I.
Down in the Straits of Dover there was now in being a barrage which put the fear into the hearts of the crews of the German submarines.
All night long, across the narrow channel between the white chalk cliffs of Dover and Calais, a line of armed trawlers lit up the waves with brilliant flares, and prevented the U-boats from slipping through on the surface.
Beneath the water were nasty devices which, when encountered by an Undersea-boat trying to creep through submerged, brought its crew to a sticky end, and reduced the cunning mechanism of the submarine to scrap.
Between the coasts of England and France two cables were laid on the bottom, parallel to each other, and some distance apart. These cables had hydrophones on them at frequent intervals. A hydrophone is a water telephone. If a noise is made in the water, say by the twin propellers of a submarine revolving, the sound is picked up by the diaphragm in the hydrophone, which is similar to the diaphragm in a telephone, only, of course, bigger.
An enemy submarine going up or down through the Straits under water would cross one and then the other of these cables. His propeller noises would be picked up by the nearest hydrophones, and the listeners in the silent cabinets on the English coast could tell in which direction he was travelling, and his approximate position.
The skippers of the trawlers, those born hunters of Fritz, would be warned by wireless, and would hasten to the place and shoot a row of nets—that is, lay them while under weigh across the path of the submarine. On these nets were hung mines, and the mines were connected to the trawlers by electric cables. The nets were made of wire, and had a large mesh, were very light, and each had a buoy which floated on the surface.
The Commander of a submarine running blind would barge into a net, drag it along, and the mines would be pulled in against the sides of his boat. The surface buoy would bob all the same as a fisherman's float. The skipper of the trawler, watchfully waiting, would press a heavy finger on the correct button.
The mother-ship in the German harbour would wait in vain for the return of her criminal son.
This was only one of the many methods of counter-frightfulness adopted, and so efficient were these Naval devilments that Fritz began to go north-about through the Fair Island Channel between the Orkneys and Shetlands, navigating south down the west coast of Scotland by sounding on the hundred fathom line, and the occupation of Felixstowe, so far as the intensive hunting of submarines was concerned, was gone.
But there were still a few Fritzes about, the Beef Trip had to be protected, and a demand arose for reconnaissance patrols in the Bight. Also the Hun had developed a fast monoplane fighter seaplane, with all its guns on the top line, and specially designed for fighting the flying-boats near the water.
These monoplanes, which were nasty fellows, carrying little fuel and fighting on their own front doorstep, were based on Zeebrugge in Belgium and the Island of Borkum in the Bight of Heligoland. In the fighting which now ensued the flying-boats, although designed for weight carrying and distance and not for fighting, held their own. A complete record of all encounters show honours even; besides which the flying-boats carried out their job o' work.
With the new year American pilots began to arrive for the War Flight. The first was Ensign Vorys, U.S.N., and Ensigns Fallen, Potter, Sturtevant, Hawkins, and Scheffelin quickly followed. They were splendid chaps, keen on flying, and could not be kept out of the air. They had all the fresh enthusiasm for the war which everybody that came in in 1914 and 1915 had possessed, and regarded patrolling, which the old hands looked on as a hard and exacting business, as a novel and entertaining sport. One of their number, who arrived a little later, looped the loop in a six-ton flying-boat; a feat which had not been performed before, and has not been tried since.
There was the deepest sorrow in the mess when Ensign Sturtevant and Ensign Potter were shot down. They were charming messmates, splendid pilots, and very gallant gentlemen.
Hun Monoplane diving in to shove home an attack.
The new year opened badly.
On the 2nd, in a thirty-knot wind, Gordon took off the harbour in a new type boat. As he rose from the water a petrol pipe failed, and not having height to turn he landed her outside down wind. She touched the water at a rate of knots, her bottom split open, and she sank in shallow water. Before she sank Gordon and his crew were taken off by a motor-boat.
The Old Man of the Sea organised a salvage party.
Jumbo boiled about in the sheds setting alight his trusty henchmen, and collected an amazing assortment of wire cables, ropes, balks of timber, flares, anchors, and what else I know not. The station tug Grampus, the steam hissing from her safety-valve through the zeal of her fireman (for the usual unexciting job of the crew was to bring bread and beef from Shotley, and this was an adventure), took the O.M.O.T.S.'s pet, the flat-bottomed salvage barge, in tow. They took it out and anchored it to windward of the wreck, but nothing further could be done until low water, which was at nine o'clock.
In the darkness of the night, in the shadow of the sheds, Jumbo collected his piratical crew and packed them into the Grampus. I asked to be taken along, and we all shoved out through the guardships into the open sea. We could not get near the barge owing to the shallow water, and Jumbo forsook us, climbing with five of his satellites into a small dingey, which, perilously overloaded, bobbed away over the heavy sea into the darkness.
A long wait. The tug was rolling and tossing in the steep waves. A drizzling rain was falling. There were no shore lights, and the night was pitch-black. And then there was a glare of light in the distance, Jumbo had lit one of the acetylene flares on the stern of the salvage barge. The glare increased, and presently a light came bobbing over the water towards the tug,—it was a lantern in the bow of the dingey. I climbed across and was ferried to the scene of activity.
It was a weird sight.
Five hissing acetylene flares surrounded the wreck with a fierce glow. Intense darkness all around, and in the brilliant pool of light a section of tossing waves, the flying-boat with her lower wings showing on the surface of the water, and the oilskin-clad men working on her.
The wind was dying down, and as the tide fell the force of the waves was broken by the shoals over which they had already passed and by the barge.
Jumbo took a short wire rope, with a wire hawser attached midway between the two ends, and had it worked down from the bow beneath the flying-boat. The ends were made fast to the engine bearer-struts, the men tying the knots under water, as the tide was now rising. Other men had made and fitted a wire sling for each engine, and to these two lines were made fast and taken to the barge. The slack in the wire hawser and the two lines was hauled in, and as the incoming tide raised the barge the flying-boat was lifted clear of the bottom.
As soon as the water was deep enough Jumbo had the anchor heaved up and two motor-boats took the barge in tow. The flying-boat, supported on the surface by its lower wings moving through the water, followed after. It was towed by the two lines attached to the engines, the wire bridle under the bow preventing it nose-diving.
The Old Man of the Sea processioned into the harbour in triumph. First the Grampus, then the two motor-boats, then the barge, and finally the flying-boat. He beached her at the Old Station at nearly high tide. A line was taken ashore and attached to a motor lorry. As the tide came in the boat was pulled farther and farther up the beach by the motor lorry, until it could be brought in no farther.
A gang of carpenters were turned out of their hammocks and placed shores under the wings to keep the boat on an even keel, and when the tide fell they patched the holes in the hull with three-ply wood and canvas.
At the next high tide the boat was floated off, towed to a slipway, put on a trolley and rolled up to a shed for repair. She was ready again in March, and carried out many more patrols.
During January 1918 there were only nine flying days, and although there were sixteen patrols carried out, no submarines were sighted.
About this time many disquieting rumours were circulating concerning the joining of the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps into a new service—disquieting because the sea-going men of the R.N.A.S. felt that they were nearer in spirit and work to the sailors than to the soldiers. Also the R.N.A.S. was a small show, the total personnel being about forty thousand, and it was felt that under new and unsympathetic management the work would suffer, work the value of which was just being recognised by a stern parent, the Navy.