Submarine and Anti-submarineNewbolt, Henry John, Sir
History
Submarine and Anti-submarine
Newbolt, Henry John, Sir
Submarines (Ships); World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations -- Submarine
Lieut.-Commander Nasmith brought his boat safely back to Mudros on June
7. The last hour of his trip was perhaps the most breathless, for
while rushing down by Kilid Bahr he found his trim quite abnormal, and
‘observed a large mine preceding the periscope at a distance of about
twenty feet; which was apparently hung up by its moorings to the port
hydroplane.’ He could not come to the surface, as the shore batteries
were waiting for him; but when outside Kum Kale, he emptied his
after-tanks, got his nose down, and went full speed astern, dropping
the mine neatly to the bottom. This was good work, but not better than
the skill shown in navigating shoal water, or ‘the resource displayed
in the delicate operation of recovering two torpedoes’ without the
usual derrick to hoist them in--an operation which may as well remain
for the present undescribed. Admiral de Robeck, in recommending
Lieut.-Commander Nasmith for the V.C., speaks of his cruise as one
‘which will surely find a place in the annals of the British Navy.’ It
will--there can be no forgetting it. The very log of E. 11 deserves to
be a classic. ‘Having dived unobserved into Constantinople ...,’ says
her Commander soberly, and so, without a thought of it, adds one to the
historic despatches of the Service.
It was now E. 14’s turn again. Commander Courtney Boyle took her up
on June 10, against a very strong tide. At 9 o’clock next morning he
stopped a brigantine, whose crew abandoned ship ‘and then all stood up
and cursed us. It was too rough to go alongside her, so Acting-Lieut.
R. W. Lawrence, R.N.R., swam off to her, climbed aboard, and ... set
fire to her with the aid of her own matches and paraffin oil.’ On the
12th one of the Rickmers steamers was torpedoed. Shortly afterwards
there was a big explosion close to the submarine. ‘And I think,’ says
her commander, ‘I must have caught the moorings of a mine with my tail
as I was turning, and exploded it.... The whole boat was very badly
shaken.’ But _Lily Rickmers_ and her sister were now both removed from
the Turkish service, for E. 11 had evidently accounted for one of them
already. Mr. Einstein writes on June 13: ‘The German Embassy approached
us to cable Washington to protest about the torpedoing without warning
of the two Rickmers steamers in the Marmora. One of these was said to
be filled with wounded, but their note neglected to say that these
had been discharged from hospital and were on their way back to the
Dardanelles.’ Only a German diplomatist could speak of a ship carrying
troops to the front as ‘filled with wounded’; and Mr. Einstein adds,
‘One cannot but be struck by the German inability to understand our
position over the _Lusitania_.’ The point is plain, and goes deep. To
the modern German mind all such considerations are only a matter of
words, useful for argumentative purposes--that there should be any
truth of reality or feeling behind them is not imaginable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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