Submarine and Anti-submarine

by Sir Henry John Newbolt

For this excellent piece of work the two skippers were suitably rewarded. Skipper Wharton, who had already killed two U-boats and had received the D.S.C. and the D.S.M. with a bar, was now given a second bar to his D.S.C. Skipper Crisp already had the D.S.M., and now received the D.S.C. But with regard to the gratuity given to the whole crew of each boat for the destruction of an enemy submarine, a distinction was made, Boy Alfred being rewarded for a ‘certainty’ and I’ll Try for a ‘probable’ only. This is interesting as showing the scrupulous caution with which our anti-submarine returns have been made up. The Germans have tried to persuade their public, at home and abroad, that many of the U-boats claimed to have been destroyed by us have, in fact, escaped, with more or less injury, and made their way home to refit. The exact contrary is the case. No one, with any power of judging the evidence, could examine our official reports without coming to the conclusion that the number of our successes has been greatly underestimated in the published records. The Admiralty have no doubt felt that, where so much is at stake, it is better to run no risk at all of misrepresenting the situation and its possibilities. If certainties only are counted, and the campaign judged and conducted accordingly, there will be no disillusionment for us, and the long list of ‘probables’ will give us a margin, uncertain in quantity, but absolutely sure to be on the right side of the account. This policy has entirely justified itself. In the long record of the anti-submarine work of these four years, only one complete disappointment has occurred, only one dead U-boat has come to life again. On the other hand, the first list of certainties published by the Admiralty—the list of 150 pirate commanders put out of action—could not be disputed, even by the authors of the German communiqués. It is not an estimate, it is a statement, beyond suspicion or dispute; but to ensure this result restraint was necessary, and the restraint was often regretted by the authorities as much as by the British crews who felt themselves stinted of their full reward. There was probably no member of the Board who did not wish that more could be done for the gallant men of I’ll Try; but her report, as here paraphrased, just fell short of the full evidence required by the rules. She killed her bird; but she could not prove that he was not a runner.

‘I’ll Try’s shell struck the base of the conning-tower.’

The same year, in the second week of August, two other smacks distinguished themselves in action. The first of these was the G. and E., commanded by Lieutenant C. E. Hammond, R.N. She was sailing at mid-day in company with the smack Leader, and about a mile to north of her, when she saw a submarine break surface about three cables beyond to the south-east. Lieutenant Hammond must have found it hard to play a waiting game, but to go at once to the help of his consort would have revealed that he was no unarmed fishing-boat. The pirate, therefore, was able to board and blow up Leader with a bomb, after ordering her crew into their small boat. He then came on fearlessly, closing, as he thought, another helpless victim. When within 200 yards he fired a rifle, and G. and E.’s crew encouraged him by getting out a boat; but when he came to forty yards and slewed round, parallel to the smack, Lieutenant Hammond hoisted the White Ensign and opened fire. The U-boat appeared to be paralysed with astonishment. For a whole minute she lay motionless, and that minute was just long enough for G. and E.’s gunner. He got off five shots in a tremendous hurry. One was a miss, and two hit the rail of the smack; but one of these went on, and penetrated the enemy very usefully in the lower part of the conning-tower. The other two were clean hits in much the same spot. Down went the enemy—not in the way a submarine would dive by choice, but nose first, and with stern up at a very high angle. The five men who had been on her deck and conning-tower, for the purpose of enjoying a little shooting at British fishermen, got an entirely new view of sport in these sixty seconds. One was killed with a rifle-shot by a petty officer on the G. and E., three disappeared in the shell bursts, and the fifth was seen still clinging to the conning-tower, as the U-boat carried him down to death. The tide made all hope of rescue vain—it was too strong even for a buoy to be put down to mark the spot.

Four days later, on the same ground, the smack Inverlyon, commanded by Skipper Phillips, with an R. N. gunner, Ernest M. Jehan, sighted a submarine at 8.20 P.M., steering right towards her in the twilight. When the two boats were within less than thirty yards of each other, the submarine was seen to be a U-boat flying the German ensign, with an officer on deck hailing ‘Boat!’ Evidently he expected to be obeyed, for he stopped dead and gave no sign of action. He had no gun mounted, and appeared to be out of torpedoes.

Mr. Jehan might well have been taken by surprise by this sudden meeting at close quarters in the dusk; but he was not. In an instant the White Ensign was hoisted, and he himself was firing his revolver at the officer steering the enemy boat. This was his pre-arranged signal for his mates to open fire, and it was obeyed with deadly quickness and precision. The gun was a mere pop-gun, a 3-pounder, but at the range it was good enough. Of the first three rounds fired, the first and third pierced the centre of the enemy’s conning-tower and burst inside, while the second struck the after part of the same structure and carried it away, ensign and all. The officer fell overboard on the starboard side.

The submarine was now out of hand. The tide brought her close round Inverlyon’s stern, within ten yards, and the gun was instantly slewed on to her again. This time, six rounds of extra-rapid fire were got off. The first hit the conning-tower, the second and fourth went over, the third, fifth and sixth hulled the U-boat dead. She sank, with the same ominous nose-dive, her stern standing up at an angle of 80°. The swirl was violent, and in it three bodies were flung to the surface. A shout was heard from one of them—a pirate, but a man in agony. Skipper Phillips stripped, took a lifebuoy in his arms and leaped overboard. He swam strongly, but vainly, in that rush of wild water and oil, and at last had to be dragged home on his own buoy. The smack meantime was drifting over the dead submarine, and brought up when her trawl got fast upon it.

The trawl was even more useful in another action, where it actually brought on the fight at close quarters and made victory possible. One day in February, H.M. Trawler Rosetta, Skipper G. A. Novo, R.N.R., had gone out to fish, but she had on deck a 6-pounder gun concealed in an ingenious manner which need not be described. She joined a small fleet of four smacks and two steam trawlers some forty-five miles out, and fished with them all night. Before dawn next morning a voice was heard shouting out of the twilight. It came from one of the steam trawlers: ‘Cut your gear away! there’s a submarine three-quarters of a mile away; he’s sunk a smack and I have the crew on board.’

‘All right, thank you!’ said Skipper Novo—to get away from the pirate was precisely what he did not wish to do. For some fifteen minutes he went on towing his trawl, in hope of being attacked; but as nothing happened, he thought he was too far away from the smacks, and began to haul up his trawl. He was bringing his boat round before the wind, and had all but the last twenty fathoms of the trawl in, when the winch suddenly refused to heave any more, and the warp ran out again about ten fathoms—a thing beyond all experience. ‘Hullo!’ said the skipper, ‘there’s something funny.’ He jumped off the bridge and asked the mate what was the reason of the winch running back. ‘I don’t know, skipper—the stop-valve is opened out full.’ The skipper tried it himself; then went to the engine-man and asked him if full steam was on. ‘The steam’s all right.’ ‘Then reverse winch!’ said the skipper, and went to give a hand himself, as was his custom in a difficulty. The hauling went on this time, all but to the end.

Suddenly the mate gripped him by the arm—‘Skipper, a submarine on board us!’—and there the enemy was, a bare hundred yards off on the starboard quarter. ‘Hard a-starboard, and a tick ahead!’ shouted the skipper, and rushed for the gun, with the crew following. The gun was properly in charge of the mate, and he got to it first; but the brief dialogue which followed robbed him of his glory. ‘Right, skipper!’ he said, meaning thereby ‘This is my job.’ But in the same breath the skipper said: ‘All right, Jack. I got him! You run on bridge and keep him astern.’ The Rosetta’s discipline was good—the mate went like a man, and the skipper laid the gun.