The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1915-07-17
CHAPTER vi.
"Where Is Our Arny?"

WTA T OWr' said the cruisers wire
M less, speaking once more into
the sea. Silent, formlesS,
black. four vast ships, long
and twice as tail as the cruisers, came
slowly in among them.
These were the transports, sealed
that not thread of light should shine
from them to betray them to the thing
that all the feet dreaded more than
anything else-the underwater lance of
a submarines torpedo.
Under water the submarine is always
blind, even when the brightest light of
the noon day sun shines vertically into
the ocean. 1t can see only with it's
periscope eye above the surface.
At night the periscope cannot see.
Then the submarine ceases to be use
full as a submarine. 1t can act still,
but only on the surface, like any other
torpedo boat
Two score destroyers, each Of thirty
knots, each armed with from four to
ten three inch guns and rapid frers,
circled around the transports. Twice
as swift as the surface speed Of the
swiftest submarine, armed overwhelm-
ingly, they could defy surface attack.
[American submarines now in COM
mission do not carry more than one
three-inch rapid fire gun. It is set in a
water tight compartment, from which
it is elevated when the vessel is on the
surface. Armaments Of destroyers are:
Ammen class, five three-inch rapid fire
30 caliber rifles; Alwyn class, four four
inch rapid fire so caliber rifles; Balm
bridge class, two three-inch rifles and
five six-pounders rapid f1re.l
They hemmed the darkened troop
ships round with a great circle of
searchlights, all thrown outward, that
served the double purpose of illuminat-
ing the ocean for miles and of binding
any who tried to approach. No human
eye looking into that glare could have
seen the transports. even If the night
had not shrouded them.
Still these liners, with their tens Of
thousands Of men, were too precious to
be protected only by this bright vigi-
lance. From each transport there pro-
jected long steel booms, eleven to a
side. These held out half ton net of
steel grommets. Stretched fore and
aft as taut as steam capstans could
haul it, this shirt of chain mail hung
far down into the sea to catch any tor
pedo that might come driving at the
keel.
There was more protection than that
It would be day soon, and then the
submarines would be blind no longer.
All around the area chosen for the
transports to lie In the fishing boats
taken from the sea islands were being
towed by destroyers to drop their nets
Their wooden buoys formed odd geo.
metrical outlines on the sea.
| These thin things of Ineshed Irvine
made only to hold little, inoffensive
fish, were suspended like submarine
fences north and south and east and
west Of the field of operations
That such trivial things should be OF
any avail against underwater craft
/ with death in their heads might vel
/ have seemed absurd to a landsman
| They did not seem absurd to the lieu
! tenant who commanded United State:
! submarine No when he steered his
/ craft, awash, out from behind Fishers
/ Island sound at dawn and looked east
ward through his glasses.
Ten miles away lay the transports
quite motionless, beautifully assembled
i as a target for him. At that distance
! their masts and tunnels seemed hud
/ died. He had a vivid picture in his
mind for an instant 1t was a picture
of fat slow sheep crowding together
! with wolf among them.
/ But between them and his wolf lay
the net buoys, dotting all the surface
In and out, as If they had been laid BIZ
some laboring artist to make a maze.
The sea wolf went slowly nearer
With its tanks fun OF water it lay sc
far submerged that the sea washed ths
combing around the manhole hatch
The lieutenant was like a man wadinS
breast high in the ocean. It would bt
hard to see him from any distance. Hi
studied the traceries Of buoys. Their,
were spaces between them that betok
ened gaps in the fences One nigh
fnd gap and go through. But to fnC
a gap the submarine must raise he
periscope above water and look around
And here, sweeping necessarily to ant
fro like galloping cavalry, were de
stroyers.
i with periscope shot away a subma
rine, even though uninjured, is quit
helpless. She may escape II she is il
deep water and the assailant is IA
enough away to give her time to div,
and fee, deeply submerged. See los
of UP on March 10 merely through de
struction of periscope. which permitte'
enemy destroyers to ram her.l
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