Submarines will probably act in conjunction with torpedo-boats and destroyers, and the object of these vessels will be to ward off the attacks of hostile torpedo-boats and destroyers.
It has been said that in action the moral effect of the submarine would probably outweigh its practical effect, and it is now urged that the moral influence of this new antidote to submarines will be very great.
“The risks of ordinary submarine work,” says a writer, are not so great as many people imagine; and they can in a great measure be overcome by practice. But the deadly spar will quite alter this. The men in the submarine cannot acquire familiarity with this in peace; not till war will it operate. Then, whenever they are rising, they will know that a destroyer may be within reach, and that, if so, absolute annihilation is certain, and annihilation in a particularly horrible form.
“Excitement may sustain them; they may figure it out that their chances of life and death are on a par with those of the soldier in a frontal attack, but it is at least doubtful. It is difficult to make the analogy; and, moreover, there is the chill of the water to consider. Nerves and courage both suffer from cold, and the interior of a submarine has always the chill of a tomb. Inside it men sit, and may not move without endangering the craft’s stability. It will need a high courage thus to sit absolutely without means of knowing whether a painful annihilation is coming in a few minutes; it will certainly render it difficult to take careful observations—and careful observations are a vital necessity. And the Frenchman, of all races of men, seems least fitted to be calm under such circumstances. It must further be remembered that if a destroyer is within a thousand yards she will be easily able to steam up and destroy the boat, for a thousand yards a minute is now destroyer speed. The boat, on the other hand, cannot, save under favourable circumstances, see a distance of a thousand yards, certainly not in a hasty rise and plunge again. She might just distinguish a big ship, but that is about all. On the verge of a frightful death it will take a very cool man even to see that.”[[7]]
[7]. “Our preparations for attacking submarines with spar torpedoes fitted to torpedo-boats or destroyers are exciting the ridicule of those foreign nations which from experience know what submarines are like. We claim that our specially rigged spar-torpedo can reach a submarine at a depth of 10 feet below the surface, but why a submarine should run at 10 instead of 30 or 40 feet does not appear. The truth seems to be that if the submarine can be reached at all by the spar-torpedo she could, at least in the vast majority of cases, be reached much more expeditiously and certainly by means of the gun” (W. Laird Clowes, at Institution of Naval Architects, 1902).
The French appear to have considered the possibility of some “antidote,” for the submersible Narval has a double hull, and in the space between the two, sea water is allowed to circulate freely. Whether this device will enable the boat to resist the force of an explosion is a question which can only be satisfactorily decided in actual warfare. Meanwhile the bomb-proof hull will certainly receive attention.
So far the periscope and the optical tube have not done away with the necessity for the submarine to come to the surface to correct her course and take her bearings, but there are those who claim that even if the necessity were removed, the whereabouts of the submarine would be revealed by tell-tale foam and bubbles.
Many inventors have lately been devoting their attention to the steering of torpedoes without the need of connecting wires, and some consider that wireless torpedoes would be an efficient antidote to submarine boats. That such weapons can be produced there is little doubt, but that they will be sufficient to drive submarines from the seas, appears extremely doubtful—at any rate just at present.
The possibility of a battleship or a cruiser being able to inform herself of the advance of a submarine vessel must be considered. Water is an excellent conductor of sound, and a microphone or some similar apparatus could be arranged to give notice of the approach of an invisible ship, even when it was some way away. The ironclad could then surround herself with her torpedo nets, or steam away leaving the submarine powerless to overtake her.
The French are very naturally watching with intense interest the attitude of the British navy towards submarine boats, and the experiments that have lately been carried out by the officers of H. M. S. Vernon with a view to discovering the most effective method of destroying under-water craft, have been carefully followed by our neighbours over the channel.