WITH THE BRITISH SUBMARINES

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 150, 14 March 1918, Page 8

WITH THE BRITISH SUBMARINES

INTERESTING GLIMPSES OF A MODEST FLOTILLA "A BUSY MORNING" I. [We hear a good deal about the Germau U-boat activities, but very' seldom anything about the British submarines. The following very interesting sketches, written by Lewis R. Freeman, appeared in the December issuo of the "World's Work." As tho author remarked in submitting these sketches, i "they'are not perhaps as exciting | as fiction, but they reveal as much , of submarine life as the Admiralty | considers advisable at tho present time."] "The boat you've como to meet is feeling her way in at half-speed tlirougli that bank of fog out there," j said the Commander of tnu Naval Station, "and will hardly bn alongside the quay before lato afternoon. If you want a bit of a look around the , town and a dip in tuo sea, now's your chance. Only bo sure and be back here by six if you want to catch 'em in their seaboots." The train journey down from London had boon insufferably hot, and I welcomed the opportunity for a bath and | a stroll through the quaint old fishing i village before proceeding to the "serious business" of my visit. Refreshed by a swim in a sea that was mottled for miles with floundering "Tommies" from tho big camp tucked out of sight behind the sand dunes, I sauntered up I to tho little park on a jutting point abovo tbe harbour mouth, and threw myself down on tho grass to listen to the Sunday afternoon concert of tho j military band and watch the ebb and j flow of the shipping. j It had a different atmosphere, this i East Coast Naval Base, from any place j 1 had previously visited. Everybody j appeared to bo there- for business, no-: body for pleasure. Nine-tenths of the j men were in bluo or khaki, and almost all of the women not dressed in some sort of uniform bcre the unmistakable stamp of wife or daughter or mother of a man in one of the Services. The picturesque old port bore about as much resemblance to an ordinary watering place as a holiday-bcflagged warship in peace times bears to that same craft stripped for action.' It was a heartening thing, that cheerful, confident crowd of men and wo : men with their wide-set blue oyeo and their squaro jaws so eloquent of courage and purposefulncss, and I watched it with never flagging interest till tho lure of the sea irresistibly drew my attention in the other direction. For, after all, "the sea was tho thing." It was the things that went out oy the sea, and the things that came (oi- might come) in by the sea, that brought these steady-eyed wen and women here together, and it was the things that were going and coming by the sea even then that held my attention fascinated onco it had been turned to where tho slow-heaving waters dulled and molted into a grey blackness at the impending wall of the fog-bank which stood waiting to move in as the sun went down. As far as the oyo could penetrate there- were ships, and beyond that one knew there were still more ships; ships of many classes and multifarious duties. Patrol boats, mine-sweepers, destroyers, cruisers, merchantmen —they came from their work, went to their work, or—anchored in stream or moored alongside quay—rested from their work. Landward the dark hulls were silhouetted sharp and clear against the sun-bright water; seaward, whore they passed into tho .fog-bank, the images grow distorted and indistinct like the figures on a wind-stirred hanging of ancient tapestry. Marine Camouflage. I had watched a pair of mine-sweep-crs steering in zig-zag parallels down the forefront of the fog, tho homeward I flight of a fleet of relieved patrol boats, i tho ovon procession of a long line of; returning destroyers, and the swift j circlings of a squadron of manoeuvring seaplanes, before my attention was attracted to a fresh apparition that took shape in- t.'io mist and caino gliding in toward the bar. Nothing more than a railed box, sliding slowly but steadily across the smooth sea, 1 took it at first for a small targei; being towed, or a renegade buoy boing put in its propor place. Then a rinplo of' white wave curling off well in advance of the box gave sure indication of the existence of a eonsidsrable length of hull, and, just in tima to jump up and run down to the station to catch a train for tho naval quay, I realised that the strange thing I had been watching' was a submarine—doubtless the one Ij was to nieet--coming home to roost! j Even well inside the narrow harbour the illusion of the "dirigible railed box" persisted, and it was not until the homecoming diver was almost i berthed against the outermost of the! half-dozen of her sisters already moor- j ed alongside the station-ship that I dis-1 covered tho strange effect was largely i due to the rcmarkablo protective colouring which had—to my unpractised eye at the really con- j siderable expanse of unsubmerged hull piactically indistinguishable at any distance from the rippling seas that lapped about it. . ' Efficacious as it was, the expedient adopted to reduce visibility appeared to be no more or less than an indiscriminate lot of splashes and dabs of different coloured paint applied in such a way as to break up the even monochrome of the exposed hull. It is possible, indeed probable, that the general effect of the blend t was carefully calculated, but to tho uninitiated it merely seemed as' though the sailors had been turned loose with the brush and paint pot, and allowed to express their vagrant fancies in chromatic "harmonies" and "symphonies" singularly suggestivo of Whistler at his most "Whistleresque." The "modern" touch was furnished by another boat, the sinuous whorls and concentries on the sides of which might well have figured in a Futurist exhibition under some such title as "Tho Thoughts of a Submarine Sailor on the Launching of a Torpedo"; while the classic atmosphere was supplied by a third craft, the spirited figures rollicking around whose sides could easily have been inspired by a study of an Etruscan vase. It sounds frivolous in the extreme in trying to describe it, but there was no frivolity of purpose. Like everything else in that little neck of the North Sea, that daubing was there for a certain end, and how well that end was served I had just had striking ocular evidence. The naval officer to whom I had reported—doubtless advised by wireless —had confided to me already that the boat I was about to board was not coming in from its hunt with "scalps at its belt," but to tho little- line of women —apparently wives and sweet- '. hearts of the crew, who had managed' to pass the triple guard of police and marines at the gate of the quay; no "advance bulletin" had been issued, and among them was evident the same air of expectancy that animates fisher \ folk crowding down to welcome a re- t turning trawler, all eagerness to learn | wliat the catch for tho voyage has been. ] "Hi know wot's 'appeued the minit • Hill pops 'is ol' 'ead out o' the ole," said a buxom matron who held a < sailor-suited youngster by either hand. "Hif they's dropped a slug inter some 'Un 'ooker 'e allus bobs up a grinnin , , an' hi kuows 'e'll be a takin , me an'

tho nippers to tho pictur's ev'ry nite 'o'& home. But Aw, no' 'opel Face like a harpuued skate. No ." I pnssed out of hearing down a greasy steel ladder at this juncture, but i'i was evident that Bill had not "bobbed up a grinnin'," and that picture palace party prospects had gone down ly the run. The Submarine Crew. But if thoro was no elation apparent in the faces of the men of the returning submarine, neither was there depression. I could readily conceivo how somo brilliant stroke executed off somewhere behind that hovering fogbank might indeed havo brought them homo "a grinnin'," but the indefinite postponement of that success—and there must bo many a "hope deferred" in that under-sea hunting gamewas evidently considered by the men themselves nothing to be bowed down I about. A missus and nippers who had I been incubating moving picture party i hopes for a fortnight was another matI ter. That these should feel a bit upset that the " 'Un" got away was only natural under tho circumstances. A right hearty lot of sailor lads they were, these men just up from the I depths. I only wish that the individual who first wrote of the "waxen, doathliko submarine pallor" could have seen them. '"Ow yer feelin', 'Arry?" sang out a voice from the quay, and tho ready answer "Full o' Deans as ev'r, Maggie," might well have been shouted in chorus if looks went for anything. "There's no reason they shouldn't look well," said the officer with me, as Iwe paused for a moment to watch I somv of tho men putting a few "snugging" touches on the gun and folding wireless mast. "They're all volunteers in the first place, and, on top of that, are carefully 'combed' to eliminate any 'heart' or 'nerve,' or any other kind of cases likely to be affected by under-water work. A largo proportion of them do not drink or smoke at all, and for those that do, the whole voyj age (save for an occasional tot _ of I rum) is a 'closed season' for tho drinkj ers, and no smoking whatever is alI lowed during the periods of submergi ence. j "Most of them actually build up I under it, and if there is any running ■ down you can be fairly sure that it occurs in the periods of relaxation at home between voyages. 'Submarine pallor.' Perhaps the Germans have it, because we keep them under water a good deal moro than they do us. But just look at the colour of these chaps! If you couldn't almost see the healthy blood behind that ruddiness you'd swear they worked in a brewery or owned a pub." I was too lato to "catch tho crew in their sea-boots" (I should have had to board her a dozen miles out really to have found them in "under-water togs"), and, in order to have room to move freely, the commander, when I was turned over to him,. advised that, wo defer going below until the men had packed up and gone ashore. "As fast as tho submarine has increased in size," he said, "the things that go inside of it- havo also increased, so that there is little moro spare room in even so late a boat as this one than in the smaller ones in commission before the war. "The best way to think of a sub* marine," he continued, "is as a sort of glorifiod torpedo. The comparison holds good both as to shape and as to the amount of 'wheels' packed into each. A rat bears about the same relation to a man in size as a torpedo does to a submarine. Well, a rat would lind just about as much room to scramble about in in a torpedo as a man can in a submarine." We slipped through tho narrow manhole—no really fat man could havo en-' tered it, and such, therefore, can never find place on a submarine—and reached the steel grill of tho main deck. "Not exactly roomy, you wouldn't call it," chuckled the Captain, grinning sympathetically at mo where I stood with my head drawn in between my shoulders. "1 hope that torpedo propeller didn't cut through to your scalp. The blades are a bit sharp, I'm afraid; but that velour hat of yours looks tough, and a little petrol will take tho grease out of it. One gets used to go- | ing about with a triple reef in his neck i after _ a while, but in tho interim— ) especially if he chances to be over six j feet, iis I am—he is bound to gather impressions (I use the term in a physical sense) that only time can efface. I'm seriously thinking of re-commending-tn the Admiralty that all men over five feet e'mht- who vohmtepr for submarine service should be given a month's preliminary training on a dummy boat fittnd with padded 'wheels' J before he begins his real work." I (To be continued.)