BOOKS.
THE VIOTORY OVER THE SUBMARINE.*
ADMIRAL Sues, a very old and good friend of the British people and of British seamen, has written the most illu- minating account of the war against the submarines which has yet appeared. It is a thrilling narrative, and we advise everybody to read it. Admiral Sims begins by describing the extreme gravity of the situation when he arrived in England in April, 1917. Till he learned the truth officially he had no idea how bad the situation really was. Unless something much more effectual could be done to atop the depredations of the submarines mer- chantmen would be swept from the seas and Germany would win the war hands down. Admiral Sims tells us that before he came over his information was derived entirely from the Press, and the obstinate cheerfulness of the British people had misled him. The British people had of course been kept more or less in the dark about the extent of the German submarine successes. Admiral Sims is careful to point out that the Admiralty did not tell lies when they published a weekly statement of merchant losses, but he does say that the figures were so net forth— though of course we all knew that at the time—that it was impos- sible for the public to arrive at the exact tale of losses for any given period. It must be remembered that at the time when the submarine menace was most terrible in 1917, General Nivelle, who for a brief time was in effect Generalissimo—for Lord Haig had been required to subordinate his plans to those of the French— bad met with a considerable reverse ; there had been a mutiny in the French Army, and some people even whispered that France could no longer go on. If there had been any betting on the war it would have been against Great Britain at that time. In these dreadful circumstances Admiral Sims was enormously im- pressed by the buoyancy and determination of Mr. Lloyd George. He found Mr. Lloyd George always cheery and always ready to crack a joke, and he was reminded of that characteristic of Abraham Lincoln under rather similar conditions which some misunderstanding persons used to take for heartlessness. Admiral Sims, of course, did not come into contact with Mr. Lloyd George in connexion with anything but naval affairs, and a complete picture of Mr. Lloyd George's activities would have to be drawn rather differently. At the same time, Admiral Sims's impression of the Prime Minister was so clear and deep that in summarizing this book it is right to mention it.
Admiral Sims says that, contrary to popular belief, there were no regular Irish bases for German submarines—the visits of
The notary at Sea By Rear-Admiral WIRlans Suedes Sims. London : Murray. [21e. net.] German submarines to their friends on the West Coast of Ireland were another matter—for the German submarines which operated in the Atlantic were well able to keep the seas without depending upon local supplies of fuel. Their range was really limited by the number of torpedoes they carried. The British public, also exaggerated the number of submarines which were at sea at any one time;— "Now in this densely packed shipping area, which extended from the North of Ireland to Brest, there were seldom more than eight or ten submarines engaged in their peculiar form of warfare at one time. The largest number which I had any record of was fifteen ; and this was an exceptional force ; the usual number was four, six, eight, or perhaps ten. Yet the men upon our merchant convoys and troopships saw submarines scattered all over the sea."
The great majority of German submarines at any particular moment were necessarily at home taking in stores and under- going repairs. If Germany had had a much larger number of submarines she must have won the war. Her small submarines used to prowl about the North Sea, and the larger ones which went into the Atlantic were formidable vessels which in some eases had a displacement of nearly three thousand tons. The ordinary man used to ask why the submarines could not be con- tained by mines, but the answer, of course, was that the British Navy,which had never much believed in mines in the past,regarding them as the weapons of a weak Power, had not enough mines for the purpose. As we know, enough mines were ultimately pro- duced, and before the end of the war there was a mine-field almost right across the North Sea. The arming of merchantmen was, of course, even as early as 1917 of some sort of use in fighting the submarines, but Admiral Sims points out that it did not countfor very much. No doubt the possession of a gun or two gave some confidence to a merchant captain, but when merchantmen were torpedoed it happened before they had oven seen the submarine, much less been able to fire at it. The principal service of the guns in merchantmen was that the submarines had to cease sinking merchantmen by gunfire. Not wishing to take un- necessary risks, they had to stay below the surface and to rely upon their torpedoes. But torpedoes were precious, and, as we have seen, the period for which a submarine could stay at sea was conditioned by the number of torpedoes carried.
The chief foe of the submarine was the destroyer, but here again the British Navy was insufficiently equipped. Admiral Sims puts the number of British destroyers at 200, and states that 100 of these had always to stay with the Grand Fleet as a pro- tecting screen. The destroyer is almost immune from torpedo attack because of her light draught. She draws, let us say, 10 feet, but the torpedo travels at a depth of about 15 feet. If the torpedo is set to travel at a less depth it is easily deflected by the surface movements of the water. Moreover, in all dealings with a submarine the amazing quioknesa in manoeuvring possessed by destroyers is a great asset. Germany recognized quite clearly that if we defeated the submarines we should do it mainly through our destroyers. That was why, in Admiral Sines's opinion, she deliberately resorted to the abominably, xicked stratagem of torpedoing hospital ships. She concluded that therewould be such a great public outcry here that the Admiralty would be forced to send hospital ships to sea with protecting screens of destroyers. When the Germans observed that this was not done with any persistency they suddenly stopped torpedoing hospital drips.
Englishmen can never be grateful enough to Admiral Sites for making all questions of national pride subordinate to the winning of the war. He grasped the facts clearly from the beginning, and saw that the only right thing to do was to help the British Navy on the lines of action against the submarines which had already been laid down. He therefore put himself and his ships frankly and absolutely at the disposal of the Admiralty, It was a great act, though we might have expected it from the man who made the memorable and charmingly indiscreet speech at the Guildhall in 1910, when he said that if the British Empire should ever be at war in Europe she could " rely upon the last ship, the last dollar, the last man, and the last drop of blood of her kindred beyond the sea." But we cannot make our acknow• ledgmenta to Admiral Sims without remembering how magni- ficently he was backed up by Dr. Page, the American Ambassador. Their despatches to Washington describing the needs of the situation are models of clearness, force, and loyalty. The tide began to turn against the submarines when the destroyers, coastal motor-boats, and other craft were equipped with depth. charges and hydrophonea. Admiral Sims mentions the origin
of the depth-charge, which prove : L., Ise the greatest of all anti- submarine weapons :— " I once asked Admiral Jellicoe who was the real inventor of this annihilating missile. ' No man in particular,' he said. It come into existence almost spontaneously, in response to a pressing need. Gunfire can destroy submarines when they are on the surface, but you know it can accomplish nothing against them when they are submerged. This fact made it extremely difficult to sink them in the early days of the war. One day, when the Grand Fleet was cruising in the North Sea, a submarine fired a torpedo at one of the cruisers. The cruiser saw the peri- scope and the wake of the torpedo, and had little difficulty in so manoeuvring as to avoid being struck. She then went full speed to the spot from which the submarine had fired its torpedo, in the hope of ramming it. But by the time she arrived the submarine had submerged so deeply that the cruiser passed over her without doing her any harm. Yet the officers and crew could see the submerged hull ; there the enemy lay in full view of her pursuers, yet perfectly safe ! The officers reported this incident to me in the presence of Admiral Madden, second in command. " Woul dn't It have been fine," said Madden, " if they had had on board a mine so designed that, when dropped overboard, it would have exploded when It reached the depth at which the submarine was lying f " That remark,' continued Admiral Jellicoe, ' gave us the germinal idea of the depth charge. I asked the Admiralty to get to work and produce a " mine " that would act in the way that Admiral Madden had suggested.' " But even when the depth-charge had been perfected the difficulty still remained of " placing" the submarine so accurately as to drop the charge right upon her. This difficulty led to the wonderful development of the hydrophone, or listeninginstrument, which took various forms. In this work American research and the latest American inventions were simply invaluable. Finally it became possible, by the use of listening instruments on three vessels simultaneously, to say where a submarine was within a few yards. The fate of the submarine was then certain.
Naval methods, however, as well as instruments and weapons, helped to bring about the downfall of the submarine. Admiral Sims says that May 20th, 1917, when a convoy reached England from the Mediterranean, having steamed at the slow speed of eight knots—the speed of the slowest vessel—was a turning-point in the war. Hitherto merchant captains had set their faces spinet the convoy system. They argued that they could not possibly steam in regular formation and at stated distances from one another, particularly at night with no lights, because they had never been trained to do such things and because their engines, having none of the delicacy of those in ships of war, were unadapted for the purpose. Probably their dislike of the idea of being convoyed was fortified by the recollection of the sinking of the three cruisers the Hogue,' the Cressy,' and the ' Aboukir.' That, they might have pointed out, was the kind of thing that was sure to happen to grouped ships ! Nevertheless, the convoy system was a great success. The merchant skippers were far more capable of doing what was required of them than they had professed to be. Then, again, the convoyed ships could be pro- tected by destroyers, and the submarines which wanted to torpedo them had to tackle the destroyers. The submarine, in fine, instead of picking off straggling ships, had to face the music in dead earnest.
Admiral Sims devotes a chapter to the astounding work of the British mystery ships, but in this work the Americans did not take part. Altogether he gives us a complete account of how the tables were turned against the submarine, and how the submarine instead of being the hunter became the hunted. It is a strange and wonderful story. Most readers, we imagine, will apply the lessons for themselves, and will not be surprised if the Committee appointed to inquire into the wisdom of building capital ships should report that the capital ship need not be regarded as having been driven from the seas. We wish we could quote Admiral Sims's account of the dastardly attacks made upon our gallant visitors by Sinn Feiners in Ireland and his weird account of how, through listening instruments, a German crew in a wrecked submarine on the bed of the sea were distinctly heard committing suicide. But for this and much else we must refer our readers to the book.
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