Like every other type of naval craft, submarines are useful but not omnipotent. We have seen what they can do in action and what they have failed to do. As scouts in the enemy’s waters they are invaluable. As commerce destroyers, they do the work of the swift-sailing privateers of a century ago. In the fall of 1915, British submarines in the Baltic almost put a stop to the trade between Germany and Sweden. But to blockade a coast effectively, submarines must have tenders, which must have destroyers and light cruisers to defend them, which in turn require the support of battle-cruisers and dreadnoughts, with their attendant host of colliers, hospital ships and air-scouts. Nor can a coast be long defended by submarines, mine-fields and shore-batteries, if there are not enough trained troops to keep the enemy, who can always land at some remote spot, from marching round to the rear of the coast-defenses. This war is simply repeating the old, old lesson that there are no cheap and easy substitutes for a real army and a real navy.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SUBMARINE AND NEUTRALS
Both Admiral von Tirpitz and the Austrian Admiralty seem to have begun their submarine campaigns after the method of Captain John Sirius: to starve the enemy any way they could and let the lawyers argue about it afterwards. From the beginning of the blockade, Scandinavian, Dutch, and Spanish vessels, even when bound from one neutral port to another, were torpedoed and sunk without warning by the German submarines. Their governments protested vigorously but without effect. Then came the turn of the United States.
The Falaba, a small British passenger steamer outward bound from Liverpool to the west coast of Africa was pursued and overtaken off the coast of Wales on March 28, 1915, by the fast German submarine U-28. Realizing that their vessel would be sunk but expecting that their lives would be spared, the crew and passengers began filling and lowering away the boats as rapidly as possible but without panic. The wireless operator had been sending calls for help but ceased when ordered to by the captain of the U-28. No patrol boats were in sight and the submarine was standing by on the surface, with both gun and torpedo-tubes trained on the motionless steamer and in absolute command of the situation. Without the slightest excuse or warning, a torpedo was then discharged and exploded against the Falaba’s side, directly beneath a half-lowered and crowded lifeboat. The lifeboat was blown to pieces and the steamer sunk, with the loss of one hundred and twelve lives, including that of an American citizen, Mr. Leon C. Thrasher, of Hardwick, Massachusetts.
Photo by Brown Bros.
British Submarine, showing one type of disappearing deck-gun now in use.
This cold-blooded slaughter of the helpless horrified the rest of the world and did Germany’s cause an incalculable amount of harm. The German people were in no state of mind to realize this, for they had gone literally submarine-mad. They rejoiced in the cartoons depicting John Bull marooned on his island or dragged under and drowned by the swarming “U-boats.” They sincerely believed that within a few months the power of the British navy would be broken forever and that in the meanwhile the German submarines could do no wrong. This feeling was presently intensified by the loss of their hero, the gallant von Weddigen. Decorated, together with every man of his crew, with the Iron Cross and promoted to the command of a fine new submarine, the U-29, he did effective work as a blockader and captured and sank several prizes, but only after carefully removing those on board. Then the U-29 was sunk with all hands, by an armed patrol boat, the British declare: treacherously, the German people believe, by a merchant ship whose crew von Weddigen was trying to spare.[28]