Part 31

Now for the personnel of the crew. The crew of the sub described were not sailors. The captain was an old seagoer--yes; and it would be a safe guess that the diving-rudder man had a seagoing experience; and one other perhaps; but the fellows who stood by the other things below came straight from the boat works. They had helped, most of them, to build her: which was one good reason for having them along on her trial trip.

And there are thousands of young fellows working around garages and in machine-shops and electric-light plants ashore who are the very men needed for submarines. There will always have to be a sailor or two in a submarine; or there should be, for a real sailor is always a handy man to have around--he knows things that nobody else knows.

And so, if hanging around there are any young fellows with a taste for adventure and a trend for naval warfare, these submarines look to be the thing. They are only little fellows now, and, as they stand to-day, limited as to range and power of offense, but stay by and grow up with them, and by and by be with them when they will be as big as the battleships and of a radius of action that will stretch from here to--well, as far as they like; drawing their energy from the sun above them, or the sea-tides about them, and not having to see enemy ships to be able to fight them--equipped with devices not now invented but which will serve to feel those other ships and, feeling them, to plot their direction and distance!

Imagine a fleet of those lads battling under water some day--allowing no surface craft to live--feeling each other out and plotting direction and distance as they feel, and then letting go broadsides of torpedoes ten or a hundred times as powerful as anything we now have; and at the same time the air full of war-planes battling above them.

Infants, sea babies, is what they are to-day. But wait till they grow up!

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Transcriber's Note:

Typographical errors corrected:

Page 84: changed ay to aye

Page 191: moved quotes from end of paragraph to end of quote

Page 202: changed serivce to service

Page 208: changed underguard to under guard

Page 253: added missing word "to" after "evil happen."