COMPOSITION OF THE FLOTILLA[ToC]
CHAPTER VII
COMPOSITION OF THE FLOTILLA
The shore establishment—Heavy losses of the flotilla—Humorous incidents—Drowning the mascot—Bluffing the Huns.
The Submarine Flotilla at Harwich, acting as a separate unit and receiving its orders directly from the Admiralty, though also at times working in co-operation with the Harwich Force of light cruisers and destroyers, played a very useful part in the naval war, and was especially instrumental in making the North Sea too uncomfortable for German submarines. At the commencement of the war the Maidstone was the only depot ship of the flotilla, but later she was joined by two others, the Pandora and the Forth, while another ship, the Alecto, was stationed as a branch depot ship at Yarmouth, that port being somewhat nearer the usual objective of our submarines than Harwich.
At the opening of the war, Commodore Roger Keyes was in command of the flotilla. Then Captain Waistell was in command until the end of the third year of the war. He was succeeded by Captain A.P. Addison, who is still in command. The average strength of the flotilla was eighteen submarines, the large majority of them being of the very useful "E" type. This was the only organised flotilla existing in England at the opening of the war. It had the advantage, therefore, of taking to itself all the senior and most experienced submarine officers in the Navy, a fact that may account for the large percentage of hits made by the torpedoes of these submarines in the course of the war—a percentage of which officers and men naturally feel proud. At first the personnel of the flotilla comprised naval men only; but, later, numbers of men from the merchant service and artificers from shore works were absorbed into it. These latter became very keen and efficient, and are spoken of in terms of high praise by the officers.
It was the practice, when the submarines returned after one or other of their adventurous voyages, at once to remove the crews from their confined quarters to the depot ships, in which they lived until the time came to put to sea again. But as the war progressed the accommodation afforded by the depot ships became inadequate. Consequently the Maidstone and other depot ships which had been moored in the harbour were brought alongside Parkeston quay; while, facing the quay, on the ground that had been taken over from the Great Eastern Railway Company (a company, by the way, which co-operated with the Admiralty in a zealous and patriotic fashion), there rapidly rose an extensive shore establishment, with store-rooms, workshops, offices, and comfortable quarters for the submarine crews, who lived here instead of in the depot ships when their craft were in port.