’
The depth-needle shivered and crept on to ‘fifteen.’
‘How is she?’ asked the captain again.
‘Horizontal, sir, fifteen feet,’ replied the coxswain.
‘Start the motors. Full fields,’ ordered Raymond. ‘Thirty feet. Take
her down.’
The two coxswains spun their wheels forward with eyes glued on the
depth-gauge.
The needle moved slowly on. Twenty, twenty-five, twenty-seven feet, it
recorded. They were whirling their wheels aft now to check her from
going too deep.
Thirty feet, thirty-two, thirty-four the metre registered, and then
slowly the needle swung back a little and stopped.
‘Thirty feet, sir,’ said the coxswain.
‘Right. Crack the vents and let me know if she gets heavy,’ replied the
captain, lowering the periscope. ‘Finished diving stations.’
‘Everybody works in our boat
But the L.T.O.’
floated forward again.
Raymond smiled as he watched the men leaving their posts. A humorist in
a boat is worth his weight in gold.
The crew dispersed about their various jobs, some to continue their
watch in the engine-room or at the wheels, while the watch below turned
in their hammocks or stretched out on deck, leaving a courteous gangway
to the curtained-off space, anywhere they could find room for a blanket
and pillow.
The second coxswain set the diving rudders, spat on his hands, bit off
a chunk of tobacco, and retired aft. She would do now, and the coxswain
alone could keep her at her depth with the hydroplanes, the great
horizontal rudders at the fore-end of the boat that steered her up or
down in the same manner as an ordinary vertical rudder steers a surface
ship to left or right.
Raymond spent a few minutes satisfying himself that all was well
and the helmsman on his course, and then stepped through into the
fore-compartment and looked at the chart.
Seagrave and Boyd had both turned in, and in the ‘Ward Room’ it seemed
strangely silent. When on the surface the thump and bang of the Diesels
filled the boat, and down below one could always hear the water lapping
over the superstructure, and feel the vibration and general sense of
resistance and energy. But now she was submerged there was an intense
stillness, a sort of dead stillness, and only the faint hum of the
motors indicated that she was under weigh. There was no motion, no
vibration, and no feeling of strain or energy. She might have been at
anchor in harbour, except that the hatches were closed and the steering
chain rattled now and again.
At one moment noise and rushing water, the next, ‘Diving stations!’ a
clang, a hiss or two, and ... silence.
The men’s voices drifted in from the after-compartment, and the clatter
of knives and forks indicated that the cook was getting breakfast ready.
After a while Raymond went back to the control room, inhabited now by
only the coxswain and helmsman.
‘Eighteen feet,’ he said.
The coxswain spun his wheel until the depth-needles steadied once more.
‘Eighteen feet, sir,’ he announced.
At this depth the lowered periscope was just below the surface of the
water and still invisible from above. The captain pressed the switch
and it slid up to its required height, bringing its upper lens about
three feet above the surface, a thin brass cylinder being all that was
apparent to any hostile craft.
With his eye to the lens at the lower end, Raymond obtained a view
much like that seen through ordinary binoculars.
As he turned the instrument round he could see the horizon and the wake
of the periscope lying astern in creamy bubbles, then the enemy coast
about twenty miles away filling the whole of his view to the eastward,
then a glimpse of his own hydroplanes, again the horizon and the circle
was complete.
Nothing in sight. He lowered the periscope, and giving the order
‘thirty feet,’ returned to the fore-compartment and sat down by the
chart-table with a magazine.
Every ten minutes he went back to the control room, the boat rose to
eighteen feet, the periscope was hoisted, and he took his careful
survey. Then down to the patrolling depth again and back he went to the
silent ‘Ward Room’ to glance at the chart or anything that would pass
the time.
Towards eight o’clock, the cook came forward to ask Raymond what time
he wanted breakfast.
‘Now,’ answered the skipper laconically, picking up the dividers and
sticking them into Seagrave’s leg, as the cook departed.
The sleeper grunted and turned over.
‘Wake up, young feller,’ said Raymond. ‘Don’t you want any breakfast?’
The ‘Sub.’ sat up and rubbed his eyes.
‘Oh, Lord!’ he groaned. ‘Why can’t you leave a chap alone?’
‘Come on now; it’s good for children, invalids, and the aged. Shake a
leg and let’s get that table out.’
Seagrave staggered over to the folding basin.
‘As usual,’ he grumbled, ‘no bally water now, and I can’t see out of my
eyes till I’ve had a wash.’
‘My goodness, you do look a picture of a promising young officer,’
grinned Raymond, ‘and let me tell you, you wash far too often. None of
the really classy people in submarines ever wash. When I was up the
Marmora I didn’t wash for a month.’
‘Nor since, either, I should imagine,’ retorted Seagrave.
‘This flippancy in one of tender years is very galling. You don’t
follow my august example. Look at Boyd, for instance. Gets out of his
bunk as if he were going to be Queen of the May.’
Between them they pushed in the lower bunk and hauled out a table
flap, on which the meal was laid by the cook, who bore in the eggs and
sausages with the air of one who has achieved a culinary triumph.
‘Just look at those sausages,’ said Seagrave sitting down. ‘They look
as if they’d spent their palmier days on a cab rank.’
‘You’ve been spoilt,’ replied the skipper. ‘You’ve been brought up
on Service bangers, and now you think that our best Vienna sausages,
provided by me at great personal expense, are beneath you.’
‘I’d have been glad enough to see any sort of sausages when I was
apprentice in a wind-jammer,’ put in Boyd. ‘Cracker hash was what we
got. However, I don’t blame you. If I felt like you look, I don’t think
I _could_ eat a fried egg.’
‘A most appalling example of a youthful officer on his way to the
bow-wows,’ put in Raymond. ‘Eighteen feet.’
The meal over, Seagrave went aft to look at his beloved motors and
engines, while the captain and navigator consulted the chart.
‘Near enough to the land, I think,’ said Raymond; ‘we don’t know
exactly where their minefields are. We’ll steer an opposite course till
noon.’
‘Very good, sir. Steer 236 deg., helmsman.’
‘236 deg., sir,’ came the reply as the wheel went over, and a little
later,--
‘Course, sir?’
‘All “Sir Garnet” in the engine-room,’ announced Seagrave, returning
from his tour of inspection. ‘The batteries are still up to twelve
twenty-five.’
Raymond nodded approval.
‘That’s the sort. Hard-working ‘Subs’ of boats a pace forward, march!
One of our world’s workers, but died before attaining maturity. All the
same this new battery of ours seems pretty good.’
‘What always scares me,’ returned the other, ‘is shutting down the
ventilators for diving. I know I shall forget it some day, and then
we’ll have chlorine gas in the boat and be as cold as haddocks in
about five minutes, like those poor beggars in “164.”’
‘The day you feel that coming on, you want to let me know. Suicidal
mania is not one of my deficiencies. You let me know beforehand and
I’ll have you hanged, drawn, and quartered, and bits of you hung round
the superstructure as a warning to others of the awful fate of ‘Subs’
who feel the first symptoms of incipient lunacy approaching.’
‘What was it happened to “159” last trip, by the way?’ put in Boyd.
‘Oh, it wasn’t much,’ replied Raymond. ‘“Snatcher” told me about it.
They were having tea at about thirty feet when they heard a rumbling
stunt. He took her down to eighty feet and stopped there till he had
recovered from the fit of nervous prostration into which he had been
thrown. Then he went down to a hundred and twenty, took the opportunity
of going round and seeing if the boat was right at that depth. When he
was satisfied he came up and kept her at forty-five for the rest of the
patrol.’
‘What was it?’ queried Seagrave.
‘Seaplane bomb dropped from right above, and only just missed ’em. It
was a smooth day, and the pilot must have been able to see the boat
easily. The joke was that the stoker P.O., who was off watch at the
time, was asleep, with his head against the skin of the hull, and when
the bomb went off, the vibration of the boat’s side gave him a lump on
the back of the chump as big as an ostrich egg.’
‘Interesting and instructive experience,’ remarked Boyd. ‘Honest
Herbert harried by the Hun! That’s the reason there wasn’t any gin in
the boat yesterday. The shock to the nerves must have been too much for
them.
‘Let the Hun pass,
Though he’s an ass.
I warrant he’ll prove an excuse for the glass.’
‘Yes,’ said Seagrave, ‘I heard “Bunty” trying to cadge a bottle off the
mess-man before we left. But it wasn’t any good. He pleaded that they
might meet a “U” boat this time, and that after they’d finished her off
they wouldn’t have anything to celebrate the event in. Then he tried
strategy, and told the mess-man that he was positive all the German
boats were well supplied, on the off-chance of strafing one of our “E”
boats.’
‘What did the mess-man say?’
‘Said “U” stood for ’Un and “E” for England, and handed him his mess
bill, plus extras,’ said Seagrave, hoisting himself into the upper bunk.
‘Now, just watch me,’ grinned Boyd, pushing back the table, ‘in my
wonderful impersonation of shut-eye Joe, the modern sleeping beauty.
Warranted to sleep until the next meal, or, failing that, till Fritz
shows us his world-famous tip-and-run stunt. Bye-bye, good people.
Call me when she swings.’
Raymond was taking the periscope watch himself, as the others were
fully employed on watch-keeping and other duties when on the surface.
The morning dragged slowly away without incident, and the land was
getting distant now and was barely visible by about eleven o’clock.
It was very still and peaceful once more, and the two off-watch slept
the sleep of the just. Occasionally a man passed forward outside the
curtains on his way to the lockers, or the sound of voices drifted in
from the after compartment. Only the sunlight, visible on the water
through the periscope, indicated that it was broad daylight.
Once an electric bell broke the stillness with a persistent clanging
which caused Boyd to leap from his bunk and rush off muttering
imprecations on the gyro compass. The bell stopped, and presently he
reappeared.
Raymond looked an inquiry.
‘Only the Count,’ explained the other. ‘That blessed twenty volt
generator cut-out plays tricks every now and again,’ and he relapsed
into slumber once more.
He was up again at eleven o’clock, however, and telling Raymond that
the sun would cross the meridian at a quarter past.
The captain shook his head sadly.
‘It’s no good,’ he groaned. ‘I’ve done my best for you and you
don’t get any better. I shall have to humour you or you may become
dangerous. However, I’ll see what can be done,’ and he went to the
periscope with the air of a doctor who knows the case is hopeless.
‘All right,’ he called from the control room. ‘We’ll rise for it. Too
far off the land for bearings. Wake Seagrave. Diving stations!’
Once more the men stood at their posts, and the captain kept his eye at
the periscope, while Seagrave superintended and Boyd stood by with his
sextant ready.
‘Blow 2 and 3,’ came the order.
‘Open 2 and 3 Kingstons,’ cried Seagrave.
The levers were drawn back and there was a faint jar and a rush of
compressed air as Hoskins opened the blows and the water was forced out
of the tanks.
The depth-needle came slowly back to four feet and remained steady.
‘2 and 3 out, sir,’ said Hoskins.
The captain left the periscope and went up the dark shaft of the
conning-tower hatch. Very gingerly he eased the strongback, and there
was a rush of escaping air as the pressure was released from the boat.
Seagrave had his eye on the barometer, which had swung round while
diving to ‘off the map,’ and was now rapidly decreasing to the external
pressure.
‘One inch!’ he shouted up the hatch. ‘Equal!’
The men could feel the change in the atmosphere by a tickling
sensation in the ears, much like having a drop of water in them.
Raymond threw open the hatch and stepped out, followed by Boyd.
Up here the sunlight struck sharply on the eyes. In this trim the boat
was half submerged and looked like some water-logged hulk wallowing
on the surface. She dripped at every pore, and the calm sea washed
sluggishly over her superstructure.
Three minutes later the sun crossed, and they were down again, Raymond
closing the hatch behind him as he descended.
‘Flood main ballast,’ he ordered.
Once more the tanks filled, the Kingstons were closed, and in less than
sixty seconds she was down to thirty feet again.
Ten minutes had sufficed for the whole business.
‘You’re getting a bit thick, Boyd,’ grumbled the ‘Sub’ as they went
back to the Ward Room. ‘I can’t get any sleep at all nowadays, what
with your confounded sights and the skipper’s blooming energy. Last
trip I was just caulking the bunk good-oh when Raymond started a
field-day of pasting notices into the pilots. He said the paste
wouldn’t stick the things unless there was a weight on them, and shoved
the whole lot under me in the bunk. I ought to get extra pay for that
sort of thing.’
‘Now, now, you mustn’t get in a state, dearie,’ replied Boyd. ‘Too
much work is making you peevish. Here’s lunch. Just try to pick a
bit of chicken, cold one, and you’ll rise from the table like a lion
refreshed.’
‘At one time,’ said Raymond, sitting down, ‘we didn’t get much at sea,
but in these new boats I always look forward to the trip on account of
the change of grub.’
‘And yet we growl,’ put in Boyd. ‘I never met any one at sea yet who
hadn’t a moan about the food.’
The meal was eaten in shirt sleeves, as the boat was getting rather
hot now that the sun was well up, and after the fruit and custard had
disappeared Raymond leant back with a yawn.
‘Pity we can’t smoke,’ he said. ‘I’m feeling damn tired. You keep a
watch on the “perisher”[7] this afternoon, Seagrave.’
‘All right. Turn in and trust me to let you know if we bump a
“mouldy.”[8] I won’t forget.’
In the after compartment the mess tables were down and the men were
getting outside their meal seated on stools, the deck, or anything
that came to hand. The gyro buzzed on one side of them, and the rattle
of the steering-gear formed an accompaniment, which, however, did not
seem to upset their appetites. Young men mostly, with here and there
a grizzled petty officer for leavening, they moved about with that
deftness which men acquire who are accustomed to live in confined
spaces.
By-and-by, Seagrave went up the control room shaft and unscrewed one
of the brass ports, disclosing a small circle of thick glass. Through
this the water could be seen looking intensely blue, while on glancing
up he could see the surface thirty feet above, which appeared like a
blue ceiling or a large sheet stretched over the boat.
Occasionally the under side of a piece of driftwood could be seen
floating on the surface and the fore-deck, and the gun stood out
sharply defined.
The atmosphere was bad up here, as all the foul air drifted upwards,
and Seagrave soon screwed back the post and returned to his book in the
fore compartment.
Every ten minutes came the monotonous order, ‘Eighteen feet,’ the
periscope was hoisted and lowered, and the boat descended to the
thirty-foot level.
Nearly every one was asleep, the heavy atmosphere making them drowsy,
and it was very quiet and peaceful, when the second coxswain, who was
at the hydroplanes, called out sharply,--
‘Getting ’eavy, sir! I can’t ’ol ’er up!’
Now, no submarine can descend to an unlimited depth, because the
external pressure becomes too great, and below two hundred feet or
so they are liable to crush and flatten in like pancakes. Also if
she begins to leak owing to excessive depth, water may get to the
batteries, whereupon chlorine gas will form and suffocate all hands.
Therefore a decent haste is necessary if at any time, owing to an
increase of water in the bilges, the boat becomes heavy and has what is
known as ‘negative buoyancy.’
Raymond and Seagrave hurried into the control room, the captain giving
his orders as he came.
‘Start the pump on the auxiliary. Speed up to 500 on the motors.’
The purr of the motors increased, and the adjusting pump added its
clack to the subdued noises.
Raymond hoped that the extra speed by giving her more steerage-weigh,
and with the hydroplanes ‘hard-a-rise,’ would bring her up without the
tedious necessity of blowing main ballast.
She was going down fast, however. Forty, fifty, sixty, seventy feet the
depth-gauge recorded. At seventy-five feet she stopped.
‘Stand by the hatches,’ cried Seagrave. ‘Report any leak at once.’
She rose slowly and Raymond stopped the pump. The coxswain twirled his
wheel, and she was bringing up at thirty feet when an avalanche of
water came down the conning-tower hatch.
The captain sprang for the ladder through the mass of water and
disappeared up the shaft. The flow decreased and stopped, and he
reappeared drenched to the skin.
Everybody got very busy suddenly. Nobody seemed to wish to be unduly
noticed, and all showed a strange eagerness for work of any sort. The
coxswain winked at the helmsman, and that worthy leant towards the
compass with a fixed stare.
‘These ruddy hatches!’ bellowed Raymond. ‘The damned thing came open,
and I’ve only got one shirt in the boat.’
‘Here, messenger,’ he added, pulling it off, ‘take this into the
engine-room and get it dried. No water in the battery, is there,
Seagrave?’
‘No, sir,’ replied the ‘Sub’ with a stony countenance. ‘That’s the best
of these high coamings, and we’ve got the rubber deck-cloth screwed
well down. The batteries are all right.’
‘Well, that’s a bit of luck, anyway. And now, after that lot, another
little drink wouldn’t do us any harm. But don’t wake Boyd, as we
haven’t much whisky left.’
The pressure in the boat had slightly lifted the hatch on the catch
slipping its socket. Otherwise, owing to the weight of thirty feet of
water, it could never have admitted the slightest drop.
‘All’s well that ends well,’ said Raymond, as he raised his glass, ‘but
that water coming in like that certainly shook me. I didn’t think there
was so much pressure in the boat.’
‘It shook me far more to see you looking like a drowned rat when you
came down. This is what is known ashore as “Seeing Life.”’
‘You keep a look-out with that “perisher,” my boy, and don’t worry
about me. You’ve got a shirt to wear, and I haven’t, unless it’s dry
before we rise.’
Presently they relapsed into silence, and Raymond dropped off to sleep
again, while the ‘Sub’ carried on with the watch.
At four o’clock tea put in an appearance, after which Boyd took his
turn at the periscope watch, while the others sat reading.
The wind had been increasing since noon, and the sea was getting up.
Looking through the periscope his view was often obscured by the waves,
and occasionally they broke right over, shutting out the scene as if a
light blue curtain had been flung over the eyes and torn away again.
Even at thirty feet the boat began to roll, and when suddenly a bump
was heard forward and a rattle the whole length of the boat, Raymond
jumped from his chair, brought her quickly up and glanced ahead.
However, there was nothing to be seen, and he lowered the periscope,
the boat descending to the patrol level again.
‘What was it?’ asked Seagrave.
The other shook his head. ‘Don’t know. One of the mysteries of the
deep. Perhaps a mine that didn’t go off. Anyhow you can say so in your
letters home. I heard that noise three times in an afternoon when I
was in “85” last year. You never can say for certain that it’s not the
moorings of a mine, so it’s always best to be on the look-out if you
hear that sort of row. I don’t like them knocking to be let in in that
way. It’s too forward of them altogether.’
‘I saw that “U” boat we recovered the other day when I was on leave,’
said Boyd. ‘She struck a mine end on. Great Scott! she was a sight. The
whole bow-cap was blown right off, and they found the bodies of the
crew in her when they got her up. Poor beggars. They’d grouped up and
put the hydroplanes hard-a-rise before they were snuffed out.’
‘Yes,’ remarked Raymond. ‘I can’t say that it gives me any particular
pleasure to think of a crowd of Germans in a submarine striking a mine.
It brings it too much home to one, as it were, and, after all, they’re
obeying orders in the same way as we are.’
‘It must seem funny,’ said Seagrave. ‘One minute sitting here reading,
and the next, the fore-end blown off and a wall of water flopping in on
you. I don’t expect you’d know much about it, though.’
‘I say, you fellows,’ cried Boyd, coming in from the control room.
‘There’s a hell of a sea getting up. We’re in for a wet night.
Sea-boots and oilskins for mine.’
‘My usual luck,’ said Raymond, fishing in a drawer. ‘I always get it
rough on the way home. Who’s the Jonah?’
‘I don’t know. Some beggar who hasn’t paid for his washing, I suppose.
But we’re certainly going to get it in the neck.’ The rolling of the
boat at this depth and the gurgling of the water in the vent pipes was
a sufficient warning of the state of the weather, and they set to
work lashing all portable gear in place and preparing for the expected
wetting on coming to the surface.
‘We’d better have dinner before we rise, hadn’t we?’ asked Boyd,
struggling into a pair of oilskin trousers. ‘Everything will be all
over the shop, and I’ve got some pretty good soup on hand to-night.
Main drain loungers and water.’
‘Yes. Six-thirty will do,’ replied the captain, ‘and we’ll rise at
seven. You might see about it, Seagrave.’
The ‘Sub’ departed to the engine-room to confer with his chief minion,
and Raymond turned to the navigator.
‘We’ll put her on the course for home now, I think. We’re only about
fifteen miles off Fritz’s coast as it is, and we shan’t make much
against this.
‘All right. It’s just on half-past six now. I’ll set the course and
then shake dinner up.’
In the engine-room the E.R.A.’s were bustling round the engines, and
in the middle of dinner the report came forward, ‘Engines ready, sir.’
The atmosphere was getting fuggy, and everything seemed sticky, though
there was no difficulty in breathing yet.
‘We’re certainly in for it,’ said Raymond. ‘We shan’t get home before
daylight, and I shall let her go slowly most of the time if it’s too
bad. Now then, ten to seven; shake it up with that cheese, Boyd, and
let’s get busy.’
A messenger appeared holding a bundle in his hand, which he offered to
the captain.
‘What the devil’s that thing?’ demanded Raymond. ‘Take it away. I don’t
want your dish swabs here.’
‘It’s your shirt, sir,’ replied the youth, without a smile.
‘That nasty looking thing?’ replied the skipper, seizing it and holding
it at arm’s length. ‘Just look at the straits I am reduced to. However,
it’s better than this prickly lammy coat I’ve been wearing.’
‘Seven o’clock, sir,’ said Seagrave, looking at his watch.
‘Right. Diving stations!’ ordered Raymond, struggling into the garment
as he hoisted the periscope. ‘Blow 1, 2, and 3 main ballast. Pump three
thousand out of the auxiliary.’