The U-boat hunters Part 9

One dark night she was struck amidships by a 2,000-ton British sloop-of-war. In crowded quarters and steaming without lights those little collisions are bound to occur.

This one was. .h.i.t amidships--bam!--and amidships is a bad place for a destroyer to be hit--her big engine and boiler-room compartment lie amidships.

This one of ours was. .h.i.t so hard that n.o.body aboard ever thought she would stay up. She did go down till her deck was flush with the water's edge, but there she stayed; and her crew, climbing back aboard, took a hawser from the sloop-of-war, which towed her back to port. She was a fine heartening sight coming in. If she could come back, why worry about minor mishaps?

One of them--the 343 say--had performed her duty, which was to see a small convoy to a point well on toward a large port, and was returning to the naval base.

She was in no great rush, and, it happening to be smooth water, which is a rare thing up this way at this time of the year, she stopped for a little needed gun practice.

There was no more thought than usual of U-boats. n.o.body would have been surprised if one popped up--it was a coast where they had been regularly operating--but no one was particularly expecting one.

Destroyers are bad medicine if you do not get to them quickly, and lately the U-boats seemed to care more to get merchant ships; but this day the lookouts were not loafing on their job on that account.

The 343 got through with her target practice, and, except for a few gunners' mates still coddling their pet guns, the crew were taking it easy around deck; and also, because of the smooth sea, the ship was making easy weather of it toward port.

Seeing a periscope is oftentimes a matter of luck. When they stay up it is easy enough, but when they are porpoising, shooting it up for just a look around, you have to be looking right at one. What they first saw on the 343 was the wake of this torpedo, coming on at a forty-knot clip for the waist of the ship.

The commander of the 343 was on the bridge at the time and saw the wake almost with the cry of the lookout. The wake was then pretty handy to the ship, and the torpedo itself would be fifty feet or so ahead of the wake.

There was no getting away from it then. The only hope was to take it somewhere else than amidships. Engine and boiler compartments were amidships. If it struck her there they might as well call it taps for all hands. So the commander put the wheel hard over--to take it on his quarter, where there was also a chance that it would pa.s.s under her.

Torpedoes generally strike twelve to fifteen feet under water, but just before this one could make the 343 it broached--came to the surface of the water--but without slacking her forty-knot speed. It was unusual and spectacular. The sun shone on the polished sides of her as she leaped from the sea.

She struck the 343 above her water-line and pretty well aft. Those on her deck who saw her make that last leap out of water hoped for the best, though waiting for the worst. But the resulting explosion was nothing tremendous--so officers and men say, and so adding a little more data to U-boat history. The bark of one of their own little 4-inch guns was more impressive. There was a flame and an up-shooting cloud of black smoke, followed instantly by another explosion, that of their own depth charges, of which there were two of 300 pounds each in the stern. Those who had any thoughts about it at the time were sure that if the torpedo did not get them the depth charges would.

When they went to look they found that thirty-odd feet of the after end of their ship had been blown clean off. The torpedo had hit them on the port side, and the wreckage was hanging from the starboard quarter. Of the after gun only the base was left; they never did see any of the rest of it. The gunner's mate, one of those men who love to keep a gun in shape, was swabbing it out at the time, and they never saw anything of him again.

The chief petty officers' quarters were farthest aft on the 343. The after bulkhead to their compartment was blown in, leaving the inside of the ship open to sea and sun. Fourteen men were in there at the time, lounging around or in their bunks. Many of them were bruised and all were shook up, but they all made the deck. They do not know how they made it, but they did. The after hatchway to the deck was closed with tumbling wreckage, so they must have gone up the midship hatch.

One man taking a nap in the cot bunk farthest aft had a part of the bulkhead blown past him. It cut off a corner of his cot and broke one of his legs, and blew him into the pa.s.sageway in pa.s.sing. Landing in the pa.s.sageway he sprained his other ankle. He is not quite sure how he made the deck without help, but he did make it, and he says he beat some of them to it at that.

The man who was working on the after gun with the gunner's mate who was blown up, saw the shining torpedo leaping in the sun and heading straight for his part of the ship. If he did not do something he knew he was in for it, so he began to take long high leaps forward. The explosion came while he was in the air on his third long high jump. All he remembers happening to him after that was of an ocean of water flowing over him, and he not minding it at all. When he came to, the doctor was looking him over for broken bones, but did not find any.

After the doctor left him he sat up and said: "I bet I've been as near to a torpedo exploding and getting away with it as anybody in the world, hah?" And "Yes," said one of his shipmates, "and I bet you made a world's record for three long high jumps, without a run, too. You sure did travel, boy."

When it was all over the two propeller shafts were still sticking out astern, one naked and shining in the sun; the other also shining and naked, but with a propeller still in place on it. Spotting that, the skipper ordered the engines turned. To their delight the shaft revolved, the ship began to move. No record-breaking pace, but--G.o.d love the builder of a good little ship--she was making revolutions. The wreckage hanging from her starboard quarter acted as a rudder, and so, instead of going straight ahead, she began to go round in circles.

She continued to make circles, and her officers and men stood to stations and waited for what next would happen. Destroyer people have it that there are grades of U-boat commanders--some of nerve, some only ordinary. The U-boat man with nerve enough to attack a destroyer is a good one. He will bear watching; so what they expected was to see this U-boat come up and finish the job. If she did come up and at the right place to get another torpedo in, then the 343 was in for a bad time. So they waited, some thinking one thing, and some another, but all agreeing that the odds were against them.

The U-boat did show again. They saw her conning-tower slipping through the water at about 1,500 yards. The skipper of the 343 was ready in so far as he could be ready with his poor little cripple. Crews were at gun stations, and that conning-tower had hardly got above the surface when two of the 343's guns cut loose at it. They got in four shots, the fourth one pretty handy. But no more. She submerged to the discouragement of one earnest gun-pointer. He leaned against the breech of his little 4-inch to say: "One more and I'd 'ave got her. Bet you me next month's pay that I get her if she shows for two shots again."

She did not show again, but her not showing did not end the 343's troubles. They could steam in circles, but it was not getting them anywhere. A few miles away was one of the roughest sh.o.r.es in the world, the kind where green seas piled up against rocky cliffs--and a tide that was already setting them toward it. A bad enough place in any kind of weather, but with wind and sea making, and this time of year!

It was about two in the afternoon they were torpedoed. By dark they were being driven by the tide and white-capped seas to the sh.o.r.e. They had one hope left. Their radio operator had managed to keep the radio gear in commission, and through all their troubles he had been sending out S O S calls, though not with too great hope that anybody would come in time. The U-boats had been pretty active thereabout, and it was not on any main sea route. There was always the chance, of course, that some war-ships would be somewhere near.

For one hour, two hours, three, four, five, six hours they drifted.

Their wireless kept going out of commission, and their radio operator kept patching it up and getting it going again. S O S--he never let up with that call. It was midnight when a British mine-sweeper bore down and hailed. By then they could hear the high seas breaking on the rocks abeam. The Britisher got the word across the wind, and tried to pa.s.s a messenger--a light line, that is--across to the 343. They did not make it. They tried again and again, but no use. The 343 was then within a few hundred yards of the breakers.

The skipper of the Britisher then hailed that he would try to get a boat to them. They could hear him calling for volunteers to man the boat. He got the volunteers, and without being able to see every detail of it in the dark, the 343's people knew what was happening. They were making a lee of the trawler so as to get the boat over. But the boat was swashing in and out against the side of the ship--up on a sea and then bang! in against the side of the ship. Merely as a sporting proposition, their own lives not depending on it, the 343's people would have been praying for that boat to get safely away.

The boat managed at last to get away from the side of the mine-sweeper, and in time, pitching down on the rollers, they made out to heave a line aboard the 343. And on the deck of the 343 they were right there to grab it and bend it on to a hawser. Fine. Off went the mine-sweeper after she had taken her boat aboard, tugging heartily. She tugged too heartily for the length and size of the hawser. It parted.

They did it all over again--the lowering the boat in the rough sea, the pa.s.sing the line, the bending on of the bigger line, the attempt to tow.

And again it parted. Wouldn't that test men's faith in their good luck?

The 343 thought so. Once more tried it, and once more it parted, but this time not parting until they were far enough off the beach to be safe till daylight.

At daylight a British sloop-of-war came along with a real big hawser and gave them a real tow to our naval base. A group of us were steaming out with a fleet of merchantmen to sea as she was being towed in. Our fellows would have liked to turn out to give her a little cheer, also to inquire into the details of her mishap, but we had to keep on going, and wait until our return to port after a cruise to have a look at her.

She was in dry dock when we got back to port, and the most smashed-up-looking object that any of us had ever seen come in from sea.

The wonder was how she ever stayed up long enough to make port. That gaping after end open to sea and sky, and the bare propeller shaft sticking out from the insides of her--she sure did look like she needed nursing! They agreed that they were a lucky bunch to get her home.

One poor fellow was killed--a wonder there were not more--and all hands were sorry for him; but tragedy and comedy so often bunk together, and men who adventure are more apt to dwell on the humorous than the tragic side of things. There was that about the code-books. The instructions to all ships are to get rid of the code-books if there is ever any likelihood of the enemy capturing the ship. The code-books are bound in thick lead covers. They are kept in a steel box, and altogether they weigh--I do not know, I never lifted them--but some say they weigh 150, some say 200 pounds. After the 343 was torpedoed, an ensign grabbed up the code-book chest, tossed it onto his shoulder, and waltzed out of the ward-room pa.s.sage and onto deck with it. You would think it was a feather pillow he was dancing off with. When the danger of capture was over our young ensign hooked his fingers into the chest handles to waltz back with it. But nothing doing. It took two of them to carry it back, and they did not trip lightly down any pa.s.sageway with it either, proving once again that there are times when a man is stronger than at other times.

After the 343 made port the injured were handed over to the sick bay of the flag-ship. There were two of them who must have been pretty handy to the storm centre of the explosion. At least, it took two young surgeons on the flag-ship all of one day to pick the gun-cotton out of their backs.

There was another man. The doctors, when they came to look him over, found the print of a perfect circle on the fleshiest part of his anatomy. It was so deeply pressed in that the blue and yellow flesh bulged out all around from it. The doctors said it must have been made by a wash-basin being blown against him as he ran up the ladder to the deck. But the man himself knew better than that. "Excuse me, doctor," he said, "but it was nothing so light and soft as a wash-basin hit me. It was something more solid and bigger than that. It was the water-cooler, and I didn't run up any ladder--I was blown up."

The destroyer people have great faith in the durability of their little ships. They are slim-built, and not much thicker in the plates than seven pages of the Sunday paper--they know that, but maybe that is their safety. There is no getting a fair wallop at them. They evade the issue.

One man compared them to a hot-water bottle. Try to swat a loaded hot-water bottle. And what happens? "When you poke it in one place don't it bulge out in another to make up for it? Sure it does. And how do you account for that other one we were talking about? A couple o' years ago--the one that had her stern cut off so that the men in the after compartment leaned out where the bulkhead had been, but wasn't then, and chinned themselves up to the deck from the outside? And how do you account for her bouncing along at twenty knots or more in a gale of wind and a rough sea, and nothing happening them? Get shook up--yes. But they come home, don't they? They sure do. Maybe it's luck, but also maybe it's the way they're thrown together--loose and limber-like."

Whatever it is, they are dashing in and out over there on their job of convoying merchant ships and hunting U-boats. They expect to get their b.u.mps, and they do; but so long as they get an even break they are not kicking. The chart-house gang on the 343 say that they are satisfied they get an even break all right. If she did not fill her little three-straight that time then n.o.body ever did get any cards in the draw.

They were sticking a new stern onto the 343 when I left the naval base.

When they get it well glued on she is going out again. Maybe that same U-boat--you can't always tell, some people have luck--maybe that same U-boat will come drifting her way again. And if they see her first--pa.s.s the word for the gun crews!

THE CARGO BOATS

I have spoken earlier of meeting cargo boats--tramp steamers, we call them at home--while crossing the Atlantic. In peace times a fellow would naturally expect to see them here, or almost anywhere else on the wide ocean; but to see them in these war days was to set a man wondering about them.

Wondering, because more than 90 per cent of U-boat sinkings are of ships of less than 12 knots' speed; which means that these rusty old junk heaps, wheezing along at maybe 9 or 10, but more likely at 7 or 8 knots, furnish most of the sinkings. They surely must be having great old times getting by the U-boats, and their captains and crews must surely have a view-point of their own!

At this naval base of which I have been writing, you could look almost any day and see 5, 10, or 20 of these cargo boats to moorings. And ash.o.r.e was a pub--there were other pubs, plenty of them--but to this one particular pub came bunches of these cargo captains to forget things.

(Without wishing to offend any prohibition advocate, I have to report that knocking around the world a man cannot help noticing that men who face peril regularly do sometimes take a drink to ease off things.)

A barmaid, answering to the name of Phyllis, presided over this pub, a blond, square-built, capable person, who had always about three or four of these captains standing on their heads. She was not without sentiment, but never letting sentiment interfere with business.

"Phyllis, my dear," a skipper would begin, and get about that far when she--her right hand reaching for the bottle of Scotch and her left for the soda--would be saying: "The same, captain?"--thereby choking off a great rush of words, and forwarding the business for which she drew one pound ten a week.

Before a creature of that kind these cargo captains were bound to preen themselves. They bought at frequent intervals, not at all like the ways of another group--not cargo captains--of whom one of our American warrant officers said: "You buy and buy and buy, and they drink and drink and drink. It comes time for them to buy, and when it does they submerge, and don't come up for air."

These cargo skippers were always coming up for air. They would hunt a man three stories up in his room, wake him out of his sleep, and haul him down-stairs to have just one more. Between drinks, after they got to know a man pretty well, they would talk of their sea experiences; and, after the fashion of all true adventurers, their talk was almost always of the humorous side of things.

There was a skipper there one morning who bid all hands, especially Phyllis, good-by. He was off to Alexandria. He would not be back for three months--more likely five or six months. Phyllis pinned a flower in his coat and off he went. From the pub window they saw him board his ship, and an hour later saw her steam out of the harbor and to sea.

That was at ten in the morning. At five in the afternoon--the lights were just being turned on--those in the pub who happened to be looking out of the window thought they saw this captain's ghost coming up the waterside with his crew trailing behind him. The crew looked as if they had dressed in a hurry and were scampering along to keep warm. But our skipper was wearing all he wore when he left the pub.