Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1920 — Unlucky Whale. [ARTICLE]

Unlucky Whale.

Loose mines bobbing in the water hinted at the perils that were constantly threatening our forces. In the tense imagination of the lookouts floating spars or other debris easily took the form of periscopes. Queer looking roiling vessels at a distance aroused suspicions that they might be submarines in disguise. A phosphorescent trail In the water was sometimes mistaken for the wake of a torpedo. The cover of a hatchway floating on the surface if seen at a distance of a few hundred yards looked much like the conning tower of a submarine, while the back of an occasional whale gave a lifelike representation of a U-boat awash, in fact so lifelike that on one occasion several of our submarine chasers on the English coast dropped depth charges on a whale and killed it. —Admiral Sims, in thp World’s Work. ‘