20 
LAND & WATER 
December 19, 191 8 
The Surrender of the Submarines : 
By Capt. Woodis Rogers 
THE surrender of the submarines shows, to my 
mind, more than any of the other armistice terms, 
how completely the Hun is beaten. This is 
partly because I was for ten years in the mer- 
chant service and am now in the airship 
service : yesterday 
I saw the surrender 
of twenty-seven of 
these craft, the con- 
summation of the 
efforts of all anti- 
submarine work. 
P*utting aside all 
personal feeling 
one sees that the 
only hope of the 
Hun lay in un- 
restricted use of 
submarines : he 
was powerless on 
the surface of the 
sea and was held 
on land ; I do not 
mean that our par- 
ticular work has 
been rriore import- 
ant than any 
other ; it has been 
only a link in the 
chain, helping and 
being helped by 
others ; the other 
links were sound 
and it was up to 
us to see that ours 
held too. 
Very little is 
known to the general public of airships. It is not necessary 
to go into details of their work but a general idea of it is 
necessary to understand our point of view. An airship can 
patrol at slow speeds, slow enough to keep pace with a 
convoy : the range of vision is wide and more important still 
is the fact that even if the airship does not see the submarine, 
the submarine sees 
the airship and is 
afraid to show up : 
for this reason one 
may go on patrol 
for weeks or 
months without 
seeing a sign of a 
U-boat, and get to 
feel that its a use- 
less job. 
Yesterday we 
got permission to 
fly over Harwich 
to see the surren- 
der of a batch of 
U-boats. It was 
hazy over the land 
but a little clearer 
over the sea : on 
approaching the 
rendezvous we 
thought we saw a 
submarine, but it 
turned out to be 
only a sign of their 
dirty work, a mer- 
chant vessel listed 
over on her side, 
nearly submerged. 
Shortly after this 
we sighted our 
light cruisers and destroyecs. They were in a double row, 
lying at right angles to the course of the submarines, leaving 
a long lane down which the Hun boats were steaming ; it 
reached as far as one could see in either direction. Nearly 
every type of anti-submarine craft was there, destroyers, 
trawlers, motor launches, flying boats, and our own craft ; 
THREE CRUISER SUBMARINES 
SUBMARINE BEING BOARDED BY PRIZE CREW 
there was even an old wind-jammer, punching along in just 
the same way as she had done for the last four years, she might 
have been a Q-boat for all we knew. 
We flew down the line, going dead slow, just a little faster 
than the Hun. It was very solemn, everything was done 
in silence and quite 
naturally ; when 
a U-boat reached 
a certain point a 
M.L. would come 
alongside, an Offi- 
cer and prize crew 
would board it and 
the Hun officer 
would formally 
surrender. Then 
the White Ensign 
would be hoisted, 
a large ensign, 
much larger than 
any flown by our 
vessels : a clean 
new ensign, not 
worn and dingy 
with hard work 
like ours. It 
seemed to be the 
only clean thing 
on board. The 
Huns were sent to 
the fore deck and 
the vessel would 
move off towards 
Harwich. 
This happened 
literally under our 
very eyes, but still 
we could not believe it ; it was all unreal, a play being acted, 
or were we dreaming ? For years we had searched the seas 
for the U-boat and few of us had ever seen one, but now it 
seemed as if a curtain had been rolled back, revealing our 
hidden enemy, and we could see that our work had not been 
in vain. There were dozens of them, everywhere, moored to 
buoys and more 
and still more 
coming in. Those 
at the buoys looked 
like handfuls of 
cigars thrown 
down on a table ; 
they were dead, 
unkempt and 
rusty, with an air 
of desolation, out- 
casts from the 
world of decent 
things. Those 
which were coming 
in were still a live 
power for evil ; it 
was not an honour- 
able surrender, 
they were mis- 
trusted, covered by 
our guns until in 
charge of a prize 
crew. One thought 
of all the evil they 
had done, how 
they had utterly 
changed our ideas 
of " things a fellow 
can't do." In 1914, 
when a cruiser was 
torpedoed, her 
sister ship went to the rescue, never dreaming that she would 
be attacked in the act of saving life at sea. The mad joy of 
London on Armistice day did not make me realise our victory 
one tenth as much as this drama. 
The Huns themselves, the crews I mean, how could they 
do it ? I cannot explain to the lay mind what I mean, I lack 
