Part 1

UNDER THE PERISCOPE

UNDER THE PERISCOPE

BY MARK BENNETT (LATE LIEUT. R.N.R.)

LONDON: 48 PALL MALL W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD. GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND

Copyright 1919

TO C. K.

But for whom this book would never have been written.

PREFACE

For those who have no knowledge of the ways and habits of submarines, a preface is unnecessary, and my only hope is that this book may enlighten them on points on which they were formerly in ignorance. One is often asked, ‘What does it feel like to be below the sea?’ and a host of questions of a similar character, and it is just these questions that I have endeavoured to answer. The incidents recorded are all founded on fact, and many of them are personal experiences.

Of my one-time comrades of the Submarine Service, however, I have a favour to ask. I beg them not to be too critical nor to point out its deficiencies, but rather to remember that this book was written while the War was still with us, and that a large amount of detail had therefore to be omitted.

Moreover, the boat described is of one particular class, and if they themselves have never served in that class of submarine, ‘more’s the pity.’

All luck to our successors in the next war, and may they fight in the open air.

M. B.

PREFATORY NOTE

Mr Bennett’s admirable book tells us of the officers and men of the Submarine Service and of the working of that wonderful vessel, the submarine. The author served throughout the war as an officer in H.M.S. submarine No.----, so that he writes of his own knowledge. Mr Bennett is a professional sailor; when he is not fighting for king and country he is an officer in His Majesty’s Mercantile Marine; and yet there is many a professional writer who may envy Mr Bennett’s skill in the craft of writing. As a rule, the man who does things is the least capable of writing about them; but when he can write, he is best of all. And of such is Mr Bennett.

The naval architect, when (in a rash moment) he gave the submarine to the Royal Navy, offered a new and a perilous enterprise to the indomitable spirit of the seaman. How that enterprise is achieved, with what courage, endurance, cheerfulness, enthusiasm, with what extraordinary skill, Mr Bennett tells us with a seamanlike modesty and precision. The task set to the Navy was how to wield a new weapon, an invisible weapon striking with the torpedo. It was not until 1910 that a British submarine went without escort into deep water and proved her capacity to cruise and fight as an independent unit. During the war, we heard a deal of the German submarine, and very little of our own Submarine Service. Mr Bennett narrates the story of one submarine, and in so doing, informs us more vividly and truly than all the official reports can ever inform us.

With the submarine, Germany very nearly defeated the entire British Navy, but not quite. The difference between victory and failure resided not in the submarine, which is machinery, but in the officers and men. Had the positions been reversed: had the British held the German strategical position, had the Germans owned the British Grand Fleet; there would have been very little left of that tremendous armada ere six months were over. The submarine, handled as Mr Bennett describes, has in fact made an end of the old Navy.

There is now the Navy that swims, the Navy that flies, and the Navy that dives. These three are one: and into what this triple machine will evolve, none knows. But it is enough to know something of the quality of the officers and men, for these are the masters of the machine.

L. COPE CORNFORD.

LONDON, _April, 1919_.

[_Printed after books were bound._]

CONTENTS

PAGE

UNDER THE PERISCOPE 1

PATROL 3

THE MOTHERS 45

EMPTY SADDLES 47

THE BOGIE MAN 67

‘EXERCISE ATTACKS’ 69

NEPTUNE AND BRITANNIA 103

PERSONNEL 105

THE DOCKYARD 145

‘SURVEY AND DEMAND’ 147

ACTION 191

THE REAL THING 193

THE SEAGULLS 231

‘FOR THOSE IN PERIL ON THE SEA’ 233

UNDER THE PERISCOPE

I

We know the ships of Carthage, We know how history speaks, We know the Roman galleys, The triremes of the Greeks. We know the cogs and frigates, The privateers and sloops, We know the line-of-battle ships, And lofty Spanish poops.

II

We know the great Armada, We know the ships of Drake, We know the three-decked wooden walls, Of Nelson’s battle wake. We know the Super-Dreadnoughts, We know the cruisers lean; But, save our foes, speak up, who knows The British Submarine?

PATROL

His Majesty’s Submarine ‘123’ lay alongside her depot ship _Parentis_, her lean, gray superstructure showing up ghostly white against the dark outline of the larger vessel.

The night was warm, though dark and overcast, and the light south-easterly breeze merely ruffled the waters of the harbour, causing a lap-lapping noise between the two vessels, the only sound that broke the intense silence of the summer night.

As the great fleet, anchored in the harbour, swung to the turn of the tide, ‘123’ exposed her broadside, a long low hull bulging outwards at the centre, and supporting the superstructure, on the fore part of which the gun was mounted. Amidships rose the conning-tower and the little bridge, the standard and the two periscopes, pointing up to Heaven like the fingers of an avenging angel.

The after deck was bare save for the dark rings of the hatches, leading down to her steel internals.

The anchored fleet showed up in dark blurs and splotches, as far as the eye could see. Line after line of battleships, battle cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats, backed up by a host of merchant ships of every type and size.

A light gleamed suddenly from the submarine, faded away, flashed out, and disappeared. Figures moved quietly along the deck, and the sound of subdued voices rose, broken now and then by the clump of a wet rope’s end or the clang of a closing deck locker.

Then the conning-tower hatch opened and Lieut. Commander John Raymond, R.N., in command of H.M. Submarine ‘123,’ rose to view, heaving himself through the narrow opening by painful sections.

He was a big, strongly-built man of about thirty-three, clad in an old--a very old--suit of uniform, a muffler, sea-boots, a pair of binoculars, and his own inborn modesty.

After him came the navigator, an R.N.R. Lieutenant, lovingly clasping the gyro compass repeater to his bosom, and muttering imprecations the while on the coil of electric cable which trailed up after him like a spider’s web.

‘Phew!’ he said, sniffing the air. ‘Dark night.’

The captain glanced quickly fore and aft.

‘All ready, coxswain?’ he queried.

A burly figure now loomed up on the now crowded conning-tower.

‘All ready, sir.’

Raymond leant down and pulled a lanyard, and a bell rang below in the control room.

‘Sir,’ boomed a voice as a face appeared in the circle of the hatch.

‘All ready below?’

‘All ready, sir.’

‘Group down?’[1]

‘Grouped down, sir.’

‘Let go fore and aft,’ cried Raymond to the waiting men on the superstructure.

‘All gone, sir.’

At the fore part of the conning-tower a small pedestal rose containing the magnetic compass and steering gear and a number of small switches.

Raymond pressed two of these and a hooter or ‘Klaxon Horn’ sounded below, a bell rang, and the twin screws began to revolve.

‘Astern both it is. Helm amidships.’

‘’Midships, sir,’ from the coxswain.

‘Keep a look out aft, Boyd,’ said Raymond, turning to the navigator.

‘Ay, ay, sir,’ came the answer, then ‘all clear aft, sir.’

‘The Klaxon’s sounded again.’

‘Ahead starboard, astern port. Hard-a-starboard!’ snapped Raymond.

‘Hard over, sir,’ chorused the coxswain.

‘123’ stopped coming astern, gathered herself together, and then slowly surged ahead and swung round as sedately as a dowager.

‘Stop port. Ahead port,’ snorted the ‘Klaxon.’

‘’Midships,’ from Raymond. ‘Steady. Take her out.’

‘Take her out, sir.’

The boat steadied on her course and travelled silently down the harbour on her electric motors, carefully picking her way between the dark shapes of the anchored vessels.

Conversation on the bridge was at a premium. Tempers are apt to be short and livers out of order at one o’clock in the morning.

Presently Raymond looked ahead through his binoculars and jerked the bell lanyard impatiently.

‘Group up!’ he called down the shaft.

‘Grouped up, sir,’ came the answer.

The subdued churning of the twin screws ceased and as suddenly started with redoubled energy as the batteries came in series, thrashing up the water astern and causing the boat to vibrate fore and aft as she leapt forward to the touch of the grouper switch.

Down in the electric lit interior the L.T.O.[2] and an S.T.[3] were working the motor switches, ‘making and breaking’ in obedience to the telegraph lights, to which the ‘Claxtons’ called attention. Right aft in the engine-room the Chief E.R.A.[4] was hovering over the tail shafts with an oil can and a lump of dirty waste, with the air of a demon of the revels.

Forward of him were the air compressors and main motors, and the engine clutches, and then the great eight-cylinder Diesel engines, a mass of burnished steel and brasswork in a narrow electric lit tunnel. The faint hum of the motors and the smell of fuel oil pervaded the air, but the cheery faces of the stokers on watch robbed the scene of its romance.

One of them who was whistling ‘Tennessee’ three tones flat, and bending over a clutch with a dignified expression, straightened up as a man came down the engine-room hatch.

‘’Ere, Sam, you remember that gell wot----’ he began.

‘’Strewth,’ quoth the new-comer. ‘Ain’t it got dark sudden?’

‘It usually does,’ broke in another voice from behind the engine, ‘at night-time.’

‘No, I don’t remember any gall,’ replied Sam with some asperity; ‘and wot’s more, if that clutch ain’t ready pretty damn soon, you’ll be spoke to.’

‘Way down in Tennessee----’ continued the worker, ignoring the insult, in a masterly manner.

Through the door in the engine-room bulkhead came the Chief E.R.A. to hurl an insult at a tardy message-bearer, but the hoot of the telegraph sent him diving back to his lair almost immediately.

‘Stop ’er,’ cried the L.T.O., working the switches to the accompaniment of a hiss and crackle of blue sparks.

‘Engines!’ came Raymond’s voice from above. ‘Three hundred revs.!’

‘Engines!’ shouted Furness, the L.T.O., into the engine-room. ‘Three ’undred!’

‘The ‘Chief’ waved a reply, and with a snip of switches the motors started again. Then the engine clutches came home and the Diesels began to heave with a fizz bump, fizz bump, fizz, fizz, fizz, as the needles of the ammeters came back from discharging, past zero and on to charging.

Once more Hoskins waved a grimy hand and the motor workers broke their switches. She was away on her engines at ten knots now, her exhaust, which had started in oily puffs, rapidly thinning astern to a white semi-transparent vapour.

Into the battery-room at this juncture came the ‘Sub’ of the boat, an ingenuous youth of nineteen, bearing upon his youthful shoulders as second in command all the anxieties and troubles of the world.

‘All right, Furness?’ he asked.

‘Yessir, she went off very well.’

‘Good,’ replied Seagrave, looking at the volt-metre on the low-power switchboard. ‘Keep the lighting down to a hundred and ten.’

He wandered off under the mess tables, clipped up to the steel ceiling of the compartment to examine the gyro master-compass, a large mushroom-shaped object of steel and electricity, whose rotor buzzed round at the rate of over eight thousand revolutions a minute.

On his left were the electric cooking range, lockers and battery ventilators, and overhead were the great vents which let the air out of the main ballast tanks when the boat dived.

Presently, satisfied with the ‘Sperry’ compass, he stepped forward through the watertight door into the control room, a regular holy of holies, on whose shrine were offered many tins of ‘Brasso’ daily and much elbow grease and bad language by heated and voluble ‘matlows.’[5]

Here were the levers which opened the great Kingston valves in the bottom of the boat and flooded the tanks for diving. Here was the adjusting pump, by means of which water could be pumped from any one tank to another and into or from the sea. Aft was the periscope, a long steel tube sticking up through the roof, fitted with an eye-piece and graduated rings at its lower end. On the port side were the hydroplane and diving rudder wheels, and the depth and pressure gauges. Forward was the air manifold, by means of which, on opening the Kingston valves, air could be blown into the tanks at a pressure of over 75 lbs. to the square inch, and so force the water out of them when the captain wished the boat to rise.

In the centre, up through the ceiling, was the conning-tower shaft, gained by a steel ladder, above which was another periscope and the torpedo firing gear.

Another watertight door led into the fore compartment where the battery-ventilating fans were running, and the ceiling was interlaced with the usual profusion of vents and shafts. Right aft an operator was tuning the wireless installation, beyond which were the crew’s lockers and the flag racks. On the port side was the chart table and two bunks, one high up, and the other formed by a drawer, which on being pulled out and stayed up, disclosed the bedding all neatly stowed away. Underfoot, as in the after compartment, was the great hundred-and-twenty volt battery which fed the hungry motors, and forward were the air bottles and fuel tanks.

In the bows were the torpedo-tubes, whose brass doors winked in the electric light, hiding the wicked torpedoes behind their shining faces. A turn of the bow cap and a pull at a lever, and they would be off at forty knots to reap a harvest of death and destruction. Abaft the tubes were spare torpedoes, shining steel cylinders with copper war-heads, holding sufficient T.N.T. to sink a Dreadnought.

The men were moving quietly about their work, the watch below preparing to turn in while the remainder were cleaning and adjusting and getting ready generally for the coming sea trip.

Once out of the harbour, ‘123’ lifted gently to the swell, and with her hydroplanes turned out and all hatches closed, with the exception of that from the conning-tower, was cutting through the water like a great porpoise.

By now the crew had settled down to sea routine, and only the captain, navigator, and coxswain were on the conning-tower bridge, and an occasional seaman or stoker up for a breather or smoke-oh.

Boyd, who had been looking aft intently, lowered his binoculars and glanced at the compass.

‘Bearing’s on, sir,’ he reported. ‘Course is fifty-six.’

‘All right. Steer fifty-six. That’ll do, coxswain. Helmsman to the wheel.’

The coxswain was relieved and bustled below, and a young A.B. took the wheel, or rather the electric switch which, by a movement of the finger, altered the direction of the ship’s head.

‘Wonder if we’ll see anything this time,’ continued the skipper. ‘Fritz doesn’t seem to be over-anxious about coming out lately. I never seem to have any luck, but he’ll be a nasty customer to tackle if ever we do run across him. He won’t give in while he’s got a kick left in him.’

‘Gets a bit monotonous,’ admitted Boyd. ‘My brother’s in France. Sometimes I wish I were out there too. They do see something of the scrapping at any rate. What gets on my nerves is this constant being on the alert and never seeing anything. If you were told you were to go out and strafe a Hun one wouldn’t mind. It’s the uncertainty of the business that shakes me.’

‘Now, I can’t allow you to complain of your lot,’ replied Raymond. ‘Here you are in one of the latest inventions of the twentieth century, and even that doesn’t satisfy you. When you have met George Willie in his little sardine tin you won’t be quite so anxious.’

‘Two o’clock,’ he continued, glancing at his watch. ‘We’ll dive at half-past five. Call me at a quarter past.’

‘All right. I’ll stop up till then. No need to wake Seagrave.’

Raymond’s legs disappeared down the hatch.

‘Call me if you see anything,’ he said as he went down, ‘and if you should run across Fritz, man the gun and Hun him instanter. I’ll be up before you get the first round off.’

‘Very good, sir. Good-night.’

‘Good-night.’ And the captain vanished below, like a stage demon down a trap.

Left to himself, Boyd lit a pipe, took a look round with the glasses and peered into the compass, where a thin circle of light showed up the figures on its face.

The night was clear now for the clouds had rolled away, but it was still very dark. All round was the dark rim of the horizon, and just below, quite close, was the greedy ocean, lapping up over the superstructure as the boat hurried on. The stars gleamed tranquilly and the night seemed very still.

A queer feeling this, with only the helmsman and the click of the gyro compass for company; like being adrift on the open sea in a small motor-boat. Darkness and the faint chug-chug of the engines leant an eeriness to the situation, and the proximity of the water only added to its intensity. Down through the hatch Boyd could see a small circle of the control room, where a messenger was sitting on a camp-stool reading a penny magazine with evident enjoyment. Above and all around, nature and solitude; below, men, the smell of cocoa, the engines of death and ... a penny magazine.

The watch dragged slowly on, and Boyd, seated on the little round stool screwed into the deck, began to feel the chilliness of the dawn. He rose and commenced pacing the ‘bridge.’

Not much room to walk here, for the periscope standard rose abaft the conning-tower hatch, and beyond that were the bridge berthing wires. Three steps and turn. Three steps and turn....

Then suddenly a broad white finger of light shot up over the horizon on the port bow, cleaving the darkness with an eerie suddenness.

Boyd rang the bell.

‘Tell the captain that a searchlight is visible from the enemy coast,’ he called to the messenger in the control room.

A minute’s pause, the light wavered, steadied, and went out.

‘Captain says all right, sir,’ came the voice up the hatch.

‘Thank you,’ replied Boyd, relighting his pipe and settling down on the stool again.

The boat sped on through the darkness. Somewhere away ahead, as evidenced by that broad beam of light, lay the hostile coast towards which the lean, grim-looking craft was racing as fast as Heaven and Hoskins could make her go.

A brawny stoker rose for a breath of air like some giant seal, and, in deference to the officer, took his stand on the other side of the bridge. He was followed by the signalman, and the two men lit their pipes and conversed in low tones.

Not much room up here for four men; the little bridge was crowded now.

When they had gone down, Boyd rang the bell again and muttered the magic words, ‘food and cocoa,’ to the face that appeared in the circle of light below, and presently a hand shot up out of the hatch bearing a steaming mug which he hastily relieved of its burden.

The hand disappeared and returned with a biscuit-tin, and finally vanished altogether.

The dawn was now paling the eastern sky, and the wedge of fore-deck began to take shape and harden as the light gained strength. The faint glow in the compass died out, and the coast ahead became visible: a distant, mountainous country, looking menacing in the struggling dawn.

The navigator pulled out his watch.

‘Five o’clock,’ he muttered. ‘Better get a star sight before diving.’

Telling the helmsman to ring the bell if he saw anything, he went below into the control room, where the thump and bang of the engines smothered all other sounds, and through into the fore compartment, treading lightly and dodging under the hammocks and over the sleeping men stretched out on the deck.

Passing through the long green curtains, he stepped into that space dignified by the high-sounding name of ‘Ward Room,’ where Seagrave and Raymond were sleeping, and culling from a drawer his sextant and a watch, returned on deck.

By the time he had taken his sights the dawn was well advanced, and after a careful look round the horizon he once more rang the bell.

‘Call the captain and tell him it’s five-fifteen, please.’

‘Ay, ay, sir.’

Presently Raymond came up and took a long look at the distant coast.

‘Well, young feller,’ he said, lowering his glasses, ‘seen anything?’

‘Not so as you’d notice it,’ replied Boyd. ‘That light only showed up for five minutes or so. I got some sights by the way, as the land’s too far off for decent bearings.’

‘What you’ll suffer from, my lad,’ said Raymond with a grin, ‘is sextantitis if you carry on as you’re doing now. It’s a very common complaint among R.N.R. Lieutenants, and comes from the constant habit of taking sights. The patient rises at one in the morning and tries to find his latitude with a hambone and a piece of string.’

‘Better to be sure than sorry, anyway,’ answered Boyd.

‘Well, you brought it on yourself. If you only knew what an effort it costs me to be funny at this hour in the morning you wouldn’t ask for it. I tell you it completely defeats me. When we get back I shall have to take a course of something, or drink unpleasant mixtures out of green bottles.’

‘If it’s whisky you mean I can quite believe you,’ returned Boyd, with his legs down the hatch. ‘Well, so she goes. Course fifty-six. Fine weather and no fish.’

‘Give Seagrave a shake when you get below,’ the skipper called after him. ‘Tell him I’m going to dive in ten minutes.’

‘Achchha, Sahib,’ and Boyd vanished below.

Raymond sat down and lit a pipe, keeping a careful look-out over the oily swell of smooth water. Presently he pressed the telegraph switches and the engines stopped.

‘Diving stations!’ he ordered. ‘Shut off for diving! Lower deck control!’

‘Both engine clutches out, sir,’ bellowed a voice from below.

‘Ay, ay,’ returned the skipper, and then turning to the helmsman,--

‘Down below,’ he added.

The sailor closed the magnetic compass lid and screwed it well home, unshipped the gyro repeater and decamped to continue his task at the steering position in the control room.

Raymond took a final look round, and collecting the spare glasses and all the odd gear about the bridge, clambered down the conning-tower, shutting the lid after him, and screwing the strong back well into position. On the order ‘Diving stations,’ the scene below had become one of ordered confusion. Every man had his own station and duty to perform, both when diving and rising, and by the time Raymond got below all was ready.

Hoskins, the Chief E.R.A., was at the air manifold, ready to let the air out of the smaller tanks and so admit the water.