Submarine and Anti-submarine

by Sir Henry John Newbolt

The one great day of his nine days’ patrol was June 25, when he brought off a hand-to-hand fight on the surface with three enemy ships. At 10.45 in the morning he sighted, in the Gulf of Mudania, a small two-decked passenger steamer. ‘She looked,’ he says, ‘rather like a tram-car, and was towing two sailing-vessels. In the distance was a sister of hers, towing three more.’ He chased, and soon stopped the nearer steamer. He could see, as he steamed round her, that she was carrying a lot of stores. She had no boat, and all the crew appeared to be on deck in lifebelts. He could see no sign of guns, so he ran his bow up alongside and sent his first-lieutenant, Tristram Fox, to board her. But guns are not the only risk a submarine has to take on such occasions. As the boarding party stepped on board the steamer, a Turk heaved a bomb over the side. It hit E. 12 forward, but did not explode, and no second one followed. The Turks, however, meant fighting, and they opened fire with rifles and a small gun, concealed somewhere aft. The situation was a very anxious one, especially for Lieutenant Fox and his boarding party; for they knew their own ship must open fire in return, and it was difficult to take cover on an enemy ship in action. Lieut.-Commander Bruce was in a very tight corner, but he kept his head and played his game without a mistake. He did not hesitate to open fire with his 6-pounder, but he began upon the enemy’s stern, where the gun was concealed, and having dealt with that he turned to her other end and put ten shots into her from fore to aft. His men shot steadily, though under gun and rifle fire at a range of only ten yards, and his coxswain, Charles Case, who was with him in the conning-tower, passed up the ammunition. Spare men, with rifles, kept the Turks’ heads down, and all seemed to be going well, when the two sailing-ships in tow began a new and very plucky move of their own. They came in to foul the submarine’s propellers, and at the same time opened fire with rifles, taking E. 12 in flank. But by this time the steamer was beaten, and the British rifles soon silenced those in the sailing-ships. Then, as soon as Lieut.-Commander Bruce had cleared the steamer, he sank the three of them. The steamer had probably been carrying ammunition as well as stores, for one of the shots from the 6-pounder touched off something explosive in her forward part. In fifteen minutes she was at the bottom.

Lieut.-Commander Bruce was already thinking of the other steamer with the three sailing-ships in tow. She was diligently making for the shore, and he had to open fire at her at 2000 yards. As he closed, the fire was returned, not only from the ship but from a gun on shore; but by this time he had hit the enemy aft, and set her on fire forward. She beached herself, and as the three sailing-ships had been slipped and were also close under the shore, he had no choice but to leave them. E. 12’s injuries were miraculously slight—her commander’s account of them is slighter still. ‘I was very much hampered,’ he says, ‘in my movements and took some minutes to get clear of the first steamer. But only one man was hurt, by a splinter from the steamer.’ This was quite in accordance with the old English rule of the gun-decks: to hit and be missed there’s nothing like closing. The story of this fine little scrimmage ends with the special recommendation by Lieut.-Commander Bruce of his first-lieutenant, Tristram Fox, ‘who behaved exceedingly well under very trying circumstances,’ and of his coxswain, Charles Case, and three seamen—they all received the Distinguished Service Medal. Of the commander himself we shall hear again presently.

E. 12 was recalled on June 28, leaving E. 14 still at work; and on the 30th her place was taken by E. 7, Lieut.-Commander Cochrane. On the way up, a torpedo from a tube on shore passed over him, and a destroyer made two attempts to ram him, but he got safely through and rendezvoused with E. 14 on the following evening. His misfortunes began next day, when Lieut. Hallifax and an A.B. were badly burned by an explosion in the hold of a captured steamer. Then dysentery attacked the two remaining officers and the telegraphist. Work became very arduous, but work was done notwithstanding. Ship after ship was sunk—five steamers and sixteen sailing-ships in all. One of the steamers was ‘a Mahsousie ship, the Biga,’ of about 3,000 tons. She was lying alongside Mudania Pier, with sailing-vessels moored outside the pier to protect her. But Lieut.-Commander Cochrane saw daylight between this barrage and his prey; he dived under the sailing-ships, and up went the Biga with a very heavy explosion.

On July 17, he tried a new method of harassing the Turkish army. He came up opposite Kara Burnu and opened fire on the railway cutting west of it, blocking the line—then dived, and went on to Derinjie Burnu. The shipyard there was closed, but he observed a heavy troop train steaming west, towards the block he had so carefully established just before. He followed up at full speed, and after twenty minutes of anxious hope saw the train returning baffled. It eventually stopped in a belt of trees at Yarandji Station; this made spotting difficult, but E. 7’s gunnery was good enough. After twenty rounds the three ammunition cars of the train were definitely blown up, and E. 7 could move back to Kara Burnu, where she shelled another train and hit it several times.

All this was very disturbing to the Turks, and they tried every means to stop it at the source. They had already a net in the channel, but it was quite ineffectual. ‘Now,’ says Mr. Einstein on July 15, ‘it turns out that they have constructed a barrage of network to keep out the submarines from the Dardanelles, and this explains the removal of the buoys all along the Bosphorus. They need these, and especially their chains, to keep it in place.’ A week later, Lieut.-Commander Cochrane saw these buoys on his way down. They were in a long line, painted alternately red and black, and stretching from a position a mile north of Maitos village to a steamer moored in Nagara Liman. He dived under them and went on his way; but later on, below Kilid Bahr, the boat fouled a moorings forward and was completely hung up, swinging round, head to tide. By admirable management she was got clear in half an hour, and then the same thing happened again. ‘This time,’ says her commander coolly, ‘I think the boat carried the obstruction with her for some distance. I was expecting to see something foul when we came to the surface, but everything was clear then.’ What he and his men saw, during those two half-hours, might also be described as ‘something foul.’

The cruise of E. 7 lasted for over three weeks, from June 30 to July 24. On July 21, Commander Courtney Boyle brought up E. 14 once more. He, too, saw the new net near Nagara, ‘a line of what looked like lighters half-way across, and one small steamship in the vicinity.’ But he passed through the gate in it without touching anything. This was lucky, as he had already scraped against an obstruction off Kilid Bahr and cut his guard wire nearly through. Once up, he got to work at once, and in a busy and adventurous three weeks he sank one steamer, one supply ship, seven dhows and thirteen sailing-vessels. In short, he made himself master of the Marmora. The complete interruption of the Turkish sea communications was proved by the statements of prisoners. The captain of one ship stated that Constantinople was full of wounded and short of food, and that the troops now all went to Rodosto by rail and then marched to Gallipoli—six hours in the train and three days and nights marching, instead of a short and simple voyage. All the Turkish war-ships were above the second bridge in the Golden Horn, and they never ventured out. There were no steamers going to sea—all supplies to Gallipoli went in sailing craft, towed by destroyers under cover of darkness. It is clear that, to the Turkish imagination, E. 14 was like E. 11—very much in the plural number. On August 5, E. 11 herself came on duty again, and the two boats met at rendezvous at 2 P.M. next day. Half an hour afterwards, Commanders Boyle and Nasmith started on their first hunt in couples. Their quarry was a gunboat of the Berki-Satvet class. The chase was a lively one, and it was E. 11, in the end, who made the kill with a torpedo amidships. Then the two boats came alongside again and their commanders concerted a plan for shelling troops next day.

They took up their positions in the early morning hours, and waited for the game to come past. Commander Nasmith had been given the better stand of the two; at 11.30 A.M. he observed troops going towards Gallipoli, rose to the surface and fired. Several of his shots dropped well among them and they scattered. In less than an hour another column approached along the same road. E. 11 had retired, so to speak, into her butt; she now stepped up again, raised her gun, and made good shooting as before. ‘The column took cover in open order.’

In the meantime Commander Boyle had been diving up and down all the morning between Fort Victoria and a point four miles up the coast to the east, about a mile from shore. Three times he came to the surface, but each time the troops turned out to be bullocks. At 1.30 P.M. (when he came up for the fourth time) more dust was coming down the road, and this time it was the right kind of dust. As he opened fire he heard E. 11 banging away. She had left the place where he had stationed her, to the N.E. of Dohan Aslan Bank, and had come down to join him in his billet. The two boats then conducted a joint action for the best part of an hour. Commander Boyle got off forty rounds, of which about six burst on the road among the troops, and one in a large building. But the distance was almost beyond his 6-pounder’s reach. He had to put the full range on the sights, and then aim at the top of the hill, so that his fire was less accurate than that of Commander Nasmith with his 12-pounder. E. 11 had strewed the road with a large number of dead and wounded, when guns on shore came into action and forced her to dive. She came up again an hour and a half later and dispersed the troops afresh, but once more had to dive for her life.

Next day, Commander Boyle ordered E. 11 to change billets with him, and both boats had luck, Commander Boyle destroying a 5,000-ton supply steamer with torpedo and gunfire, and Commander Nasmith bagging a battle-ship. This last was the Haireddin Barbarossa. She was passing about five miles N.E. of Gallipoli, escorted by a destroyer. E. 11 was skilfully brought into position on her starboard beam, and the torpedo got home amidships. The Barbarossa immediately took a list to starboard, altered course towards the shore, and opened a heavy fire on the submarine’s periscope. But she was mortally hit. Within twenty minutes a large flash burst from her fore part, and she rolled over and sank. To lose their last battleship, and so near home, was a severe blow for the Turks, and they made every effort to conceal the depressing details. Mr. Einstein, however, heard them and makes an interesting entry. ‘The Barbarossa was sunk in the Marmora and not in the Dardanelles, as officially announced. She was convoying barges full of munitions and also two transports, when she found herself surrounded by six submarines.’ It is creditable to Commander Nasmith that he did so well with only six of his E. 11 flotilla. Einstein continues: ‘The transports were supposed to protect her, but the second torpedo proved effective and she sank in seven minutes. One of the transports and a gunboat were also sunk, the other ran aground. Of crews of 700, only one-third were saved.’ And on August 15 he records further successes by Commander Nasmith—a large collier, the Ispahan, sunk while unloading in the port of Haidar Pasha, the submarine creeping up under the lee of another boat; and two transports with supplies, the Chios and the Samsoun, sunk in the Marmora.