One of our officers told me that more than one submarine must have been in the attack, and that the activity of the destroyer escort drove them off. There was one incident which some of the men thought rather a joke, but I felt sorry. In the morning an old British tramp picked us up, and seeing all the destroyers, etc., concluded that we were good company to travel in, so she stuck with us all the forenoon, keeping a mile off to port. No sooner did she hear the submarine warning than she lit out at full speed, about ten knots, for safer waters. Two hours after that, our radio men got an S.O.S. from her, that she had been torpedoed and was sinking. It seemed too bad that we couldn’t go and help her. This submarine alarm was the famous episode which thrilled the American public as elaborated by George Creel for the newspapers of July 4, 1917. The _Corsair_ witnessed only what occurred among the second group of transports, and although some of her men declared they saw the wake of a torpedo, Commander Kittinger failed to confirm it in his official report of this busy afternoon. Rear Admiral Gleaves carefully considered the statements of the officers of ships in Group Two and drew the following conclusions, omitting the names of the vessels engaged because of the naval censorship in force at that time: The H, leading the second group, encountered two submarines, the first about 11.50 A.M., June 26th, about a hundred miles off the coast of France, and the second submarine two hours later. The I investigated the wake of the first without further discovery. The J[3] sighted the bow wave of the second at a distance of 1500 yards and headed for it at a speed of twenty-five knots. The gun pointers at the forward gun saw the periscope several times for several seconds but it disappeared each time before they could get on, due to the zigzagging of the ship. The J[3] passed about twenty-five yards ahead of a mass of bubbles which were coming up from the wake and let go a depth charge just ahead. Several pieces of timber, quantities of oil, bubbles, and _débris_ came to the surface. Nothing more was seen of the submarine. The attacks on the second group occurred about eight hundred miles to the eastward of where the attacks had been made on the first group.... It appears from reports of the French Ministry of Marine and from the location of the attack that enemy submarines had been notified of our approach and were probably scouting across our route. [Illustration: WITH AMERICA’S FIRST CONVOY. THE TROOP-SHIPS ARE THE HENDERSON, ANTILLES, MOMUS, AND LENAPE] [Illustration: THE MINE FUNCTIONS AND A LURKING U-BOAT WOULD FIND IT EXCESSIVELY UNHEALTHY]