"I am pleased to be able to record that, with the two submarines
meeting end on--the one in enemy waters and the other just
returning to base after a somewhat difficult mine-laying
operation--it was the submarine which might have been expected
to have been least on the _qui vive_ which scored the success.
This reflects great credit on Lieutenant Pulleyne and his ship's
company, as it shows they were in all respects ready."
It is probable that this incident caused a number of our other officers
secretly to wonder whether, in "E 34's" place, they would have been
equally successful and prompt.
The captain of the U-boat was a charming prisoner. He was taken aboard
the _Maidstone_ and put in a cabin under medical care. His clothes
were dried and other clothes given him. When he had recovered he went
off to a prisoners' camp, from whence he wrote peremptory letters to
the _Maidstone_ officers accusing them of having stolen his
waistcoat, and presenting a bill for its value if not instantly
returned. The _Maidstone_ view of the matter was that they hadn't
got his beastly waistcoat, didn't believe he'd ever had one, and
wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole if he had. Considering they could
not have treated him with more consideration if he had been one of
themselves, and that incidentally they had saved his life--well, the
Hun _is_ a queer person and we'll never be able to understand him.
The story of the sinking of "E 14" (Lieut.-Commander White) in the
Dardanelles has already appeared in print, so I shall not tell it
again. But the thought of German submarine officers leads to
comparisons, and perhaps a submarine sailor had better give his views
about it here:--
"Copy of letter received by H.M.S. _Adamant_ from Petty Officer R.
A. Perkins (late of S/M "E 14"), Prisoner of War, No. 5456,
Fabrique de Cement, Eski Hissar, Guebzeh, Asia Minor."
"DEAR SIR,--No doubt the officers and men of the _Adamant_ and
submarines would like to know what became of the captain and two
officers. I am very sorry to say that Mr White was almost blown to
pieces by a large shell which wounded three other men, and I
believe it killed Mr Drew, as I was with both of them. I saw the
captain's body, but nothing of Mr Drew, so I think he must have
been killed and fell into the sea. Mr Blasset was last seen in the
engine-room, so went down with the boat. It was a credit to us all
to think that we had such a brave captain, and, sir, if only I
could mention a few things about him; but owing to his coolness he
saved the boat half a dozen times. It is a great pity that no
officer was saved to tell the tale. I also mention A.B. Mitchell
and Signalman Trimbell for gallantry in diving overboard and saving
the life of Prichard, Ord. Tel., who was badly wounded, and would
have lost his life had it not been for both of these men keeping
him afloat until assistance arrived. I am glad to say that all men
that were wounded were sent to hospital ten minutes after being
captured, and were treated very well. The remaining five men,
except Stoker Reed, have had a bad attack of fever since being
captured. We are all sorry that so few men were saved, and, as I
have said, our gallant captain. This is all I have to report."
Being the senior survivor, Petty Officer Perkins reports as such. If
his officers had lived I think it probable we would have heard
something to the credit of Petty Officer Perkins.
The escape of Lieut.-Commander Cochrane from Asia Minor is being
described in 'Maga.' The account of how he became a prisoner seems to
indicate that he was not likely to remain a submissive captive:--
"6.30 A.M.: Passed Kilid Bahr at 200 yards--the periscope being
fired on by the forts without result.
"7.30: Sighted the buoys of the submarine net off Nagara Point.
Dived to 100 feet and increased to 7-1/2 knots.
"The bows cut through the net as the starboard propeller fouled
and stopped the starboard motor. Went hard-a-port and port motor
to full speed. Boat fell off to port and lay parallel to and much
entangled in the net. I tried to turn the boat's head to south and
pass through the net.
"8.30 A.M.: A mine exploded a few hundred feet from the boat, no
damage being done.
"After about two hours manoeuvring the boat was turned to the
southward, and repeated attempts to get clear were made at depths
of from 60 to 130 feet by going full speed ahead and astern. Boat
was now held by the net fore and aft.
"10.30 A.M.: A mine was exploded close to the boat. The explosion
was violent, but no damage was done to the hull. After this
explosion the boat was much freer than before, _and in the hopes
that further attempts to blow up the boat might result in
completely freeing her_,[2] I decided to remain submerged at a
good depth till after dark, when it might be possible to come to
the surface and clear the obstruction. Burned all confidential
papers.
[2] The italics are mine.--AUTHOR.
"By 2 P.M. battery power was much reduced and further attempts to
get clear were given up for a time.
"6.40 P.M.: A mine was exploded a few feet from the hull; the
explosion was very violent--electric lights and other small
fittings being broken. The motors were at once started in the hope
that the net had been destroyed; but this was not the case. The
presence of enemy craft on the surface having made it impossible
to come to the surface after dark and so clear the obstruction, I
decided to come up and remove the crew from the boat before
blowing her up. The boat was brought to the surface without
difficulty, and when the conning-tower was above water Lieutenant
Scaife went on deck to surrender the crew. Fire was immediately
opened on him from light guns on shore and three motor-boats which
were lying round 'E 7.' As soon as the excitement had died down
and the enemy officers had regained control of their men, two
motor-boats came alongside and the officers and men were taken off
without difficulty. This operation was carried out under the
orders of German submarine officers. The boat was sunk as soon as
she was clear of men, and a time-fuse having been fired,
subsequently blew up.
"Throughout the day the discipline and behaviour of the crew was
excellent. This was particularly noticeable at the time of the
third explosion. At this time the crew had been fallen out from
their stations, and many of them were asleep. On being called to
their stations every man went quietly to his place, although the
violence of the explosion was such as to convince every one that
the boat was badly damaged.
"... Petty Officer Sims, L.T.O., was in charge of the
after-switchboard, and continued throughout the day to work the
starboard motor, although much hampered by smoke and pieces of
molten copper, due to the damage received by the motor and
starting resistances while freeing the propeller."
Lieut.-Commander Cochrane attempted to escape, but after covering 200
miles was, with Lieut.-Commander Stoker of "AE 2," captured ten miles
from the coast. They received a year's imprisonment, and on August 18,
1918, Lieut.-Commander Cochrane started his successful trip,
accompanied by seven military officers, back to England.
V
I
In 1916 we began to look to Germany to produce something very
unpleasant in the way of submarines. We were certain she would follow
the obvious course indicated by the lessons all belligerents were
learning, and produce the big U-cruiser. Very fortunately for us, she
produced nothing of the sort until well into 1918, when one small
U-cruiser did us a great deal of damage. The point was this--We were
worrying and chasing U-boats with trawlers, motor-boats, destroyers,
and numbers of other comparatively small and weakly-armed craft. If a
U-cruiser, armed with, say, four 6-inch guns, and armoured along her
top-strakes, had risen to fight her tormentors--well, it is clear that
our small patrol-vessel service would have become suddenly very
expensive. Each convoy would have required cruiser protection, and we
had not enough cruisers to provide this. In 1917, by our constructor's
reckonings, there was no reason why a German submarine could not have
been produced which could proceed safely to the East Indies (round the
Cape), and repeat (on a bigger scale) the exploits of the _Emden_.
Well, the Germans didn't do it; they produced U-cruisers with two 5·9"
guns apiece in 1918, but the type was unsatisfactory and unstable. It
is still a puzzle to us that the idea came to them so slowly. We had
K-class boats with the fleet in 1916 of 2600 tons, and had shown that a
big submarine was a working proposition. (The K boat, of course, is not
a cruiser-submarine; she is a fast and lightly-gunned type for use in
battle only, and she does not leave the fleet except when detached for
watching patrols.) We produced the M-class in 1917, and--for obvious
reasons--we kept the type as secret as possible until the Armistice.
The M boat is rather smaller than the K, and is of only seventeen knots
speed, but she has far better under-water capabilities than her big
companion. She carries, besides her torpedo armament, a 12-inch gun of
the normal battleship type. This gun can be carried loaded submerged by
the use of a watertight tampion and breech. The boat can rise in the
wake of an enemy, fire as she "breaks surface," and submerge again--all
in a matter of seconds.
The type was extremely successful, and one can only be thankful that
such boats were not on the enemy's side. They would have been the very
devil to deal with on the trade routes, and would have caused us to
reconsider very hurriedly our whole system of anti-submarine defence.
Of course, four 6-inch would be better than one 12-inch from a German
point of view, especially as a destroyer would be likely to attack
unscathed under the fire of one big gun, but our type was intended for
use against such things as enemy cruisers, and not for sinking merchant
ships. By the end of the war the enemy had arrived at the stage of
submarine design where one says, "We've got a type that works--let us
stick to it, and just add improvements." We passed that stage before
the war and are now in the confident (with reservations!) state of
feeling that we can turn out anything required to combine the
properties of under-water and surface craft. If submarines continue as
weapons of war, they will improve very considerably, and the range of
possibility of future types is so great that any prophecy now would be
rash. It must be remembered, however, that the depth of water in which
a boat is intended to operate limits her size. It is not only that the
distance from her keel to periscope is (in the case of a big boat) some
50 feet, but also that the great length of a big boat's hull means that
even a slight fore-and-aft inclination as she dives will add enormously
to her draught; a very long boat in twenty fathoms of water (the North
Sea average) would have to be careful not to get off an even keel, as
it might happen that in the presence of the enemy her bow or stern
would touch bottom, with the result of causing the whole boat to bounce
up to the surface. A submarine submerged is in a state of equilibrium,
in that she has little or no tendency to rise or sink if her motors are
stopped and the boat left to herself. I am afraid in this history that
I continue to speak of submarines as if everybody knew a good deal
about them. I use technical expressions and words as if I was dealing
with things like motor-cars. I will try and explain more clearly what I
mean by "bouncing to the surface," and will do so in the idea that
there are probably readers who know as much about diving boats as I do
of bimetallism.
A submarine is a surface ship which can be submerged and driven ahead
at a steady depth-line. She is built strongly in order to resist the
water-pressure when she is deep down. She is propelled on the surface
by (usually) heavy-oil Diesel engines. When submerged she cannot use
these, as they consume air, so she has an electric battery and motors
for use under water. The battery is charged when on the surface at her
convenience or by favour of the enemy. The Diesel engines are used for
this purpose, and they recharge the batteries through the motors, using
the latter as dynamos.
In old pictures of projected submarines of the seventeenth century one
sees that the principle of "trimming down" for submersion was known,
and that our present-day system of tanks was intended to be substituted
by pig-skins which fitted into cylindrical hollows in the hull. These
skins were emptied by screwing out a ram from inside (on the idea of
old-fashioned printing presses) which squashed the skins. Nowadays a
boat is all tanks along her lower half, the upper half being living
space and battery room, etc. These tanks are flooded through valves in
order to destroy the boat's buoyancy. The water is ejected from them
either by pumps or by the use of compressed air, the latter taking the
place of the old seventeenth-century screw-press idea. When the tanks
have flooded until the boat's buoyancy is all gone--_i.e._, until
you could press her down or lift her up with one hand--she is
"trimmed," and by going ahead and working the bow and stern hydroplanes
you can keep whatever depth-line is required. When submerged, a
look-out is kept through a periscope--a tube about thirty feet long
which has lenses all the way up, is watertight, and has an eyepiece
like an ordinary telescope at its lower end.
To dive, a boat opens her vents, puts "dive" helm on, and goes under
with her motors running. The flooding valves are kept open to save
time; in surface trim a boat is "hanging on the vents"--_i.e._, if
you open the vents (upper valves of the tanks) the water enters and she
goes down; until the vents are open the water cannot enter beyond a
certain point; when they do open the air in the tanks can get away and
the tanks fill up with a rush.
During a trip the "trim" of the boat alters continually. She is using
fuel, ammunition, food, and water, and calculation is necessary to
allow for this. Certain tanks are used for this compensating, so that
on all occasions when a rapid dive is necessary, there is nothing to do
but flood the big external tanks, and yet know that the boat will be in
hand when under. If mistakes are made, they will show at once. If too
much has been put into the "internals" to compensate, the boat will run
on down to the bottom in spite of "up helm" and full speed. If too
little, you have to flood internals according to an estimate of what is
needed as she ploughs along half-submerged; the latter case is one to
be avoided, as you may be killed by the enemy while flooding. The usual
war practice is to compensate on the "heavy" side--_i.e._, let her
go with a rush and blow tanks so as to catch her and hold her at sixty
feet; then you can bring her up to patrol depth at your leisure.
It can be seen, then, that the description of a boat as "bouncing" is
not incorrect. When going to the bottom for the night it is a common
occurrence, if too rough a "landing" is made, to proceed like a
tennis-ball along the sand for a couple of hundred yards. It is a
curious thing that both in the Cattegat and the Sea of Marmora, boats
have been able to lie for the night with motors stopped at depths of
from thirty to seventy feet. In the Marmora the junction depth of the
salt and fresh water is about seventy. A boat trimmed with about two
hundred pounds of negative buoyancy out there will, if she stops her
motors, sink slowly through the upper layer of fresh (or brackish)
water, till she meets the denser salt below; on reaching this she will
be in a state of "positive" buoyancy, and after a little bouncing up
and down to find her "zero" stratum, she will settle at a steady depth.
The same sort of thing--a blessing in the Marmora--is a nuisance in the
Bight. A boat crossing the mouths of the German rivers may be at one
moment diving comfortably with zero helm on the hydroplanes--the next,
she meets a layer of fresh water from the Jahde ebb and is bumping on
the bottom with "hard-up" helm and the pumps working on the tanks.