Submarine and Anti-submarine

a submarine base is like. We take his advice, and return to our trawler. Her head is turned westward and signals are made and answered. The skipper informs us that we are about to pass thro

about to enter. But a short description can do no harm, because one of these bases is very like another, and all are absolutely impervious to enemy craft. Even if they could navigate the mine-field, so thickly strewn with both our mines and their own, and

er-head are two or three picket-boats; and a little further on, a light cruiser with her observation balloon mounted. The vast sheds beyond are the hangars of the Air Service. They are painted in a kind of Futurist style, which gives them a queer look from below, but ma

ng headquarters of the Admiral who is Commodore of the port; and behind her, in two long lines, stretching away upstream into the far distance, lies an apparently inexhaustible force of light cruisers, destroyers, and destroyer-leaders, with here and there a submarine—one is slung aloft in a dry-dock for overhauling. A side creek to the left is crowded with trawlers and drifters, whose men are now ashore ‘between sweeps.’

for repetition outside, from those which you must forget as soon as you have heard them. He begins by explaining the daily routine of the port—the mine-sweeping, which is done regularly twice a day, but at what times the enemy can only guess, and the mine-laying, which is a game of brain against brain, each side trying to see through the other’s devices and catch him with their own. An elementary example would be the obvious dodge of moving the enemy’s mine a short distance, instead of removing it altogether—so that when n

oastal submarines is therefore monotonous; but it is none the less invaluable. Besides making sure, it trains a continual succession of crews for oversea work, and gives experience to young commanders. The number of boats increas

e of purifiers, becomes oppressive to breathe—not even the head of a match will burn. Then there are two special conditions tending towards depression. First, the positive results are few, and form no measure of the work or the risks. Results are obtained, but never in proportion56 to the devotion and sanguine hopes of the Service. It is a baffling and trying experience to live for days with your eye glued to a periscope—the field of vision is contracted, and too c

ave been under fire, from gun or torpedo. Custom in the Navy is generally a sound rule; but in this particular instance, the custom did not grow up to fit the case, and does not fit it. The57 Admiral does not say anything on this point; but he tells us that the real danger a submarine commander has to face is not the gun or the torpedo. He may come off his patrol without having been shot at by either, and yet may be entitled to the credit of having been in action for days and nights on end. In fact, every minute that he is in enemy waters he is in danger from mines, and from a host of formidable pursuers—aeroplanes and Zeppelins with bombs, and fast anti-submarine craft with depth-charges and explosive sweeps. No doubt all ships are to some extent in danger from mines, but no other class of vessel is asked to run the gauntlet on the enemy’s coast to

and Leir, seventeen each; Commander Benning and Lieut. C. Moncreiffe, sixteen. More wonderful still is the fact that the first two of these officers spent fifty-six and sixty-five days respectively in enemy waters, and the other four from thirty-six to forty-nine days each. The most interesting part of their adventures cannot yet be told; but much may be guessed from an outline or two. Commander Leir, for instance, was repeatedly in action with Zeppelins, seaplanes, and anti-submarine craft, one of which he sank. He was present at the action in the Heligoland Bight in August 1914, and brought home some German prisoners. Commander Benning was

it is an almost unimaginable life. ‘Yes,’ says the Admiral, ‘in this Service, officers

by an enem

is going on, then towards the great air-sheds. As we approach the first of these, a

anes, flying ahead of the convoy. The starboard one of these had sighted a submarine at 8.30 A.M. and swooped towards her instantly. She was nearly submerged when the seapl

ct cloud. ‘What is it?’ Well, the fact is that the pilot of the other seaplane,

on patrol in that precise direction, but she62 was not due in that spot till 11 o’clock, B.S.T., and it was highly improbable she would be there so much before her time. Besides, he knew the colour of a Hun conning-tower. Undoubtedly it was ‘only a muddle.’ The explanation sounds a good one, but it is a speculation, not a certainty; and on further inquiry, it appear

ening with all her hydrophones. In the morning her watch was rewarded; she heard, first, the monotonous low ticking of a German submarine’s motors passing near her on the outward patrol—then at 8.30 the heavy dull boom of two explos

erged when the seapl

d against a convoy than against a single ship. The Captain (S.) who has already been torpedoed once hims

time is entirely ours. He takes us down to his own room, an elegant and almost spacious apartment, very unlike anything to be seen in a destroyer of the ordinary type; and he, too, answers our question positively. ‘Which is easiest—to hit a single ship or a convoy? The question answers itself—a submarine ought to get at least one bird out of a covey every time! She does not do it, perhaps; but look at the trouble we take to prevent her. Think of all the work put in by the auxiliary patrol to keep the sea fairly clear to start with—armed yachts, trawlers, whalers, drifters, motor-launches, mine-sweepers, net-drifters and motor-boats, out day and

ght hours—above all, how successful it is, and how, little by little, they have given up the chase of mercantile convoys for the attack of transports and single ships of great size and value. In one month, for instance, of the present year, 690 vessels were convoyed from Engl

The first of these is ahead of the convoy, zigzagging continuously from side to side across the whole front. The second is zigzagging in another67 direction. Suddenly, from this second destroyer, a signal is seen to fly. Her look-out has spotted the wake of a periscope 1000 yards away on her starboard bow, moving to cut off the convoy, from the right column of which it is already not more than 1500 yards distant. A torpedo fired at this moment should cross the convoy formation exactly in the middle, and would have an excellent chance of sinking either of the ce

looks very simple; but it’s mostly a matter of ten seconds

as something to sa

n of Swallow probably averted a casualty to the convoy.” He

the destroyer slips silently from her moorings and fades away d