CHAPTER XIII
P-BOATS AND AUXILIARY PATROL
The trawler is a fishing-boat by birth, and a mine-sweeper by necessity; the destroyer is first of all a fighting ship, and a protector of the weak. They will both kill a submarine when it comes their way; but we have ships—classes of ships—whose whole profession and occupation it is to hunt the pirate. Their methods differ as the methods of two kinds of hound. The Q-boat hunts slowly and craftily, the P-boat and the Yacht Patrol by speed, the ram, and the dreaded depth-charge. It is unnecessary to give the technical description of either class. A yacht is a yacht, and for a P-boat you may imagine a long slim boat, with fine lines and a rather low freeboard, three officers, a surgeon, and some fifty-five men—depth-charges round the stern and a gun or two, but no torpedoes.
In September 1917, H.M.S. P. 61 received orders to pick up in a certain roadstead the oiler San Zeferino and escort her to her destination. It was no easy job; the San Zeferino’s steering gear was defective, she could not zigzag; and in the misty showers and very dark weather prevailing, her course was embarrassingly original. But she was a valuable ship, and P. 61 meant to get her in if it could be done.
The sea was moderate, but visibility was no more than three-quarters of a mile. P. 61 kept on the convoy’s starboard bow and only about two cables ahead, zigzagging at seventeen knots. At three minutes to six in the morning, the oiler was suddenly observed to be settling by the stern. Lieut.-Commander Frank Arthur Worsley, R.N.R., on the bridge of P. 61, had heard no sound of explosion, and no one in the ship had sighted a submarine. The Commander knew, however, that in the thick mist and with a head wind and wash against him, this was natural enough. He immediately circled twice round the convoy, signalling to her: ‘Have you been torpedoed?’ With some difficulty she replied ‘Yes,’ and also that she had sighted the submarine.
Lieut.-Commander Worsley ascertained that the San Zeferino had her boats swung out and was in no immediate danger. He then reduced speed, in order not to betray his presence to the enemy, and started off north-west on the chase. Inevitably he soon lost sight of the oiler in the fog, and was obliged to turn in order to regain touch. He found the convoy still heading on her course, though her engines were wrecked; crossed her bows, and passed down her port side and under her stern. Directly P. 61 was clear, Lieutenant J. R. Stenhouse, R.N.R., on her bridge, sighted the enemy about half a mile away on the starboard beam, heading westward at nine knots.
Action stations had already been sounded, and fire was now opened from the port 12-pounder gun. One round of common shell was sent into the submarine, striking her just before the conning-tower. But a gun action was not the final object of P. 61. Lieut.-Commander Worsley had got his engines up to full speed as he came on, and saw that the enemy could not escape his ram. So sure was he that, after three minutes’ run, he deliberately stopped both engines, so as to let the ship’s bows drop deeper in the water and make a better hit.
The engines stopped, the bows sank two feet, the order ‘Stand by to ram’ was heard, and P. 61 struck the enemy stem on, on the port side, just abaft the conning-tower. Her speed at the moment was fully 20 knots, and the impact was severe; the submarine rolled over as the stem cut into her; and when P. 61’s stern was just above her, a very violent explosion took place, giving Lieut.-Commander Worsley, for an instant, the nightmare that he had been torpedoed by another U-boat in the moment of victory. He was quickly reassured. P. 61 had suffered no damage. But round the place of collision the sea was boiling with foam; immense air-bubbles were coming to the surface in rushes, and continued for some minutes after the explosion. There was oil upon the surface, and in it two men struggling. Lifebelts were thrown to them, and boats put out. One of the two was rescued and proved to be Ober-Leutnant Alfred Arnold, the commanding officer of the U-boat—the fifth upon the list of 150 published by the British Admiralty. The submarine was U.C. 49 and lies at the bottom in forty-seven fathoms. The San Zeferino was taken in tow by P.61 and came safely in after an arduous twelve hours—an admirable piece of work. Lieutenant-Commander Worsley received the D.S.O., Lieutenant Stenhouse the D.S.C., and two petty officers the D.S.M. for excellent steering and gun-laying.
On this occasion the P-boat had left her patrol duty for the moment, to act as escort. This was not the case with P. 57, who had a similar success in November of the same year. In the dark of early morning, about 6 o’clock, she had just challenged and examined by searchlight a vessel which turned out to be a friend, when the forward look-out reported ‘Buoy on the port bow!’ Course was altered to examine this buoy, and on approaching it both Lieut.-Commander H. C. Birnie, R.N.R., in command of P. 57, and Lieutenant Isdale, R.N.R., his officer of the watch, simultaneously perceived it to be a large U-boat heading due west and only 200 yards distant.