Bravery such as we have seen in this and other chapters was greater than even appears: for, having once revealed the identity of your ship as a man-of-war, the wounded submarine would remember you, however much you might disguise yourself; and the next time he returned, as he usually did, to the same station, he would do his best to get you, even if he spent hours and days over the effort. That officers and men willingly, eagerly, went to sea in the same Q-ships, time after time, when they might have obtained, and would certainly have deserved, a less trying appointment afloat or ashore, is surely a positive proof that we rightly pride ourselves on our British seamanhood. Through the centuries we have bred and fostered and even discouraged this spirit. In half-decked boats, in carracks, galleons, wooden walls, fishing boats, lifeboats, pleasure craft; in steam, and steel-hulled motor, cargo ships, in liner and tramp and small coaster, this seamanlike character has been trained, developed, and kept alive, and now in the Q-ship service it reaches its apotheosis. For all that is courageous, enduring, and inspiring among the stories of the sea in any period, can you beat it? Can you even equal it?
CHAPTER X
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
One of the great lessons of the Great War was the inter-relation of international politics and warfare. It was an old lesson indeed, but modern conditions emphasized it once more. We have already seen that the torpedoing in 1915 of the Atlantic liners Lusitania and Arabic caused pressure to be put on the German Government by the United States of America. In the spring of 1916 the submarine campaign, for the Germans, was proceeding very satisfactorily. In February they had sunk 24,059 tons of British merchant shipping, in March they sank 83,492 tons, in April 120,540 tons; but in May this dropped suddenly to 42,165 tons. What was the reason for this sudden fall?
The answer is as follows: On March 24, 1916, the cross-Channel S.S. Sussex was torpedoed by a German submarine, and it happened that many citizens of the U.S.A. were on board at the time and several were killed. This again raised the question of relations between the U.S.A. and Germany, the New York World going so far as to ask, ‘Whether anything is to be gained by maintaining any longer the ghastly pretence of friendly diplomatic correspondence with a Power notoriously lacking in truth and honour.’ On April 20, therefore, the U.S.A. presented a very sharp note to the German Government, protesting against the wrongfulness of the submarine campaign waged versus commerce, and threatened to break off diplomatic relations. The result of this was that Germany had to give way, and sent orders to her naval staff to the effect that submarine warfare henceforth was to be carried on in accordance with Prize Law: that is to say, the U-boats—so Admiral Scheer interpreted it—were ‘to rise to the surface and stop ships, examine papers, and all passengers and crew to leave the ship before sinking her.’
Now this did not appeal to the German mind at all. ‘As war waged according to Prize Law by U-boats,’ wrote Admiral Scheer,[3] ‘in the waters around England could not possibly have any success, but, on the contrary, must expose the boats to the greatest dangers, I recalled all the U-boats by wireless, and announced that the U-boat campaign against British commerce had ceased.’ Thus we find that after April 26 the sinkings of British merchant ships became low until they began to increase in September, 1916, and then rapidly mounted up until in April, 1917, they had reached their maximum for the whole war with 516,394 tons. It is to be noted that after May 8, until July 5, 1916, no sinkings by U-boats occurred in home waters, although the sinkings went on in the Mediterranean, where risk of collision with American interests was less likely to occur.
Having regard to the increasing utility and efficiency of the Q-ships, we can well understand Admiral Scheer’s objection to U-boats rising to the surface, examining the ship’s papers, and allowing everyone to leave the ship before sinking her. This was the recognized law, and entirely within its rights the Q-ship made full use of this until she hoisted the White Ensign and became suddenly a warship. It shows the curious mental temper of the German that he would gamble only when he had the dice loaded in his favour. He had his Q-ships, which, under other names, endeavoured and indeed were able to pass through our blockade, and go raiding round the world; but until his submarines could go at it ruthlessly, he had not the same keenness. It was on February 1, 1917, that his Unrestricted Submarine Campaign began, and this was a convenient date, seeing that Germany had by this time 109 submarines. We know these facts beyond dispute, for a year after the signing of Armistice Germany held a ‘General National Assembly Committee of Inquiry’ into the war, and long accounts were published in the Press. One of the most interesting witnesses was Admiral von Capelle, who, in March, 1916, had succeeded von Tirpitz as Minister of Marine; and from the former’s lips it was learned that one of the main reasons why Germany in 1916 built so few submarines was the Battle of Jutland; for the damage inflicted on the High Sea Fleet necessitated taking workmen away from submarine construction to do repairs on the big ships. The number and intensity of the minefields laid by the British in German waters in that year caused Germany to build many minesweepers to keep clear the harbour exits. This also, he says, took men away from submarine building. It needed a couple of years to build the larger U-boats and a year to build the smaller ones; and though at the beginning of the Unrestricted Campaign in February, 1917, there were on paper 109 German submarines, and before the end of the war, in spite of sinkings by Allied forces, the number even averaged 127, yet there were never more than 76 actually in service at one time, and frequently the number was half this amount. For the Germans divided the seas up into so many stations, and for each station five submarines were required, thus: one actually at work in the area, one just relieved on her way home for rest and refit, a third on her way out from refit to relieve number one, while two others were being overhauled by dockyard hands. Geographically Germany was unfortunately situated for attacking the shipping reaching the British Isles from the Atlantic and Bay of Biscay. Before the submarines could get into the Atlantic they had either to negotiate the Dover Straits or go round the North of Scotland. The first was risky, especially for the bigger and more valuable submarines, and during 1918 became even highly dangerous; but the second, especially during the boisterous winter months, knocked the submarines about to such an extent that they kept the dockyards busier than otherwise.
All this variation of U-boat activity reacted on the rise, development, and wane of the Q-ship. In the early part of 1917, when the submarine campaign was at its height, the Q-ships were at the top of their utility. It was no longer any hole-and-corner service, relying on a few keen, ingenious brains at one or two naval bases, but became a special department in the Admiralty, who selected the ships, arranged for the requisite disguises, and chose the personnel. The menace to the country’s food had by this time become so serious—a matter of a very few weeks, as we have since learned, separated us from starvation—that every anti-submarine method had to be carried out with vigour, and at that time no method promised greater success than these mystery ships. Altogether about 180 vessels of various sorts were taken up and commissioned as Q-ships. Apart from the usual tramp steamers and colliers and disguised trawlers, thirty-four sloops and sixteen converted P-boats, named now ‘PQ’s,’ were equipped. The P-boat, as mentioned on a previous page, was a low-lying craft rather like a torpedo-boat; but her great feature was her underwater design. She was so handy and had a special forefoot that if once she got near to a submarine the latter would certainly be rammed; in one case the P-boat went clean through the submarine’s hull. The next stage, then, was to build a suitable superstructure on this handy hull, so that the ship had all the appearance of a small merchant ship. Because of her shallow, deceptive draught she was not likely to be torpedoed, whereas her extreme mobility was very valuable.
In every port all over the country numerous passenger and tramp steamers and sailing ships were inspected and found unsuitable owing to their peculiar structure or the impossibility of effective disguise combined with a sufficient bearing of the disguised guns. All this meant a great deal of thought and inventive genius, the tonnage as a rule ranging from 200 to 4,000, and the ships being sent to work from Queenstown, Longhope, Peterhead, Granton, Lowestoft, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Falmouth, Milford, Malta, and Gibraltar. And when you ask what was the net result of these Q-ships, the whole answer cannot be given in mere figures. Generally they greatly assisted the merchantman, for it made the U-boat captain very cautious, and there are instances where he desisted from attacking a real merchant ship for the reason that something about her suggested a Q-ship. In over eighty cases Q-ships damaged German submarines and thus sent them home licking their wounds, anxious only to be left alone for a while. This accounts for some of those instances when a merchant ship, on seeing a submarine proceeding on the surface, was surprised to find that the German did not attack. Thus the Q-ship had temporarily put a stop to sinkings by that submarine. But apart from these indirect, yet no less valuable, results, no fewer than eleven submarines were directly sent to their doom of all the 203 German U-craft sunk during the war from various causes, including mines and accidents.