At 11.10 P.M. the same sub called a British convoy.
At 11.15 P.M. sub called Corsair and said go ahead with message.
At 11.16 Corsair called sub and sent a message, the groups of which were taken from several intercepted German messages.
At 11.17 sub acknowledged Corsair’s message.
At 11.25 P.M. sub called Corsair and asked for a repetition of the second group.
Corsair did not answer.
Sub repeated message. This time he was impatient as he said “Go ahead” twice.
The subs continued to intercommunicate during the night, and also with Bruges.
The radio service of the Corsair in the war zone was so important and essential a part of her activities that a description of it in some detail seems well worth recounting. Chief Radio Electrician H. F. Breckel went to the trouble of preparing a narrative which reads as follows, and it goes without saying that he was the man best fitted to undertake such a task:
I reported on board the U.S.S. Corsair, then at the Navy Yard, Brooklyn, during the last week in May, 1917, in accordance with orders from the Bureau of Navigation. At that time I was attached to the U.S.S. Ohio, then at Yorktown, Virginia, which was the war base of the Atlantic Fleet. Reporting to Ensign Gray, Communications Officer of the Corsair, I was told that I would be in charge of the operation of the radio department and to get things in shape for a long cruise away from any established base of supplies.