lO 
Land & Water 
February 28, 191 8 
juinj><.<J iMiw til . ii<.i I.' :vivi- him, and they did bring him in 
— only to die a few minutes later. 
It had all happened very quickly. From the dropping of 
the first depth charge, till the prisoners were aboard, no more 
than ten minutes had elapsed. It fact it was over before I 
had time to realise what was going on. How I should like to 
hate talked with the prisoners ! But a large convoy is not to 
be held up for a correspondent's chatter. We moved c 
on. 
leaving one destroyer to take the prisoners back to the Base. 
But I heard of them on our return. Tha bag comprised 
one Captain-Lieutenant, one Lieutenant, one Ober-Lieutenant, 
one Ober-Kngineer, and thirty-six men, who could be ill-spared 
by the Kaiser at this juncture in his naval affairs. As this 
U-boat had come from its base straight to our port, moreover, 
it carried down a full complement of twelve torpedoes; a 
greater loss than the vessi-l. 
The prisoners were all cross-examined, of course, and from 
a plentiful chaff of misinformation was gleaned a few kernels 
of knowledge. The commander said, for instance, that no 
submarine officer who knew his business w.ould waste a torpedo 
on a destroyer. But in the course of an intimate conversation 
with the ensign in whose charge he was placed he let out the fact 
that two torpedoes were always kept set for a depth of six feet. 
The piece of infonnation that interested us most came in a 
wireless message some hours later — the Base Port was "closed." 
The poor, harmless U-boat that " would not waste a tor- 
I>edo on a destroyer " had mined the offing. All of our 
bird-like swoopings, lively evolutions, had been performed in a, 
nest of mines ! This interesting news, however, was presently 
eclipsed by a wireless message 'we picked up in transit between 
a patrol and the Base. " Submarine has just fired a torpedo 
■ it us. We have dropped a depth mine at head of his wake." 
.\nother green commander ! 
This was the Base- Admiral's busy day. The next message 
we picked up came from a British patrol boat that had engaged 
a submarine in an artillery duel earlier in the day. It appeared 
that the " P " had plumped several shells into the " sub " 
and did not wish to be robbed of her prey ; hence a polite 
inquiry as to whether our " capture " was not due to injuries 
and disabilities previously inflicted by her ? She was assured 
of the contrary, and as no U-boat ever travels in any 
direction but the bottom with six shells in her, the little 
" P " received credit for a sinking. 
The next message brought an S.O.S. from a merchant 
ship that was being shelled by a submarine. She was too far 
away for us to render dssistance, but it drew an interesting 
reminiscence from the executive officer whose watch I was shar- 
ing on the bridge. 
" If she puts up as good a fight as the old * L ,' she will 
After fighting a duel with an American " tanker," that only 
surrendered when her ammunition ran out, Kelly ran alongside 
and congratulated the naval gunner. " That was a beautiful 
fight j'ou put up, sir. Sorry to have to sink you, but get 
into your boats and I'll tow you to the nearest land." He 
seems, also, to have an intimate knowledge of the whereabouts 
of American destroyers, and knows all the captains by name. 
" Pull in such and such a direction," he told one boat's crew ; 
' in three hours you will meet the American destroyer, C 
r^: — i'^ A.^:^ XT _ !•__ _i_ _ . _i J. 11 1 ■ "_ 1 » 
Stand a fine chance to be saved. We were ninety miles away 
when we got her S.O.S., and while we smoked it over the 
ocean, just hitting the tips of the waves, she kept us posted 
on the fight " Bridge shot away ! On fire ! Fire extinguished i 
bhell exploded m engine room ! We have thrown code books 
and papers overboard ! " We were still thirty miles away 
when that happened, but we wirelessed "her not to surrender 
and received a reply that would rnake a fine sub-title for a 
movie melodrama—" Never ! " And she didn't— thanks to 
the naval gunner who kept on firing after the captain thought 
It time to haul his flag down. ^ 
^1^1^ k" ^^ r''*"" ^J^ "°* ^° ^"""^y- You should have 
seen the boats of an oil tanker we picked up one day The 
U-boat had tlirown a shell into each and dead and dying men 
v,\l1u^u'J'°^^''"}^- ^^"^^ ^""^ been cut in two by Ihells 
■ Half the body would be there, the rest had gone overboard 
It was awful. Yet though bloodier, for pure devilry it was 
surpassed in another instance when the U-boat commander 
took away all the oars, sails and provisions from the boats of a 
ThTn ^ . J"st sunk. He evep had the water kegs emptied. 
^ r. S ^^tl^'^'ll'^^y' '^^^''"8 ^^'^ unfortunate crew to die, 
hfnH Th"^ ■ °^ ^V"?''"' ^"^ ^*^''"'^' hundreds of miles from 
hJln nS""^ were picked up, but I do not doubt that there have 
been others who were not so fortunate. After you have seen 
a ew hings like that, you don't feel very t^ender toward 
Fritz-though there is one German submarine commander 
operating around here who is really a gentleman •'"'""'''"^'^'^ 
thus It was that I came to hear of Kelly the snortine 
U-boat commander, who forms the shining^ excentbn to 
Hun barbarity. Whether Kelly-as he signs himself n 
the humorous notes he sends out' through the danger zone 
-IS really a Sinn Feiner in the German service, wHl probably 
iTves hfs lok-r- J'V'' °".^ '^'"^ h*^ '' t™'y Mile^[an-h^ 
Ujves his joke. Sometimes he will notify a local paoer or 
S"nT A^f''"f *'f ?^ "il^ ""^ P^-^^-t -t a cer afn &ic 
meeting. A few days later will come a second letter criticisinK 
trtsa'ctTd'"" Whe""."'*' acquaintance with the bu'in I 
boat Kplh- .1 ''^ rP' "P alongside an Irish fishing 
shTps when no^fnr^r ^<'' '^' '^f '•' '^^ '^^''- ^Iso he warn! 
Jives'tire bmt^, fhl • '^^"^°'-\^'"king them, and invariably 
gives .the boits their courses to the nearest land. 
Give Captain N my compliments and tell him he has a 
loose propeller blade. I heard it when he passed over me this 
morning. It makes inc nervous. Ask him to have it 
repaired please." 
After an unsuccessful attack on a Canadian transport that 
had Red Cross nurses aboard, he sent a wireless message after 
the fleeing ship. " Sorry you must go. Give my love to the 
nurses." It is said that the transport returned answer : 
" Same to you ! " 
From these and other tales of Kelly, I judge that, like most 
personages who achieve the limelight, he is gathering unto 
himself all the sporadic human impulses that crop up in the 
submarine zone. The lively sailor imagination, moreover, is 
not above adding a few of its own. Kelly is really in danger 
of evolving into a myth that will flourish and endure long after 
the inevitable depth mine has been dropped on his head. In 
the meantime he remains to shame by his fair fighting the 
bloody records of his brother commanders. 
\\'hile we were talking, tj;ie sun had rolled down its western 
slant and hung poised for a few minutes in a cloud glory of 
crimson and gold before it slid down into a purple sea. Above 
stretched a flaming vault, dappled in rainbow colour save 
- where, in the west, a great tear in the radiant tapestries 
revealed a sky wall of pure jade. It was intensely beautiful. 
so lovely that the mind refused further commerce with the 
quarrels of man ; would not picture the sea murderers that 
lay in wait beneath all that beauty. But they were there. 
The officer on the bridge chuckled as" he read me a " wireless " 
picked up in transit. 
" Listen to the chattering of the little ' subs ' ! Have you 
seen any ships to-day .' The ocean seems empty. I am afraid 
those damned destroyers have sunk Muller. He does not 
answer my calls ! " 
Muller " was, no doubt, the " P" boat's victim, for our 
Captain-Lieutenant, now at the Base, answered to another 
name. 
All that evening the messages came in a constant stream. 
Some were calls for aid ; others merely reports of U-boat 
■ movements. One told of a torpedoed derelict that had been 
picked up and safely beach«d by the patrol.' And no one of 
them that did not produce some tale from the officer on the 
bridge. Usually tragic, recording the loss of fine ships and the 
deaths of brave men, their grimness was short, with here and 
there a gleaming thread of humour. 
Such was the case with the M -, an American munition 
ship with a million dollar cargo, torpedoed a hundred miles 
out from the Base. The Base-Admiral sent out an anxious 
inquiry as to her condition and progress to the destroyer 
that had her in tow and received in reply : " We are making 
three and a half knots, but it is a long way to Tipperary " 
It was, alas ! She foundered at sea. ■ 
Take also the "Lovely Lucy," a trim steamer that had 
strayed from her convoy during a fog. A wireless came in 
.. f.ru*^^'*^"'"^ ^'"""^ ^ destroyer that had picked up the stray : 
What did you do to the ' Lovely Lucy ? ' Found her at 
dusk, without an escort, zig-zagging wildly through the fog." 
bome told of Homeric encounters between British and 
German ' subs " as when two collided underwater one evening 
then backed away, fired a torpedo apiece, and lost each other 
in the dark. Another Englishman came up alongside a 
steamer that was being sunk by shell fire. Sinking again, 
he waited till the German came sailing around then put a 
torpedo in his solar plexus. Fritz had piled some cases- of 
beer on his deck, loot from the steamer, and when he went up 
—using the graphic language of the British commander— 
the air was full of beer, blood, Boches, and broken bottles." 
Ihat evening displayed destroyer life at its best. A 
brilliant moon— which the " Bridge " fluently cursed "for kn 
ally ot the Boche— laid a path of silver along a sleepy sea. 
Our boat laid her long, slim cheek softly against the slow 
swells. From the deck below,, the tinkle of a mandolin and 
guitar ascended to the bridge accompanying a mixed repertoire 
ot rag-time and those sentimental ballads the sailor so dearly 
loves. It had quite the flavour of a Coney Island picnic but, 
once an hour, a constant reminder of the grim realities of war, 
a dark hgure raised and lowered the guns and swung them 
around the firing circle. The gunners were taking no chances 
o* Jreezing through cold-stiffened grease. 
Ihis remarkable weather— which the " Bridge " was kind 
enough to attribute to me-held till we dropped our convoy 
well out of the danger zone, and picked up another homeward 
