Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/69

1917] which the enemy might soon perceive and of which he would probably take advantage.

At the very moment that Admiral Bayly was giving these impressive instructions the submarine campaign had reached its crisis; the fortunes of the Allies had never struck so low a depth as at that time. An incident connected with our arrival, not particularly important in itself, brought home to our men the unsleeping vigilance of the enemy with whom they had to deal.

Perhaps the Germans did not actually have advance information of the arrival of this first detachment of our destroyers; but they certainly did display great skill in divining what was to happen. At least it was a remarkable coincidence that for the first time in many months a submarine laid a mine-field directly off the entrance to Queenstown the day before our ships arrived. Soon afterward a parent ship of the destroyers reached this port and encountered the same welcome; and soon after that a second parent ship found a similar mine-field awaiting her arrival. The news that our destroyers had reached Queenstown actually appeared in the German papers several days before we had released it in the British and American press. Thanks to the vigilance and efficiency of the British mine-sweepers, however, the enemy gained nothing from all these preparations, for the channel was cleared of German mines before our vessels reached port. The night before the destroyers arrived, while some of the officers of my staff were dining with Admiral Bayly, the windows were shaken by heavy explosions made by the mines which the sweepers were dragging out. Admiral Bayly jokingly remarked that it was really a pity to interfere with such a warm welcome as had apparently been planned for our crusaders. Even the next night, while the destroyer officers were dining at Admiralty House, several odd mines exploded outside the channel that had been swept the previous day. This again impressed our men with the fact that the game which they had now entered was quite a different affair from their peace-time manoeuvres.

The Germans at that time were jubilant over the progress of their submarine campaign and, indeed, they had good reason to be. The week that our first flotilla reached Irish waters their submarines had destroyed 240,000 tons of