Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 143, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1917 — BRITISH U-BOAT IN A CLEVER RUSE [ARTICLE]

BRITISH U-BOAT IN A CLEVER RUSE

Vessel, Disabled, Captures Mine* Laying Trawler and Sets a Trap. SINKS 6 ENEMY DESTROYERS ©trews Sea With Score of Mines Then Calls Prussian Vessels in German Code and They Rush to Their Destruction. New York.—How a British submarine, disabled and forced to come to the surface in Prussian waters in the North Sea, captured an enemy minelayer and sank six Prussian destroyers was told in graphic language by an officer of a British vessel that arrived at an American port. According to the narrative the officer commanding the submarine forced the mine-layer to tow him out to sea and then, repairs being completed, sowed the’ sea* with mines and in German code sent out a call by wireless that brought six Prussian destroyers down on them. Four of the destroyers struck mines and the remaining two. were sunk by the submarine, jvhich then made her way heme in safety. , “We were cruising oft the mouth of the Weser at night,” the officer told a ■’New York Herald reporter, “when wept wrong with our machinery and we came to a stop. Setting the Trap. “We had passed close by to several Prussian vessels earlier in the evening, but had not touched them, for ours was a mission of observation. So we considered that we would fall In with one very soon. Sure enough, in an hour’s time we caught sight of a dark shape coming down and which would apparently run afoul of us if we kept on. Through the night glasses our lieutenant made her out to be a trawler. At once he decided on a desperate expedient. He sent off the bo’sun and six men, all the available men we had, in our collapsible boat, and as the trawler bore down on us he hailed her in German and reported himself as U-29, with machinery disabled. -

"It wasn’t till she was .right on top of us that they smelled a rat. Someone shouted out an alarm as her overhang grazed us. And as the cry went up our collapsible, which had pulled around, boarded her from the other side. The lieutenant and I went over the trawler’s side and shot two of them before they rushed us, for our boat’s crew had kept the remainder of the watch on deck busy. “Once in possession of the deck it was easy to do for the engine-room force of three and the boat was ours. We made sure that there was no communication from the fo’c’sle except by the locked hatch. Then the lieutenant passed a line to our own submarine and with her engine-room crew working like mad the rest of us on the trawler got under way. It was almost dawn before the engineer on the submarine hailed us and announced that

he had cleared away the broken stuff and replaced the rods. “The lieutenant then cast loose from our submarine and the trawler made a wide semicircle, dropping overside all the surface mines she had on board.— 20 of them. Then we sent a radio in' German—the lieutenant had found the Hun’s secret code book In the wheelhouse —calling for help and announcing that the trawler had fallen In with a flotilla of fast British cruisers, evidently bent on a raiding expedition. With that we wrecked the wireless, abandoned the trawler with her crew still locked on the fo’c’sle and submerged behind our barrier of mines. Destroying the Destroyers. “We didn’t have long to wait. The dawn .was just breaking when up from the east came four destroyers in column. We had hardly sighted them when they saw the trawler and spread out fanwise. As they shot into the mine field the leading destroyer went leaping out of the water with her bow torn off. The others sheered and the secomTand third, thus running up the mine trail, both struck, each one being

fairly turn to pieces. The fourth destroyer, her engines reversing at top speed and hauling her back on her haunches, took a pot shot at the trawler for luck, realizing that they had run into a trap. As she was firing we crept slowly up and let her have a torpedo amidships. “The roar of the explosion had hardly” died away when another detonation shook us and we found that two more destroyers had come up from the southward and had fallen afoul of the mines. The leading one was untouched, but the second had struck another mine. As the one remaining destroyer turned to run we made for her at an angle and got her. She went up with an appalling roar. “We had no chance to breathe, however, for something dropped into - the sea close by and exploded. Swinging our periscope upward we found three Taubes circling above us. We turned and cut for home, with the trio hanging over us for more than half an hour, dropping bombs ail around us, and after running with the fear of death in our hearts for more than an hour we got within our cruising area and the Taubes were driven away by a couple of our own seaplanes. “The lieutenant got the Victoria cross for his work and we all got the Military cross.”