Chapter XV: Aboard a Submarine

Submarines have been compared to all kinds of things, from a fish to a cigar. Life on them has been described in terms of the highest elation as well as of the deepest depression. Their operation and navigation, according to some claims, require a veritable combination of mechanical, electrical, and naval genius--not only on the part of the officers, but even on that of the simplest oiler--while others make it appear as if a submarine was at least as simple to handle as a small motor boat. The truth concerning all these matters lies somewhere between these various extremes.

It is quite true that except on the very latest "submerged cruisers" built by the Germans, the space for the men operating a submarine is painfully straitened. They must hold to their positions almost like a row of peas in a pod. From this results the gravest strain upon the nerves so that it has been found in Germany that after a cruise a period of rest of equal duration is needed to restore the men to their normal condition. Before assignment to submarine duty, too, a special course of training is requisite. Submarine crews are not created in a day.

What the interior of the new German submarines with a length of 280 feet, and a beam of 26 feet may be, no man of the Anglo-Saxon race may know or tell. The few who have descended into those mysterious depths will have no chance to tell of them until the war is over. Nor is it possible during wartimes to secure descriptions even of our own underwater boats. But the interior of the typical submarine may be imagined as in size and shape something like an unusually long street car. Along the sides, where seats would normally be, are packed wheels, cylinders, motors, pumps, machinery of all imaginable kinds and some of it utterly unimaginable to the lay observer. The whole interior is painted white and bathed in electric light. The casual visitor from "above seas" is dazed by the array of machinery and shrinks as he walks the narrow aisle lest he become entangled in it.

Running on the surface the submarine chamber is filled with a roar and clatter like a boiler shop in full operation. The Diesel engines are compact and powerful, but the racket they make more nearly corresponds to their power than to their size. On the surface too the boat rolls and pitches and the stranger passenger, unequipped with sea legs grabs for support as the subway rider reaches for a strap on the curves. But let the order come to submerge. The Diesels are stopped. The electric motors take up the task, spinning noiselessly in their jackets. In a moment or two all rolling ceases. One can hardly tell whether the ship is moving at all--it might for all its motion tells be resting quietly on the bottom. If you could disabuse your mind for a moment of the recollection that you were in a great steel cigar heavy laden with explosives, and deep under the surface of the sea you would find the experience no more exciting than a trip through the Pennsylvania tubes. But there is something uncanny about the silence.

_A Torpedo Designed by Fulton._]

Go forward to the conical compartment at the very bow. There you will find the torpedo chamber for the submarine, like the cigar to which it is so often compared, carries its fire at its front tip. The most common type of boat will have two or four torpedo tubes in this chamber. The more modern ones will have a second torpedo chamber astern with the same number of tubes and carry other torpedoes on deck which by an ingenious device can be launched from their outside cradles by mechanism within the boat. In the torpedo chamber are twice as many spare torpedoes as there are tubes, made fast along the sides. Here too the anchor winch stands with the cable attached to the anchor outside the boat and an automatic knife which cuts the cable should the anchor be fouled.

_The Method of Attack by Nautilus._]

Immediately aft of the torpedo chamber, cut off by a water-tight partition, is the battery compartment. It gets its name because of the fact, that beneath the deck which is full of traps readily raised are the electric storage batteries of anywhere from 60 to 260 cells according to the size of the boat. This room is commonly used as the loafing place for the crew, being regarded as very spacious and empty. In it are nothing but the electric stove, the kitchen sink, the various lockers for food and all the housekeeping apparatus of the submarine. Mighty trim and compact they all are. The builder of twentieth century flats with his kitchenettes and his in-door beds might learn a good deal from a study of the smaller type of submarine. Next aft come the officers' staterooms, rather smaller than prison cells, each holding a bunk, a bureau, and a desk. Each holds also a good deal of moisture, for the greatest discomfort in submarine life comes from the fact that everything is dripping with the water resulting from the constant condensation of the air within.

The great compartment amidships given over to machinery is a place to test the nerves. The aisle down the centre is scarcely two feet wide and on each side are whirling wheels, engines, and electric motors. Only the photographs can give a clear idea of the crowded appearance of this compartment. It contains steering wheels, the gyroscopic compass, huge valves, dials showing depth of submergence, Kingston levers, motor controllers, all polished and shining, each doing its work and each easily thrown out of gear by an ignorant touch.

The author once spending the night on a United States man-of-war was shown by the captain to his own cabin, that officer occupying the admiral's cabin for the time. At the head of the bunk were two small electric push buttons absolutely identical in appearance and about two inches apart. "Push this button," said the captain genially, "if you want the Jap boy to bring you shaving water or anything else. But be sure to push the right one. If you push the other you will call the entire crew to quarters at whatever hour of night the bell may ring."

The possibility of mistaking the button rested heavily on the writer's nerves all night. A somewhat similar feeling comes over one who walks the narrow path down the centre of the machinery compartment of a submarine. He seems hedged about by mysterious apparatus a touch of which, or even an accidental jostle may release powerful and even murderous forces.

While the submarine is under way, submerged, the operator at every piece of individual machinery stands at its side ready for action. Here are the gunner's mates at the diving rudder. They watch steadily a big gauge on which a needle which shows how deep the boat is sinking. When the required depth is reached swift turns of two big brass wheels set the horizontal rudders that check the descent and keep the boat on an even keel. Other men stand at the levers of the Kingston valves which, when open, flood the ballast tanks with water and secure the submergence of the boat. Most of the underwater boats to-day sink rapidly on an even keel. The old method of depressing the nose of the boat so as to make a literal dive has been abandoned, partly because of the inconvenience it caused to the men within who suddenly found the floor on which they were standing tilted at a sharp angle, and partly because the diving position proved to be a dangerous one for the boat.

In the early days of the submarines the quarters for the men were almost intolerable. The sleeping accommodations were cramped and there was no place for the men off duty to lounge and relax from the strain of constant attention to duty. Man cannot keep his body in a certain fixed position even though it be not rigid, for many hours. This is shown as well at the base ball grounds at the end of the sixth inning when "all stretch" as it was in the old time underwater boats. The crews now have space in which to loaf and even the strain of long silent watches under water is relieved by the use of talking machines and musical instruments. The efficiency of the boat of course is only that of her crew, and since more care and more scientific thought has been given to the comfort of the men, to the purity of the air they breathe, and even to their amusements, the effect upon the work done by the craft has been apparent. Ten years ago hot meals were unthought of on a submarine; now the electric cooker provides for quite an elaborate bill of fare. But ten years ago the submarine was only expected to cruise for a few hours off the harbour's mouth carrying a crew of twenty men or less. Now it stays at sea sometimes for as long as three months. Its crews number often as many as fifty and the day is in sight when accommodations will have to be made for the housing of at least eighty men in such comparative comfort that they can stand a six months' voyage without loss of morale or decrease in physical vigour.

It is, of course, very rare that a civilian has the chance to be present on a submarine when the latter is making either a real or a feigned attack. Fred B. Pitney, a correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, was fortunate enough to have this experience, fortunate especially because it was all a game arranged for his special benefit by a French admiral. He writes of this interesting experience in the _Tribune_ of Sunday, May 27, 1917, and at the same time gives a vivid description of a French submarine.

It appears that Mr. Pitney was on a small vessel put at his disposal by the French Ministry of Marine to view the defences of a French naval base. This boat was attacked by what seemed to be an enemy submarine, but later turned out to be a French one which was giving this special performance for Mr. Pitney's information. We read:

Our officers were experts at watching for submarines, and though
the little white wave made by the periscope disappeared, they
caught the white wake of the torpedo coming toward the port
quarter and sheered off to escape it. The torpedo passed
harmlessly by our stern, but the adventure was not ended, for
hardly a minute later we heard a shot from off the starboard
quarter and, turning in that direction, saw that the submarine
had come to the surface and was busily firing at us to bring us
to.

We stopped without any foolish waste of time in argument. I asked
if a boat would be sent to us, or if we would have to get out our
boat.

"They carry a small folding boat," said the officer to whom I had
been talking, "but we will have to send our boat."

While we were getting our boat over the side, the submarine
moved closer in, keeping her gun bearing on us all the time, most
uncomfortably. The gun stood uncovered on the deck, just abaft
the turret. It was thickly coated with grease to protect it when
the vessel submerged. It is only the very latest type of
submarines that have disappearing guns which go under cover when
the vessel submerges and are fired from within the ship, which
makes all the more surprising the speed with which a submarine
can come to the surface, the men get out on deck, fire the gun,
get in again and the vessel once more submerges.

I was in the first boatload that went over to the submarine. From
a distance it looked like nothing so much as a rather long piece
of 4×8 floating on the water, with another block set on top of it
and a length of lath nailed on the block. It lost none of these
characteristics as we neared it. It only gained a couple of ropes
along the sides of the 4×8, while men kept coming mysteriously
out of the block until a round dozen was waiting to receive us.
The really surprising thing was that the men turned out to be
perfectly good French sailors, with a most exceedingly polite
French lieutenant to help us aboard the little craft....

_Painting by John E. Whiting._]

The vessel we were in was a 500-ton cruising submarine. It had
just come from eight months' guarding the Channel, and showed all
the battering of eight months of a very rough and stormy career
with no time for a lie-up for repairs. It was interesting to see
the commander hand the depth gauge a wallop to start it working
and find out if the centre of the boat was really nine feet
higher than either end. We were fifty-four feet under water and
diving when the commander performed that little experiment and we
continued to dive while the gauge spun around and finally stopped
at a place which indicated approximately that our back was not
broken. I suppose that was one of the things my friend the
lieutenant referred to when he said life on a submarine was such
a sporting proposition.

We boarded the submarine over the tail end and balanced our way
up the long narrow block, like walking a tight rope, to the
turret, where we descended through a hole like the opening into a
gas main into a small round compartment about six feet in
diameter exactly in the midship section, which was the largest
compartment in the ship. Running each way from it the length of
the vessel were long corridors, some two feet wide. On each side
of the corridors were rows of tiny compartments, which were the
living and working rooms of the ship. Naturally, most of the
space was given up to the working rooms.

The officers' quarters consisted of four tiny compartments, two
on each side of the after corridor. The first two were the mess
room and chart room, and the second pair were the cabins of the
commander--a lieutenant--and his second in command, an ensign.
Behind them was an electric kitchen, and next came the engines,
first two sets of Diesel engines, one on each side of the
corridor, each of four hundred horse-power. These were for
running on the surface. Then came four bunks for the
quartermasters and last the electric motors for running under the
surface. The motors were run from storage batteries and were half
the power of the Diesel engines. The quarters of the crew were
along the sides of the forward corridor. The floors of the
corridor were an unbroken series of trap doors, covering the
storage tanks for drinking water, food, and the ship's supplies.
The torpedo tubes were forward of the men's quarters. Ten
torpedoes were carried. The ammunition for the deck gun was
stored immediately beneath the gun, which was mounted between the
turret and the first hatch, abaft the turret. Besides the turret
there were three hatches in the deck, one forward and two aft.

There were thirty-four men in the crew. The men are counted every
two hours, as there is great danger of men being lost overboard
when running on the surface, and in bad weather they are
sometimes counted as often as every half hour.

The turret was divided in two sections. In the after part was the
main hatch and behind it a stationary periscope, standing about
thirty inches above the surface of the water when the deck was
submerged and only the periscope showing. There was no opening in
the forward section of the turret, but the fighting periscope,
which could be drawn down into the interior or pushed up to ten
feet above the surface when the vessel was completely submerged,
extended through the top.

For two hours, turn and turn about, the commander and his second
stand watch on the iron grips in the turret, one eye on the
periscope, the other on the compass. And this goes on for weeks
on end. It is only when they lie for a few hours fifty to
seventy-five feet below the surface that they can get some rest.
And even then there is no real rest, for one or the other of them
must be constantly on duty, testing pipes and gauges, air
pressure, water pressure, and a thousand other things.

When we dropped through the hatch into the interior of the
submarine and the cover was clamped down over our heads the
commander at once ordered me back into the turret.

"Hurry, if you want to see her dive," he said.

I climbed into the after section of the turret and fastened my
eye to the periscope. Around the top of the turret was a circle
of bulls' eyes and I was conscious of the water dashing against
them while the spray washed over the glass of the periscope. The
little vessel rolled very slightly on the surface, though there
was quite a bit of sea running. I watched the horizon through the
periscope and watched for the dive, expecting a distinct
sensation, but the first thing I noticed was that even the slight
roll had ceased and I was surprised to see that the bulls' eyes
were completely under water. The next thing there was no more
horizon. The periscope also was covered and we were completely
beneath the surface.

"Did it make you sick?" the commander asked, when I climbed down
from the turret, and when I told him "no" he was surprised, for
he said most men were made sick by their first dive.

The thing most astonishing to me about that experience was how a
submerged submarine can thread its way through a mine field. For
though the water is luminous and translucent one can hardly make
out the black hull of the boat under the turret and a mine would
have to be on top of you before you could see it. The men who
watch for mines must have a sense for them as well as
particularly powerful sight.

We continued to dive until we were sixty-eight feet below the
surface, too deep to strike any mine, and there we ran tranquilly
on our electric engines, while the commander navigated the vessel
and the second in command opened champagne in the two by four
mess room. After half an hour of underwater work we came near
enough the surface for our fighting periscope to stick twenty
inches out of the water and searched the lonely horizon for a
ship to attack.

It was not long before we sighted a mine trawler, steaming for
the harbour, and speeded up to overtake her.

"Pikers!" said our commander, as we circled twice around the
trawler; "they can't find us."

Five men on the trawler were scanning the sea with glasses
looking for submarines. We could follow all their motions, could
tell when they thought they had found us and see their
disappointment at their mistakes, but though we were never more
than five hundred yards from them, I did not think they were
pikers because they did not find us. I had tried that hunt for
the tiny wave of a periscope.

"No use wasting a torpedo on those fellows," said our commander.
"We will use the gun on them."

"How far away can you use a torpedo?" I asked.

"Two hundred yards is the best distance," he said. "Never more
than five hundred. A torpedo is pure guesswork at more than five
hundred yards."

We crossed the bow of the trawler, circled around to her
starboard quarter and came to the surface, fired nine shots and
submerged again in forty-five seconds.

The prey secured, we ran submerged through the mine field and
past the net barrier to come to the surface well within the
harbour and proceed peacefully to our mooring under the shelter
of the guns of the land forts.

Life and work on a German submarine is known to us, of course, only from descriptions in German publications. One of these appeared, previous to our entry in the war, in various journals and was translated and republished by the New York _Evening Post_. It reads partly as follows:

"U-47 will take provisions and clear for sea. Extreme economical
radius."

A first lieutenant, with acting rank of commander, takes the
order in the grey dawn of a February day. The hulk of an old
corvette with the Iron Cross of 1870 on her stubby foremast is
his quarters in port, and on the corvette's deck he is presently
saluted by his first engineer and the officer of the watch. On
the pier the crew of U-47 await him. At their feet the narrow
grey submarine lies alongside, straining a little at her cables.

"Well, we've our orders at last," begins the commander,
addressing his crew of thirty, and the crew grin. For this is
U-47's first experience of active service. She has done nothing
save trial trips hitherto, and has just been overhauled for her
first fighting cruise. Her commander snaps out a number of
orders. Provisions are to be taken in "up to the neck," fresh
water is to be put aboard, and engine-room supplies to be
supplemented.

A mere plank is the gangway to the little vessel. As the
commander, followed by his officers, comes aboard, a sailor hands
to each a ball of cotton-waste, the sign and symbol of a
submarine officer, which never leaves his hand. For the steel
walls of his craft, the doors, and the companion-ladder all
sweat oil, and at every touch the hands must be wiped dry. The
doorways are narrow round holes. Through one of the holes aft the
commander descends by a breakneck iron ladder into the black hole
lit by electric glow-lamps. The air is heavy with the smell of
oil, and to the unaccustomed longshoreman it is almost choking,
though the hatches are off. The submarine man breathes this air
as if it were the purest ozone. Here in the engine-room aft men
must live and strain every nerve even if for days at a time every
crack whereby the fresh air could get in is hermetically sealed.
On their tense watchfulness thirty lives depend.

Here, too, are slung some hammocks, and in them one watch tries,
and, what is more, succeeds in sleeping, though the men moving
about bump them with head and elbows at every turn, and the low
and narrow vault is full of the hum and purr of machinery. In
length the vault is about ten feet, but if a man of normal
stature stands in the middle and raises his arms to about half
shoulder height his hands will touch the cold, moist steel walls
on either side. A network of wires runs overhead, and there is a
juggler's outfit of handles, levers, and instruments. The
commander inspects everything minutely, then creeps through a
hole into the central control station, where the chief engineer
is at his post. With just about enough assistance to run a fairly
simple machine ashore the chief engineer of a submarine is
expected to control, correct, and, if necessary, repair at sea an
infinitely complex machinery which must not break down for an
instant if thirty men are to return alive to the hulk.

Forward is another narrow steel vault serving at once as
engine-room and crew's quarters. Next to it is a place like a
cupboard, where the cook has just room to stand in front of his
doll's house galley-stove. It is electrically heated, that the
already oppressive air may not be further vitiated by smoke or
fumes. A German submarine in any case smells perpetually of
coffee and cabbage. Two little cabins of the size of a decent
clothes-chest take the deck and engine-room officers, four of
them. Another box cabin is reserved for the commander--when he
has time to occupy it.

At daybreak the commander comes on deck in coat and trousers of
black leather lined with wool, a protection against oil, cold,
and sea-water. The crew at their stations await the command to
cast off.

"Machines clear," calls a voice from the control-station and
"Clear ship," snaps the order from the bridge. Then "Cast-off!"
The cables slap on to the landing-stage, the engines begin to
purr, and U-47 slides away into open water.

A few cable-lengths away another submarine appears homeward
bound. She is the U-20 returning from a long cruise in which she
succeeded in sinking a ship bound with a cargo of frozen mutton
for England.

"Good luck, old sheep-butcher," sings the commander of U-47 as
the sister-ship passes within hail.

The seas are heavier now, and U-47 rolls unpleasantly as she
makes the light-ship and answers the last salute from a friendly
hand. The two officers on the bridge turn once to look at the
light-ship already astern, then their eyes look seaward. It is
rough, stormy weather. If the egg-shell goes ahead two or three
days without a stop, the officers in charge will get no sleep for
just that long. If it gets any rougher they will be tied to the
bridge-rails to avoid being swept overboard. If they are hungry,
plates of soup will be brought to them on the bridge, and the
North Sea will attend to its salting for them.

Frequently this "meal" is interrupted by some announcement from the watch, such as: "Smoke on the horizon off the port bow." Then--so we are told:

The commander drops his plate, shouts a short, crisp command,
and an electric alarm whirs inside the egg-shell. The ship buzzes
like a hive. Then water begins to gurgle into the ballast-tanks,
and U-47 sinks until only her periscope shows.

"The steamship is a Dutchman, sir," calls the watch officer. The
commander inspects her with the aid of a periscope. She has no
wireless and is bound for the Continent. So he can come up and is
glad, because moving under the water consumes electricity, and
the usefulness of a submarine is measured by her electric power.

After fifty-four hours of waking nerve tension, sleep becomes a
necessity. So the ballast-tanks are filled and the nutshell sinks
to the sandy bottom. This is the time for sleep aboard a
submarine, because a sleeping man consumes less of the precious
oxygen than one awake and busy. So a submarine man has three
principal lessons to learn--to keep every faculty at tension when
he is awake, to keep stern silence when he is ashore (there is a
warning against talkativeness in all the German railway-carriages
now), and to sleep instantly when he gets a legitimate
opportunity. His sleep and the economy of oxygen may save the
ship. However, the commander allows half an hour's grace for
music. There is a gramophone, of course, and the "ship's band"
performs on all manner of instruments. At worst, a comb with a
bit of tissue paper is pressed into service.

Another American who suffered an enforced voyage on an _unterseeboot_ made public later some of his experiences. His captor's craft was a good sized one--about 250 feet long, with a crew of 35 men and mounting two 4-1/2 inch guns. She could make 18 knots on the surface and 11 submerged and had a radius of 3200 miles of action. Her accommodations were not uncomfortable. Each officer had a separate cabin while the crew were bunked along either side of a narrow passage. The ventilation was excellent, and her officers declared that they could stand twenty-four hours continuous submergence without discomfort, after that for six hours it was uncomfortable, and thereafter intolerable because of the exudation of moisture--or sweating--from every part. At such times all below have to wear leather suits. The food was varied and cooked on an electric stove. The original stores included preserved pork and beef, vegetables, tinned soups, fruits, raisins, biscuits, butter, marmalade, milk, tea, and coffee. But the pleasures of the table depended greatly on the number of their prizes, for whenever possible they made every ship captured contribute heavily to their larder before sinking her. Of the tactics followed the observer writes:

It appears that 55 per cent., or more than half, of the torpedoes
fired miss their mark, and with this average they seem satisfied.
Once they let go at a ship two torpedoes at 3000 yards' range,
and both missed, the range being too long but they did not care
to come any nearer, as they believed the ship to be well armed.

They prefer to fire at 500 to 700 yards, which means that at this
range the track or "wake" of a projectile would be discernible
for, say, twenty-five to thirty seconds--not much time, indeed,
for any ship to get out of the way. At 100 yards' range or less
they do not care to fire unless compelled to, as the torpedo is
nearly always discharged when the submarine is lying ahead of the
object, _i. e._, to hit the ship coming up to it; it follows that
a gun forward is more useful than one aft, the gun aft being of
real service when a submarine starts shelling, which she will do
for choice from aft the ship rather than from forward of her,
where she would be in danger of being run over and rammed.