WAR-TIME MEMORIES

Hokitika Guardian, 27 October 1931, Page 7

WAR-TIME MEMORIES

CHECKING THE SUBMARINE. SUCCESS OF CONVEY SYSTEM Transports, convoys, patrols and submarines—these things are some 15 years old. To those who were actively concerned with them they have become a memory, hut to a later generation they' are a fascjnat ng story, just as any other tale of adventure and spacious days might be. The uncertain ty of those days, and the tear which the word submarine called to mind, are things the later generation have not known. Captain Ctifton-Alogg, one of the best-known skippers coming to New Zealand, who has been made marine superintendent in Australia for the associated lines of the Aberdeen and Commonwealth Company, the White Star Company and the Shaw feavill and Albion Company, was on the outbreak of war in 1914 transferred to what was popularly called the “Irish Navy,”'*the 10th Squadron. Some of the vessels in this squadron were the more decrepit of the battleships and others were merchantmen, commandeered to act with the others. The captain was a navigating lieutenant in tlie Orotava, one such trarfsferred vessel, The squadron used to patrol those waters frequently used by the merchant ships bringing foodstuffs, and consequently haunted by enemy submarines.

A favourite trick of enemy ships was to come from America across the Arctic Sea, and then make a bolt for the Baltic down the coast of Norway, which is just a honeycomb of fiords. The patrol used to watch the coast, and also the northern ocean, the birthplace of mighty storms. Once the Orotava struck a blizzard and the whole bridge was torn away. The captain; said they were lucky to weather the storm. SEAPLANE “SPOTS” SUBMARINE. He was with one fleet of transports near the Scilly Isles, off Cornwall, when a submarine came up light in the middle of them.

“There was immediate orderly confusion, with each skipper wondering what his luck was going to he ; and then the Persic ‘got it’ in the second hold. Down went the submarine and away for her life, and the immediate concern was for the men on the sinking ship. Put at that moment a seaplane flew out from the mainland, and from high up it was ab'e to follow the course of the raider under the water. The seaplane dropped smoke bombs and so the escort and the destroyers; chasing the, ’plane as fast as they could, were able to iollow the trail of the smoke before it could drift too far a wily to be of use. VY itlun half an liouf they we he back with the deform ntiou that they had got the sub marine ■by dropping, -depth .. .charges The Persic managed to crawl to the gcilly Isles, where she was beached. “liut it was a nerve-wraclung time; for the skippers of the transports,’ said Captain Mogg. “We used to hold a zigzag course all day and then a' night we would return to normal. But even then we had vessels all round us. It. was no ensy#task to maintain a course on the zig-zag sen that we all remained equal to correct distances from each other. .It was- a case of being on the watch all the t me, fot we never knew when instructions would come from the convoy, or what they would be. We skippers did not know the meaning of a decent sleep, 101 we had just a few moments at night when our course was normal. But ue would be up again, for even if there was nothing for 11s actually to do, oui responsibility was great. GERMAN CAMPAIGN DEFEATED. Rut the convoy system ruined the German submarine plan in the end. As time went on, submarine signalling apparatus became more nearly perfect, so ’ that it was possible to spot one before it got near enough to do any damage. In the end it was more deadly for the submarine than for its onetime prey. It was the knowledge tlr t they were going to almost certain death in the submarines that was one of the causes of the mutiny in the German Navy. “I was thoroughly glad to get hack to the routine of the merchant seivice,” added the skipper, but be left the impression that lie bad at the enjoyed bis war experience, when time moved fast.