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had closed in so that we could have tried our anti-guns on her. Then I saw the Blücher a mass of flames and smoke, the other three ships steaming off. Two of them, the Derflinger and Sedlitz, were burning badly; if we could only have gone on for another hour we should have knocked out one, if not both of them, but we were close over to their mine-fields and submarine area. We closed to the Blücher and had a go at her with my guns. My gun crew was very glad, as they had seen nothing of the fight up till then. We gave it hot and heavy to the B. She was burning forward and aft at times, almost obscured by smoke, but the Germans stuck gamely, firing with one gun till the last. Our destroyers made a dash at her, but she was nearly done by that time. The Arethusa led them; it was a fine sight when they closed in, they looked like so many racehorses running for the winning-post. She struck, and our destroyers closed to rescue the survivors. She then turned over and sank. The Germans say she was like a furnace. They tried to cool her by opening up all the sea-cocks. Altogether they lost nearly 800 men. We feel we gave them something to think about. We lost nothing. One of their light cruisers was sunk. The B.'s said they did not think the Sedlitz would reach harbor, she was so badly shot up, but I expect she did as the weather was fine. However, they are both out of action for some time. We got off lightly considering the Lion and ourselves were really the only two ships engaged. If we had only had another hour, or even a half, we should have had one more. I wish their High Sea Fleet would come and give us a chance. Our big fleet are waiting anxiously for it-they have a monotonous time of it-they envy us greatly for many things. We all live in hope of the great show coming.

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hopes." An officer on H. M. T. No. 012 writes describing patrol duty:

You may be surprised to hear that this ship, H. M. T. No. 012, is the old City of Edinburgh with fourteen officers and a crew of one hundred and forty, and a couple of 4.7 guns on her forecastle head and one on her stern, and a new wireless outfit, and very business-like in gray paint. It was a big surprise to me when I had my orders to join H. M. T. No. 012 and found, on inquiry at the Admiralty office at Glasgow, it was the ship I was just about to leave. It is very monotonous cruising around, waiting for them to come out. All the woodwork and wooden structures were torn down and thrown over the side-because of the fire risk—and they were going to put the piano over. However, some of us appealed very earnestly to the commander to let us keep it; and after much official consideration, we were allowed to do so. Everybody-captain included-is very glad that it was kept; without it, we would have been absolutely helpless in the way of amusement. We have a Ward Room paper, a weekly to which we all supply a little. Really you never saw such a thing in your life. It is full of the most personal remarks; but it is amusing, and everybody takes it in the spirit for which it is intended. It is not permitted to be sent out of the Ward Room (official dignity). Our 2nd has a rather large mouth, which some polite bounder attributed to the fact that when he was a kid, he fell down the cellar stairs and his mouth caught on a nail! The commander put the following in it: "RESTAURANT-KEEPER: 'You're from Ger

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"ČUSTOMER: 'I'm Hungary.' "RESTAURANT-KEEPER: 'I can't Servia." Rotten! Isn't it? When naval officers are reduced to such positions that they have to amuse themselves with humor like the above-well-they are in very bad straits. We had a prehistoric-old-age-pension German-sausage for lunch the other day, but on the menu it was "Belgium Sausage." The minute the commander saw it he said: "What! More German spies?" And when he put his fork in it, the darn thing turned round and bit him. (Fact.) At the present time, even we have daily bridge parties, rag time concerts, etc. Twice we have been called to action in the middle of these and then gone back to complete them. Once a Zep came which a light cruiser went after. Really, it is great sport. Let 'em comelet 'em all come. The sooner the better. Oh, I forgot to say it was my right arm that was shot in the last engagement-right on the wrist-bone. If it had been on the funny

bone I should absolutely have failed to see the humorous side of it. Personally I never felt better, and am in the best of spirits. Come what may-would not care a continental, for myself, suppose the ship was sunk to-morrow. It's for England. Well, dear old chap, the general signal has been sent. around, "Coaling finished." We are off to take up our station again at

Say, the funniest things I've seen are the postcards they are selling ashore pictures of the German fleet with bushes and trees growing all over them.

Do you suppose they have carried intensive farming that far? By Jove, I hope not!

The merchant marine has been ravaged by unseen warfare. The total loss of ten million tons since the beginning of the war has made the 1914 volume of Lloyd's Register of Shipping about as useless a reference in marine affairs as a list of the distinguished dead in Arlington would be to the War Department in carrying out the provisions of the draft. Ships may be overcome, but the spirit of the men who sail them is as mighty and unconquerable as the sea which breeds them. British captains are landed as prisoners in German ports by enemy submarines; life - boats are shelled and drowning men left to their fate; hospital ships, such as the Asturias and Lanfranc, with their cargo of wounded, are torpedoed; but none of these acts of an enemy who strikes on the sly, deeply, desperately, and runs away, drives them from the

sea.

tial Admiralty mail, and answered the U-boat commander's order for the captain to come aboard by ingeniously replying that the captain was lost in the wild scramble from the ship, and thus saved himself the fate of a German prison-camp. When U-boats operated on the surface, sometimes disguised as

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JUNIOR MERCANTILE OFFICERS ARE HOLY TERRORS AS COMMANDERS OF MINE-SWEEPERS

Ruthlessness fails to inflict the terror intended on the breed, even when carried out as in the case of the Belgian Prince. When disaster comes they take to the life-boats and make the best of it. One quick-witted captain, soon after the German U-boats developed the habit of taking prisoners, made himself less conspicuous by sinking his braided coat and cap with the ship's papers and confiden

fishing boats, the captain of the AngloCalifornian and wheelsman were killed by a shell; the mate took the damaged wheel and, lying flat on the bridge, kept the vessel on her course till she escaped.

On board a steamer anchored in New York Bay I talked with an apprentice, submarined on his last voyage across. It happened on a wild night and came near costing the crew their lives. I wondered how this eighteen-year-old youngster took it.

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I have just received your letter written on the 24th of February. It has chased me all over the French ports and has been shipwrecked and in the water some time. It has a French post-office notice on it, "accident in transit,' and is as difficult to decipher as the Babylonian tablet of the flood. I feel wet myself, for I just arrived home, but unfortunately without the Kioto; the German Subs seem to be after me, for it is the second time in six weeks. . . .The torpedo just clipped our stern and blew it clean away-a

few men in it. She gave one h'ist and then went down like an anchor. I am joining another ship sometime this week. I have no idea of her name or where she is bound.

We were hit at four o'clock on a bitterly cold morning [writes a submarined officer]. Of course we all jumped out of our bunks. By the time I reached deck the ship was sinking at the part where she was broken in two, while her stem and stern were going up higher all the time. The slope of the deck became steeper and I rolled off into the water between the two halves and was drawn down in the whirlpool. When I came up the stem and stern were almost at right angles to the sea. I swam toward a life-boat and reached it and was taken into it.

A cheerful soul about to leave Alexandria for England writes:

So those squareheads are out torpedoing anything that comes along! Well, I've been forming plans. You see, we have an awful pile of empty beer-kegs on deck. Oh yes, they came aboard empty, anyway if they were full they would be empty before we get to home waters. I have formed an affection for one nice smelly cask; if they play any dirty tricks on us I am going to paddle ashore on my own private barrel. Devil of a joke at home, you know. Right after we sailed, the Zeps came over the North Sea

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BROUGHT THE SHIP STERN TO, ZIGZAGGED, AND FOUGHT HIM OFF FOR SIX HOURS

and dropped bombs on Yarmouth. Well, they were bad shots, for both at the hospital and church they missed and only dropped near enough to blow the windows out. Well, you know we live near St. Peter's Church and the bombs they tried to drop on that blew all the windows out of our house, not one left-I'll bet they felt beastly uncomfortable sleeping with all the windows out. Eh, what! and February, too!

Naturally, captains obeying Admiralty instructions say little of any submarine the sea is well rid of-and dead men tell no tales. This letter concerns the fate of a submarine which sank a liner without warning, causing an exchange of notes between the American and German Governments:

You remember F. of the sailing-ship Port Stanley [writes a captain to Mr. Wood]; he was second mate with me afterwards. Well, he left us last November and joined the Navy as sub-Lieutenant. He was placed in command of six armed trawlers engaged in submarine hunting. Last April he was promoted to Lieutenant, and I had a letter from him telling me he had just sunk two German submarines, one of which was the submarine that sank the Arabic. This explains why the German Government could

not get the captain's statement before replying to Wilson's note.

We got it in the neck this time [writes another]. We just missed the U-53 off Nantucket; we heard by wireless that she inquired from one of her victims where we were. I guess she knows now. A destroyer picked us up. They're men, those destroyer chaps, all right; one told me a thing or two about what happened to these U-boats and it sounded pretty good, I can tell you.

A captain engaged on Admiralty service, discussing the fate of the men of the Belgian Prince-left to drown when the submarine submerged-told me that the same week the Belgian Prince outrage occurred he was in an English naval base, where a German submarine was towed in, after being caught out at sea in a net. On opening it they found not only the German crew dead, but also six English captains, captured when their vessels were torpedoed.

"I wonder," he said, "if there is any left an Allied seaman car meet

new way his fate."

Before the trade routes were purged of German raiders there were many

small encounters that, of course, never reached the light of official despatches. Here is an account of one early in the

war:

BUENOS AIRES, Aug. 6, 1914.

There was a terrific hand-to-hand fight yesterday on the next wharf between the crews of the German Cap Trafalgar and the French Lutetia. They were armed with bottles instead of marlin spikes. Needless to say, there were plenty of heads on each side that needed patching up. The Cap Trafalgar was preparing to put to sea, and once there it is surmised she will mount guns, and play havoc with all the shipping leaving the River Plata. Several English captains have visited the British Consulate office and of fered to ram the ship at her wharf. But their offers were politely declined, and to-day she put to sea.

Wireless plants up and down the coast of South America informed the raiders operating there of shipping departures, helping them enormously in capturing unsuspecting steamers. In the ports of the Indian Ocean the exploits of the Emden, embellished with German propaganda, were spread in the bazaars of India, and as a consequence P. & O. liners, unable to secure lascar crews, left Bombay undermanned, and passengers washing down decks and handling baggage. In the endeavor to secure even more intimate knowledge of British merchantmen, German sailors shipped as German-speaking Norwegians. This deception succeeding for a time, was uncovered and rendered impossible by the simple test of an interpreter of the English Home Office. He required the supposed impostors to repeat "Thirtythree thousand thieves thrust their thirty-three thousand thumbs into thirty-three thousand thistles." The real Germans could not pronounce the th, and once detected were quickly interned, where espionage was no longer possible.

Despite all this, English ships continued their voyages-while German shipping vanished from the seven seas. The German raiders, prowling about the trade routes, did little flirting with unknown shipping; captured merchantmen with prize crews aboard served as lookouts for them, and reported their observations by wireless, whereupon the cunning raiders put on full speed and overhauled the victim. Add the clever

disguises, such as collapsible funnels and masts, and guns hidden under dummy deck-houses, used by the raiders, and one has a fairly good idea of the odds confronting captains of merchantmen. Suspicious of the first blur of smoke on the horizon, starting with every flash in the wireless-room, they dogged the trade routes by day and doused running lights at night. Many succeeded in escaping the raiders, but fate decreed that other twelve knot cargo carriers were match for twenty-five-knot cruisers. Here is a letter from an officer whose ship was captured and sunk. He was prisoner on the raider Kronprinz Wilhelm for a time and then was landed with other prisoners by a British vessel, released for the purpose by the raider.

On board R. M. S. P. Alcantra.

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Don't get alarmed and think I have command of the above steamer. Oh, no such luck; instead I am on my way home at government expense. Of course you know the old Indira is no more. We had a rotten time, for it rather hurts a fellow to see a ship sunk that he has been in four years, for I'm a sailor born and love my ship. The Kronprinz Wilhelm got us. We were the last ship sunk in the South Atlantic so far as we can hear. Our ships are down there now, and the enemy keep away from the trade routes, and hang around in mid-Atlantic, short of coalgood-by to them soon. We were kept twelve days aboard the cruiser and although they fed us all right, it was just rotten, for we didn't fancy having a limited space with a nasty lot of square-heads armed with swords to prevent us straying. Whenever they got alarmed (as they did a lot of times) and ran, we were just put below, and of course had she been cornered we would have gone down with her like rats in a trap. When the Carmania sank the Cap Trafalgar, she was only fifty miles off us; and the Kronprinz ran like hell that time to get out of the way. Imagine how we felt. I hope to join the navy when I get home and have a slap back at the rats; but they made us sign a parole and that I am afraid will give trouble as the government may not let us break it. We had to sign under compulsion and I don't see why it should not be broken. You know it would not have helped Old England any to have gone down on board the Indira. Breaking it only means getting shot if taken prisonerI'm willing to take the risk.

Men rolled up from all the trades on all the coasts and outlandish ports of the world to do their bit-an amazing

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