August 19th. Got liberty after coaling ship and went ashore. Was hungry, so bought quite a dinner—one omelette, two steaks, two orders of peas and potatoes, tomato salad, three plates of ice-cream, five small cakes, two peaches, coffee, and some champagne. Wasn’t at all hungry when I got through. The life begins to agree with me.
It may be noted that in these extracts from the day’s routine of several weeks of active duty, the Corsair was engaged in patrolling a certain definite area of ocean and in escorting single ships through her block, like a policeman on a beat, or in saving mariners and vessels in distress. Incidentally she endeavored to lift the scalp of Fritz whenever opportunity offered. These areas, as laid off on the chart in degrees of latitude and longitude, would measure perhaps sixty by one hundred miles. The same system was employed by the Queenstown destroyer flotilla during the early months of its service. Some protection was given shipping and the submarines were driven farther offshore, but as an offensive campaign the patrol system was a little better than nothing. Of the destroyer patrol, Admiral Sims had this to say:
The idea is sound enough if you can have destroyers enough. We figured that to make the patrol system work with complete success, we should have to have one destroyer for every square mile. The area of the destroyer patrol off Queenstown comprised about 25,000 square miles. In other words, the complete protection of the trans-Atlantic trade would have required about 25,000 destroyers.
The alternative and by far the more effective scheme was to group a number of merchant vessels or transports and send them out from port or take them in with a sufficient force of destroyers and yachts to screen the convoy from submarine attack. Valuable ships could not be allowed to run by themselves. This was the procedure worked out and generally adopted after the United States had come into the war, and it made possible the enormous task of placing two million men in France and feeding a large part of Europe besides.
When the Corsair was on the Breton patrol, in company with other American yachts, it was difficult to realize how few U-boats were actually cruising at one time and how great were the odds against finding one in a designated patrol area.
Now in this densely packed shipping area [declared Admiral Sims], extending, say, from the north of Ireland to Brest, there were seldom more than eight or ten submarines operating at any one time. The largest number I had record of was fifteen, but this was exceptional. The usual number was four, six, eight, or perhaps ten. We estimated that the convoys and troop-ships brought in reports of sighting about three hundred submarines for every submarine actually in the field. We also estimated that for every hundred submarines the Germans possessed, they could keep only ten or a dozen at work in the open sea. Could Germany have kept, let us say, fifty submarines constantly at work on the great shipping routes in the winter and spring of 1917, before we had learned how to handle the situation, nothing could have prevented her from winning the war. Instead of sinking 850,000 tons in a single month, she would have sunk 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 tons.
With such handicaps it was all the more creditable to the Corsair and her sister yachts that they were able to accomplish so much in the summer of 1917, before they were shifted to the troop and supply convoys. It was knight-errantry, in a way, this work of the Breton Patrol—rough-riders of the sea whose spirit was akin to that of the impetuous regiment which Theodore Roosevelt led at Santiago. The Breton pilots were eloquent in admiration, but shrugged their shoulders at the notion of weathering a Bay of Biscay winter in these yachts, so slender, so elegant, of such light construction, of a certainty built for pleasure and le sport!
The programme of patrol duty sent the larger yachts out two and two, each pair to be relieved after four days at sea. The Corsair and Aphrodite were coupled as cruising in adjoining areas, and when they returned to port the Noma and Kanawha went out to take the same stations. The smaller yachts of the “Suicide Fleet” were assigned areas nearer the Breton coast, where they guarded the shipping that flowed alongshore between the Channel and the ports of France and Spain. The Patrol Instructions included the following plan of operation:
When on an area patrol, vessels shall steer courses to cover the area but the method adopted must be irregular. Do not proceed with such regularity that the vessel’s position may be plotted.
When on a line patrol, vessels shall proceed along the line of patrol until reaching its extremity when a return over the same line will be made. The courses steered must be such that the advance of the vessel will be along the base course.