NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16214, 17 May 1918, Page 7

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

I When Frederick Palmer, the American war correspondent, visited the Grand Fleet, ho asked ono of tho officers the enemy submarines were dealt with. "Sometimes by ramming, sometimes by gunfire, sometimes by explosives, and x in many other ways, which we do not tell," was the reply. Probably it was as much as ho expected to get,"though, of course, it was tho "many other ways" that ho wanted to hear about —any person of average intelligence could have guessed tho other methods specified. Since then, however, some of <"ho ways of killing a submarine have become fairly well known. There is, for instance, nothing novel about the listening dcvice with which, according to ono of to-day's cablcs, the Allies' patrol vessels are fitted. Somo such apparatus, which acts on tho principle of the microphone, was fitted on American destroyers many months ago, and has sinco been installed on British craft.

This dovico enables those on hoard to detect at a great distance —the cable says thirty miles —the sound mado by a submarino in motion, and has naturnlly been of great valuo in helping patrolling destroyer to locato its prey. The U-boats are said, however, to be fitted with "mechanical oars," which convey to the listeners tho sound of the destroyer's propeller, and when the destrover stops to listen, undisturbed Ijy the beat of her own. engines, ttho submarine also stops, and stays silent until tho destroyer moves again. Later improvements have probably extended tho range of this listening device, and the destroyer's powers of detecting under-sea sounds may consequently be greater than those enjoyed by the submarine.

This would, no doubt, help to account for tho undoubted increase in the sinkings of submarines. All that a destroyer •wants is to get near enough to a Üboat to drop a depth-bomb on her. If it is dropped on tho right place, thero is a submarino explosion, and a gush of oil to the surface of the sea—atid that particular U-boat may ho struck off the German navy list. Tho submarine- leads, indeed, a precarious life nowadays. It has no frionds outside tho enemy Powers it represents, and ft host of n'ctivo and ingenious foes. Its harbours of refugo aro up, its zono of activity is circumsoribed by minefields of great extent, and extreme sensitiveness, and by steel nets of remarkable strength. Converted trawlers trawl for it in pairs, dragging between them a cablo garlanded with mines which explodo on touching a periscope of conning tower. Patrols of destroyers and other light craft watch day and night for it as it rises from tho deep to toko bearings, and overhead, tho ready airman awaits, with boAbs, its passage either underneath the sea or on the surface. The submarine started >vith enormous chances in its favour, but they appear to have been reduced until the odds are rather against it.

-•Sometimes, if we may believe the "Norddeutsche AUgemeine Zeitung"— a feat which, wo admit calls for considerable credulity—a submarine manages to. escape extraordinary perils. A member of the crew of a U-boat told how his boat had fired at a heavilyladen steamer, one of a convoy. "A violent enemy counter-attack followed. The destroyers left tho convoy and followed the submarine, and in the course i of a few minutes dropped thirty-nine water bombs around the spot whore th? U-boat was supposed to be submerged. Luckily they failed to hit her, and our U-boat escaped' unscathed. The same submarine was previously followed by two airplanes from mid-day until eveping and pelted with twenty-three bombs, but escaped." Luckily for ono U-boat that lives to fight another day after an experience of that kind, there is good reason to believe that several others go to tho bottom and stay there.

| The launching of the first million tons of shipping completed under the direction of the United States Shipping Board still leaves a great deal to be done if the shipbuilding programme of which wo have heard bo much last year, is to bo finished in the specified time. It used to be said then that America would put out six million tot 3 of shipping by the end of 1918. More than a third of the year has gone, and five million tons have still to be launched. It looks as though in' the raco between the shipyards and Time, the latter would win with a good deal in hand. But this promise was never made, or even supported, by Mr Hurley, the present chairman of the Shipping Board. He has instilled an immense amount of energy and activity into the business since hiß appointment, as is shown by the completion of a freight steamor in 87 days after hor keel was laid, and the launching of 57,000 tons of shipping in the week ending last Monday. But Mr Hurley has never promised the impossible; all ho has done, apart from _ making the builders hustle, -was to announce that he proposed to take on himself the responsibility if tho building programme suffered from delays. This was a new note; hitherto all the responsible officials had put the blame for the serious delays that occurred last year on the next man.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the National Marine League in New York about six weeks ago, Mr Hurley gave a valuablo sketch of what the Shipping Board had dono to cope with the shipping shortage. Tho total amount ot the steel construction programme on March Ist, he said, was &,200,708 deadweight tons, made up of. 5,160,300 deadweight tons under contract _ with the Emergency i'Jeet Corporation, and deadweight tons of requisitioned vessels. The programme for steel ships had advanced 28 per cent, toward completion. Of the amount of steel ships under contract and under requisition 655,456 deadweight tons, or approximately 8 per cent., were actually completed and in servico on March Ist of this year. This amount of floating tonnage exceeded tbo total American output in 1916, including steel, wooden, and sailing vessels, by approximately 50 per cent.

A great doal had to bo done in the way of increasing shipbuilding accommodation. At the outset the thirtyseven old yards for building stcol ships increased, their capacity until they now have 195 ways, as against 162 eight months ago. Thirty additional new steel shipyards have boen erected, with, a total ot 203 shipbuilding ways.; Thus there are now in the aggregate sixtyseven steel shipyards oitner wholly _or partly engaged in Fleet Corporation work, witn a total of 3(ftJ steel building ways. Of these, thirty-five yards with 258 ways aro on the Atlantic and Gulf coast. Nineteen yards, with sixty-six ways, aro on the Pacific, whilo thirteen yards, with seventy-four ways, are oa the great lakes. Many wooden ships are also being built, in spite of the fact that a year ago wooden shipbuild- ' ing in tho United states was almost a lost art. There wore twenty-four old wooden shipyards, with seventy-three shipways. The capacity for wooden shipbujiding has been increased until thf>m are now eighty-ono wooden shipbuilding yards, with 332 wayß completed or nearing completion. Assuming that these ways will each produce two standard ships a year, they should tarn out about 2,300,000 deadweight

tons of. -wooden shipping annuallj*. These 332 -wooden shipbuilding ways now neaiing completion, added to the 398 steel building ways, give a total of 730 berths upon which to build steel and wooden vessels. The promise for the immediate future is, therefore, very bright.

No doubt much of this activity is duo to Mr Hurley's driving power. A man who •will publicly inform the great shipbuilding firms of the United States that the Government wants ships, and not cxcuses. appears to bo just tho sort of man who was wanted. It would be unfair, however, if we failed to credit some of the rapidity with which ships are now being turned out to the spirit of emulation among tho shipyard workers. This has probably been stimulated bv tho sporting proclivities of the men in one shipyard on tthe I'acific Coast, who, contending that they had already set tho pace for the construction of wooden ships on the Pacific Coast and in the United States for the iSmergencv Fleet Corporation, offered to the builders on the Atlantic Coast a wager of ten thousand dollars that they would continue to lead all shipyards in speed, efficiency, and quality, and would leave it to the Shipping Board to decide the bet. They expected to turn out one ship every twelve days. The wager was no doubt accepted, henco the "speeding up."