Читать книгу Our Navy in the War - Lawrence Perry - Страница 6

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First Experience of Our Navy with the German U-Boat—Arrival of Captain Hans Rose and the U-53 at Newport—Experiences of the German Sailors in an American Port—Destruction of Merchantman by U-53 off Nantucket—Our Destroyers to the Rescue—Scenes in Newport—German Rejoicing—The Navy Prepares for War

How many of us who love the sea and have followed it to greater or less extent in the way of business or pleasure have in the past echoed those famous lines of Rudyard Kipling:

"'Good-bye Romance!' the skipper said.

He vanished with the coal we burn."

And how often since the setting in of the grim years beginning with August of 1914 have we had occasion to appreciate the fact that of all the romance of the past ages the like to that which has been spread upon the pages of history in the past four years was never written nor imagined. Week after week there has come to us from out the veil of the maritime spaces incidents dramatic, mysterious, romantic, tragic, hideous.

Great transatlantic greyhounds whose names evoke so many memories of holiday jaunts across the great ocean slip out of port and are seen no more of men. Vessels arrive at the ports of the seven seas with tales of wanton murder, of hairbreadth escapes. Boat crews drift for days at the mercy of the seas and are finally rescued or perish man by man. The square-rigged ship once more rears its towering masts and yards above the funnels of merchant shipping; schooners brave the deep seas which never before dared leave the coastwise zones; and the sands of the West Indies have been robbed of abandoned hulks to the end that the diminishing craft of the seas be replaced. And with all there are stories of gallantry, of sea rescues, of moving incidents wherein there is nothing but good to tell of the human animal. Would that it were all so. But it is not. The ruthlessness of the German rears itself like a sordid shadow against the background of Anglo-Saxon and Latin gallantry and heroism—a diminishing shadow, thank God, and thank, also, the navy of Great Britain and of the United States.

For more than two years and a half of sea tragedy the men of our navy played the part of lookers-on. Closely following the sequence of events with the interest of men of science, there was a variety of opinion as to the desirability of our playing a part in the epic struggle on the salt water. There were officers who considered that we were well out of it; there were more who felt that our part in the struggle which the Allied nations were waging should be borne without delay. But whatever existed in the way of opinion there was no lack of unanimity in the minute study which our commissioned officers gave to the problems in naval warfare and related interests which were constantly arising in European waters.

It was not, however, until October of 1916 that the American Navy came into very close relationship with the submarine activities of the German Admiralty. The morning of October 7 of that year was one of those days for which Newport is famous—a tangy breeze sweeping over the gorse-clad cliffs and dunes that mark the environment of Bateman's Point the old yellow light-ship which keeps watch and ward over the Brenton reefs rising and falling on a cobalt sea. From out of the seaward mists there came shortly before ten o'clock a low-lying craft which was instantly picked out by the men of the light-ship as a submarine, an American submarine. There is a station for them in Newport Harbor, and submersible boats of our navy are to be found there at all times.

But as the men watched they picked up on the staff at the stern of the incoming craft the Royal German ensign. A German submarine! Be assured that enough interest in German craft of the sort had been aroused in the two years and eight months of war to insure the visitor that welcome which is born of intense interest. The submarine, the U-53, held over toward Beaver Tail and then swung into the narrow harbor entrance, finally coming to anchor off Goat Island. The commander, Captain Hans Rose, went ashore in a skiff and paid an official visit first to Rear-Admiral Austin M. Knight, commander of the Newport Naval District, and then to Rear-Admiral Albert Gleaves, chief of our destroyer flotilla.

Subsequent testimony of that German commander was that the American naval officers appeared somewhat embarrassed at the visit, suggesting men who were confronted by a situation which they were not certain how to handle. The statement of the German officer had a humorous sound and may have been humorously intended. In any event. Admiral Knight and Admiral Gleaves were very polite, and in due course paid the Germans the courtesy of a return visit, And while the submarine lay in the harbor the crew came ashore and were treated to beer by the American sailors, while crowds of curious were admitted aboard the submersible and shown about with the most open courtesy.

Captain Rose said he had come to deliver a letter to Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, but such a mission seemed so trivial that rumor as to the real intentions of the craft was rife throughout the entire country. There were suspicions that she had put in for fuel, or ammunition, or supplies. But nothing to justify these thoughts occurred. The U-53 hung around through the daylight hours, and at sunset, with a farewell salute, put to sea.

Did our naval officers think this was the last of her? Possibly, but probably not. They knew enough of the Germans to realize, or to suspect, that their minds held little thought those days of social amenities and that such calls as were made upon neutrals contained motives which, while hidden, were none the less definite.

The night brought forth nothing, however, and the Navy Department was beginning to feel that perhaps after all the U-53 was well on her way to Germany, when early the following morning there came to the radio-station at Newport an indignant message from Captain Smith of the Hawaiian-American liner Kansan. He asked to know why he had been stopped and questioned by a German submarine which had halted him in the vicinity of the Nantucket light-ship at 5.30 o'clock that morning. He added that after he had convinced the submarine commander as to the nationality of his ship, he was permitted to proceed.

This looked like business, and Newport became certain of this when shortly after noon came a radio containing advices as to the sinking of the steamship West Point off Nantucket. Then at intervals up to midnight came other messages telling of the sinking of other vessels until the victims of the undersea craft numbered four British, a Dutch, and a Scandinavian vessel, one of them, the Halifax liner Stephana, a passenger-vessel, with Americans on board. Reports of vessels torpedoed, of open boats containing survivors afloat on the sea, followed one another swiftly until not only Newport but the entire country was aroused.

Admiral Knight and Admiral Gleaves, who had been keeping the Navy Department at Washington in touch with every phase of the situation, beginning with the arrival of the U-53 the preceding day, lost no time in sending destroyers forth to the rescue, while already there was the cheering word that the destroyer Batch was on the scene and engaged in rescue work.

The departure of the destroyers was a spectacle that brought thousands of men, women, and children of Newport to the points of vantage along the shore or to small craft of all sorts in which they kept as close to the destroyers, preparing for their seaward flight, as they could. It was Sunday, a day when crowds were at leisure, but it was also a day when many of the officers and crew of the flotilla were on shore-leave. They were summoned from all points, however, and within a short time after the first call for help had been received the Jarvis, with Lieutenant L. P. Davis in command, was speeding to sea at the rate ordered by Admiral Gleaves, thirty-one knots an hour.

Inside half an hour the other destroyers shot out to sea at the same speed as the Jarvis while the spectators cheered them, and such as were in small boats followed until the speeding craft had disappeared. There was the Drayton—Lieutenant Bagley, who later was to know the venom of the German submarine—the Ericson, Lieutenant-Commander W. S. Miller; the O'Brien, Lieutenant-Commander C. E. Courtney; the Benham, Lieutenant-Commander J. B. Gay; the Cassin, Lieutenant-Commander Vernon; the McCall, Lieutenant Stewart; the Porter, Lieutenant-Commander W. K. Wortman; the Fanning, Lieutenant Austin; the Paulding, Lieutenant Douglas Howard; the Winslow, Lieutenant-Commander Nichols; the Alwyn, Lieutenant-Commander John C. Fremont; the Cushing, Lieutenant Kettinger; the Cummings, Lieutenant-Commander G. F. Neal; the Conyngham, Lieutenant-Commander A. W. Johnson, and the-mother ship, Melville, Commander H. B. Price.

Soon after the destroyers had passed into the Atlantic there came a wireless message saying that twenty of the crew of the British steamship Strathdean had been taken on board the Nantucket light-ship. Admiral Gleaves directed the movement of his destroyers from the radio-room on the flag-ship. He figured that the run was about a hundred miles. There was a heavy sea running and a strong southwest wind. There was a mist on the ocean. It was explained by the naval authorities that the destroyers were sent out purely on a mission of rescue, and nothing was said as to any instructions regarding the enforcement of international law. None the less it was assumed, and may now be assumed, that something was said to the destroyer commanders with regard to the three-mile limit. But as to that we know no more to-day than at the time.

Suffice to say that the destroyers arrived in time not only to wander about the ocean seeking survivors in the light of a beautiful hunter's moon, but in time to witness the torpedoing of at least two merchantmen; the submarine commander, it is said, advising our war-ship commanders to move to certain locations so as not to be hit by his shells and torpedoes.

Eventually the destroyer flotilla returned with their loads of survivors and with complete details of the operations of the U-53 and, according to belief, of another submarine not designated. It appeared that the Germans were scrupulous in observing our neutrality, that their operations were conducted without the three-mile limit, and that opportunities were given crews and passengers to leave the doomed ships. There was nothing our destroyer commanders could do. Even the most hot-headed commander must have felt the steel withes of neutral obligation which held him inactive while the submarine plied its deadly work. There was, of course, nothing else to do—except to carry on the humanitarian work of rescuing victims of the U boat or boats, as the case might have been.

Later, it was given to many of the craft which set forth that October afternoon to engage in their service to humanity, to cross the seas and to meet the submarine where it lurked in the Irish Sea, the North Sea, the English Channel, and the Mediterranean. One of them, the Cassin was later to be struck—but not sunk—by a torpedo off the coast of England, while the Fanning, in company with the Nicholson, had full opportunity of paying off the score which most naval officers felt had been incurred when the U-53 and her alleged companion invaded American waters and sullied them with the foul deeds that had so long stained the clean seas of Europe.

German diplomats were enthusiastic over the exploits of their craft. "The U-53 and other German submarines, if there are others," said a member of the German Embassy at Washington, "is engaged in doing to the commerce of the Allies just what the British tried to do to the Deutschland when she left America. (The submarine Deutschland, engaged in commercial enterprise, had visited the United States some time previously.) It is a plain case of what is sometimes known as commerce-raiding. It is being done by submarines, that is all. Warfare, such as that which has been conducted in the Mediterranean, has been brought across the Atlantic. It should be easy to destroy more of the overseas commerce of the Allies, which is principally with America, near where it originates."

Here was a veiled threat—not so veiled either—which was no doubt marked in Washington. President Wilson received the news of the sinkings in silence, but plainly government authorities were worried over the situation. New problems were erected and the future was filled with possibilities of a multifarious nature.

Thus, within twenty-four hours it was demonstrated that the war was not 3,000 miles away from us, but close to our shores. The implied threat that it would be a simple matter for submarines to cross the Atlantic and deal with us as they were dealing with France and England and other Entente nations—not to say harmless neutrals such as Holland and Scandinavia—was not lost upon the citizens of this country. But, as usual, German judgment in the matter of psychology was astray. The threat had no effect in the way of Schrecklichkeit, but rather it steeled us to a future which began to appear inevitable. And deep under the surface affairs began to move in the Navy Department.

No doubt, too, the conviction began to grow upon the government that the policy of dealing fairly by Germany was not appreciated, and that when the exigencies of the war situation seemed to require it, our ships would be sent to the bottom as cheerfully as those of other neutrals such as Holland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as other countries who unfortunately were not in the position to guard their neutrality with some show of dignity that we were in.

Subsequent events proved how true this feeling was. For not six months later the German policy of sea aggression had brought us to the point where it was not possible for us to remain out of the conflict against the pirate nation. It was in the following April that we went to war, and our first act was to send forth a destroyer flotilla to engage the U-boat in its hunting-ground, Among that flotilla, as said, were many of the craft which had rescued survivors of the Nantucket affair. They were ready and their officers were ready, nay, eager. They swept across a stormy Atlantic like unleashed hounds, and when the British commander received them at Queenstown, and asked the American commanders when they would be ready to take their places with the British destroyers, the answer came quickly:

"We are ready now."

And they were—allowing for the cleaning of a few hulls and the effecting of minor repairs to one or two of the vessels. Other destroyers remained here, of course, while a fringe of submarine-chasers and swift, armed yachts converted into government patrol-vessels were guarding our coast the day after the President signed the war resolution. But more than a year and a half was to elapse before our waters were again to know the submarine menace. Just why the Germans waited may not be known. Probably they had all they could attend to in foreign waters. In any event it was not until June, 1918, that a coastwise schooner captain was both surprised and indignant when a shot from a craft which he took to be an American submarine went across his bows. It was not an American submarine; it was a German submersible and that schooner was sent to the bottom, followed by other wind-jammers and the Porto Rico liner Carolina.

Thus, what in the original instance was a test journey in the interests of German submarine activity—the visit of the U-53 in October, 1916—as well as a threat to this country bore its fruit in the development of that test trip, and in the fulfilment of that threat. At this writing the coastwise marauder, or marauders, are still off our shores, and clouds of navy craft are seeking to destroy them. We are far better equipped for such service than we were when Captain Hans Rose came here in his submarine, and it is divulging no secret information to say that this and further invasions of our home waters will be dealt with bravely and rigorously without the necessity of subtracting from the number of war-vessels that are engaged with Allied fighters in maintaining commerce upon the waters of Europe.

But this is getting a bit further ahead than I intended to go at this juncture. The primary point is that with the visit of Captain Hans Rose in his undersea boat, with her depredations off our coast, the Navy Department, saying nothing to outsiders, came to accept the idea of war as something more than a possible contingency.

Debates in Congress were characterized by an increasing pointedness, and stories of sea murders increased rather than diminished. And not infrequently there were Americans on board those ships. At length came the sinking of American merchantmen and the final decision by our government to place armed guards on all merchant vessels carrying our flag. It was then that the Navy Department was called upon to take the first open steps against the German sea menace—steps rife with grim possibilities, since it operated to bring our seamen gunners into actual conflict with the German naval forces. There could be little doubt, therefore, that war would follow in inevitable course.