THE SUBMARINE BLOCKADE
“It is true that submarine boats have improved, but they are
as useless as ever. Nevertheless, the German navy is carefully
watching their progress, though it has no reason to make
experiments itself.”
ADMIRAL VON TIRPITZ, in 1901.
“DANGER!
Being the Log of Captain John Sirius
by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”
If you have not read the above-mentioned story by the author of
Sherlock Holmes, I advise you to go to the nearest public library and
ask for it. For those that cannot spare the time to do this, here are a
brief outline and a few quotations.
Captain John Sirius is supposed to be chief of submarines in the navy
of Norland, a small European kingdom at war with England. With only
eight submarines, he establishes a blockade of Great Britain and begins
sinking all ships bringing in food. He enters a French harbor, though
France is at peace with his country, and sinks three British ships that
have taken refuge there.
“I suppose,” says the captain, “they thought they were safe in French
waters but what did I care about three-mile limits and international
law! The view of my government was that England was blockaded, food
contraband, and vessels carrying it to be destroyed. The lawyers could
argue about it afterwards. My business was to starve the enemy any way
I could.”
Presently he overtook an American ship and sank her by gunfire as her
skipper shouted protests over the rail.
“It was all the same to me what flag she flew so long as she was
engaged in carrying contraband of war to the British Isles.... Of
course I knew there would be a big row afterwards and there was.”
“The terror I had caused had cleared the Channel.”
“There was talk of a British invasion (of Norland) but I knew this to
be absolute nonsense, for the British had learned by this time that it
would be sheer murder to send transports full of soldiers to sea in the
face of submarines. When they have a Channel tunnel, they can use their
fine expeditionary force upon the Continent but until then it might not
exist so far as Europe is concerned.”
“Heavens, what would England have done against a foe with thirty or
forty submarines?”
The British navy could do nothing to stop Captain John Sirius. One
of his submarines was sunk by an armed liner, but with the remaining
seven he sank the _Olympic_ and so many other vessels that no one
dared try to bring food into Great Britain. At the end of six weeks,
fifty thousand people there had died of starvation and the British
government had to make peace with Norland and pay for all the damage
the submarines had done to neutrals.
As a warning to his countrymen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote this
story in May, 1914. Before it was published,[26] England was at war
with Germany. On February 4, 1915, the famous “War Zone Decree” was
published in Berlin.
“The waters around Great Britain, including the whole of the English
Channel, are declared hereby to be included within the zone of war, and
after the 18th inst, all enemy merchant vessels encountered in these
waters will be destroyed, even if it may not be possible always to save
their crews and passengers.
“Within this war-zone neutral vessels are exposed to danger since, in
view of the misuse of the neutral flags ordered by the government of
Great Britain on the 31st ult., and of the hazards of naval warfare,
neutral ships cannot always be prevented from suffering from the
attacks intended for enemy ships.
“The routes of navigation around the north of the Shetland Islands in
the eastern part of the North Sea and in a strip thirty miles wide
along the Dutch coast are not open to the danger-zone.”
But those routes had been closed three months before by the British
government, which declared that it had had the North Sea planted with
anchored contact mines, but that all ships trading to neutral ports
would, if they first called at some British port, be given safe conduct
to Holland or Scandinavia, by way of the English Channel. This way
would run through the proposed “war-zone.”
International law says nothing about either “war-zones” or submarines.
In all probability, special rules for undersea warfare will be drawn
up by a conference of delegates from the leading countries of the
world soon after the end of the present war. But till then, no such
conference can be held, and the United States has always maintained,
even when it has been to its disadvantage to do so, that no one nation
can change international law to suit herself. We insist that the game
be played according to the rules. A submarine has no more rights than
any other warship. It may sink a merchantman if the latter tries
to fight or escape. If the captured vessel is found to be carrying
contraband to the enemy’s country, the warship may either take her into
port as a prize or, if this is impracticable, sink her. But before an
unarmed and unresisting merchant vessel can be sunk, the passengers and
crew must be given time and opportunity to escape.
President Wilson gave notice on February 10, 1915, that if, by act of
the commander of any German warship, an American vessel or the lives of
American citizens should be lost on the high seas, the United States
“would be constrained to hold the Imperial government of Germany to
a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities and
to take any steps that might be necessary to safeguard American lives
and property and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyments of
their acknowledged rights on the high seas.”
On the same day, a note to Great Britain voiced our objection to the
“explicit sanction by a belligerent government for its merchant ships
generally to fly the flag of a neutral power within certain portions
of the high seas which are presumed to be frequented with hostile
warships.”
To this Sir Edward Grey replied that “the British government have no
intention of advising their merchant shipping to use foreign flags as a
general practice or resort to them otherwise than for escaping capture
or destruction.”
Such “sailing under false colors” to fool the enemy’s cruisers is an
old and well-established right of merchantmen of belligerent countries.
Its abuse, under present-day conditions, however, might have given the
German submarine commanders a plausible excuse for sinking neutral
vessels. To avoid this, neutral shipowners began to paint the name,
port, and national colors on the broadside of each of their steamers,
plain enough to be read from afar through a periscope.
Then the time came for the war-zone decree to be put into effect, and
the world watched with great interest and no little apprehension to see
what the submarine blockaders could do.
[Illustration:
Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Herald.
German Submarine Pursuing English Merchantman.
(Note stern torpedo-tubes, and funnel for carrying off exhaust from
Diesel engine.)]
Seven British ships were sunk during the first six days. Then came
a lull, followed by the announcement by the British Admiralty that
between February 23 to March 3, 3805 transoceanic ships had arrived
at British ports, 669 had cleared and none had been lost, while two
German submarines had been sunk. During the eleven weeks between the
establishing of the blockade and the sinking of the _Lusitania_,
forty-two oversea vessels and twenty-eight fishing boats of British
registry had been sunk by the submarines, but 16,190 liners and
freighters had safely run the blockade. The largest number of vessels
sunk by the “U-boats” in any one week was thirty-six, between June 23
and 30; while nineteen British merchantmen, with a total tonnage of
76,000, and three fishing vessels were destroyed either by submarines
or mines during the week ending August 25. The total number sunk in
the first six months was 485. But with more than fifteen hundred ships
coming and going every week, the submarine blockade of the British
Isles was obviously a failure.
It was a costly failure from the military point of view. The
expenditure of torpedoes alone must have been considerable and a modern
Whitehead or Schwartzkopf costs from five to eight thousand dollars and
takes several months to build. How many of the “U-boats” themselves
have fallen prey to the British patroling craft, traps, mines, and
drag-nets cannot be computed with any accuracy, but by the first of
September, 1915, the number declared to be lost “on the authority of
a high official in the British Admiralty” ran anywhere from thirty to
fifty. Even if she has been completing a new submarine every week since
the war began, Germany cannot afford the loss of so much material,
and still, less, of so many trained men. Captain Persius, one of
the foremost German writers on naval affairs, pointed this out in a
newspaper article that brought a hurricane of angry criticism about
his ears. How great has been the wear and tear on the nervous systems
of the submarine crews is shown by the following extract from the
statement of Captain Hansen of the captured _U-16_.
“It is fearfully trying on the nerves. Not every man can endure it.
While running under the sea there is deathlike stillness in the boats,
as the electrical machinery is noiseless.... As the air becomes heated
it gets poor and mixed with the odor of oil from the machinery. The
atmosphere becomes fearful. An overpowering sleepiness often attacks
new men and one requires the utmost will power to keep awake. I have
had men who did not want to eat during the first three days out because
they did not want to lose that amount of time from sleep. Day after day
spent in such cramped quarters, where there is hardly room to stretch
your legs, and remaining constantly on the alert, is a tremendous
strain on the nerves.”
But if there is discomfort below the surface there is peril of death
above. Yet a submarine must spend as much time as possible on top of
the water, even off the enemy’s coast, to spare the precious storage
batteries and let the Diesel engines grind oil into electricity
by using the electric motor as a dynamo. If she could renew her
batteries under water or pick up a useable supply of current as she
can pick up a drum of oil from a given spot on the sea-bottom, then
the modern submarine would indeed be a hard fish to catch. As it is,
great ingenuity has been shown by the German skippers in minimizing
the dangers of surface cruising and at the same time stalking their
prey. One big submarine masqueraded as a steamer, with dummy masts and
funnel. Innocent-looking steam trawlers flying neutral flags acted as
screens and lookouts, besides carrying supplies. One of these boldly
entered a British harbor, where it was noticed that her decks were
cumbered with very many coils of rope. The authorities investigated
and found snugly stowed in the center of each a large can of fuel-oil.
Another trawler, flying the Dutch flag, was stopped in the North Sea
by a British cruiser and searched by a boarding-party. They were going
back into their boat, after finding everything apparently as it should
be, when one of the Englishmen noticed a mysterious pipe sticking out
of the trawler’s side. They swarmed on board again and discovered
that the fishing-boat had a complete double hull, the space between
being filled with oil. The trawler’s crew were removed to the cruiser
and a strong detachment of bluejackets left in their place. A few
hours afterwards, there was a swirl of water alongside and a German
submarine came up for refreshments. It was promptly captured and so was
another that presently followed it: a good day’s catch for one small
fishing-boat.
Because of the uncertainty and danger of depending on underwater caches
and tenders, each blockader usually returned at the end of two or three
weeks to Heligoland, Zeebruge, Ostend, or some other base to take on
supplies, report progress and rest the crew. This of course reduces
the number of submarines actually on guard. How large that number may
have been at any particular time since the blockade began is unknown to
everybody except a few persons in Berlin. At the outbreak of the war,
Germany had between twenty and twenty-five submarines in commission
and a dozen or so under construction. If, as is claimed, the Germans
have been completing a new undersea boat every week since the war
began, that would have given them by August 1, 1915, a flotilla of
seventy-seven, exclusive of losses. If only thirty had been lost, that
would have left fewer than fifty submarines to blockade more than
fifty seaports, great and small, scattered over more than twenty-five
hundred miles of coast.
Moreover, these widely scattered blockaders would have to be on duty
by night as well as by day. But at night or in fog the periscope is
useless; to intercept an incoming steamer, running swiftly and without
lights, the submarine must rise and cruise on the surface. It cannot
use a searchlight to locate the blockade-runner without consuming
much precious voltage and at the same time attracting the nearest
patrol-boat.
The same disadvantages apply to sending wireless messages from one
blockading submarine to another. And as the wireless apparatus of an
undersea boat is necessarily low-powered and has a narrow radius, while
“oscillators,” bells, and other underwater signaling devices are still
in their infancy, it would seem as if the German “U-boats” in British
waters must have been suffering from lack of coöperation and team-play.
If the captain of a Union gunboat, lying off Charleston during the
Civil War, caught a glimpse of a blockade runner, he could alarm the
rest of the fleet with rockets and signal guns, but the commander of
the _U-99_ off Queenstown cannot count on his consorts if he himself
fails to sink an approaching liner.
Perhaps the most notable shortcoming of the submarine blockade has
been its failure to inspire terror. Contrary to the expectations of
nearly every forecaster from Robert Fulton to Conan Doyle, the sinking
of the first merchant vessels by submarines failed to frighten away
any others. Cargo rates are high in war-time and insurance covers the
owners’ risk, so few sailing orders were canceled. As for the captains,
they are not noted for timidity, and professional pride is strong among
them; most of them have families to provide for, and every one of
them knows that behind him stands an eager young mate with a master’s
ticket, ready to take the risk and take out the ship if the skipper
quits. So the merchant marine accepted the submarine as one of the
risks of the trade.
When a big German submarine rose up off the Irish coast within easy
gunshot of the homeward-bound British steamer _Anglo-Californian_ and
signaled for her to heave to, the plucky English skipper slammed his
engine-room telegraph over to “Full speed ahead.” Away dashed the
steamer and after her came the submarine,[27] making good practice
with her 8.8 centimeter gun. Twenty shrapnel shells burst over the
_Anglo-Californian_, riddling her upper works, slaughtering thirty of
her cargo of horses, killing seven of her crew and wounding eight more.
Steering with his own hands, Captain Archibald Panlow held his vessel
on her course till a shrapnel bullet killed him, when the wheel was
taken by his son, the second mate, who brought the _Anglo-Californian_
safely into Queenstown. It is men of this breed who have kept Admiral
von Tirpitz from saying, in the words of the fictitious Captain John
Sirius,
“The terror I had caused had cleared the channel.”
But because the “Campaign of Frightfulness” has failed and a few score
of unsupported submarines have been unable to blockade the British
Isles, it is stupid to pretend that there has been no progress since
1901 and say as Admiral von Tirpitz said then,
“Submarines are as useless as ever.”
Like every other type of naval craft, submarines are useful but not
omnipotent. We have seen what they can do in action and what they have
failed to do. As scouts in the enemy’s waters they are invaluable. As
commerce destroyers, they do the work of the swift-sailing privateers
of a century ago. In the fall of 1915, British submarines in the
Baltic almost put a stop to the trade between Germany and Sweden. But
to blockade a coast effectively, submarines must have tenders, which
must have destroyers and light cruisers to defend them, which in turn
require the support of battle-cruisers and dreadnoughts, with their
attendant host of colliers, hospital ships and air-scouts. Nor can a
coast be long defended by submarines, mine-fields and shore-batteries,
if there are not enough trained troops to keep the enemy, who can
always land at some remote spot, from marching round to the rear of
the coast-defenses. This war is simply repeating the old, old lesson
that there are no cheap and easy substitutes for a real army and a real
navy.