The arrangements made for the comfort of the men were excellent. A church, a chapel, recreation rooms, a theatre, a cinema house, and canteens fronted the quay, and good companies were brought from London theatres and music-halls to entertain the sailors, while, of course, provision was also made for outdoor sports and games. There were, naturally, serious-minded people who considered that some of these arrangements were of a frivolous character, out of harmony with the tragedy of war. But those who organised these things knew better. The strain of submarine work is very great. To occupy the minds of the men with amusements while they are resting awhile on shore after their trying duties cannot but help to keep up their moral. And that the moral of the submarine men was wonderful all are agreed. Surely no other Service on land or sea can supply a greater test of sustained valour than does this submarine warfare. The conditions of it are uncanny, calculated to terrify the imagination. As a rule the submarine is playing a lone hand upon the seas. It is rare, when disaster comes, for a friendly ship to be near her to bring help or to carry tidings of her to England. In the great majority of cases, when one of our submarines has been lost, all that is known of the disaster is that she does not come home. What has happened to her remains a secret of the sea never to be revealed. An ordinary patrol for a submarine of the Harwich Flotilla was of about ten days; a mine-laying trip, of from three to six days' duration. When the overdue ship did not return there was suspense for several days, until at last it was realised that there was no longer room for hope.
In this little flotilla of eighteen submarines, ships that disappeared had to be replaced by others. For in the course of the war twenty "E" boats, two "D" boats, and one "L" boat belonging to the flotilla were lost, and these figures do not include the submarines that were detached from the Harwich Flotilla to be lost in the Mediterranean and Baltic. The sailor of to-day has not all the superstitions of his forefathers, but, like most people, he has some belief in omens. Certain coincidences made him regard it as very unlucky to sail in a submarine when a new captain was making his first voyage in her. Within a short period four submarines that had sailed out of Harwich under new captains were never heard of again. It was also recognised that ill luck was likely to attend the first voyage of a newly launched submarine; but that, so soon as the first voyage had been safely accomplished, all was well with the ship, which would then be faced only by the ordinary chances of war.
To turn to an amusing example of the superstition of the sea. In the course of one cruise a submarine of the Harwich Flotilla had fired seven torpedoes at various enemy ships without result. The captain discovered one of his crew kneeling on the deck over a bucket of sea-water. He was holding under the water and mercilessly wringing an object against which he was directing a volume of abuse in terms frankly nautical. Disgusted at the failure of the torpedoes, he was drowning the ship's mascot, a teddy bear or similar doll, hoping to change the luck. I wish that I could state that the next torpedo fired sank a Hun battleship, but I have no record of the sequel.
Even in war there are humorous incidents, and, indeed, there are many of them. One submarine captain of this flotilla attacked a German submarine on the surface and gave chase to her with the intention of torpedoing her. But the Hun had the greater speed; the British submarine had no gun, and could not get near enough to the receding foe to use a torpedo. So the captain had to content himself with signalling insulting messages to the Hun, hoping to taunt him into fighting; but the shocked Hun dived under the surface and disappeared in order to avoid the language.
On another occasion a submarine of this flotilla and a German submarine passed very close to each other in such foul weather that nothing could be done in the way of fighting, so the two captains waved their hands cheerily at each other and went their respective ways. This is the only instance that I can recall of any Hun having displayed anything remotely resembling a sense of humour in the course of this war.
Our submarine commanders appear to have been adepts in the art of successfully bluffing the enemy when the occasion arose. For example, after one of our air raids on the German coast, a submarine of the Harwich Flotilla went to the rescue of one of our seaplanes that had fallen disabled to the water. While she was engaged in sinking the seaplane and taking off her pilot, a German aircraft came over very close. The captain of the submarine waved his cap to the enemy airmen, who concluded that the submarine was a German boat which had brought down an English seaplane and was capturing her pilot. As soon as the captain of the submarine had completed his task he dived quickly. The German must have then realised too late that he was dealing with an enemy, for as the submarine was moving away beneath the surface there was felt the shock caused by the bursting of bombs dropped by the Hun aircraft.
On another occasion, in June 1915, one of the Harwich submarines, on coming to the surface somewhere near the German coast, found that her engines were partly disabled. There was a German trawler in sight, and within range of the submarine's gun. The trawler would certainly have made a bolt for it, and in all probability would have got safely away, had she known that the submarine was incapable of giving chase to her. But the captain of the submarine induced the German to surrender and compelled him to tow the crippled submarine across the North Sea back to Harwich, where the trawler and her crew of eight men were handed over to the authorities.