Thereupon, knowing that the torpedo was going to strike about where he stood, he ran to the pile of munitions and tumbled them into the sea. The explosion occurred as he was at work, and he was blown into the ocean and lost. But he had not died in vain, for the secondary explosion that he feared was averted by his act of supreme sacrifice.
Fortunately, only one engine was disabled by the explosion, and the destroyer was thus permitted to remain under way. She zigzagged to and fro, hoping to get a chance at her assailant, and in about an hour the German submarine commander decided that it was a good time to come to the surface for a better look at the destroyer. As the conning-tower came into view the Cassin's gunners delivered four shots, two of which fell so close to the U-boat that she submerged and was not seen again. In the meantime the crew, with splendid team-work, set about repairing the damage and attending to the five men who were wounded, none seriously.
After a while British war-ships came up and the Cassin returned to port. Admiral Sims mentioned Commander Vernon and his officers in despatches to Secretary Daniels, and more than a score of the seamen were cited for coolness and efficiency.
Our second war-ship definitely known to be sunk by the German submarines was the destroyer Jacob Jones, which was struck at 4.12 o'clock on the afternoon of December 6, last. The destroyer was on patrol, and nothing was known of the proximity of the submarine until the torpedo hit the vessel. The Jacob Jones, which was commanded by Lieutenant-Commander David Worth Bagley, a brother-in-law of Secretary Daniels and brother of Ensign Worth Bagley, who was killed on the torpedo-boat Winslow in the fight at Cardenas in the Spanish-American War, went down in seventeen minutes after she was struck. Gunner Harry R. Hood was killed by the explosion, but the remainder of the company got safely overside in rafts and boats. The submarine appeared after the sinking and took one of the survivors aboard as a prisoner. Lieutenant-Commander Bagley, with five others, landed in a small boat on the Scilly Islands while other survivors reached shore in various ways. The Jacob Jones was regarded by superstitious navy men as something of a Jonah, she having figured in one or two incidents involving German spies while in this country.
The first and to date the only American war-ship lost in American waters as a result of submarine attack was the armored cruiser San Diego—formerly the California—which was sunk by a mine off Point o' Woods on the Long Island coast on the morning of July 19, 1918. Facts associated with the disaster, involving the loss of some fifty lives, are illuminated with the light of supreme heroism, gallantry, and utter devotion. In no single instance was there failure on the part of officers or crew to meet the unexpected test in a manner quite in accordance with the most glorious annals of the United States Navy.
Point will perhaps be given to this if we picture Captain Harley H. Christie pushing his way about the welter of wreckage in a barrel, reorganizing some 800 of his men, who were floating about on every conceivable sort of object, into the disciplined unit that they had comprised before they were ordered overside to take their chances in the ocean. Or again, taking the enlisted-man aspect of the situation, there was the full-throated query of a husky seaman, clinging to a hatch as the San Diego disappeared:
"Where's the captain?"
Then a chorus of voices from the water:
"There he is! See his old bald head! God bless it! Three cheers for the skip!"
There they all were, some 800 men, survivors of a company numbering thirteen-odd hundred, in the water, out of sight of land, not a ship in sight—and twelve life-boats among them, cheering, singing, exchanging badinage and words of good hope.