Danger! and Other Stories | Page 3

declaration of war. I
will confine myself to my own plans, which had so glorious and final a
result.
The fame of my eight submarines, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Theta, Delta,
Epsilon, Iota, and Kappa, have spread through the world to such an

extent that people have begun to think that there was something
peculiar in their form and capabilities. This is not so. Four of them, the
Delta, Epsilon, Iota, and Kappa, were, it is true, of the very latest
model, but had their equals (though not their superiors) in the navies of
all the great Powers. As to Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Theta, they were
by no means modern vessels, and found their prototypes in the old F
class of British boats, having a submerged displacement of eight
hundred tons, with heavy oil engines of sixteen hundred horse-power,
giving them a speed of eighteen knots on the surface and of twelve
knots submerged. Their length was one hundred and eighty-six and
their breadth twenty-four feet. They had a radius of action of four
thousand miles and a submerged endurance of nine hours. These were
considered the latest word in 1915, but the four new boats exceeded
them in all respects. Without troubling you with precise figures, I may
say that they represented roughly a twenty-five per cent. advance up on
the older boats, and were fitted with several auxiliary engines which
were wanting in the others. At my suggestion, instead of carrying eight
of the very large Bakdorf torpedoes, which are nineteen feet long,
weigh half a ton, and are charged with two hundred pounds of wet
gun-cotton, we had tubes designed for eighteen of less than half the size.
It was my design to make myself independent of my base.
And yet it was clear that I must have a base, so I made arrangements at
once with that object. Blankenberg was the last place I would have
chosen. Why should I have a port of any kind? Ports would be watched
or occupied. Any place would do for me. I finally chose a small villa
standing alone nearly five miles from any village and thirty miles from
any port. To this I ordered them to convey, secretly by night, oil, spare
parts, extra torpedoes, storage batteries, reserve periscopes, and
everything that I could need for refitting. The little whitewashed villa
of a retired confectioner--that was the base from which I operated
against England.
The boats lay at Blankenberg, and thither I went. They were working
frantically at the defences, and they had only to look seawards to be
spurred to fresh exertions. The British fleet was assembling. The
ultimatum had not yet expired, but it was evident that a blow would be

struck the instant that it did. Four of their aeroplanes, circling at an
immense height, were surveying our defences. From the top of the
lighthouse I counted thirty battleships and cruisers in the offing, with a
number of the trawlers with which in the British service they break
through the mine-fields. The approaches were actually sown with two
hundred mines, half contact and half observation, but the result showed
that they were insufficient to hold off the enemy, since three days later
both town and fleet were speedily destroyed.
However, I am not here to tell you the incidents of the war, but to
explain my own part in it, which had such a decisive effect upon the
result. My first action was to send my four second-class boats away
instantly to the point which I had chosen for my base. There they were
to wait submerged, lying with negative buoyancy upon the sands in
twenty foot of water, and rising only at night. My strict orders were that
they were to attempt nothing upon the enemy, however tempting the
opportunity. All they had to do was to remain intact and unseen, until
they received further orders. Having made this clear to Commander
Panza, who had charge of this reserve flotilla, I shook him by the hand
and bade him farewell, leaving with him a sheet of notepaper upon
which I had explained the tactics to be used and given him certain
general principles which he could apply as circumstances demanded.
My whole attention was now given to my own flotilla, which I divided
into two divisions, keeping Iota and Kappa under my own command,
while Captain Miriam had Delta and Epsilon. He was to operate
separately in the British Channel, while my station was the Straits of
Dover. I made the whole plan of campaign clear to him. Then I saw
that each ship was provided with all it could carry. Each had forty tons
of heavy oil for surface propulsion and charging the dynamo which
supplied the electric engines under water. Each had also eighteen