CHAPTER XXI

FIGHTS OF THE SUBMARINES

When, on the 5th of February, 1915, the German admiralty proclaimed
a "war zone" around the British Isles and announced that it would
fight the sea power of the Allies with submarines, a new era in
naval warfare had opened. In all previous wars, and in the earlier
months of the Great War, submarines were employed as auxiliaries
to the larger naval units. The Germans were the first to use them
as separate units. The idea of sending a fleet of submarines out on
to the high seas was a new one, and had been impossible in the last
war in which they had been used--that between Russia and Japan. But
the improvements which had been made in their design and equipment
since then had made an actual cruising submarine possible, and
made possible the new phase of naval warfare inaugurated by the
German admiralty.

While Germany was the last great sea power to adopt the submarine
as a weapon, both England and Germany, in the years immediately
preceding the war, had spent the same amounts of money on this
sort of craft--about $18,000,000--but while the Germans had later
given as much attention to them as to any other sort of naval craft,
the British authorities did not figure on employing the submarine
as a separate offensive tactical unit being sufficiently equipped
in large ships carrying large guns. And being weaker in capital
ships Germany was compelled to rely upon underwater warfare in
her campaign of attrition. Not only were the naval authorities
of the rest of the world uninformed about the improvements that
German submarines carried, but they were fooled even as to the
actual number which Germany had built.

The most modern of the German submarines at the time had a length
of 213 feet and a beam of twenty feet, these dimensions giving
them sufficient deck space to mount thereon two rapid-fire guns,
one of 3.5 inches and another of 1.4 inches. Their displacement was
900 tons, and they could make a speed of 18 knots when traveling
"light" (above water), and 12 knots when traveling submerged. These
speeds made it possible for them to overtake all but the fastest
merchantmen, though not fast enough to run away from destroyers,
gunboats, and fast cruisers. Their range of operation was 2,000
miles, and in the early months of 1915, it was possible for Germany
to send two or three of them from their base in the North Sea to
the Mediterranean. Germany was at the same time experimenting with