U-BOATS IMPRISONED.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14587, 14 December 1917, Page 2

U-BOATS IMPRISONED.

CAUGHT-IN THE ICE

Something "iventw^ng in the early days of Germany's submarine campaign ; thac is certain, writes Mr Archibald Kurd In the "Fortnightly; Review." What it was the Germans: have not', of course, revealed, though: probably the explanation is very gen-, orally known throughout the Empire, j We may find possibly a clue to the mys-! Tory in a letter-which appeared in the' •'Bystander" of ,April 12 from its' Copenhagen, correspondent, quoting ' Knud Rasmussen, the Danish explorer, in reference to the imprisonment of 30, German submarines in the Sound. The explorer stated that the bouts were.; trapped in the narrow part of the j Sound, just above Helsingborg, two, days after the new. submarine campaign began. They "were all making north from the Baltic base, evidently on their' way to the "war zone," when the east wind blew the loose ice together, and as it was freezing hard —"12deg. Celsius at least" —soon all the submarines were in a solid pack. They were moving with only their periscopes np. Some of them smelt danger in time and managed to rise. These got wedged in_wi.th tleir decks showing. Others were -caught-.under the ice, only their periscopes showing, Rasmussen continued:— "I myself walked across the ice to them, and my mate even tried to look down a periscope. Then the ice-slip— -

that is, loose ice, which always drifts under the pack—snapped the periscope lubes. The submarines perished miserably. Some, after threo days imprison-

ment, tried to get nway under the ice. I know that seven were smashed in and all on board drowned."

Tlie explore:]- added that he had told Prince Harold oi: Denmark about the occurrence. Whether that, is or is not the complete explanation of the- miscarriage of German hopes we shall probably not know until alter the war ; but at any rate some detail in the enemy*: carefully.; elaborated preparations, extending over- a period of many months, went, wrong, with the. result that not only were German hopes not realised, but they were shattered. i