FREIGHTER AND SUBMARINE.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 March 1917, Page 3

FREIGHTER AND SUBMARINE.

SCAiRS OF TWO HOOTS' BATTLE, New York, Jan. 21. The first details of a running fight at sea of the Sicilian coast, between the British freighter Lindenhall and a German submarine, in which the former vessel escaped after receiving a fusilade of shells which marked her hull and decks above the waterline, were told yesterday by the captain and officers when she arrived in quarantine. According to Captain Hughes Jones, the Lindenhall was bound from Newport (Wales), to Torre Annunziata, in the Bay of Naples, with a cargo of coal and was ncaring the Sicilian coast about 3 o'clock in the afternoon of December 13 when a submarine appeared off the starboard bow a mile away, and fired a shot as a 'warning to the captain to stop his ship. Instead of complying, the British- captain swung the stern of his ship around toward the submarine, and went ahead full speed, while the crew ran out the 4in gun aft, and loaded it ready for action.

When the German commander realised that tne freighter Avas trying to escape and threatened a' fight, he opened fire with his two bow guns and maintained a shell-fire lasting nearly two hours, in which 210 shots were expended on the Lindenhall -without doing any material damage to her. One shell passed through the starboard superstructuer under the bridge and penetrated the potato locker, near the galley, where it wa9 found later, having failed to explode. Other shells exploded in the air, and pieces fell on the deck of the steamship, while shrapnel struck the masts, funnel, ventilators, and winches without injuring any of the crew.

The crew of the Lindenhall returned the fire with their single gun aft as rapidly as they could under the handicap of continuous swinging of the ship to prevent the submarine from getting her broadside ojl The wireless operator sent out "5.0.S." calls that the ship was being attacked, which the operator on the submarine tried to blurr by working his apparatus at the same time with a series of meaningless letters. Towrfrd the end of thi fight a piece of shell went through the side of the smaii dining saloon on the upper deck and lodged in the beam of the boat deck overhead. By that time the Lindenhall had expended 85 shots, members of the crew said, and she was so near the Sicilian coast that the submarine commander decided not to risk an Italian destroyer's coining out to sink his craft, and submerged. Captain Jones explained that when the Lindenhall was attacked she was in charge of Captain Evans Thomas, whom he had relieved at Naples. The other officers and crew of the steamship remained with her. Captain Jones added that the 4in gun had been taken off the stern of the Lindenhall at Gibraltar by the British Admiralty, to be placed on another steamship entering the Mediterranean. There is a fleet of twelve small, fast patrol boats at Gibraltar lie says, which halts the west-bound vessels and removes their guns and places them on the east-bound ships. Armourers and gun-fitters are carried on each patrol boat. The same idea is carried out at Pcrb Said in regard to steamships entering and leaving- the Suez Canal. The White Star liners, Canpopic and Cretic, trading between Mew York and Naples since the beginning of the war, have- been equipped with guns at Gibraltar on their eastbound trips and have had them taken off when they passed Gibraltar, bound for New York or Boston.