MYSTERY SHIPS

Hokitika Guardian, 1 March 1930, Page 8

MYSTERY SHIPS

outwitting submarines. LONDON, Jan. I. Schoolboys home for the holidays are afforded the opportunity of combining instruction with pleasure by attending Christinas lectures arranged by the learned societies, while an enterprising newspaper has organised an exhibition for their benefit. Both boys and girls composed the audience u,t the Royal Empire Society’s lecture, at which. Rear-Admir-al Gordon Campbell, V.C., told the tale of the Q ships, the masquerading merchantmen which in the last two years of the war were among our most effective weapons against the submarine. The Admiral interwove with his lecture a text which he evidently thinks we should do well to

bear in mind these days, and that is the vulnerability of our sea-borne commerce in tiniQ of war, and the utility of a navy to protect it. The slides with which the lecture was illustrated showed the plight of British merchantmen torpedoed without warning, made it unnecessary for him to underline the theme.

For the rest, the Admiral told frankly the story of the Q ships Enthusiasm reached its height at the story of the exploit for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross. A mystery ship under his command courted a hit by a torpedo, which made a hole 45 feet square. Just previously Admiral Campbell had detailed half-a-dozen men to sit and smoke conspicuously on the forecastle like merchant seamen off duty, and on "looking up after the explosion lie found the men still calmly smoking I They were waiting, they said, for the order to go to their stations. The “panic boats,” were immediately manned, while men at the guns crouched down to avoid being seen, and Admiral Campbell lay full length on the bridge watching the U-boat through a slit in the canvas. For twenty-five minutes the U-boat cruised around just beiow the surface. Then, seeing one of the officers dressed as a merchant captain in one of the “panic boats,’’ it swallowed the bait and came to the top to take him prisoner and get the ship’s papers.

Within five seconds a hencoop and other gun concealments fell away, the White Ensign was run up, and all the guns opened fire at a range of 1.50 yards. A few more seconds and ÜB3 went to the bottom. With a list of 45 degrees the Farnborough, as tiiis mystery ship was called, was then taken to the Irish coast and beached to save her guns.