Very thin the skin of a submarine; very fragile and complicated its machinery. It does not take much of a shock to put it out of order or a large cargo of explosive to dent that skin beyond repair. It being in the nature of submarines to sink, how does the hunter know when he has struck a mortal blow? If oil and bubbles come up for sometime in one place, or if they come up with a rush, that is suggestive. Then, it does not require a nautical mind to realise that by casting about on the bottom with a grapnel you will learn if an object with the bulk and size of a submarine is there. Admirals accept no guesswork from the hunters about their exploits; they must bring the brush to prove the kill.
With Admiral Crawford I went to see the submarine defences of a harbour. It reminded one of the old days of the drawbridge to the castle, when a friend rode freely in and an enemy might try to swim the moat and scale the walls if he pleased.
“Take care! There is a tide here!” the coxswain was warned, lest the barge get into some of the troubles meant for Fritz. “A cunning fellow, Fritz. We must give him no openings.”
The openings appear long enough to permit British craft, whether trawlers, or flotillas, or cruisers, or battleships, to go and come. Lying as close together as fish in a basket, I saw at one place a number of torpedo boats home from a week at sea.
“Here to-day and gone to-morrow,” said an officer. “What a time they had last winter! You know how cold the North Sea is—no, you cannot, unless you have been out in a torpedo boat dancing the tango in the teeth of that bitter wind, with the spray whipping up to the tops of the smoke-stacks. In the dead of night they would come into this pitch-dark harbour. How they found their way is past me. It’s a trick of those young fellows, who command.”
Stationary they seemed now as the quay itself; but let a signal speak, an alarm come, and they would soon be as alive as leaping porpoises. The sport is to those who scout and hunt. But, again, do not forget those who watch, those who keep the blockade, from the Channel to Iceland, and those trawlers who plod over plotted sea-squares with the regularity of mowing machines cutting a harvest, on their way back and forth sweeping up mines. They were fishermen before the war and are fishermen still. Night and day they keep at it. They come into the harbours stiff with cold, thaw out, and return to hardships which would make many a man prefer the trenches. Tributes to their patient courage, which came from the heart, were heard on board the battleships.
“It is when we think of them,” said an officer, “that we are most eager to have the German fleet come out, so that we can do our part.”