“The success of any kind of stunt for harrying the U-boat is very largely a matter of psychology, and this is especially so in the ‘Q’ department. The main point of it is to make the enemy think you are more harmless than you really are. There is nothing new in the idea, for it is precisely the same stunt the old pirate of the Caribbean was on when he concealed his gun-ports with strips of canvas and approached his victims as a peaceful merchantman. As a matter of fact, I think it was the Hun himself who started the game in this war, for I’m almost dead sure that we had tried nothing of the kind on—in a systematic way, at any rate—up to the time one of his U-boats rigged up a mast and sails and lured on victims by posing as a fisherman in distress.
“Obviously, it’s a game you can’t use any kind of craft that is plainly a warship in, and the burning question always is as to how far you will sacrifice punishing power to harmlessness of appearance. A light gun or two is about as far as you
can go in the way of shooting-irons, and even these are very difficult to conceal on a small boat. Likewise a torpedo tube. I tried that first stunt of mine without either, and that’s where the psychology came in.
“Most of the ‘Q-boats’ they were figuring on at that time were of the slower freighter type, with a rather powerful gun mounted for’ard and concealed as well as possible by something rigged up to look like deck cargo.
“That was, however, all well and good as far as it went, I figured, but, from such study of the Hun’s little ways as I had been able to make, I had my doubts as to whether an old cargo boat would prove tempting enough bait to put a Fritz in the proper mental state for a real ‘rise’—one in which he’d deliver himself up to you bound and gagged, so to speak. That was the kind of a thing I wanted to make a bid for, and, by cracky, I pulled it off.
“From all I could pick up, from the inside and outside, about the ships that had already been torpedoed, I came to the conclusion that the Hun would go to a lot more trouble, and take a deal bigger chance, to put down a vessel with a number of passengers than he would with a freighter. And even that early in the War a U-boat had exposed itself to being rammed by a destroyer, when it could have avoided the attack entirely by foregoing the pleasure of a Parthian shot at a lifeboat which was already half-swamped in the heavy seas. That
was the little trait of the Hun’s that I reckoned on playing up to when I began to figure on taking the ‘——’ out U-boat strafing without any gun larger than a Maxim aboard her. I’d have been glad enough of a good four-incher, understand, if there had been any way in the world it could have been concealed. But there wasn’t, and rather than miss getting into the game at all, I was quite content to tackle it with such weapons as were available. That was where my ‘che-ild’ came in.
“On the score of weapons available, there were only two—the lance-bomb and the depth-charge. For the kind of game I had in mind, it was to the former that I pinned my faith. It was powerful enough to do all the damage needful to the shell of a submarine if only a chance to get home with it could be contrived. ‘Getting it home’ has always been the great difficulty with the lance-bomb, and up to that time the only chap to have any luck with it was the skipper of a M.L.—another Yank, by the way, who came over and got into the game in the same way, and about the same time, that I did. He had been the champion sixteen-pound hammer-thrower in some Middle Western college only a year or two before, and, by taking a double turn on his heeling deck, managed to chuck the bomb (which is on the end of a wooden handle, much like the old throwing hammer) about three times as far as anyone ever dreamed of, and cracked in the nose of a lurking U-boat with it.
“Unluckily, I was not a hammer-thrower, and so had to try to bring about an easier shot. It was with this purpose in view that I submitted a proposal to reconvert the ‘——’ temporarily to the outward seeming of a pleasure yacht; to make her appear so tempting a bait that the Hun’s lust for schrecklichkeit, or whatever they call it, would lure him close enough to give me a chance at him. They were rather inclined to scoff at the plan at first, principally on the ground that the enemy, knowing that there was no pleasure yachting going on in the North Sea, would instantly be suspicious of a craft of that character. I pointed out that there was still a bit of yachting going on in the Norfolk Broads, which the Hun, with his comprehensive knowledge of the East Coast, might well know of, and that there would be nothing strange in a craft from there being blown to sea in a spell of nor’west weather. Of course, the ‘——’ isn’t a Broads type by a long way, but I didn’t expect the Hun to linger over fine distinctions any more than the trout coming up for a fly does. The sequel fully proved that I was right.