s, and she had on board the usual armed gun
crew.

Not only was the _Antilles_ the first American Army transport to be lost
in the present war, but she was the first vessel under American convoy
to be successfully attacked. She was well out to sea at the time and the
convoy of protecting vessels was smaller for this reason, and for the
fact that she was westbound, carrying no troops. The submarine was never
seen and neither was the torpedo. There has been rumor that the
explosion that sank her came from the inside, but so far as any one
knows this is merely port gossip of such nature as arises when vessels
are lost. Our second transport to be lost was the _President Lincoln_,
taken over from the Germans when war was declared. She, too, was
eastbound, well out to sea, and the loss of life was small. The third
was the _Covington_, formerly the German liner _Cincinnati_, which was
torpedoed in the early summer of this year while on her way to an
American port.

Life on merchantmen, freighters, liners, and the like, crossing the
Atlantic, has been fraught with peril and with excitement ever since we
went into the war. Even with armed guards there are of course all sorts
of chances of disaster, chances frequently realized; but, on the other
hand, in a great majority of cases the vessels of the transatlantic
passenger service have crossed to and fro, giving their passengers all
the thrills of an exciting situation without subjecting them to anything
more serious.

Let me quote in part a letter from a Princeton man, Pleasants
Pennington, who was a passenger on the French transatlantic liner
_Rochambeau_, on one of its trips late in 1917.

"What about the submarines? They haven't put in an appearance yet. We
haven't worried about them because we only got into the war zone last
night; but I may have more to write about before we get into Bordeaux on
Wednesday or Thursday. There are several people on board--especially
ladies of the idle rich--who have been much concerned about the safety
of the ship and incidentally their own skins.... The Frenchmen, the
officers of the ship and especially the captain (his name is Joam) take
a very philosophic view of the situation, and shrug their shoulders with
Gallic fatalism. If they shall be torpedoed--_tant pis!_ But why
worry?... I had a talk with our captain the second day out, and he
seemed to have made a pretty thorough study of tactics for avoiding
submarines. He said they did not