Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/284

 was in the summer of 1918 that the Germans made their only attempt at what might be called an offensive against their American enemies. Between the beginning of May and the end of October, 1918, five German submarines crossed the Atlantic and torpedoed a few ships on our coast. That submarines could make this long journey had long been known. Singularly enough, however, the impression still prevails in this country that the German U-boats were the first to accomplish the feat. In the early autumn of 1916 the U-53 commanded by that submarine officer, Hans Rose, who has been previously mentioned in these pages crossed the Atlantic, dropped in for a call at Newport, R.I., and, on the way back, sank a few merchant vessels off Nantucket. A few months previous the so-called merchant submarine Deutschland had made its trip to Newport News. The Teutonic press, and even some Germanophiles in this country, hailed these achievements as marking a glorious page in the record of the German navy. Doubtless the real purpose was to show the American people how easily these destructive vessels could cross the Atlantic ; and to impress upon their minds the fate which awaited them in case they maintained their rights against the Prussian bully. As a matter of fact, it had been proved, long before the Deutschland or the C7-53 had made their voyages, that submarines could cross the Atlantic. In 1915, not one but ten submarines had gone from North America to Europe under their own power. Admiral Sir John Fisher tells about this expedition in his recently published memoirs. In 1914, the British Admiralty had contracted for submarines with Charles M. Schwab, president of the Bethlehem Steel Company. As international law prohibited the construction of war vessels by a nation in wartime for the use of a