The Diary of a U-boat Commander Part 9

There was nearly an awkward moment last night, or, rather, there was an awkward moment, and nearly an awkward accident. I relieved the navigator at midnight (the pilot is an una.s.suming individual called Siegel) and took on the middle watch. It was blowing about force 4 from the south-west, and a nasty short, lumpy sea was running which caught us just on the port bow. About once every ten seconds she missed her step with the waves and, dipping her nose into it, shovelled up tons of water, which, as the bow lifted, raced aft and, breaking against the gun, flung itself in clouds of spray against the bridge. In a very few minutes every exposed portion of me was streaming with water.

At about 2 a.m. I had turned my back to the sea for a moment, and my thoughts were for an instant in Bruges, when, on facing forward once again I saw a sight which effectually brought me back to earth.

This was the spectacle of two black shapes, evidently steamers, one on either bow, distant, I should estimate, 600 or 700 metres. I had to make a quick decision, and I decided that to fire a torpedo in that sea with any hope of a hit, especially with the boat on surface, was useless; furthermore, that at any moment either of the steamers might sight us from their high bridge and turn and ram.

These thoughts were the work of an instant, and I at once rang the diving bell, and, pushing the look-out before me, in five seconds I was in the conning tower and had the hatch down. I at once proceeded down into the boat, and the first thing that struck my eye was the diving gauge with the needle practically stationary at two metres.

The boat was not going down properly! and for an instant I was rudely shaken, until a cool voice from the wardroom remarked, "Helm hard a-port," an order that was instantly obeyed, and as she began to turn the moving needle on the depth gauge began its journey round the dial. It was the Captain who had spoken. As soon as he heard the diving alarm he was out of his bunk, and a glance at the gauge he has fitted in the wardroom told him we were not sinking rapidly. In an instant he had put his finger on the trouble, which was that we were almost head on to the sea, with the result that he had given the order as stated above, which, bringing us beam on to the sea, had caused her to dive with ease. He is efficiency itself!

As I explained to him what had happened, the noise of propellers at varying distances from us overhead led him to state his belief that we had run into a convoy homeward bound to Southampton from the Atlantic.

He approved of my actions in every particular, save only in my omission to bring the boat away from the sea as I began to dive.

This morning we are beginning to get the full force of what is evidently going to be a south-westerly gale of some violence. The seas are getting larger as we debouch into the Atlantic. This looks bad for business.

At the moment we are practically hove to on the surface, with the port engine just jogging to keep her head on to sea and the starboard ticking round to give her a long, slow charge of 200 amps.

The wind is force 7-8 and a very big sea is running which makes it entirely impossible to open the conning tower hatch; the engine is getting its air through the special mushroom ventilator, which is apparently not designed to supply both the boat's requirements and those of the engine; the whole ventilator gets covered with sea every now and then, during which period until the baffle drains get the water away no air can get in, so the engine has a good suck at the air in the boat, the result of all this being a slight vacuum in the boat. It is a very unpleasant sensation, and made me very sick. This is really a form of sickness due to the rarefied air.

I had a great surprise when I looked at the barograph this morning as the needle had gone right off the paper at the bottom, and at first glance I thought we had struck a tropical depression of the first magnitude, which, flouting all the laws of meteorology, had somehow found its way to the English Channel; but the engineer explained to me that, as I have already stated, the low atmospheric pressure in the boat was due to the conning-tower hatch being shut down.

I have discovered that Von Weissman is a martyr to sea-sickness--all day he has been lying down as white as a sheet and subsisting on milk tablets and sips of brandy; yet such is the man's inflexibility of will that he forces himself to make a tour of inspection right round the boat every six hours, night and day. It is this will to conquer which has made Germans unconquerable, though "Come the four corners of the world in arms" against us, as the great poet says.

We are, of course, keeping watch from inside the conning tower; it is, at all events, dry, but as to seeing anything one might as well be looking out through a small gla.s.s window from inside a breakwater! To bed till 4 a.m.

A most unprofitable day. I grudge every day away from Zoe on which we do nothing. This morning about noon the gale blew itself out, but a heavy confused sea continued to run.

At 2 p.m. we saw a most tantalizing spectacle. A big tank steamer, fully 600 feet long and of probably 17,000 tons burthen hove in sight, escorted by two destroyers. To attack with the gun was impossible, as we could only keep the conning tower open when stern to sea, and in any case the two destroyers prevented any surface work. We tried to get in for an attack, but we had not seen her in time, and the best we could do was to get within 3,000 yards, at which range it would have been absurd to have wasted a torpedo, the chances of hitting being 100 to 1 against, even if the torpedo had run properly in the sea that was on.

I had a good look at her through the foremost periscope in between the waves, and it maddened me to see all that oil, doubtless from Tampico for the Grand Fleet, going safely by. The destroyers were having a bad time of it, crashing into the sea like porpoises, their funnels white with salt, and their bridges enveloped in sheets of water and spray. They little thought that, barely a mile away, amidst the tumbling, crested waves a German eye was watching them!

There is no doubt these d.a.m.ned British have pluck, for it was the last sort of weather in which one would have expected to find destroyers at sea, and yet I suppose they do this throughout the winter.

After all, one would expect them to be tough fellows--they are of Teutonic stock--though by their bearing one might imagine that the Creator made an Englishman and then Adam.

Let's hope we get some decent weather to-morrow. I have just been refreshing my memory by reading of what I wrote in the book, concerning the day in the forest with the adorable girl. There is an exquisite pleasure in transporting the mind into such memories of the past when the body is in such surroundings as the present, if only I could will myself to dream of her!

A fine day in every sense of the word. The weather has been and remains excellent, and I have been present at my first sinking. It was absurdly commonplace. At 10 a.m. this morning a column of smoke crept upwards from the southern horizon.

Von Weissman steered towards it on the surface until two masts and the top of a funnel appeared. We dived and proceeded slowly under water on a southerly course.

Half an hour pa.s.sed and Von Weissman brought the boat up to periscope depth and had a look. He called to me to come and see, an invitation I accepted with alacrity.

With natural excitement I looked through the periscope and there she was, unconsciously ambling to her doom like a fat sheep.

She was a steamer (British) of about 4,000 tons, slugging home at a steady ten knots, but she was destined to come to her last mooring place ahead of schedule time!

We dipped our periscope and I went forward to the tubes. Five minutes elapsed and the order instrument bell rang, the pointer flicking to "Stand by." I personally removed the firing gear safety pin and put the repeat to "Ready." A breathless pause, then a slight shake and destruction was on its way, whilst I realized by the angle of the boat that Weissman was taking us down a few metres.

That shows his coolness, he didn't even trouble to watch his shot.

Anxiously I watch the second hand of my stop watch. Weissman had told me the range would be about 500 metres--30 seconds--31--32--33--has he missed?--34--35--3--A dull rumble comes through the water and the whole boat shakes. Hurra! we have hit, and the order "Surface" comes along the voice pipe.

The cheerful voice of the blower is heard, evacuating the tanks; I run to the conning tower and closely follow Weissman up the ladder. At last I am on the bridge. There she is! What a sight!

I feel that I shall never forget what she looked like, though, if all goes well, I shall see many another fine ship go to her grave.

But she was my first; I felt the same sensation when, as a boy, I shot my first roe-deer in the Black Forest, one instant a living thing beautiful to perfection, the next my rifle spoke and a bleeding carcase lay beneath the fine trees. So with this ship. I am a sailor, and to every sailor every ship that floats has, as it were, a soul, a personality, an ent.i.ty; to carry the a.n.a.logy further, a merchant craft is like some fat beast of utility, an ox, a cow, or a sheep, whilst a warship is a lion if she is a battleship, a leopard if she is a light cruiser, etc.; in all cases worthy game.

But War has little use for sentimentality! and in my usual wandering manner I see that I have meandered from the point and quite forgotten what she did look like.

What I saw was this:

I saw that the steamer had been hit forward on the starboard side. The upper portion of the stem piece was almost down to the water level, her foremost hold was obviously filling rapidly. Her stern was high out of water, the red ensign of England flapping impotently on the ensign staff. Her propeller, which was still slowly revolving, thrashed the water, and this heightened the impression that I was watching the struggles of a dying animal. The propeller was revolving in spasmodic jerks, due, I imagine, to the fast failing steam only forcing the cranks over their dead centres with an effort.

A boat was being lowered with haste from the two davits abreast the funnel on one side, but when she was full of men and, due to the angle of the ship, well down by the bow, someone inboard let go the foremost fall or else it broke, for the bows of the boat fell downwards and half a dozen figures were projected in grotesque att.i.tudes into the sea. For a few seconds the boat swung backwards and forwards, like a pendulum.

When she came to rest, hanging vertically downwards from the stern, I noticed that a few men were still clinging like flies to her thwarts. Truly, anything is better than the Atlantic in winter. Meanwhile the ship had ceased to sink as far as outward signs went.

I mentioned this to Von Weissman, who was at my side with a slight smile on his face, amused doubtless at the eagerness with which I watched every detail of this, to me, novel tragedy. He answered me that I need not worry, that she was being supported by an air lock somewhere forward, that the water was slowly creeping into her and her boilers would probably soon go.

This remarkable man was absolutely correct.

There was an interval of about five minutes, during which another boat, evidently successfully lowered from the other side, came round her stern, picked up one or two men from the water and also collected the survivors in the hanging boat; then the steamer suddenly sank another two feet, there was a dull rumbling, as of heavy machinery falling from a height, a m.u.f.fled report, a cloud of steam and smoke, a sucking noise and then a pool in the water, in the middle of which odd bits of wood and other buoyant debris kept on bobbing up. Nothing else!

No! I am wrong, there were two other things: a U-boat, representing the might of Germany, and a whaler with perhaps twenty men in it, representing the plight of England!

As she went I felt hushed and solemn, it was an impressive moment; a slight chuckle came from imperturbable Weissman; he had seen too many go to think much of it, and he gave an order for the helm to be put over, so that we might approach the whaler.

They were horribly overcrowded, and were engaged in trying to sort themselves into some sort of order. We pa.s.sed by them at 50 yards and Weissman, seizing his megaphone, shouted in English: "Goodbye! steer west for America!" A cold horror gripped my heart. It was an awful moment. I dare not write the thoughts that entered my head.

I turned away my head and faced aft, that he should not see my face; looking back I saw the whaler rocking dangerously in our wash, and then a commotion took place in her stern, from which a huge bearded man arose and, shaking his fist in our direction, shouted something or other before his companions pulled him down.

Von Weissman heard and his lips narrowed in. I held my breath in suspense, but he evidently decided against what he had been about to do, for with the order, "Course north! ten knots," he went below.

I remained on deck watching the rapidly receding whaler through my gla.s.ses until she was a mere speck--alone on the ocean, 150 miles from land, Then the navigator came up, and with strangely mixed feelings of exultant joy and depressing sorrow I went below.

Von Weissman was in the wardroom. I watched him un.o.bserved. He was humming a tune to himself and had just completed putting a green dot on the chart. This done he lay back on the settee and closed his eyes--strange, insoluble man!

For long hours I could not forget that whaler; I see it now as I write. I suppose I shall get used to it all. What would Zoe say?

The most wonderful thing about man is that he can stand the strain of his own invention of modern war!

I am rather tired to-night, but must just jot down briefly what has taken place to-day, as there is never any time in the daylight hours.