United States or Jamaica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Finally, as to the danger to neutral submarines in waters frequented by belligerent submarines, it was the duty of belligerents to distinguish between them, and responsibility for any conflict arising from neglect to do so must rest upon the negligent power. This caustic exchange of views on harboring submarines took place before the appearance of the U-53.
More interest in submarine warfare than ever before was aroused in this country when the German war submarine U-53 unexpectedly made its appearance in the harbour of Newport, R. I., during the afternoon of October 7, 1916.
The destroyers of the United States Navy stood by like spectators on the bleachers, and when the submarine had quite finished the supply of ships the obliging destroyers picked up the fragments in the open boats and brought them ashore. And the U-53 went on unchecked, after one of the most astounding spectacles in the history of the sea.
The night brought forth nothing, however, and the Navy Department was beginning to feel that perhaps after all the U-53 was well on her way to Germany, when early the following morning there came to the radio-station at Newport an indignant message from Captain Smith of the Hawaiian-American liner Kansan.
One of them, the Cassin was later to be struck but not sunk by a torpedo off the coast of England, while the Fanning, in company with the Nicholson, had full opportunity of paying off the score which most naval officers felt had been incurred when the U-53 and her alleged companion invaded American waters and sullied them with the foul deeds that had so long stained the clean seas of Europe.
This method of submarine warfare proved very successful and by November, 1916, Germany was sinking over 425,000 tons of ships per month. During this swell in the success of the submarine campaign the U-53 was despatched across the Atlantic to operate off the United States coasts.
If the United States is willing to play this rôle, the Germans will hold their hands from an extra dose of unlimited submarine frightfulness." The U-53 had no sooner gone when an exchange of communications between the American and Allied governments regarding the status of foreign submarines in neutral ports became public.
The submarine, the U-53, held over toward Beaver Tail and then swung into the narrow harbor entrance, finally coming to anchor off Goat Island. The commander, Captain Hans Rose, went ashore in a skiff and paid an official visit first to Rear-Admiral Austin M. Knight, commander of the Newport Naval District, and then to Rear-Admiral Albert Gleaves, chief of our destroyer flotilla.
It was a short-lived panic. The U-53 came and went in a flash; but amid the scare created by its presence President Wilson found it necessary to assure the country that "the German Government will be held to the complete fulfillment of its promise to the Government of the United States. I have no right now," he added, "to question its willingness to fulfill them."
It was proved, at least, that the Germans had sent more submarines to this side of the ocean. The visit of the Deutschland and of U-53 to America before the United States got into the war, had been in the nature of a warning as to what the Hun could really do. Now perhaps a squadron of U-boats was to be sent across to prey upon American shipping or to shell helpless seaboard towns.
Word Of The Day