Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/207

1918] this submarine, it will be recalled, which had suddenly paid a ceremonious visit to Newport, R.I., in the autumn of 1916, and which, on its way back to Germany, had paused long enough off Nantucket to sink half a dozen British cargo ships. It was the same submarine which sank our own destroyer, the Jacob Jones, by a chance shot with a torpedo. Thus Americans had a peculiar reason for wishing to see it driven from the seas. About the middle of August, 1918, we discovered that the U-53 was operating in the Atlantic about 250 miles west of Brest. At the same time we learned that two German submarines were coming down the west coast of Ireland. We picked up radio messages which these three boats were exchanging; this made it quite likely that they proposed to form a junction west of Brest, and attack American transports, which were then sailing to France in great numbers. Here was an opportunity for the subchasers. The distance 250 miles to sea would be a severe strain upon their endurance, but we assigned four hunting units, twelve boats in all, to the task, and also added to this contingent the destroyers Wilkes and Parker. On the morning of September 2nd one of these subchaser units picked up a suspicious sound. A little later the lookout on the Parker detected on the surface an object that looked like a conning-tower, with an upright just forward which seemed to be a mast and sail; as it was the favourite trick of the U-53 to disguise itself in this way, it seemed certain that the chasers were now on the track of this esteemed vessel. When this mast and sail and conning-tower suddenly disappeared under the water, these suspicions became still stronger. The Parker put on full speed, found an oilslick where the submarine had evidently been pumping its bilges, and dropped a barrage of sixteen depth charges. But had these injured the submarine? Under ordinary conditions there would have been no satisfactory answer to this question; but now three little wooden boats came up, advanced about 2,000 yards ahead of the Parker, stopped their engines, put over their tubes, and began to listen. In a few minutes they conveyed the disappointing news to the Parker that the depth charges had gone rather wild, that the submarine was still steaming ahead, and that they had obtained a "fix" of its position. But the U-53, as always, was exceedingly crafty. It knew that the chasers were on the trail; its propellers were