Full Speed Ahead: Tales from the Log of a Correspondent with Our Navy — John Shaqi
Full Speed Ahead: Tales from the Log of a Correspondent with Our NavyBeston, Henry
History
Full Speed Ahead: Tales from the Log of a Correspondent with Our Navy
Beston, Henry
United States. Navy; World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations
Meanwhile, some seventy feet below, the Z3 manoeuvred, killing time.
The phonograph had been hushed, and every man was ready at his post.
The prospect of a go with the enemy had brought with it a keen thrill
of anticipation. Now a submarine crew is a well trained machine.
There are no shouted orders. If a submarine captain wants to send
his boat under quickly, he simply touches the button of a Klaxon, the
horn gives a demoniac yell throughout the ship, and each man does
what he ought to do at once. Such a performance is called a "crash
dive."
"I'd like to see him come up so near that we could ram him," said the
captain, gazing almost directly into the sun. "Find out what she's
making."
The engineer lieutenant stooped to a voice-tube that almost swallowed
up his face, and yelled a question to the engine room. An answer
came, quite unheard by the others.
"Twenty-four, sir," said the engineer lieutenant.
"Get her up to twenty-six," said the captain.
The engineer cried again through the voice tube. The wake of the
vessel roared like a mill race, the white foam tumbling rosily in the
setting sun.
Seventy feet below, Captain Bill was arranging the last little
details with the second in command.
"In about five minutes we'll come up and take a look-see (stick up
the periscope) and if we see the bird, and we're in a good position
to send him a fish (torpedo) we'll let him have one. If there is
something there, and we're not in a good position, we'll manoeuvre
till we get into one, and then let him have it. If there isn't
anything to be seen, we'll go under again and take another look-see
in half an hour. Reilly has his instructions." Reilly was chief of
the torpedo room.
"Something round here must have got it in the neck recently," said
the destroyer captain, breaking a silence which had hung over the
bridge. "Did not you think that wreckage a couple of miles back
looked pretty fresh? Wonder if the boy we're after had anything to
do with it. Keep an eye on that sun streak."
An order was given in the Z3. It was followed instantly by a kind of
commotion, sailors opened valves, compressed air ran down pipes, the
ratchets of the wheel clattered noisily. On the moon-faced depth
gauge with its shining brazen rim, the recording arrow fled swiftly,
counter clockwise, from seventy to twenty to fifteen feet....
Captain Bill stood crouching at the periscope, and when it broke the
surface, a greenish light poured down it and focussed in his eyes.
He gazed keenly for a few seconds, and then reached for the
horizontal wheel which turns the periscope round the horizon. He
turned ... gazed, jumped back, and pushed the button for a crash dive.
"She was almost on top of me," he explained afterwards. "Coming like
H--l. I had to choose between being rammed or depth bombed."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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