(a) Two mines connected by lines.
(b) Secured to bottom of dummy periscopes which were mounted in a box or other object.
(c) In waterlogged boats, used as decoys.
(d) Attached to wreckage of various kinds.
If submarine is sighted or if gunfire from any ship indicates attack, destroyers and fast yachts of escort will head at best speed in direction of submarine, force it to submerge, and attack as conditions permit. They will rejoin convoy at earliest possible moment. If any ship is damaged by torpedo, two destroyers will stand by ship, those nearest of escort, affecting such rescue as may be necessary and possible.
CHAPTER II
“LAFAYETTE, WE ARE HERE!”
The Corsair stood out to sea with the transports and the escort in the morning of June 14th after a thick fog had delayed the departure for several hours. As finally selected, the ship’s company consisted of 130 officers and enlisted men. The shifting fortunes of war were to scatter most of them to other ships and stations during the long exile overseas, and when the battered yacht came home, only Commander Porter and Lieutenant McGuire and eighteen of the crew of this first muster roll were left on board.
Changes were so frequent that from first to last almost three hundred men served in the Corsair.[1] The ship proved to be a training school for officers, and made an exceptional record in that thirteen of her enlisted force and one warrant officer won commissions during the war, some taking the examinations while on foreign service and others being sent to Annapolis for the intensive course of three months and receiving the rank of temporary ensigns in the regular naval organization. On deck and below, men were rated as petty officers as rapidly as they displayed aptitude, and few of the crew failed to advance themselves. The spirit of the ship was eager and ambitious from the start and drudgery could not dull it.
As a proper man-of-war the Corsair lived a complex and disciplined programme of duty through the twenty-four hours of the day. When she steamed past Sandy Hook, outward bound, the complement included a chief boatswain’s mate, one boatswain’s mate, six coxswains, seven gunner’s mates, four quartermasters, nineteen seamen, nineteen ordinary seamen, three electricians, four radio operators, a carpenter’s mate, two ship-fitters, a boiler maker, a blacksmith, a chief machinist’s mate, one machinist’s mate, a chief water tender, two water tenders, four oilers, twenty-one firemen and coal passers, a chief yeoman, three yeomen, a hospital apprentice, a bugler, a cabin steward, four ship’s cooks, and eight mess attendants.
The complete roster of the ship on this famous day of June 14, 1917, was as follows: