We know the ships of Carthage, We know how history speaks, We know the Roman galleys, The triremes of the Greeks. We know the cogs and frigates, The privateers and sloops, We know the line-of-battle ships, And lofty Spanish poops. II We know the great Armada, We know the ships of Drake, We know the three-decked wooden walls, Of Nelson’s battle wake. We know the Super-Dreadnoughts, We know the cruisers lean; But, save our foes, speak up, who knows The British Submarine? PATROL His Majesty’s Submarine ‘123’ lay alongside her depot ship _Parentis_, her lean, gray superstructure showing up ghostly white against the dark outline of the larger vessel. The night was warm, though dark and overcast, and the light south-easterly breeze merely ruffled the waters of the harbour, causing a lap-lapping noise between the two vessels, the only sound that broke the intense silence of the summer night. As the great fleet, anchored in the harbour, swung to the turn of the tide, ‘123’ exposed her broadside, a long low hull bulging outwards at the centre, and supporting the superstructure, on the fore part of which the gun was mounted. Amidships rose the conning-tower and the little bridge, the standard and the two periscopes, pointing up to Heaven like the fingers of an avenging angel. The after deck was bare save for the dark rings of the hatches, leading down to her steel internals. The anchored fleet showed up in dark blurs and splotches, as far as the eye could see. Line after line of battleships, battle cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats, backed up by a host of merchant ships of every type and size. A light gleamed suddenly from the submarine, faded away, flashed out, and disappeared. Figures moved quietly along the deck, and the sound of subdued voices rose, broken now and then by the clump of a wet rope’s end or the clang of a closing deck locker. Then the conning-tower hatch opened and Lieut. Commander John Raymond, R.N., in command of H.M. Submarine ‘123,’ rose to view, heaving himself through the narrow opening by painful sections. He was a big, strongly-built man of about thirty-three, clad in an old--a very old--suit of uniform, a muffler, sea-boots, a pair of binoculars, and his own inborn modesty. After him came the navigator, an R.N.R. Lieutenant, lovingly clasping the gyro compass repeater to his bosom, and muttering imprecations the while on the coil of electric cable which trailed up after him like a spider’s web. ‘Phew!’ he said, sniffing the air. ‘Dark night.’ The captain glanced quickly fore and aft. ‘All ready, coxswain?’ he queried. A burly figure now loomed up on the now crowded conning-tower. ‘All ready, sir.’ Raymond leant down and pulled a lanyard, and a bell rang below in the control room. ‘Sir,’ boomed a voice as a face appeared in the circle of the hatch. ‘All ready below?’ ‘All ready, sir.’ ‘Group down?’[1] ‘Grouped down, sir.’