According to the Dutch Navy Department, the steamer was towing the motor-ship Zeemeeuw at the time, and at the opening of the engagement both vessels were outside territorial waters. When they were abandoned they had again entered the three-mile limit. The prize crew succeeded in getting the Batavier II outside, but owing to her disability and a strong current she again drifted within the Dutch sphere of influence. A Dutch torpedo-boat then hoisted the signal “Respect neutrality,” and the submarine retired. The Zeemeeuw was taken in tow and conducted to Nieuwediep.
Less than a month later the Renate Leonhardt, another German steamer, attempted to run the blockade. Instead she ran ashore near the Helder, and after being refloated was met on the high seas by a British submarine, which made short work of her. The crew were picked up and taken to Holland.
Let me close this chapter with a contrast. Fiendish brutality characterized the behaviour of most German U-boat commanders. It mattered not whether the ship attacked was sailing under the colours of the Allies or of neutrals. To them war was a biological necessity, a phase in the development of life, to be waged relentlessly and vitriolic ally. The more cruel the method, the shorter the conflict. That was the Prussian theory, and the Great Conflict proved it false. To the German the neutral country was only neutral when it was working for the Fatherland. Often enough, even in these circumstances, he preferred to regard it as an open enemy. The lanes of the ocean are strewn with the wrecks of neutral craft and dead men assassinated by “our sea-warriors” in their hideous attempt at world-conquest. I quote a report received from the commander of a British submarine. The statements are corroborated by the neutrals of the world:
“On the morning of March 14 [1917] His Majesty’s submarine E —, when proceeding on the surface in the North Sea, sighted two suspicious craft ahead. On approaching them, however, she found them to be ship’s boats sailing south, and containing some thirty members of the crew of the Dutch steamship L. M. Casteig, which had been torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine some distance to the northward over twenty-four hours previously.
“After ascertaining that there was both food and water in the boats, E — took them in tow at once, and proceeded toward the Dutch coast at the greatest possible speed consistent with safety, in view of the state of the weather. Some four hours later the Norwegian steamship Norden was sighted, and as she showed some natural reluctance about approaching the submarine, not knowing that it was a British one, the boats containing the Dutch crew cast off the tow and pulled toward her. E — kept the boats in sight until they were seen to have been picked up by the Norden, and then proceeded on the course which had been interrupted for this act of mercy.”
Mercy as a biological necessity of war! It is a suggestive thought, of British origin. It compares favourably with the treatment of forty of the crew of the s.s. Belgian Prince, who were lined up on U 44 and drowned as the submersible plunged. About a fortnight later Paul Wagenführ, the instigator of this diabolical outrage, was drowned with his confederates. U 44 was their coffin.
CHAPTER VII
Submarine v. Submarine
“Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy.”
Shakespeare
At the beginning of the war it was freely stated that the one ship a submarine could not fight was the submarine. This theory, like so many others, went by the board in the process of time. Finally the notion was completely reversed. Allied underwater craft ferreted out many an enemy submersible. Indeed, if we accept the authority of Rear-Admiral S. S. Robison, of the United States Navy, they did “more than any other class of vessel” to defeat the U-boats.