Q-ship

“ There is the loneliness of the airman gliding through celestial heights; there is the loneliness of the man in the crowd; there is the loneliness of the sentry, of the hermit, of the administrator in the desert. But I can conceive of nothing so solitary as the Q-ship captain lying alone on the planking of his bridge, patiently waiting and watching through a slit in the canvas the manœuvres of an artful U-boat. ”

“ The intention was deliberate, premeditated self-immolation for the greater object of fooling the submarine and then sinking him. The Q-ship’s company had all been warned that the intention would be thus, and every man was given an opportunity to leave the ship before sailing. Not one man left. Therefore to-day, when a long way off the torpedo was seen approaching, it could easily have been avoided, but instead, the helm was put hard aport only at the last minute, and only so that it should strike the ship elsewhere than in the engine-room. ”

“ In arranging action stations in a Q-ship the difficulty was that internally the vessel had to be organized as a warship, while externally she must necessarily keep up the character of a merchantman. In Penshurst Captain Grenfell had arranged for the following signals to be rung from the bridge on the alarm gong. One long ring meant that a submarine was in sight and that the crew were to stand by at their respective stations; if followed by a short ring it denoted the enemy was on the starboard side; if two short rings the submarine was on the port side. ”

“ For, be it remembered, the Q-ship service was representative of every species of seamen. There were officers and men of the Royal Navy both active and retired, of the Royal Naval Reserve, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and men from the Royal Fleet Reserve. From warship, barracks, office, colony, pleasure yacht, fishing vessel, liner, sailing ship, tramp steamer, and elsewhere these seafarers went forth in unarmoured, slow-moving, lightly-armed vessels to perform the desperate adventure of acting as live-bait for a merciless enemy. ”

“ By February, 1917, this auxiliary topsail schooner was ready for sea as a disguised man-of-war, with a couple of 12-pounders cleverly concealed on her deck. She had changed her name from First Prize to Prize, alias Q 21, and in command of her went Lieutenant W. E. Sanders, R.N.R., whom we saw behaving with distinction when serving in the Q-sailing-ship Helgoland. No better man could have been found than this plucky New Zealander, and he had already shown that he had a genius for this extra special type of Q-ship work. ”

“ It was rather the cumulative effect of Q-ships, destroyers, mines, auxiliary patrol craft, depth charges, hydrophones, convoys, and good staff work which broke the spirit of the German submarine menace, so that if the war had continued much longer U-boats would have been thwarted except within certain limits of the North Sea. Every weapon has its rise and fall in the sphere of usefulness; the shell is repelled by armour-plate, the Zeppelin is destroyed by the aircraft, and so on. So it was with the Q-ship. ”

“ Any Q-ship captain will bear testimony to the wonderful effect wrought on a crew by the first encounter with an enemy submarine. The average seaman has much in him of the simple child, and has to be taught by plain experience to see the use and necessity of monotonous routine, of drills and discipline; but having once observed in hard battle the value of obedience, of organization and the like, he is a different man—he looks at sea-life, in spite of its boredom, from a totally different angle. Perfect discipline usually spelled victory over the enemy. ”

“ Quite apart from the bad weather, the uncomfortable quarters on board, the constant trimming of sheets and alteration of course off an unlit coast, there was always the possibility that some U-boat’s crew would, after sinking the schooner, cut the throats of these British seamen. The Q-ship crews knew this, and on certain occasions when U-boat prisoners were taken by our ships the Germans did not conceal this fact. Life in these sailing craft was something quite different from that in a battleship with its wardroom, its cheery society, and a comfortable cabin to turn into. ”

“ But after all that could be prepared for has been done, there always remains some awkward possibility which the wit of man can never foresee. Take the incident of the Q-ship Ravenstone, which was commissioned as a Q-ship on June 26, 1917, under the name of Donlevon. A month later she was torpedoed one afternoon in the Atlantic, 40 miles south of the Fastnet. Fortunately there were no casualties, and fortunately, too, the ship did not straight away founder. ”

“ Now, if the U-boat skipper was a live man and really knew his work he would, of course, become suspicious on seeing so many hands from one sunken tramp. ‘This,’ he would remark, ‘is no219 merchant ship, but a proper trap,’ and would proceed to cross-examine the boats’ crews. It was therefore the daily duty of Q-ship men to learn a suitable lie which would adequately deceive the German. Here is the information which Penshurst was, at a certain period of her Q-ship career, ready to hand out to any inquisitive Hun if the latter had sunk the ship. ”

“ From one hour to another no man knew whether he would be alive or dead, and the one essential thing consisted in absolute preparedness and mental alertness. To be surprised by the enemy was almost criminal; to escape narrowly from shipwreck, to remain unmoved under shell-fire, to see the spars crashing down and your shipmates laid out in great pain, to be hit and yet refusing to hit back until the right moment, to keep a clear head and a watchful eye, and all the time handle your ship so that the most was got out of the wind—all this was a part of your duty as a Q-ship man. ”

“ The captain handed over the ship’s papers and protested that the ship was in territorial waters. Eleven Germans and the four Norwegians were then transferred to the Q-ship, who landed the four Norwegians in the Dusseldorf’s boat at Sves Fjord, and this boat they were allowed to keep. The British boarding party had consisted of a dozen men, but Lieutenant Muhlhauser sent three back to the Q-ship, and retained three German stokers and the two German engineers in order to get the prize back to England, these five men working under the supervision of one of the Tay and Tyne’s crew. ”

“ Even Q-ship crews were human, and after weeks of cruising and pent-up keenness, after being battered about by seas, shelled by submarines while lying in224 dreadful suspense, and then doing all that human nature could be expected to perform, much may be forgiven them if the attractions of the shore temporarily overpowered them. ”

“ Another converted sloop was Tamarisk, who began that rôle at the end of July, 1916, and was commanded by Lieutenant John W. Williams, R.N.R. Towards the end of November she was shelled by a submarine at long range, so that the Q-ship had to declare herself and reply, whereupon the enemy beat a retreat and dived. Hitherto the excellent Q-ship gunnery had depended on the fact that first-class men had been selected who would be able at short range to score hits with the first or second rounds. ”

“ But every indecisive action made it241 worse for the Q-ships, for that vessel was a mark for future attack and the enemy’s intelligence department was thereby enriched, and outgoing submarines could be warned against such a trawler or such a tramp whose guns had a dead sector on such a bearing. Thus an inefficient Q-ship captain would be a danger not merely to himself and his men, but to the rest of the force. Nothing succeeds like success, and there was nothing so useful as to make a clean job of the submarine-sinking, so that he could never get back home and tell the news. ”

“ If you consider all the major and minor sea fights from the earliest times to the present day; if you think of fleet actions, and single-ship contests, you cannot surpass the golden story of the Q-ships. As long as people take any interest in the untamed sea, so will these exploits live, not rivalling but surpassing the greatest deeds of even the Elizabethan seamen. ”

“ No one could hope to be successful with his Q-ship unless he realized what the submarine could not do, and how he could attack the U-boat in her weakest feature. If the submarine’s greatest capability lay in the power of rendering herself invisible, her greatest weakness consisted in remaining thus submerged for a comparatively short time. On the surface she could do about 16 knots; submerged, her best speed was about 10 knots. As the heart is the vital portion of the human anatomy, so the battery was the vital part of the submarine’s invisibility. ”

“ The submarine then submerged. Lieutenant F. A. Frank, R.N.R., the captain of the Q-ship, now rang down for full speed ahead, with the intention of dropping depth charges. No answer was made to his telegraph, so he waited and rang again. Still no answer. He then left the bridge, went below to the engine-room, and found it full of steam, with the sea rising rapidly. Engine-room, stokehold, and the after ’tween deck were filling up, the dynamo was out of action, it was impossible to use the wireless, and the steam-pipe had burst owing to the enemy having landed two shots into the engine-room. ”

“ The conning-tower was literally a superstructure imposed over the hull, and not an essential part of the ship. That is why, as we have already seen, the Q-ship could shell holes into the tower and yet the U-boat was not destroyed. Similarly, a shell would often pierce the outer hull and do no very serious damage other than causing a certain amount of oil to escape. Only those who have been in British and German submarines, and have seen a submarine under construction, realize what a strong craft she actually is. ”

“ For instance, the S.S. Intaba (Q 2) , under Commander Frank Powell, on December 8, 1916, was in action with a submarine not far from the Kola Inlet, and had been sent to these northern latitudes inasmuch as German submarines for some time had been sinking our merchant ships off that coast. Another Q-ship operated with a British E-class submarine near Madeira and the Canaries; and another Q-ship was in the South Atlantic looking for a German raider, At other times there were the ocean-going submarines Deutschland and Bremen to be looked out for. ”

“ When the enemy bears the correct number of degrees of deflection the tube is fired, the periscope lowered, speed increased, and, if the torpedo has hit the Q-ship, the concussion will be felt in the submarine. This depends entirely on whether the Q-ship’s speed and course have been accurately ascertained. The torpedo has travelled at a speed of 36 knots, so, knowing the distance to be run, the captain has only to look at his stop-watch and reckon the time when his torpedo should have hit. ”

“ Discipline, of course, there was, even in the apparently and externally most slovenly tramp Q-ship; and it must not be thought that among so many crews of ‘hard cases’ all the hands were as harmless as china shepherdesses. When ashore, the average sailor is not always at his best: his qualities are manifest on sea and in the worst perils pertaining to the sea. The landsman, therefore, has the opportunity of observing him when the sailor wants to forget about ships and seas. ”

“ In the latter, with powerful turbines and all the latest navigational instruments, bad weather meant little inconvenience. After all it is the human element which is the deciding factor, and the Q-ship service certainly wore out officers and men at a great pace. It is indeed difficult to imagine any kind of seafaring more exacting both physically and nervously. ”

“ If you can wait and not be tired by waiting ...’ then, one may definitely assert, you have in you much that goes to the making of an ideal Q-ship captain and a brave warrior. As such you might make a first-class commanding officer of a destroyer, a light cruiser, or even a battleship; but something more is required. The enemy is artful; you must be super-artful. You must be able to look across the tumbling sea into his mind behind the conning tower. ”

“ Naval history has no use for hysteria and for the sensational exaggeration of ‘stunt’ journalism, but it is difficult to write calmly of the great deeds performed in these most unheroic-looking ships. To-day some Q-ship officers and men are walking about looking for jobs, and there are not ships in commission to employ them. But yesterday they were breaking the spirit of the U-boat personnel, risking their lives to the uttermost limits in the endeavour to131 render ineffectual the submarine blockade and the starvation of the nation. ”

“ Q-ships were kept pretty busy, too, in the Mediterranean. On March 11, 1917, when Wonganella (Lieut.-Commander B. J. D. Guy, R.N.) was on her way from Malta to England via Gibraltar, she was shelled by a submarine, and while the ‘panic’ party were getting out the boats, a shell wounded the officer and several of the crew in the starboard lifeboat. Another shell went through the bulwarks of the ship, wounding some men and bursting the steam-pipe of the winch, thus rendering unworkable the derrick used for hoisting out the third boat, and the port lifeboat was also damaged. ”

“ The difficulty of anti-submarine warfare was increased when the enemy became so wary that he preferred to remain shelling the ship at long range, and this led to our Q-ships having to be armed with at least one 4-inch against his 4·1-inch gun. The famous Arnauld de la Périère, who, in spite of his semi-French ancestry, was the ablest German submarine captain in the Mediterranean, was especially devoted to this form of tactics. Most of the German submarines were double-hulled, the space between the outer and inner hulls being occupied by water ballast and oil fuel. ”