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Updated: June 29, 2025
Jim returned to the doldrums with a new resentment. He was a prisoner now. He had gone to Texas to find war and his wife to Newport to find gaiety. She found much more than that. On October 7th the old town was stirred by something genuinely new in sensations the arrival of a German war submarine, the U-53.
About three hours afterwards, without having taken on any supplies, and after explaining her presence by the desire of delivering a letter addressed to Count von Bernstorff, then German Ambassador at Washington, the U-53 left as suddenly and mysteriously as she had appeared. This was the first appearance of a foreign war submarine in an American port.
The question related to the hospitality accorded the Deutschland in Baltimore and New London; but as it arose in the midst of the hubbub occasioned by the U-53, the American view appeared to determine that such craft could call at an American port like any other armed vessel, so long as it did not stay beyond the allotted time.
Of the slow development of that engine of war to its present effectiveness we shall speak more fully in later chapters. Enough now to say that had the Confederacy possessed boats of the U-53 type the story of our Civil War might have had a different ending.
Referring to "the activities of the U-53 under the very eyes of the American navy" and to President Wilson's ultimatum which resulted in the German pledge, Lord Sydenham said: "Even before the exploits of the U-53 that pledge was torn to shreds. Yet the Government of the United States has made no sign whatever that the sinking of neutral ships goes on almost every day.
It was claimed that the U-53 had made the trip from Wilhelmshaven in seventeen days. She was 213 feet long, equipped with two guns, four torpedo tubes, and an exceptionally strong wireless outfit. Besides her commander, Captain Rose, she was manned by three officers and thirty-three men. Early the next morning, October 8, it became evident what had brought the U-53 to this side of the Atlantic.
The temper of Americans was being tried by continued sinkings, although the exact circumstances of each case were difficult to determine. The attacks made by the German U-53 immediately off the American coast and the deportation of Belgian civilians into Germany made more difficult the preservation of amicable relations. In view of the possibility of war Wilson wanted to define the issue exactly.
U-53 was sent here for two purposes: First, it was to demonstrate to the American people that, in event of war, submarines could work terror off the Atlantic coast. Second, it was to show the naval authorities whether their plans for an attack on American shipping would be practical.
German diplomats were enthusiastic over the exploits of their craft. "The U-53 and other German submarines, if there are others," said a member of the German Embassy at Washington, "is engaged in doing to the commerce of the Allies just what the British tried to do to the Deutschland when she left America. It is being done by submarines, that is all.
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