Jack Heaton, wireless operator

by A. Frederick Collins

While the ex-Kaiser’s navy could not be induced to leave its mine-protected harbors and do battle with the British fleet—no, not even if all Germany starved to death—crafty, old Admiral von Tirpitz began to build up a frightful fleet of U-boats with the avowed intention of sinking every merchant ship, no matter what flag she flew, if she carried foods or munitions to England and her Allies.

As the United States was shipping cargoes of both of these commodities to Great Britain and France, which was entirely within her rights according to international law, it was not long, as you can imagine, before the German U-boats were sinking our ships and killing our men.

It was bewhiskered Admiral von Tirpitz who figured out and showed the ex-Kaiser that the only way left open for Germany to win the war was to sink every ship afloat that did not fly the German flag, and soon after this program was agreed to by the war-lords they seemed in a fair way to succeed, for they were sinking ships faster than the Allies and the United States could replace them.

Any number of schemes to beat the U-boats were thought up and while most of them were quite impracticable there were a few that proved effective when put to the test. One way was to build more merchant ships every month than the U-boats could sink and when Uncle Sam put the job into Mr. Schwab’s hands this was done. Another plan was to hunt down the U-boats with submarine chasers. A submarine chaser is a small, high-speed boat carrying one or more rapid fire guns.

As you know a submarine can shoot a torpedo at the biggest ship afloat and if it hits her she is sure to sink in a few minutes and yet it is the easiest thing in the world to send a U-boat to the bottom if you can only get a chance to land a shell on her.

Just before we got into the war Germany built two great submarines each of which was over 300 feet long. One of these U-boats was the Deutschland and the other was the U-53, and both had a cruising radius of about 5,000 miles, that is, they could travel that distance without having to take on food or fuel.

No one here ever thought that a submarine could make a trip across the ocean but the Deutschland did it. She left Bremen, Germany, and submerged while in the river, then she slipped out into the seaway under the British fleet that had the German warships bottled up, made the passage of the North Sea on and under the water, thence through the English Channel going this dangerous route entirely under water and across the Atlantic Ocean during which she submerged only when she saw some of the Allies’ warships.

Then one fine morning, 16 days later, she came to the surface in Chesapeake Bay and docked at Baltimore. There she unloaded a cargo of dye-stuffs and synthetic gems and took on a cargo of rubber, and, what was of more importance, secret papers which Count von Bernsdorf, Germany’s ambassador to the United States, could not trust to go any other way. On sailing she made her way to the mouth of the bay, submerged to escape the British ships which were laying in wait for her beyond the three mile limit and returned to her home port. Later on she made another round voyage with equal success.

When we got into the war it was clear that we had a war-zone right here at home and one that was not to be sneezed at, for, since a submarine could be built large enough to travel the whole distance from Europe to America without having to be convoyed by a base, or mother-ship as she is called, Germany could as easily send over to our shores one or a dozen submarines as large as the Deutschland, fitted out with rapid-fire guns and torpedoes and do a lot of damage to our shipping and even to our cities. The Navy Department believed that the best way to protect our coast was to build a large fleet of U-boat chasers and this work was gone ahead with as fast as possible.

Now while I can use a key with my left hand nearly as well as I could with my right, still my arm pained me a good deal and I could have gotten a long leave of absence if I had asked for it. So when I told the commander I wanted to be transferred to a U-boat chaser he fixed it O. K. for me and I was assigned to the Second Naval District which patrolled from Newport to the First and Third Naval Districts.