“It is fearfully trying on the nerves. Not every man can endure it. While running under the sea there is deathlike stillness in the boats, as the electrical machinery is noiseless.... As the air becomes heated it gets poor and mixed with the odor of oil from the machinery. The atmosphere becomes fearful. An overpowering sleepiness often attacks new men and one requires the utmost will power to keep awake. I have had men who did not want to eat during the first three days out because they did not want to lose that amount of time from sleep. Day after day spent in such cramped quarters, where there is hardly room to stretch your legs, and remaining constantly on the alert, is a tremendous strain on the nerves.”
But if there is discomfort below the surface there is peril of death above. Yet a submarine must spend as much time as possible on top of the water, even off the enemy’s coast, to spare the precious storage batteries and let the Diesel engines grind oil into electricity by using the electric motor as a dynamo. If she could renew her batteries under water or pick up a useable supply of current as she can pick up a drum of oil from a given spot on the sea-bottom, then the modern submarine would indeed be a hard fish to catch. As it is, great ingenuity has been shown by the German skippers in minimizing the dangers of surface cruising and at the same time stalking their prey. One big submarine masqueraded as a steamer, with dummy masts and funnel. Innocent-looking steam trawlers flying neutral flags acted as screens and lookouts, besides carrying supplies. One of these boldly entered a British harbor, where it was noticed that her decks were cumbered with very many coils of rope. The authorities investigated and found snugly stowed in the center of each a large can of fuel-oil. Another trawler, flying the Dutch flag, was stopped in the North Sea by a British cruiser and searched by a boarding-party. They were going back into their boat, after finding everything apparently as it should be, when one of the Englishmen noticed a mysterious pipe sticking out of the trawler’s side. They swarmed on board again and discovered that the fishing-boat had a complete double hull, the space between being filled with oil. The trawler’s crew were removed to the cruiser and a strong detachment of bluejackets left in their place. A few hours afterwards, there was a swirl of water alongside and a German submarine came up for refreshments. It was promptly captured and so was another that presently followed it: a good day’s catch for one small fishing-boat.
Because of the uncertainty and danger of depending on underwater caches and tenders, each blockader usually returned at the end of two or three weeks to Heligoland, Zeebruge, Ostend, or some other base to take on supplies, report progress and rest the crew. This of course reduces the number of submarines actually on guard. How large that number may have been at any particular time since the blockade began is unknown to everybody except a few persons in Berlin. At the outbreak of the war, Germany had between twenty and twenty-five submarines in commission and a dozen or so under construction. If, as is claimed, the Germans have been completing a new undersea boat every week since the war began, that would have given them by August 1, 1915, a flotilla of seventy-seven, exclusive of losses. If only thirty had been lost, that would have left fewer than fifty submarines to blockade more than fifty seaports, great and small, scattered over more than twenty-five hundred miles of coast.
Moreover, these widely scattered blockaders would have to be on duty by night as well as by day. But at night or in fog the periscope is useless; to intercept an incoming steamer, running swiftly and without lights, the submarine must rise and cruise on the surface. It cannot use a searchlight to locate the blockade-runner without consuming much precious voltage and at the same time attracting the nearest patrol-boat.
The same disadvantages apply to sending wireless messages from one blockading submarine to another. And as the wireless apparatus of an undersea boat is necessarily low-powered and has a narrow radius, while “oscillators,” bells, and other underwater signaling devices are still in their infancy, it would seem as if the German “U-boats” in British waters must have been suffering from lack of coöperation and team-play. If the captain of a Union gunboat, lying off Charleston during the Civil War, caught a glimpse of a blockade runner, he could alarm the rest of the fleet with rockets and signal guns, but the commander of the U-99 off Queenstown cannot count on his consorts if he himself fails to sink an approaching liner.
Perhaps the most notable shortcoming of the submarine blockade has been its failure to inspire terror. Contrary to the expectations of nearly every forecaster from Robert Fulton to Conan Doyle, the sinking of the first merchant vessels by submarines failed to frighten away any others. Cargo rates are high in war-time and insurance covers the owners’ risk, so few sailing orders were canceled. As for the captains, they are not noted for timidity, and professional pride is strong among them; most of them have families to provide for, and every one of them knows that behind him stands an eager young mate with a master’s ticket, ready to take the risk and take out the ship if the skipper quits. So the merchant marine accepted the submarine as one of the risks of the trade.
When a big German submarine rose up off the Irish coast within easy gunshot of the homeward-bound British steamer Anglo-Californian and signaled for her to heave to, the plucky English skipper slammed his engine-room telegraph over to “Full speed ahead.” Away dashed the steamer and after her came the submarine,[27] making good practice with her 8.8 centimeter gun. Twenty shrapnel shells burst over the Anglo-Californian, riddling her upper works, slaughtering thirty of her cargo of horses, killing seven of her crew and wounding eight more. Steering with his own hands, Captain Archibald Panlow held his vessel on her course till a shrapnel bullet killed him, when the wheel was taken by his son, the second mate, who brought the Anglo-Californian safely into Queenstown. It is men of this breed who have kept Admiral von Tirpitz from saying, in the words of the fictitious Captain John Sirius,
“The terror I had caused had cleared the channel.”
But because the “Campaign of Frightfulness” has failed and a few score of unsupported submarines have been unable to blockade the British Isles, it is stupid to pretend that there has been no progress since 1901 and say as Admiral von Tirpitz said then,
“Submarines are as useless as ever.”