He made the passage of the Straits successfully, reconnoitred the Marmora and made a neat arrangement, probably suggested by the adventures of E. 14, for saving the enemy the trouble of so much hunting. He stopped a small coastal sailing vessel, sent Lieut. D’Oyly Hughes to search her for contraband, and then trimmed well down and made her fast alongside his conning-tower. Being now quite invisible from the eastward, he was able to proceed in that direction all day without interruption. At night he released his stalking-horse and returned westward.
‘Made her fast alongside his conning-tower.’
Early on the 23rd, he observed a Turkish torpedo-boat at anchor off Constantinople and sank her with a torpedo; but as she sank she fired a 6-pounder gun, the first shot of which damaged his foremost periscope. He came up for repairs, and all hands took the chance of a bathe. Five hours later he stopped a small steamer, whose crew did a ‘panic abandon ship,’ capsizing all boats but one. ‘An American gentleman then appeared on the upper deck, who informed us that his name was Silas Q. Swing of the Chicago Sun and that he was pleased to make our acquaintance.... He wasn’t sure if there were any stores on board.’ Lieut. D’Oyly Hughes looked into the matter and discovered a 6-inch gun lashed across the top of the fore hatch, and other gun-mountings in the hold, which was also crammed with 6-inch and other ammunition marked Krupp. A demolition charge sent ship and cargo to the bottom.
Lieut.-Commander Nasmith then chased and torpedoed a heavily laden store-ship, and drove another ashore, exchanging rifle fire with a party of horsemen on the cliff above. Altogether the day was a lively one, and the news, brought by Mr. Silas Q. Swing and his friends, shook Constantinople up severely. Mr. Einstein records that ‘the submarine came up at 20 minutes to 2 o’clock, about three hundred yards from where the American guardship Scorpion lay moored, and was immediately fired at by the shore batteries. It shot off two torpedoes; the first missed a transport by about fifty yards, the second struck the Stamboul fair, passing under a barge moored alongside, which blew up. The Stamboul had a gap of twenty feet on her water-line but did not sink. She was promptly towed toward Beshiktash to lie on the bottom in shallow water. The submarine meanwhile, under a perfect hail of fire, which passed uncomfortably close to the Scorpion, dived and got away, steering up the Bosphorus. At Galata there was a panic, everyone closing their shops; the troops, who were already on two transports, were promptly disembarked, but later re-embarked, and still later landed once more. The total damage was inconsiderable, but the moral effect was very real.’ On the following day he adds, ‘S.’ (Swing, no doubt—Silas Q. Swing of the Chicago Sun) ‘came in with an exciting tale. On his way to the Dardanelles the steamer, which carried munitions and a 6-inch gun, had been torpedoed by an English submarine, the E. 11. They allowed the crew to leave, and then sank the ship. The English officer told him there were eleven submarines in the Marmora, and these are holding up all the ships going to the Dardanelles. They had sunk three transports full of troops, out of four which had been sunk, and various other vessels, but do not touch those carrying wounded.’
So, between Lieut. D’Oyly Hughes and Mr. Silas Q. Swing, the E. 11 became eleven submarines, and may go down the ages like the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne. Her commander evidently hoped to create a panic, and Mr. Einstein leaves us no doubt that the plan succeeded to the full. On May 27 he writes again: ‘The Marmora is practically closed by English submarines. Everyone asks where their depot is, and how they are refurnished.’ May 28: ‘The submarines in the Marmora have frightened the Turks, and all the remaining transports, save one, lie tranquilly in the Golden Horn. Otherwise I have never seen the port so empty. One wonders where the submarines have their base, and when and how it was prepared.’ He adds, with some shrewdness: ‘Probably, if at all, in some island of the Marmora, though the newer boats can stay out a long time.’ E. 11 was far from new, as we have seen, but she was in hands that could make her stand for quality as well as quantity.
Lieut.-Commander Nasmith brought his boat safely back to Mudros on June 7. The last hour of his trip was perhaps the most breathless, for while rushing down by Kilid Bahr he found his trim quite abnormal, and ‘observed a large mine preceding the periscope at a distance of about twenty feet; which was apparently hung up by its moorings to the port hydroplane.’ He could not come to the surface, as the shore batteries were waiting for him; but when outside Kum Kale, he emptied his after-tanks, got his nose down, and went full speed astern, dropping the mine neatly to the bottom. This was good work, but not better than the skill shown in navigating shoal water, or ‘the resource displayed in the delicate operation of recovering two torpedoes’ without the usual derrick to hoist them in—an operation which may as well remain for the present undescribed. Admiral de Robeck, in recommending Lieut.-Commander Nasmith for the V.C., speaks of his cruise as one ‘which will surely find a place in the annals of the British Navy.’ It will—there can be no forgetting it. The very log of E. 11 deserves to be a classic. ‘Having dived unobserved into Constantinople ...,’ says her Commander soberly, and so, without a thought of it, adds one to the historic despatches of the Service.
It was now E. 14’s turn again. Commander Courtney Boyle took her up on June 10, against a very strong tide. At 9 o’clock next morning he stopped a brigantine, whose crew abandoned ship ‘and then all stood up and cursed us. It was too rough to go alongside her, so Acting-Lieut. R. W. Lawrence, R.N.R., swam off to her, climbed aboard, and ... set fire to her with the aid of her own matches and paraffin oil.’ On the 12th one of the Rickmers steamers was torpedoed. Shortly afterwards there was a big explosion close to the submarine. ‘And I think,’ says her commander, ‘I must have caught the moorings of a mine with my tail as I was turning, and exploded it.... The whole boat was very badly shaken.’ But Lily Rickmers and her sister were now both removed from the Turkish service, for E. 11 had evidently accounted for one of them already. Mr. Einstein writes on June 13: ‘The German Embassy approached us to cable Washington to protest about the torpedoing without warning of the two Rickmers steamers in the Marmora. One of these was said to be filled with wounded, but their note neglected to say that these had been discharged from hospital and were on their way back to the Dardanelles.’ Only a German diplomatist could speak of a ship carrying troops to the front as ‘filled with wounded’; and Mr. Einstein adds, ‘One cannot but be struck by the German inability to understand our position over the Lusitania.’ The point is plain, and goes deep. To the modern German mind all such considerations are only a matter of words, useful for argumentative purposes—that there should be any truth of reality or feeling behind them is not imaginable.
The rest of this log is a record of destruction, but destruction on thoroughly un-German methods. ‘June 20.—Boarded and sank 3 sailing dhows ... towed the crew inshore and gave them some biscuit, beef, rum, and water, as they were rather wet.’ ‘June 22.—Let go passenger ship.’ 23.—‘Burnt two-master, and started to tow crew in their boat, but had to dive. Stopped two dhows: they were both empty and the crews looked so miserable that I only sunk one and let the other go.’ 24.—‘Blew up 2 large dhows: there was another one about a mile off with no boat ... and thought I saw two heads in the water. Turned round and found that there were 2 men in the water at least half a mile from their dhow. Picked them up: they were quite exhausted: gave them food and drink, and put them on board their ship. They had evidently seen the other two dhows blown up and were frightened out of their wits.’ There is nothing here to boast about—to us, nothing surprising. But it brings to mind inevitably the evidence upon which our enemies stand convicted. We remember the long roll of men and women not only set adrift in stormy seas, but shot and drowned in their open boats without pity and without cause. We admit the courage of the Hun, but we cannot admire it. It is too near to animal ferocity, and stained with a cruelty and callousness which are not even beast-like.
On June 21, Commander Boyle had rendezvoused with E. 12, Lieut.-Commander K. M. Bruce. ‘I got her alongside, and we remained tied up for 3 hours.’ From this time onward the reliefs were arranged to overlap, so that there were nearly always two boats operating at the same time in the Marmora. Lieut.-Commander Bruce came up on June 19, and found, like others, that the chief difficulty of forcing the passage was the heating of the main motors on so long and strenuous a run.