A composite flotilla of French, British and Italian gunboats and submarines attacked an Austrian flotilla which had sneaked out from the Bocche di Cattaro, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic and shelled the port of Durazzo. The engagement resulted in the sinking of an Austrian destroyer. The following day the French picked up some sailors from another Austrian destroyer, the Llka, which had struck a mine and sunk. These sailors told them that in attacking the Austrian fleet the Allied boats had narrowly escaped killing the survivors of a French submarine that had been sunk and the crew of which had been rescued by Austrian gunboats.
What submarine it was they were at a loss to know, but as time passed and nothing was heard from the Monge, they became convinced that it must have been she. This conviction was strengthened two months later, when Mme. Roland Morillot, wife of Lieut. Morillot, commander of that boat, received a letter signed "Crew of the Monge," mailed from the concentration camp for prisoners at Deutsch Gabel, Bohemia, of which the following is a translation of a part:
"Notwithstanding the distance, we unite our grief with yours in weeping over the memory of him who in spite of all will ever remain our captain. Stricken by a blow of fate just when victory smiled most brightly, Commandant Morillot died like a hero, after having accomplished the almost impossible to save his vessel and his crew."
More months elapsed; then Chief Master Electrician Joffry and Quartermaster Mahe, both of the Monge, were returned to France from Austria in an exchange of prisoners. And they told the story.
II—STORY OF A COLLISION AT 30 KNOTS
The Monge belonged to the class of submarines that have to use a steam engine for recharging their diving accumulators. It had been scouting ahead of the rest of the flotilla and had crept close to the Bocche di Cattaro that night when the Austrian fleet came out. At 12.15 A. M. Commandant Morillot sighted the lights of the Austrian vessels. How many he couldn't tell, nor how far away they were. He submerged to 20 feet, leaving the night periscope above the surface. Suddenly he was aware of a rapidly approaching huge black mass, and was giving orders to fire a torpedo from the port tube when a hitherto unseen vessel passed at 30 knots right over the Monge. Its keel struck the submarine; the shock was terrific. The little boat rolled almost over. The conning tower was smashed and the sea poured in through a gaping hole.
The crew of the Monge tumbled in heaps against the partitions of the compartments in which they happened to be. The stern dropped, the bows rose, and the boat began sinking stern foremost at an angle of 30 or 40 degrees. Abominable gases rose as the sea water flooded the tanks of sulphuric acid.
The electric lights went out. The Monge wabbled downwards in pitch darkness.
It is such moments as these that test master and men. How both were equal to the emergency, let Chief Electrician Joffry relate:
III—TWO HUNDRED FEET BENEATH THE SEA