CHAPTER VIII

SUBMARINE AGAINST SUBMARINE

I

It is not improbable that I have given a false impression concerning the relative merits of the several methods which were developed for fighting the submarine. Destroyers, patrol boats, subchasers, and mystery ships all accomplished great things in solving the most baffling problem presented by the war. The belief is general that the most successful hunter of the submarine was the destroyer, and, so far as absolute figures are concerned, this is true. Destroyers, with their depth charges and their gunfire, sank more U-boats than any other agency. One type of craft, however, proved a more destructive enemy of the submarine than even the destroyer. That was a warship of whose achievements in this direction little has so far been heard. The activities of the German submarine have completely occupied public attention; and this is perhaps the reason why few newspaper readers have suspected that there were other than German and Austrian submarines constantly operating at sea. Everyone has heard of the U-boats, yet how many have heard anything of the H-boats, the E-boats, the K-boats, and the L-boats? The H-, E-, and K-boats were British submarines, and the L-boats were American submarines. In the destruction of the German under-water craft these Allied submarines proved more successful than any kind of surface ship. The Allied destroyers, about 500 in number, sank 34 German submarines with gunfire and depth charges; auxiliary patrol craft, such as trawlers, yachts, and the like, about 3,000 in number, sank 31; while the Allied submarines, which were only about 100 in number, sank 20. Since, therefore, the Allies had about five times as many destroyers as submarines at work, it is evident that the record of the latter vessels surpasses that of the most formidable surface anti-submarine craft.

Thus the war developed the fact that the most deadly enemy of the submarine is the submarine itself. Underwater warfare is evidently a disease in which like cures like. In a way this is the most astonishing lesson of the naval operations. It is particularly interesting, because it so completely demolishes all the ideas on this subject with which we entered the war. From that day in history when the submarine made its first appearance, the one quality which seemed to distinguish it from all other kinds of warship was that it could not be used to fight itself. Writers were fond of pointing out that battleship could fight battleship, that cruiser could fight cruiser, that destroyer could fight destroyer, but that submarine could not fight submarine. This supposed quality, which was constantly emphasized, was what seemed to make the introduction of this strange vessel such a dangerous thing for the British Empire. For more than a hundred years the under-water boat was a weapon which was regarded as valuable almost exclusively to the weaker sea powers. In the course of the nineteenth century this engine of sea fighting made many spectacular appearances; and significantly it was always heralded as the one effective way of destroying British domination at sea.

The inventor of the modern submarine was an undergraduate of Yale named David Bushnell; his famous Turtle, according to the great British authority, Sir William White, formerly Chief Naval Constructor of the British navy, contained every fundamental principle of "buoyancy, stability, and control of depth" which are found in the modern submarine; "it cannot be claimed," he said in 1905, "that any new principle of design has been discovered or applied since Bushnell.... He showed the way to all his successors.... Although alternative methods of fulfilling essentials have been introduced and practically tested, in the end Bushnell's plans in substance have been found the best." The chief inspiration of Bushnell's work was a natural hostility to Great Britain, which was at that time engaged in war with his own country; his submarine, invented in 1777, was intended to sink the British warships which were then anchored off the American coast, break the communications of Great Britain with her revolting colonies, and in this way win our liberty. Bushnell did not succeed in this ambitious enterprise for reasons which it is hardly necessary to set forth in this place; the fact which I wish to emphasize is that he regarded his submarine as an agency which would make it possible for the young United States, a weak naval power, to deprive Great Britain, the dominant sea power, of its supremacy. His successor, Robert Fulton, was inspired by a similar ambition. In 1801 Fulton took his Nautilus into the harbour of Brest, and blew a merchant vessel into a thousand pieces; this dramatic experiment was intended to convince Napoleon that there was one way in which he could destroy the British fleet and thus deprive England of her sea control. Dramatic as this demonstration was, it did not convince Napoleon of the value of the submarine; Fulton therefore took his ship to England and exhibited it to William Pitt, who was then Prime Minister. The great statesman was much impressed, but he did not regard the submarine as an innovation that should arouse much enthusiasm in England. "If we adopt this kind of fighting," he said, "it will be the end of all navies."

Despite his own forebodings, Pitt sent Fulton to St. Vincent, who was then the First Lord of the Admiralty.

"Pitt is the biggest fool in the world," remarked the head of the victorious British navy. "Why does he encourage a kind of warfare which is useless to those who are the masters of the sea, and which, if it succeeds, will deprive them of this supremacy?"

The reason for St. Vincent's opposition is apparent. He formed the conception of the submarine which has prevailed almost up to the present time. In his opinion, a submarine was a vessel which could constantly remain under the surface, approach great warships unseen and blow them to pieces at will. This being the case, a nation which possessed two or three successfully working engines of this kind could apparently wipe out the entire British fleet. It therefore needed no argument to show that this was a weapon which was hardly likely to prove useful to the British navy. If the submarine could fulfil its appointed mission, it would give the control of the sea to that nation which used it successfully; but since Great Britain already controlled the sea, the new type of war craft was superfluous to her. In the hands of a weak naval power, however, which had everything to gain and nothing to lose, it might supply the means of overthrowing the British Empire. Could one submarine destroy another, it would present no particular menace, for then, in order to control the sea, it would merely be necessary to build a larger under-water fleet than that of any prospective enemy: but how could vessels which spent all their time under the water, in the dark, ever get a chance to come to blows? From these considerations it seemed apparent to St. Vincent and other British experts of his time that the best interests of the British Empire would be served, not by developing the submarine, but by suppressing it. Fulton's biographer intimates that the British Government offered Fulton a considerable amount of money to take his submarine back to America and forget about it; and there is a letter of Fulton's to Lord Granville, saying that "not for £20,000 a year would I do what you suggest." But there seemed to be no market for his invention, and Fulton therefore returned to America and subsequently gave all his time to exploiting the steamboat. On the defensive powers of the under-water vessel he also expressed the prevailing idea. "Submarine," he said, "cannot fight submarine."

The man who designed the type of submarine which has become the standard in all modern navies, John P. Holland, similarly advocated it as the only means of destroying the British navy. Holland was an American of Irish origin; he was a member of the Fenian brotherhood, and it was his idea that his vessel could be used to destroy the British navy, blockade the British coast, and, as an inevitable consequence, secure freedom for Ireland. This is the reason why his first successful boat was known as the Fenian Ram, despite the fact that it was not a "ram" at all. And the point on which Holland always insisted was that the submarine vessel was a unique vessel in naval warfare, because there was no "answer" to it. "There is nothing that you can send against it," he gleefully exclaimed, "not even itself."