Our Navy in the War

by Lawrence Perry

When the European nations first went to war in 1914 I happened to be at the Newport Naval Training Station, and I asked an officer what would happen if we went into the war.

"Not much," he said. "We would stand on our shores and the Germans on theirs and make faces at each other."

Events have proved that he was not looking into the future wisely, not taking into account the enormous energy and get-things-doneness of Secretary Daniels and his coadjutors. Not only did the Navy Department send our destroyer fleet to the war zone—the Allied officers, believing co-operation of the sort not feasible, had neither requested nor expected this—but performed many other extraordinary feats, among them the equipping of transports to carry our men to France, and the conduct of the service when they were ready.

We had only a fair number of American steamships adapted for the purpose, but lying in our ports were interned German and Austrian vessels aggregating many hundreds of thousands of tons. From 1914 until we entered the war commuters on North River ferry-boats seemed never weary of gazing at the steamships lying in the great North German Lloyd and Hamburg-American line piers in Hoboken. There was a small forest of masts and funnels appearing above the pier sheds, while many a graceful stern protruded out beyond the pier lines into the river.

Among them was the great Vaterland, the largest vessel in the world, and the outward and visible expression of that peaceful maritime rivalry between Great Britain and the German Empire, which in the transatlantic lanes as in the waters of all the seven seas had interested followers of shipping for so many years. There was, so far as passenger traffic was concerned, the rivalry for the blue ribbon of the sea—the swiftest ocean carrier, a fight that was waged between Great Britain and Germany from the placid eighties to the nineties, when the Germans brought out the Deutschland, and later the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, the Kaiser Wilhelm II—all champions—whose laurels were to be snatched away by the Mauretania and the Lusitania—the two speed queens—when war ended competition of the sort.

But the contest in speed had, to an extent, been superseded by the rivalry of size, a struggle begun by the White Star Line when the great Oceanic slipped past quarantine in the early 1900's, and carried on by that line, by the Atlantic Transport Line, and by the German companies with unceasing vigor. Great carrying capacity and fair speed were the desiderata, and the studious Germans were quick to see that it was a far more profitable battle to wage, since speed meant merely advertising, with a more or less slight preponderance in the flow of passenger patronage to the line which owned the latest crack greyhound, whereas size meant ability to carry greater cargoes, and thus enhanced earning capacity.

So great hulls were the order of the years preceding 1914. There came the new Baltic, the new Cymric, the new Adriatic of the White Star Line, and for the Germans there came the Amerika and other craft of that type. Finally there was the Titanic and her ill-fated maiden voyage; the Cunarder Aquitania, and the Vaterland, and the Imperator, which bore the German ensign. These facts, presented not altogether in chronological order, are necessary to give the reader an idea of the manner in which the Americans were taking back seats in the unceasing fight for commercial maritime supremacy. It is quite likely, so far back was our seat, that the Germans held little respect for our ability, either to man or to fit the immense number of German vessels in our harbors. In truth, the events that followed our entrance into the war showed just how supreme the contempt of the Germans was for our knowledge of things nautical.

We are about to record just how erroneous that attitude of the Germans was, but wish first to point out that they had failed to take into consideration the fact that at Annapolis is situated a school of the sea that asks nothing of any similar school in the world, and that they had also failed to note that, while we had not gone in heavily for shipping, we have been rather effective in other lines which in event of emergency might be brought to bear upon the problem of correcting such deficiencies as might exist in our store of modern nautical tradition.

Well, while the German waged their unrestricted warfare on the sea, those German vessels lay at Hoboken and at other ports of the country, gathering the rust and barnacles of disuse. Then one day Congress spoke definitely, and the next morning North River ferry voyagers saw lying off the German docks a torpedo-boat destroyer flying the American flag. Some days later the American flag floated over the taffrails of the Vaterland, the Kaiser Wilhelm II, and other Teutonic craft. Their employment in the way of providing transportation of our soldiers, of course, was contemplated. In fact, the accession to our marine of such a large number of hulls seemed to provide for us all the necessary means which otherwise we would have lacked.

But not so fast. When our officers began to look over these German craft they found that they were in a woful condition, not so much because of disuse as because of direct damage done to them by the German crews who had been attached to the ships ever since they were laid up in 1914. There is evidence in Washington that the German central authorities issued an order for the destruction of these ships which was to be effective on or about February 1, 1917—simultaneous, in other words. with the date set for unrestricted warfare. There is not the slightest doubt that the purpose of the order was to cause to be inflicted damage so serious to vital parts of the machinery of all German vessels in our ports, that no ship could be operated within a period of time ranging from eight months to two years, if at all.