The Victory At Sea

II

The Allied submarines, like many other patrol craft, spent much of their time in those restricted waters which formed the entrances to the British Isles. Their favourite places were the English Channel, St. George's Channel, which forms the southern entrance to the Irish Sea, and the northern passage-way between Scotland and Ireland. At these points, it may be remembered, the cargo ships could usually be found sailing singly, either entirely unescorted, or escorted inadequately, while on their way to join a convoy or to their destinations after the dispersal of a convoy; these areas were thus almost the only places where the German submarines had much chance of attacking single vessels. The territory was divided into squares, each one of which was indicated by a letter: and the section assigned to each submarine was known as its "billet." Under ordinary circumstances, the Allied submarine spent all its time, while patrolling, on its own particular "billet"; only in case the pursuit of an enemy led it outside the "square" was it permissible to leave. Allied submarines also hunted the U-boats in the North Sea on the routes which the latter had to take in coming out or returning through the passages in the German mine-fields of the Heligoland Bight, or through the Skager Rack.

As previously explained, in the daytime the Allied submarine remained under the water, its periscope exposed for a short time every fifteen minutes or so, sweeping the sea for a distance of many miles. As soon as darkness set in, the boat usually emerged, began taking in new air and recharging its batteries, the crew seizing the opportunity to stretch their legs and catch a welcome glimpse of the external world. The simple fact that the Allied submarines spent the larger part of their time under water, while the German spent the larger part of their time on the surface, gave our boats a great military advantage over the foe, but it likewise made existence in our submarine service more arduous. Even on the coldest winter days there could be no artificial heat, for the precious electricity could not be spared for that purpose, and the temperature inside the submarine was the temperature of the water in which it sailed. The close atmosphere, heavily laden also with the smell of oil from the engines and the odours of cooking, and the necessity of going for days at a time without a bath or even a wash, added to the discomfort. The stability of a submerged submarine is by no means perfect; the vessel is constantly rolling, and a certain number of the crew, even the experienced men, are frequently seasick. This movement sometimes made it almost impossible to stay in a bunk and sleep for any reasonable period; the poor seaman would perhaps doze off, but a lurch of the vessel would send him sprawling on the deck. One could hardly write, for it was too cold, or read, for there was little light; and because of the motion of the vessel, it was difficult to focus one's eyes on the page. A limited amount of smoking was permitted, but the air was sometimes so vitiated that only the most vigorous and incessant puffing could keep a cigarette alight. One of the most annoying things about the submarine existence is the fact that the air condenses on the sides as the coldness increases, so that practically everything becomes wet; as the sailor lies in his bunk this moisture is precipitated upon him like raindrops. This combination of discomforts usually produced, after spending a few hours under the surface, that mental state commonly known as "dopey."

The usual duration of a "cruise" was eight days, and by the end of that time many of the crew were nearly "all in," and some of them entirely so. But the physical sufferings were the least discomfiting. Any moment the boat was likely to hit one of the mines the Germans were always planting. A danger which was particularly vexatious was that a British or an American submarine was just about as likely to be attacked by Allied surface craft as the Germans themselves. At the beginning, recognition signals were arranged by which it was expected that an Allied under-water craft, coming to the surface, could make its identity known to a friendly warship; sometimes these signals succeeded, but more frequently they failed, and the attacks which British and American destroyers made upon their own submarines demonstrated that there was no certainty that such signals would offer any protection. A rather grim order directed all destroyers and other patrol craft to sink any submarine on sight, unless there was positive information that a friendly submarine was operating in the neighbourhood. To a large extent, therefore, the life of our submarine sailors was the same as that of the Germans. Our men know how it feels to have a dozen depth charges explode around them, for not infrequently they have had to endure this sort of thing from their own comrades. Mistakes of this sort, even though not very numerous, were so likely to happen at any time that whenever an Allied submarine saw an Allied destroyer at a distance, it usually behaved just as a German would have behaved under the same conditions: it dived precipitately to the safety of deep water. Our men, that is, did not care to take the risk of a discussion with the surface craft; it was more prudent to play the part of an enemy. One day one of the American submarines, lying on the surface, saw an American destroyer, and, cheered in their loneliness by the sight of such a friendly vessel, waited for it to approach, making all the identification signals carefully set down in the books. Instead of a cordial greeting, however, about twenty rounds of projectiles began falling about the L-boat, which as hastily as possible dropped to sixty feet under the surface. In a few minutes depth charges began exploding around him in profusion, the plates of the vessel shook violently, the lights went out, and the end seemed near. Making a last effort, the American submarine rose to the surface, sent up all the recognition signals the officers could think of, and this time with success. The destroyer approached, the commander shouting from the bridge:

"Who are you?"

"American submarine A L-10."

"Good luck, old man," came a now familiar voice from the bridge. "This is Bill."

The commander of the destroyer and the commander of the submarine had been room-mates at Annapolis!

In other ways our submarine force passed through the same experiences as the Germans. Its adventures shed the utmost light upon this campaign against merchantmen which the Germans had depended upon to win the war. The observer at the periscope was constantly spotting huge Allied merchantmen making their way into port. The great ships sailed on, entirely oblivious of the periscope and the eye of the British or American watcher fixed upon them.

"How easy to sink her!" the observer would say to himself. This game in which the Germans were engaged was a dangerous one, because of Allied anti-submarine craft; but, when it came to attacking merchant ships, it was the easiest thing in the world. After a few weeks in a submarine, it grew upon our men that the wonder was not that the Germans had sunk so many merchant ships, but that they had sunk so few. Such an experience emphasized the conviction, which was prevalent in both the British and American navies, that the Germans were not particularly skilful at the occupation which seemed to be so congenial to them. Indeed, there are few things in the world that appear so absolutely helpless as a great merchant ship when observed through the periscope of an under-water boat.

Whenever an Allied submarine met its enemy the contest was usually a short one. The issue, one way or the other, was determined in a few minutes. On rare occasions there were attempts to ram; almost invariably, however, it was the torpedo which settled the conflict. If our boat happened to be on the surface when it sighted the German, which, however, was very seldom the case, the first manœuvre was to dive as quickly and as unostentatiously as possible. If it succeeded in getting under before the U-boat discovered its presence, it then crept up, guided only by the periscope, until it had reached a spot that was within range. The combat, as was the case so frequently in this war, was one-sided. The enemy submarine seldom knew its assailant was anywhere in the neighbourhood; a merchant ship, from its relatively high bridge, could sometimes see the torpedo approach and turn out of its way; but it was almost impossible to see a wake from the low conning-tower or periscope of a submarine, and no one except the observer had a glimpse of the surface. The small size of the submarine was in itself a great protection; we launched many torpedoes, but only occasionally scored a hit. The missile would usually pass a few feet ahead or astern, or would glide over or under the submerged hulk, perhaps a few inches only saving it from destruction. Once an American torpedo hit its enemy squarely on the side but failed to explode! If the torpedo once struck and functioned, however, it was all over in a few seconds. A huge geyser of water would leap into the air; and the submarine would sometimes rise at the same time, or parts of it would fly in a dozen directions; then the waters would gradually subside, leaving a mammoth oil patch, in which two or three members of the crew might be discovered struggling in the waves. Most of the men in the doomed vessel never knew what had struck them.

Thus, early one evening in May, 1918, the E-35, a British submarine, was patrolling its billet in the Atlantic, about two hundred miles west of Gibraltar. About two or three miles on the port beam a long, low-lying object was distinguished on the surface; the appearance was nondescript, but, to the practised eye at the periscope, it quickly took shape as an enemy submarine. As the sea was rather rough, the E-35 dived to forty feet; after a little while it ascended to twenty-six, put up the periscope, and immediately saw, not far away, a huge enemy submarine proceeding north at a leisurely pace, never once suspecting that one of its own kind was on its trail. In order to get within range and cut the German off, the Britisher dived again to forty feet, went ahead for twenty minutes with all the speed it could muster, and again came near enough to the surface to put up its periscope. Now it was directly astern; still the British submarine was not near enough for a sure shot, so again it plunged beyond periscope depth, coming up at intervals during the next hour, each time observing with satisfaction that it was lessening the distance between itself and its prey. When the range had been decreased to two hundred and fifty yards, and when the E-35 had succeeded in getting in such a position that it could fire its torpedo, the missile was launched in the direction of the foe. But this was only another of the numerous occasions when the shot missed. Had the German submarine been a surface ship, it would have seen the wake and probably escaped by flight; but still it sailed nonchalantly on its way, never suspecting for a moment that a torpedo had missed its vitals by only a few feet. Soon the E-35 crept still closer, and fired two torpedoes simultaneously from its bow tubes. Both hit at the same time. Not a glimpse of the German submarine was seen from that moment. A terrific explosion was heard, a mountain of water rose in the air, then in a few seconds everything was still. A small patch of oil appeared on the surface; this gradually expanded in size until it covered a great area; and then a few German sailors came up and started swimming toward the British vessel.

We Americans had seven submarines based on Berehaven, Ireland, whose "billets" were located in the approaches to the Irish Sea. The most spectacular achievement of any one of our boats was a curious mix-up with a German submarine, the details of which have never been accurately ascertained, but the practical outcome of which was indisputably the sinking of the German boat. After a week's hard work on patrol, the A L-2 was running back to her base on the surface when the lookout sighted a periscope. The A L-2 at once changed her course, the torpedo was made ready to fire, when the quiet of the summer afternoon was rent by a terrific roar and explosion. It was quite apparent that something exceedingly distressing had happened to the German submarine; the American turned, and made a steep dive, in an attempt to ram the enemy, but failed. Listening with the hydrophone, the A L-2 could hear now the whirring of propellers, which indicated that the submarine was attempting to gain surface and having difficulty in doing so, and now and then the call letters of the German under-water signal set, which seemed to show that the vessel was in distress and was sending appeals for aid. According to the Admiralty records, a German submarine operating in that area never returned to port; so it seems clear enough that this German was lost. Commander R. C. Grady, who commanded the American submarine division, believes that the German spotted the American boat before it was itself seen, that it launched a torpedo, that this torpedo made an erratic course (a not infrequent trick of a torpedo) around our ship, returned and hit the vessel from which it started. There are others who think that there were two German submarines in the neighbourhood, that one fired at our boat, missed it, and that its torpedo sped on and struck its mate. Probably the real facts about the happening will never be explained.

Besides the actual sinkings to their credit, the Allied submarines accomplished strategic results of the utmost importance. We had reason to believe that the Germans feared them almost more than any other agency, unless it was the mine. "We got used to your depth charges," said the commander of a captured submarine, "and did not fear them; but we lived in constant dread of your submarines. We never knew what moment a torpedo was going to hit us." So greatly did the Germans fear this attack that they carefully avoided the areas in which the Allied under-water boats were operating. We soon learned that we could keep any section free of the Germans which we were able to patrol with our own submarines. It also soon appeared that the German U-boats would not fight our subsurface vessels. At first this may seem rather strange; certainly a combat between two ships of the same kind, size, and armament would seem to be an equal one; the disinclination of the German to give battle under such conditions would probably strike the layman as sheer cowardice. But in this attitude the Germans were undoubtedly right.

The business of their submarines was not to fight warships; it was exclusively to destroy merchantmen. The demand made upon the U-boat commanders was to get "tonnage! tonnage!" Germany could win the war in only one way: that was by destroying Allied shipping to such an extent that the Allied sea communications would be cut, and the supplies of men and munitions and food from the United States shut off. For this tremendous task Germany had an inadequate number of submarines and torpedoes. Only by economizing to the utmost extent on these vessels and these weapons could she entertain any hope of success. Had Germany possessed an unlimited quantity of submarines and torpedoes, she might perhaps have profitably expended some of them in warfare on British "H-boats" and American "L-boats"; or, had there been a certainty of "getting" an Allied submarine with each torpedo fired, it would have been justifiable to use these weapons, small as was the supply. The fact was, however, that the Allies expended many torpedoes for every submarine sunk; and this was clearly a game which Germany could not afford to play. Evidently the U-boats had orders to slip under the water whenever an Allied submarine was seen; at least this was the almost invariable procedure. Thus the Allied submarines compelled their German enemies to do the one thing which worked most to their disadvantage: that is, to keep submerged when in the same area with our submarines; this not only prevented them from attacking merchantmen, but forced them to consume their electric power, which, as I have already explained, greatly diminished their efficiency as attacking ships.

The operations of Allied submarines also greatly diminished the value of the "cruiser" submarines which Germany began to construct in 1917. These great subsurface vessels were introduced as an "answer" to the convoy system. The adoption of the convoy, as I have already explained, made it ineffective for the Germans to hunt far out at sea. Until the Allies had put this plan into operation, the relatively small German U-boats could go two or three hundred miles into the Atlantic and pick off almost at will the merchant ships, which were then proceeding alone and unescorted. But now the destroyers went out to a point two or three hundred miles from the British coast, formed a protecting screen around the convoy, and escorted the grouped ships into restricted waters. The result of this was to drive the submarines into these coastal waters; here again, however, they had their difficulties with destroyers, subchasers, submarines, and other patrol craft. It will be recalled that no destroyer escort was provided for the merchant convoys on their way across the Atlantic; the Allies simply did not have the destroyers for this purpose. The Germans could not send surface raiders to attack these convoys in mid-ocean, first, because their surface warships could not escape from their ports in sufficient numbers to accomplish any decisive results, and, secondly, because Allied surface warships accompanied every convoy to protect them against any such attack. There was only one way in which the Germans could attack the convoys in mid-ocean. A fleet of great ocean-going submarines, which could keep the sea for two or three months, might conceivably destroy the whole convoy system at a blow. The scheme was so obvious that Germany in the summer of 1917 began building ships of this type. They were about 300 feet long, displaced about 3,000 tons, carried fuel and supplies enough to maintain themselves for three or four months from their base, and, besides torpedoes, had six-inch guns that could outrange a destroyer. By the time the armistice was signed Germany had built about twenty of these ships. But they possessed little offensive value against merchantmen. The Allied submarines and destroyers kept them from operating in the submarine zone. They are so difficult to manœuvre that not only could they not afford to remain in the neighbourhood of our anti-submarine craft, but they were not successful in attacking merchant vessels. They never risked torpedoing a convoy, and rarely even a single vessel, but captured a number by means of their superior gunfire. These huge "cruiser submarines," which aroused such fear in the civilian mind when the news of their existence first found its way into print, proved to be the least harmful of any of the German types.

The Allied submarines accomplished another result of the utmost importance. They prevented the German U-boats from hunting in groups or flotillas. All during 1917 and 1918 the popular mind conjured up frightful pictures of U-boat squadrons, ten or fifteen together, lying in wait for our merchantmen or troopships. Hardly a passenger crossed the ocean without seeing a dozen German submarines constantly pursuing his ship. In a speech which I made to a group of American editors who visited England in September, 1918, I touched upon this point. "I do not know," I told these journalists, "how many submarines you gentlemen saw on the way over here, but if you had the usual experience, you saw a great many. I have seen many accounts in our papers on this subject. If you were to believe these accounts, you could only conclude that many vessels have crossed the ocean with difficulty because submarines were so thick that they scraped all the paint off the vessels' sides. All of these accounts are, of course, unofficial. They get into the American papers in various ways. It is to be regretted that they should be published and thereby give a false impression. Some time ago I saw a letter from one of our men who came over here on a ship bound into the English Channel. This letter was written to his girl. He said that he intended to take the letter on shore and slip it into a post box so that the censor should not see it. The censor did see it and it eventually came to me. This man was evidently intent on impressing on his girl the dangers through which he had passed. It related that the vessel on which he had made the voyage had met two or three submarines a day; that two spies were found on board and hanged; and it said, 'When we arrived off our port there were no less than eighteen submarines waiting for us. Can you beat it?'"

Perhaps in the early days of the war the German U-boats did hunt in flotillas; if so, however, they were compelled to abandon the practice as soon as the Allied submarines began to operate effectively. I have already indicated the circumstances which reduced their submarine operations to a lonely enterprise. In the open sea it was impossible to tell whether a submarine was a friend or an enemy. We never knew whether a submarine on the surface was one of our own or a German; as a result, as already said, we gave orders to attack any under-water boat, unless we had absolute knowledge that it was a friend. Unquestionably the Germans had the same instructions. It would therefore be dangerous for them to attempt to operate in groups, for they would have no way of knowing that their supposed associate was not an Allied or an American submarine. Possibly, even after our submarines had become exceedingly active, the Germans may have attempted to cruise in pairs; one explanation of the strange adventure of the A L-2, as said above, was that there were two U-boats in the neighbourhood; yet the fact remains that there is no well-established case on record in which they did so. This circumstance that they had to operate singly was a strategic point greatly to our advantage, especially, as I shall describe, when we began transporting American troops.

CHAPTER IX

THE AMERICAN MINE BARRAGE IN THE NORTH SEA

I

Was there no more satisfactory way of destroying submarines than by pursuing them with destroyers, sloops, chasers, and other craft in the open seas? It is hardly surprising that our methods impressed certain of our critics as tedious and ill-conceived, and that a mere glance at a small map of the North Sea suggested a far more reasonable solution of the problem. The bases from which the German submarines found their way to the great centres of shipping were Ostend and Zeebrugge on the Belgian coast, Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven on the German coast, and the harbour of Kiel in the Baltic Sea. From all these points the voyage to the waters that lay west and south of Ireland was a long and difficult one; in order to reach these hunting grounds the German craft had either to pass through the Straits of Dover to the south, or through the wide passage-way of the North Sea that stretched between the Shetland Islands and Norway, and thence sail around the northern coast of Ireland. We necessarily had little success in attempting to interfere with the U-boats while they were making these lengthy open-sea voyages, but concentrated our efforts on trying to oppose them after they had reached the critical areas.

But a casual glance at the map convinced many people that our procedure was a mistake. And most newspaper readers in those days were giving much attention to this map. Many periodicals, published in Great Britain and the United States, were fond of exhibiting to their readers diagrams of the North Sea; these diagrams contained one heavy black bar drawn across the Straits of Dover and another drawn across the northern passage from Scotland to Norway. The accompanying printed matter informed the public that these pictures illustrated the one effective "answer" to the submarine. The black bars of printer's ink represented barrages of mines and nets, which, if they were once laid between the indicated spots, would blow to pieces any submarine which attempted to force a way across. Not a single German U-boat could therefore succeed in getting out of the North Sea. All the trans-Atlantic ships which contained the food supplies and war materials so essential to Allied success would thus be able to land on the west coast of England and France; the submarine menace would automatically disappear and the war on the sea would be won. Unfortunately, it was not only the pictorial artists employed on newspapers and magazines who insisted that this was the royal road to success. Plenty of naval men, in the United States and in Europe, were constantly advancing the contention, and statesmen in our own country and in Allied countries were similarly fascinated by this programme. When I arrived in London, in April, 1917, the great plan of confining the submarines to their bases was everywhere a lively topic of discussion. There was not a London club in which the Admiralty was not denounced for its stupidity in not adopting such a perfectly obvious plan. The way to destroy a swarm of hornets—such was the favourite simile—was to annihilate them in their nests, and not to hunt and attack them, one by one, after they had escaped into the open. What the situation needed was not a long and wearisome campaign, involving unlimited new construction to offset the increasing losses of life and shipping, and altogether too probable defeat in the end, but a swift and terrible blow which would end the submarine menace overnight.

The naval officers who expressed fears that, under the shipping conditions prevailing in 1917, such a brilliant performance could not possibly be carried out in time to avoid defeat, merely gained a reputation for timidity and lack of resourcefulness. When the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, in 1915 declared that the British fleet would "dig the Germans out of their holes like rats," his remarks did not greatly impress naval strategists, but they certainly sounded a note which was popular in England. One fact, not generally known at that time, demonstrated the futility of the whole idea. Most newspaper critics assumed that the barrage from Dover to Calais was keeping the submarines out of the Channel. That the destroyers, aircraft, and other patrols were safely escorting troopships and other vessels across the Channel was a fact of which the British public was justly proud. Yet it did not necessarily follow that the submarines could not use the Channel as a passage-way from their German bases to their operating areas in the focus of Allied shipping routes. The mines and nets in the Channel, of which so much was printed in the first three years of the war, did not offer an effective barrier to the submarines. This was due to various reasons too complicated for description in a book of this untechnical nature. The unusually strong tides and rough weather experienced in the vicinity of the Straits of Dover are well known. As one British officer expressed it at the time, "our experience in attempting to close the Strait has involved both blood and tears"—blood because of the men who were lost in laying the mines and nets, and tears because the arduous work of weeks would be swept away in a storm of a single night. In addition, at this stage of the war the British were still experimenting with mines; they had discovered gradually that the design which they had used up to that time—the same design which was used in the American navy—was defective. But the process of developing new mines in wartime had proved slow and difficult; and the demands of the army on the munition factories had prevented the Admiralty from obtaining a sufficient number. The work of the Dover patrols was a glorious one, as will appear when all of the facts come to public knowledge. But in 1917 this patrol was not preventing the U-boats from slipping through the Channel. The Straits of Dover, at the point where this so-called barrage was supposed to have existed, is about twenty miles wide. The passage-way between Scotland and Norway is 250 miles wide. The water in the Channel has an average depth of a few fathoms; in the northern expanse of the North Sea it reaches an average depth of 600 feet. Mining in such deep waters had never been undertaken or even considered before by any nation. The English Channel is celebrated for its strong tides and stormy weather, but it is not the scene of the tempestuous gales which rage so frequently in the winter months in these northern waters. If the British navy had not succeeded in constructing an effective mine barrier across the English Channel, what was the likelihood that success would crown an effort to build a much greater obstruction in the far more difficult waters to the north?

The one point which few understood at that time was that the mere building of the barrage would not in itself prevent the escape of submarines from the North Sea. Besides building such a barrage, it would be necessary to protect it with surface vessels. Otherwise German mine-sweepers could visit the scene, and sweep up enough of the obstruction to make a hole through which their submarines could pass. It is evident that, in a barrage extending 250 miles, it would not be difficult to find some place in which to conduct such sweeping operations; it is also clear that it would take a considerable number of patrolling vessels to watch such an extensive barrier and to interfere with such operations. Moreover, we could not send our mine-layers into the North Sea without destroyer escort; that is, it would be necessary to detach a considerable part of our forces to protect these ships while they were laying their mines. Those responsible for anti-submarine operations believed that in the spring and summer of 1917 it would have been unwise to detach these anti-submarine vessels from the area in which they were performing such indispensable service. The overwhelming fact was that we needed all the surface craft we could assemble for the convoy system. The destroyers which we had available for this purpose were entirely inadequate; to have diverted any of them for other duties would at that time have meant destruction to the Allied cause. The object of placing the barrage so far north was to increase the enemy's difficulty in attempting to sweep a passage through it and facilitate its defence by our forces. The impossibility of defending a mine barrier placed too far south was shown by experience in that area of the North Sea which was known as the "wet triangle." By April, 1917, the British had laid more than 30,000 mines in the Bight of Heligoland, and were then increasing these obstructions at the rate of 3,000 mines a month. Yet this vast explosive field did not prevent the Germans from sending their submarines to sea. The enemy sweepers were dragging out channels through the mine-fields almost as rapidly as the British were putting new fields down; we could not prevent this, because protecting vessels could not remain so near the German bases without losses from submarine attacks. Moreover, the Germans also laid mines in the same area in order to trap the British mine-layers; and these operations resulted in very considerable losses on each side. These impediments made the egress of a submarine a difficult and nerve-racking process; it sometimes required two or three days and the assistance of a dozen or so surface vessels to get a few submarines through the Heligoland Bight into open waters. Several were unquestionably destroyed in the operation, yet the activity of submarines in the Atlantic showed that these mine-fields had by no means succeeded in proving more than a harassing measure. It was estimated that the North Sea barrage would require about 400,000 mines, far more than existed in the world at that time, and far more than all our manufacturing resources could then produce within a reasonable period. I have already made the point, and I cannot make it too frequently, that time is often the essential element in war—and in this case it was of vital importance. Whether a programme is a wise one or not depends not only upon the feasibility of the plan itself, but upon the time and the circumstances in which it is proposed. In the spring of 1917 the situation which we were facing was that the German submarines were destroying Allied shipping at the rate of nearly 800,000 tons a month. The one thing which was certain was that, if this destruction should continue for four or five months, the Allies would be obliged to surrender unconditionally. The pressing problem was to find methods that would check these depredations and that would check them in time. The convoy system was the one naval plan—the point cannot be made too emphatically—which in April and May of 1917 held forth the certainty of immediately accomplishing this result. Other methods of opposing the submarines were developed which magnificently supplemented the convoy; but the convoy, at least in the spring and summer of 1917, was the one sure method of salvation for the Allied cause. To have started the North Sea barrage in the spring and summer of 1917 would have meant abandoning the convoy system; and this would have been sheer madness.

Thus in 1917 the North Sea barrage was not an answer to the popular proposal "to dig the Germans out of their holes like rats." We did not have a mine which could be laid in such deep waters in sufficient numbers to have formed any barrier at all; and even if we had possessed one, the construction of the barrage would have demanded such an enormous number that they could not have been manufactured in time to finish the barrage until late in the year 1918. Presently the situation began to change. The principal fact which made possible this great enterprise was the invention of an entirely new type of mine. The old mine consisted of a huge steel globe, filled with high explosive, which could be fired only by contact. That is, it was necessary for the surface of a ship, such as a submarine, to strike against the surface of the mine, and in this way start the mechanism which ignited the explosive charge. The fact that this immediate contact was essential enormously increased the difficulty of successfully mining waters that range in depth from 400 to 900 feet. If the mines were laid anywhere near the surface, the submarine, merely by diving beneath them, could avoid all danger; if they were laid any considerable depth, it could sail with complete safety above them. Thus, if such a mine were to be used at all, we should have had to plant several layers, one under the other, down to a depth of about 250 feet, so that the submarine, at whatever depth it might be sailing, would be likely to strike one of these obstructions. This required such a large number of mines as to render the whole project impossible. We Americans may take pride in the fact that it was an American who invented an entirely new type of mine and therefore solved this difficulty. In the summer of 1917 Mr. Ralph C. Browne, an electrical engineer of Salem, Mass., offered a submarine gun for the consideration of Commander S. P. Fullinwider, U.S.N., who was then in charge of the mining section of the Bureau of Ordnance. As a submarine gun this invention did not seem to offer many chances of success, but Commander Fullinwider realized that it comprised a firing device of excellent promise. The Bureau of Ordnance, assisted by Mr. Browne, spent the summer and autumn experimenting with this contrivance and perfecting it; the English mining officers who had been sent to America to co-operate with our navy expressed great enthusiasm over it; and some time about the beginning of August, 1917, the Bureau of Ordnance came to the conclusion that it was a demonstrated success. The details of Mr. Browne's invention are too intricate for description in this place, but its main point is comprehensible enough. Its great advantage was that it was not necessary for the submarine to strike the mine in order to produce the desired explosion. The mine could be located at any depth and from it a long "antenna," a thin copper cable, reached up to within a few feet of the surface, where it was supported in that position by a small metal buoy. Any metallic substance, such as the hull of a submarine, simply by striking this antenna at any point, would produce an electric current, which, instantaneously transmitted to the mine, would cause this mine to explode. The great advantage of this device is at once apparent. Only about one fourth the number of mines required under the old conditions would now be necessary. The Mining Section estimated that 100,000 mines would form a barrier that would be extremely dangerous to submarines passing over it or through it, whereas, under the old conditions, about 400,000 would have been required. This implies more than a mere saving in manufacturing resources; it meant that we should need a proportionately smaller number of mine-laying ships, crews, officers, bases, and supplies—all those things which are seldom considered by the amateur in warfare, but which are as essential to its prosecution as the more spectacular details.

I wish to emphasize the fact that, in laying such a barrage, it was not our object to make an absolute barrier to the passage of submarines. To have done this we should have needed such a great number of mines that the operation would have been impossible. Nor would such an absolute barrier have been necessary to success; a field that could be depended upon to destroy one-fourth or one-fifth of the submarines that attempted the passage would have represented complete success. No enemy could stand such losses as these; and the moral of no crew could have lasted long under such conditions.

Another circumstance which made the barrage a feasible enterprise was that by the last of the year 1917 it was realized that the submarine had ceased to be a decisive factor in the war. It still remained a serious embarrassment, and every measure which could possibly thwart it should be adopted. But the writings of German officers which have been published since the war make it apparent that they themselves realized early in 1918 that they would have to place their hopes of victory on something else besides the submarine. The convoy system and the other methods of fighting under-water craft which I have already described had caused a great decrease in sinkings. In April of 1917 the losses were nearly 900,000 tons; in November of the same year they were less than 300,000 tons.[7] Meanwhile, the construction of merchant shipping, largely a result of the tremendous expansion of American shipbuilding facilities, was increasing at a tremendous rate. A diagram of these, the two essential factors in the submarine campaign, disclosed such a rapidly rising curve of new shipping, and such a rapidly falling curve of sinkings, that the time could be easily foreseen when the net amount of Allied shipping, after the submarines had done their worst, would show a promising increase. But, as stated above, the submarines were still a distinct menace; they were still causing serious losses; and it was therefore very important that we should leave no stone unturned toward demonstrating beyond a shadow of doubt that warfare as conducted by these craft could be entirely put down. The more successfully we demonstrated this fact and the more energetically we prosecuted every form of opposition, the earlier would the enemy's general moral break down and victory be assured. In war, where human lives as well as national interests are at stake, no thought whatever can be given to expense. It is impossible to place a value on human life. Therefore, on November 2, 1917, the so-called "Northern Barrage" project was officially adopted by both the American and the British Governments. When I say that the proposed mine-field was as long as the distance from Washington to New York, some idea of its magnitude may be obtained. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before. The combined operations involved a mass of detail which the lay mind can hardly comprehend. The cost—$40,000,000—is perhaps not an astonishing figure in the statistics of this war, but it gives some conception of the size of the undertaking.

II

During the two years preceding the war Captain Reginald R. Belknap commanded the mine-laying squadron of the Atlantic fleet. Although his force was small, consisting principally of two antiquated warships, the Baltimore and the San Francisco, Captain Belknap had performed his duties conscientiously and ably, and his little squadron therefore gave us an excellent foundation on which to build. Before the European War the business of mine-laying had been unpopular in the American navy as well as in the British; such an occupation, as Sir Eric Geddes once said, had been regarded as something like that of "rat catching"; as hostilities went on, however, and the mine developed great value as an anti-submarine weapon, this branch of the service began to receive more respectful attention. Captain Belknap's work not only provided the nucleus out of which the great American mine force was developed, but he was chiefly responsible for organizing this force. The "active front" of our mine-laying squadron was found in the North Sea; but the sources of supply lay in a dozen shipyards and several hundred manufacturing plants in the United States.

We began this work with practically nothing; we had to obtain ships and transform them into mine-layers; to enlist and to train their crews; to manufacture at least 100,000 mines; to create bases both in the United States and Scotland; to transport all of our supplies more than 3,000 miles of wintry sea, part of the course lying in the submarine zone; and we had to do all this before the real business of planting could begin. The fact that the Navy made contracts for 100,000 of these new mines before it had had the opportunity of thoroughly testing the design under service conditions shows the great faith of the Navy Department in this new invention. More than 500 contractors and sub-contractors, located in places as far west as the Mississippi River, undertook the work of filling this huge order. Wire-rope mills, steel factories, foundries, machine shops, electrical works, and even candy makers, engaged in this great operation; all had their troubles with labour unions, with the railroads, and with the weather—that was the terrible winter of 1917-18; but in a few months trainloads of mine cases—great globes of steel—and other essential parts began to arrive at Norfolk, Virginia. This port was the place where the mine parts were loaded on ships and sent abroad. The plant which was ultimately constructed at this point was able to handle 1,000 mines a day; the industry was not a popular one in the neighbourhood, particularly after the Halifax explosion had proved the destructive powers of the materials in which it dealt. In a few months this establishment had handled 25,000,000 pounds of TNT. The explosive was melted in steel kettles until it reached about the density of hasty pudding; with the aid of automatic devices it was then poured into the mine cases, 300 pounds to a case, and thence moved on a mechanical conveyor to the end of the pier. Twenty-four cargo vessels, for the most part taken from the Great Lakes, carried these cargoes to the western coast of Scotland. Beginning in February, 1918, two or three of these ships sailed every eight days from Norfolk, armed against submarines and manned by naval crews. The fact that these vessels were slow made them an easy prey for the under-water enemy; one indeed was sunk, with the loss of forty-one men; regrettable as was this mishap, it represented the only serious loss of the whole expedition.

The other vital points were Newport, Rhode Island, where the six mine-layers were assembled; and Fort William and Kyle of Lochalsh on the western coast of Scotland, which were the disembarking points for the ships transporting the explosives. Captain Belknap's men were very proud of their mine-layers, and in many details they represented an improvement over anything which had been hitherto employed in such a service. At this point I wish to express my very great appreciation of the loyal and devoted services rendered by Captain Belknap. An organizer of rare ability, this officer deserves well of the nation for the conspicuous part which he played in the development of the North Sea Mine Barrage from start to finish. Originally, these mine-layers had been coastwise vessels; two of them were the Bunker Hill and the Massachusetts, which for years had been "outside line" boats, running from New York to Boston; all had dropped the names which had served them in civil life and were rechristened for the most part with names which eloquently testified to their American origin—Canonicus, Shawmut, Quinnebaug, Housatonic, Saranac, Roanoke, Aroostook, and Canandaigua. These changes in names were entirely suitable, for by the time our forces had completed their alterations the ships bore few resemblances to their former state. The cabins and saloons had been gutted, leaving the hulls little more than empty shells; three decks for carrying mines had been installed; on all these decks little railroad tracks had been built on which the mines could be rolled along the lower decks to the elevators and along the upper mine deck to the stern and dropped into the sea. Particularly novel details, something entirely new in mine-layers, were the elevators, the purpose of which was to bring the mines rapidly from the lower decks to the launching track. So rapidly did the work progress, and so well were the crews trained, that in May, 1918, the first of these ten ships weighed anchor and started for their destination in Scotland. Already our navy had selected as bases the ports of Inverness and Invergordon, on Moray Firth, harbours which were reasonably near the waters in which the mines were to be laid. From Invergordon the Highland Railway crosses Scotland to Lochalsh, and from Inverness the Caledonian Canal runs to Fort William. These two transportation lines—the Highland Railway and the Caledonian Canal—served as connecting links in our communications. If we wish a complete picture of our operation, we must call to mind first the hundreds of factories in all parts of our country, working day and night, making the numerous parts of these instruments of destruction and their attendant mechanisms; then hundreds of freight cars carrying them to the assembling plant at Norfolk, Virginia; then another small army of workmen at this point mixing their pasty explosive, heating it to a boiling point, and pouring the concoction into the spherical steel cases; then other groups of men moving the partially prepared mines to the docks and loading them on the cargo ships; then these ships quietly putting to sea, and, after a voyage of ten days or two weeks, as quietly slipping into the Scottish towns of Fort William and Kyle; then trains of freight cars and canal boats taking the cargoes across Scotland to Inverness and Invergordon, where the mines were completed and placed in the immense storehouses at the bases and loaded on the mine-layers as the necessity arose. Thus, when the whole organization was once established on a working basis, we had uninterrupted communications and a continuous flow of mines from the American factories to the stormy waters of the North Sea.

The towns in which our officers and men found themselves in late May, 1918, are among the most famous in Scottish history and legend. Almost every foot of land is associated with memories of Macbeth, Mary Queen of Scots, Cromwell, and the Pretender. "The national anthem woke me," says Captain Belknap, describing his first morning at his new Scottish base. "I arose and looked out. What a glorious sight! Green slopes in all freshness, radiant with broom and yellow gorse; the rocky shore mirrored in the Firth, which stretched, smooth and cool, wide away to the east and south; and, in the distance, snow-capped Ben Wyvis. Lying off the entrance to Munlochy Bay, we had a view along the sloping shores into the interior of Black Isle, of noted fertility. Farther out were Avoch, a whitewashed fishing village, and the ancient town of Fortrose, with its ruined twelfth-century cathedral. Across the Firth lay Culloden House, where Bonnie Prince Charlie slept before the battle. Substantial, but softened in outline by the morning haze, the Royal Burgh of Inverness covered the banks and heights along the Ness River, gleaming in the bright sunshine. And how peaceful everywhere! The Canandaigua and the Sonoma lay near by, the Canonicus farther out, but no movement, no signal, no beat of the engine, no throbbing pumps." The reception which the natives gave our men was as delightful as the natural beauty of the location. For miles around the Scots turned out to make things pleasant for their Yankee guests. The American naval forces stationed at the mining bases in those two towns numbered about 3,000 officers and men, and the task of providing relaxations, in the heart of the Highlands, far removed from theatres and moving-picture houses, would have been a serious one had it not been for the cordial co-operation of the people. The spirit manifested during our entire stay was evidenced on the Fourth of July, when all the shops and business places closed in honour of American Independence Day and the whole community for miles around joined our sailors in the celebration. The officers spent such periods of relaxation as were permitted them on the excellent golf links and tennis courts in the adjoining country; dances were provided for the men, almost every evening, the Scottish lassies showing great adaptability in learning the American steps. Amateur theatricals, in which both the men from the warships and the Scottish girls took part, cheered many a crew after its return from the mine-fields. Baseball was introduced for the first time into the country of William Wallace and Robert Burns. Great crowds gathered to witness the matches between the several ships; the Scots quickly learned the fine points and really developed into "fans," while the small boys of Inverness and Invergordon were soon playing the game with as much enthusiasm and cleverness as our own youngsters at home. In general, the behaviour of our men was excellent and made the most favourable impression.

These two mine-assembly bases at Inverness and Invergordon will ever remain a monumental tribute to the loyal and energetic devotion to duty of Captain Orin G. Murfin, U.S. Navy, who designed and built them; originally the bases were intended to handle 12,000 mines, but in reality Captain Murfin successfully handled as many as 20,000 at one time. It was here also that each secret firing device was assembled and installed, very largely by reserve personnel. As many as 1,200 mines were assembled in one day, which speaks very eloquently for the foresight with which Captain Murfin planned his bases.