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Updated: May 17, 2025
The statement of the American Ambassador, to the effect that the armed British steamers Secondo and Welsh Prince were sunk without warning by Austrian submarines, is based on error. The Austrian Government has in the meantime received information that no Austro-Hungarian warships were at all concerned in the sinking of these vessels.
Henry Woodhouse, one of the most distinguished authorities on aeronautics in the United States, in his standard Textbook on Naval Aeronautics, published by the Century Company, has assembled the following data on submarine and aeroplane combats: "On May 4, 1915, the German Admiralty reported an engagement between a German dirigible and several British submarines in the North Sea.
I learned nothing of value about the largest German submarines, except that everybody in Germany knew they were being built, and by the time the gossip of them reached Berlin the impression there was that they were at least as large as Atlantic liners. Now as to German submarine policies. The part that has to do with winning the war will be dealt with in the next chapter.
They too were alarmed by the sudden silence, and were changing their course going, like the French steamer, toward the place where the Californian had met the submersible. "Can it be that they are already in the Mediterranean!" the operator exclaimed with astonishment on finishing his report. "How could the submarines possibly get 'way down here?..." Ferragut did not dare to go up on the bridge.
Those French cruisers are big ones, though I don't quite recognise which they are, and they carry twice or three times the metal that those miserable forts do which comes of trusting everything to the Fleet, as though these were the days of wooden walls and sails instead of steam battleships, fast cruisers and destroyers, to say nothing of submarines and airships.
This country most of all, which was left so far behind in the production of submarines, airships and aeroplanes, must be made to realise the folly of its trust in established things. Each new thing we take up more belatedly and reluctantly than its predecessor. The time is not far distant when we shall be "caught" lagging unless we change all this.
Copper plates were fastened fore and aft on the outside of submarines, and it was made possible for wireless messages to be sent through the water at a distance of fifty miles. A submarine cannot aim at a ship without some object as a sight. So one submarine often acted as a "sight" for the submarine firing the torpedo.
It pursued a French steamer between Minorca and Mallorca. It spoke to a fishing boat! What did it not do? Señor, there was no submarine yesterday in the channel between Minorca and Mallorca. If there had been I must have known." And he sat back as though the subject were disposed of. "But submarines do visit these waters, Señor Medina, and they do sink ships," replied Hillyard.
You see, when the next British captain thinks of ramming one of our submarines he will remember the fate of Captain Fryatt and think twice!" Once more Germany is attempting intimidation, and seeking to make neutrals her ally in an attempt to starve Britain into defeat.
The convoy system forced submarines to expose themselves to the attacks of destroyer escorts, or else to work close in shore to set upon vessels after the dispersion of the convoy. But when working close to the coast they were exposed to Allied patrols and submarines.
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