Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/161

1917] centrated upon the task in hand amounted to little less than genius. When the war began, Captain Campbell, then about thirty years old, was merely one of several thousand junior officers in the British navy. He had not distinguished himself in any way above his associates; and probably none of his superiors had ever regarded him as in any sense an unusual man. Had the naval war taken the course of most naval wars, Campbell would probably have served well, but perhaps not brilliantly. This conflict, however, demanded a new type of warfare and at the same time it demanded a new type of naval fighter. To go hunting for the submarine required not only courage of a high order, but analytical intelligence, patience, and a talent for preparation and detail. Captain Campbell seemed to have been created for this particular task. That evening at Queenstown he finally gave way to much urging, and entertained us for hours with his adventures; he told the stories of his battles with submarines so quietly, so simply and, indeed, so impersonally, that at first they impressed his hearers as not particularly unusual. Yet, after the recital was finished, we realized that the mystery ship performances represented some of the most admirable achievements in the whole history of naval warfare. We have laid great emphasis upon the brutalizing aspects of the European War; it is well, therefore, that we do not forget that it had its more exalted phases. Human nature may at times have manifested itself in its most cowardly traits, but it also reached a level of courage which, I am confident, it has seldom attained in any other conflict. It was reserved for this devastating struggle to teach us how brave modern men could really be. And when the record is complete it seems unlikely that it will furnish any finer illustration of the heroic than that presented by Captain Campbell and his compatriots of the mystery ships.

This type of vessel was a regular ship of His Majesty's navy, yet there was little about it that suggested warfare. To the outward eye it was merely one of those several thousand freighters or tramps which, in normal times, sailed sluggishly from port to port, carrying the larger part of the world's commerce. It looked like a particularly dirty and uninviting specimen of the breed. Just who invented this grimy enemy of the submarine is unknown, as are the inventors of many other devices developed by the war. It