Our Navy in the War Part 6

"She is a Dutchman, sir," he says at length. The commander steps to the periscope and takes a look. The Dutchman has no wireless and is bound for some continental port. It is not wise to sink every Dutch boat one meets--although German submarines have sunk a sufficient number of them, in all conscience. At all events, the steams.h.i.+p goes in peace and the submarine comes to the surface. The commander is glad, because electric power must be used when the vessel is moving under water and there must be no waste of this essential element.

So the submarine proceeds on her way, wallowing and tumbling through the heavy graybacks of the North Sea. At length after fifty-four hours the necessity of sleep becomes apparent. The ballast-tanks are filled and the craft slowly descends to the sandy bottom of the sea. It is desirable that the crew go to sleep as quickly as possible, because when men are asleep they use less of the priceless supply of oxygen which is consumed when the boat is under water. However, the commander allows the men from half an hour to an hour for music and singing. The phonograph is turned on and there on the bottom of the North Sea the latest songs of Berlin are ground out while the crew sit about, perhaps joining in the choruses--they sang more in the early days of the war than they do to-day--while the officers sit around their mess-table and indulge in a few social words before they retire.

In the morning water from the tanks is expelled and the boat rises to greet a smiling sea. Also to greet a grim destroyer. The war-s.h.i.+p sees her as she comes up from a distance of perhaps a mile away. All steam is crowded on while the leaden-gray fighter--the one craft that the submarine fears--makes for her prey. Sharp orders ring through the U-boat. The tanks are again filled, and while the commander storms and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es, everything is made tight and the vessel sinks beneath the surface. The electric-motors are started and the submarine proceeds under water in a direction previously determined, reckoned in relation to the course of the approaching destroyer.

Presently comes a dull explosion. The destroyer arriving over the spot where the undersea boat was last seen, has dropped a depth-bomb, which has exploded under the surface at a predetermined depth. The submarine commander grins. The bomb was too far away to do damage, although the craft has trembled under the shock. There comes another shock, this time not so palpable. Eventually all is quiet.

For an hour the submarine proceeds blindly under water, and then cautiously her periscope is thrust above the surface. Nothing in sight.

Orders sound through the vessel and she rises to the surface. She could have remained below, running under full headway, for six hours before coming to the surface. So the day goes on. Toward nightfall smoke again is seen on the horizon. It proves to be a large freighter ladened, apparently, with cattle. Two destroyers are frisking about her, crossing her bow, cutting around her stern. The steams.h.i.+p herself is zigzagging, rendering accurate calculations as to her course uncertain.

By this time, of course, the submarine has submerged. The watch-officer and the commander stand by the periscope, watching the approaching craft. The periscope may not be left up too long; the watchers on the destroyers and on the deck of the vessel, which is armed, are likely to spy it at any time. So the periscope is alternately run down and run up.

The submarine has moved so that the steams.h.i.+p will pa.s.s her so as to present a broadside. Up comes the periscope for one last look. The observer sees a puff of smoke from the deck of a destroyer and a quick splash of water obscures the view momentarily.

"They have seen us and are firing."

But the steams.h.i.+p is now within a mile, within fairly accurate torpedo range. An order rolls into the torpedo-room and the crew prepare for firing. In the meantime a shower of sh.e.l.ls explode about the periscope.

There comes a sudden vagueness on the gla.s.s into which the observer has been gazing.

"The periscope has been hit."

Thoughts of launching the torpedo vanish. Safety first is now the dominant emotion. Additional water flows into the tanks and the craft begins to settle. But as she does so there is a sudden flood of water into the control-room; a hoa.r.s.e cry goes up from the crew. The officers draw their revolvers. Evidently the injured periscope has caused a leak.

Before anything can be done there is a tremendous grinding, rending explosion; the thin steel walls contract under the force of the released energy. Above them the destroyer crew gazing eagerly at the geyser-like volume of water arising from the sea descry pieces of metal, dark objects of all sorts. The sea quiets and up from the depths arise clouds of oil, spreading slowly over the waves. The U-47-1/2 has joined many a n.o.bler craft upon the wastes of subaqueous depths.

But not always has the outcome of a submarine attack been so fortunate for us. There have been thousands of instances--many more of them in the past than at present, fortunately--where the U-boat returned to her base with a murderous story to tell. While it is certain that when the totals for the present year are compiled an engaging tale of reduced submarine effectiveness will be told; yet--as the British Government has announced--any effort to minimize what the submarine has done would work chiefly toward the slowing up of our s.h.i.+p-building and other activities designed to combat directly and indirectly the lethal activities of the submarine. And from a naval standpoint it is also essential that the effectiveness of the undersea craft be fully understood.

It was on January 31, 1917, that the German Government suddenly cast aside its peace overtures and astonished the world by presenting to the United States Government a note to the effect that from February 1 sea traffic would be stopped with every available weapon and without further notice in certain specified zones. The decree applied to both enemy and neutral vessels, although the United States was to be permitted to sail one steams.h.i.+p a week in each direction, using Falmouth as the port of arrival and departure. On February 3 President Wilson appeared before Congress and announced that he had severed diplomatic relations with Germany on the ground that the imperial government had deliberately withdrawn its solemn a.s.surances in regard to its method of conducting warfare against merchant vessels. Two months later, April 6, as already noted, Congress declared that a state of war with Germany existed.

The German people were led to believe that an aggregate of 1,000,000 tons of s.h.i.+pping would be destroyed each month and that the wastage would bring England to her knees in six months and lead to peace. The six months went by, but the promises of the German Government were not fulfilled. Instead the submarine war brought the United States into the struggle and this, in the words of Philipp Scheidemann, leader of the German majority Socialists, has been "the most noticeable result."

None the less, the submarine, used ruthlessly, without restrictions, proved itself to be an unrivalled weapon of destruction, difficult to combat by reason of its ability to stalk and surprise its quarry, while remaining to all intents and purposes invisible. It has taken heavy toll of s.h.i.+ps and men, and has caused privation among the peoples of the Entente nations; it is still unconquered, but month by month of the present year its destructiveness has been impaired until now there may be little doubt that the number of submarines destroyed every month exceeds the number of new submarines built, while the production of s.h.i.+p tonnage in England and the United States greatly outweighs the losses.

In other words, the submarine, as an element in the settling of the war in a manner favorable to Germany, has steadily lost influence, and, while it is not now a negligible factor, it is, at least, a minor one and growing more so.

Secret figures of the British Admiralty on submarine losses and world s.h.i.+p-building issued in March, 1918, show that from the outbreak of war, in August, 1914, to the end of 1917, the loss was 11,827,080 tons.

Adding the losses up to April of the present year--when the submarine sinkings began to show a markedly decreased ratio--and we get a total of 13,252,692 tons. The world's tonnage construction in the four years 1914-17 was 6,809,080 tons. The new construction in England and the United States for the first quarter of 1918 was 687,221 tons, giving a total from the beginning of the war to April 1 of 1918, 7,750,000 tons built outside of the Central Powers since the beginning of the war, with a final deficit of about 5,500,000 tons. Of this deficit the year 1917 alone accounted for 3,716,000 tons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph copyright by Enrique Midler_. A U. S.

SUBMARINE AT FULL SPEED ON THE SURFACE OF THE WATER.]

From the last quarter of 1917, however, the margin between construction and loss has been narrowing steadily. In the first quarter of 1918 the construction in Great Britain and America alone was over 687,000 tons and the losses for the whole world were 1,123,510 tons. Here is a deficit for three months--the first three months of the present year--of 436,000 tons, or an annual average of 1,750,000 tons, which is a deficit one-half less than that of the black year of 1917. When figures at the end of the present year are revealed we may find that we have reckoned too little upon the s.h.i.+p-building activity of both England and the United States, in which event the deficit may prove to be even less. But in any event the dry figures as set forth are worth perusal inasmuch as they point not only to the deadly effectiveness of the submarine in the first year of unrestricted activity, but show how valiantly the Allied sea power has dealt with a seemingly hopeless situation in the present year.

In the House of Commons not long ago a definite statement that the trend of the submarine war was favorable to the Allies was made. The one specific item given was that from January 1 to April 30, 1917, the number of unsuccessful attacks upon British steams.h.i.+ps was 172, a weekly average of 10. Last year in the ten weeks from the end of February to the end of April there were 175 unsuccessful attacks, or a weekly average of 18. This statement was not exactly illuminating. For of itself a decline in the weekly number of unsuccessful attacks would imply an increase in the effectiveness of the U-boat--which we know is not so. What the House of Commons statement really meant, of course, was that the number of _successful_ attacks had been declining as well as the number of unsuccessful attacks--or, in other words, that the German sea effort as a whole was declining. The U-boats are not hitting out as freely as they did a year ago. This argues that there are fewer of them than there were in 1917. For actual tonnage losses we have the word of the French Minister of Marine that the sinkings for April, 1918, were 268,000 tons, whereas in April of the previous year they were 800,000 tons, an appalling total.

"The most conclusive evidence we have seen of the failure of the enemy's submarine campaign is the huge American army now in France, and the hundreds of thousands of tons of stores brought across the Atlantic,"

said James Wilson, chairman of the American labor delegation, upon his return to England last May from a visit to France and to the American army. "Less than twelve months have pa.s.sed since General Pers.h.i.+ng arrived in France with 50 men. The developments that have taken place since seem little short of miraculous."

Georges Leygues, Minister of Marine of France, in testifying before the Chamber of Deputies in May said that in November of 1917 losses through the submarine fell below 400,000 tons, and since has diminished continuously. He said that the number of submarines destroyed had increased progressively since January of the present year in such proportion that the effectiveness of enemy squadrons cannot be maintained at the minimum required by the German Government. The number of U-boats destroyed in January, February, and March was far greater in each month than the number constructed in those months. In February and April the number of submarines destroyed was three less than the total destroyed in the previous three months. These results, the minister declared, were due to the methodical character of the war against submarines, to the close co-ordination of the Allied navies; to the intrepidity and spirit animating the officers and crews of the naval and aerial squadrons, to the intensification of the use of old methods and to the employment of new ones.

We may lay to ourselves the unction that the reduced effectiveness of the submarine coincided with the entrance of our naval forces into the war. This is taking nothing from the French, British, and Italian navies; as a matter of truth, it would be gross injustice to ignore the fact that the large share of the great task has been handled through the immense resources of the British. But the co-ordinated effort which began with the arrival of our vessels on the other side, the utter freedom with which Secretary Daniels placed our resources at the service of the British was inspiring in its moral influences throughout the Entente nations, while practically there may be no doubt that our craft have played their fair share in the activities that have seen the steady decline of deadliness on the part of the U-boat. We may now consider the methods which our navy in collaboration with Allied sea power have employed in this combat for the freedom of the seas.

CHAPTER VII

How the Submarine is being Fought--Destroyers the Great Menace--But Nets, Too, Have Played Their Part--Many Other Devices--German Officers Tell of Experience on a Submarine Caught in a Net--Chasers Play Their Part--The Depth-Bomb--Trawler Tricks--A Camouflaged Schooner Which Turned Out To Be a Tartar--Airplanes--German Submarine Men in Playful Mood

When the submarines first began their attacks upon British war-s.h.i.+ps and merchant vessels the admiralty was faced by a state of affairs which had been dealt with more or less in the abstract, the only practical lessons at hand being those of the Russo-j.a.panese War, which conflict, as a matter of fact, left rather an unbalanced showing so far as the undersea boat and the surface craft were concerned; in other words, the submersible had by all odds the advantage.

But England tackled the problem with bulldog energy, utilizing to that end not only her immense destroyer fleet, but a myriad of high-speed wooden boats, many of which were built in this country. They were called submarine-chasers, and while the destroyer and the seaplane, as one of the most effective weapons against the submarine, came to the fore, the chaser is employed in large numbers by England, France, and the United States.

The great usefulness of the destroyer lay not only in patrolling the seas in search of the U-boats, but of serving in convoys, protecting pa.s.senger and freight vessels, and in rescuing crews of vessels that had been sunk. There may be other methods of reducing Germany's sum total of submarines which are equally--if not more--effective than the destroyer; but, if so, we have not been made aware of that fact. Certain it is, however, that aside from the destroyer, steel nets, fake fis.h.i.+ng and merchant sailing vessels, seaplanes and chasers have played their important part in the fight, while such a minor expedient as blinding the eye of the periscope by oil spread on the waters has not been without avail.

The United States Navy appears to have figured chiefly through its destroyer fleet. It has been stated that half the number of sailors who were in the navy when we entered the war were sent to European waters.

The system of training them involves a number of training-bases in Europe constantly filling up from American drafts. Each new destroyer that steams to Europe from our sh.o.r.es in due course sends back some of her men to form a nucleus for the crew of another new destroyer turning up in American waters. Their places are taken by drafts from the training-bases in Europe. The destroyer referred to as turning up in this country makes up her complement from the battles.h.i.+ps and other naval units here. The training-bases in this country are established at Newport, Chicago, San Francisco, and Pelham Bay, N.Y. Here the men have many months' instruction. As their training approaches completion they are sent where needed, and thus the work of creating an immense army of trained seamen qualified for any sort of a task proceeds with mechanical precision.

Submarine hunting is very popular with our young jackies, and great is their satisfaction when some submarine falls victim to their vigilance, their courage, and their unerring eyes.

"But," said a young sea officer not long ago, "the submarine is a difficult bird to catch. He holds the advantage over the surface craft.

He always sees you first. Even when he is on the surface he is nearly awash, and when submerged only his periscope appears above the water.

The submarine is not after animals of our breed--destroyers--and when he can he avoids them. We may go several weeks without putting an eye upon a single U-boat. When we do there is action, I can tell you. We start for him at full speed, opening up with all our guns in the hope of getting in a shot before he is able to submerge. But you may believe he doesn't take long to get below the surface. Anyway, the sub doesn't mind gun-fire much. They are afraid of depth charges--bombs which are regulated so that they will explode at any depth we wish. They contain two or three hundred pounds of high explosive, and all patrol vessels and destroyers carry them on deck and astern. When we see a submarine submerge we try to find his wake. Finding it, we run over it and drop a bomb. The explosion can be felt under water for a distance of several miles, but we have to get within ninety feet of the hull to damage it.

This damage may or may not cause the undersea boat to sink. Inside of ninety feet, though, there isn't much doubt about the sinking.

"Patrol duty is a grind. The sea where we work is filled with wreckage for a distance of 300 miles off sh.o.r.e, and you can take almost any floating object for a periscope. Yes, we shoot at everything; ours is not a business in which to take chances. Convoy work is more interesting and more exciting than the round of patrol. The advantage of the convoy over the picking up and escorting of a merchantman by a patrol-boat is that in the convoy from six to ten destroyers can protect from ten to thirty merchantmen, while under the patrol system one destroyer watches one merchant craft. Convoy trips take our destroyers away from their base from six to eight days, and they are all trying days, especially so in dirty weather. On convoy duty no officer, and no man, has his clothes off from start to finish. Too many things may happen to warrant any sort of unpreparedness. Constant readiness is the watch-word.

"At night difficulty and danger increase, chiefly because of the increased danger of collision. Collisions sometimes occur--what with the absence of lights, the zigzag course of the s.h.i.+ps of the convoy, and the speed with which we travel. But as a rule the accidents are of the sc.r.a.ping variety, and all thus is usually well. The convoy is purely a defensive measure. The patrol is the offensive; in this the destroyers and other craft go out and look for the U-boats, the idea being to hound them out of the seas."

Then there are netting operations in which our sailors have played some part. The netting most often used is made of stout galvanized wire with a 15-foot mesh. This is cut into lengths of 170 feet, with a depth of 45 feet. On top of this great net are lashed immense blocks of wood for buoys. Two oil-burning destroyers take the netting, and hanging it between them as deep down in the water as it will go, are ready to seine the 'silverfish.' The range of a submarine's periscope is little over a mile in any sort of sea. Vessels that are belching clouds of smoke may be picked up at distances of from three to five miles, but no more. In other words, watchful eyes gazing through binoculars may see a periscope as far as that periscope sees. The destroyers, bearing their net between them, then pick up a distant periscope. They chart the submarine's direction (this may be told by the direction in which the periscope is cutting the water) and calculate her speed. Then they steam to a point directly ahead of the submarine, and the las.h.i.+ngs are cut away from the net. While it thus floats in the submarine's path the destroyers speed away out of eye-shot. In a large majority of cases it is claimed the submarine runs into that net, or one like it. Results are a probable disarrangement of her machinery and her balance upset. She may be thrown over on her back. If she comes up she goes down again for good and all with a hole shot in her hull; if not, it is just as well, a sh.e.l.l has been saved.

Submarines occasionally escape by changing their course after the nets have been set; but there appears to have been no instance of the destroyers themselves having been picked up by the periscope. This because they set pretty nearly as low as a submarine, and with their oil-burning propulsion give forth no telltale cloud of smoke. Other nets are hung from hollow gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s, which the periscope cannot pick up against the sea water. These nets are set in profusion in the English Channel, the North Sea, or wherever submarines lurk, and they are tended just as the North River shad fishermen tend their nets. When a destroyer, making the rounds, sees that a gla.s.s ball has disappeared, there is more than presumptive evidence that something very valuable has been netted.

Naval Lieutenant Weddingen, of the German submarine U-17, has related the following experience with the British net system. The U-17 had left her base early in the morning and had pa.s.sed into the North Sea, the boat being under water with periscope awash. "I looked through the periscope," said Weddingen, "and could see a red buoy behind my boat.

When, ten minutes later, I looked I saw the buoy again, still at the same distance behind us. I steered to the right and then to the left, but the buoy kept on following us. I descended deeply into the water, but still saw the buoy floating on the surface above us. At last I discovered that we had caught the chain of the buoy and that we were dragging it along with us.

"At the same time, also, I saw through the periscope that a strange small steamer was steering a course directly behind us and the buoy. At this time my sounding apparatus indicated that a screw steamer was in the vicinity. Observation revealed that five enemy torpedo-boats were approaching from the north. I increased the speed of the boat in the expectation of being able to attack one of them. The five torpedo-boats arranged themselves in a circle. I sank still deeper and got ready for eventualities.

"At this juncture my boat began to roll in a most incomprehensible manner. We began to rise and sink alternately. The steering-gear apparently was out of order. Soon afterward I discovered that we had encountered a wire netting and were hopelessly entangled in it. We had, in fact, got into the net of one of the hunters surrounding us.

"For an hour and a half the netting carried us with it, and although I made every effort to get clear of it, it seemed impossible. There was nothing to do but increase the weight in the submarine as much as possible so that I might try to break the netting. Fortunately, when we had started I had pumped in from five to six tons of water, filling all the tanks. I increased the weight of the boat to the utmost, and suddenly we felt a shock and were clear of the netting. I then descended as deeply in the water as I could, the manometer showing thirty metres.

We remained under water for eighteen hours. When I wanted to ascertain where we were I noticed that my compa.s.s was out of order. For a time I steered by the green color of the water, but at last I had to get rid of the ballast in order to rise. I then discovered that the manometer continued to register the same depth, and was also out of order.

"I had, therefore, to be very careful not to rise too high and thus attract the attention of the torpedo-boats. Slowly the periscope rose above the surface, and I could see the enemy in front of me, and toward the left the east coast of England. I tried to turn to starboard, but the rudder did not work. In consequence, I had to sink again to the bottom of the sea, where I remained for six hours, at the end of which time I had succeeded in putting the compa.s.s in order, and also in repairing the steering-gear. But upon rising this time, we were detected by a torpedo-boat, which made straight for us, forcing me to descend again." (This apparently was before depth-bombs came into use.) "I remained submerged for two hours, then turned slowly outward, and at a distance of some fifty metres from the leading enemy craft, pa.s.sed toward the open sea. At 9 o'clock in the evening we were able to rise and proceed in safety."

Here is a human doc.u.ment, is it not? It is the experience of the tarpon at the undersea end of the line, or, in human terms, the hidden drama of man against man, drama of the sort made possible by the ingenuity of this modern age.

Submarine-chasers are shallow craft, capable of a speed of thirty-five miles an hour or more, mounting guns fore and aft. Some of our chasers measure more than 200 feet over all (_Eagle_ cla.s.s), while others measure 110 feet. The British, as already said, like the 80-footer, although using all sizes. Well, in any event, the chaser cruises about looking for surface waves. Now, the surface wave is the path marked by a submarine on the surface of the water. Even when she is fifty feet below the surface she leaves this palpable pathway up above. And few submarines travel at a depth of sixty feet. Then besides this track there are air-bubbles and spots of oil, all confirming the presence beneath the water of the U-boat.

So thereafter the chaser simply follows that surface wave until the submarine comes to the surface, as she must do sooner or later to get her bearings and look about for prey. When she does come up--she goes down for good. The hunt of the chaser has been aided in the past year or so by the depth-bomb, which did not exist in the first two and a half years of war. Equipped with this, she need not necessarily follow a surface wave all day; she simply drops the bomb down through this wave; at least she does under certain conditions.