The U-Boat Hunters

Part 1

THE U-BOAT HUNTERS

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BOOKS BY JAMES B. CONNOLLY Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

THE U-BOAT HUNTERS. Illustrated net $1.50 RUNNING FREE. Illustrated net 1.50 HEAD WINDS. Illustrated net 1.50 SONNIE-BOY'S PEOPLE. Illustrated net 1.50 WIDE COURSES. Illustrated net 1.50 OPEN WATER. Illustrated net 1.50 THE CRESTED SEAS. Illustrated net 1.50 THE DEEP SEA'S TOLL. Illustrated net 1.50 THE SEINERS. Illustrated net 1.50 OUT OF GLOUCESTER. Illustrated net 1.50 JEB HUTTON. Illustrated net 1.20 THE TRAWLER. net .50

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THE U-BOAT HUNTERS

JAMES B. CONNOLLY

With Illustrations

New York Charles Scribner's Sons 1918

Copyright, 1906, 1918, by Charles Scribner's Sons

Published June, 1918

Copyright, 1916, 1917, 1918, by P. F. Collier & Son, Incorporated

FOREWORD

What a great thing if we could do away with war!

But men are not cast in that mould. We shall continue to have wars; and some day the world is going to have a war to which the present will serve only as a try-out.

When that war comes our country will probably have to bear the burden for the western hemisphere. In that war our navy will be our first line of defense; and what we do for our navy now will have much to do with what our navy will be able to do for us then.

Our navy to-day is made up of good ships and capable, courageous, hard-working officers and men. There are some fuddy-duddies and politicians among them, but most of them are on the job every minute. Their highest hope is the chance to serve their country. The chapters in this book which tell of their U-boat hunting only prove once more their great qualities.

There are chapters in this book which have nothing to do with U-boat hunting, but have much to do with the navy. Such are the two opening chapters and the three closing chapters. The motive of four of those chapters will probably be obvious; the chapter on the workings of a submarine is included in the hope of interesting our young fellows in that type of craft.

The need of such a chapter? Take this illustration of what people do not know about submarines: Three years ago an admiral on the other side was called into conference on the U-boat problem. When it came his turn to speak he said: "Gentlemen, it is child's talk to say that the U-boats will ever amount to anything! Disregard them utterly!" Only three years ago that was, and that naval officer was considered for commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet! Three years ago, and last year the U-boats sank 6,600,000 tons of shipping!

Right now Germany probably contemplates, or is actually constructing, U-boats with armor and guns heavy enough to engage on the surface any war craft up to the battle-cruiser class. How far from that to fighting the heaviest of surface craft--even to the battleships?

In the event of invasion--we might as well face that; refusing to think about it certainly will not eliminate the possibility,--in the event of invasion by a powerful foe our first line of defense will be our navy. The navy will always be our first line of defense; and so the need to-day of interesting in our navy young men,--progressive young men, who will learn from the past but prefer to live in the future.

J. B. C.

CONTENTS

PAGE NAVY SHIPS 1

NAVY MEN 12

SEEING THEM ACROSS 24

THE U-BOATS APPEAR 37

CROSSING THE CHANNEL 58

Part 2

THE CENSORS 77

ONE THEY DIDN'T GET 92

THE DOCTOR TAKES CHARGE 108

THE 343 STAYS UP 127

THE CARGO BOATS 142

FLOTILLA HUMOR--AT SEA 157

FLOTILLA HUMOR--ASHORE 172

THE UNQUENCHABLE DESTROYER BOYS 186

THE MARINES HAVE LANDED-- 204

THE NAVY AS A CAREER 222

THE SEA BABIES 239

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Where you-all going?... Can't you-all see where you're going? Keep off--keep off" Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

She shoved out into the stream and kicked her way down the harbor, and as she did so ... everybody seemed to know 26

Our thirty-knot clip was eating up the road. We were getting near the spot 98

In the engine-room of a submarine 242

NAVY SHIPS

More than one-third of our naval force was being reviewed by the President. A most impressive assembly of men-o'-war it was, in tonnage and weight of metal the greatest ever floated by the waters of the western hemisphere.

The last of the fleet had arrived on the night before. From the bluffs along the shore they might have been seen approaching with a mysterious play of lights across the shadowy waters. In the morning they were all there. Hardly a type was lacking--the last 16,000-ton double-turreted battleship, the protected and heavy-armored cruisers, monitors, despatch-boats, gun-boats, destroyers, attendant transport, and supply ships. Fifty ships, 1,200 guns, 16,000 men: all were there, even to the fascinating little submarines with their round black backs just showing above the water.

It was that chromatic sort of a morning when the canvas of the sailing-boats stands out startlingly white against the drizzly sky and the smoke from the stacks of the steamers takes on an accented coal-black, and, drooping, trails low in a murky wake. Rather a dull setting at this early hour; but not sufficiently dull to check the vivacity of the actors in the scene.

The President comes up the side of the Mayflower and, arrived at the head of the gangway, stands rigid as any stanchion to attention while his colors are shot to the truck and the scarlet-coated band plays the national hymn. Then, ascending to the bridge, he takes station by the starboard rail with the Secretary of the Navy at his shoulder. The clouds roll away, the sun comes out, and all is as it should be while he prepares to review the fleet, which thereafter responds aboundingly to every burst of his own inexhaustible enthusiasm.

And this fleet, which is lying to anchor in three lines of four miles or so each in length, with a respectful margin of clear water all about, is, viewed merely as a marine pageant, magnificent; as a display of potential fighting power, most convincing. No man might look on it and his sensibilities--admiration, patriotism, respect, whatever they might be--remain unstirred. To witness it is to pass in mental review the great fleets of other days and inevitably to draw conclusions. Beside this armament the ill-destined Armada, Von Tromp's stubborn squadrons, Nelson's walls of oak, or Farragut's steam and sail would dissolve like the glucose squadrons that boys buy at Christmas time. Even Dewey's workman-like batteries (this to mark the onward rush of naval science) would be rated obsolete beside the latest of these!

It was first those impressive battleships; and bearing down on them one better saw what terrible war-engines they are. Big guns pointing forward, big guns pointing astern, long-reaching guns abeam, and little business-looking machine-guns in the tops--their mere appearance suggests their ponderous might. A single broadside from any of these, properly placed, and there would be an end to the most renowned flag-ships of wooden-fleet days. And that this frightful power need never wait on wind or tide, nor be hindered in execution by any weather much short of a hurricane, is assured when we note that to-day, while the largest of the excursion steamers are heaving to the whitecaps, these are lying as immovable almost as sea-walls.

It is, first, the flag-ship which thunders out her greeting--one, two, three--twenty-one smoke-wreathed guns--while her sailormen, arm to shoulder, mark in unwavering blue the lines of deck and superstructure. Meantime the officers on the bridge, admiral in the foreground, are standing in salute; and in the intervals of gun-fire there are crashing out over the waters again the strains of the "Star Spangled Banner." And the flag-ship left astern, the guns of the next in line boom out, and on her also the band plays and men and officers stand to attention; and so the next, and next. And, the battleships passed, come the armored cruisers, riding the waters almost as ponderously as the battleships and hardly less powerful, but much faster on the trail; and they may run or fight as they please. After examining them, long and swift-looking, with no more space between decks than is needed for machinery, stores, armament, and lung-play for live men, the inevitable reflection recurs that the advance of mechanical power must color our dreams of romance in future. Surely the old ways are gone. Imagine one of the old three-deckers aiming to work to windward of one of these in a gale, and if by any special dispensation of Providence she was allowed to win the weather berth, imagine her trying, while she rolled down to her middle deck, to damage one of these belted brutes, who meantime would be leisurely picking out the particular plank by which she intended to introduce into her enemy's vitals a weight of explosive metal sufficient in all truth to blow her out of water.

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