Sea Warfare

By Guess—and by God. - By William Guy Carr. Preface by Admiral S. S. Hall. (Hutchinson. 10s. 6d) Ma. CARR could not have had a better story to tell than the . history . of the work of the British submarines during the War. One can take the book up almost anywhere and find in it a .thrilling story of .the voyage of some British sub- marine in the Baltic, the North Sea, or the Dardanelles. He gives a vivid account of the hardships and dangers of the life of a submarine officer in war time :— "Like the whale, a submarine must have air. She is in reality simply a destroyer which can hold her breath. But not for ever. Although submersible, she must return at decent intervals to her own element and breathe. Not only does the air inside her acquire the foulness of something that has been used over and over again, but her batteries require recharging."

Perhaps the most exciting of all are the accounts towards the beginning of the-book of the work of the British submarines in piercing the Dardanelles and popping up. in the Sea of Marmora to harass the Turkish communications. Lieutenant- Commander Nasmith succeeded in diving right into the

harbour of Constantinople. His submarine, Mr. Carr writes,

" was the first enemy of any description to intrude on the sacred precincts of- the Golden Horn in the five hundred years the Turks have held the city. Nasmith's own account is a classic of mad- dening brevity. So,' he wrote,. ' we dived unobserved into Constantinople.' "

Once inside .the harbour, excitement followed excitement :—

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" Nasmith raised periscope shortly after noon in the centre of the harbour, and immediately there occurred ono of those incon- gruous incidents which pleased him. ' Our manoeuvring,' he used to say, was rather difficult because of the cross-tides, the mud, and the current, but most particularly on account of a damn fool of a fisherman who kept trying to grab the top of my periscope every time I raised it to take an observation. I don't think he had any idea what it was, but to get rid of him I gave him a chance to get a good hold on it. Then I ordered " Down periscope quickly," and almost succeeded in capsizing his boat. When I looked at him a minute later he wore the most amazed and bewildered expression I over hope to see.' "

Equally exciting, and perhaps, in the end, of more critical importance were the operations of the British submarines in checking the depredations of the German U-boats. It was a curious thing that the British submarines proved one of the most effective counter instruments to enemy submarines. How risky this game of hide-and-seek was is illustrated by a terrible story of a mistake in which a British submarine was sunk by one of our own destroyers and of the extraordinary escape of one of the crew

I never heard just which of the G-boats it was, but one was sunk by our own destroyers. In the first place, the G-boat mistook her for an enemy ship and torpedoed her. Tho torpedo, however, failed to explode, and the destroyer turned and rammed the luckless submarine. All her crew were lost with the exception of one stoker. According to all the rules of the game he should have been the last person to be saved. He was on duty in the engine room when the bow of the attacking ship ploughed through the side of the compartment he was in, practically cutting the boat in two. The boat filled and sank immediately, but he was carried to the surface in a huge bubble of escaping air and was picked up by the crew of the attacking ship."

The whole of Mr. Carr's book is made up of stories of this kind. His general conclusions on the submarine as a weapon of war are interesting. He considers that the chief limitation to their mass use in warfare is the question of finding suitable crews to man them. He says :-

" It may be possible to produce submarines by mass production which will more than make up for the wastage of war, but with anti-submarine methods as effective as they were at the end of the War, I doubt very much that crews could be found, and, if found, be trained to man them properly. No matter what experts may say, no matter what figures may prove, no matter what modern science may invent, this fact is certain : the value of submarines as engines of war will always be limited by the skill and courage of the crews that man them."

Mr. Keble Chatterton has also written a most exciting book, telling the story of all the German raiding ships which escaped from the North. Sea during the War. It is strange that this

story has never been told before. The duel between the Carmania ' and the ' Cap Trafalgar' was, perhaps, the most striking duel between single ships that occurred during the whole War. Both were armed liners. Mr. Chatterton gives us a seaman's account of this extraordinary warfare between liners.

" Now this kind of single-ship fight between combatants that had been created for peace and comfort, for safety and luxury, was inevitably bound to cause grievous damage to both parties : there is something painful in the situation of two such noble examples of ship.wrightry being put to such intolerable tests. Still, war is war, and raiders had to be fought wherever and whenever found. Those of us who crossed tho ocean' in Carmania ' when she first began her voyaging, and remember how with a beam wind sho was almost as sensitive as a sailing vessel, could not have imagined that she should ever have endured the terrific hammering of battle."

Both were armed with small guns, but the ' Carnrania had the superior armaments, eight 4.7 inch guns. The ' Cap Trafalgar,' the German Vessel, had only two-inch guns, and sir 1.4 inch machine-guns. On the other hand she had an extra knot and a half of speed and was a brand new vessel, while the Carmania ' was eleven years old. The engagement was fought out at a range of about a mile and a half. It

was the Carmania's ' superior armaments which in the end decided the engagement, sinking the ' Cap Trafalgar,' by firing direct along the waterline, but not before the latter's arma- ments had caused a great fire in the Carmania,' which very nearly destroyed her.

We have chosen to quote from the account of this engage- ment, but it is only typical of the exciting stories which are told in almost every chapter of the book. -There are also extraordinarily interesting photographs, many of them of actual sinkings, and of the effect of shells on unarmoured merchant vessels. Altogether this is a book which no one interested in the sea should miss.