"They are," observed the commander, "the most alert sailors in the world." The destroyer carried five 4-inch guns, the type most used on destroyers. Ten feet behind the guns were cases of shells, each shell weighing sixty pounds. When firing upon a submarine the shells are passed by hand to the gunners—no small task when the sea is heavy. At the gun the gunner is equipped with a head-gear, like that worn by telephone girls, through which he receives sighting directions from the officer on the bridge. Speaking-tubes also convey messages from the bridge to the gunners.
These "voice-tubes," as they are called, run to all the guns, but take the most circuitous routes, running way below deck in order that damage by shell-fire to the upper part of the vessel might not affect communication from the bridge to the gunners. On different parts of the deck were three canvas-covered boxes, each containing six loaded rifles, eighteen in all. These were for use against boarding-parties.
The vessel also contained numerous torpedo-tubes, always loaded. The destroyer registered about a thousand tons, and carried a crew of ninety-five men, who were reported as "a great happy family." The commanding officer said that there was surprisingly little homesickness among the men, many of whom had never before been so far from their native land.
"We invite questions and suggestions from our men," said one of the officers to the correspondent. "We want them to feel that no one is ever too old to learn."
The seamen sleep on berths suspended from the steel walls of the destroyers, berths which, when not in use, can be closed very much after the manner of a folding bed. When "submarined" crews are rescued the sailors willingly give up their comfortable berths and do everything else in their power to make the shipwrecked mariners comfortable. The men receive their mail from home uncensored. It arrives about every ten days in bags sealed in the United States. Their own letters, however, are censored, not only by an officer aboard ship, but by a British censor. However, there has been little or no complaint by the men on the ground of being unable to say what they wish to their loved ones.
"The men," wrote an officer recently, "look upon submarine-hunting as a great game. The only time they are discontented is when a situation which looks like an approaching fight resolves itself into nothing. The seas of the war zone are, of course, filled with all sorts of flotsam and jetsam, and very often that which appears to be a periscope is nothing of the sort. But when a real one comes—then the men accept it as a reward."
In view of all that has been said thus far and remains to be said concerning the submarine, it might be well to digress for a moment and devote the remainder of this chapter to a consideration of the undersea fighter, its genesis, what it now is, and what it has accomplished. We all know that the submarine was given to the world by an American inventor—that is to say, the submarine in very much the form that we know it to-day, the effective, practical submarine. The writer recalls witnessing experiments more than twenty years ago on the Holland submarine—the first modern submarine type—and he recalls how closely it was guarded in the early days of 1898, when it lay at Elizabethport and the Spanish war-ship Viscaya, Captain Eulate, lay in our harbor. This was a month or so after the destruction of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, and threats against the Spanish had led, among other precautions, to an armed guard about the Holland lest some excitable person take her out and do damage to the Viscaya. There was no real danger, of course, that this would happen; it merely tends to show the state of public mind.
Well, in any event, the Holland, and improved undersea craft subsequently developed, converted the seemingly impossible into the actual. To an Englishman, William Bourne, a seaman-gunner must be credited the first concrete exposition of the possibilities of an undersea fighter. His book, "Inventions or Devices," published in 1578, contains a comprehensive description of the essential characteristics of the undersea boat as they are applied to-day. From the days of the sixteenth century on down through the years to the present time, submarine construction and navigation have passed through various stages of development. Captain Thomas A. Kearney, U.S.N., in an interesting monograph published through the United States Naval Institute at Annapolis, says that of the early American inventors, particular mention should be made of the work of David Bushnell and Robert Fulton, both of whom have been termed the "father of the submarine." Bushnell's boat, completed in 1775-6, was much in advance of anything in its class at the time. The boat, which was, of course, water-tight, was sufficiently commodious to contain the operator and a sufficient amount of air to support him for thirty minutes. Water was admitted into a tank for the purpose of descending and two brass force-pumps ejected the water when the operator wished to rise. Propulsion was by an oar astern, working as the propeller of a vessel works to-day. Practically Bushnell in one attempt to destroy a British war-ship in the Hudson River was able to get under the British frigate Eagle without detection, but was unable to attach the mine which the boat carried.
Fulton's inventive genius directed toward a submarine took tangible shape in 1800 when the French Government built the Nautilus in accordance with his plans. Both France and the United States carried on experimental work with Fulton's designs, under his personal supervision, but there is no record of any marked achievement.
The first submarine within the memory of men living to-day, the first practical, albeit crude, undersea boat, was the H. L. Hunley, built at Mobile, Ala., under the auspices of the Confederate Navy and brought from that port to Charleston on flat cars for the purpose of trying to break the blockade of that port by Federal war-ships. The Hunley was about forty feet long, six in diameter, and shaped like a cigar. Its motive power came from seven men turning cranks attached to the propeller-shaft. When working their hardest these men could drive the boat at a speed of about four miles an hour.