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By her manner of shelling the steamer after he had opened fire our skipper judged she was a tough one. She did show once while we were circling the Luckenbach. Her periscope popped up about a mile abeam of us. It may have popped up again it was getting to be a nice little choppy sea good for sub work and no saying that it was not but we only sighted it once, and then it did not linger.
"We are being shelled," said the radio; latitude and longitude followed, as did the name of the ship, J. L. Luckenbach. One of us knew her; an American ship of 6,000 tons or so. Another radio came: "Shell burst in engine-room. Engineer crippled." S O S signals were no rare thing in those waters, but even so they were never passed up as lacking interest; the skipper waited for action.
Pretty soon it came, a signal from the senior officer of our group. The 352 let us give that as the number of our ship was to proceed at once to the assistance of the Luckenbach. The skipper's first act was to shake up the second watch-officer, who also happened to be acting as chief engineer of the ship, and to pass him the word to speed the ship up to twenty-five knots.
In this way, in the autumn of 1914, the American steamer Luckenbach was successfully run through direct to Germany with several million pounds of wool on board.
The skipper left the surgeon aboard, and at twenty knots the 352 steamed more circles around the steamer, all lookouts meanwhile skinning their eyes afresh for signs of the sub. We could make out a lot of smoke on the southern horizon. It was the convoy we had left in the morning. An hour later the Luckenbach found her legs.
The two officers made the deck together, one buttoning his blouse over a heavy sweater, the other a sheepskin coat over his blouse. Word was sent to the Luckenbach that we were on the way. Within three minutes the radio came back: "Our steam is cut off. How soon can you get here?" Up through the speaking-tube came a voice just then to say that we were making twenty-five knots.
There was a nineteen-year-old lad who, when I knew him two years before, was doing boy's work in the Collier bookbindery. Now he was a gun-captain standing handy to his little pet and trying not to look too proud when he peeked up toward where I was. The foretop reported smoke on the horizon ahead. That would be on the Luckenbach. And where she was the U-boat was.
On October 19, 1917, the steamer J. L. Luckenbach had a four-hour running battle with a submarine in which the ship fired 202 rounds and the pursuer 225. The latter scored nine hits, but was at last driven off by the appearance of a destroyer. To cite another typical engagement, the Navajo, in the English Channel, July 4, 1917, was attacked first by torpedo and then by gunfire.
At the same moment our executive officer, who also happened to be the navigator, handed the skipper a slip of paper with the course and distance to the Luckenbach, saying: "That was at nine-fifteen." It was then nine-seventeen. Down the tube to the engine-room went the order to make what speed she could. Also the skipper said: "She ought to be tearing off twenty-eight soon as she warms up.
The sea was growing lumpy when the whale-boat came bouncing back with our senior officer. It was right about the Luckenbach having nine injured, but all would get well. The doctor was looking after them. She was a cotton steamer. The kid who had been hit twice was all right.
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