nd so submarines may have an advantage
over merchant ships, especially if the merchant ships are slow-moving
freighters. But a war-ship, or a troop-ship in convoy is something else.
Troop-ships carry an immense number of lookouts, not overworked men who
are liable to go to sleep on watch, but keen-eyed young fellows of high
vitality, surrounded by other young fellows of high vitality, and all
competing to see who can see something first.

They will spot a periscope, under normal conditions, at a pretty good
distance; which does not mean that that periscope is at once going to be
blown out of the water. Hitting a piece of 4-inch pipe at any distance
is not easy; the pipe moving and the ship moving does not make it any
easier.

But the submarine has shown herself. To get her torpedo home she will
have to move nearer. With a thousand eyes looking for her and five, six,
a dozen ships with four guns or more apiece waiting to have a crack at
her, she is not going to have a pleasant time after she moves nearer.
She must show her periscope again to locate her target. To show her
periscope she must get her hull somewhere near the surface; it takes a
little time--not so much, but a little time to get her hull safely below
again; and while she is doing that who can say that not one of our five,
six, or a dozen ships will be handy to the spot? And if one of our ships
should happen to be handy enough, what can save the submarine from being
rammed? And if she is rammed there is no hope for her--she is gone.

I am pretty much of one mind with our first officer in this submarine
matter. In the middle of the combat off the French coast he was making
the rounds, cutting away the lashings which held the life-boats to the
davits--this in case we had to leave the ship. He had a squint at the
banging guns, the charging troop-ships, the flying destroyers; and then
he looked up long enough to say: "A fat chance a U-boat would have if
she so much as stuck her nose out. In four seconds she'd be like a
rabbit among a pack of hunting-dogs. She might get away, but I bet you
no bookmaker would take her end of it."

This argument does not apply to a slow-steaming freighter going it
alone; it is for the matter of troop-ships moving at a fairly good
speed. For myself that time the fleet steamed in direct column ahead,
one ship jam up behind another, in a rough sea and on a black night, at
high speed without lights of any kind, they did a more diffic