World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations -- Submarine; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
torpedoes, but also to torpedo without warning. This was the only
alternative except to abandon the submarine campaign altogether.
Berlin accordingly instructed the submarine commanders not to approach
on the surface any merchant or passenger vessel closely enough to get
within range of its guns, but to keep at a distance and shell it. Had
the commanders always observed these instructions the success of the
mystery ship in sinking submarines would have ended then and there,
though the influence of their presence upon tactics would have remained
in force. The Allied navies now made elaborate preparations, all for the
purpose of persuading Fritz to approach in the face of a tremendous risk
concerning which he had been accurately informed. Every submarine
commander, after torpedoing his victim, now clearly understood that it
might be a decoy despatched for the particular purpose of entrapping
him; and he knew that an attempt to approach within a short distance of
the foundering vessel might spell his own immediate destruction. The
expert in German mentality must explain why, under these circumstances,
he should have persisted in walking into the jaws of death. The skill
with which the mystery ships and their crews were disguised perhaps
explains this in part. Anyone who might have happened in the open sea
upon Captain Campbell and his slow-moving freighter could not have
believed that they were part and parcel of the Royal Navy. Our own
destroyers were sometimes deceived by them. The _Cushing_ one day hailed
Captain Campbell in the _Pargust_, having mistaken him for a defenceless
tramp. The conversation between the two ships was brief but to the
point:
_Cushing_: What ship?
_Pargust_: Gordon Campbell! Please keep out of sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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