A state of near hysteria resulted. New York feared that the submarines might be accompanied by a mother ship carrying planes. Rumours were rampant. There were secret bases all along the coast. A schooner was seen stocking a U-boat with provisions 40 miles offshore. A floating U-boat repair dock was spotted in mid-Atlantic. A substance like mustard gas, coming in from the sea, overcome six persons and killed a brood of chickens near Charleston, South Carolina, Every floating object was a periscope. Many persons were arrested, accused of communicating with the submarines from our shores.
An officer from one German submarine was reported seen in a New York restaurant by one of his victims. Survivors of a sunken fishing schooner landed at Nantucket said one German officer had ticket stubs for a New York theatre dated only two days previous, In Ocean City, New Jersey, a beach walker was shot and killed as a spy by coast guardsmen, having been seen. it was said, signaling out to sea with powerful electric torches. Rumours were largely base-Jess. But one fact cannot be denied: during the summer and early fall of 1918 there were six raids by U-boats off the coast of the United States.
The first raider, the U-151, not only sank 22 vessels and laid five mine fields, but accomplished the spectacular feat of transferring a cargo of 80 tons of copper from the steamship Vihdeggen at sea. The next raider, the U-156, caused a sensation when she came up only three miles off Cape Cod, one Sunday morning in Jüly, and opened fire. Before the eyes of hundreds of startled vacationists she quickly set a tug ablaze and sank four barges with a total of 41 persons aboard, all of whom were rescued. Fragments of the shells even reached the shore.
Four student aviators from the nearby Chatham Naval Air Station took off in hydroplanes to sink the raider. Their bombs failed to explode. As a last resort, sandbags were dropped. The U-156, finding the planes harm-Jess, opened fire on them. After 1% hours the U-boat headed south on the surface. The U-156 sank 29 vessels in all. She captured and armed a trawler which, in turn, sank six fishing schooners. On the homeward voyage, however, she hit a North Sea mine, the only raider that failed to reach home safely.
Four other submarines appeared along the coast during the summer. Altogether they sank or seriously damaged 100 vessels, including a 10,000-ton tanker and the U, S. S. Ticonderoga, with 237 men aboard. The U. S. S. San Diego and the U. S. S. Minnesota were sunk by mines, the former just off Fire Island.
Washington had been warned, in advance of all this by the British Admiralty, which reported on May 1, that it had been informed by reliable agents that the U-151 had left Germany on April 10 for a raid on America. So precise was the information that the Admiralty even knew the U-boat's route and speed. Naval bases were warned, and, when the raiders struck, destroyers, blimps and planes set out in pursuit. Yet, despite elaborate preparations, the Navy did not sink or seriously damage one U-boat during that entire summer.
That was 1918.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.