The Mystery Ships
My Mystery Ships. By Rear-Admiral Gordon Campbell, V.C., D.S.O. (Hodder and Stoughton. 20s.)
ALTHOUGH the facts about the mystery, or Q, ships which hunted submarines in- the War are fairly- well known it is a notable event in naval literature to have the story told by Admiral Gordon Campbell, who was the most famous of the mystery ship captains. Sir Lewis Bayly, who writes a preface to the book, says that Admiral Campbell was the only one of thirty mystery captains who could stand the strain for more than a year. Admiral Campbell writes artlessly, but in a book of this sort we prefer it to be so ; artifice might easily spoil the sense of reality or genuineness.
The Duke of Wellington's phrase about " two in the morning courage " has less power to thrill than it used to have. The Great War brought many new and hitherto unimagined strains. Among all the situations of unrelieved strain what could have been worse than that of the crew of a mystery ship ? The ship was a converted merchant vessel, having all the weapons of war hidden or disguised. She appeared to be an ordinary trading vessel. In order to induce a submarine to come close enough to be dealt with satisfactorily it was generally essential for the mystery ship to allow herself to be torpedoed. She was •a. kind of live bait.. But deliberately waiting to be torpedoed was only a small part of the strain. It was useless to fire at a submarine's periscope ; not only was it a very difficult object to hit but even if it were hit the submarine would be little damaged and would instantly disappear. How necessary it was to bring a concentrated short-range fire "on a submarine' in order to make sure of sinking her was, proved by the experience of the merchant steamships armed with a single gun. Not one of these ships ever sank a submarine.
The procedureof a mystery crew.after their vessel had been torpedoed was reduced to a fine art. A number of them, representing such a cOrimany as the vessel might be expected to -carry, escaped in the boats. They were the " panic party." The executive officers and gun-crews remained hidden on board and had to wait silent and motionless, with the ship Perhaps sinking under them, until the submarine became a " sitter." While thus waiting the ship might be torpedoed a second time or have AMA ponied into her. At last the Ogiriiirt4-itAizsmd. died -aow47. -Criskil; .dereeas
(lesembling deck fittings) which covered the guns ; the white ensign was run up, and every gun that bore 'upon the sub- marine was " loosed off."
There is no more difficult and subtle subject of study in war than the art of deception. Unless the deception be effective all the time and the forethought spent upon it have been wasted. Sometimes a ludicrously small point may have been overlooked, yet it " gives away the show." Armies which supposed themselves to be hidden have often been " given away " by the flight of agitated birds. Admiral Campbell's narrative proves the extraordinary care which was taken to make deception successful, yet there were slips. The words of command were to be " Torpedo coming " and then either " Torpedo hit," or " Torpedo missed." On the words " Torpedo hit " the panic party was to begin panicking, but the first time his ship was torpedoed the explosion made it so obvious that she had been hit that it never occurred to him to say " Torpedo hit " 1 He could not understand why the panic party did not at once get to work. He asked why they were not rushing for the boats. The reply was, " waiting for the order, Torpedo hit,' sir."
It was not till later that Admiral Campbell planned pre- cautions against the mischance of the enemy's first torpedo accidentally revealing the guns or otherwise betraying the character of the ship. He rehearsed two distinct abandon- ments of the ship : first, that of the panic party, and secondly, that of the gun crews, who must seem to have thrown up the sponge. The scheme was that enough men to man two guns should still be left behind. The action of the panic party had been brought to perfection in the early stages of rehearsal. The boats were lowered anyhow—one of them always end upwards. One man was to be visibly left behind. He was to shout dismally. A boat would then come back to take him off. A finishing touch was the carrying away by the panic party of a stuffed parrot in a cage.
Admiral Campbell says that it has been supposed that the crews were picked men. Really the necessity of secrecy made careful selection impossible. In his first mystery ship many of the men had no idea till they were fairly at sea on what kind of adventure they were engaged. If they had been told the secret would probably have leaked out. The few naval officers in the ships had to dress themselves as " tramp " officers. Even when buying kit suitable for the part they had to cover up their tracks in order to avoid suspicion.
No mystery ship could be allowed to bear the same appear- ance for more than a very short time. Submarines haunted a particular piece of coast, and if they had seen the same tramp patrolling those waters day after day the cat would have been out of the bag. It was the practice to change the appearance of the ships after dark by repainting the funnels, by changing the name and her port of registry and so on.
As for the crew, it was essential to cultivate an outer slackness within which there was a hidden but rigid discipline. For the misinformation of casual onlookers the crew were encouraged to lounge about the decks, to smoke anywhere, to spit on the deck, and to bear themselves with a certain casualness or easy affability towards their officers. The language of the Mercantile Marine instead of that of the Navy had to be acquired by the naval officers.
It would spoil • Admiral - Campbell's descriptions of his various fights to summarize them, but we must refer the reader in particular to the Dunraven's ' fight. Admiral Campbell had to take a decision which wilt make the reader catch at his breath. A fire in the stern of the ship after she had been torpedoed was bound to cause an explosion of the cordite within a few minutes. Admiral Campbell knew that he must wait more than those few minutes for the submarine to come into the right position. If he waited he condemned the gun crews in the stern to apparently certain death. But obviously it was his duty to wait on any-reasonable balance of gain and loss in the objects of the War. He did wait. The gun crews were blown up. By a miracle hot one of them was killed.
It is a technical question whether the mystery ships, which accounted in all for eleven submarines, justified their employ- ment. On the whole it seems that they did. They damaged the moral of submarine crews, and by causing there to rely more upon torpedoes than upon gun fire—latterly the sub- marines, did not dare to come near" innocent-looking vasels----lesiened their-desfrudiv-eness---. —
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