John Bower - The Story of Our Submarines

She carried a matter of eleven people on her bridge – a bridge designed to accommodate, perhaps, four or five. Her fighting complement was thirty-one all told, but at this moment she held over fifty. Needless to say, it was the passengers who seemed to take up most room. They comprised overseers, foremen, chargemen, a manager or two, about a dozen caulkers and engineers, and a pilot. In addition she carried an overseer of overseers – a Commander from the submarine Commodore's staff. He was present as schoolmaster, judge, and as friend to the Captain of the boat, and his job was one the Captain of the boat was not in the least envious of. The Captain knew that his crew were only partially trained, that he himself was new to E boats, and that the boat might not be all he hoped to find her in the way of reliability and hull-strength, but he felt that at any rate he knew more or less what the personnel, including himself, were like, while the Inspecting Commander must be, or ought to be, the most nervous man in submarines, with his job of travelling from trial to trial, unbroken by a chance of a trip in a fully-tested boat with a fully-trained crew.

As they swung round the last river-buoy and saw the outer lightship draw clear of the land, a destroyer overtook them, and passed on ahead to lead them to sea. The boat was going thirty miles out to get deep water for her hull-test, and it was not safe for a British boat to be that distance, or even a third of that distance, from the mouth of a British harbour unescorted, unless she was there on her war business. This was not because of the enemy – far from it; it was to save her from the enthusiastic but misguided attentions of the multitudes of "Fritz-hunters" who drew no distinction between submarines of their own or the enemy's flag. As she neared the light-vessel, the submarine increased speed and some of the "yarning-party" on the bridge departed below down the conning-tower. The programme included a full-speed surface-trial which was to start from the lightship and finish at the diving-ground, and for the next two hours the engineers and engine-overseers were to be the only busy passengers. From the engine-room bulkhead to the bows, the crew and officers moved to and fro – testing, instructing, and, it should be added, grumbling continuously, for the multitude of passengers were a considerable handicap in the way of an efficient and (the great ideal) an unexciting and placid diving-trial.

The inside of the boat was incredibly dirty from a naval point of view. She had not been built at one of these yards where no workman can live without a quid of tobacco in his cheek (in fact by the trials standard of some yards she was clean), but it was obvious that she would take a good month's scrubbing and polishing before she was, in her officers' estimation, even sanitary.

At ten o'clock an order came from on deck, and a couple of sailors ascended the conning-tower carrying a few rounds of 12-pounder ammunition. The trials she was to do were to be complete and to everybody's satisfaction, and the building firm, being a firm which would sooner see their work over- than under-tested, had suggested a few rounds from the bow-gun before the dive, with the idea that if the gun-mounting was going to cause leaks through to the hull as a result of recoil, it should be given the chance to do it now instead of later when the boat was in enemy waters. A biscuit-tin was dropped, the boat circled round, and at a range of a hundred yards the gunlayer proceeded to miss the box completely. However, the shooting did not matter – the gun had recoiled a few times and that was all that was required. The fact of the gunlayer finding later that he had shipped the sights of the H.A. gun on to his bow-gun before practice, was a merely trifling incident among the errors that one might expect to occur on trials.

At eleven o'clock the destroyer, which had been jogging along a few cables ahead, circled round and slowed up. The Submarine Captain rang "Slow" on his telegraph, smiled encouragingly at the civilians who still remained on the bridge, and made a pointing gesture with his thumb at the open conning-tower lid. The civilians, with a nervous straightening of bowler hats and several lingering looks at the sunlit sea and sky, clambered slowly below, and the Captain remained watching the whirling arms of the semaphore on the destroyer's bridge. He dictated a reply to his signalman, then rang down "Stop," and, leaving the lid open, descended to see what order his First Lieutenant was producing out of the crowded chaos below.

From the foot of the conning-tower ladder he could see nothing but a mass of humanity, mostly civilian, through which his uniformed crew moved apologetically and bent double. He moved forward into the crowd and assisted his officers in their efforts to station the passengers in positions where they would be as much out of the way as possible, and would at the same time be comfortable enough to lose their desire to move about. At the end of five minutes comparative peace reigned, and the crew were standing at their stations looking at their officers for orders across a new deck of caps and tilted bowler hats.

The Captain took a sweeping glance fore and aft, then ascended the conning-tower. He ordered the signalman below, looked across at the destroyer through his glasses, and then descended, closing and locking the lid above his head. As he re-entered the boat, he caught the eye of the First Lieutenant. "Flood one, two, five, six, seven, and eight," he ordered. "Slow ahead both – keep her level." The vent valves indicated their opening with a snort and a roar of air, and the rush and gurgle of flooding tanks cut off the chatter of the passengers, as the clang of a closing breech-block brings silence to a gun's crew. A few seconds later the Captain spoke again. "Flood three and four – take her down." Each order was repeated by the First Lieutenant – an officer whose eyes seemed to note the doings of every man in the boat at once. As the Captain moved to the diving-gauge by the periscope to watch for the first slow movement of the long black needle, the First Lieutenant's hand shot out and gripped the neck of a seaman by the starboard pump, and he spoke in a voice of concentrated, hissing rage. " That's the main line, you fool! Close it, quick, and don't you dare touch it till I tell you!"

The gauge-needle quivered and began to rise. At eight feet the Captain stepped back, and, taking the periscope training-handles, began to look into the rubber-padded eye-piece, "Check at twenty feet," he said. "Take the angle off now, coxswain." "Twenty feet, sir, horizontal." The coxswain sat on a low heavy music-stool facing another white-faced diving-gauge, his big brass hydroplane wheel moving a turn or two each way under his hand. "Pump on Z internal — don't start till I tell you." The Captain was watching the hydroplane helm indicators beside him, which showed, by the amount of "rise" helm they were carrying, that the boat had a touch of negative buoyancy.

"All ready the pump, sir!"

"Start the pump – keep her up , coxswain."

"Coming up, sir – horizontal, sir."

"Stop the pump – close main line – close Z internal."

On an even keel the E boat ploughed along – her periscope top four feet above the surface, and the periscope-wake bubbling and foaming on the perfectly smooth sea. The watcher in the following destroyer saw the wake die down till it was a barely visible ripple, as – her trim correct – the Captain eased the boat's speed down to less than two knots. Then the shining periscope began to disappear, slowly reducing in height as the planes took the boat down for her deep hull test.

Inside her hull there was silence except for an occasional whisper from one seated civilian to his neighbour. The gauge-needles crept slowly round, and as the depth increased the little spot of daylight thrown by the periscope eye-piece on to the pump-starter abreast of it changed from yellow to green of ever-darkening shades till the last link with the sun above them died away.