Читать книгу Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights - Kelly Miller - Страница 190

The enormous inroads on the world's shipping made by German submarines during the war shows the efficiency of this diabolical device. In the first two years and a half of the war statistics were compiled to show that more than 10 per cent of the world's merchant marine was destroyed by Germany's underseas craft of the U-boat type. Incidentally, the name U-boat as applied to submarines developed because Germany, instead of naming these slinking boats, as is the custom with surface-cruising vessels, painted upon the conning tower or nose of the craft the letter U, representing the word "underseas," coupled with the numeral denoting the number of the boat. Thus those who sail the ocean highways came to recognize the fact that a conning tower or low, sharp-nosed craft bearing the mystic characters U-9 was a German underseas boat No. 9.

The statistical records at the end of April, 1917, showed that nearly 3000 vessels of almost 5,000,000 gross tons were destroyed by the U-boats in the war. More than half of the vessels sunk belonged to England. Norway and France were the next greatest sufferers from the submarine warfare. In one week after Germany announced her intention to give no quarter, but to sink any vessel which came within the range of the U-boat torpedoes, the toll of ships lost was more than 400,000 tons.

At the beginning of the war the submarine was to all intents and purposes a novelty—a boat of recognized possibilities, but existing very largely in the experimental stage. Its use was very largely ignored by naval men, although it was conceded that when properly developed it would prove a wonderful agency of destruction. The proud commanders of the great battleships, with their 10, 12 and 14 inch guns, which sent great shells miles across the ocean, looked down upon the little underseas boat, and applied to it the sobriquet of "tin sardine."

But the "tin sardine" has grown up, and the commander of the monster war vessel is at the mercy of the little craft which he ridiculed. A short time ago Holland, the American inventor of the modern submarine, died of a broken heart. His type was necessarily an experimental one. He built five boats before he was able to sell one to the United States Government, and this latter one, after being bought by a junk dealer, who intended to break it up for its metals, was finally rescued from such an inglorious end by the city of New York, which has placed it in her municipal museum.