We had gradually drawn closer to a distance of about six thousand meters. At last an enemy! After so many neutral steamers. At last an enemy! An intense joy thrilled us, a joy which only can be compared with the hunter’s when he sees at last the longed-for prey coming within range, after long and fruitless efforts. We had traveled many hundred sea miles. We had endured storm, cold, and at times had been drenched to the skin, and there, only two points port, our first success was waving towards us!
By this time we must have been discovered by the steamer. Now our flag of war must have been recognized. A ghastly horror must have seized the captain on the bridge: The U-boat terror! the U-boat pest!
But the captain on the steamer did not give in so easily. He tried to save himself by flight. Suddenly we saw how the steamer belched forth thicker and darker clouds of smoke and in a sharp curve turned port. Its propeller water, which hitherto could hardly be seen, was whipped to a white foam, and let us know the machines had been put into the highest possible speed. But it was of no use. No matter how much the captain was shouting and how much the machinist drove his sweating and naked fire crew to even more than human endeavors, so that the coal flew about and the boilers were red, everything was useless. We closed in on him with a horrible certainty nearer and nearer.
For some time I had been standing high up on the tower with a spy-glass before my eyes and did not lose one of the steamer’s motions. Now it seemed to me the right moment had come to energetically command the steamer to stop.
“A shot above the steamer! Fire!”
The granate landed two hundred meters in front of the steamer. We waited a few minutes, but when the shot did not cause any change I gave the right distance to the gunners and shouted the command to aim at the steamer. The second shot hit and a thick, black and yellow cloud from the explosion shot into the air. The third shot tore a piece off the funnel, the fourth hit the bridge, and before the fifth had left the mouth of the gun the signal flew up, “I have stopped.”
Ah! old friend, you had come to it, anyhow!
An old sea-rule says: “Carefulness is the best seamanship.” Regarding all the tricks and subterfuges which the hostile merchant-marine has used against us, I did not consider it advisable to advance nearer the steamer at once. I therefore also stopped our machines and signaled: “Leave the ship immediately!”
The signal was unnecessary. The English captain had himself given the command to the crew to take to the boats after he, frothing with anger, had comprehended the impossibility to flee. Snorting with wrath, he shortly afterwards came alongside our boat, and handed me at my request the ship’s papers and asked me to tow the three boats to the neighborhood of the coast. I promised this and said some simple words to him in regard to his bad luck and concerning the grim necessity of the war—which he dismissed with an angry shrug of his shoulders. I certainly could understand the man’s bad spirit.
I then went forward and torpedoed the steamer, which sank, stern foremost, with a gurgling sound into the deep.