COMBATING SUBMARINES

Waikato Times, Volume 87, Issue 13272, 30 August 1916, Page 5

COMBATING SUBMARINES

THE WAY OF THE NAVY

WONDERFUL PATHOL SYSTEM. GERMANS NONPLUSSED. .MYSTERIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS iHigh Commissioner's Cable.) Received August 3d, 8.50 a.m. LONDON, August 2<J. Mr Allied Noyes, in a second article, stafies ( that jor many months a certain strip' on the north African coast was strewn with wreckage and men's bodies from merchant ships of the Allied and Neutral Powers who met Gorman submarines. We despatched a flotilla of trawlers and drifters there and that coast to-day is as Clean as any in Britain. On one occasion one squadron was withdrawn to the mouth of the Adriatic in order to deal with unexpected trouble in the Aegean Sea. The submarines had promptly emerged from unguarded gates, and more wreckage and dead strewed the unwatched shores. British longshore fishermen may be found patrolling or frozen in the White Sea; others are always patrolling the coast of Bulgaria. The sinking of unarmed fishing boats was one of Fritz's favourite amusements early in the war. Mr Noyes relates a typical true story recorded in the official log books as to how a submarine surprised the trawler Victoria on a fishing bank, 130 miles from land. The trawler took a forlorn hope and tore homewards. One after another shells from the submarine killed her crew until only four were left. The submarine picked up the survivors, and the commander examined them singly concerning the patrol system. But they all refused to answer. Mr Noyes continues: "The sinking of these fishing boats suddenly ceased except on rare occasions, and the fact is now acknowledged that when a submarine sees one It Submerges or Bolts. Details must not be given, but I may give one of six. There was once a simple fishing boat shooting us, nxis and a submarine gave the men five minutes to leave. Immediately there was a panic aboard the boat which had been part of the drill in port. Two of the crew went down on their knees for mercy. Others hauled >at a boat like men possessed." Passing over the details again, he says, "The resultant picture showed a dummy boat on deck in four pieces, and a fine big gun was levelled on the submarine with the navy's gunners in attendance. Two Germans pleading for mercy, an abolished submarine, and oil upon the troubled waters was all that was left." "The war," he says, "has made many queer transformations. What looks like a battleship may be a comparatively harmless thing resembling Noah's Ark, but' German Warships Run from a boat as harmless as a mouse. They are confronting a 'most terrible bluff' in this war gamble. Passengers on, American and other neutral liners heave sighs of content on sighting a British man-o'-war, which is not a man-o'-war at all while all around the sea is # dotted with insignificant craft."