Part 4

The destroyer is the capital weapon against the submarine. She can out-race a sub, can fight him with guns, torpedoes, or depth charges; she can send him bubbling to the bottom by ramming him amidships. She can confuse him by throwing a pall of smoke over his target; she can beat off his attacks either above or below the surface. He fires a torpedo at her, she dodges, runs down the trail of the torpedo, drops a depth bomb, and brings her prey to the surface, an actual incident this. Her problem is of a dual nature, being both defensive and offensive. To-day, her orders are to escort a convoy through the danger zone to a position in latitude x and longitude y; to-morrow, her orders are to patrol a certain area of the beleaguered sea or a given length of coast.

Based upon a foreign port, working in strange waters, the destroyer flotilla added to the fine history of the American Navy a splendid record of endurance, heroism and daring achievement.

IX

TORPEDOED

If you would understand the ocean we sailed in war-time, do not forget that it was essentially an ambush, that the foe was waiting for us in hiding. Nothing real or imagined brooded over the ocean to warn a vessel of the presence of danger, for the waters engulfed and forgot the tragedies of this war as they have engulfed and forgotten all disasters since the beginning of time. The great unquiet shield of the sea stretched afar to pale horizons, the sun shone as he might shine on a pretty village at high noon, the gulls followed alert and clamorous. Yet a thundering instant was capable of transforming this apparent calm into the most formidable insecurity. In four minutes you would have nothing left of your ship and its company but a few boats, some bodies, and a miscellaneous litter of wreckage strewn about the scene of the disaster. Of the assassin there was not a sign.

All agreed that the torpedo arrived at a fearful speed. "Like a long white bullet through the water," said one survivor. "Honest to God, I never saw anything come so fast," said another.

"Where did it strike?" I asked the first speaker, a fine intelligent English seaman who had been rescued by a destroyer and brought to an American base.

"In a line with the funnel, sir. A great column of steam and water went up together, and the pieces of the two port boats fell all around the bridge. I think it was a bit of one of the boats that struck me here." He held up a bandaged hand.

"What happened then?"

"All the lights went out. It was just dusk, you see, so we had to abandon the boat in the darkness. A broken steam pipe was roaring so that you couldn't hear a word any one was saying. She sank very fast."

"Did you see any sign of the submarine?"

"The captain's steward thought he saw something come up just about three hundred yards away as we were going down. But in my judgment, it was too dark to see anything distinctly, and my notion is that he saw a bit of wreckage, perhaps a hatch."

The next man to whom I talked was a chunky little stoker who might have stepped out of the pages of one of Jacobs' stories. I shall not aim to reproduce his dialect--it was of the "wot abaht it" order.

"We were heading into Falmouth with a cargo of steel and barbed wire. I had a lot of special supplies which I bought myself in New York, some sugar, two very nice 'ams and one of those round Dutch cheeses. I was always thinking to myself how glad my old woman would be to see all those vittles. Just as we got off the Scillies, one of those bloody swine hit us with a torpedo between the boiler room and the thwart ship bunker, forward of the engine room, and about sixteen feet below the water line. Understand? I was in the boiler room. Down came the bunker doors, off went the tank tops in the engine room, two of the boilers threw out a mess of burning coal, and the water came pouring in like a flood. Let me tell you that cold sea water soon got bloody hot, the room was filled with steam, couldn't see anything. I expected the boilers to blow up any minute. I yelled out for my mates. Suddenly I heard one of 'em say: 'Where's the ladder?' and there was pore Jem with his face and chest burned cruel by the flying coal, and he had two ribs broke too, though we didn't know it at the time. Says 'e, 'Where's Ed?' and just then Ed came wading through the scalding water, pawing for the ladder. So up we all went, never expecting to reach the top. Then when we got into a boat, we 'eard that the wireless had been carried away, and that we'd have to wait for somebody to pick us up. So we waited for two days and a Yankee destroyer found us. Yes, both my mates are getting better, though sister 'ere tells me that pore Ed may lose his eye."

Sometimes the torpedo was seen and avoided by a quick turn of the wheel. There were other occasions when the torpedo seems to follow a ship. I remember reading this tale. "At 2.14 I saw the torpedo and felt certain that it would mean a hit either in the engine or the fire room, so I ordered full speed ahead, and put the rudder over hard left. At a distance of between two and three hundred yards, the torpedo took a sheer to the left, but righted itself. For an instant it appeared as if the torpedo might pass astern, but porpoising again, it turned toward the ship and struck us close by the propellers."

So much for blind chances. One hears curious tales. The column of water caused by the explosion tossed onto the forward hatch of one merchant ship a twisted half of the torpedo; there was a French boat struck by a torpedo which did not explode, but lay there at the side violently churning, and clinging to the boat as if it were possessed of some sinister intelligence. I heard of a boat laden with high explosives within whose hold a number of motor trucks had been arranged. A torpedo got her at the mouth of the channel. An explosion similar to the one at Halifax raked the sea, the vessel, blown into fragments, disappeared from sight in the twinkling of an eye, and an instant later there fell like bolides from the startled firmament a number of immense motor trucks, one of which actually crashed on to the deck of another vessel!

Meanwhile, I suppose, some hundred and fifty feet or more below, "Fritz," seated at a neat folding table, wrote it all down in his log.

X

THE END OF A SUBMARINE

Two days before, in a spot somewhat south of the area we were going out to patrol, a submarine had attacked a convoy and sunk a horse boat. I had the story of the affair months afterwards from an American sailor who had seen it all from a nearby ship. This sailor, no other than my friend Giles, had been stationed in the lookout when he heard a thundering pound, and looking to port, he saw a column of water hanging just amidships of the torpedoed vessel, a column that broke crashing over the decks. In about three minutes the ship broke in two, the bow and the stern rising like the points of a shallow V, and in five minutes she sank. The sea was strewn with straw; there were broken stanchions floating in the confused water, and a number of horses could be seen swimming about. "All you could see was their heads; they looked awful small in all that water. Some of the horses had men hanging to them. There was a lot of yelling for help." The other ships of the convoy had run for dear life; the destroyers had raced about like hornets whose nest is disturbed, but the submarine escaped.

We left a certain harbour at about three in the afternoon. Many of the destroyers were out at sea taking in a big troop convoy and the harbour seemed unusually still. The town also partook of this quiet, the long lateral lines of climbing houses staring out blankly at us like unresponsive acquaintances. Very few folk were to be seen on the street. We were bound forth on an adventure that was drama itself, a drama which even then the Fates, unknown to us, were swiftly weaving into a tragedy of vengeance, yet I shall never forget how casual and undramatic the Esplanade appeared. A loafer or two lounged by the door of the public house, a little group of sailors passed, a jaunting car went swiftly on its way to the station; there was nothing to suggest that these isles were beleaguered; nothing told of the remorseless enemy at the gates of the sea.

All night long under a gloomy, starless sky we patrolled waters dark as the very waves of the Styx. The hope that nourished us was the thought of finding a submarine on the surface, but we heard no noise through the mysterious dark, and a long, interminable dawn revealed to us nothing but the high crumbling cliffs of a lonely and ill-reputed bay. Where were _they_ then, I have often wondered? When had they their last look at the sun? Had they any consciousness of the end which time was bringing to them with a giant's hurrying step? At about six o'clock we swung off to the southward, and in a short time the coast had faded from sight.

From six o'clock to about half past ten we swept in great circles and lines the mist encircled disk of the pale sea which had been entrusted to our keeping. We were at hand to answer any appeal for aid which might flutter through the air, to investigate any suspicious wreckage; above all, to fulfill our function of destruction. I have spoken elsewhere of the terror which lurks in the word _destroyer_. We were hunters; beaters of the ambush of the sea. About us lay the besieged waters, yellow green in colour, vexed with tide rips and mottled with shadows of haze and appearances of shoal.

We were on the bridge. Suddenly a voice called down the tube from the lookout on the mast:

"Smoke on the horizon just off the port bow, sir."

In a little while a vague smudginess made itself seen along the humid southeast, and some fifteen minutes later there emerged from this smudge the advance vessels of a convoy. Now one by one, now in twos and threes, the vessels of the convoy climbed over the dim edge of the world, a handful of destroyers accompanying the fleet. Almost every ship was camouflaged, though the largest of all, a great ocean drudge of a cargo boat, still preserved her decency of dull grey. A southeast wind blowing from behind the convoy sent the smoke of the funnels over the bows and down the western sky. There was something indescribably furtive about the whole business. The ships were going at their very fastest, but to us they seemed to be going very slowly, to be drifting almost, across the southern sky. "We advanced," as our report read later, "to take up a position with the convoy." The watch, always keen on the 660, redoubled its vigilance. The bait was there; the hunt was on. Now, if ever, was the time for submarines. I remember somebody saying, "We may see a sub." The destroyer advanced to within three miles of the convoy, which was then across her bow. The morning was sunny and clear; the sun high in the north.

"Periscope! Port bow," suddenly cried the surgeon of the ship, then on watch on the bridge. "About three hundred yards away, near that sort of a barrel thing over there. See it? It's gone now."

Powerful glasses swept the suspected area. The captain, cool as ice, took his stand by the wheel.

"There it is again, sir. About seventy-five yards nearer this way."

This time it was seen by all who stood by. The periscope was extraordinarily small, hardly larger than a stout hoe handle, and not more than two feet above the choppy sea.

"Full speed ahead," said the captain. "Sound general quarters."

I do not think there was a heart there that was not beating high, but outwardly things went on just as calmly as they had before the periscope had been sighted.

The fans of the extra boilers began to roar. The general quarters alarm, a continuous ringing, sounded its shrill call. Men tumbled to their stations from every corner of the ship, some going to the torpedo tubes, some to the guns, others to the depth charges at the stern. The wake of the destroyer, now tearing along at full speed, resembled a mill race. And now the destroyer began a beautiful manoeuvre. She became the killer, the avenger of blood. Leaving her direct course, she turned hard over to port, and at the point where her curve cut the estimated course of the German, she tossed over a buoy to mark the spot at which the German had been seen and released a depth bomb. The iron can rolled out of its chocks, and fell with a little splash into the foaming wake. The buoy, a mere wooden platform with a bit of rag, tied to an upright stick wobbled sillily behind. For about four seconds nothing happened. Then the seas behind us gave a curious, convulsive lift, one might have thought that the ocean had drawn a spasmodic breath; over this lifted water fled a frightful glassy tremor, and an instant later there broke forth with a thundering pound a huge turbid geyser which subsided, splashing noisily into streaks and eddies of foam and purplish dust. The destroyer then dropped three more in a circle round the first--a swift cycle of thundering crashes. Meanwhile the convoy, warned by our signal and by the uproar turned tail and fled from the spot. Great streamers of heavy black smoke poured from the many funnels, revealing the search for speed. In the area we had bombed, a number of dead fish began to be seen floating in the scum. By this time some of the vessels from the escort of the convoy had rushed to our assistance, and round and round the buoy they tore, dropping charge after charge. The ocean now became literally speckled with dead whiting, and I saw something that looked like an enormous eel floating belly upwards.

The convoy disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Little by little the excitement died away. Finally the only vessel left in sight on the broad shield of the sea was another American destroyer, our partner on patrol. The 305 was fitted with listening devices, and she agreed to remain behind to keep an eye and ear open. We were to have a word from her every half hour.

From twelve noon to two o'clock there were no tidings of importance. At 2:20, however, this laconic message sent us hurrying back to the scene of the morning's combat.

"Signs of oil coming to surface."

What had happened in the darkness below those yellow green waves? I am of the opinion that our first bomb, dropped directly upon her, crushed the submarine in like an egg-shell, that she had then sunk to the bottom, and developed a slow leak.

The 660 returned through a choppy sea to the battleground of the morning. We caught sight of the other destroyer from afar. She lay on the flank of a great area defiled by the bodies of fish, purple T.N.T. dust and various bits of muddy wreckage which the explosions had shaken free from the ooze. Gulls, already attracted to the spot, were circling about, uttering hoarse cries. In the heart of this disturbed area lay a great still pool of shining water and into this pool, from somewhere in the depths, huge bubbles of molasses-brown oil were rising. Reaching the surface, these bubbles spread into filmy pan cakes round whose edges little waves curled and broke.

XI

"FISHING"

A young executive officer who had discovered that I came from his part of the world, took me there for tea. I fancy that few of the destroyer folk will forget the principal hotel at the Navy's Irish base. We sat in worn plush chairs in a vast rectangular salon lit by three giant sash windows of horrible proportions. Walls newly decked with paper of a lustrous, fiery red showered down upon us their imaginary warmth. The room was cold, horribly cold, and a minuscule fire of coke burning in a tiny grate seemed to be making no effort whatsoever to improve conditions. The little glow of fire in the nest of clinkers leered with a dull malevolence. Cold--a shivery cold. My eye fled to the pictures on the fiery wall. How in the d----l did these particular pictures ever land in this particular corner of south Ireland? Two were photographic studies of ragged Alabama darkies, pictures of the kind that used to be printed on calendars in the eighteen nineties. One was entitled "I want you, ma honey" (this being addressed to a watermelon), the other being called "I'se just tired of school." These two were varied by an engraving of a race horse, some Charles I cavaliers, and a framed newspaper photograph of the 71st New York Guards en route for Tampa in 1898!

Sugar excepted, there is still plenty of good food in Ireland. The Exec. and I sat down to a very decent tea. I told all that I knew about the Exec.'s friends, that A was in a machine gun company; B in the naval aviation; C in the intelligence department and so forth. And when I had done my share of the talking, I demanded of the Exec, what he thought of his work "over there."

He answered abruptly, as if he had long before settled the question in his own mind:

"It's a game. Some of the sporting fishermen in the flotilla say that it's much like fishing ... now you use this bait, now that, now this rod, now another, and all the time you are following ... following the fish.... It's a game, the biggest game in all the world, for it has the biggest stakes in all the world. There's far more strategy to it than one would suspect. You see, it's not enough to hang round till a periscope pops up; we've got to fish out the periscope."

"Fishing, then," said I. "Well, how and where do you fish?"

"On the chequer board of the Irish Sea and the Channel. You see the surface of the endangered waters is divided up into a number of squares or areas, and over each area some kind of a patrol boat stands guard. She may be a destroyer, ... perhaps a 'sloop.' Now let's suppose she's out there looking for 'fish.'"

"Yes, even as a fisherman might wade out into a river in which he knows that fish are to be caught. But how is your destroyer fisherman to know just what fish are to be caught, and in just what bays and inlets he ought to troll?"

"That's the function of the Naval Intelligence. Have you realized the immense organization which Britain has created especially to fight the submarine? You'll find it all in the war cabinet report for 1917. Before the war, there were only twenty vessels employed as mine sweepers and on auxiliary patrol duties; to-day the number of such craft is about 3,800, and is constantly increasing. And don't forget the sea planes, balloons, and all the other parts of the outfit. So while our destroyer fisherman is casting about in square x, let us say, all these scouting friends of his are trying to find the 'fish' for him. So every once in a while he gets a message via wireless, 'fish seen off bay blank,' 'fish reported in latitude A and longitude B.' ... If these messages refer to spots in his neighbourhood, you can be sure that he keeps an extra sharp lookout. So no matter where the fish goes, there is certain to be a fisher." _During a recent month the mileage steamed by the auxiliary patrol forces in British home waters exceeded six million miles_.

"Now while you are beating the waters for them, what about the fish himself?"

"The fish himself? Well, the ocean is a pretty big place, and the fish has the tremendous advantage of being invisible. A submarine need only show _three inches_ of periscope if the weather is calm. She can travel a hundred miles completely submerged, and she can remain on the bottom for a full forty-eight hours. Squatting on the bottom is called "lying doggo." But she has to come up to breathe and recharge her batteries, and this she does at night. Hence the keenness of the night patrol. And here is another parallel to fishing. You know that when the wind is from a certain direction, you will find the fish in a certain pool, whilst if the wind blows from another quarter, you will find the fish in another place? Same way with submarines. Let the wind blow from a certain direction, and they will run up and down the surface off a certain lee shore. You can just bet that that strip of shore is well patrolled. Moreover, submarines can't go fooling round all over the sea, they _have_ to concentrate in certain squares, say the areas which lie outside big ports or through which a great marine highway lies."

"Suppose that you manage to injure a fish, what then?"

"Well, if the fish isn't too badly injured, he will probably make for one of the shallows, and lie doggo till he has time to effect repairs. Result, every shallow is watched as carefully as a miser watches his gold. And sea planes have a special patrol of the coast to keep them off the shallows by the shore."

"Sometimes, then, in the murk of night, a destroyer must bump into one by sheer good luck?"

"Oh, yes, indeed. Not long ago, a British destroyer racing through a pitch dark rainy night cut a sub almost in half. There was a tremendous bump that knocked the people on the bridge over backward, a lot of yelling, and then a wild salvo of rain blotted everything out. I think they managed to rescue one of the Germans. Pity they didn't get the fish itself. You know it's a great stunt to get your enemy's codes. We get them once in a while. Ever seen a pink booklet on any of your destroyer trips? It's a translation of a German book of instructions to submarine commanders. On British boats they call it 'Baby-Killing at a Glance or the Hun's Vade Mecum.' Great name, isn't it? Tells how to attack convoys and all that sort of thing. Lots of interesting tricks like squatting in the path of the sun so that the lookout, blinded by the glare, shan't see you; playing dead and so on. That playing-dead stunt, if it ever did work, which I greatly doubt, is certainly no favourite now."

"Playing dead? Just what do you mean?"

"Why, a destroyer would chase a sub into the shallows and bomb her. Then 'Fritz' would release a tremendous mess of oil to make believe that he was terribly injured, and lie doggo for hours and hours. The destroyer, of course, seeing the oil, and hearing nothing from 'Fritz' was expected to conclude that 'Fritz' had landed in Valhalla, and go away. Then when she had gone away, 'Fritz,' quite uninjured, went back to his job."

"And now that stunt is out of fashion?"

"You bet it is. Our instructions are to bomb until we get tangible results. Before it announces the end of a sub, the Admiralty has to have unmistakable evidence of the sub's destruction. Not long ago, they say a sub played dead somewhere off the Channel, sent up oil, and waited for the fishers to go. In a few seconds, 'Fritz' got a depth bomb right on his ear, and up he came to the top, the most surprised and angry Hun that ever was seen. Bagged him, boat and all. He must have had a head of solid ivory.

"Got to be cruising along, now. It's four o'clock, and our tender must be waiting for me at the pier."

"Going fishing?" I asked politely.

"You bet!" he answered with a grin.

XII

AMUSEMENTS