On November 2nd "E 19" was on the traffic route again and sank the Ruomi of Hamburg. (The work being done by these boats was the same as the Germans were doing to us, but if the Germans had carried out their work with the same decency and care for the lives of the non-combatants they would be receiving far more consideration and respect from us now.) The enemy had now started to protect their traffic lane, and they sent out a cruiser to drive the E boats away.
"E 19" continues (November 7th, 1.45 P.M.):—
"Fired starboard beam tube 1100 yards' range, hitting her forward on starboard side. The cruiser (Ancona class) swung round and stopped. At 1.55 P.M. fired stern tube at 1200 yards. Torpedo hit just abaft main-mast, and after-magazine blew up. Three minutes later there was no sign of her."
The German ships torpedoed in the Baltic seem to have had touchy magazines. Commander Goodhart "E 8" met the Prinz Adalbert on October 23rd, 1915. She was zigzagging slightly and going 15 knots, with two destroyers zigzagging ahead as a screen. The torpedo was fired at the fore-bridge as she passed, and—
"Observed very vivid flash of explosion along water-line at point of aim. This was immediately followed by a very heavy concussion, and the entire ship was completely hidden by a huge column of thick grey smoke—fore magazine having evidently been exploded by torpedo. As many portions of the ship were observed to be falling in the water all round, I proceeded to 50 feet depth."
The range of this shot was about 1300 yards. This comparatively long distance was fortunate, as the resultant explosion would have probably caused a terrific shock to "E 8" had she happened to fire from closer.
The E boats in the Baltic came from Harwich viâ the Sound. It sounds simple, but it was a remarkably difficult and dangerous trip. For six miles in the narrows it is too shallow for a submarine to submerge. The boats had to trim down and go along with their conning-towers showing and their keels bumping along the rocky bottom. The traffic—both neutral and enemy—was so thick that it was not so much a question of avoiding being seen, as of actually avoiding collision. A maze of moving and fixed lights, searchlights, star-shells, and attempts to ram made up a nightmare of navigational difficulties to add to the normal anxiety of passing through thick traffic in a narrow channel. It was really a marvel that any boats got through safely at all.
III
Throughout this history I am giving selections from despatches of typical "contacts" with the enemy, or of those which describe exciting incidents on patrol; but I don't want to give the idea that submarine patrol work was one whirl of gaiety, and that a boat had only to go to sea in order to find a target. The facts are very different. A boat might do a matter of twenty trips without meeting any kind of chance at an enemy, and I suppose that each boat averaged two to three thousand miles of diving between chances. The following description of routine in a patrol boat must stand for four years of blank days in the North Sea, Atlantic, or Mediterranean:—
The boat dives at dawn, and, the trim correct and the captain satisfied, the order is given to "fall out all but diving hands." One officer remains at the periscope, while the remainder and the majority of the crew move off to their sleeping billets and lie down. When not on watch it is customary for everybody to sleep, read, and eat all the time; this is to conserve the stock of air in the boat. Oxygen is not carried, but "purifiers" are. The air in the hull of the boat is, however, ample for a long day's dive, and except when kept down by accident or the machinations of the enemy there is no necessity to renew it. It is kept on the move, however, by ordinary circulating fans, which produce a general draught and disturbance of the halos of bad air around each man's head, and this keeping of the air moving makes a great difference—in fact, with no fans running a match fails to burn after nine hours' diving; with all fans circulating a match can be lit after a dive of from fourteen to eighteen hours. Why this is, I don't know. If any work is done while diving (such as reloading of tubes or repairing of damage) the air is used more rapidly—in fact, extraordinarily quickly. When no work is being done, but only the usual day's dive has been carried out, there is a slight increase in rate of respiration among the hands on watch, with a slighter rise in rate of pulse. But as soon as one attempts to do anything, such as lifting weights or making a speech to the crew on the subject of their crimes, one finds it necessary to breathe heavily and quickly; and in fact, in the case of the speech, only a few minutes' harangue would be possible towards the end of a day. Officers do not keep watch at the periscope for more than a couple of hours at a time—it is bad for the eyes and bad for the temper; the deadly monotony of shuffling slowly round while stooping to stare at a perfectly blank and usually misty horizon is the worst part of a patrol. The periscope work makes one sleepy also. Submarine officers sleep a lot; the work is dull and sleep passes the time. One gets tired of reading, although one certainly reads an extraordinary amount. A succession of blank uneventful trips is good for education, however; somebody once said that the book to be cast away on a desert island with was Gibbons' 'Roman Empire.' I have known heavier books than that to be worked through on patrol—even to weighty tomes on Constitutional History. The sailors also read, sleep, and eat continuously. A few hands keep watch on the hydroplane wheels, the pumps, and the motors; the rest take it easy. They study such periodicals as one finds on the counters of small tobacconists' shops, and in addition they borrow and read intelligently the more abstruse literature from their officers' library.