THE PADDLE-BOAT AND THE SUBMARINE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2986, 25 January 1917, Page 6

THE PADDLE-BOAT AND THE SUBMARINE

AN INCIDENT OF SEA WAR (From the "Daily Mail.") ' • She was a slim, flat-bottomed paddlewffEet pleasure steamer, with a single ' thin funnel and oscillating engines, and m the jlim,imitive cabin, which advertisements of her river trips into a "Commodious Fore i-Saloon with Refreshments," a framed certificate presented by the Board of Trade announced that the S.S. Victoria must not carry more than 200 passengers* andjnust not navigate any waters outside an imaginary line drawn between tho two headlands that protccted.the harbour, under threat of heavy penalTies. It also told her tonnage—a ridiculous term for so slight a craft; one would havo thought "poundage" much more suitable—and gavo other details of her dimensions in case the crow ever v/anted some light and instructive reading in their leisure hours. Ber roughest seas wore encountered when'crossing the harbour from the promenado pier to the. river-mouth in a high wind, excursionists having been known on such occasions to ask if>, there was any dangor; and as Captain Jones bact done the trip six days a week in summer and three days a week in winter .(transformed then into a market-, beat) for twenty years, his desp&nd&flcy SJt this question was excusable. But listen war broko out the Board of Trade tooVa hack seat. The Vie was given a pretty searchlight of her. very own and a few charges of explosive for destroying wreckage, and told that she might run away and play on the deeper waters beyond; and this is the story .of her-first splendid adventure. Out in the Channel. One wet and gloomy night Captain Jones was keeping his usual course in the open, some twelve or thirteen miles out, with a smother of spray flying over the bridge, and his little boat rolling sponsors under. The ' short Channel waves, through which a liner would advance without a tremor, tossed the Vic upward, smacked her viciously down, threw her sideways till one buries paddle laboured and groaned in distress while the other clawed at the all', and maltreated her generally like a clumsy child with a new; toy. , •And there waß a liner, making majestically for the port, slowly shearing aside from her lofty bows the angry crests that so worried the poor Vio, with an unhurried dignity and certainty wufth. the Vic might admire but could never emulate. Captain Jones winked at her with his searchlight, received a gruff, friendly "woof" from her bassoprof undo horn, and carried on, stamping up and down his narrow bridge, blowing off the trickles of rain that dripped from the peak of his cap to tho peak of Ms nose, and wondering why some folks - wore gold lace and steered ten thousand tons across the world while other folks wore i>£a-coats and steered cockleshells on a pond. Twenty minutes passed, and he calculated that the liner must have leached the smoother belt within the sphere of the western headland, when suddenly a long clear beam stabbed the inky darkness close to the surface of the sea, questing here -and there, searching the void like the prying of a huge bull's-eye lantern. It settled upon the liner. The great vessel stood out against the vast velvet-black screen of the night, a ship of pr/.F flame. And even as Captain Jone;. ivatched her through Ids binoculars column of water and smoke swelleu and burst against her hull, and down wind came a dull, ominous shudder of the air, booming and dying away. If tho little Vio could not figKt she could help, and as the captain spun the wheel she clambered', over the sea at her best speed, as though anxious, to he in tho thick of it all. The liner had heeled over, hut was not yet sinking, and a red flash or two showed that the submarine was firing on her. In the dense gloom the captain drew near, knowing that the very last thing the enemy would expect to see so far off shore would be a pigmy pleasureboat drawing 4ess than three feet of water, dancing about like a small pugieager to get in liis blow. Carefully the Vic came round in a wide sweep, making for the submarine first —for her master had a hrilliant idea, a genuine inspiration. Presently he handed the wheel to the mate, went below, ascended again ,with something in his hand, and stood gripping the rail of tho bridge on the starboard paddlebox, giving now and again a word of instruction as to the steering. But the mate was also an old hand; not for nothing had he brought the Vic to an inch alongside piers and buoys and heaving pontoons in tricky tides and currents for the last ten years, and to-night he manipulated the "wheel with the sure touch of a master mariner. ' A Near Squeak. The commander of the submarine, puzzled by a faint rhythmic pulsation, a thud-thud-thud that ho had so far. only vaguely noticed, turned to gaze seawards. To his utter amazement he beheld, almost on top of him, a small paddle-steamer) rolling and'tossing and doing her best for England. He had the. impression that she was trying to ram him, and.was inclined to smile at what would be the result of such a mad action; hut she might 'bo up to other mischief. He could not submerge for at least two minutes; his engines were stopped, his hatch was wide open. With a sidelong, wallowing movementthe Vic seethed by. He saw a big statuesque figure, clad in oilskins, leaning from the paddlebox that almost scraped his conning tower, with hand extended; in the hand was something that fizzled and sparked. The face of that figure came for a moment into the white glare of tho searchlight; he saw it well—it was bearded, tight-lipped, grim, with keen, blue eyes; very British. Then something flew past his head right into the dark recess of the hatch, and the boat. sheered off. There was a sharp explosion and the noise of many waters. For him and his crew, oblivion ; for the gallant little Vic, a torn rudder-post and a few floats wrenched from her starboard paddle-wheel. "Guess we only just shaved over." said Captain Jones, regaining his usual place on the bridge. "Another foot, and wo should havo been able to havo a look at him through our engineroom! In ten minutes a destroyer raced up, and the remainder of that night's story is simply a record of ordinary British seamanshi|)—of how the Vic' crippled but steerable and in no danger, rescued more than a hundred from boats that were swamping,' and how the destroyer completed tho task of taking passengers and_ crew from the decks of the doomed liner just in time. With her portholes screwed tightly, her load-line a number of inches below water that would have given tho Board of Trade several sleepless nights had they known of it, and hor captain humming a quiet tune, tho Vic staegcred bravely homo in weird arcs like a wounded seagull, till as dawn began to glow she crept iuto port. She resembled not at all the smart excursion boat which took pleasant parties up tho river beneath sunVncr suns in peaceful years; she looked, in fact, distinctly disreputable. But down in her "commodious fore saloon" hot tea was putting fresh heart into a wet and shivering but cheerful crowd, and the cheers of the people who lined the dork wall as she rounded the jetty and slid slowly but triumphantly past F f nrtled the mi'-e in -vnrohnnscs quite three-quarters.of a mile away.

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