and it submits meekly; but at no time is it meant
to wear on a hydroplane. They dared not come
up to unhitch it, “owing to the batteries ashore,”
so they pushed the dim shape ahead of them till they
got outside Kum Kale. They then went full astern,
and emptied the after-tanks, which brought the bows
down, and in this posture rose to the surface, when
“the rush of water from the screws together with
the sternway gathered allowed the mine to fall clear
of the vessel.”
Now a fool, said Dr. Johnson, would have tried to
describe that.
RAVAGES AND REPAIRS
Before we pick up the further adventures of H.M.
Submarine E14 and her partner E11, here is what you
might call a cutting-out affair in the Sea of Marmara
which E12 (Lieutenant-Commander K.M. Bruce) put
through quite on the old lines.
E12’s main motors gave trouble from the first,
and she seems to have been a cripple for most of that
trip. She sighted two small steamers, one towing
two, and the other three, sailing vessels; making seven
keels in all. She stopped the first steamer, noticed
she carried a lot of stores, and, moreover, that her
crew—she had no boats—were all
on deck in life-belts. Not seeing any gun, E12
ran up alongside and told the first lieutenant to
board. The steamer then threw a bomb at E12,
which struck, but luckily did not explode, and opened
fire on the boarding-party with rifles and a concealed
1-in. gun. E12 answered with her six-pounder,
and also with rifles. The two sailing ships in
tow, very properly, tried to foul E12’s propellers
and “also opened fire with rifles.”
It was as Orientally mixed a fight as a man could
wish: The first lieutenant and the boarding-party
engaged on the steamer, E12 foul of the steamer, and
being fouled by the sailing ships; the six-pounder
methodically perforating the steamer from bow to stern;
the steamer’s 1-in. gun and the rifles from
the sailing ships raking everything and everybody
else; E12’s coxswain on the conning-tower passing
up ammunition; and E12’s one workable motor
developing “slight defects” at, of course,
the moment when power to manoeuvre was vital.
The account is almost as difficult to disentangle
as the actual mess must have been. At any rate,
the six-pounder caused an explosion in the steamer’s
ammunition, whereby the steamer sank in a quarter of
an hour, giving time—and a hot time it
must have been—for E12 to get clear of
her and to sink the two sailing ships. She then
chased the second steamer, who slipped her three tows
and ran for the shore. E12 knocked her about
a good deal with gun-fire as she fled, saw her drive
on the beach well alight, and then, since the beach
opened fire with a gun at 1500 yards, went away to
retinker her motors and write up her log. She
approved of her first lieutenant’s behaviour
“under very trying circumstances” (this
probably refers to the explosion of the ammunition
by the six-pounder which, doubtless, jarred the boarding-party)
and of the cox who acted as ammunition-hoist; and of
the gun’s crew, who “all did very well”
under rifle and small-gun fire “at a range of
about ten yards.” But she never says what
she really said about her motors.
