At 4.18, Lieutenant D’Oyly Hughes reduced speed and brought her up again to 26 feet. His first observation, on looking into the periscope, was that the bearing had changed; and secondly, that the floating object was without doubt a large enemy submarine. He headed at once to cut her off—she was making slowly off northwards—and dived to 40 feet in order to increase to full speed himself.
After a twenty-four minutes’ run he slowed down again for periscope observation, ordering the boat to be brought to 23 feet. This was a very anxious moment, for the sea once more all but gave him away. The swell rolled E. 35 up till she was actually for an instant breaking surface, within 1,800 yards of the enemy. She was got down again to 26 feet without having been seen, and her commander then very skilfully placed her in the trough of the sea, where he could pursue the chase on a slightly converging course instead of following right astern. On this course, which soon became absolutely parallel to that of the enemy, he remained at periscope depth for another half hour; then at 5.20, observing that he was not gaining fast enough, he dived again to 40 feet and speeded up, at the same time bringing a torpedo-tube to the ‘ready.’ At 5.35 he slowed once more for observation, and found the range had decreased to 1,100 yards. Down he went again for another spurt. At 5.53, he was within 900 yards; but as the parallel courses of the two boats were only a little more than 100 yards apart, he was ‘still very fine on enemy’s port quarter’—the shot was almost a bow-chaser shot and practically hopeless. He dived again, and for twenty-four more minutes patiently continued to observe and spurt alternately.
At 6.17, a dramatic change occurred in the situation. On rising to observe, he found that the enemy, for some irrelevant reason of her own, had turned 16 points to starboard, and was now actually coming back on a course which would bring her down the starboard side of E. 35 at a distance of scarcely more than 200 yards. This was much too close for a desirable shot—setting aside the dangers of the explosion, it was not certain that the torpedo would have picked up its depth correctly in so short a run, and a miss might put the U-boat on guard. Still, to manœuvre for a fresh position would take time and the chance was quite a possible one; the torpedo, at the end of 200 yards, would be at any rate near picking up its depth, and might well make a detonating hit on its upward track—it could not miss for deflection at that range; the enemy’s length was taking up almost the whole width of the periscope. Even if it were a miss underneath, it would probably escape notice, especially in so heavy a sea.
Lieutenant D’Oyly Hughes took exactly one minute to perceive the change of course and the wholly altered situation, to weigh all the above considerations, and to make his decision. At 6.18 he fired, lowered his periscope, put his helm hard a-starboard, and increased his speed. The hydrophone operator heard the torpedo running on her track, but the sound grew fainter and fainter and died away without a detonation. The shot was a miss beneath the target; after more than two long hours, the chase had failed.
The failure was brilliantly redeemed, and with astonishing swiftness. To realise the swiftness and the brilliancy of the manœuvre which followed, it is necessary to bring it vividly before the mind’s eye. The two boats must be seen at the moment of the first shot, passing one another at 200 yards on opposite courses, E. 35 going N.E., and the U-boat S.W. on her starboard beam. At 6.19 the enemy turned a little more towards E. 35, and began to steer due west under her stern, happily still without sighting her periscope. E. 35 was on her old course, running farther and farther away to the N.E., and there was already some 500 yards between them. But when the U-boat took up her westerly course, Lieutenant D’Oyly Hughes in an instant sent his boat on a swift curve to port, turning in quick succession N., N.W., W., and S.W., till in less than seven minutes after missing his first shot he was bearing down S.S.W. on the enemy, and therefore only 30 degrees abaft her starboard beam and hardly more than 500 yards distant. By pure luck, the unconscious U-boat had at the first critical moment done precisely the right thing to save herself; by sheer skill, the E-boat had been brought back to a winning position. At 6.25 Lieutenant D’Oyly Hughes—coolly estimating speed, distance, and deflection—fired one torpedo at his huge enemy’s fore-turret and another at her after-turret.
Both hit where they were aimed to hit. The first made very little noise, but threw up a large column of water and debris. The second did not appear to the eye to produce quite so good a burst; but the noise was louder, and the concussion felt in E. 35 was very powerful indeed, the whole boat shaking and a few lights going out momentarily. When the smoke and water column had cleared away, there was nothing to be seen but a quickly expanding calm area, like a wide lake of oil with wreckage floating in it, and three or four survivors clinging to some woodwork. E. 35, with her sub-lieutenant, her coxswain, and one able seaman on deck, and life-lines ready, went at once to their rescue; but a second U-boat made her appearance at that moment, and Lieutenant D’Oyly Hughes was obliged to dive at once. Three minutes afterwards, a torpedo passed him on the starboard side; but the new enemy was over two miles away, and though he reloaded his tubes and patrolled submerged on various courses, he never succeeded in picking her up in the periscope. She, also, had no doubt dived, and the two boats had scarcely more chance of coming to action than two men miles apart upon the Downs at midnight.
In such a case, only a lucky chance could bring the duellists together; and even then successful shooting would be difficult. But a bold submarine commander, having once closed, would improvise a new form of attack rather than let a pirate go his way. E. 50 was commanded by an officer of this temper when she sighted an enemy submarine, during a patrol off the east coast. Both boats were submerged at the time; but they recognised each other’s nationality by the different appearance of their periscopes. The German had two—thin ones of a light-grey colour, and with an arched window at the top, peculiar to their Service. The British commander drove straight at the enemy at full speed, and reached her before she had time to get down to a depth of complete invisibility. E. 50 struck fair between the periscopes; her stem cut through the plates of the U-boat’s shell and remained embedded in her back. Then came a terrific fight, like the death grapple of two primeval monsters. The German’s only chance, in his wounded condition, was to come to the surface before he was drowned by leakage; he blew his ballast tanks and struggled almost to the surface, bringing E. 50 up with him. The English boat countered by flooding her main ballast tanks, and weighing her enemy down into the deep. This put the U-boat to the desperate necessity of freeing herself, leak or no leak. For a minute and a half she drew slowly aft, bumping E. 50’s sides as she did so; then her effort seemed to cease, and her periscopes and conning-towers showed on E. 50’s quarter. She was evidently filling fast; she had a list to starboard and was heavily down by the bows. As she sank, E. 50 took breath and looked to her own condition. She was apparently uninjured, but she had negative buoyancy and her forward hydroplanes were jammed, so that it was a matter of great difficulty to get her to rise. After four strenuous minutes she was brought to the surface, and traversed the position, searching for any further sign of the U-boat or her crew. But nothing was seen beyond the inevitable lake of oil, pouring up like the thick rank life-blood of the dead sea-monster.