The Story of Our Submarines Part 6

I

Facing each other across the southern part of the North Sea were the opposing submarine bases of Harwich and Flanders. The boats from these bases occasionally met and fought, but in the main their duties lay well apart. Harwich boats worked off the Bight, while the Flanders ports were bases for U-boats to start from on their way down channel to the traffic routes. The losses of the Flanders boats were heavy--so were the losses of the VIIIth Flotilla at Harwich, especially in 1916.

In that year the VIIIth Flotilla submarine officers pa.s.sed a self-denying ordinance to reduce their consumption of alcohol. (Now what I am leading up to is a comparison of British and German mentality, because I think the question of personnel to be infinitely more important than that of material.) The fact is, that heavy losses do affect those who are left to carry on the work. A boat comes back to harbour with her officers and crew tired and glad to be home again; they are perhaps met with, "Did you see anything of Seventy-six? He's been overdue three days. He was next to you--off Ameland. You didn't hear anything go up? Oh, well, you'll probably have that billet next week and you may find out...."

Well, it _does_ affect people, and there is undoubtedly a great feeling of relief at getting back to harbour safely. In the Navy, where wines and spirits are free of duty, alcohol is cheap and obtainable, and alcohol is a relief from worry and an opiate for tired nerves. But the war has never seen a case of disciplinary action being necessary to control our submarine officers. It is a difficult question to approach in print, as the temperance argument seems to call out such strongly-expressed opinions from the advocates pro and con; but while I have no idea of holding up submarine officers as paragons of abstinence (for I hardly know any who are teetotallers), there is no doubt that they fully realised that only moderation could keep them efficient for war.

Over in Flanders it was the rule for U-boats to base at Bruges, and to use only Ostend and Zeebrugge as they pa.s.sed through on their way to and from the sea. At Bruges the U-boat officers had a mess at the house of M. Catulle--a large, well-furnished, and comfortable building near the docks. There the officers had made the cellars (three inter-connected vaults) into an underground Rest for Tired Workers. All around the walls are painted frescoes ill.u.s.trating the minds of the patrons. The frescoes are over two feet in depth, and are well executed in the type of German humour one meets in the Berlin comic papers. There are mines, projectiles, etc., with the conventional faces and hats of John Bull, France, and other Allies; dancing with the mines are torpedoes, some of which carry on them the faces of dead U-boat officers. Beneath the frescoes are mottoes--such as, "Drink, for to-morrow you may die"--"Life is short, and you'll be a long time dead." Between the pictures are smaller paintings of monkeys drinking champagne.

After dinner, according to witnesses, the officers would retire to these cellars and drink. There is little ventilation, and the atmosphere must have been fairly thick with smoke and fumes. Drinking sometimes continued till 8 A.M.--a horrible hour at which to be drunk. It is reported by Belgians that the officers got through four thousand bottles of wine in three weeks. Taking the high estimate of an average of twenty officers always present, this means ten bottles per head a day--which is absurd. It is probable, however, that the compet.i.tors broke or gave away a good many bottles. But there is no doubt they went at it pretty fast; one officer was drunk and incapable for five days on end, and (as apparently there was considered to be a limit of four days for states of coma) on the fifth day was ordered to sea by the Captain of the Flotilla "to cool his head." The whole impression one gets from the local stories is one of fear, morbid excitement, and drink. The pictures conjured up are unpleasant: the early morning scene in the cellars when a few hiccoughing stalwarts still sat over their wine--the guttural attempt at song--the pale glow of electric lamps through swirling smoke--the reek of alcohol--the litter of bottles--and the frightened face of the Belgian chambermaid peering round the angle of the cellar stairs. "_Karl and Schmidt have not returned--G.o.d punish the Englis.h.!.+ Open more bottles, fool, and let us forget that our turn is coming!_"

How the flotillas were able to do efficient work at all is a puzzle; but the Flanders Flotillas did the Allies a lot of harm. Had it not been the custom of the officers to throw off restraint in harbour, we might have suffered a good deal more--how much more only a student of psychology can guess. But there is no doubt of this--and a comparison of the Harwich and Flanders Flotillas shows it--the British take to games to soothe their nerves and the Germans to drink.

It is possibly something to do with this trait that brought the major part of the U-boat successes into the hands of a few special officers.

The greater part of the captains did little; a few "aces" compiled huge lists of sunken tonnage to their credit (or otherwise). Judged by British Admiralty standards of efficiency, those few are the only ones who in our Service would have been retained at all.

However, it is time I went on with the doings of our own boats. Human beings are so much more important in war than are machines, that it is a temptation to describe them for preference. I would like to be able to talk about the submarine seamen also, but there is no ground for comparison between our own men and the German machine-made U-boat hand.

One thinks of the German men as just things that opened or closed valves when barked at, and who never took any interest in what was going on outside their particular stations, or in what the boat was doing. Our sailors are--well, to put it "socially," they seem to belong more to the middle than the lower cla.s.s. They are certainly not machine-made or dull, and they are not reluctant to act according to their own judgment in the absence of an officer's orders.

During the war our submarines sank 54 enemy wars.h.i.+ps and 274 other vessels. These figures do not, of course, include the many wars.h.i.+ps which were damaged but which were got back into harbour, although they include the U-boats which our submarines destroyed. German s.h.i.+ps are very well subdivided in compartments and take a lot of killing.

Certainly on a modern war-vessel one torpedo-hit is very little use; it takes about four to make certain of sinking her. The _Moltke_ (battle-cruiser) was. .h.i.t with one torpedo forward in the Baltic by Commander Laurence, and again off Hiorn's Reef by Lieutenant Allen (right aft this time); on each occasion she got home safely. Our own light cruiser _Falmouth_ had to receive four torpedoes in succession before she sank. The _Prinz Adalbert_ was torpedoed by Commander Horton in the Baltic off Cape Kola and returned safely to Kiel (she could not take a hint, however, and after a long interval for repair she went east again and met Commander Goodheart of "E 8," who sank her).

Commander Laurence in "J 1" hit the _Kronprinz_ and _Grosser Kurfurst_ (battles.h.i.+ps) in the North Sea, but both were got home safely. Our later submarines were fitted with larger torpedoes and tubes, but the boats fitted with eighteen-inch torpedoes made up the larger part of our flotillas, and it was realised by both our own and the enemy submarines that it took several hits with the smaller-size weapon to finish off a large s.h.i.+p. Perhaps the clearest case on record is that of the _Marlborough_, the s.h.i.+p being hit by a torpedo at the Jutland battle and remaining in the line at the Fleet speed and continuing her firing as if she had never been touched. Older s.h.i.+ps, as both sides found to their cost, were much more vulnerable. Probably the Turkish s.h.i.+ps were the easiest of all to put down, as it is doubtful if their fatalistic officers troubled to keep the watertight doors closed.

It must be remembered that there is all the difference in the world between a practice and a war attack. The war attack is usually unexpected, and is done under conditions of light and weather which make things chancy, to say the least of it. In a practice attack an officer can afterwards usually plot on the chart for you every movement his boat and the enemy made, and give reasons for all orders he gave.

After a war attack he would probably only be able to remember clearly such things as the periscope hoisting gear giving trouble and the hydroplane men appearing to be unaccountably deaf. I have mixed up several boats' attacks in the following description, and it would not be far wrong as an account of more.

II

The mist closed in in swirling clouds that came along the calm water in lines a few hundred yards apart. One moment through the periscope the captain of the L-boat could see across the yellow-green sea a band of fog crossing his bows--the next, he could see nothing but the ripples that spread and vanished astern a few feet from the top prism of the instrument. It had been a poor visibility day since dawn, and now it looked like being thick weather till dark. He called to the first lieutenant and gave an order. The hydroplane wheels whirred and the boat tilted up and climbed to the accompaniment of sighs and roars, as a couple of external tanks were partly blown. The captain looked down as he climbed the conning-tower ladder: "Slow ahead, port motor--put a charge on starboard--stop blowing." He threw back the lid and met the clammy touch of wet fog on his face. The boat was moving slowly east through a calm sea with only her conning-tower and guns above water, while a white line of foam running forward traced where her deck superstructure ran a few inches below the surface. If she had been on patrol anywhere but to the west of the Vyl Lights.h.i.+p the captain would have taken her to seventy feet and kept a hydrophone watch, but that billet is one that marks the end of a German swept channel, and he wanted to watch from above for the first sign of the fog clearing. He sat on the conning-tower lip, his sea-booted legs resting on the third ladder-rung, and his head twisting this way and that as he stared at the white wall of mist that was so close to him. He had sat there barely a minute, and the booming roar of the big charging engine had just begun sounding up the conning-tower when he slid forward and stood on the ladder with his head and shoulders only exposed; he leaned out to starboard trying to catch again the faint note of a syren that he had felt rather than heard through the note of his own engine. Then something showed dark through the fog, a grey blur with a line of foam below, and the L-boat's lid clanged down, and through her hull rang the startling, insistent blare of the electric alarm. The engine stopped, the port motor woke to full speed, and the control-room was alive with sound and rapid movement. She inclined down by the bow as the captain's boots appeared down the ladder, and as he jumped to the deck his hasty glance at the gauge showed her to be already at twelve feet. But twelve feet by gauge means a conning-tower top still exposed, and as the tanks filled and the internal noises died down a sound could be heard to starboard--a noise of high-speed engines that swelled till it seemed that every second would bring the crash and roar of water each man could imagine so clearly. The gauge-needle checked at fifteen, then swung rapidly up to thirty; the faces watching it relaxed slightly--for the noise swelling through the boat told of destroyers, and destroyers are shallow-draught vessels. The boat still raced on down, with the gauge jerking round through 60-70-80.... "Hold her up, now--back to seventy, c.o.xswain"; the angle changed swiftly to "bow-up" as the spinning wheels reversed and the boat checked at eighty-five; a pump began to stamp and hammer as it drove out the water from a mids.h.i.+p tank, and as the trim settled, the big main motors were steadily eased back to "dead slow." The first lieutenant looked up from the gauge and spoke over his shoulder to the captain. "I made it twelve seconds to twenty feet, sir; what was it that pa.s.sed?"

"You're a cheery optimist with your twelve seconds. Your watch is stopped, Number One. It's destroyers, and they didn't give us much room either."

"Then d'you mean a fleet?"

"I mean I'm coming up to look in a quarter of an hour. I believe if it wasn't foggy I'd see them on the horizon now; that was a screening force that put us down. Here comes another."

Again the sound of a turbine-driven vessel came from the starboard hand. It swelled to its maximum and then suddenly died to a murmur, pa.s.sing away to port. Twice more the warning came, and then fell a silence of just five minutes by the captain's wrist-watch. "Bring her up--twenty-four feet--and _don't_ break surface now." He turned round to the periscope as the boat climbed and tested the raising gear, making the big s.h.i.+ning tube move a few feet up and down. As the gauge moved to the 30 mark, the periscope rose with a rush, and he bowed his head to the eye-piece in readiness for an early glimpse of the surface world. At twenty-five feet a grunt of satisfaction and a quick swing round of the periscope spoke of his relief at being able to see at all; the fog was clearing and he was diving across one of the long lanes made in the mist by the rising wind. He turned the boat through eight points to keep her in the lane, turning up-wind to meet the clearer visibility that was coming. As he steadied on the new course he stiffened in his crouching att.i.tude, staring to port: "_Action Stations_--evolution now--get a move on."

The clatter and excitement of flooding tubes and opening doors lasted hardly sixty seconds, but it was punctuated by several sentences from the periscope position such as: "_Are_ you going to get those tubes ready?" and less plaintively, "How much _something_ longer now?" The captain's thoughts were out in the mist above him where his range of view was bounded on two sides by faintly seen grey ma.s.ses that rushed past him at close range. The reports of, "Ready, bow tubes"; "beam tubes ready, sir," came through the voice-pipes as the first lieutenant hurried from forward, panting from his exertions. "All ready, sir,"

he said, and paused for breath. "What is it, sir; can you see?..."

The captain interrupted: "_Yes_," he said, "blinkin' mist and battle-cruisers. Port beam, stand by; port beam, fire! Starboard twenty-five; stop port, full speed starboard; look out forrard, Number One, I'm going to let go the lot."

The first lieutenant vanished through the control-room door as the familiar sound of a destroyer pa.s.sing at short range began again to fill the boat. At the periscope the captain swore silently and continuously at the mist, the enemy, and the L-boat. He was between the destroyer screen and the big s.h.i.+ps; the whole High Sea Fleet seemed to be coming by, and he had the very vaguest idea of their formation or even of their course. His first torpedo had missed, and it was more than likely the track of it would be seen. The L-boat spun round under the drive of the screw and the helm she carried, and as two destroyers of the screen converged on her periscope in high fountains of spray, she fired her bow salvo of torpedoes at the nearest of the big dim s.h.i.+ps that crossed her bows. The range was short and the salvo ragged, for one torpedo "hung in the tube" a few seconds before leaving, its engines roaring and driving the water from the tube over the men abaft it in a drenching shower. That torpedo hit the s.h.i.+p astern of and beyond the target--the first bow torpedo to leave exploding right aft on the target herself. The converging destroyers swerved outwards slightly to avoid mutual collision, and the two "Wa.s.serbomben" they dropped as they turned were let go more in anger than with accurate aim. Thirty feet down the L-boat, her forward tanks flooding and her nose down at an angle of 15, was driving her gauge round in an urgent hurry to gain depth. Seventy--eighty--ninety-five. "Hold her up now.

Blow number two external. Stop both--_dammit_, hold her up, man.

Stop both--hold on, everybody!"

The gauge-needle went round with a rush; there was a heavy shock, and the boat's bow sprang upwards (the captain, holding with one arm to the periscope and bracing his feet, had a momentary vision in his memory of a photograph of a tank climbing a parapet--a trivial recollection of a Bond Street shop window); she rolled to starboard as the gauge-needle jumped back from a hundred and twenty to the hundred mark, then bounced again as her tail touched, rolled to port, and slid along the bottom to rest on an even keel. _Whang-bang-whang._ The explosions of depth-charges pa.s.sed overhead and made the lights flicker; then a succession of fainter reports continuing to the southward told of a chase misled in the mist. A voice spoke from a tube at the captain's side, "Did they hit, sir?"

The captain was feeling vaguely in his pockets. A reaction from the tense concentration of the last few minutes was approaching, and the habits of an habitual smoker were calling to him. "Yes, I think so," he said; "but there were so many explosions I can't swear to it. We'll know when we get in."

He took a cigarette from his case and lit it. The match burnt blue and went out quickly; the cigarette gave him a mouthful of acrid smoke, and also failed. The short time the conning-tower had been open before the destroyers came had not cleared the air, and the work and excitement of the crew in the attack had consumed as much oxygen as if the boat had been diving for a summer's day. There is only one kind of cigarette which will burn in bad air; a stoker kneeling by the main line flooding-valve fumbled in his cap, and then held out a packet of five of them to the captain. The officer took one with a grunt of thanks, lit it, and spoke again. "Watch remain at diving-stations--fall out the rest--torpedo hands reload."

III

I am just branching off to the Adriatic a moment to describe a patrol trip by "E 21" (Lieutenant Carlyon Britton). In this account of British submarine doings I have been avoiding such incidents as have been already much better treated of by writers such as Rudyard Kipling and Sir Henry Newbolt. There are, however, a good many incidents for which they had not s.p.a.ce in their accounts, and mention of such incidents here will lay stress on the fact that submarine work was continuous throughout the war, and was not a matter of spasmodic effort.

On the 30th June 1918 "E 21," being a unit of our flotilla working with the Italian Navy, torpedoed and sank an Austrian ammunition transport insh.o.r.e close to Piana, one of the islands that fringe the Dalmatian coast. She then fired at an escorting torpedo-boat (who dodged and saved herself), and she was then bombed by an aeroplane without receiving damage. On the 1st July she charged her batteries in Mid-Adriatic and moved east towards Lissa Island. On arrival there she dived up to St Giorgio harbour (I wonder what Tegetthof would have thought of this sort of thing in 1864?), only turning back a mile from the entrance when it was plain that there were no s.h.i.+ps inside. She moved on along the coast and looked into Civita Vecchia, but saw nothing worth attack there. Between Brazza Island and Lesina Island runs the Greco de Lesina Channel--a gap rather after the pattern of the Dardanelles. E 21 dived to 130 feet to pa.s.s under the minefield which guards the "narrows," and went through by compa.s.s and dead reckoning.

After four hours she rose and, being then well through the straits, proceeded towards Makarska on the surface. At dawn she dived again and did a sweep round the bay, finding no s.h.i.+pping in the harbours.

Returning that evening, she safely negotiated the minefield at 130 feet depth and proceeded west and north to look at Zerovia Island, near the locality where she had sunk the transport. She found nothing to fire at there, and the weather getting misty and bad for periscope work, she shaped course back to Brindisi on the 4th. She had been sent out to catch Austrian transports, and having sunk one which was well out on its way, and having been bombed for doing so, she had gone right back along the traffic route to see if "running to heel" would provide another chance, while at the same time her absence would give time for the excitement off Piana to die down. On her return she found it had died down to the extent of nothing being in sight; but her strategy had nevertheless been sound and well conceived.

Aeroplane bombs around the Heligoland Bight became common in 1918. A typical "Aircraft" report comes from "E 56" (Lieutenant Satow) in May of that year. Her station was by the South Dogger Bank light:--

"23rd May.--South Dogger, bearing north 3 miles at 1 A.M. 4.30 A.M.: a Zeppelin in sight N.E.--a long way off. 10 A.M.: sighted seaplane in periscope two miles on port beam coming towards me--dived 60 ft.--altered course to west. 10.15: one bomb--dived to 90 ft.--up to periscope depth and continued patrol. 6.20 P.M.: three bombs--dived to 80 feet. 6.37: three bombs--altered course to N.E., depth 70 feet. 6.50: one bomb. 7.37 P.M.: at 80 feet six or seven bombs dropped, three of them close to boat.

"26th May.--Sighted seaplane--dived 70 feet at 4.45 A.M. 9 A.M.: sighted seaplane--dived 80 feet. 9.38: five bombs dropped. 12.15: one bomb dropped. Heard propellers which pa.s.sed on. 4 P.M.: two bombs dropped. 4.20: one bomb dropped. Heard propellers and sweep.

4.40 P.M.: two bombs--propellers and sweep. 6.20 P.M.: one bomb a long way off--propellers heard--boat rolled in the wash of destroyers.

"28th May.--4.45 A.M.: Sighted seaplanes bearing east. 3.20 P.M.: sighted Zeppelin bearing north.

"All bombs mentioned in this report were small ones."

The attentions paid to "E 56" on the 26th call to mind the story of the E-boat which did a "crash" dive to avoid similar machines. The captain arrived at the foot of the conning-tower with a rush, his binoculars preceding him with a heavy thud and his oilskin coming after him; as he touched the deck three bombs exploded on the surface just over his boat, the shock making him sit down suddenly. To the first lieutenant's unspoken question of "What is it after us?" he answered with an absurd giggle, and "They've evidently seen me!" Students of Captain Bairnsfather's drawings will catch the allusion.

IV

I will conclude the accounts of typical submarine _v._ submarine engagements by the case of "E 34" (Lieutenant Pulleyne) and a U-boat off Harwich on the 10th May 1918.

"E 34" was returning to harbour after a trip. She was actually in the swept channel leading into Harwich, and could pretty well take it for granted that any vessel met with so near home would be friendly. As boats get near their base it is usual to begin the cleaning-up work which is so necessary after a trip, and to get ready generally for harbour routine again. "E 34" saw a submarine ahead steering north, and, treating her as hostile until her ident.i.ty could be established, dived at once to attack. Fifteen minutes later Lieutenant Pulleyne, in no doubt at all about what his target's nationality was, fired both bow tubes and sank her. He then rose, and proceeded to pick up the only survivor, who happened to be the captain, and who was in pretty bad condition from shock and immersion.

Captain (S.), H.M.S. _Maidstone_, comments on the affair as follows:--

"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 s.h.i.+p'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 sh.e.l.l 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 Bla.s.set 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. Mitch.e.l.l 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 a.s.sistance 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.