The depth charge looked like the innocent domestic ash can, and that was the name by which it soon came to be popularly known. Each destroyer eventually carried twenty or thirty of these destructive weapons at the stern; a mere pull on a lever would make one drop into the water. Many destroyers also carried strange-looking howitzers, which were made in the shape of a Y, and from which one ash can could be hurled fifty yards or more from each side of the vessel. The explosion, when it took place within the one hundred feet which I have mentioned as usually fatal to the submarine, would drive the plates inward and sometimes make a leak so large that the vessel would sink almost instantaneously. At a somewhat greater distance it frequently produced a leak of such serious proportions that the submarine would be forced to blow her ballast tanks, come to the surface, and surrender. Even when the depth charge exploded considerably more than a hundred feet away, the result might be equally disastrous, for the concussion might distort the hull and damage the horizontal rudders, making it impossible to steer, or it might so injure the essential machinery that the submarine would be rendered helpless. Sometimes the lights went out, leaving the crew groping in blackness; necessary parts were shaken from their fastenings; and in such a case the commander had his choice of two alternatives, one to be crushed by the pressure of the water, and the other to come up and be captured or sunk by his surface foe. It is no reflection upon the courage of the submarine commanders to say that in this embarrassing situation they usually preferred to throw themselves upon the mercy of the enemy rather than to be smashed or to die a lingering and agonizing death under the water. Even when the explosion took place at a distance so great that the submarine was not seriously damaged, the experience was a highly disconcerting one for the crew. If a dozen depth charges were dropped, one after the other, the effect upon the men in the hunted vessel was particularly demoralizing. In the course of the war several of our own submarines were depth-charged by our own destroyers, and from our crews we obtained graphic descriptions of the sensations which resulted. It was found that men who had passed through such an ordeal were practically useless for several days, and that sometimes they were rendered permanently unfit for service. The state of nerves which followed such an experience was not unlike that new war psychosis known as shell-shock. One of our officers who had had such an adventure told me that the explosion of a single depth charge under the water might be compared to the concussion produced by the simultaneous firing of all the fourteen-inch guns of a battleship. One can only imagine what the concussion must have been when produced by ten or twenty depth charges in succession. Whether or not the submarine was destroyed or seriously