Later on he told me this yarn.
"Life's hard. Nobody loves us. Ships fire first, inquire afterwards. Off Terschelling at daybreak. Suddenly saw Harwich flotilla. Didn't know they were out. Infuriated destroyers coming straight for me. Dived. Hit sandbank. Conning-tower showing above surface. Broadside on to flotilla leader. Right on top of me. Reversed one engine, went ahead on other. Swung round. Destroyer shaved past. Wash lifted me off. Slid into deep water. Depth charges dropped. Electric lamps and crockery broken. Much annoyed. Said so when I returned."
I had another yarn with him in 1918. He said:
"On Dogger Bank. Saw Zeppelin. Later saw seaplane. Dived. Hundred and fifty feet. Bomb exploded eighty feet above me. Shook boat badly. Moved north eighty miles. Same thing happened. What's to be done?"
II.
Down on the sea boats are not easy to handle with precision. But I once did a little bit of seamanship of which I am rather proud. It is a trick I would never try to repeat.
Lofty Martin and myself were out together in two boats on the 5th, when we sighted a Fritz twenty miles south-east of the North Hinder. Lofty was nearer and went bald-headed at him. The commander of the submarine saw him coming and dived, but Lofty let go his four bombs just as Fritz went under. And then I saw that his boat was in difficulties. He got into a dangerous bank and into a steep dive, but gradually righted and landed on the water.
Flopping around above him, my wireless operator, leaning far over the side, tried to attract his attention with the Aldis signal-lamp, but without success. The bow of the boat seemed to be down and the tail up. There was a brisk east wind blowing with a fair sea running, and I thought he might have damaged the bottom of his boat in getting down. So I cut my engines and ducked in beside him.
Taxi-ing across his bow, I asked what was the trouble. An aluminium casting, holding the pulley-wheel through which an aileron control-wire was led, bad broken. It could not be repaired. The crew had all gathered in the bow to examine the break. And at that moment his port engine failed.
We were fifty miles from harbour.