Our Destroyer Service is perhaps as efficient, and as dashing, as anything ever seen in the way of organised human activity. It is long established, and its very perfection seems almost to stand in the way of our wonder at its achievement. The performance of our trawlers and drifters, on the other hand, is the more astonishing because it was an afterthought, the work of a service called into being—suddenly created, as it were, out of nothing—to meet the need of a grave moment which no imagination could well have provided against. When the moment came, everyone knew what might be expected from our Navy. It had not occurred to anyone that our fishermen might help to keep the sea against an outbreak of piracy, not only with courage but with marked success. Yet this they did; and of all the disappointments which the War has brought our enemies this must have been one of the most unexpected and unpleasant.

In reading the accounts which follow, it will be remarked that the work to which our trawlers and drifters set themselves, with such admirable readiness and courage, was not only new to them, but was continually taking new and unforeseen forms, so that they have been called upon to show quickness and adaptability, as well as the capacity for training and discipline.179 The armament and methods of the submarine of 1915 were different from those of the later and more dangerous boats of 1917. The trawlers, too, were much less adequately armed and equipped. Our men had at first to play a game in which there were no certain rules, and no standard weapons. We can hardly over-praise the officers of the R.N.R. who, in those critical days, took command of the special-service trawlers and fought them with the native skill of the Elizabethan sea-dogs. Nor can we admire too heartily the ready pluck and patriotism with which the skippers, mates, deck-hands and boys of our fishing-fleets turned their hands at a moment’s notice from nets to depth-charges and twelve-pounders, and undertook the daily sweeping of mines, in seas now doubly treacherous, and a hundred times more deadly. There is a strange and almost pathetic sound, even in the names of the little ships themselves—names bearing none of the splendour of history or the prestige of war, but the humble and intimate memories of wives and children, or the jesting pride of the homely seaport where they lived in the time of peace.

The Ina Williams (now His Majesty’s Trawler, Ina Williams) was steaming towards the Irish coast at seven o’clock, one evening in early summer, when she sighted a large submarine on her port beam, some two-and-a-half miles away. The enemy had just come to the surface; for there was no sign of him in that direction a few moments before, and he had not yet got his masts or ventilators up. The Ina Williams was armed, fortunately, with a 12-pounder gun, and commanded by Sub-Lieutenant C. Nettleingham, R.N.R., who had already been commended for good conduct, and after180 nine months’ hard work was not likely to lose a fighting chance.

He headed straight for the U-boat. She might, of course, submerge at any moment, leaving the pursuer helpless. But Mr. Nettleingham calculated that she would disdain so small an enemy, and remain upon the surface, relying upon her trained gunners and keeping her superiority of speed, with her torpedoes in case of extreme necessity. He was right in the main. The U-boat accepted battle by gunfire; but a torpedo which missed the starboard quarter of the Ina Williams by only 10 feet must have been fired at least as soon as the trawler sighted her, and showed that the enemy was not disposed to underrate even a British fishing-boat. Mr. Nettleingham had saved his ship by the promptness with which he turned towards the submarine, and he now opened fire, keeping helm to avoid any further torpedoes.

The fight was a triumph for English gunnery. The Ina Williams had the good fortune to have fallen in with a wildshot. All his five shells were misses—some short, some on the trawler’s starboard side. The gunner of the Ina Williams had probably had no experience of firing at a moving target, almost level with the water. The U-boat was going 10–12 knots, too, and that was faster than he expected. The result was that his first three shots failed to get her; they fell astern, but each one distinctly nearer than the last. The pirate commander did not like the look of things; he called in his guns’ crews and prepared to submerge. Too late. The British gunner’s fourth shot caught the U-boat on the water-line, half-way between conning-tower and stern. A fifth followed instantly, close abaft the conning-tower181 itself. The wounded submarine was probably by this time out of hand, for she continued to submerge. Just before she disappeared, the sixth shell struck the conning-tower full at the water-line, and the fight was over. It had lasted fifteen minutes, and the Ina Williams was still 3,400 yards away when the enemy sank. She steamed straight on to the position of the U-boat, and found that even after the ten minutes which it took her to reach the spot, large bubbles of air were still rising, and the sea was being more and more thickly covered with a large lake of oil. The depth was fifty fathoms, and out of that depth, while the Ina Williams steamed round and round her buoy, she had the satisfaction of seeing the dead brute’s life-blood welling up with bursts of air-bubbles for nearly an hour, until the sea was thick for five hundred yards, and tainted for a much further distance. The smell of the stuff was peculiar, and new to the trawler’s crew; they could not find the right word to describe it. But they were eager to scent it again, and as often as possible, for it meant good work, good pay and a good report.

This was a thoroughly professional bit of service, a single fight at long range; but it was no smarter than the sharp double action fought by His Majesty’s Armed Smacks Boy Alfred and I’ll Try against two German submarines. The British boats were commanded by Skipper Walter S. Wharton, R.N.R., and Skipper Thomas Crisp, R.N.R., and were out in the North Sea when they sighted a pair of U-boats coming straight towards them on the surface. The first of these came within 300 yards of Boy Alfred and stopped. Then followed an extraordinary piece of work, only possible to a German pirate. The U-boat signalled with a flag to182 Boy Alfred to come nearer, and at the same time opened fire upon her with a machine-gun or rifles, hitting her in many places, though by mere chance not a single casualty resulted.

Skipper Wharton’s time had not yet come; he was not for a duel at long range. He threw out his small boat, and by this submissive behaviour encouraged the U-boat to come nearer, which she did by submerging and popping up again within a hundred yards. A man then came out of the conning-tower and hailed Boy Alfred, giving the order to abandon ship as he intended to torpedo. But 100 yards was a very different affair from 300. It was, in fact, a range Skipper Wharton thought quite suitable. He gave the order ‘Open fire’ instead of ‘Abandon ship,’ and his gunner did not fail him. The first round from the 12-pounder was just short, and the second just over; but having straddled his target, the good man put his third shot into the submarine’s hull, just before the conning-tower, where it burst on contact. The fourth shot was better still; it pierced the conning-tower and burst inside. The U-boat sank like a stone, and the usual wide-spreading patch of oil marked her grave.

In the meantime the second enemy submarine had gone to the east of I’ll Try, who was herself east of Boy Alfred. He was a still more cautious pirate than his companion, and remained submerged for some time, cruising around I’ll Try with only a periscope showing. Skipper Crisp, having a motor fitted to his smack, was too handy for the German, and kept altering course so as to bring the periscope ahead of him, whenever it was visible. The enemy disappeared entirely no less than six times, but at last summoned up courage to break183 surface. The hesitation was fatal to him—he had given the smack time to make every preparation. He appeared suddenly at last, only 200 yards off, on I’ll Try’s starboard bow; but his upper deck and big conning-tower were no sooner clearly exposed than Skipper Crisp put his helm hard over, brought the enemy on to his broadside and let fly with his 13-pounder gun. At this moment a torpedo passed under the smack’s stern, missing only by ten feet, then coming to the surface, and running along on the top past Boy Alfred. It was the U-boat’s first and last effort. In the same instant, I’ll Try’s shell—the only one fired—struck the base of the conning-tower and exploded, blowing pieces of the submarine into the water on all sides.

The U-boat immediately took a list to starboard and plunged bows first—she disappeared so rapidly that the gunner had not even time for a second shot. I’ll Try immediately hurried to the spot, and there saw large bubbles of air coming up and a large and increasing patch of oil. She marked the position with a Dan buoy, and stood by for three-quarters of an hour with Boy Alfred. Finally, as the enemy gave no sign of life, the two smacks returned together to harbour.

For this excellent piece of work the two skippers were suitably rewarded. Skipper Wharton, who had already killed two U-boats and had received the D.S.C. and the D.S.M. with a bar, was now given a second bar to his D.S.C. Skipper Crisp already had the D.S.M., and now received the D.S.C. But with regard to the gratuity given to the whole crew of each boat for the destruction of an enemy submarine, a distinction was made, Boy Alfred being rewarded for a ‘certainty’ and I’ll Try184 for a ‘probable’ only. This is interesting as showing the scrupulous caution with which our anti-submarine returns have been made up. The Germans have tried to persuade their public, at home and abroad, that many of the U-boats claimed to have been destroyed by us have, in fact, escaped, with more or less injury, and made their way home to refit. The exact contrary is the case. No one, with any power of judging the evidence, could examine our official reports without coming to the conclusion that the number of our successes has been greatly underestimated in the published records. The Admiralty have no doubt felt that, where so much is at stake, it is better to run no risk at all of misrepresenting the situation and its possibilities. If certainties only are counted, and the campaign judged and conducted accordingly, there will be no disillusionment for us, and the long list of ‘probables’ will give us a margin, uncertain in quantity, but absolutely sure to be on the right side of the account. This policy has entirely justified itself. In the long record of the anti-submarine work of these four years, only one complete disappointment has occurred, only one dead U-boat has come to life again. On the other hand, the first list of certainties published by the Admiralty—the list of 150 pirate commanders put out of action—could not be disputed, even by the authors of the German communiqués. It is not an estimate, it is a statement, beyond suspicion or dispute; but to ensure this result restraint was necessary, and the restraint was often regretted by the authorities as much as by the British crews who felt themselves stinted of their full reward. There was probably no member of the Board who did not wish that more could be done for the gallant men of185 I’ll Try; but her report, as here paraphrased, just fell short of the full evidence required by the rules. She killed her bird; but she could not prove that he was not a runner.
‘I’ll Try’s shell struck the base of the conning-tower.’

The same year, in the second week of August, two other smacks distinguished themselves in action. The first of these was the G. and E., commanded by Lieutenant C. E. Hammond, R.N. She was sailing at mid-day in company with the smack Leader, and about a mile to north of her, when she saw a submarine break surface about three cables beyond to the south-east. Lieutenant Hammond must have found it hard to play a waiting game, but to go at once to the help of his consort would have revealed that he was no unarmed fishing-boat. The pirate, therefore, was able to board and blow up Leader with a bomb, after ordering her crew into their small boat. He then came on fearlessly, closing, as he thought, another helpless victim. When within 200 yards he fired a rifle, and G. and E.’s crew encouraged him by getting out a boat; but when he came to forty yards and slewed round, parallel to the smack, Lieutenant Hammond hoisted the White Ensign and opened fire. The U-boat appeared to be paralysed with astonishment. For a whole minute she lay motionless, and that minute was just long enough for G. and E.’s gunner. He got off five shots in a tremendous hurry. One was a miss, and two hit the rail of the smack; but one of these went on, and penetrated the enemy very usefully in the lower part of the conning-tower. The other two were clean hits in much the same spot. Down went the enemy—not in the way a submarine would dive by choice, but nose first, and with stern up at a very high angle. The five men who had been on her deck and187 conning-tower, for the purpose of enjoying a little shooting at British fishermen, got an entirely new view of sport in these sixty seconds. One was killed with a rifle-shot by a petty officer on the G. and E., three disappeared in the shell bursts, and the fifth was seen still clinging to the conning-tower, as the U-boat carried him down to death. The tide made all hope of rescue vain—it was too strong even for a buoy to be put down to mark the spot.

Four days later, on the same ground, the smack Inverlyon, commanded by Skipper Phillips, with an R. N. gunner, Ernest M. Jehan, sighted a submarine at 8.20 P.M., steering right towards her in the twilight. When the two boats were within less than thirty yards of each other, the submarine was seen to be a U-boat flying the German ensign, with an officer on deck hailing ‘Boat!’ Evidently he expected to be obeyed, for he stopped dead and gave no sign of action. He had no gun mounted, and appeared to be out of torpedoes.

Mr. Jehan might well have been taken by surprise by this sudden meeting at close quarters in the dusk; but he was not. In an instant the White Ensign was hoisted, and he himself was firing his revolver at the officer steering the enemy boat. This was his pre-arranged signal for his mates to open fire, and it was obeyed with deadly quickness and precision. The gun was a mere pop-gun, a 3-pounder, but at the range it was good enough. Of the first three rounds fired, the first and third pierced the centre of the enemy’s conning-tower and burst inside, while the second struck the after part of the same structure and carried it away, ensign and all. The officer fell overboard on the starboard side.

188 The submarine was now out of hand. The tide brought her close round Inverlyon’s stern, within ten yards, and the gun was instantly slewed on to her again. This time, six rounds of extra-rapid fire were got off. The first hit the conning-tower, the second and fourth went over, the third, fifth and sixth hulled the U-boat dead. She sank, with the same ominous nose-dive, her stern standing up at an angle of 80°. The swirl was violent, and in it three bodies were flung to the surface. A shout was heard from one of them—a pirate, but a man in agony. Skipper Phillips stripped, took a lifebuoy in his arms and leaped overboard. He swam strongly, but vainly, in that rush of wild water and oil, and at last had to be dragged home on his own buoy. The smack meantime was drifting over the dead submarine, and brought up when her trawl got fast upon it.

The trawl was even more useful in another action, where it actually brought on the fight at close quarters and made victory possible. One day in February, H.M. Trawler Rosetta, Skipper G. A. Novo, R.N.R., had gone out to fish, but she had on deck a 6-pounder gun concealed in an ingenious manner which need not be described. She joined a small fleet of four smacks and two steam trawlers some forty-five miles out, and fished with them all night. Before dawn next morning a voice was heard shouting out of the twilight. It came from one of the steam trawlers: ‘Cut your gear away! there’s a submarine three-quarters of a mile away; he’s sunk a smack and I have the crew on board.’

‘All right, thank you!’ said Skipper Novo—to get away from the pirate was precisely what he did not wish to do. For some fifteen minutes he went on towing his trawl, in hope of being attacked; but as nothing189 happened, he thought he was too far away from the smacks, and began to haul up his trawl. He was bringing his boat round before the wind, and had all but the last twenty fathoms of the trawl in, when the winch suddenly refused to heave any more, and the warp ran out again about ten fathoms—a thing beyond all experience. ‘Hullo!’ said the skipper, ‘there&rsqu............