The sea along the east coast of England is sown with wreckage of steamers and fishing craft destroyed while pursuing their ordinary and innocent trades. The Irish Sea and the North Channel are also strewn with the remains of British shipping. For four years or more British ships followed their calling, passing through seas bristling with dangers, and the people of this country, which depends upon its overseas traffic for their daily bread, went about as usual, and suffered no actual privation from the shortage of food.
Such was the position of things—the dangers which our merchant ships had to encounter, and the problems which our Navy had to attack and to conquer. The versatility of our Navy is proverbial. It has been well said “A sailor is a jack of all trades.”
A distinguished officer recently stated that when he retired from the Navy, he bought a brewery, which he worked for some years, and brewed the best beer in the district. He then laid a submarine cable for the American Government, and ended up by managing a foreign coal-mine. Such is the remarkable adaptability of our naval men. It is not, therefore, surprising that when the submarine menace developed itself our navy was not slow in devising means of counter-attack, and of destroying the U boats. Destroyers and even submarines chased them, dropping depth charges containing high explosives, which were fatal if they struck the submarine, and even the concussion of the explosion at a considerable distance placed their electric batteries hors de combat. Wire netting protected our ships while at anchor, and was used to form a barrier across the Channel and to protect our ports.
It was found that U boats could be seen from an aeroplane when they were some depth under the water. Aeroplanes were, therefore, used to hunt the submarine, and indicate its position to an accompanying destroyer, or the aeroplane itself dropped a depth charge.
Underwater listening apparatus was invented, by which the thud of the propeller of a submarine could be distinctly heard, and the position of the submarine approximately ascertained.
Mystery-ships, fully armed, but having the appearance of an innocent coasting vessel, traversed the adjacent seas, but the most successful protection afforded to our transports and to our commerce was the adoption of the old system of “convoys.” Convoys were seldom very successfully attacked, and ships lost while being convoyed did not exceed 3 per cent. The convoy system required very careful organisation. Ships have different speeds and different destinations, so we had convoys for ships of varying swiftness. We had not sufficient war ships or destroyers to act as convoys from shore to shore in the Atlantic, therefore the convoys crossing the ocean were only under the protection of a ship of war, and only met their escort fleet of destroyers when they reached the danger zone. At a given point the convoy broke up, some ships going up the St. George’s Channel to Liverpool, the others proceeding to London and the Channel ports. The convoy system in the later stages of the war became very perfect, and although some enemy submarines boldly penetrated the protecting line of destroyers, and sank a few ships, they seldom got away again, and the knowledge of this had a very wholesome and a very deterrent effect. The valuable services performed by both English and American destroyers to our Mercantile Marine deserves the highest praise.
The appearance of the River Mersey upon the arrival of a convoy was something to be remembered. Sometimes a convoy would consist of twenty or thirty large merchantmen, all dazzle-painted, stretching out in a long line from New Brighton to the Sloyne, while their escort of British and American destroyers made their rendezvous at the Birkenhead floating stage.
Admiral Scheer, in his book, allows that the Germans lost half of their submarines, a considerable number he says were always under repair, and the difficulty of obtaining crews was an increasing one. Therefore, we think that it can be claimed that our navy had already mastered the U boat menace when the war ended.
To make it difficult for a submarine to find the range at which to fire their torpedos, our ships were carefully camouflaged or dazzle-painted, and presented a very grotesque and strange appearance, no two ships being alike. The painting was carefully designed, in many cases by an artist of eminence, the object being to confuse the eyes of a spectator at a distance. In some cases the ship was made to appear as if going the opposite way to that upon which she was actually proceeding. In others the ship gave the appearance of going at a much greater speed than that at which she was actually steaming. In others the ship at a distance had the appearance of being much shorter than she really was. In all these cases the submarine would have difficulty in ascertaining how far his quarry was away from him, which way she was proceeding, and how fast she was going. In order to render a submarine attack still more ineffective, our ships during the day time followed a zig-zag course, proceeding for a given period on a certain course, then suddenly changing it by several degrees, thus rendering it difficult for a submarine to get into a position to fire a torpedo.