The Victory At Sea Part 15

I

Was there no more satisfactory way of destroying submarines than by pursuing them with destroyers, sloops, chasers, and other craft in the open seas? It is hardly surprising that our methods impressed certain of our critics as tedious and ill-conceived, and that a mere glance at a small map of the North Sea suggested a far more reasonable solution of the problem. The bases from which the German submarines found their way to the great centres of s.h.i.+pping were Ostend and Zeebrugge on the Belgian coast, Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven on the German coast, and the harbour of Kiel in the Baltic Sea. From all these points the voyage to the waters that lay west and south of Ireland was a long and difficult one; in order to reach these hunting grounds the German craft had either to pa.s.s through the Straits of Dover to the south, or through the wide pa.s.sage-way of the North Sea that stretched between the Shetland Islands and Norway, and thence sail around the northern coast of Ireland. We necessarily had little success in attempting to interfere with the U-boats while they were making these lengthy open-sea voyages, but concentrated our efforts on trying to oppose them after they had reached the critical areas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NORTH SEA BARRAGE

Just how many German submarines were sunk in attempting to get by this barrage will never be known, for it did its work silently without any observers. It was probably a contributory cause of the mutiny which demoralized the German fleet in the autumn of 1918.

Emery Walper Ltd. sc.]

But a casual glance at the map convinced many people that our procedure was a mistake. And most newspaper readers in those days were giving much attention to this map. Many periodicals, published in Great Britain and the United States, were fond of exhibiting to their readers diagrams of the North Sea; these diagrams contained one heavy black bar drawn across the Straits of Dover and another drawn across the northern pa.s.sage from Scotland to Norway. The accompanying printed matter informed the public that these pictures ill.u.s.trated the one effective "answer" to the submarine. The black bars of printer's ink represented barrages of mines and nets, which, if they were once laid between the indicated spots, would blow to pieces any submarine which attempted to force a way across. Not a single German U-boat could therefore succeed in getting out of the North Sea. All the trans-Atlantic s.h.i.+ps which contained the food supplies and war materials so essential to Allied success would thus be able to land on the west coast of England and France; the submarine menace would automatically disappear and the war on the sea would be won. Unfortunately, it was not only the pictorial artists employed on newspapers and magazines who insisted that this was the royal road to success. Plenty of naval men, in the United States and in Europe, were constantly advancing the contention, and statesmen in our own country and in Allied countries were similarly fascinated by this programme. When I arrived in London, in April, 1917, the great plan of confining the submarines to their bases was everywhere a lively topic of discussion. There was not a London club in which the Admiralty was not denounced for its stupidity in not adopting such a perfectly obvious plan. The way to destroy a swarm of hornets--such was the favourite simile--was to annihilate them in their nests, and not to hunt and attack them, one by one, after they had escaped into the open. What the situation needed was not a long and wearisome campaign, involving unlimited new construction to offset the increasing losses of life and s.h.i.+pping, and altogether too probable defeat in the end, but a swift and terrible blow which would end the submarine menace overnight.

The naval officers who expressed fears that, under the s.h.i.+pping conditions prevailing in 1917, such a brilliant performance could not possibly be carried out in time to avoid defeat, merely gained a reputation for timidity and lack of resourcefulness. When the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, in 1915 declared that the British fleet would "dig the Germans out of their holes like rats," his remarks did not greatly impress naval strategists, but they certainly sounded a note which was popular in England. One fact, not generally known at that time, demonstrated the futility of the whole idea. Most newspaper critics a.s.sumed that the barrage from Dover to Calais was keeping the submarines out of the Channel. That the destroyers, aircraft, and other patrols were safely escorting troops.h.i.+ps and other vessels across the Channel was a fact of which the British public was justly proud. Yet it did not necessarily follow that the submarines could not use the Channel as a pa.s.sage-way from their German bases to their operating areas in the focus of Allied s.h.i.+pping routes. The mines and nets in the Channel, of which so much was printed in the first three years of the war, did not offer an effective barrier to the submarines. This was due to various reasons too complicated for description in a book of this untechnical nature. The unusually strong tides and rough weather experienced in the vicinity of the Straits of Dover are well known. As one British officer expressed it at the time, "our experience in attempting to close the Strait has involved both blood and tears"--blood because of the men who were lost in laying the mines and nets, and tears because the arduous work of weeks would be swept away in a storm of a single night. In addition, at this stage of the war the British were still experimenting with mines; they had discovered gradually that the design which they had used up to that time--the same design which was used in the American navy--was defective. But the process of developing new mines in wartime had proved slow and difficult; and the demands of the army on the munition factories had prevented the Admiralty from obtaining a sufficient number. The work of the Dover patrols was a glorious one, as will appear when all of the facts come to public knowledge. But in 1917 this patrol was not preventing the U-boats from slipping through the Channel. The Straits of Dover, at the point where this so-called barrage was supposed to have existed, is about twenty miles wide. The pa.s.sage-way between Scotland and Norway is 250 miles wide. The water in the Channel has an average depth of a few fathoms; in the northern expanse of the North Sea it reaches an average depth of 600 feet. Mining in such deep waters had never been undertaken or even considered before by any nation. The English Channel is celebrated for its strong tides and stormy weather, but it is not the scene of the tempestuous gales which rage so frequently in the winter months in these northern waters.

If the British navy had not succeeded in constructing an effective mine barrier across the English Channel, what was the likelihood that success would crown an effort to build a much greater obstruction in the far more difficult waters to the north?

The one point which few understood at that time was that the mere building of the barrage would not in itself prevent the escape of submarines from the North Sea. Besides building such a barrage, it would be necessary to protect it with surface vessels. Otherwise German mine-sweepers could visit the scene, and sweep up enough of the obstruction to make a hole through which their submarines could pa.s.s. It is evident that, in a barrage extending 250 miles, it would not be difficult to find some place in which to conduct such sweeping operations; it is also clear that it would take a considerable number of patrolling vessels to watch such an extensive barrier and to interfere with such operations. Moreover, we could not send our mine-layers into the North Sea without destroyer escort; that is, it would be necessary to detach a considerable part of our forces to protect these s.h.i.+ps while they were laying their mines. Those responsible for anti-submarine operations believed that in the spring and summer of 1917 it would have been unwise to detach these anti-submarine vessels from the area in which they were performing such indispensable service. The overwhelming fact was that we needed all the surface craft we could a.s.semble for the convoy system. The destroyers which we had available for this purpose were entirely inadequate; to have diverted any of them for other duties would at that time have meant destruction to the Allied cause. The object of placing the barrage so far north was to increase the enemy's difficulty in attempting to sweep a pa.s.sage through it and facilitate its defence by our forces. The impossibility of defending a mine barrier placed too far south was shown by experience in that area of the North Sea which was known as the "wet triangle." By April, 1917, the British had laid more than 30,000 mines in the Bight of Heligoland, and were then increasing these obstructions at the rate of 3,000 mines a month.

Yet this vast explosive field did not prevent the Germans from sending their submarines to sea. The enemy sweepers were dragging out channels through the mine-fields almost as rapidly as the British were putting new fields down; we could not prevent this, because protecting vessels could not remain so near the German bases without losses from submarine attacks. Moreover, the Germans also laid mines in the same area in order to trap the British mine-layers; and these operations resulted in very considerable losses on each side. These impediments made the egress of a submarine a difficult and nerve-racking process; it sometimes required two or three days and the a.s.sistance of a dozen or so surface vessels to get a few submarines through the Heligoland Bight into open waters.

Several were unquestionably destroyed in the operation, yet the activity of submarines in the Atlantic showed that these mine-fields had by no means succeeded in proving more than a hara.s.sing measure. It was estimated that the North Sea barrage would require about 400,000 mines, far more than existed in the world at that time, and far more than all our manufacturing resources could then produce within a reasonable period. I have already made the point, and I cannot make it too frequently, that time is often the essential element in war--and in this case it was of vital importance. Whether a programme is a wise one or not depends not only upon the feasibility of the plan itself, but upon the time and the circ.u.mstances in which it is proposed. In the spring of 1917 the situation which we were facing was that the German submarines were destroying Allied s.h.i.+pping at the rate of nearly 800,000 tons a month. The one thing which was certain was that, if this destruction should continue for four or five months, the Allies would be obliged to surrender unconditionally. The pressing problem was to find methods that would check these depredations and that would check them in time. The convoy system was the one naval plan--the point cannot be made too emphatically--which in April and May of 1917 held forth the certainty of immediately accomplis.h.i.+ng this result. Other methods of opposing the submarines were developed which magnificently supplemented the convoy; but the convoy, at least in the spring and summer of 1917, was the one sure method of salvation for the Allied cause. To have started the North Sea barrage in the spring and summer of 1917 would have meant abandoning the convoy system; and this would have been sheer madness.

Thus in 1917 the North Sea barrage was not an answer to the popular proposal "to dig the Germans out of their holes like rats." We did not have a mine which could be laid in such deep waters in sufficient numbers to have formed any barrier at all; and even if we had possessed one, the construction of the barrage would have demanded such an enormous number that they could not have been manufactured in time to finish the barrage until late in the year 1918. Presently the situation began to change. The princ.i.p.al fact which made possible this great enterprise was the invention of an entirely new type of mine. The old mine consisted of a huge steel globe, filled with high explosive, which could be fired only by contact. That is, it was necessary for the surface of a s.h.i.+p, such as a submarine, to strike against the surface of the mine, and in this way start the mechanism which ignited the explosive charge. The fact that this immediate contact was essential enormously increased the difficulty of successfully mining waters that range in depth from 400 to 900 feet. If the mines were laid anywhere near the surface, the submarine, merely by diving beneath them, could avoid all danger; if they were laid any considerable depth, it could sail with complete safety above them. Thus, if such a mine were to be used at all, we should have had to plant several layers, one under the other, down to a depth of about 250 feet, so that the submarine, at whatever depth it might be sailing, would be likely to strike one of these obstructions. This required such a large number of mines as to render the whole project impossible. We Americans may take pride in the fact that it was an American who invented an entirely new type of mine and therefore solved this difficulty. In the summer of 1917 Mr. Ralph C.

Browne, an electrical engineer of Salem, Ma.s.s., offered a submarine gun for the consideration of Commander S. P. Fullinwider, U.S.N., who was then in charge of the mining section of the Bureau of Ordnance. As a submarine gun this invention did not seem to offer many chances of success, but Commander Fullinwider realized that it comprised a firing device of excellent promise. The Bureau of Ordnance, a.s.sisted by Mr.

Browne, spent the summer and autumn experimenting with this contrivance and perfecting it; the English mining officers who had been sent to America to co-operate with our navy expressed great enthusiasm over it; and some time about the beginning of August, 1917, the Bureau of Ordnance came to the conclusion that it was a demonstrated success. The details of Mr. Browne's invention are too intricate for description in this place, but its main point is comprehensible enough. Its great advantage was that it was not necessary for the submarine to strike the mine in order to produce the desired explosion. The mine could be located at any depth and from it a long "antenna," a thin copper cable, reached up to within a few feet of the surface, where it was supported in that position by a small metal buoy. Any metallic substance, such as the hull of a submarine, simply by striking this antenna at any point, would produce an electric current, which, instantaneously transmitted to the mine, would cause this mine to explode. The great advantage of this device is at once apparent. Only about one fourth the number of mines required under the old conditions would now be necessary. The Mining Section estimated that 100,000 mines would form a barrier that would be extremely dangerous to submarines pa.s.sing over it or through it, whereas, under the old conditions, about 400,000 would have been required. This implies more than a mere saving in manufacturing resources; it meant that we should need a proportionately smaller number of mine-laying s.h.i.+ps, crews, officers, bases, and supplies--all those things which are seldom considered by the amateur in warfare, but which are as essential to its prosecution as the more spectacular details.

I wish to emphasize the fact that, in laying such a barrage, it was not our object to make an absolute barrier to the pa.s.sage of submarines. To have done this we should have needed such a great number of mines that the operation would have been impossible. Nor would such an absolute barrier have been necessary to success; a field that could be depended upon to destroy one-fourth or one-fifth of the submarines that attempted the pa.s.sage would have represented complete success. No enemy could stand such losses as these; and the _moral_ of no crew could have lasted long under such conditions.

Another circ.u.mstance which made the barrage a feasible enterprise was that by the last of the year 1917 it was realized that the submarine had ceased to be a decisive factor in the war. It still remained a serious embarra.s.sment, and every measure which could possibly thwart it should be adopted. But the writings of German officers which have been published since the war make it apparent that they themselves realized early in 1918 that they would have to place their hopes of victory on something else besides the submarine. The convoy system and the other methods of fighting under-water craft which I have already described had caused a great decrease in sinkings. In April of 1917 the losses were nearly 900,000 tons; in November of the same year they were less than 300,000 tons.[7] Meanwhile, the construction of merchant s.h.i.+pping, largely a result of the tremendous expansion of American s.h.i.+pbuilding facilities, was increasing at a tremendous rate. A diagram of these, the two essential factors in the submarine campaign, disclosed such a rapidly rising curve of new s.h.i.+pping, and such a rapidly falling curve of sinkings, that the time could be easily foreseen when the net amount of Allied s.h.i.+pping, after the submarines had done their worst, would show a promising increase. But, as stated above, the submarines were still a distinct menace; they were still causing serious losses; and it was therefore very important that we should leave no stone unturned toward demonstrating beyond a shadow of doubt that warfare as conducted by these craft could be entirely put down. The more successfully we demonstrated this fact and the more energetically we prosecuted every form of opposition, the earlier would the enemy's general _moral_ break down and victory be a.s.sured. In war, where human lives as well as national interests are at stake, no thought whatever can be given to expense. It is impossible to place a value on human life. Therefore, on November 2, 1917, the so-called "Northern Barrage" project was officially adopted by both the American and the British Governments.

When I say that the proposed mine-field was as long as the distance from Was.h.i.+ngton to New York, some idea of its magnitude may be obtained.

Nothing like it had ever been attempted before. The combined operations involved a ma.s.s of detail which the lay mind can hardly comprehend. The cost--$40,000,000--is perhaps not an astonis.h.i.+ng figure in the statistics of this war, but it gives some conception of the size of the undertaking.

II

During the two years preceding the war Captain Reginald R. Belknap commanded the mine-laying squadron of the Atlantic fleet. Although his force was small, consisting princ.i.p.ally of two antiquated wars.h.i.+ps, the _Baltimore_ and the _San Francisco_, Captain Belknap had performed his duties conscientiously and ably, and his little squadron therefore gave us an excellent foundation on which to build. Before the European War the business of mine-laying had been unpopular in the American navy as well as in the British; such an occupation, as Sir Eric Geddes once said, had been regarded as something like that of "rat catching"; as hostilities went on, however, and the mine developed great value as an anti-submarine weapon, this branch of the service began to receive more respectful attention. Captain Belknap's work not only provided the nucleus out of which the great American mine force was developed, but he was chiefly responsible for organizing this force. The "active front" of our mine-laying squadron was found in the North Sea; but the sources of supply lay in a dozen s.h.i.+pyards and several hundred manufacturing plants in the United States.

We began this work with practically nothing; we had to obtain s.h.i.+ps and transform them into mine-layers; to enlist and to train their crews; to manufacture at least 100,000 mines; to create bases both in the United States and Scotland; to transport all of our supplies more than 3,000 miles of wintry sea, part of the course lying in the submarine zone; and we had to do all this before the real business of planting could begin.

The fact that the Navy made contracts for 100,000 of these new mines before it had had the opportunity of thoroughly testing the design under service conditions shows the great faith of the Navy Department in this new invention. More than 500 contractors and sub-contractors, located in places as far west as the Mississippi River, undertook the work of filling this huge order. Wire-rope mills, steel factories, foundries, machine shops, electrical works, and even candy makers, engaged in this great operation; all had their troubles with labour unions, with the railroads, and with the weather--that was the terrible winter of 1917-18; but in a few months trainloads of mine cases--great globes of steel--and other essential parts began to arrive at Norfolk, Virginia.

This port was the place where the mine parts were loaded on s.h.i.+ps and sent abroad. The plant which was ultimately constructed at this point was able to handle 1,000 mines a day; the industry was not a popular one in the neighbourhood, particularly after the Halifax explosion had proved the destructive powers of the materials in which it dealt. In a few months this establishment had handled 25,000,000 pounds of TNT. The explosive was melted in steel kettles until it reached about the density of hasty pudding; with the aid of automatic devices it was then poured into the mine cases, 300 pounds to a case, and thence moved on a mechanical conveyor to the end of the pier. Twenty-four cargo vessels, for the most part taken from the Great Lakes, carried these cargoes to the western coast of Scotland. Beginning in February, 1918, two or three of these s.h.i.+ps sailed every eight days from Norfolk, armed against submarines and manned by naval crews. The fact that these vessels were slow made them an easy prey for the under-water enemy; one indeed was sunk, with the loss of forty-one men; regrettable as was this mishap, it represented the only serious loss of the whole expedition.

The other vital points were Newport, Rhode Island, where the six mine-layers were a.s.sembled; and Fort William and Kyle of Lochalsh on the western coast of Scotland, which were the disembarking points for the s.h.i.+ps transporting the explosives. Captain Belknap's men were very proud of their mine-layers, and in many details they represented an improvement over anything which had been hitherto employed in such a service. At this point I wish to express my very great appreciation of the loyal and devoted services rendered by Captain Belknap. An organizer of rare ability, this officer deserves well of the nation for the conspicuous part which he played in the development of the North Sea Mine Barrage from start to finish. Originally, these mine-layers had been coastwise vessels; two of them were the _Bunker Hill_ and the _Ma.s.sachusetts_, which for years had been "outside line" boats, running from New York to Boston; all had dropped the names which had served them in civil life and were rechristened for the most part with names which eloquently testified to their American origin--_Canonicus_, _Shawmut_, _Quinnebaug_, _Housatonic_, _Saranac_, _Roanoke_, _Aroostook_, and _Canandaigua_. These changes in names were entirely suitable, for by the time our forces had completed their alterations the s.h.i.+ps bore few resemblances to their former state. The cabins and saloons had been gutted, leaving the hulls little more than empty sh.e.l.ls; three decks for carrying mines had been installed; on all these decks little railroad tracks had been built on which the mines could be rolled along the lower decks to the elevators and along the upper mine deck to the stern and dropped into the sea. Particularly novel details, something entirely new in mine-layers, were the elevators, the purpose of which was to bring the mines rapidly from the lower decks to the launching track. So rapidly did the work progress, and so well were the crews trained, that in May, 1918, the first of these ten s.h.i.+ps weighed anchor and started for their destination in Scotland. Already our navy had selected as bases the ports of Inverness and Invergordon, on Moray Firth, harbours which were reasonably near the waters in which the mines were to be laid. From Invergordon the Highland Railway crosses Scotland to Lochalsh, and from Inverness the Caledonian Ca.n.a.l runs to Fort William.

These two transportation lines--the Highland Railway and the Caledonian Ca.n.a.l--served as connecting links in our communications. If we wish a complete picture of our operation, we must call to mind first the hundreds of factories in all parts of our country, working day and night, making the numerous parts of these instruments of destruction and their attendant mechanisms; then hundreds of freight cars carrying them to the a.s.sembling plant at Norfolk, Virginia; then another small army of workmen at this point mixing their pasty explosive, heating it to a boiling point, and pouring the concoction into the spherical steel cases; then other groups of men moving the partially prepared mines to the docks and loading them on the cargo s.h.i.+ps; then these s.h.i.+ps quietly putting to sea, and, after a voyage of ten days or two weeks, as quietly slipping into the Scottish towns of Fort William and Kyle; then trains of freight cars and ca.n.a.l boats taking the cargoes across Scotland to Inverness and Invergordon, where the mines were completed and placed in the immense storehouses at the bases and loaded on the mine-layers as the necessity arose. Thus, when the whole organization was once established on a working basis, we had uninterrupted communications and a continuous flow of mines from the American factories to the stormy waters of the North Sea.

The towns in which our officers and men found themselves in late May, 1918, are among the most famous in Scottish history and legend. Almost every foot of land is a.s.sociated with memories of Macbeth, Mary Queen of Scots, Cromwell, and the Pretender. "The national anthem woke me," says Captain Belknap, describing his first morning at his new Scottish base.

"I arose and looked out. What a glorious sight! Green slopes in all freshness, radiant with broom and yellow gorse; the rocky sh.o.r.e mirrored in the Firth, which stretched, smooth and cool, wide away to the east and south; and, in the distance, snow-capped Ben Wyvis. Lying off the entrance to Munlochy Bay, we had a view along the sloping sh.o.r.es into the interior of Black Isle, of noted fertility. Farther out were Avoch, a whitewashed fis.h.i.+ng village, and the ancient town of Fortrose, with its ruined twelfth-century cathedral. Across the Firth lay Culloden House, where Bonnie Prince Charlie slept before the battle. Substantial, but softened in outline by the morning haze, the Royal Burgh of Inverness covered the banks and heights along the Ness River, gleaming in the bright suns.h.i.+ne. And how peaceful everywhere! The _Canandaigua_ and the _Sonoma_ lay near by, the _Canonicus_ farther out, but no movement, no signal, no beat of the engine, no throbbing pumps." The reception which the natives gave our men was as delightful as the natural beauty of the location. For miles around the Scots turned out to make things pleasant for their Yankee guests. The American naval forces stationed at the mining bases in those two towns numbered about 3,000 officers and men, and the task of providing relaxations, in the heart of the Highlands, far removed from theatres and moving-picture houses, would have been a serious one had it not been for the cordial co-operation of the people. The spirit manifested during our entire stay was evidenced on the Fourth of July, when all the shops and business places closed in honour of American Independence Day and the whole community for miles around joined our sailors in the celebration. The officers spent such periods of relaxation as were permitted them on the excellent golf links and tennis courts in the adjoining country; dances were provided for the men, almost every evening, the Scottish la.s.sies showing great adaptability in learning the American steps. Amateur theatricals, in which both the men from the wars.h.i.+ps and the Scottish girls took part, cheered many a crew after its return from the mine-fields. Baseball was introduced for the first time into the country of William Wallace and Robert Burns. Great crowds gathered to witness the matches between the several s.h.i.+ps; the Scots quickly learned the fine points and really developed into "fans," while the small boys of Inverness and Invergordon were soon playing the game with as much enthusiasm and cleverness as our own youngsters at home. In general, the behaviour of our men was excellent and made the most favourable impression.

These two mine-a.s.sembly bases at Inverness and Invergordon will ever remain a monumental tribute to the loyal and energetic devotion to duty of Captain Orin G. Murfin, U.S. Navy, who designed and built them; originally the bases were intended to handle 12,000 mines, but in reality Captain Murfin successfully handled as many as 20,000 at one time. It was here also that each secret firing device was a.s.sembled and installed, very largely by reserve personnel. As many as 1,200 mines were a.s.sembled in one day, which speaks very eloquently for the foresight with which Captain Murfin planned his bases.

III

But of course baseball and dancing were not the serious business in hand; these Americans had come this long distance to do their part in laying the mighty barrage which was to add one more serious obstacle to the illegal German submarine campaign. Though the operation was a joint one of the American and British navies, our part was much the larger.

The proposal was to construct this explosive impediment from the Orkney Islands to the coast of Norway, in the vicinity of Udsire Light, a distance of about 230 nautical miles. Of this great area about 150 miles, extending from the Orkneys to 3 degrees east longitude, was the American field, and the eastern section, which extended fifty nautical miles to Norway, was taken over by the British. Since an operation of this magnitude required the supervision of an officer of high rank, Rear-Admiral Joseph Strauss, who had extended experience in the ordnance field of the navy, came over in March, 1918, and took command. The British commander was Rear-Admiral Clinton-Baker, R.N.

The mines were laid in a series of thirteen expeditions, or "excursions," as our men somewhat cheerfully called them. The ten mine-layers partic.i.p.ated in each "excursion," all ten together laying about 5,400 mines at every trip. Each trip to the field of action was practically a duplicate of the others; a description of one will, therefore, serve for all. After days, and sometimes after weeks of preparation the squadron, usually on a dark and misty night, showing no lights or signals, would weigh anchor, slip by the rocky palisades of Moray Firth, and stealthily creep out to sea. As the s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sed through the nets and other obstructions and reached open waters, the speed increased, the gunners took their stations at their batteries, and suddenly from a dark horizon came a glow of low, rapidly moving vessels; these were the British destroyers from the Grand Fleet which had been sent to escort the expedition and protect it from submarines. The absolute silence of the whole proceeding was impressive; not one of the destroyers showed a signal or a light; not one of the mine-layers gave the slightest sign of recognition; all these details had been arranged in advance, and everything now worked with complete precision. The swis.h.i.+ng of the water on the sides and the slow churning of the propellers were the only sounds that could possibly betray the s.h.i.+ps to their hidden enemies. After the s.h.i.+ps had steamed a few more miles the dawn began to break; and now a still more inspiring sight met our men. A squadron of battles.h.i.+ps, with scout cruisers and destroyers, suddenly appeared over the horizon. This fine force likewise swept on, apparently paying not the slightest attention to our vessels. They steamed steadily southward, and in an hour or so had entirely disappeared. The observer would hardly have guessed that this squadron from Admiral Beatty's fleet at Scapa Flow had anything to do with the American and British mine-layers. Its business, however, was to establish a wall of steel and shotted guns between these forces and the German battle fleet at Kiel.

At one time it was believed that the mine forces on the northern barrage would prove a tempting bait to the German dreadnoughts; and that, indeed, it might induce the enemy to risk a second general engagement on the high seas. At any rate, a fleet of converted excursion steamers, laying mines in the North Sea, could hardly be left exposed to the attacks of German raiders; our men had the satisfaction of knowing that while engaged in their engrossing if unenviable task a squadron of British or American battles.h.i.+ps--for Admiral Rodman's forces took their regular turn in acting as a "screen" in these excursions--was standing a considerable distance to the south, prepared to make things lively for any German surface vessels which attempted to interfere with the operation.

Now in the open seas the ten mine-layers formed in two columns, abreast of each other and five hundred yards apart, and started for the waters of the barrage. Twelve destroyers surrounded them, on the lookout for submarines, for the s.h.i.+ps were now in the track of the U-boats bound for their hunting ground or returning to their home ports. At a flash from the flags.h.i.+p all slackened speed, and put out their paravanes--those under-water outrigger affairs which protected the s.h.i.+ps from mines; for it was not at all unlikely that the Germans would place some of their own mines in this field, for the benefit of the barrage builders. This operation took only a few minutes; then another flash, and the squadron again increased its speed. It steamed the distance across the North Sea to Udsire Light, then turned west again and headed for that mathematical spot on the ocean which was known as the "start point"--the place, that is, where the mine-laying was to begin. In carrying out all these manoeuvres--sighting the light on the Norwegian coast--the commander was thinking, not only of the present, but of the future; for the time would come, after the war had ended, when it would be necessary to remove all these mines, and it was therefore wise to "fix" them as accurately as possible in reference to landmarks, so as to know where to look for them. All this time the men were at their stations, examining the mines to see that everything was ready, testing the laying mechanisms, and mentally rehearsing their duties. At about four o'clock an important signal came from the flags.h.i.+p:

"Have everything ready, for the squadron will reach 'start point' in an hour and mine-laying will begin."

Up to this time the s.h.i.+ps were sailing in two columns; when they came within seven miles of "start point," another signal was broken out; the s.h.i.+ps all wheeled like a company of soldiers, each turning sharply to the right, so that in a few minutes, instead of two columns, we had eight s.h.i.+ps in line abreast, with the remaining two, also in line abreast, sailing ahead of them. This splendid array, keeping perfect position, approached the starting point like a line of racehorses pa.s.sing under the wire. Not a s.h.i.+p was off this line by so much as a quarter length; the whole atmosphere was one of eagerness; the officers all had their eyes fixed upon the stern of the flags.h.i.+p, for the glimpse of the red flag which would be the signal to begin. Suddenly the flag was hauled down, indicating:

"First mine over."

If you had been following one of these s.h.i.+ps, you would probably have been surprised at the apparent simplicity of the task. The vessel was going at its full speed; at intervals of a few seconds a huge black object, about five feet high, would be observed gliding toward the stern; at this point it would pause for a second or two, as though suspended in air; it would then give a mighty lurch, fall head first into the water, sending up a great splash, and then sink beneath the waves. By the time the disturbance was over the s.h.i.+p would have advanced a considerable distance; then, in a few seconds, another black object would roll toward the stern, make a similar plunge, and disappear. You might have followed the same s.h.i.+p for two or three hours, watching these mines fall overboard at intervals of about fifteen seconds. There were four planters, each of which could and did on several trips lay about 860 mines in three hours and thirty-five minutes, in a single line about forty-four miles long. These were the _Canandaigua_, the _Canonicus_, the _Housatonic_, and the _Roanoke_. Occasionally the monotony of this procedure would be enlivened by a terrible explosion, a great geyser of water rising where a mine had only recently disappeared; this meant that the "egg," as the sailors called it, had gone off spontaneously, without the a.s.sistance of any external contact; such accidents were part of the game, the records showing that about 4 per cent. of all the mines indulged in such initial premature explosions. For the most part, however, nothing happened to disturb the steady mechanical routine. The mines went over with such regularity that, to an observer, the whole proceeding seemed hardly the work of human agency. Yet every detail had been arranged months before in the United States; the mines fell into the sea in accordance with a time-table which had been prepared in Newport before the vessels started for Scotland. Every man on the s.h.i.+p had a particular duty to perform and each performed it in the way in which he had been schooled under the direction of Captain Belknap.

The spherical mine case, which contains the explosive charge and the mechanism for igniting it, is only a part of the contrivance. While at rest on board the s.h.i.+p this case stands upon a box-like affair, about two feet square, known as the anchor; this anchor sinks to the bottom after launching and it contains an elaborate arrangement for maintaining the mine at any desired depth beneath the surface. The bottom of the "anchor" has four wheels, on which it runs along the little railroad track on the launching deck to the jumping-off place at the stern. All along these railroad tracks the mines were stationed one back of another; as one went overboard, they would all advance a peg, a mine coming up from below on an elevator to fill up the vacant s.p.a.ce at the end of the procession. It took a crew of hard-working, begrimed, and sweaty men to keep these mines moving and going over the stern at the regularly appointed intervals. After three or four hours had been spent in this way and the s.h.i.+ps had started back to their base, the decks would sometimes be covered with the sleeping figures of these exhausted men. It would be impossible to speak too appreciatively of the spirit they displayed; in the whole summer there was not a single mishap of any importance. The men all felt that they were engaged in a task which had never been accomplished before, and their exhilaration increased with almost every mine that was laid. "Nails in the coffin of the Kaiser,"

the men called these grim instruments of vengeance.

IV

I have described one of these thirteen summer excursions, and the description given could be applied to all the rest. Once or twice the periscope of a submarine was sighted--without any disastrous results--but in the main this business of mine-laying was uneventful.

Just what was accomplished the chart makes clear. In the summer and autumn months of 1918 the American forces laid 56,571 mines and the British 13,546. The operation was to have been a continuous one; had the war gone on for two years we should probably have laid several hundred thousand; Admiral Strauss's forces kept at the thing steadily up to the time of the armistice; they had become so expert and the barrage was producing such excellent results that we had plans nearly completed for building another at the Strait of Otranto, which would have completely closed the Adriatic Sea. Besides this undertaking the American mine-layer _Baltimore_ laid a mine-field in the North Irish Channel, the narrow waters which separate Scotland and Ireland; two German submarines which soon afterward attempted this pa.s.sage were blown to pieces, and after this the mine-field was given a wide berth.

Just what the North Sea barrage accomplished, in the actual destruction of submarines, will never be definitely known. We have information that four certainly were destroyed, and in all probability six and possibly eight; yet these results doubtless measure only a small part of the German losses. In the majority of cases the Germans had little or no evidence of sunken submarines. The destroyers, subchasers, and other patrol boats were usually able to obtain some evidences of injury inflicted; they could often see their quarry, or the disturbances which it made on the surface; they could pursue and attack it, and the resultant oil patches, wreckage, and German prisoners--and sometimes the recovered submarine itself or its location on the bottom--would tell the story either of damage or destruction. But the disconcerting thing about the North Sea barrage, from the viewpoint of the Germans, was that it could do its work so secretly that no one, friend or enemy, would necessarily know a thing about it. A German submarine simply left its home port; attempting to cross the barrage, perhaps at night, it would strike one of these mines, or its antenna; an explosion would crumple it up like so much paper; with its crew it would sink to the bottom; and not a soul, perhaps not even the crew itself, would ever know what had happened to it. It would in truth be a case of "sinking without a trace"--though an entirely legitimate one under the rules of warfare.

The German records disclosed anywhere from forty to fifty submarines sunk which did not appear in the records of the Allies; how these were destroyed not a soul knows, or ever will know. They simply left their German ports and were never heard of again. That many of them fell victims to mines, and some of them to the mines of our barrage, is an entirely justifiable a.s.sumption. That probably even a larger number of U-boats were injured is also true. A German submarine captain, after the surrender at Scapa Flow, said that he personally knew of three submarines, including his own, which had been so badly injured at the barrage that they had been compelled to limp back to their German ports.

The results other than the sinking of submarines were exceedingly important in bringing the war to an end. It was the failure of the submarine campaign which defeated the German hopes and forced their surrender; and in this defeat the barrage was an important element.

That submarines frequently crossed it is true; there was no expectation, when the enterprise was started, that it would absolutely shut the U-boats in the North Sea; but its influence in breaking down the German _moral_ must have been great. To understand this, just place yourself for a moment in the position of a submarine crew. The width of this barrage ranged from fifteen to thirty-five miles; it took from one to three hours for a submarine to cross this area on the surface and from two to six hours under the surface. Not every square foot, it is true, had been mined; there were certain gaps caused by the spontaneous explosions to which I have referred; but n.o.body knew where these openings were, or where a single mine was located. The officers and crews knew only that at any moment an explosion might send them to eternity. A strain of this sort is serious enough if it lasts only a few minutes; imagine being kept in this state of mind anywhere from one to six hours! Submarine prisoners constantly told us how they dreaded the mines; going through such a field, I suppose, was about the most disagreeable experience in this nerve-racking service. Our North Sea barrage began to show results almost immediately after our first planting. The German officers evidently kept informed of our progress and had a general idea of the territory which had been covered. For a considerable time a pa.s.sage-way, sixty miles wide, was kept open for the Grand Fleet just east of the Orkney Islands; the result was that the submarines, which had hitherto usually skirted the Norwegian coast, now changed their route, and attempted to slip through the western pa.s.sage-way--a course that enabled them to avoid the mine-field. When the entire distance from the Orkneys to Norway had been mined, however, it became impossible to "run around the end." The Germans were now obliged to sail boldly into this explosive field, taking their chances of hitting a mine. Stories of this barrage were circulated all over Germany; sailors who had been in contact with it related their experiences to their fellows; and the result was extremely demoralizing to the German submarine flotilla. The North Sea barrage was probably a contributory cause of the mutiny which demoralized the German fleet in the autumn of 1918.

I think I am therefore justified in saying that this enterprise was a strong factor in overcoming the submarine menace, though the success of the convoy system had already brought the end in sight, and had thus made it practicable to a.s.sign, without danger of defeat, the tonnage necessary to lay the barrage and maintain and augment it as long as might be necessary. The Germans saw the barrage not only as it was in the autumn of 1918, but as it would be a few months or a year hence. We had started a steady stream of mines from hundreds of factories in the United States to our Scottish bases; these establishments were constantly increasing production, and there was practically no limit to their possible output. We had developed a mine-laying organization which was admittedly better than any that had been hitherto known; and this branch of the service we could now enlarge indefinitely. In time we could have planted this area so densely with explosives that it would have been madness for any submarines even to attempt a pa.s.sage. To be sure, the Pentland Firth, between the Orkneys and Scotland, was always open, and could not be mined on account of its swift tides, but besides being a dangerous pa.s.sage at best it was constantly patrolled to make it still more dangerous.

The loyal devotion to duty and the skilful seamans.h.i.+p which our officers displayed in this great enterprise were not only thoroughly in keeping with the highest traditions of the navy, but really established new standards to guide and inspire those who will follow us. These gallant officers who actually laid the mines are ent.i.tled to the nation's grat.i.tude, and I take great pleasure in commending the work of Captain H. V. Butler, commanding the flags.h.i.+p _San Francisco_; Captain J. Harvey Tomb, commanding the _Aroostook_; Captain A. W. Marshall, commanding the _Baltimore_; Commander W. H. Reynolds, commanding the _Canandaigua_; Captain T. L. Johnson, commanding the _Canonicus_; Captain J. W.

Greenslade, commanding the _Housatonic_; Commander D. Pratt Mannix, commanding the _Quinnebaug_; Captain C. D. Stearns, commanding the _Roanoke_; Captain Sinclair Gannon, commanding the _Saranac_; and Captain W. T. Cluverius, commanding the _Shawmut_.

This splendid squadron, of which the flags.h.i.+p was the _San Francisco_, was organized by Captain R. R. Belknap and, by order of the Secretary of the Navy, was placed under his direct command; and he was therefore responsible for all preparations, tactics, general instructions, special instructions for each mine-laying "excursion," the intricate navigation required, and in fact all arrangements necessary for the successful planting of the mines in their a.s.signed positions.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] Complete statistics of s.h.i.+pping losses, new s.h.i.+p construction for 1917 and 1918, will be found in Appendices VIII and IX.

CHAPTER X

GERMAN SUBMARINES VISIT THE AMERICAN COAST

It was in the summer of 1918 that the Germans made their only attempt at what might be called an offensive against their American enemies.