HUNTING SUBMARINES

Nelson Evening Mail, 22 September 1916, Page 7

HUNTING SUBMARINES

TRAWLERS AND MOTOR BOATS. HOW THE SEAS ARE SWEPT. BRITAIN'S AUXILIARY NAVY. The work of British trawlers and the auxiliary craft in chasing and fighting German '.suibmarinos is the subject, of a descriptive article by Alfred Noves, the sea poet. He writes : To begin with, a body cf nidj, larger than the "United States Army. was chosen from the longsTlorc fishermen and trawling crews. They -were .gradually drilled, disciplined, and trained and 1 put into naval ■uniform. They Ave re chosen, of course, 0111 an entirely different yriiveiplo 'from, that of the army. Th.cv were tough 'sea dogs, inured <to all the ways of the sea, but not at all to any form of discipline,. This iu itself implies very great 'preliminaries—for the finished produet i.-i fit to mail, a battleship. In the meantime their fishing boats, trawlers, and drifters were gradually takeu over by the Government and fitted 1 out for -the hunt, some 3000 of them. To these were added a fleet, of tast motor-boat-:, specially built- for sei.ut"in.g puiyoses. They were stationed at various points all round the coast. Night and day, in all weathers, section replacing section, (these trawlers and drifters string themselves out from coast to coast : while on .shore thousands of workers are turn! ng out their special munitiona and equipment—nets, mm.es. and a dozen mysteries which may not be •mentionedFrom one of their 'bases a. patrol 'boat took me out alorog one of the longrst- lines of the flotilla. "This innocent line of trawlers, strung out for some 50 ni'.les ■had more nightmares in store for the Geiimian submarine than a fleet of battleships. It was an odd sensation to •approach trawler after trawler and note •the one obviously unusual 'feature of each —the menacing black gun at bow and stern. They were good 1 gains, too — English, French and Japanese. The patrol boat carried a, Hotchkiss, and most 'cf 'the trawlers had equally efficient weapons. A THOUSAND PERILS. There Avere other unusual features an every trawler, drifter, whaler, features •that made one catch one's breath-when their significance was realised. About this I may say very little. But in the •matter of the nets, it was demonstrated •to me that within 25 minutes any submarine reported in most of our homo waters can be enclosed in a steel trap fi'oim which there ris no escape. The vague rumour that wo heard in the earlier stages cf the war led one to suppose that these nets might 'be used perhaps in (the English Channel and other narrow waters. But I' have seen traps 100 miles long, traps that could shift their position and change their shape at a signal. A submarine may enter their zone,, indeed, and even go to America. She may even do some damage within their lines. But if she does this her position is known, and if there be any future damage done, it Avill probably have to be done by another submarine. For she has called upon a thousand' perils, from every pjoint of the compass, to close upon her return journey." I have actually seen the course of a German submarine —which thought itself undiscovered — marked from day to day on the chart at an English base. The clues to all the ramifications of this work are held by a few e men at the Admiralty in London. Telephone and, telegraph keep them in; constant touch with every seaport in the Kingdom,'. .SERVICE TO NEUTRALS. Throughout this work of the auxiliary fleet it is-worth noting that in their records of rescue and salvage a good half of their care is devoted to the ships of neutrals. It is England that sweeps the seas for amines, marks them off on her charts, warns,, delays', and'-"guides the traffic of tlie Avorld through a thousand unknown perils. But neutrals have not always escaped; and in talking ,to the men on these trawlers I was struck by the fact that a large (proportion of their tales referred, as I haA-e said above, to the salvage or the actual saving of neutral ships. ■Often, as in the case of the halaba, ihe rescue work l is attended with many perils to the auxiliary concerned. From the Falaba 116 persons were rescued, and tne drifter was "bilgedi," a phrase that in this case meant "almost foundered." Oil a few the hunters have themselves been trapped. Three men taken off a trawler b\\ a submarine endured an 80 hours' nightmare under the sea that shattered the mind of one and left permanent traces on the other two. Periodically revolvers Avere put to their heads and they were ordered, on pain of death, to tell all they knew' of our naval dispositions. They saw a good deal of the internal routine of the German submarine also, and noted character isticaMy that the German crew—on this boat-, at any rate—were very "jumpy," too "jumpy" even to take a square" meal. They munched! biscuits afc their stations at odd' moments.

C;U'NS ; HEARD O VEEETE A ID. On the third' morning they heard guns going overhead, and watched the Germans handing out shells to their own nuns. Finally a torpedo was fired, and' thev heard it take effect. Then they emerged into the red wash of dawn anji saw -only the floating wreckage of the big ship that had been sunk, and among the wreck'age a small boat. They were bundled' into tin's, told they were free to row to England or Nineveh, and the submarine left them—three 'longshore fishermen, who had- passed through the Vitest invention of the modern scientific d'evil. two who could still pull! at the oars, but the other too crazy to steer, as his little personal part- of the price paid by England for sweeping and patrolling'the seas of civilisation.

TWO GEEIIA"' SUBMiAiRsINES. But even with neutrals the auxiliary fleet finds it necessary sometimes to add the wisdom of the serpent 10 its general philanthropy. On one occasion a neutral tank steamer was overhauled. She was believed to be carrying suspiciously large •supplies to a suspiciously vnuue destination. but was Allowed to proceed for political reasons and' in the name of the i'reed'om of the sea*. -Nevertheless, with innocent fishing luoats dotting our waters at intervals of haif-a-mile. and wireless telesrraphy to help them, the sea has almost- as manv eyes and ears to-day as it has fishes, and at dusk a drifter rolled up to our neutral friend again. "'Begorra, it's twins," said the gunner, training his 12-pounder on her; and twins it was. For tucked close under either quarter lay a German submarine, quietly being fed. Before they could submerge or bunk away, the crew of the drifter had boarded the neutral and had persuaded the. crews of the submarines, with the help of a dozen revolvers, that they were prisoners of war.