Submarine and Anti-submarine

lieved that the day of the big battleship was practically over—that such vessels could be ‘pulled down’ with certainty by any enterprising submarine commander, without any corresponding risk to

rger ships of war, but has not rendered them obsolete or kept them from going about their true business, the control of the sea; and as time goes

were offering a hundred targets to one. Our cruisers were all over the North Sea, while no German ships could be met there except an occasional mine-layer like the K?nigin Luise. This state of things has only become more invariable as the War has developed; and the most remarkable result, so far, of the contest between th

ons, with a complement of 268 officers and men, of whom some half were saved. The boat which sank her was the

d Cressy, old ships of 12,000 tons and 18 knots’ speed, which were out on patrol duty in the North Sea, and80 were about to take up their stations for the day’s work. The danger of the submarine was hardly yet fully recognised; and when the Aboukir was struck by a violent explosion, the general belief in the squadron was that she had run foul of a mine. She listed heavily and sank slowly, her funnels almost level with the water, and the smoke coming out as from

e said by Lieutenant Harrison to have sunk one of the attacking U-boats. ‘I reckon her gunners,’ said a survivor from the Aboukir, ‘were about the bravest men that ever lived. They kept up the firing until she had 40 degrees of list. They died gamely, did those fellows.’ Their shipmates were worthy of them. ‘There was absolutely no panic on the cruiser; the men were as calm as at drill.’ At last some trawlers came up; and, after two81 hours, some destroyers. Only

ich, a few months later, destroyed U. 29 (Weddigen’s boat) by a brilliant and almost reck

e line were the London and the Formidable, the latter of which was suddenly shaken by a violent explosion, and not long afterwards by a second one. Even then, the ship did not sink till forty-five minutes after; and if it had not been for the rough weather and icy water, boats and rafts might have been got away with most of the crew. As it82 was, no steam-pinnaces could be got out, and the oars of the 42-foot cutter and other boats were nearly all smashed against the ship’s sides. The whole company, from the officers, giving quiet orders on the bridge, to the men smoking on the slant deck, behaved a

er 200 men. On April 11, the Wayfarer transport was torpedoed, and ran ashore off Queenstown. On May 1, the Recruit,

the 50-ton smack, Pr

boats succeeded in inflicting another double loss on us, at a moment when the Army needed the strongest support to ensure success. On May 26, a single torpedo sa

deck touched the water, and in five minutes capsized completely, but remained flo

llowing years, and then greatly admired. She also, on May 27, was supporting the army in action on the Gallipoli peninsula, when a German torpedo ended her twenty years’ career. She carried about 760 officers and men, but nearly all of them were saved. In June, two torpedo-boats, the Greenfly and Mayfly, of 215 tons, were sunk; the Roxburgh, a 10,000-ton cru

an, carrying reinforcements for the 29th Division in Gallipoli, and details of the Royal Army Medical Corps, when she was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank rapidly. She had on board 32 military officers and 1,350 troops, in addition to her own crew of 220 officers and men. Of all these, only 600 were saved; and for the first time in modern war we suffered the cruel loss of soldiers to the strength of a whole battalion killed—not in battle, but helpless and unresisting, without the chance of firing a shot or delivering a last charge with the

eptember 19, the Ramazan, with 385 Indian troops on board, was shelled and sunk by a submarine, off Antikythera. In October, the transport Marquette was sunk in the ?gean. On November 3,87 the transport Mercian was heavily shelled, and had nearly 100 killed and wounded. On Novembe

already noted, our control of the North Sea was a continuous and effective control, and every effort was made, especially after the flight of the Germans from Jutland, to bring out the enemy fleet from its hiding-place. These efforts, of course, involved the exposure of our advanced forces to certain risks. On August 19, there was a report that the High Canal Fleet was at sea again. Hope outstripped belief, and light cruisers were sent out in every direction to find the enemy. Two of these, the Nottingham and the Falmouth—good ships of 5,400 and 5,2

ral von Capelle, by the Prussian Minister of Finance in the Diet, and by the chief military writers in the Press, that the promise of an American army was a boast and a deception, that the American troops could not and would not cross the Atlantic, because of the triumphant activity of the U-boats. Of the complete failure to make good these assurances no better account need be given than that supplied by the German Admiralty, in answer to the complaints89 of their own people. Towards the end of July 1918, when there was no longer any possibility of concealing the presence of a large and victorious American force in France, Admiral von Holtzendorff, the Admiralty Chief of Staff, gave the following explanation to the K?lnische Zeitung. He admitted the success of the Allies in improving oversea transport, especially the transport of troops from America. But in reply to the statement that there was i

oltzendorff does not explain the official assurances by which the German public was deceived for more than a year, and it only partially explains the ill success of the

sank over 300 enemy vessels. We lost, of course, many more; but when it is remembered that we were offering to our enemies every week more than four times as many targets as they offered us during the whole three years, it will be admitted that the comparison is not one to give them much ground for sat

r of steamers (some carrying iron ore for military use), the following war-ships: three destroyers, three transports, one old battleship or cruiser, one light cruiser,91 and one armed auxiliary. In the Dardanelles or Sea of Marmora were sunk or destroyed the following, besides a very large number of ships with stores or provisions for the troops in Gallipoli: two battle-ships, four gun-boats, one armed German auxiliary, seven transports, three ammunition ships and one amm

ot in the happiest of circumstances, for one of his officers was ill, and to afford him some relief from the exhausted atmosphere below, it became imperatively necessary to rise to the surface. No sooner was the periscope above water, than the commander sighted a German light cruiser, the Héla, in a position where s

ay German destroyers, and four on armed auxiliary vessels. Lieut.-Commander Benning (E. 5) hit an auxiliary in April 1915, but did not sink her. In June, Lieut.-Commander Moncrieffe hit another, the America, so badly that she was run ashore. In September, Commander Benning sank a third outright; and in December, Lieut.-Commander Duff-Dunbar (E. 16) s

rd from the Admiral Commanding our Submarine Base, in Chapter IV. The simple story is that Lieut.-Commander G. Kellett, finding his boat (S. 1) so far disabled that she could not93 get home on her own engines, took over a German trawler by force, without attracting undue attention, and came safely into port, towed from enemy waters by an enemy boat. The remaini

nd on November 5, Commander Lawrence (in J. 1) achieved the brilliant feat of torpedoing two German Dreadnoughts—the Grosser Kurfurst, which was laid down in 1913 and finished since the War began, and the Kronprinz, which was both laid down and commissioned since August 1914. A success of this kind, though not final, may well be set against the sinking of much older and more vulnerable ships, like the Formidable, Triumph, and Majestic; and it must be remembered that the disappearance of these thre