I.
I was sunk a thousand fathoms deep in sleep.
Came a loud rap at my cabin door, the stab of electric light in my eyes, and a voice saying, "Signal, sir."
The messenger, seeing I was more or less awake, crossed the cabin and passed me a signal pad. Propping one eye open, I read—
"0348 Trout, XUB top."
"Thanks," I said, and the messenger vanished.
The signal was a wireless fix of a Fritz. Sitting up in bed, I reached for the squared chart, and examined it. The message, interpreted, meant that at forty-eight minutes after three o'clock that morning, September 3, a German submarine had been on the surface off the Goodwins.
The commander of the U-boat had reported to Germany by wireless. He was probably taking no chances in that vicinity, and would not have up his aerial masts, but would be using as aerials the two jumping wires which ran from end to end of his boat, passing over his conning-tower and forming a protection against nets, hawsers, and mines. He could therefore dive immediately.
However, it was not my pigeon; he was not in the Felixstowe area. So I switched off the light, turned over, and was immediately asleep.
An hour later I was sitting up in bed again reading a second signal—
"0403 Trout, ANV centre."
"Wait," I said to the messenger.
The repetition of the word "Trout" meant it was the same Fritz again working wireless. I checked the positions and times of the two fixes on the chart. The commander of the submarine had come north about ten miles, and would soon enter the Spider Web. This was a different matter.
"Quartermaster," I said to the waiting messenger.
Jumping out of bed, I pulled on my uniform over my pyjamas, and met the Quartermaster as he entered the door of the mess. We stood together and looked across the quarter-deck. It was going to be a misty day. We walked down to the concrete, and looked across the harbour. Harwich, on the far side, a mile away, was invisible, but the big light-buoy, half-way across, could be seen.
"Can do," I said. "We'll take a chance. Turn out the hands; I'll call the pilots."
The weather had been so unpromising the night before that no early morning Duty Pilots had been warned off, so I hammered up Dickey for myself and Cuckney and Clayton for the second boat.
Cuckney was a stout fellow, who had been doing the two-trip-a-night stunt in carrying bombs from Dunkirk to Zeebrugge.
He was over the Mole one night at a low height in a Snider, a small float-seaplane, when his engine stopped. He pushed and pulled everything he could think of, but the engine would not start again, and he landed in Zeebrugge harbour. Searchlights blinded him, and the Huns let off everything that would bear. The enemy then saw that his engine had stopped. Fire ceased, and two launches raced out from the dock to capture him.
They were right on top of him when he found the trouble: he had opened the magneto-switch with his elbow. He started his engine, and ran along the water in front of the launches. And then he zoomed into the air, followed by howls of disappointment and a hurricane of high explosives.
After working some time at Dunkirk, he felt a bit weary, and somebody, who mistakenly thought that flying-boat patrols were a rest-cure, sent him down to Felixstowe.
Quickly despatching breakfast, we got into our two boats, and pushed off for the Spider Web, Cuckney taking up station on my port-beam, a quarter of a mile away. The water was invisible, and as he was travelling at the same speed and in the same direction, he looked to me as though he were standing still, suspended in the air by an invisible wire. It was an odd optical illusion.
The farther out we got the thicker got the mist. We could only see any distance by looking up the molten pathway made by the reflected image of the sun on the little waves.
After sculling about for two hours, I balanced the boat on the controls, and quickly climbed out of the first pilot's seat. Dickey was ready, and popped in. I now devoted my whole energies to observing. Turning my back on the sun, I tried to pierce the blank wall of fleecy white.
I saw something sparkle.
It looked like a tiny fountain glittering in the sunlight.
Through the binoculars it showed up as a thin thread of water standing up all by itself in the middle of the grey, calm, misty sea.
Taking a quick bearing on the compass, I bumped Dickey out of the control-seat, and swung the head of the boat towards the fountain. I opened out the engines and shoved the nose down. Looking back, I saw that Cuckney had turned in behind me.
One minute passed, two minutes, four minutes. We had roared over six miles of sea, and still I could see the little fountain ahead.
Then I saw the submarine. She was a mile away—a big grey Fritz of the U-class, long flush deck rising toward the bows, conning-tower between bow and stern, two guns, one before and one aft of the conning-tower, and a straight stem. She was shoving through the water at top speed, about thirteen knots, and above her bow was the little fountain.
It was caused by a thread of water running up her straight stem and leaping into the air about five feet.
It glittered in the sun.
Two men were on the conning-tower, but they did not see or hear us coming. We were attacking up wind and down sun. We read part of her number, U 4?, but the second numeral was blurred.
Forty seconds after seeing the U-boat Dickey pulled the release lever and dropped one bomb. He threw up his arm. I banked over and looked down. The bomb had detonated on the starboard side half-way between the conning-tower and the stern.
The submarine heeled slowly over to port. She stopped in her own length and began to sink.
Cuckney close behind me passed over. I saw a bomb burst on the starboard side right in front of the conning-tower. Her decks were now awash. An explosion occurred in her bow and several smaller explosions between the stem and the conning-tower.
By this time I was again in position, and Dickey dropped a second bomb. The bomb detonated about thirty feet away from her. Only the very top of her conning-tower was showing. And then she vanished.
The little fountain had been fatal.
Later on in the same day, in the vicinity where the submarine had been met, Gordon and Faux in one boat, and Hallinan and Hodson in another, were surprised from the rear by four enemy seaplanes. The Huns failed to get home with the first attack and sheered off, and as they proved faster than the boats they could not be brought to action.
About this time, on an absolutely clear day, with no wind, and in a boat with a well-tested compass, conditions under which navigation should be certain and easy, I was extremely surprised and annoyed to arrive over the position where I thought the North Hinder should be and not see her.
I buzzed round in a circle, saw that my compass card was apparently all right, took a look at my notes of navigation, compared my watch with the watches of the crew, and then felt quite helpless.
On straightening up the machine, and deciding to carry on the patrol, I saw a black speck on the water about fourteen miles away. Through the binoculars I thought it looked like the North Hinder, but it appeared more bulky than usual and smoke seemed to be coming from it.
Deciding that I had made some silly error in time or course I started off for the light-ship, and found when I got near it that two tugs were lugging it along at about six knots towards the Dutch coast. It was being taken in to be repainted and overhauled. The following day a new North Hinder, with the paint of the name very white and the red sides unstained by rust, was lying at the moorings on the shoal. The new vessel could be told from the old one by a small black ball on the mast above the lantern, a decoration which the original light-vessel did not possess.
On the morning of September 13th the Commander of a Harwich submarine was coming in from a four days' surface patrol outside the mine-fields in the Bight of Heligoland. He was one of the little lot of submarines who kept the continuous watch, day and night, for the coming out of the German High Sea Fleet. But he had been relieved, and had come down homeward bound past Terschelling, across the Brown Ridge, and when near the North Hinder, finding he was a bit early, he went to the bottom to rest.
He had been down but a short time when he heard through the E-boat's ears, which are hydrophones, the propeller noises of another submarine. It was on the surface and passed directly over him.
He was just about to give the order to blow the tanks and come up and stalk the Fritz, when two heavy underwater explosions shook his boat. He remained on the bottom. He listened for a long time. But with the explosions the propeller noises had ceased abruptly and did not start again. Finally he came up to periscope depth, took a good look around, saw nothing, and broke water.
He said: "I started in for Harwich on the surface. I hung out all my signal flags, let some of the crew stand on deck, and looked as friendly as possible."
While the E-boat was down at the bottom of the sea and the Fritz was up above churning up the muddy water with her twin propellers, a Beef Trip was threshing along on the surface, and up in the air, in the sunlight, were the flying-boats.
The pilots of the two flying-boats, on their way out to the Beef Trip, saw the Fritz on the surface and whooped over to investigate.
But the pilots of the first boat to pass over him, knowing our own submarine was expected to be in the vicinity at this time, and not identifying the submarine as a German, passed over without bombing him. They did not know that the Commander of the E-boat was lying snug on the bottom.
The Commander of the U-boat, who was out after the Beef Trip, when he saw the first boat pass over, gave orders to dive and waited for the bombs which did not come.
Billiken and Dickey, in the second boat, got into position when only the light-grey conning-tower, with a tumble of white water behind it, was showing. But they recognised him as a Fritz and let him have two bombs. They circled over the spot for some time, and finally saw oil coming up, which spread, and spread, and spread.
Things now moved rather fast. On September 15 Young and Barker bombed a submarine. Poor Young, almost at the very end of the war, was shot at the controls of his boat in a fight against heavy odds off Borkum. He landed the boat safely in spite of the terrible wound, and died before the boat had stopped running on the water. The rest of the crew were made prisoners, setting the boat on fire before being taken off.
On the same day Perham and Gooch had a brush with three enemy seaplanes, and Hallinan and Hodson in one boat, and Gordon and Faux in another, dropped four bombs on a Fritz on the 25th.
While on a Beef Trip with Watson on F 2 C, an experimental boat, I sighted an enemy submarine about eight miles away and hastened towards it at eighty knots.
The boat was fitted with a marvellous arrangement of brass taps, pipes, a compressed air bottle, and a long release lever. This was a gadget for dropping bombs by compressed air, which, according to its proud inventor, was to supersede the good old way of dropping them by pulling a bowden wire.
When over the submarine the lever was pulled, but the compressed air escaped with a derisive hiss and the bombs refused to leave the racks. The submarine submerged and a destroyer summoned to the place dropped depth charges, but there is a feeling that Fritz went off safely about his business.
The area was now being made so hot for Fritz that the Germans began to be convoyed up through it by destroyers.