During the first three months of war duty, June, July, and August, the Corsair steamed 11,738 miles, which was the greatest distance logged by any of the yachts during the same period. There was little time or opportunity for the grooming and tinkering which a pleasure craft is presumed to receive. Blow high, blow low, she went to sea at the appointed hour and the fires were never dead under the boilers. In her forward deck-house was a couplet, carved on a panel of wood, which she was living up to in full measure:

The first cruise of August took the yacht to Saint-Nazaire, on the 4th, in company with the Aphrodite, Kanawha, and Noma, to escort a group of empty transports to sea. This was safely accomplished, and the Corsair returned to Brest where the Celtic was waiting to be guarded through the danger zone. For lack of destroyers it was the business of the yachts to take the big ships out after they had discharged their troops or supplies. Having parted company with the Celtic at Fourteen West and wished her good luck, the Corsair hastened back for coal and further orders, which were to cruise in the regular patrol area. The American steamer Carolyn was expected, inbound and running alone, and the Corsair searched a waste of waters until the magic of the radio found the unseen ship and whispered to her this comforting message:

The skipper of the Carolyn had become a trifle confused in his bearings and was glad to be led to a safe anchorage where he could join a coastwise convoy for Bordeaux and so reach his destination.

To the Corsair then fell the experience of protecting a cargo steamer whose speed was so slow that she crept through the dangerous stretch of sea like a rheumatic snail and was a tempting target for any prowling submarine. It was all in the day’s work, although a bit trying to the nerves, and Commander Kittinger’s report indicates the nature of the task:

By way of variety, the Corsair was next ordered to the English Channel to pick out the American supply ship Erny from a convoy escorted by H.M.S. Devonshire and carry her into Saint-Nazaire. This was the first taste of the Channel Patrol, of cruising in those black and crowded waters where the numerous routes of traffic crossed and converged, and ships ran blind with no lights showing, and the risk of collision was much greater than the chance of submarine attack. The yachts regularly assigned to this coastwise escort duty saw more of it than the Corsair, but she learned to know the meaning of that lusty chantey of the war zone, “On the Channel Run”:

The Corsair laid a course for the secret meeting-place where she hoped to make contact with the convoy and picked up the Lizard Light, cruising in rough water for a day and a night until the flotilla of merchant ships was sighted, when she signalled the Erny to follow and so returned to France. This errand brought the month of August to a close. It would have seemed incredible to the crew, before they sailed from home, that they could spend a summer in the war zone and steam more than eleven thousand miles without seeing a submarine or enjoying the excitement of a torpedo attack. They had passed large quantities of floating wreckage, tragic evidence that the enemy was active, and the S.O.S. calls of frightened ships had often come to the radio-room, but this was all. One inference was that the yachts had been of real service and that the U-boats were learning to be wary of them and their rapid-fire batteries.

The autumn was to be much more eventful. On September 5th the Corsair stood out from Brest to look for an American supply convoy which included the valuable steamers Edward Luckenbach, Dakotan, Montanan, and El Occidente. While steering for the latitude and longitude named in the confidential orders, a small boat under oars and sail was descried from the bridge. A few minutes later a second boat was sighted, and the Corsair bore down to save the castaways who were frantically appealing for help. They were in two dories, eleven men in all, who were hauled aboard and made comfortable by the crew of the yacht. They were from the French fishing vessel Sadi Carnot which had been shelled by a submarine while homeward bound from the Grand Banks to Saint-Malo with a cargo of salted cod.

Impassioned, with many gestures, these weather-beaten Breton sailors cursed the Germans who had placed bombs under the hatches of their beloved bark. The Corsair’s men listened eagerly while they cheered their weary guests with sandwiches and coffee. Presently a hail from the bridge announced that another boat was adrift to the westward, and the mariners of the Sadi Carnot yelled vociferous joy. Five more comrades of theirs were deftly picked up, leaving three boats still unaccounted for, and the Corsair searched for them in vain.

Another boat was discovered a little later, it is true, but the men in it made no sign—four of them, all corpses which washed about in the water under the thwarts or were grotesquely doubled up like bundles of old clothes. They were English seamen and the boat bore the name of the British steamer Malda. As one of the Corsair’s signal-men wrote in his diary; “It was a ghastly sight. The French fishermen we have on board were almost starved and frozen. They could not have lived more than another day or so. Imagine their feelings when they saw the Malda’s boat with the dead men and knew that this would soon have been their own fate.”

It was later reported in Brest that another ship had picked up the Malda’s boat in passing and had discovered that the bodies of the English sailors were riddled with bullets from a machine gun, presumably after they had abandoned their steamer.

The Corsair kept on her way and had no trouble in finding her convoy of four vessels with which she started for Saint-Nazaire at thirteen knots. Off Belle Isle, the Montanan developed a fit of hysterics and opened fire on an imaginary flock of submarines which turned out to be blackfish in a sportive mood. The other merchant steamers promptly joined in the bombardment and banged away for all they were worth, at the same time stampeding most zealously. They scattered over the sea like hunted ducks and the indignant Corsair endeavored to recall and soothe them.

“We could see what they were shooting at,” noted a quartermaster on the yacht, “but believed it to be the splash of a big fish. However, they were thoroughly convinced that Fritz was out to pull some of his morning hate stuff. The ships of the convoy were so excited that they shot all over the ocean. One of their shells missed us by a hundred yards or so and we got sore. I sent them a signal, ‘Cease firing at once and come within hail.’ They paid no attention, but we rounded up the bunch and escorted them safely into port and then beat it out to sea again.... We passed close to a submarine last night, but could not find him. We got the smell of his Diesel engines and I guess he was charging his batteries and ducked under when he heard us.”

The emotions of this startled convoy were not easily calmed, for the commander of the Corsair records, an hour after the alarm, “Proceeding again in close formation. The Edward Luckenbach fired one shot at a flock of gulls on the water.” Concerning the general bombardment he officially observes:

These false alarms happened often, and during her next tour at sea the Corsair sounded the call to battle stations on two different occasions, reported as follows:

Until the merchant convoys became more accustomed to the routine of their hazardous employment, they were a source of almost continual anxiety to the yachts and other naval craft escorting them, and the work was more harassing than may appear on the surface. As a sample one may select from the Corsair’s daily experiences such an incident as the following, under date of September 5th:

The Corsair’s crew had been hoping to visit England and the opportunity came, but not precisely as they might have wished it. The yacht was ordered to proceed to Devonport on September 13th to load a cargo of depth charges for the other naval vessels on the French coast. It was something like asking a man to make a railway journey from New York to Boston with a stick of dynamite in every pocket of his clothes. With luck it might be done, but he would feel painfully eager to avoid any more bumping or jostling than could be helped. And as has been said, the Channel was an extraordinarily crowded and darkened thoroughfare. This was getting on with the war, however, and the unterrified Corsair duly anchored in Plymouth Harbor. Instructed by Admiralty officers, she shifted to moorings at a jetty of the British naval docks where a lighter came alongside, and the Corsair bluejackets, with gingerly care, hoisted in almost a hundred “ash cans.” This quick-tempered merchandise included such items as these:

Of this trip to England, one of the petty officers wrote in his little notebook:

The Corsair was again assigned to the convoys and the same chronicler has this to say of the remaining days of September:

The American Army had begun to move overseas in a swelling tide of khaki and the transports came faster and faster. No sooner had the Corsair seen the last of one group than another was waiting. On September 28th she left port to seek contact with the store-ships City of Atlanta, Willehad, Artemus, and Florence Luckenbach, and a British destroyer which was the senior vessel of the escort. Having found them, the subsequent proceedings were such as sprinkled gray hairs on the heads of the commander and the officers of the Corsair. The War Diary records it in this summary fashion:

So much for the routine of faithful endeavor, continual danger, and incessant vigilance! The month of October was very different. It was memorable in the Corsair’s calendar because she fought a submarine, rescued many survivors of abandoned ships, and saw two fine transports torpedoed, the Antilles and the Finland, with heavy loss of life. There was no more grumbling at the uneventful drudgery of war. The crowded activity began on the second day of October when this radio message was caught and decoded:

The Corsair was in company with the yachts Wakiva and Alcedo, and promptly signalled them to disregard her movements as she was going in search of survivors. Shortly after noon, the wreck of a schooner was sighted, the hull awash, and many barrels of oil floating near it. The Corsair’s gunners fired seven shots into the derelict, but were unable to sink it and the yacht hastened on her errand of mercy, guided by the squared areas of the secret chart to which the radio message had referred. Three hours later the first boat was found, a dory four men from the French fishing bark, Saint Pierre, which had been set on fire by a boarding party from a U-boat one hundred and eighty miles off Ushant.

The mate, who was one of those rescued, swore that after the crew of the Saint Pierre had scrambled into the boats two more large submarines appeared, and that all three of these infernal sea monsters had made a circuit of the hapless bark before destroying her. It was also his belief that each submarine was very formidable, at least a hundred metres in length and mounting two large cannon.

The crew of the Corsair cheered at the tidings while they sympathized with the forlorn fishermen. “The U-boats were coming in bunches,” joyously reflected the deck force, and the “black gang” slung the coal with an earnest determination to give her twenty knots or blow the boilers out of her. The ship raced to scan the sea for the other boats of the Saint Pierre and at 4.35 P.M. heard firing in the direction of a tall barkentine whose sails gleamed seven miles to the northward. Here was a second fisherman in trouble and a U-boat actually shelling her within sight of the U.S.S. Corsair! Ten minutes more, with speed worked up to eighteen knots, and the submarine could be clearly recognized through the binoculars aimed from bridge and crow’s-nest.

Etched very small against the horizon was the deck, like a fine, black line, and the conning tower as a tiny hump in the middle, while a gun winked as a red spark, and the water splashed high near the target of a sailing vessel and was visible as so many white specks resembling dabs of cotton. The Corsair was then four miles distant, too far to use her own guns effectively. The submarine delayed five minutes longer, rolling on the surface and using her battery in order to sink the fisherman without wasting a precious torpedo on a victim so unimportant. Then the cruel U-boat filled her ballast tanks and submerged as a whale sounds when alarmed. Sighs from the Corsair’s decks were mingled with the deep and hearty curses of the saltwater vocabulary. The commander expurgated his report when it came to writing it, and this was his unadorned narrative:

It was an animated scene aboard the Corsair when the thirty-one men and officers of the Eugene Louise were disputing whether or not they should go back to their ship and sail her into port. There were also two dogs, one of them shaggy and black, who barked in energetic approval of remaining on the Corsair. Their Breton shipmates appeared to share this opinion. Panic had gripped most of them. They were literally frightened out of their wits. Red kerchiefs knotted about their heads, gold rings twinkling in their ears, they looked like shipwrecked buccaneers, but their spirit was quite otherwise.

The captain of the Eugene Louise was a man of stout heart and, besides, he owned a share of the barkentine. He raced between bridge and deck, conferring, imploring, expostulating, but his fishermen refused to follow him. They were fed up with submarine warfare and, in their opinion, once was enough. The next U-boat would undoubtedly cut their throats and it was a long road to Saint-Malo. Their refusal brought genuine grief to the navigating officer of the Corsair. Nothing would have pleased Lieutenant Robert E. Tod more than to sail the barkentine Eugene Louise into the nearest French port, and he had already volunteered for the job.

He was a faithful and zealous officer of the Corsair, but, after all, she was a steam kettle and his heart went out to the spars and stays and canvas of a sailing vessel and the winds that served to steer her by. Such had been his own training as a yachtsman, and he knew he could shove this French square-rigger along for all she was worth, with thirty nimble Breton sailors to swarm aloft. Alas, Captain Pierre Catharine, of the Eugene Louise, could not argue his frightened crew into accepting this sporting proposition. It was left for the industrious British destroyers to take her to safety at the end of a tow-line. The news was gratifying, when received later, that the barkentine with her cargo of fish, so welcome to the Breton villages, had been rescued from the brutal destruction of the enemy. One of the Corsair’s deck force sadly noted in his journal:

During the night of this same day the Corsair was zigzagging toward Brest at twelve knots when she encountered one of the submarines which had been running amuck among the fishing vessels. The weather was hazy and obscured and an occasional rain squall drove across the ship. The bridge and deck watches were peering into the gloom which lifted between the squalls to let a watery moon gleam through. Lieutenant Tod was officer of the watch and Quartermaster Augustus C. Smith, Jr., stood at the wheel. At 11.25 P.M. one of the whistling flurries of rain and wind had passed and the sea was visible in the illumination of the misty moonlight.

No more than five hundred yards away the outline of a large submarine was clearly discernible as it rested at leisure upon the surface of the water, having emerged, no doubt, to open hatches and give the crew a breathing spell. This was a sight which the crew of the Corsair had dreamed of. It was too good to be true. Quartermaster Augustus Smith, a bland, unruffled young man in all circumstances, had an uncommonly keen pair of eyes and he did not have to be informed that yonder was the enemy. He spun the wheel at the order. Lieutenant Tod threw the handle of the engine-room indicator to emergency speed, and the Corsair swung to rush straight at the U-boat, hoping to ram.

Commander Kittinger and his executive, Lieutenant Commander Porter, instantaneously appeared upon the bridge, while Ensign Gray dashed for the chart-house deck to make certain that the forward gun crew had sighted the submarine for themselves. There was excitement, but no confusion. Long training and disciplined habit had prepared them all for such an episode as this, like sprinters set and ready on the mark. No time was lost in wondering what ought to be done. Those who hunted Fritz had to be quickwitted or else he would scupper them.

The submarine, caught napping, went ahead on its oil engines, moving slowly on the surface and almost in the same direction as the plunging Corsair whose forward battery endeavored to bear on the mark, which was difficult for lack of a bow-chaser. Number Two gun barked once and the shell kicked up foam astern of the U-boat which was submerging in the very devil of a hurry, as one may imagine. Before the Corsair could fire again, the conning tower had vanished and the gray shape of the slinking submarine was slanting downward in a “crash dive.”

The yacht had three hundred yards to go before she passed over the spot. Her keel failed to strike and rip through the thin plates of the German craft which was, perhaps, thirty feet beneath the sea, but a bubbling wake was visible and into it the depth charges began to drop from the stern of the Corsair. The gunner’s mates played no favorites, but let go an English “ash can” with 120 pounds of TNT, then two French “Grenades Giraud,” and finally an American Sperry bomb.

All four of the Allied gifts for Fritz functioned with terrific effect. The Corsair, charging ahead at full speed to avoid being hoisted herself, was shaken as though she had hit a reef. The sea was violently agitated in a foaming upheaval. The men asleep below decks came spilling up through the hatches, convinced that the ship had been blown up. One of the French fishermen vowed that he had a glimpse of the shadowy shape of the submarine as it passed directly under the Corsair. It seemed reasonable to assume that the four depth charges had been placed where they would do the most good. Nothing could survive the destructive effect of the solid wall of water impelled by these explosions. And the submarine had been near enough, in all probability, to receive the force of these rending shocks.

The Corsair moved ahead for five minutes, along the track which the U-boat had taken when it submerged. There was the hope that it might rise to the surface disabled, but the moonlit surface of the sea was unbroken. The mist had cleared and the sky was bright. Swinging about, the Corsair retraced her path on the chance of finding some sign or token of a shattered U-boat. Soon she ran through a spreading oil slick, a patch of greasy calm amid the glinting waves, and the smell of mineral oil was strong. They sniffed it greedily aboard the Corsair and the French fishermen forgot to mourn the Eugene Louise. It was their belief that the glorious American Navy had evened the score with the Boche. The bluejackets were of the same opinion and felt confident that the Corsair would be awarded a star to display on her funnel, the Croix de Guerre of the sea, to show that she had bagged her submarine.

The officers were not quite so cock-sure. Daylight might have disclosed some bits of débris, enough wreckage to substantiate the claim beyond a shadow of doubt, but the mere presence of floating oil was no longer admitted as final proof either by the American Navy Department or the British Admiralty. Submarines were apt to leak a certain amount of fuel oil, or to blow it through the exhaust when running on the surface, and it was suspected that Fritz had learned the trick of opening a valve in order to delude the pursuers into the belief that they had crippled or smashed him.

In this instance, however, the circumstantial evidence was very strongly in favor of the Corsair, even though officials ashore might decline to give her documentary credit. The submarine had been unusually close aboard, almost under the ship, when four depth charges were let go and all exploded perfectly. Commander Kittinger was so reluctant to claim too much that he presented no more than the terse facts and let the matter rest with that. Earlier in the war, destroyers had been granted the star on a funnel for evidence no more conclusive than this—depth charges dropped within a fatal radius and the presence of abundant fuel oil as the aftermath.

It is highly probable that the Corsair wiped one U-boat from the active list on this moonlit night in the Bay of Biscay and her crew had the right to feel pride in the exploit. That careful, well-poised petty officer, Quartermaster Augustus Smith, who saw the whole show from his station at the wheel, took pains to write down his own observations which confirmed, in every respect, the conclusions of Commander Kittinger and his officers: