A

WITH THE AMERICAN

SUBMARINES

HENRY B. BESTON

LONDON day of soft and smoky skies, darkened every now and then by capricious and intrusive little showers, was drawing to a close in a twilight of gold and gray. Our table stood in a bay of plate-glass windows overlooking the Embankment close a view by Cleopatra's Needle. We watched the little of the Emdouble-decked tram-cars gliding by, the opposing, interthreading streams of pedestrians, and a fleet of coal barges coming up the river, solemn as a cloud.

bankment.

་

Behind us lay, splendid and somewhat theatric, the mottled marble, stiff white napery, and bright silver of a fashionable dining-hall. Only a few guests were at hand. At our little table sat the captain of a submarine who was then in London for a few days on richly merited leave, a distinguished young officer of the "mother ship" accompanying our underwater craft, and myself. It is impossible to be long with submarine folk without realizing that they are a people apart, differing from the Submarine rest of the naval personnel even as their vessels people differ. A man must have something individual apart. to his character to volunteer for the service, and every officer is a volunteer. An extraordinary power of quick decision, a certain keen, resolute look, a certain carriage; submarine folk are such men as all of us like to have by our side in any great trial or crisis of our life.

Copyright, Atlantic Monthly, October, 1918.

folk are a

How the submarines

Atlantic.

Guests began to come by twos and threespretty girls in shimmering dresses, young army officers with wound-stripes and clumsy limps. A faint murmur of conversation rose, faint and continuous as the murmur of a distant stream.

Because I requested him, the captain told me of the crossing of the submarines. It was the epic of an heroic journey.

"After each boat had been examined in decrossed the tail, we began to fill them with supplies for the voyage. The crew spent days manœuvring cases of condensed milk, cans of butter, meat, and chocolate, down the hatchways-food which the boat swallowed up as if she had been a kind of steel stomach. Until we had it all neatly and tightly stowed away, the Z looked like a corner grocery store. Then, early one December morning, we pulled out of the harbor. It wasn't very cold, merely raw and damp, and it was misty dark. I remember looking at the winter stars riding high just over the meridian. The port behind us was still and dead, but a handful of navy-folk had come to one of the wharves to see us off. Yes, there was something of a stir-you know, the kind of stir that's made when boats go to sea: shouted orders, the plash of dropped cables, vagrant noises. It didn't take a great time to get under way; we were ready, waiting for the word to go. The flotilla-mother-ship, tugs and allwas out to sea long before the dawn. You would have liked the picture: the immense stretch of the grayish, winter-stricken sea, the little covey of submarines running awash, the gray mother-ship going ahead, as casually as an excursion steamer, into the featureless dawn.

The

mothership and submarines

leave.

"The weather was wonderful for two days, -a touch of Indian summer on December's ocean; then, on the night of the third day, we

ran into a blow, the worst I ever saw in my life. A storm-oh, boy!"

One could see

He paused for an instant. memories living in the fine, resolute eyes. The broken noises of the restaurant, which had seemingly died away while he spoke, crept back again to one's ears. A waiter dropped a clanging fork—

storm

night.

"A storm. Never remember anything like it. A terrific A perfect terror. Everybody realized that any comes on attempt to keep together would be hopeless. toward And night was coming on. One by one the submarines disappeared into that fury of wind and driving water, the mother-ship, because she was the largest vessel in the flotilla, being the last we saw. We snatched her last signal out of the teeth of the gale, and then she was gone, swallowed up in the storm. So we were alone.

water the

"We got through the night somehow or other. The next morning the ocean was a dirty browngray, and knots and wisps of cloud were tearing by close over the water. Every once in a Rough while a great hollow-bellied wave would come next day. rolling out of the hullabaloo and break thundering over us. On all the boats the lookout on the bridge had to be lashed in place, and every once in a while a couple of tons of water would come tumbling past him. Nobody at the job stayed dry for more than three minutes; a bathing-suit would have been more to the point than oilers.

"Shaken, you ask? No, not very bad: a few assorted bruises and a wrenched thumb; though poor Jonesy on the Z-3 had a wave knock him up against the rail and smash in a couple of ribs. But no being sick for him; he kept to his feet and carried on in spite of the pain, in spite of being in a boat which regis- The boat tered a roll of seventy degrees. I used to registers a watch the old hooker rolling under me. You've seventy never been on a submarine when she's rolling,

roll of

degrees.

provides

-talk about rolling-oh, boy! We all say seventy degrees, because that's as far as our instruments register. There were times when I almost thought she was on her way to make a complete revolution. You can imagine what it was like inside. To begin with, the oily air was none too sweet, because every time we opened a hatch we shipped enough water to make the old hooker look like a start at a swimming tank; and then she was lurching so continuously and violently that to move six feet was an expedition. The men were wonderful-wonderful! Each man at his allotted

task, and-what's that English word?-carryThe cook ing on. Our little cook couldn't do a thing with food after the stove, might as well have tried to cook on a a fashion. miniature earthquake; but he saw that all of us had something to eat-doing his bit, game as could be."

The submarines run on the

He paused again. The Embankment was fading away in the dark. A waiter appeared, and drew down the thick, light-proof curtains. "Yes, the men were wonderful-wonderful. And there wasn't very much sickness. Let's see, how far had I got?-Since it was impossible to make any headway, we lay to for fortyeight hours. The deck began to go the second morning, some of the plates being ripped right off. And blow-well, as I told you in the beginning, I never saw anything like it. disk of the sea was just one great ragged mass of foam being hurled through space by a wind screaming past with the voice and force of a million express trains.

The

"Perhaps you are wondering why we didn't submerge. We simply couldn't use up our elecsurface to tricity. It takes oil and running on the sur face to create the electric power, and we had a long, long journey ahead. Then ice began to form on the superstructure, and we had to get out a crew to chop it off. It was something

save electricity.

1

of a job; there wasn't much to hang on to, and the waves were still breaking over us. But we freed her of the danger, and she went on

"We used to wonder where the other boys were, in the midst of all the racket. One ship was drifting toward the New England coast, her compass smashed to flinders; others had run for Bermuda, others were still at sea.

weather

"Then we had three days of good easterly Good wind. By jingo, but the good weather was at last. great! Were we glad to have it?-oh, boy! We had just got things shipshape again when we had another blow, but this second one was by no means as bad as the first. And after that we had another spell of decent weather. The crew used to start the phonograph and keep it going all day.

"The weather was so good that I decided to keep right on to the harbor which was to be our base over here. I had enough oil, plenty of water; the only possible danger was a shortage of provisions. So I put us all on a ration, arranging to have the last grand meal on Christmas day. Can you imagine Christmas on a little storm-bumped submarine some hun- Reaching dred miles off the coast? A day or two more a friendly and we ran calmly into-shall we say, 'deleted' harbor?

coast.

rejoice at

"Hungry, dirty; oh, so dirty! We hadn't had The men any sort of bath or wash for about three weeks; food and we all were green-looking from having been baths. cooped up so long, and our unshaven greasestreaked faces would have upset a dinosaur. The authorities were wonderfully kind, and looked after us and our men in the very best style. I thought we could never stop eating, and a real sleep-oh, boy!"

"Did you fly the flag as you came in?" I asked.

"You bet we did!" answered the captain, his keen, handsome face lighting at the memory.