Later another of the same class came nosing up out of the depths, and bumped head on and into a breakwater down that same country—a solid stone wall of a breakwater. What did she do? She bounced off, and, after a look around, also went on about her business.
In the morning our sub up-anchored for her run across the open bay. On the conning-tower was rigged a little bridge of slim brass stanchions and thin wire-rope rail, with the canvas as high as a man's chin for protection; and away she went in a wind that was still blowing hard enough to drive home-bound Gloucester fishermen down to storm trysails and sea enough to jump an out-bound destroyer of a thousand tons under easy steam to her lower plates whenever she lifted forward.
There was not a soul standing around on the main deck of the destroyer as we passed her, nor on her high forward turtle-deck, which was being washed clean; and surely not much comfort being bounced around on transoms in that destroyer below, nor too much dryness on her flying bridge. And yet here was our little sub—full speed and all—heading straight into high-curling seas and making fine weather of it.
Plunging her bow under, and through she'd go; and when she did the seas would go swashing up atop of her make-believe deck and come rolling down her round-top plates and squishing through the hundreds of round holes in her deck sides. But steady? Up on her little bridge we did not half the time have to hold on to her little steel-rope rail lines to keep our balance. She kept on going, hooked-up all the way, seas and wind and all to hinder her, and finished her five-hour run without so much as wetting our coat fronts up on the conning-tower bridge. A great little sea boat—a submarine.
Now for the personnel of the crew. The crew of the sub described were not sailors. The captain was an old seagoer—yes; and it would be a safe guess that the diving-rudder man had a seagoing experience; and one other perhaps; but the fellows who stood by the other things below came straight from the boat works. They had helped, most of them, to build her: which was one good reason for having them along on her trial trip.
And there are thousands of young fellows working around garages and in machine-shops and electric-light plants ashore who are the very men needed for submarines. There will always have to be a sailor or two in a submarine; or there should be, for a real sailor is always a handy man to have around—he knows things that nobody else knows.
And so, if hanging around there are any young fellows with a taste for adventure and a trend for naval warfare, these submarines look to be the thing. They are only little fellows now, and, as they stand to-day, limited as to range and power of offense, but stay by and grow up with them, and by and by be with them when they will be as big as the battleships and of a radius of action that will stretch from here to—well, as far as they like; drawing their energy from the sun above them, or the sea-tides about them, and not having to see enemy ships to be able to fight them—equipped with devices not now invented but which will serve to feel those other ships and, feeling them, to plot their direction and distance!
Imagine a fleet of those lads battling under water some day—allowing no surface craft to live—feeling each other out and plotting direction and distance as they feel, and then letting go broadsides of torpedoes ten or a hundred times as powerful as anything we now have; and at the same time the air full of war-planes battling above them.
Infants, sea babies, is what they are to-day. But wait till they grow up!