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While this was in progress the Navy Department was having built a fleet of submarine-chasers of the 110-foot class, which, together with the yachts taken over, offered abundant opportunities for oversea service, which the sailors enrolled in the Coast Defense Division were not slow to accept after they were requested to transfer their enrollment from Class 4 to Class 2, under which classification they were eligible to be sent abroad.
Thus thousands of young men who had enlisted for coast-patrol duty, were sent aboard transports, submarine-chasers, and war-ships generally, for service in the European war zones.
When we entered the war, a decision to send a number of our destroyers to France imposed upon the Navy Department the necessity of protecting our own coast from possible submarine attack. We had retained destroyers in this country, of course, and our battle and cruiser fleet was here; but a large number of mosquito craft, submarine-chasers, patrol-boats, and the like were urgently demanded.
After Brazil's entrance into the war the Brazilian Navy co-operated with our vessels in the patrol of South American waters. The taking over of some 800 craft of various kinds, and their conversion into types needed, provided the navy with the large number of vessels required for transports, patrol service, submarine-chasers, mine-sweepers, mine-layers, tugs, and other auxiliaries.
Hundreds of submarine-chasers have now been built, and a number of destroyers and other craft completed and placed in service. The first merchant ship to be armed was the oil-tanker Campana; guns manned by navy men were on board when she sailed for Europe, March 12, 1917. The big American passenger-liners St.
But there are also to be remembered the unheralded stories of heroism and skill, such as the dash of the submarine-chasers and destroyers through the mine fields at Durazzo, and the work of our naval guns in the attack on Zeebrugge.
Ferragut saw the swift torpedo destroyers dancing at the slightest undulation upon their cables of twisted steel, and examined the improvised submarine-chasers, robust and short little steamers, constructed for fishing, that carried quickfirers on their prows.
Their crews were on the watch in the dirtiest weather, unable to sleep, tossed and battered by the incessant rolling, without warm food, facing the constant peril of being swept overboard and knowing that their boat could not stop to pick them up. American submarine-chasers and converted yachts, mine-sweepers on their beneficent and hazardous duty, were equally active.
Submarine-chasers are shallow craft, capable of a speed of thirty-five miles an hour or more, mounting guns fore and aft. The British, as already said, like the 80-footer, although using all sizes. Well, in any event, the chaser cruises about looking for surface waves. Now, the surface wave is the path marked by a submarine on the surface of the water.
Other destroyers remained here, of course, while a fringe of submarine-chasers and swift, armed yachts converted into government patrol-vessels were guarding our coast the day after the President signed the war resolution. But more than a year and a half was to elapse before our waters were again to know the submarine menace. Just why the Germans waited may not be known.
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