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INTIMATE PAPERS OF COLONEL HOUSE. Arranged as a narrative by Charles Seymour. New York. Houghton, Mifflin Company. Vols. 3-4. 1928. $10.
Reviewed By Captain W. R. Gherardi, U. S. Navy
The two concluding volumes of The Intimate Papers of Colonel House have now been published and form a most important addition to the history of the World War period.
President Wilson selected Colonel House as chief of the organization for preparing the American case at the peace conference, appointed him head of the American war mission to Europe for the coordination of military and industrial effort, and asked him to draft a constitution for a league of nations. He sent him to Europe as American representative on the Supreme War Council when it arranged the armistice with Germany. He shared President Wilson’s labors and held his complete confidence during the period which led up to and immediately followed the war.
Those who know Colonel House personally also know his honesty of purpose and his close adherence to the facts as he saw them. In this book there is no desire to evade the many issues which came to his knowledge nor to gloss over any part which he may have had in the negotiations which took place under his observation. The book reflects a singularly candid and reflective mind which has passed through an experience which no other man except the President himself shared.
To President Wilson he was loyalty itself. He shared with the President the ardent desire for a league of nations of such a form as to make future wars impossible. He believed such a league possible. He believed that the accomplishment of such a league could be had only by the adoption of the principle of the “Freedom of the Seas.”
When conditions arose which rendered it necessary to put aside the ideal in order to hold to what had been accomplished by the armistice he did so, but his feeling never changed.
The debt which the world owes to Colonel House for his work during that time of its travail will be increasingly recognized as the years progress. In his private capacity as the closest friend and adviser of President Wilson he exercised an influence on the war, on the armistice, and on the peace conference perhaps greater than any other person, private or public.
It is not too much to say that President Wilson turned to Colonel House for advice on every matter wherein American relations with the Allies came into question.
As a result of his intercourse with European statesmen, with many of whom he established close personal relations, Colonel House was in a position to conduct for the President negotiations of a most vital character. The letters and papers covering this entire period were carefully preserved and form the basis for these two volumes.
The book is not a history of the war and is not intended to be so. It is written to show the nature of Colonel House’s participation in the important acts in which America was associated with the Allied Powers in 1917, 1918, and part of 1919- Professor Seymour, who has ably edited the book, says: “It leaves to the future historian to determine where he and others were wrong.”
Nevertheless, these volumes have an interest to all who would follow the sequence of events connected with American participation in the World War, from the time of her entry until the signing of the peace treaty. To the naval officer it has a distinct appeal, for the application of naval power is often shown as being determinative in its effect.
How narrowly the European Allies escaped a complete break with the United States during the armistice negotiations is told for the first time in authoritative form.
In Colonel House’s diary in November, 1918, is found the following:
It is difficult to fully tell of the tense feeling that has prevailed due to the discussion of the Fourteen Points. George and I, and Reading and I have had many conferences, separately and together…Lloyd George said that Great Britain would spend her last guinea to keep a Navy superior to that of the United States or any other power, and that no cabinet official could continue in the government in England who took a different position. I countered this by telling him it was not our purpose to go into a naval building rivalry with Great Britain, but it was our purpose to have our rights at sea adequately safeguarded, and that we did not intend to have our commerce regulated by Great Britain whenever she was at war.
That the negotiations between President Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando leading to the adoption of the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles were often in danger of breakdown is shown in these volumes.
The reason for the estrangement which took place between Colonel House and President Wilson will never be known. It is referred to in the concluding sentence of the book as follows:
My separation from Woodrow Wilson was, and is to me, a tragic mystery, a mystery that can now never be dispelled, for its explanation lies buried with him.
MY MYSTERY SHIPS. By Rear Admiral Gordon Campbell, R.N., London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1928. New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1929.
Reviewed by Brockholst Livingston To know Admiral Campbell is to recognize that his splendid work with the mystery ships during the late war was part and parcel of his desire to serve. He craved no distinction save that gained by sheer valor. He desired no flaming press reports. His book, for which we have waited a long while, is characteristic of the man who wrote it. It is a tale told in a simple yet enlightening fashion and brings us an account of deeds which went unsung while they were being done. As commander of a “Q” ship, Admiral Campbell won the highest decoration of the British nation. A Victoria Cross and three distinguished service orders are proof of the fine accomplishments of this officer.
Throughout the book one point stands predominant. The author claims no special credit for himself. He is continually anxious that we shall not make the mistake of considering him solely responsible for the results obtained. To his crew he makes repeated acknowledgements of aid, concluding: “A finer crew no man has ever had the honor to command . . . .”
As Admiral Sir Lewis Bayley has written in a foreword, it is “a book which will enlighten its readers as to the heroism, wonderful patience, and self-control shown by all who served in these mystery ships.”
The mystery ship played a more important part in the antisubmarine campaign than most of us are aware. Admiral Campbell, while dealing principally with his own ships, also touches on many points of general information concerning the choice of and fitting out of the vessels to be used, and the tactics employed by the ships when attempting to decoy submarines. However, the book is nontechnical and is very light reading—the type you read for pleasure rather than through compulsion.
In a summary the author has discussed the comparative value of the mystery ship and other classes of antisubmarine vessels. “It may appear to the reader . . . .” he writes, “that an enormous amount of effort was used (by Campbell’s ships) to destroy three submarines—in fact, in obtaining these three destructions, one merchant ship was beached, one put into dry-dock, and one sunk. It is only by comparison that a more correct estimate can be made.” Over 180 mystery ships were fitted out and the number of submarines to their credit was eleven. Against this we place, for the destruction of 145 submarines (total destroyed due to our own action) “some 5,000 auxiliary craft employed, thousands of mines, guns, depth charges and bombs, miles of nets, vast convoy systems, and many other contrivances and contraptions.” From this, he believes, it may be realized that to encircle and destroy a submarine is not such an easy thing as may appear to the arm-chair critic.” Seven per cent of the known submarine destructions are credited to mystery ships. The effect on morale while not possible to estimate, must have been great.
Carrying his discourse into the realm of might-have-beens,” he ventures that “supposing (in 1915), instead of two or three mystery ships operating, there had been about thirty, as there were in 1917. It is not too much to suggest that the whole submarine menace might have been avoided.” From the standpoint of the breaking down of morale this seems a quite probable accomplishment.
In stating that the question whether mystery ships will be used again cannot be answered, Admiral Campbell wisely says: “…but one thing is quite certain .... in any war some form of deception or decoy will be used by sea, air, and land, and if anyone has ideas for such in future wars, he will be wise to keep his mystery to himself until it can be used with the maximum chance of success.”
With each new volume that appears, the history of the World War becomes more complete. Individuals have contributed their personal accounts. Classes of ships have been dealt with by various authors. Battles have been discussed. Certainly no war was ever more thoroughly “covered.” Admiral Campbell’s account is somewhat novel in that it treats of a subject of which we knew so little while it was taking place. It should be popular with both the naval and civilian reader.
THE LIFE OR SIR MARTIN FROBISHER. By William McFee. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1928. $4.00.
Reviewed by Brockholst Livingston
William McFee has written a biography of Frobisher, seaman, pirate, explorer, and admiral in the service of the great Queen Bess. After reading his book one wonders why there is such great ado about the subject. The author states:
For Drake and Raleigh and Leicester, Elizabeth revealed great affection and even passionate admiration. She could express a valiant faith in their high loyalty and desperate courage. But when it was a matter of simple duty, a matter of humdrum, hammer-and-tongs naval vigilance and strategy without either spectacular privateering or action lurid with glory, she sent for Frobisher.
Granting this, we, nevertheless, marvel that Britain has found so much to admire in the characters of her Elizabethan seamen.
We are cautioned by the author that “there is nothing to be gained by injecting modern ethics into the discussion of a sixteenth-century corsair,” and yet, as we read the lives of those corsairs—legalized pirates —we are thankful that American naval history is made up of characters and events so much more wholesome and legitimately colorful than Britain’s.
The book carries with it something of the flavor of the sea that is about McFee, and brings vividly to us the happenings of that period in Britain’s history when, by the destruction of the Great Armada, she reduced her rival, Spain, to a position of inferiority.
Apparently Congress is not the only body to question expenditures for a navy. Elizabeth, with the Spanish Armada even then approaching, was backward about providing the bare necessities of food and water for the British ships. “The Invincible Armada was defeated,” says McFee, “not by strategists in Whitehall, not by military aristocrats, nor yet by the leadership of the sovereign, but by the mariners of England.” And, we add, only so shall all future enemies who come by sea to any land!
McFee prefaces his book with: “The intention in this book has been, so far as human frailty permitted, to avoid controversy and partisanship.” He has done well by this resolution and if we find the substance disappointing we should rather lay the blame to the character of the subject than to the skill of the author.
JOHN CAMERON’S ODYSSEY. Transcribed by Andrew Farrel. New York:
Macmillan Co., 1928. $4.50.
Reviewed by Professor Allan Westcott, U. S. Naval Academy
A hard-hitting, hard-drinking, hardheaded mate and master of trading vessels, principally in the Pacific, from 1865 to 1895, a Scot with a Scot’s virtues and vices, and a knack, also Scottish, for pushing a pen— such was Jack Cameron, whose adventures this Odyssey tells. Its publication no doubt stimulated by the immense popularity of Trader Horn, the book has many of Trader Horn’s attractive qualities, but without the romantic fictional element, which for some may increase its appeal. Here is the man’s character laid bare, something of his sailor- made philosophy of life, and much of what he lived through. Cameron wrote the original manuscript; the transcriber, it appears, has done little more than touch up Cameron’s grammar and pare down his story. He has certainly not falsified it, for his copious notes at the back show a keen appetite for facts. Altogether it is a readable and valuable book, a vivid and realistic, not romantic, picture of “lights and shadows of the South Seas.”
For about ten years Cameron was before the mast, chiefly in British windjammers, and it seems a sad commentary on old-time discipline that he had a fistic combat with mate or master on pretty nearly every ship in which he sailed. Risen to officer’s rank, he drifted from San Francisco westward to Honolulu and the South Seas. This is the bulk and best of the story—a “black- birding” cruise for native laborers in the New Hebrides; an extraordinary voyage as mate of The Wandering Minstrel, ending in her shipwreck on Midway Island (which furnished material for Stevenson’s The Wrecker) and the escape of Cameron, a Danish semi-lunatic, and a China boy (selected, so Cameron says, because he was plump and tender, in view of possibilities) in an open boat fifteen hundred miles to the Marshalls; then trading, smuggling, and carousing again among the islands. After thirty years of it, Jack married a chief’s daughter, took a year’s pleasure jaunt in his own vessel, and thus ended his story. But for another thirty years, till his death in.1925, he was settled in Japan, a trusted employee of Standard Oil. It was here, in 1921, that he went to hear the singing at the reunion in Japan of the Annapolis Class of ’81. “These old American naval officers,” he said, “must know how to sing chanteys.” But he was disappointed; the setting at least was wrong.
In old age Cameron mellowed. “In my mind’s eye,” says the transcriber, “I can still see the old fellow, boyish hearted at seventy-four, stocky, deep-chested, broad, powerful, with a white thatch and white mustache and beard, a sparkle in his gray eye—I can still see him rolling over the skyline to suggest that, in view of the phase of the moon or the physiography of Mars, it was time to splice the main brace.” Not perhaps a literary chef d’oeuvre, his book is a good one for man or boy. It has nothing too strong for boys nowadays, and in another way it may do them good.
SIX ANS DE CROISIERES EN SOUS- MARIN. By Lieutenant Johannes Spiess. Translated from the German by Lieutenant Henry Schricke. Published by Payot, Paris. 18 Francs.
Reviewed by Maurice Prendergast
“Thou shalt go thou shalt return never in battle shall thou perish!’’—Reply of The Delphic Oracle
What did the World War look like, from the other side, and especially from the viewpoint of the German submarine commanders? That is a question which we have often asked ourselves. The further the conflict progressed, the more did the Allied navies devote themselves to deadlier campaigns for the extermination of the U-boats. Upon the officers and men of these German craft fell the fury of a merciless and relentless warfare, devised for their utter extinction. They became the Ishmaels of the seas, with every man’s hand against them. What were the personal experiences of the German submarine commanders? What, for example, did it feel like, to be attacked by depth charges? To be trapped by decoy ships? To be tracked by hydrophones, and to be hunted into barrages of nets and mines? Surely, these men had war experiences worth the narrating.
Lieutenant Johannes Spiess, of the German Navy, has at last satisfied our curiosity by giving us his reminiscences. Few men alive today are better qualified than he to describe from personal experience the development and downfall of the German submarine service. On October 1, 1912, Lieutenant Spiess joined the U-9, to serve as second in command to Lieutenant Otto Weddigen, the first, and perhaps the most famous, of all the “U-boat aces.” On the evening of November 11, 1918, Lieutenant Spiess hauled down the colours of U-135 for the last time. Between those two dates, he served, without a break, for six years, a month and twenty days in the submarine branch of his service. It is doubtful if there is alive today any other German officer who can present a similar record of duties during the World War. Of the many fellow officers who served with him in the submarines, Lieutenant Spiess says that hundreds were killed in active service or were made prisoners of war; others lost health and sanity itself under the strain of their experiences. And when one reaches the end of this book, one marvels that the author should ever have survived to write it. Few more exciting narratives of participation in the War of 1914-18 have ever been written. A certain German philosopher has declared that the secret of happiness lies in living dangerously. If this be a true criterion, Lieutenant Spiess must have been the Happy Warrior of the World War. But from the general tenor of his remarks, we gather that he found Nietzche’s advice of little consolation, when on the wrong side of a depth charge!
Let us first take a glance at the author’s record, as detailed in his book. From October, 1912, to January, 1915, he served under Weddigen in U-g. Thus it came about that he was present at one of the most memorable and startling events of the naval war—the sinking of the three big British cruisers, Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue, in rapid succession, by U-g on the morning of September 22, 1914. One cannot, of course, describe Spiess as an “eye witness” of this event, for Weddigen was at the periscope. However, his station was behind Weddigen and he gives a graphic and most interesting account of the approach, the attack, and the handling of the boat. During the next cruise, the British cruiser Hawke was sent to the bottom. Then the two men parted. Weddigen went to take over the command of U-29, a boat with none too promising a reputation, for she had returned unexpectedly from her first cruise with her commanding officer nearly insane. Weddigen took her out, to meet death under the ram of H.M.S. Dreadnought. Spiess succeeded to the command of U-g in January, 1915. The anti-shipping war “with restrictions” having begun, Spiess took his boat out to the Dogger Bank, and there sank about a dozen British trawlers and two or three small steamers. Three months later, Spiess was detailed for service in the Baltic against the Russians, and remained there until U-g was deemed obsolete, and relegated to training duty in April, 1916. He went back to the Baltic in August of the same year, in command of U-19, and operated in that area for the next four months. After the outbreak of the 1917 anti-shipping war “without restrictions,” he was sent out with U-19 to observe the organization and tactics of the first British mercantile convoys, and to raid them. His first attempts were against the Scandinavian convoys running between the Shetlands and Norway. Made proficient by this experience, he was put to the work of harassing the big Atlantic convoys. In October, 1917, he was promoted to the command of U-52, but all his luck left him when he took over his new boat. She met disaster but through no fault of her commanding officer. So he went back to his old love, the U-19, and did not leave her till April, 1918; by that time she was the oldest submarine of the German Navy still on active service, and was practically worn out. During the last six months of hostilities, he commanded the big and fast U-135, but saw no active service in her.
What new historical material can we glean from Six Years of Cruising in Submarines? In his preface, Lieutenant Spiess disclaims all intention of writing history in the grand manner of circumstance and chronology. His purpose was merely to put forward his personal adventures, and to show how, as the war progressed, new problems arose, and had to be met and mastered by the commander of a submarine.
Despite this disavowal, he furnishes us with new information materially affecting our appreciation of historical events. In the first place, he does us the notable service of fixing our starting point; he shows us the exact condition, both in material and personnel, of the German submarine service before the war. There is a Latin saying that “things mysterious are assumed to be magnificent,” and the maxim applies in this instance. Such secrecy surrounded the U- boats up to 1914, that the idea became current—and still prevails to some extent—that the German fleet embarked on hostilities with an underwater arm far more efficient than that possessed by any other navy.
Lieutenant Spiess, in his first chapter, dispells all the glamour of mystery, and shows us things as they actually were. And what a condition things were in! It is almost impossible to believe that this same service, in the space of four years, was to provide the crisis of the naval war. When Spiess joined in 1912, the U-boats were crude, clumsy, and inefficient; the main job was to get them to dive and keep underwater at all, let alone fire torpedoes. Fires, explosions, and accidents were not infrequent. Consecutive training was out of the question, for the submarines had to be continually hurried back to the yards, to have defects remedied, to be tinkered with, and improved. The strongest seamen, stripped to the waist, could only stand a ten-minute spell at the diving-rudder controls. Training, when it was actually carried out, was marked by caution verging on timidity. To go deeper than forty-five feet was considered to be simply suicidal. Living conditions were so squalid and uncomfortable that a week at sea in a submarine was deemed to be beyond the powers of human endurance. One of the glories of [7-p, by the way, was a patent electric cooker, that promptly short- circuited as soon as a frying pan was put on it! Outside of the hulk Acheron (parent vessel of submarines at Kiel), few German officers believed that the diving boats could, or ever would, do anything in actual warfare.
It was Weddigen who first confounded the croakers. During the May exercises of 1913, he hit, with four successive torpedo shots, the battleships Friedrich der Grosse, Ostfriesland and Thuringen, theoretically placing these three dreadnaughts “out of action.” It was so sensational a performance that a little more initiative was allowed in the training system thereafter. None the less, it was only just before the actual outbreak of hostilities that Weddigen was allowed to demonstrate that he could reload his tubes while running submerged. People said such a thing simply could not be done, and when Weddigen showed that it could be done, they asked, what was the good of such a stunt? Within two months, Weddigen had crushingly proved “the good of it.” By rapidly reloading his tubes, he was able to sink the three British cruisers Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue in little more than one hour. In that disaster, the British Navy lost nearly 1,600 officers and men. The “stunt” proved stunning to Germans and British alike.
It is not likely, so long as the present Bolshevist regime prevails, that the Russians will ever issue any official history of their part in the naval war of 1914-17. If such an account is ever prepared, it will have to be, perforce, compiled from a variety of sources and authors. To such a patchwork compilation, Spiess’s book will furnish some useful facts. We learn, for instance, that from the very first days of war, the Russians had mines of remarkable and deadly efficiency; they mined the Baltic on a grand scale, and were past masters in planning and planting their fields. The two great barrages of mines and nets across the Finnish Gulf were recognized from the very outset as being impassable for the German submarines. In other words, the Russians had at the start what the Allied navies did not get, even at the very end of the World War.
On the other hand, Lieutenant Spiess makes a laughing stock of all that silly mystery-making in which the Russian ministry of marine loved to indulge itself. To cite an instance: the charts issued by the Russian hydrographic service never disclosed the existence of certain safe channels amongst the reefs of the Aaland Islands. These “secret” passages the Russians wished to preserve for their own exclusive use, in the event of war. But, for information regarding soundings and lights, the Russians went to Finnish pilots. No sooner had war begun, than the Germans got in touch with the same Finnish pilots. It was not long before the Germans had ascertained all that was worth knowing, from a navigational point of view. In the autumn of 1914, the Russians established a “very secret, advanced base” at the island of Uto, “the Heligoland of the Finnish Gulf,” reckoning that the Germans would never be able to discover the approach channels amongst the reefs. The Germans responded by sending the battle cruiser Von der Tann, and other cruisers, to Uto. The “highly secret” base received a “most confidential” bombardment before the Russians had time to settle down there!
Such chaos and confusion reigned in the German naval ports during the last days of the World War that we have, even now, no very clear perception of what actually took place. Spiess tells us how he witnessed the last throes of the Kaiser’s Navy. He even gives us a glimpse of Hipper, the commander in chief of the High Sea Fleet, at that dreadful moment when mutiny broke out in the battleships. The fleet was assembling for the last grand sortie against the British coast, when Spiess was suddenly summoned before Michelsen, commodore of submarines, Wilhelmshaven. “Are you sure of your crew?” asked Michelsen. Puzzled as he was by such an abrupt question, Spiess replied in the affirmative. Then the commodore broke the news. The battleships Ostfriesland and Thuringen, lying out in Schillig Roads, had mutinied. Spiess was to take the U-135 out there, and act “upon orders from the Fleet Command.” The meaning of these instructions could be easily divined: the big submarine was to attack and sink the two rebel battleships, should the necessity arise. Lieutenant Spiess went to Admiral von Trotha and asked for written orders, but the chief of staff refused to put anything into writing. Litera scripta manet—and perhaps the mutineers might win in the end! In that event, a written order might prove highly inconvenient to its author!
Spiess therefore appealed to Caesar, and requested an interview with the commander in chief. All he got for his pains were a few brief words from Admiral Hipper, no clear orders, a bow—and the interview was over.
Why did Hipper, the indomitable leader of the battle cruisers at the Dogger Bank and Jutland, act in so undecided a way, when he saw insurrection breaking out within his command? It is hard to answer such a question, but in Lieutenant Spiess’s narrative, we get glimpses of a sinister figure standing in the shadows behind Hipper—the figure of Admiral Kraft. Kraft, the incompetent, had once got “The Blue Letter”—that is to say, he was compulsorily retired, and virtually dismissed the service. From “The Blue Letter” there was supposed to be no appeal; it was St. Helena. But to Kraft, it was simply an Elba; he “came back” and was installed at Berlin as controller of the dockyards. Incompetent as ever, he did nothing to back up the war front with adequate supplies. Clamor from the fighting line drove him from office, and he was kicked upstairs into the command of the High Sea Fleet’s best battle squadron. When the mutiny of October 31 had collapsed before the threat of U-135, certain naval leaders advocated drastic measures, to purge the fleet of mutineers, and restore discipline. Kraft would have none of these remedies; he decided to take his battle squadron to Kiel, “where the men would come to a saner state of mind.” It was just the very move that precipitated the final crash, for, once arrived at Kiel, Kraft’s seamen broke away from all restraint and began the revolution.
When all recovery of discipline in the High Sea Fleet became hopeless, Michelsen left Wilhelmshaven in U-135, and with a force of some fifty submarines, torpedo craft, and patrol vessels assembled at Heligoland, he tried to organize a “last-ditch” navy. But the island-fortress went “red,” and the “Forlorn Hope Fleet” tried to find a new base in Lister Deep, behind Sylt. On arrival, internecine strife was found to be raging in Sylt, and no pro-Hohenzollern ships could stay there in safety. There was nothing for it but to take the ships back to the naval ports, and surrender them to the “Soldiers’ Councils.” Michelsen hoisted his broad pennant in the cruiser Graudenz, and passed down the line, to take the salute of the submarines for the last time.
Here is a remarkable side light from Spiess regarding the genesis of the German submarine war on shipping. When H.M.S. Hawke was torpedoed by Weddigen, October 15, 1914, the British consorts of the stricken ship at once steamed away, in accordance with their standing orders. Against the retreating cruisers U-17 made an attack, but met with no success. So she went over to the Norwegian coast, and having nothing else better to do, captured and scuttled the steamship Glitra, the first mercantile ship ever sunk by a submarine. When U-17 got back to Heligoland and reported, Spiess tells us that the captain in command of submarines there was simply dumbfounded. He simply dared not breathe for several days, until the commander in chief had accepted U-17’s escapade as a fait accompli and approved it. That gave Germany the idea of blockade by submarines. No one tried to foresee how far such a form of warfare would go, or where it would lead Germany in the end. Never was there a better illustration of Cromwell’s saying: “No one goes further than the man who does not know where he is going.”
Insignificant in itself, but interesting from an historical point, is the following entry made by Spiess, just before he left the Ems on May 7, 1917:
Before sailing, I had a conference with the captain of our Flotilla, and I was made acquainted with a report on the last cruise of the U-49, which had come into the place. Her Commanding Officer remarked, amongst other things, that some ship had thrown “a marine-bomb” at him. At this period, it was a novelty that created a sensation.
The “marine-bomb” was, of course, the depth charge, and so we know now when the Germans were first introduced to the “ash can.” Spiess became quite familiar with it later on—so familiar, in fact, that he calls it in his book nothing more or less than “an accursed invention.” But a sense of humor never was a strong trait amongst the Germans!
The sinking of shipping naturally runs through the whole narrative. Spiess did not embark seriously on this branch of his duties until convoys were first coming into use. Blame has often been imputed to the British Admiralty for holding to the view for so long that the convoy system was not practical. Let this be remarked: Spiess frankly confesses that the Germans themselves thought modern steamers never could be worked in assembled masses across the high seas. Once the system was taken up by the British, Spiess was sent out with U-19 to watch, report on, and attack the Scandinavian convoys. It was not long before he discovered that the route then lay between Lerwick in the Shetlands, and Aspo Fjiord, Norway. He soon adapted himself to conditions as he found them. If he sighted, say, a convoy off the Shetlands in the evening, he used to set off, and steer a course parallel to the convoy track all night, so as to be in an intercepting and attacking position at dawn. If he sighted the convoy at dusk off the Norwegian coast, he reversed his procedure. So well did he estimate the situation that if he met and missed an outward convoy, he knew exactly where and when he would get a contact later, with an inward convoy. The Scandinavian convoys ran daily in each direction; they were mostly composed of small steamers, usually not more than twelve in number. They emitted such clouds of smoke that they were “like traveling volcanoes,” and easy to sight, in clear weather, at long range.
The first time Spiess saw a big convoy moving out into the Atlantic, he was amazed. The number of ships, and their individual sizes, exceeded anything he had seen between the Shetlands and Norway. What surprised him most was that the Atlantic convoys emitted barely a vestige of smoke; the ships kept station, and altered course upon a given signal, like a fleet of warships. Time and again was he frustrated in attacking convoys, but once or twice he had the good luck to emerge in the middle of the mercantile fleet, to play “the devil amongst tailors.” He notes with pride those days when he “gets a double,” that is, making hits, almost simultaneously, with two torpedoes, fired first from a bow and next from a stern tube—a performance he acquired from Otto Weddigen. He gives an idea of the various kinds of convoy formations, and the methods of approach and attack he employed under diverse conditions.
One observes a rather peculiar point in these records, and it is too important a one to pass over without comment. This is the difficulty of accurately identifying ships, and estimating their size by periscope. When Weddigen first examined the three British cruisers of the Cressy class through U-p’s periscope, he declared they were British light cruisers of the Birmingham class. Later, he altered his opinion, and, when making his way back to his base, he got off a radio message, believing he had sunk “three British cruisers of the Kent class.” In both opinions, he was wrong. When he sank the Hazvke, he thought he had only put down an old, two-funneled gunboat. Spiess confesses that he missed mercantile targets many times, by overestimating size and draught. A 2,000-ton steamer, light and in ballast, he often mistook for a ship of 5,000 or 6,000 tons, with the result that his torpedo went off with too big a depth-setting, and underran the target.
Antisubmarine warfare plays a large part in his memoirs, and, at times, assumes nightmare proportions. He had only two encounters with the famous “Q-Boats” or submarine decoy vessels. The first, a three masted sailing ship, he was able to detect by a small defect in her disguise, and he kept clear of her. Wary as he was, he got trapped by “an old flower-pot” of a disguised brig later on, but escaped from her clutches with nothing worse than a bad scare. (You can always tell when he is rattled, because after the alarm is over, he starts swearing that he will wage bloody warfare on everything, north, south, east, and west!) Destroyers he dreaded from his very first experience of them, in October, 1914, when, standing by Weddigen’s side in the conning tower of U-p, he heard H.M.S. Nymphe pass, “like a clap of thunder” over his head. Even the imperturbable Otto mopped his brow, it was so close a thing! Spiess relates one peculiar “let-off” by an American destroyer. He was taking U-19 home, as the boat had been damaged in the after tubes by a depth charge, and trouble with the engines was developing. On September 13, 1917, fog was about, and a heavy sea running. In the afternoon, he suddenly sighted a United States destroyer, a little more than 1,000 yards away. The American boat had such trouble in going about in the heavy sea that Spiess had time to efface himself and U-19, damaged though as she was. He publicly thanks his lucky star, in his book, that this destroyer did not have her guns manned and ready for action.
Four times was he caught, at point-blank range, by Allied submarines, and every time escaped. One evening in 1915, he ran submerged through reefs and mine fields, under the very muzzles of coast defense batteries, past signaling and watch stations ashore, right into the “secret” Russian base at Uto. There, in a narrow channel, he met a Russian submarine, coming right down on top of him. He made a desperate effort to swing his boat around under water, and spiked her on a rock. The Russian saw him and opened fire with gun and torpedoes. The ensuing fight, in the twilight, between the two submarines was brief; it ended by the Russian boat incontinently bolting off, and Spiess was left to grope his way out again in pitch darkness.
On another evening he was coming down the North Sea, homeward bound, and sighted smoke on the horizon to the west. After studying it for some time, he came to the conclusion that it was a British warship, too far off and moving much too fast for him to make an attack. He ordered watch to be kept on it, and went below to turn in. Just as he was settling down in his bunk, he overheard the remark of a seaman in one of the forward compartments, to a shipmate, “…smoke no longer in sight.” Instinct, more than anything else, made the German lieutenant turn out and go on deck. He asked the man on watch if the smoke was still in sight. “No,” replied the man, staring through his binoculars, “it is not—neither is the conning tower of a submarine.” This latter remark alarmed Spiess, and at once he put the U-19 hard about. Then there heaved up from the depths a great British submarine, but a few yards away! The sudden change of course had thrown the German boat across the bows of the British craft; the latter, to avoid a head-on collision, had stopped her engines, and at once bobbed up to the superior and aerial world. The amusing thing was, neither side could do a thing in the way of injury, to the other. Had the British boat fired a torpedo, she would have immolated herself, besides extinguishing her antagonist. The German boat had her gun neither manned nor loaded. So, after glaring impotently at each other, the two combatants saved what little was left of their dignity, by diving alongside of one another!
What was this German lieutenant’s most fortunate escape? He bore so charmed a life, it is hard to select any specific instance, but the following episode is, perhaps, without parallel. In Chapter X, “A Fruitful Cruise, and Adventures around England,” he narrates how he sighted, near the Scilly Islands, the Norwegian bark Akaora running fast before the wind. Being on his guard against sailing decoy ships, he decided to attack submerged, but, misjudging his distances, he had to make a second attempt to get into a firing position. To quote his own words:
U-19 went about to starboard. To recover my firing line, I went up to attacking depth, with a bow tube ready. After the estimated time had elapsed, I should have found myself in a very good position for my shot. Up periscope more; the periscope is not high enough yet! . . . . Ah! that’s the surface .... but it’s swamped again by a wave! .... At last! now I can get a sight Oh! a grey wall rises up before me in the eye-piece Horrors! We are rammed! . . . . Every hand forward! Dive! Down with her! Stop both engines! Bow tube, hold fire!
Then the submarine crashed, bows on, into the side of the sailing ship, and under the shock of the collision, the bow tube fired itself!
After Spiess had surfaced, chased, overhauled, and sunk the Akaora, he examined the bows of his boat, and tried to puzzle out what in the world had happened. By all rights, both submarine and sailing ship should have been blown to pieces instantly. From marks upon the slightly twisted stem, it became evident that at the moment of ramming, the U-19 had assumed a negative angle, with her bows pointing downwards. So the torpedo had shot just under the keel of the Norwegian bark, and had passed on, heading for the bottom of the Atlantic. A few more inches and . . . .!
Of quite a different category was his escape from U-52. With this boat, he had no luck whatever. Barely had he begun his first cruise in her when she fractured the head of a Diesel engine cylinder, and he had to put back to Kiel for repairs. The boat’s performance had been so unsatisfactory that Spiess asked for a general overhaul. He went ashore with the chief engineer and some hands to make arrangements about repairs to the damaged engine. There was a terrific report just behind him. Splintered glass flew in all directions from the windows of the dockyard buildings. Turning round, he saw a great column of smoke rising from the basin over the place where U-52 should have been. Running back, he was just in time to see the conning tower disappear under water. The account of the salvage operations, and the rescue of eight men, imprisoned within the sunken boat, is most interesting, but cannot be commented on here.
What was the cause of the disaster? The whole thing was an utter mystery for days afterwards, and then, chiefly by chance, the clues were found. They consisted of a severed hand, discovered still grasping the control wheel of a valve, and a minute fragment of a shattered torpedo. The origin of the explosion was this: the after tubes of the U-52 had been designed to take torpedoes six meters long, but into them had been loaded Mark G.VII torpedoes, nominally seven meters long. This could be done by leaving off the long net-cutter usually affixed to the noses of German torpedoes. It was an extremely dangerous expedient, for it left the firing gear in the nose of the G. VII torpedo dangerously close to the inner face of the tube port. Once loaded into the six-meter tube, the seven-meter G.VII torpedo could only be withdrawn by being disassembled in three sections—a long, intricate and dangerous job. Spiess never intended that the after tubes should be touched, and gave orders to that effect before he went ashore. The small, twisted fragment showed that the G.VII torpedoes had never been secure in their tubes. The dead hand proved that some one had opened a valve, delivering compressed air at high pressure into an after tube. Under the air blast, the torpedo had moved forward, the firing gear in its nose had violently struck the inner face of the closed tube port—and instant disaster ensued. The Germans thereafter pondered, whether the advice about not putting new wine into old bottles, might not also apply to torpedoes and their tubes!
Terrible is the account given of the events that marked the evening of April 15, 1918, in the Northern Channel. Here, on his preceding cruise, Spiess had achieved what he considers to be his finest attack during the whole war. He had torpedoed and sunk H.M.S. Calgarian, one of the biggest armed merchant cruisers of the British Tenth Cruiser Squadron. One cannot deny, after reading the version presented by Lieutenant Spiess, that it was a remarkably fine piece of submarine handling. The big armed liner was moving fast, and was escorted by two destroyers, but Spiess got his first torpedo home, at a range of only 200 yards. Seeing the Calgarian stopped, but still afloat, he went back to finish her off, although he had been heavily depth-charged and knew he would be so attacked again. Around the stricken ship and in the vicinity, Spiess counted seven destroyers, eleven armed trawlers, and three sloops. He wondered where this mob had meandered in from, and found that a big convoy was passing by, and sent part of its escort to protect the torpedoed auxiliary cruiser. Against these odds, back he went; a trawler charged onto him and began to pelt him with depth charges from just overhead. With a final effort, Spiess fired a double shot from two bow tubes, and down went the Calgarian for ever.
But he was imprudent enough to go back to this area, on his very next cruise. Admiral W. S. Sims, U.S.N., has told us, in his book on the World War, that the British Admiralty knew exactly where the U-boats went, what they sank, when they left, and returned to their bases. After the loss of the Calgarian, the lords commissioners of the Admiralty, no doubt, strongly desired that the head of Lieutenant Johannes Spiess might be presented to them in a slop-bucket, and perhaps gave orders to that effect. There is every evidence that when the U-19 again appeared in the Northern Channel, she walked straight into a murderous trap. Nothing happened at first; nothing at all! Spiess thought it a little odd, that on three successive days he should sight three British sloops, wandering about in a seemingly aimless manner, always just outside of his reach. At 7:30 p.m. on April 15, 1918, he sighted a big convoy, five miles away, and coming up towards him. He dived, and got ready to attack, when, into the periscope’s field of vision there drifted one of those sloops. She was only 1,000 yards away, and hove to.
She was far too rich a thing to miss, for she presented such a simple, sitting target for a shot. He would collect the sloop first, and then get on with the convoy attack. He was just drawing a bead on the sloop, when —a depth charge explosion, close above, nearly lifted him from the central control station into the conning tower overhead. Then, rocking and reeling under the depth charge concussions, U-19 plunged madly down to the sea bed, crashed on it, and stopped. They dared not move for fear the sloop would locate them on her hydrophones, and give them another dose of the “water-bombs.” All electric lights were shattered and extinguished; seams were started and water creeping in; the batteries were nearly exhausted. However, night was not far off, and in the darkness they might be able to slip away. Spiess meditated long and deeply on two unpleasant discoveries he had just made. Firstly, he had gone dead slow on his engines, to beat the hydrophones, but the sloop had heard the noise of the motor raising the periscope, and had fixed his position by that. Secondly, the British sloop had mortars or howitzers of some kind, from which she could hurl depth charges to a distance of at least 1,000 yards. No one had ever warned him of this.
At 1130 a.m. on the next morning, with infinite caution, they rose towards the surface. They found it was bright moonlight above, and the accursed sloop still there, right on top of them—waiting! Anticipating another dose of the depth charge, U-19 was hurled down again to the sea bottom.
Matters were getting pretty serious. Spiess sat himself down on a folding chair, and tried to figure out exactly what his chances were. The moon set in one hour. That would be the last and only chance. If that failed, nothing for it but to open the Kingstons and throw themselves overboard. The last preparations were made. The commanding officer pocketed the few personal possessions he valued most, and then threw his last, desperate stake. At 2:30 a.m. he ordered the boat off the bottom. Using the last of his electric current, he began to crawl away. After minutes of nerve-racking suspense, he put his periscope up, found the world above in pitch darkness. The sloop was gone! He surfaced; the hatches were thrown open; the Diesels broke into their thundering march, and away he ran, alive—alive!—alive!
War in the under waters may have its horrors and tragedies, but it often contains elements of the comic and the absurd. Once Spiess was literally caught napping. He had taken his boat to an unfrequented area of the Baltic, to give his men a day’s rest. The submarine was hove to; stores, showing signs of mildew, were brought up to dry. The men sprawled on deck, warming themselves like lizards in the sun. Spiess was drowsing over a book, when lifting his eyes, he saw the twin periscopes of a Russian submarine rise high out of the water, 500 yards away, and turn directly towards him. Tableau! The men, hugging boxes of stores, flung themselves, pell-mell, down the hatchways. Spiess, with one jump, got onto the top of the conning tower, bursting his suspenders en route. Regard for the modesty of our readers prohibits us from entering too deeply into further details. Suffice it to say that he had to con his boat through an emergency dive, whilst he held his trousers up with one hand. Outside of this most regrettable casualty to the nether garments of the commanding officer, the German submarine suffered no damage at all from the encounter.
We will pass over that memorable day when, by a well-intentioned warning message, Lieutenant Spiess sent the whole High Sea Fleet to “Action Stations,” to fight itself. Nor can we dilate on the peculiar episode of the Dogger Bank, wherein Spiess sank a 2,600-ton steamer himself, with shots from a rifle. Incredible as this may sound, we turn to the British official White Paper, “Merchantile Losses,” and find that the event did take place, substantially as Spiess narrates it.
It may be news to many American naval officers that the British Isles were invaded by the Germans during the World War, but such a humiliation actually did take place. After the hair-raising encounter with the “hydrophone sloop,” narrated above, Spiess found that his crew was badly rattled. During the daily practice dive, “serious mishaps” took place; the men could not, or would not, perform their duties properly. Later, a man on lookout aft nearly went mad with panic, completely failing to give warning when he sighted a British destroyer emerging, close at hand, out of a haze patch. With a frightful yell, he mounted the conning tower, and swarmed up to the top of the periscope. As the submarine began to dive, he was pulled down, crashed on the deck, and was stunned. Spiess, suddenly awakened, rushed into the central control station, and found a mob of demoralized men there, jabbering round the prone figure of the unconscious man.
To divert the minds of his men from recent events, and to get his boat revictualed, Spiess decided to make a landing on the lonely island of St. Kilda, which stands out in the Atlantic, far to the west of Scotland. Once arrived there, he sent the “invading army” ashore. It consisted of four men, armed with rifles, all crammed into a small folding Berthon boat. It took a vast amount of ammunition and bad language, before four of the nimble sheep were shot. Upon this, it was found that four men and four sheep could not all be accommodated in the Berthon. So two of the sheep were heaved overboard and towed behind the boat. The porpoises, undeterred by rifle shots, chased and tried to grab the mutton of the tow for their own consumption. In the end, the landing party, with the spoils of its perspiring hunt, got back aboard U-19.
To officers in command of American submarines, might we be allowed to tender just one word of advice? On no account ever allow dead, sea-sodden sheep to be skinned and cut up on your decks! Lieutenant Spiess permitted this, and he regretted it. He had to retire in haste below, holding his nose. We suspect that, afterwards, he experienced further regrets. Besides themselves, the sheep appear to have brought other visitors on board. These minute and active additions to the complement soon became warmly attached to their new home, and evinced an eager, avid, and impartial affection for officers and seamen alike!
Classical history tells us that, before going to war, soldiers used to consult the Delphic Oracle, to discover what their future fortunes in battle might be. One and all, they received the same reply:
“Thou shalt go thou shalt return never in battle shalt thou perish!”
A cryptic reply, for the position of a single comma, before or after the word “never,” makes the whole verdict favorable or the reverse. Happily for the German Lieutenant Spiess, Destiny had placed the comma, for him, in the right place. He went, he returned, never in battle did he perish. Hundreds of his fellow officers went, they returned never, in battle did they perish. So he survived, to give us a most entertaining and exciting narrative of his experiences in that great conflict, wherein the submarines of his service played so prominent a part, and contributed so much to the final downfall of his nation.