Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/145

1917] vessels which, for various reasons, fell behind the convoy, a tempting bait for the submarine. At this time certain of the merchant captains manifested an incurable obstinacy; they affected to regard the U-boats with contempt, and insisted rather on taking chances instead of playing the game. In such cases a destroyer would often have to leave the main division, go back several miles, and attempt to prod the straggler into joining the convoy, much as a shepherd dog attempts to force the laggard sheep to keep within the flock. In some cases, when the merchantman proved particularly obdurate, the destroyer would slyly drop a depth charge, near enough to give the backward vessel a considerable shaking up without doing her any injury; usually such a shock caused the merchantman to start full speed ahead to rejoin her convoy, firmly believing that a submarine was giving chase. In certain instances the merchantman fell behind the convoy because the machinery had broken down or because she had suffered other accidents. The submarines would follow for days in the track of convoys, looking for a straggler of this kind, just as a shark will follow a vessel in the hope that something will be thrown overboard; and for this reason one destroyer at least was often detached from the escorting division as a rear guard. In this connection we must keep in mind that at no time until the armistice was signed was any escort force strong enough to insure entire safety. If we had had destroyers enough to put a close screen, or even a double screen, around every convoy, there would have been almost no danger from submarines. The fact that all escort forces were very inadequate placed a very heavy responsibility upon the escort commanders, and made them think twice before detaching a destroyer in order to protect stragglers.

One late summer afternoon the American converted yacht Christabel was, performing this duty for the British merchantman Danae, a vessel which had fallen eight miles behind her convoy, bound from La Pallice, France, to Brest. It was a beautiful evening ; the weather was clear, the sea smooth, and there was not a breath of wind. Under such conditions a submarine could conceal its presence only with great difficulty; and at about 5.30 the lookout on the Christabel detected a wake, some six hundred yards on the port quarter. The Christabel started