The U-boat hunters Part 18

That's 90 per cent--yes, maybe 99 per cent--of the submarine game: See that everything is right mechanically with your sub, then get a competent crew and--well, you're ready."

That is for the submariner's point of view. As for the danger from a sh.o.r.e-goer's point of view: Ash.o.r.e we make the mistake, perhaps, of thinking of a submarine as a heavy, logy body fighting always for her life beneath an unfriendly ocean; whereas she is a light-moving easily controlled creature cruising in a rather friendly element.

The ocean is always trying to lift her atop and not hold her under water. A submarine could be sent under with a positive buoyancy so small--that is, with so little more than enough in her tanks to sink her--that an ordinary man standing on the sea bottom could catch her as she came floating down and bounce her up and off merely by the strength of his arms. Consider a submarine under water as we would a toy balloon in the air, say. Weight that toy balloon so that it just falls to earth.

Kick that toy balloon and what does it do? Doesn't it bounce along, and after a few feet fall easily down again, and up and on and down again?

Picture a strong wind driving that toy balloon along the street, and the balloon, as it b.u.mps along, meeting an obstacle: Will the balloon smash itself against the obstacle, or what will it do? What that balloon does is pretty much what a submarine would do if, while running along full speed under water, she suddenly ran into shoal water. She would go b.u.mping along on the bottom; and, meeting an obstacle, if not too high, she would be more likely to bounce over it than to smash herself against it.

But sometimes they do run into things and fetch up?

That is right, they do. Let our naval men tell of the old C plunger--the first cla.s.s of sub in our navy--which hit an excursion steamer down the James River way one time. She was a wooden steamer about 150 feet long, and the C's bow went clear through the steamer's sides. The steamer's engineer was sitting by his levers, reading the sporting page of his favorite daily, when he heard a crash and found himself on the engine-room floor. Looking around, he saw a wedge of steel sticking through the side of his ship. He did not know what it was, but he could see right away it didn't have a friendly look; so he hopscotched across the engine-room floor and up a handy ladder to the deck, taking his a.s.sistant along in his wake. After rescuing the pa.s.sengers it took three tugboats to pry sub and steamer apart.

Our C boat must have hit her a pretty good wallop, for as they fell apart the steamer sank. They ran the little old C up to the navy-yard to see how much she was damaged. Surely after that smash she must be shaken up--her bow torpedo-tubes at least must be out of alignment! But not a thing wrong anywhere; they didn't even have to put her in dry dock. Out and about her business she went next morning.

Later another of the same cla.s.s came nosing up out of the depths, and b.u.mped head on and into a breakwater down that same country--a solid stone wall of a breakwater. What did she do? She bounced off, and, after a look around, also went on about her business.

In the morning our sub up-anch.o.r.ed for her run across the open bay. On the conning-tower was rigged a little bridge of slim bra.s.s stanchions and thin wire-rope rail, with the canvas as high as a man's chin for protection; and away she went in a wind that was still blowing hard enough to drive home-bound Gloucester fishermen down to storm trysails and sea enough to jump an out-bound destroyer of a thousand tons under easy steam to her lower plates whenever she lifted forward.

There was not a soul standing around on the main deck of the destroyer as we pa.s.sed her, nor on her high forward turtle-deck, which was being washed clean; and surely not much comfort being bounced around on transoms in that destroyer below, nor too much dryness on her flying bridge. And yet here was our little sub--full speed and all--heading straight into high-curling seas and making fine weather of it.

Plunging her bow under, and through she'd go; and when she did the seas would go swashing up atop of her make-believe deck and come rolling down her round-top plates and squishing through the hundreds of round holes in her deck sides. But steady? Up on her little bridge we did not half the time have to hold on to her little steel-rope rail lines to keep our balance. She kept on going, hooked-up all the way, seas and wind and all to hinder her, and finished her five-hour run without so much as wetting our coat fronts up on the conning-tower bridge. A great little sea boat--a submarine.

Now for the personnel of the crew. The crew of the sub described were not sailors. The captain was an old seagoer--yes; and it would be a safe guess that the diving-rudder man had a seagoing experience; and one other perhaps; but the fellows who stood by the other things below came straight from the boat works. They had helped, most of them, to build her: which was one good reason for having them along on her trial trip.

And there are thousands of young fellows working around garages and in machine-shops and electric-light plants ash.o.r.e who are the very men needed for submarines. There will always have to be a sailor or two in a submarine; or there should be, for a real sailor is always a handy man to have around--he knows things that n.o.body else knows.

And so, if hanging around there are any young fellows with a taste for adventure and a trend for naval warfare, these submarines look to be the thing. They are only little fellows now, and, as they stand to-day, limited as to range and power of offense, but stay by and grow up with them, and by and by be with them when they will be as big as the battleships and of a radius of action that will stretch from here to--well, as far as they like; drawing their energy from the sun above them, or the sea-tides about them, and not having to see enemy ships to be able to fight them--equipped with devices not now invented but which will serve to feel those other ships and, feeling them, to plot their direction and distance!

Imagine a fleet of those lads battling under water some day--allowing no surface craft to live--feeling each other out and plotting direction and distance as they feel, and then letting go broadsides of torpedoes ten or a hundred times as powerful as anything we now have; and at the same time the air full of war-planes battling above them.

Infants, sea babies, is what they are to-day. But wait till they grow up!