Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/167

1917] When the sailor of a warship dumps ashes overboard he does it with particular care, so as not to soil the sides of his immaculate vessel; but a merchant seaman is much less considerate; he usually hurls overboard anything he does not want and lets the ship's side take its chances. To have followed the manner of the navy would at once have given the game away; so the sailors, in carrying out this domestic duty, performed the act with all the nonchalance of merchant seamen. To have messed in naval style would also have been betraying themselves. The ship's cook, therefore, in a white coat, would come on deck, and have a look around, precisely as he would do on a freighter. Even when in port officers and men maintained their disguise. They never visited hotels or clubs or private houses; they spent practically all their time on board ; if they occasionally went ashore, their merchant outfit so disguised them that even their best friends would not have recognized them in the street.

The warlike character of their ships was even more cleverly hidden. In the early days the guns were placed behind the bulwarks, which, when a lever was pulled, would fall down, thus giving them an unobstructed range at the submarine. In order to make the sides of the ships collapsible, certain seams were unavoidably left in the plates, where the detachable part joined the main structure. The U-boat commanders soon learned to look for these betraying seams before coming to the surface. They would sail submerged around the ship, the periscope minutely examining the sides, much as a scientist examines his specimens with a microscope. This practice made it necessary to conceal the guns more carefully. The places which were most serviceable for this purpose were the hatchways—those huge wells, extending from the deck to the bottom, which are used for loading and unloading cargo. Platforms were erected in these openings, and on these guns were emplaced; a covering of tarpaulin completely hid them; yet a lever, pulled by the gun crews, would cause the 'sides of the hatchway covers to fall instantaneously. Other guns were placed under lifeboats, which, by a similar mechanism, would fall apart, or rise in the air, exposing the gun. Perhaps the most deceptive device of all was a gun placed upon the stern, and, with