A RUSSIAN FEAT

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 March 1917, Page 6

A RUSSIAN FEAT

CAPTURE OF TURKISH TRANS-

• PORT. The exploit of the' Russian submarine Tuilen, meaning "seal," which captured and brought to pout the Turkish armed transport Rodosto, of 6000 tons, wasi only briefly mentioned in the official bulletin, writes the Petrograd correspondent of the London Morning Post. The Tuilen was lying, submerged, off Kevken, about sixty miles east of the entrance to the Bosphorus, when the approach of the Turkish vessel was noted. The Russian submarine promptly moved to get between the enemy craft and the shore, amd, coining to the surface, opened fire at a range of about a mse. The Rodoiito, which carried heavier guns than the submarine, returned the fire. The Tuilen, however, made better practice, and soon set the navigating bridge of the Rodosto on tire, pierced her steam pipes, and damaged her steering gear. The Rodosto being thus reduced to helpiesstuesv, the sub. marine approached and battered the enemy ship at close range, afterwards running in and rescuing from the pieces of wreckage in the water a number of men. Among these were the lieutonaint in command of the Rodosto, the senior engineer, and the officer of the watch, all Hermans.

Apparently the German officer* had deserted the ship without ,-al tempting to quench the fire caused by the Russian gunn. The Tuilen put a prize crew on board, extinguished the flames and repaired the damages sufficiently to enable the capture to be navigated. After forty hours.' precarious passage, the prize * crew brought the Rodosto safely into harbor at Sebastopol, escorted by the submarine. The .gallant conduct of the Russian submarine speaks for itself, and the commander has been awarded the Cross of St. George for his striking exploit. Rut the behavior pf the German officers seem.! to require some explanation. The circunwtainces were precisely those in which Russian sailors,'like the British, always sink their ship and take their chances of life, which are generally exceedingly small. Yet the German officer s "of this transport were all three found floating on wreckage alongside the ship, which afterwards made a successful voyage of over three hundred miles to the Russian Tiaval base of the Black Sea. Of the shocking gunnery displn- made by the enemy nothing need he said, as it is no novelty. But one would like to know just how the German officers got into the water. Their duty, when they found themselves uaiablc, in spite of superior armament, to cope with the artillery mounted on the submarine, was obviously to sink their ship. Under the present circumstances, it was a very valuable prize, opart from what may have been on board, a point on which we are given no information.

Presumably there were enough Turks on board to resent the destruction of the .ship, and the key to the whole story is doubtless that when affairs got desperate the hated German officers were flung overboard by the Turks themnelves or took to the -water ot their own accord to escape a worse fate. Moreover, the crews of submarines are not calculated on a scale to afford spare prize crews for working 6000-ton ships hundreds of miles into a home port. "While the highest eulogy is due to the submarine crew for their very bold and successful attempt to take a bio- ship by using only the weakest part of submarine armament against the superior artillery of the enemy, I fancy tho most instructive part of this exploit is that the submarine crew put out the fire raging aboard the Rodosto, repaired the damages, pjnd reached a home port safely under escort of the submarine. lam not aware that anything like this has been done anywhere before since submarines took rn active part in warfare.