Diary of a U-Boat Commander

rt business to-

to-night, then f

eading my diary. Strange how it amuses one to see little bits of oneself on pa

es that I feel I want to talk intimately wit

on to make us think we were to see the Grand Fleet, and we promptly dived. We cruised towards her for about

riscope, gave us a certain amount of information, and we gathered that all this

in the control room (my action statio

being held in Alten's hands. It is all very well for the crew, for, to start with, they have no imagination, and to most of them their mental horizon stops at the walls of the boat. Secondly,

, such as: "Raise!" "Lower!" "Take her down to ten metres!" "Hal

an air of unconcern whic

r unknown to me, and there was no great danger, but simply that I lo

d tube. S

almost immediately

t, and the starboard torpedo proc

the explosion, but all we were vouchsafe

er when Alten had calmed down somewhat. We were about to surface and give her the gun, when luckily Alten took a good sweep round with the skyscra

ty metres we decided to

nly forty-eight hours before we sailed. He launched forth into a tirade against the torpedo staff at Bruges, and, warming to his subject, he roundly abused the whole of the depot pers

Alten is an exception; he left the Hamburg-Amerika on two years' half pay in 1912, and was, of course, kept on in 1914. After all, the depot staff are Germans, and as such labour for the Fatherland, and though their work in office and workship is not so dangerous as ours, on the other hand they have not got the stimulati

ing this trip, and not once have we had a chance on the surface of getting at the two external tubes; add to which our depth gear, with

with their deep depth gear, which is of the unrestrained Uhlan type, i.e., weight and valve interdepen

prefer the Uhlan principle of valve conjuncting with weight, but it would be interesti

ition on depth gears; I must g

but the small airship was still hangin

awn," as the navigator calls them, so far from land, and at dark we surfaced and proceeded

zon, not a vestige of mast

ss of everything to do a really good series of Müller on the upper deck, stripped t

ster, though of no family, was, I could plainly see, struck by my development, and asked to be initiated into the series of exercise

her, appeared above the horizon. The visibility was extreme,

he would have another look at the convoy. We eased speed, came up to six

tres, accompanying this order with another to the motor room demanding utmost speed

at we were at ten metres. I looked, and of course saw nothing; furious at the tric

whole British battle c

ld take. The port foremost motor was sparking like the devil, rings of cursed sparks shooting round the commut

d, when the sparking assumed the appearance of a ring of fire and, f