The sinking of merchant vessels or neutral ships or hospital ships seemed to be a barbarous, treacherous and piratical act deserving every conceivable means of extermination.
When we consider that nearly 13,000 British lives were destroyed by the German U-boats and that many were civilians, and the cruel and shocking incidents—to some extent inevitable—which characterized this warfare, and when we remember, further, the awful character of the stakes, the fact that several hundred German officers and men were rescued from the sea gun to sink, burn or induce the surrender of a defenceless vessel, and disappear into the invisible depths of a vast waste of water without leaving a trace behind.
Of all the tasks ever set to a Navy none could have appeared more baffling than that of sheltering this enormous traffic and groping deep below the surface of the sea ior the deadly elusive foe. It was in fact a game of blind man's buff in an unlimited space of three dimensions.
The foundation of all defence lay in ihe fact that merchant seamen three or four times "submarined" returned unfalteringly to the perilous seas, and even in the awful month when one ship out of every four that left the United Kingdom never came home no voyage was delayed for lack of resolute civilian volunteers.
False Colours Baffle Pirates The prime weapon of all submarines was the torpedo; and as long as they fought warships no other weapon was of any service.
Thin-skinned submersible vessels could only engage in an artillery duel with armoured surface ships at a fatal disparity in risk. The penetration of a U-boat's hull by a single shot deprived her of the power of diving, even if it did not sink her outright.
The merchant ships were so numerous that the torpedo was an unsuitable weapon for procuring decisive results, Therefore the first move of the Germans was to arm their U-boats with guns to attack merchant ships on the surface of the water, sinking them either by gunfire or, after surrender, by bombs placed on board.
This method also enabled the U-bo&ts to use their much superior surface. speed, and allowed them to discriminate between different classes of merchant ships and between enemy and neutral ships; to observe their Own Prize Law by visit and search; and finally to give time for the merchant crews. if they chose to surrender their vessel to escape in open boats.
The first British counter-move, made on my responsibility in 1915, was to arm British merchantmen to the greatest possible extent with guns of sufficient power to deter the U-boat from surface attack.
The submerged U-boat with its defective vision ran the greatest of mistaking neutral for Britis vessels and of drowning neutral crews, and thus of embroiling Germany with other great Powers. We also resorted to the well-known ruse de guerre of hoisting false colours in order further to baffle and confuse the enemy.
Thus from a very early stage the U-boats were forced to choose between all the practical inconveniences and far-reaching diplomatic consequences of under-water attack with the torpedo, or on the other hand facing the disproportionate hazards of the gun duel on the surface.
U-Boats in Duel With Q-Boats It was at this stage that we developed the stratagem of the Q-boat. A number of merchant vessels were specially equipped with torpedo tubes and with concealed guns firing from behind trap-door bulwarks, and sent along the trade routes to offer themselves to the hostile submarines.
When the U-boat, wishing to eco-
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nomize torpedoes, attacked the Q-ship by gun-fire on the surface a portion of the British crew took to the boats and by every device endeavoured to entice the Germans to close quarters.
Once the enemy was within decisive range, the White Ensign was hoisted, the trap-doors fell and deadly file by trained gunners was opened upon them By these means in 1915 and 1916 eleven U-boats were destroyed and the rest, rendered far more nervous Gf attacking by gun-fire, were thrown back more and more upon their tor-pedees. By the end of 1917 this process was complete The German submarine commanders would not face the unequal gunfire combat. The stratagem of the Q-ship was thus exhausted, and i! last victim, U88, perished in September, 1917.
By all these manœuvres and pre: sures the Germans were confront during 1916 with the dilemma with of losing a great many U-boats in gun duels or Q-ship ambuscades, or of -resorting almost entirely to the torpedo with s vastly increased risk of offending neutrals. or allowed to surrender after scuttling their vessels is a tribute to the restraint of the deeply injured conqueror.
On February 1, 1916, the unrestricted attack began in full vigour, and the numbers of the U-boats continually increased. The losses of British, Allied and neutral vessels increased from 181 in January to 259 in February, 325 in March, and 423 in April.
We know now that the German Naval Staff estimated that British shipping could be reduced at a rate of 600000 tons a month, and that in five months at this rate Britain would be forced to her knees. In April alone the total world tonnage lost reached the appalling figure of 849,000 tons.
Nor did the entry of the United States into the war shed any beam of hope on these dark waters. The longed-for American resources required a vast array of British tonnage to transport them.
In April the great approach route io the southwest of Ireland was becoming a veritable cemetery of British shipping, in which large vessels were sunk regularly day by day about 200 miles from land. During this month it was calculated that one in four merchant ships leaving the United Kingdom never returned.
The U-boat was rapidly undermine ing not only the life of the British islands but the foundations of the Allies' strength; and the danger of their collapse in 1918 began to loom black and imminent.
The stern pressure of events reacted upon Admiralty organization. Without reorganization of the Staff the measures that defeated the U-boat, even if conceived, could not have been executed.
These measures took a threefold form: first, the preparation and launching of extensive mining plans; secondly, the further development of research and supply in the technical fields of mines, depth charges and hydrophones; and, thirdly, the dee step, the institution of a convoy system which involved the escort and control of all merchant shipping.
T had instituted the convoy system for troopships crossing the oceans at the beginning of the war.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.