THE UNITED STATES

IN THE WORLD WAR

CHAPTER I

SUBMARINES OFF OUR COAST

Two visits to our ports by the merchant submarine Deutschland, one by the armed undersea boat U-53, and the torpedoing by her of five ships off Nantucket Island in the autumn of 1916 made it certain, now we were at war, that sooner or later our Atlantic coast would be the scene of this form of German frightfulness. No surprise, therefore, was felt when, about the middle of May, 1918, rumors of the presence of a submarine off the capes of Virginia became current.

The master of a British steamship which reached an Atlantic port May 22 reported that he had seen a submarine one hundred and fifty miles off the Virginia capes, and had fired five shots at her. The captain of a Clyde Line steamer which reached port a few days later had sighted three derelicts with cargoes untouched, sides torn open, and crews gone. One, a large four-masted schooner, was floating with her starboard side up, and had a great hole well below the water line. Another, found in latitude 37° north, longitude 75° west, was half submerged with bow down and stern high in air. Four small fishing vessels were standing by, examining her. A search for the missing crews, made by the Clyde liner, revealed no trace of them. Near the wreck were floating a few unmarked cork-ring life boats. Apparently the vessels had been hurriedly abandoned. Another, the three-masted schooner Edna, bound for Havana from Philadelphia with a cargo of

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gasoline, sighted off the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, was towed by the Clyde liner to a point off the Delaware Capes and there abandoned. The report of the British captain that he had fired at a submarine was now believed to explain the mystery surrounding the three derelicts. Clearly, they had been destroyed by some undersea enemy craft off our coast, though the Navy Department officials declared there were no signs of a submarine on this side of the Atlantic, and that the British captain had probably fired at a bit of wreckage or some other floating object. Perhaps it was a whale, for a captain of a steamship which arrived at Mobile reported that he sighted a large one in the Gulf of Mexico. May 28 the Edna, with her decks level with the water, was towed into port by a tug and beached on the mud flats in the Delaware River off Port Richmond, and later was brought to Philadelphia and repaired. The fate of her crew of twenty-four was still as great a mystery as ever, and in hopes that they might be in life boats at sea, wireless messages were sent out to all vessels asking if they had picked up the men.

While the mystery of the derelicts was still unsolved, the Hamburg-American liner President Lincoln, one of the vessels taken over after we entered the war, and then used as a transport, was torpedoed and sunk May 31, while on her way from Brest to our country. Aboard were 715 persons, including the ship's officers and crew, and a few army officers and soldiers on their way home. Three officers and twenty-three seamen lost their lives.

At eight o'clock in the morning, as the President Lincoln with three other transports was running west, the convoying destroyers having left them the previous evening, she was struck by three torpedoes fired from a submerged submarine, the U-90, which had trailed the transports during the entire night. A few minutes after nine all hands were in life boats, or on rafts, and at half-past nine the President Lincoln turned over and sank. First Lieutenant Isaacs was taken prisoner,

carried to Wilhelmshaven, sent to the camp at Karlsruhe, and finally to Villingen, from which he escaped to Switzerland.1

And now a Brazilian steamship reached an Atlantic port where the passengers stated that, when entering the Gulf Stream off the Florida coast, a wireless warning to look out for submarines caused the captain to make a wide détour. Sir Leslie Probyn, Governor General of Jamaica, one of the passengers, said that before leaving the Barbados he had heard that a German submarine had been sighted as early as May 16 near Bermuda. All doubt was put at rest June 3, when a Canadian-Pacific liner reached New York, and her captain announced that five vessels had been torpedoed off the Jersey coast. According to his story, his vessel was one of a slow convoy when, about seven o'clock on the evening of June 2, a wireless was received stating, "We are attacked by a submarine." The name of the vessel and her exact locality were given, but were not made known by the captain. In a few minutes came the words, "We have been torpedoed." He thereupon left the convoy and made all speed for New York. Half an hour later, as he sped through the darkness, a third message was received, reading, "We are attacked," and giving the name and location of a second tanker, and finally a fourth message from the same vessel, "We are sinking, S. O. S." Fuller details of the work of the submarine were brought to New York, on the morning of June 3, by the steamship Bristol, with eleven of the crew of the four-masted schooner Edward H. Cole, sunk on the evening of June 2, some fifty miles southeast of Barnegat Light, New Jersey. The captain of the Cole re ported that a U-boat appeared suddenly, raised the German naval flag, circled about his schooner, and fired a shot across her bow; that after he came about a boat put off from the submarine; that her commander boarded the Cole, and said, "Captain, you and your men have seven and a half minutes to get into your boats;" and that just as they put off the submarine

Lieutenant Isaacs has told his very interesting adventures in a little book, "Prisoner of the U-90.”’

commander called out, "You will find the Jersey or Delaware coast over there. It isn't far." The Cole was then sunk by bombs. Before she was out of sight the U-boat was seen to sink a steamship believed to be the Carolina, of the Porto Rico line. Towards eight o'clock the crew of the Cole was picked up by the Bristol.

On the afternoon of June 3 an American steamship came to port with forty-eight survivors of vessels destroyed by a submarine. They proved to be from the steamship Winnieconnie, and the schooners Edna, Hattie Dunn, Hauppaug, and Isabel B. Wiley, picked up some twenty-five miles from Barnegat. About half of them had been prisoners on board the submarine for eight days. The Hattie Dunn left New York on May 23, and when two days out met a submarine displaying the letters A.B., meaning stop at once. After the order was obeyed, a party came aboard, gave the crew ten minutes to get into a boat, put an armed guard over them, and took them, seven in number, to the submarine, which at once gave chase to the Hauppaug, five miles away. Her crew was also taken to the U-boat. Later in the afternoon the Edna was overhauled, and bombed, and her crew made captive. Continuing her course, the submarine, on Sunday, June 2, captured and sank the Wiley and the Winnieconnie, and putting all the prisoners into her boats, with water and bread, left them to shift for themselves. Next came the Texel, a Dutch steamship of 7,000 tons, operated by the United States Shipping Board, and carrying 42,000 pounds of sugar. Shortly after four o'clock on Sunday afternoon, when the Texel was sixty miles from New York harbor, a submarine suddenly arose off her bow, fired three rounds of shrapnel, sent a party aboard, ordered the crew to their boats, and sank her. Towards midnight, on Monday, the thirty-six survivors, exhausted by their long row, landed near the lighthouse at Atlantic City. More horrible still was the experience of the passengers and crew of the Carolina, destroyed about six o'clock on Sunday afternoon by the same U-boat, which, two hours before, sank the Texel. From the conflicting stories told