Chapter V: A Somersault in the North Sea

That night, during the darkest hours between eleven and one o'clock, I had decided to travel submerged with the electric engines.

When we submerged in the twilight of the long summer night there had been very little wind, but there was a heavy swell--a sure sign that the wind would rise to a storm within a few hours. Towards two o'clock I gave the order to rise to the surface, and soon noticed from the increasingly wild movements of the boat that the storm had arisen, and that a rougher sea must have set in with it.

At times we made regular springs, but continued steadily blowing out from our tanks and came to the surface in good order.

From the lower end of the periscope I tried to get my bearings. It was, however, almost impossible to see anything, as the periscope was continually enveloped by the heavy breakers, the dim light causing the huge waves to assume monstrous and uncanny proportions.

Now we had risen entirely to the surface, and I climbed into the conning-tower to get a proper outlook over the wildly dancing sea. It had become pleasant weather indeed! In the pale dim light was visible a seething witch's cauldron of tossing, mountainous waves crowned with foam, from which the wind tore away the spray and hurtled it through the air. The boat struggled heavily against it and made little headway. The entire deck was, of course, flooded, and every moment the sea dashed up over the conning-tower and fell over me in showers of spray. I clung on to the parapet of the "bath-tank" and scanned the horizon--a strange outlook, one continually shifting scene of mountainous rollers.

I was just about to give the order to start the oil engines working when--what is that over there?

That dark streak yonder--surely it is a line of smoke?...

Then the back of a wave blots it out for a moment from the pale grey sky....

I wait, staring through the glass till my eyes ache....

There it is again, a dark line of smoke ... and there, there: a masthead, thin as a needle, yet I can see it through my glasses; and now ... my eyes are boring their way through the glasses ... that black thing over there just visible in the valley of the waves ... the smoke above it, four low funnels....

Good heavens! it is a destroyer!...

With one bound I spring into the conning-tower, close the hatch:

"Alarm!"

"Submerge quickly!"...

"Flood the tanks!"

"Diving rudder; eleven fathoms down."

The commands follow each other in rapid succession. But to carry them out is a different matter!

To submerge head on to this sea will be from all experience sheer madness....

But what am I to do?

The destroyer may have seen us already....

Down we must go, and as quickly as possible.

Below me, in the control-room, the crew are working in speechless haste. The emergency air valves are opened, the compressed air hisses out of the tanks--the submersion valves sing in all their scales....

I stand with compressed lips, looking through the tower window over the tossing sea around me, waiting for the first sign of sinking....

But still I can see our deck, still the waves toss us up high into the air.... We have no more time to lose.

I order more play to diving rudders, and give the command, "Both engines full speed ahead!"

The whole boat trembles and sways under the increased engine power, and gives a couple of springs; she staggers and reels. Is she never going to sink?... Then with a jerk she dips suddenly under by the bow and disappears rapidly at an ever-increasing angle beneath the waves.

The daylight which is just dawning in at the conning-tower window disappears, the depth gauge shows in rapid succession one--one and a half--three--five fathoms.... But still the angle of the boat increases.

We stagger, lean backwards, slip over, losing all grip on the floor which is sinking forward ... I am still just able to hold on to the eye-piece of the periscope ... and down below in the control-room the men are holding fast on to the hand-wheels of the diving rudders....

This lasts for several terrible moments.

We are still wondering what on earth has happened, when suddenly there comes a heavy blow; we are thrown to the ground in all directions, and everything that is not nailed securely down is hurled around us.

We find ourselves in the strangest positions, look at each other, and for a moment a deadly silence prevails. Then the first officer, Krapohl, observes dryly: "Well, we've got there, anyway."

This broke the horrible tension.

We had all grown pretty pale, and now we began to try and face the situation.

What had happened?

Why this unnatural angle of the boat? And why were the engines pounding so madly above us that the whole boat quivered and shook?

Before any of us had time to think, however, our little Klees, the steering engineer, had sprung from his cowering position, and quick as lightning had pulled the telegraph round to "Stop."

As suddenly a deep silence followed.

Slowly we collected our various limbs together and considered: what had happened?

The boat was standing on her head, so to speak, with her fore-part sloping downwards at an angle of thirty-six; her bow must be touching ground while the stern was obediently oscillating in the air above water; the gauge meanwhile showed a depth of about eight fathoms.

I took a rapid stock of our situation; it was far from pleasant.

According to the map there should be here a depth of about seventeen and a half fathoms; judging from the almost upright position of our long boat our stern must be projecting a considerable way above water, making thereby an admirable target for enemy destroyers. As long as the engines continued working it followed that as the waves passed over us the propeller lashing partly in the air was increasing our power of attraction by causing fountains of leaping water and foaming whirlpools.

This Klees had realised through the mad pounding of the engines, and by his presence of mind had removed the greatest danger.

All the same we had marked our resting-place with the strangest of buoys, and expected every moment to hear bombs crashing through the stem of our boat as it hung high in the air above us....

Moments of extreme tension followed....

But all was still. The screws could no longer betray us, and it was probably still too dark above for them to be noticeable. The destroyer, moreover, had no doubt enough to do in looking after herself in this rough sea.

It will be understood, however, that we were particularly anxious to get out of this absurd position as quickly as possible.

As the boat was still quite intact and had sustained the fearful shock without the least damage, the rest of the programme was easy enough to carry out.

The stern tanks which were not quite freed of air were quickly flooded, and so gradually the boat attained a slightly more normal position. Nevertheless, she still lay far from the horizontal. She had stuck her nose too fast in the mud for that!

By this time, however, we were at least entirely under water, and could finish the rest of our work in peace. Part of the water was forced out from the fore ballast tanks, and for the rest we continued trimming the boat with the tanks until the bow became loosened from the ground. Now we began to rise, and were immediately obliged to check her in order to counteract the immediate pendulum-like tendency of the over-weighted stern to descend.

After some time, however, the balance was readjusted and the "Deutschland" was firmly in hand again.

And now we had to consider what could have been the cause of this sudden blunder on the part of our otherwise gallant boat.

A great many circumstances must have combined to produce it. Apart from the fact that it is only possible in rare cases to submerge a heavy boat in a rough sea, it is conceivable that owing to the haste enforced on us by the destroyer the tanks had not been quite pumped out.

The chief reason, however, appeared to be the sudden dynamic working of the diving rudders; this, in combination with full engine power and the downward pressure of a particularly heavy sea, forced the fateful gradient too suddenly. We found ourselves in the position of a dirigible which steers too low before landing, and through a sudden downward current of air is flattened and crushed to the ground by the double weight.

Fortunately for us, the wonderful material of our steel body stood the heavy blow undamaged. Only the bottom of the North Sea may have suffered a little indentation at Latitude X° N. and Longitude Y° E.

One thing more strikes me as worth mentioning in connection with this event.

When I look back in retrospect on my thoughts as we dived at full speed through the deeps at an angle of 36 degrees, I must confess my first thought was for the cargo! Was the cargo safely stored? Could it possibly shoot overboard?

The thought came quite instinctively, strange though it seemed to me afterwards.

I could not shake myself free of the old Adam as captain of a heavy steamer, even on board a U-Boat.