This submarine alarm was the famous episode which thrilled the American public as elaborated by George Creel for the newspapers of July 4, 1917. The Corsair witnessed only what occurred among the second group of transports, and although some of her men declared they saw the wake of a torpedo, Commander Kittinger failed to confirm it in his official report of this busy afternoon. Rear Admiral Gleaves carefully considered the statements of the officers of ships in Group Two and drew the following conclusions, omitting the names of the vessels engaged because of the naval censorship in force at that time:
The H, leading the second group, encountered two submarines, the first about 11.50 A.M., June 26th, about a hundred miles off the coast of France, and the second submarine two hours later. The I investigated the wake of the first without further discovery. The J[3] sighted the bow wave of the second at a distance of 1500 yards and headed for it at a speed of twenty-five knots. The gun pointers at the forward gun saw the periscope several times for several seconds but it disappeared each time before they could get on, due to the zigzagging of the ship.
The J[3] passed about twenty-five yards ahead of a mass of bubbles which were coming up from the wake and let go a depth charge just ahead. Several pieces of timber, quantities of oil, bubbles, and débris came to the surface. Nothing more was seen of the submarine. The attacks on the second group occurred about eight hundred miles to the eastward of where the attacks had been made on the first group.... It appears from reports of the French Ministry of Marine and from the location of the attack that enemy submarines had been notified of our approach and were probably scouting across our route.
WITH AMERICA’S FIRST CONVOY. THE TROOP-SHIPS ARE THE HENDERSON, ANTILLES, MOMUS, AND LENAPE
THE MINE FUNCTIONS AND A LURKING U-BOAT WOULD FIND IT EXCESSIVELY UNHEALTHY
The story of Seaman Arthur Coffey is less exaggerated than might have been expected in these wholly novel circumstances. It may have been a torpedo or, perchance, it was a porpoise that was seen from the Corsair. If it was the latter, no blame is to be laid to the young sailors who were so tremendously excited. To their unaccustomed eyes the ocean swarmed with periscopes and U-boats. Many a seasoned skipper had blazed away at blackfish or shivered in his shoes at a bit of floating spar. The destroyer Cummings, at any rate, blew up something from the vasty deep with the “ash can” that plopped from her fan-tail. As for the soldiers packed in the transports, all girdled with life-belts and eyeing the ocean with morbid suspicion, they would have told you that the submarines were coming at them in droves. It was one of the dauntless doughboys of this First Expeditionary Force who wrote home to his trustful kindred:
Dear Mother and the Folks:
We hadn’t more than got out of New York than you could see submarines bobbing up all around us. The periscopes were as thick as cat-tails in a swamp. I counted seventy-five and then the ships began to fire. The gunner near me fainted. Shell shock, I guess. I sprang to the gun and began shooting. The first shot I fired hit a submarine square on top of the back and tore out its whole back-bone, just like tearing out a whale’s back-bone. There was blood all over the water, and some oil.