Favoured by their light draught and smaller proportions, the coasters are perhaps less exposed to successful torpedo attack than their larger and deeper ocean sisters. In the early days of submarine activity, the enemy was loath to use his deadlier and more expensive weapon on the small craft. He relied on gunfire to produce effects. The channel seas were not then as well patrolled as now by armed auxiliaries: he could have a leisurely exercise in frightfulness at little risk to himself--there was no return to his fire--it was an easy target practice. _Cottingham_ was shelled at short ranges when off the Bristol Channel. Unarmed and outdistanced, the master stopped his engines, lowered the two boats, and abandoned ship. The shelling continued, but was directed on the sinking ship; the submarine commander evidently thought the bitter wintry weather would accomplish a more refined _Schrecklichkeit_ than the summary execution of his shell-bursts. In the heavy battery of a sou'west gale, the boats drove apart. The master's boat was sighted by a patrol, and the crew of six rescued after some hours' exposure. The mate's boat came ashore at Portliskey in Wales, bottom up and shattered; of the seven men who had manned her there was no trace. Six of _Cottingham's_ crew survived the bitter weather--six hardy seamen were spared to return to service afloat. The German became dissatisfied with a frightfulness that murdered only half a merchant ship's crew when it was possible to murder all. It was not enough to destroy the ships and leave the seamen to the wind and sea and bitter weather. If they were not to be driven from their calling by fear, there were other measures--sure, definite, final. There was to be no weakness among the apostles of the new creed, no shrinking, no humanity--British seamen were to follow their shattered ships to the litter of the channel bottom. The _Kölnische Zeitung_ set forth that "in future, our German submarines and aircraft would wage war against British mercantile vessels without troubling themselves in any way about the fate of the crews." The _Kölnische Zeitung_ could not have been well informed. Their submarine commanders troubled themselves greatly about the fate of our crews. They shelled the boats in many subsequent attacks. They expended ammunition in efforts to secure that no further seafaring would be possible to their victims. Sheer individual murder took the place of an illegal act of war. ". . . We were unarmed, a slow ship. The submarine hit us with a shot on the bow and then ran up the signal to take to the lifeboats. We did so, and several shots were fired at the _Palermo_. They did not take effect, however, and a torpedo was sent into her side. She sank within a few minutes. Whether the fact that he had to use a torpedo to send our vessel to the bottom angered the commander I do not know, but the submarine came directly alongside of our lifeboats. The