SUBMARINE PIRACY.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLII, Issue 11470, 23 February 1918, Page 5

SUBMARINE PIRACY.

STATEMENT BY JELUGQE. WHAT THE NAVY IS DOING, London, Feb. 21. Admiral Jollicoe, speaking as the' guest ot the aldwcyh Club, said that destroyers were the great antidote to submarine piracy. Ho said we were short of destroyorshit the'oatbreak of war, as wo thought too much a boat Dreadnoughts, hut the Gormans fear our destroyers above anything else. The people must not wonder if enemy destroyors’got past our patrols occasionally or even frequently. If they came often and fought “tip and run” raids, they would get caught as they were by the Broke and the Swift. The visibility of the enemy destroyers at night could he represented by a pin point on a big map of the North Sea. “You do not hear of the visits we pay to German waters, ” he said, “but the Germans know about them. There are no targets for our submarines, the enemy only come out once u year, and it is a boring business waiting for an annual shot.” He believed, lie «aid, that the navy had sunk 50 per cent, of the German submarines in the North Sea, the Atlantic, and the Arctic Sea.

THE NEXT FEW MONTHS. OPTIMISM UKTIMLY. London, Feb. 8. ® Lord Jellicoe, late First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, in a speech delivered at Hull on Friday, said;— “I am afraid we are in for a bad time for a few months, but about august, if the nation bolds out, I believe that we shall bo able to say that the'subniurine menace has been hilled."' The reason that our shipping losses are heavy in the Irish Sea is that there is shoal water on both sides, and the first intimation of the presence of the enemy is usually the sinking of our vessels. We hunt it down, but it stays on the bottom until it is necessary for our destroyers to return to port to refuel. The submarine then resumes its pirate’s career.

“Lord Fisher prepared a memorandum in 1911 stating that if Ger m ny went to war she would use submarines against our merchantmen. ’ That memorandum went to the Admiralty, hut nobody in a responsible position agreed that Germany would do such a thing. Lord Fisher was right then, as he has been right in many cases. Gfcourse, the British Navy was not prepared to deal with submarines. If Lord Fisher’s words had been believed there would have been time to adopt measures which would have effectually stopped the submarines from getting out. This is the only way to deal with them. It is a superhuman task to save merchantmen, when submarines are out, as the submarines can steam under water for 24 hours, and lie under water for another 48 hours. It is similarly difficult to keep submarines to their ports as the water within a PKI-mile radius of Heligoland allows submarines to ‘sit’ cm the bottom. If detected on the surface they dee to the bottom and await night, when they can continue their course unseen.

'‘l have asked Sir Lloyd George often enough not to make optimistic speeches about submarines, for they are always followed by a long list of .losses. The Cabinet can reserve its optimistic speeches until August. SUBMARINE SINKINGS. FLENCH AND ITALIAN FIGURES. London, Feb. 21. The French shipping returns for the past week are:— Arrivals .... 019 Departures .... 870 Sinkings .... nil Unsuccessfully attacked .... 3 Italian returns show that two steamers were sunk.