Throughout this history I am giving selections from despatches of
typical "contacts" with the enemy, or of those which describe exciting
incidents on patrol; but I don't want to give the idea that submarine
patrol work was one whirl of gaiety, and that a boat had only to go to
sea in order to find a target. The facts are very different. A boat
might do a matter of twenty trips without meeting any kind of chance at
an enemy, and I suppose that each boat averaged two to three thousand
miles of diving between chances. The following description of routine
in a patrol boat must stand for four years of blank days in the North
Sea, Atlantic, or Mediterranean:--
The boat dives at dawn, and, the trim correct and the captain
satisfied, the order is given to "fall out all but diving hands." One
officer remains at the periscope, while the remainder and the majority
of the crew move off to their sleeping billets and lie down. When not
on watch it is customary for everybody to sleep, read, and eat all the
time; this is to conserve the stock of air in the boat. Oxygen is not
carried, but "purifiers" are. The air in the hull of the boat is,
however, ample for a long day's dive, and except when kept down by
accident or the machinations of the enemy there is no necessity to
renew it. It is kept on the move, however, by ordinary circulating
fans, which produce a general draught and disturbance of the halos of
bad air around each man's head, and this keeping of the air moving
makes a great difference--in fact, with no fans running a match fails
to burn after nine hours' diving; with all fans circulating a match can
be lit after a dive of from fourteen to eighteen hours. Why this is, I
don't know. If any work is done while diving (such as reloading of
tubes or repairing of damage) the air is used more rapidly--in fact,
extraordinarily quickly. When no work is being done, but only the usual
day's dive has been carried out, there is a slight increase in rate of
respiration among the hands on watch, with a slighter rise in rate of
pulse. But as soon as one attempts to do anything, such as lifting
weights or making a speech to the crew on the subject of their crimes,
one finds it necessary to breathe heavily and quickly; and in fact, in
the case of the speech, only a few minutes' harangue would be possible
towards the end of a day. Officers do not keep watch at the periscope
for more than a couple of hours at a time--it is bad for the eyes and
bad for the temper; the deadly monotony of shuffling slowly round while
stooping to stare at a perfectly blank and usually misty horizon is the
worst part of a patrol. The periscope work makes one sleepy also.
Submarine officers sleep a lot; the work is dull and sleep passes the
time. One gets tired of reading, although one certainly reads an
extraordinary amount. A succession of blank uneventful trips is good
for education, however; somebody once said that the book to be cast
away on a desert island with was Gibbons' 'Roman Empire.' I have known
heavier books than that to be worked through on patrol--even to weighty
tomes on Constitutional History. The sailors also read, sleep, and eat
continuously. A few hands keep watch on the hydroplane wheels, the
pumps, and the motors; the rest take it easy. They study such
periodicals as one finds on the counters of small tobacconists' shops,
and in addition they borrow and read intelligently the more abstruse
literature from their officers' library.
There is not much cooking done while diving. Cooking is done in
electric ovens and boilers, but it is usual to do what work is
necessary with these when the boats are charging batteries on the
surface. Cooking when submerged uses oxygen, makes smells, and expends
battery power, and is discouraged. Cold meals are the rule, and
submarine people cannot complain of being underfed, as there is a
special supply for them of bottled fruits and other extras to obviate
the dangers of illness to men living without exercise or fresh air in
such confined quarters. On the whole, the crews keep healthy and fit,
but there has been a good deal of illness and also eye-strain among the
officers during the war.
I have said that while one officer is on watch at the periscope the
others sleep or read. It is remarkable, however, how awake they are to
certain sounds or happenings. An officer may take some minutes to rouse
when called for his spell on watch, but if instead of the gentle
shaking of the messenger he felt a change of inclination of the boat,
or a new vibratory note from the motors, or if he felt by the cessation
of rolling that the boat was sinking, he would be awake in a flash. The
human brain seems to keep one technical department always on watch, and
it misses nothing. A boat patrolling in a slight swell keeps up a
gentle roll at periscope depth, and all the time one hears the rattle
and click of the shafting as the fore and aft hydroplanes are worked to
keep her at her depth-line. If, for instance, she meets a stratum of
fresh water, she will begin to sink; the hydroplanes will be worked up
to "hard-a-rise" and left there, with the boat inclined up and trying
to climb. The officer at the periscope will order a tank to be
partially emptied and will increase speed on the motors to help her
climb up again. As she goes down the rolling will cease, and the
silence of the hydroplane shafts, the hum of the motors, and the angle
of the boat will tell every sleeper at once exactly what is happening;
some of them could probably tell the actual depth the boat had got down
to without looking at the gauge. In the same way when on passage on the
surface a change of note in the roar of the Diesel engines will wake
all hands--it might mean something important. When on the surface,
there is one sound which wakes everybody without any exception--and
that is the electric alarm horn. It makes a dry blaring noise which is
unmistakable, and in view of the fact that it may be the preliminary to
the loss of the boat, it interests all hands very intimately. There is
always the feeling, especially if it is dark, that the officer on watch
may have rung it too late, and that before the boat can be forced under
a destroyer stem may come crashing through the pressure hull. A
submarine hates being on the surface--at least, a patrol submarine
does. She has to come up to recharge her batteries or to "make a
passage." It must be reiterated that a submarine is fairly fast and of
long radius on the surface, and of slow speed and low capacity
submerged. It will be understood that a boat is in an anxious position
if she has been diving long and her battery is low when she is near
enemy patrols. She has _got_ to come up and charge again, and
while charging a low battery she is rather helpless. Every weapon has
its weak point, and a knowledge of where the weakness lies means a
chance to the opponent.
Neither side had any submarines present at the Battle of Jutland, for
the simple reason that neither side had at that time any boats fast
enough to cruise with the Fleet and so arrive in time at a tactical
rendezvous. One boat did arrive at the scene of battle next day--a
homeward-bound U-boat who knew nothing of what had happened; she passed
through an area of water which was covered with corpses, wreckage, and
debris, and which was occasionally marked by the ends of sunken ships
standing up above the surface. She cruised about, wondering, for a
time, and then hurried on into harbour.
If, however, there had been another fleet action during the war, the
fast submarine would have been represented in it. The Germans never
built anything like our K class boats, and so the war test of the type
would have been carried out by us only. Tests in practice had given
such good results that the reluctance of the enemy to repeat the
Jutland experiment was very disappointing to the K-boat officers, who
had two years of waiting for their one chance--a chance which never
arrived. A submarine of 2600 tons cannot throw up her tail and slip
under in a few seconds as an E boat can do--she must be taken under
with due respect for her great length and size, and she cannot
therefore be used on the usual Bight patrols. She is built and designed
for battle only, and the type, apart from a few "incidents" with enemy
submarines while employed on scouting patrols, had to share the fate of
the Grand Fleet battleships which never got a fair chance at the enemy.
The building of these boats, however, showed us that the big submarine
was a working possibility. We designed and built them to a certain
specification, and they showed they could improve on that specification
in practice, and they gave most valuable data for future design.
There is, at any rate, one point on which prophecy as to the future of
submarines (if they are allowed by International Law to continue to
develop) is safe: at present a boat has to travel submerged by electric
power, because that is the only form of propulsion we know which does
not consume air. When an engine arrives which can propel a boat under
water by abstracting the necessary oxygen from the surrounding sea, we
will have made the submersible a commercial proposition. A properly
streamlined body moves faster under than on the surface of water, and
with a submersible internal combustion engine there would be in all
probability a doubling of the speed of ships. That such a type of
engine will come there is little doubt, and when it is remembered that
water is a far cheaper protection from shells than is armour-plate, a
field for prophecy is opened which is much too big and tempting to
venture into here.
Whatever happens, the German policy of torpedoing merchant ships
without warning must be made not only illegal, but unsafe for a nation
adopting it; the use of this weapon by the enemy has made the word
"submarine" one of reproach; the submarine personnel of every allied
navy feels that an honourable weapon has, on its first appearance in a
great sea war, had its name degraded by a section of its users. If
these notes of mine serve no other purpose, they will at any rate do
something towards differentiating between the submarine and the U-boat.
If the name of the weapon is to become a term of reproach, it is better
to particularise and to spare the honour of the Allied Navies.
I am going to relate an incident which occurred during the war. It was
not in the presence of the enemy, and so there is little direct
connection between it and a War History. But it is illustrative of the
ideas of the Submarine Service in that it evoked little comment among
the Flotillas, the standard shown by the personnel being considered to
be normal, and in accordance with accepted practice.
Submarine "C 12" was under way in the Humber; her main driving motors
failed, and before the fault could be remedied or anchors let go, she
was carried by the strong ebb-tide against the bows of destroyers which
were lying at the Eastern Jetty at Immingham, and badly holed. Most of
the crew and the first lieutenant (Lieutenant Sullivan) were below at
the time, while the captain (Lieutenant Manley) was on deck. Seeing
that the boat was sinking fast, Lieutenant Manley ordered all hands on
deck. They hurried up, the first lieutenant remaining below. The water
was pouring in over the electric batteries, causing heavy chlorine
fumes to be given off. The boat was on the verge of sinking when, the
last man being up, Lieutenant Manley went below, closing the
conning-tower lid after him. The boat then went to the bottom, with
both officers inside her. Finding, however, that nothing could be done
owing to the extent of the damage, the chlorine gas, and the weight of
water entering, these officers entered the conning-tower, closing the
lower door after them. They then flooded the conning-tower and, lifting
the upper door, swam to the surface, reporting that nothing could now
be done without salvage plant to lift the boat.
War produces a lot of incidents of a note-worthy kind, but work in
submarines produces similar incidents under peace conditions also,
because the Service is always at war with its constant enemy--the sea.
The boats have small buoyancy, and a leak is a dangerous thing; they
are very vulnerable to the ram, and even in peace manoeuvres before
the war we lost 6 boats from collisions either on the surface or
diving. During the war we lost 61 boats, of which
7 were blown up without losses in personnel--these being the boats
of the Baltic Flotilla.
20 were lost from a cause unknown. In other words, they went on
patrol, and nothing more was heard of them. The enemy have no
knowledge of their fate, and there were no survivors from them.
Their loss was probably due to their striking mines.
5 were sunk by enemy submarines (one of them--"E 20"--in the Sea of
Marmora).
3 were sunk while entering the Dardanelles, and 1 by gun-fire in
the Marmora.