MURDER LOGS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LII, Issue 117, 22 May 1918, Page 2

MURDER LOGS.

COLD-BLOODED U-BOATS.

JEERING AT DROWNING MEN

Vivid pictures of the murderous war waged by the submarine pirates in then* invisible'craft on our Merchant Service arc contained in a series of depositions and statements which the writer of this article has been permitted to examine at the Admiralty. These statements are made by officers and men of torpedoed ships. For obvious reasons the names are "camouflaged."

Here is one deposition •. "At 3 a.m. got message Ow) lorpeVa> t\%--MMi M ordering { the hehn a-wort. Almost mimeu\u\.\iVv sighted a submarine right abend coming from starboard past. It was a very big one, and there were four or five men around the coiinig-towenr. I put the helm hard a-starboard and tried to rum her, hut missed her by feet, as I heard the men shouting aboard) of her. As soon as I saw I had missed her I sung out the gun's crew, 'Look out close on port side,' and I put the helm hard-a-porfc to bring the enemy astern. "Almost immediately afterwards I heard the report of my gun, and on turning round saw a big bright flare-up in the water on the port quarter, like a big explosion. . . About ten minutes afterwards I noticed wbat appeared to be the wake of a torpedo passing along the port side. Observed the bow and stern wake of a submarine on the port quarter steering parallel to us and coming on at a good speed. Fired at her but made no hit- Ordered 'Cease fire, as I hoped to escape in the darkness. At 6.20 torpedoed and sunk {with heavy loss of life). In this instance two submarines must have ben acting in support of one another. No. 1, the vessel hit, was laTge, 300 ft long, with ut big connmg-tower, two high masts, and one large gun. No. 2, which fired the fatal torpedo, was 150 ft long, with raised centre, «!•.••• v. green conning-tower only 7ft high. id masts, and officers of Austrian appearance. , . ■ j In another case, after the ship nad been torpedoed, abouS midnight the boats capsized;. The narrator says: "Swam to upturnpd boat. After we had been on the upturned boat fo r some minutes a submarine appeared, » came up close to tne port boat and hailed us to come on board, but was told that it was impossible as the boats were capsized. , "The submarine came to the starboard boat after wc had been m the boat about ten minutes, and came so close that we were touching the side ol the submarine. We asked him to upright the boat for us, but no answer was given. The submarine then went ahead and put his helm hard over, with the result that the whole of the men on the upturned boat were thrown into the water, and the boat sent under. Ihe submarine then steamed away. J-hc-se in the submarine must have heard that there was a man under the upturned boat, as they could easily hear him knocking." In one case we find a submarine using a searchlight, the only instance in these depositions. Six men from a torpedoed ship had struggled to an overturned boat. One oi them states: 'The submarine came close to ns and flashed her searchlight on the boat and on those m the water, and after jeering at them made off towards the west. The submarine was sienalling with her Morse lamp and was answered by flashes some distance awav to the west." Robbery of the British is common. After one vessel had been torpedoed at 2 a.m. "the master was searched and £22 ss, with clothes, watch, ■> and 'matches, were taken from him. An officer stated, that no food was left m the submarine, which had been six weeks out from Heligoland. The commanding officer and No. 1 (his first officer) spoke very good English and mentioned that food in Germany was very short. The (British} master asked how Hamburg and Bremen were looking. No. 2 answered 'Very depressed,' and that >\ e should not have been at war with England.' " . , If here and there we find that coloured crews or seamen showed signs of panic, so that sortie Filipinos preferred to jump into the water and perish rather than face the horrors of an open boat in winter weather, there is one recurrent note in these wonderful memorials of the Merchant Service: 'All the crew behaved well. and _ smartly : "All hands showed courage-" It is a great and glorious service, though it is still without the 'medal©' and the uniforms which it has so abundantly earned the right to -wear.