The interior cylindrical hull is divided by four transverse bulkheads into five separate water-tight compartments. Compartment No. 1, at the bow, contains the anchor cables and electric winches for handling the anchor; also general ship stores, and a certain amount of cargo. Compartment No. 2 is given up entirely to cargo. Compartment No. 3, which is considerably larger than any of the others, contains the living quarters of the officers and crew. At the after end of this compartment, and communicating with it, is the conning tower. Compartment No. 4 is given up entirely to cargo. Compartment No. 5 contains the propelling machinery, consisting of two heavy oil engines and two electric motors. The storage batteries are carried in the bottom of the boat, below the living compartment. For purposes of communication, a gangway, 2 feet 6 inches wide by 6 feet high, is built through each cargo compartment, thus rendering it possible for the crew to pass entirely from one end of the boat to the other.

The length of the Deutschland is about 315 feet; beam 30 feet, and draught 17 feet. For surface propulsion and for charging the batteries, the boat carries two 4-cylinder, Diesel, heavy-oil motors of about 600 H. P. each. The speed at the surface is from 12 to 13 knots; and submerged it is 7 knots. At the surface the displacement of the boat is about 2000 tons, and she has a cargo capacity of about 700 tons.

The freeboard to the main deck, which runs the full length of the boat, but is only about 5-½ feet wide, is about 6 feet, and the cockpit at the top of the conning tower is about 15 feet above the water. This cockpit, by the way, is suggestive of the protection afforded a chauffeur in an automobile, there being a shield in front of the quartermaster, so shaped as to throw the wind and spray upwards and clear of his face.

Two periscopes are provided; one at the forward end of the conning tower, and the other, of larger diameter, being forward and on the starboard of the conning tower. An interesting feature is the two folding, steel, wireless masts, about 50 feet in height, both of which fold aft into pockets built in the deck of the ship. The forward one of these masts carries a crow's nest for the lookout.

in less than two months a telegram called me to Berlin to an important conference. Here I looked at sketches, plans, and working drawings until my eyes swam. Four more months passed which I utilized to the full. I then went to Kiel and saw a remarkable framework of steel slowly take shape upon the stocks across the way at Gaarden. Rotund, snug, and harmless the thing lay there. Inside it were hidden all the countless, complicated, and powerful features of those sketches and working drawings. I cannot boast that the reality as executed in steel and brass was any easier to grasp than the endless network of lines and circles which had bewildered me when inspecting the blueprints.

Those of you who have seen illustrations and photographs of the interior of the "central station" or the "turret" of a submarine, will understand what I mean. And should you have entered a submarine itself and felt yourself hopelessly confused by the bewildering chaos of wheels, vents, screws, cocks, pipes, conduits—above, below, and all about—not to speak of the mysterious levers and weird mechanisms, each of which has some important function to fulfill, you may find some consolation in the thought that my own brains performed a devils' dance at the sight.

But after this monster, with its tangle of tubes and pipes, had been duly christened, and its huge grey-green body had slid majestically into the water, it suddenly became a ship. It swam in its element as though born to it—as though it had never known another.

For the first time I trod the tiny deck and mounted the turret to the navigation platform. From here I glanced down and was surprised to see beneath me a long, slender craft—with gracious lines and dainty contours. Only the sides, where the green body vaulted massively above the water, gave an indication of the huge size of the hull. I felt pride and rapture as my eye took in this picture. The fabric swayed slightly beneath my feet—an impressive combination of power and delicacy.

And now I know that what had at first seemed to me nothing more than the product of some mad phantasy on the part of the technicians was in reality a ship. It was a ship in which oceans might be crossed, a real ship, to which the heart of an old sailor like myself might safely attach itself.

Then came a short period of trial trips and diving tests, all of which were carried off successfully, and at last the day of departure arrived. As soon as the last escort had turned around a final diving test was ordered.

Instantly the response came back from the turret and the central station, and the men hurried to their posts. The oil engines were still hammering away at a mad rate. I left the manhole of the turret. The cover was battened down, the engines stopped at the same moment.

We felt a slight pressure in our ears for a moment. We were cut off from outside and silence reigned. But this silence was merely an illusion—and was due to the change.

"Alarm! Dive quickly! Flood!"

"Set diving rudder!"

"Twenty meters' depth!"

The commands were uttered in almost one breath. But the execution of them!

To attempt to dive with such a sea running was sheer madness, as experience has taught us. What was I to do? The destroyer might have seen us already!

Well, we knew we must get under—and as quickly as possible.

The men in the central below me were working away in silent haste. All the exhausts were opened wide, the compressed air hissed from the tanks—the diving vents were chanting in all possible keys.

I stood with my lips pressed together and stared out of the turret window upon the tossing sea, and watched for the first sign of our going down. But our deck remained still visible and we were continually lifted into the air by some wave. There was not a moment to be lost.

I ordered the diving rudder to be set still more sharply and both engines to drive ahead with full power.

The whole vessel quivered and thrilled under the increased pressure of the engines and made several leaps. She staggered about in the furious seas—but still seemed loath to leave the surface. Then she gave a jerk and her bows suddenly dipped and cut into the flood. She began to sink into the depths at an ever-increasing angle. The coming daylight vanished from the windows of the turret, the manometer in rapid succession showed 2—3—6—10 meters' depth. But the angle of the boat also began to increase.

We staggered about, leaned back, slipped off our feet. We then lost our footing entirely—for the floor of the Deutschland slanted sharply toward the front. I was just able to catch hold of the ocular or eye-piece of the periscope. Down in the central the men were hanging on to the hand-wheels of the diving rudder. A few terrible seconds passed thus.

We had not yet seized the full significance of this new situation when there came a severe shock. We were hurled to the floor and everything that was not fastened down went flying in all directions.

We found ourselves in the queerest attitudes—and stared into one another's faces. There was a grim silence for a moment, then First Officer Krapohl remarked dryly:

"Well, we seem to have arrived!"

This broke the ghastly tension.

We were all rather pale around the gills, but at once tried to get our bearings.

What had happened?

What had caused this unnatural inclination of the boat? And why were the engines above us raving at intervals in a way that made the whole boat roar from stem to stern?

Before any of us had arrived at any solution of the mystery, our Chief Engineer, little Klees, had jumped up from his crouching position, and, swift as lightning, had swept the engine-signal dial around to "Stop!"

And suddenly there was a deep silence.

We slowly assembled our proper legs and arms and thought hard over what had happened.

The vessel had slanted down toward the bows at an angle of about 36 degrees. She was standing, so to speak, on her head. Our bow was fast upon the bottom of the sea—our stern was still oscillating up and down like a mighty pendulum. The manometer showed a depth of about 15 meters.[2]

During these experimental diving tests we were treated to a spectacle of fairy-like loveliness.

I had set the rudder in such a way that the turret was travelling about three yards under water. Overhead the sun shone brilliantly and filled the deeps with a clear radiance. The pure water was luminous with colour—close at hand it was of a light azure blue, of fabulous clearness and transparent as glass. I could see the entire boat from the turret windows. The shimmering pearls of the air-bubbles which rise constantly from the body of the craft played about the entire length of the vessel from deck to bows, and every detail stood out in miraculous sharpness. Farther ahead there was a multi-coloured twilight. It seemed as if the prow kept pushing itself noiselessly into a wall of opalescent green which parted, glistening, and grew to an ethereal, rainbow-like translucency close at hand.

We were spell-bound by this vision of beauty. The fairy-like effect was increased by medusÆ which, poised in the transparent blue, frequently became entangled in the wires of the mine-guards or the railings and glowed like trembling fires of rose, pale gold, and purple.[3]

While in the Gulf Stream we had an outer temperature of 28° Celsius. This was about the warmth of the surrounding water. Fresh air no longer entered. In the engine-room two 6-cylinder combustion motors kept hammering away in a maddening two-four time. They hurled the power of their explosions into the whirling crankshafts. The red-hot breath of the consumed gases went crashing out through the exhausts, but the glow of these incessant firings remained in the cylinders and communicated itself to the entire oil-dripping environment of steel. A choking cloud of heat and oily vapour streamed from the engines and spread itself like a leaden pressure through the entire ship.

During these days the temperature mounted to 53° Celsius.

And yet men lived and worked in a hell such as this! The watch off duty, naked to the skin, groaned and writhed in their bunks. It was no longer possible to think of sleep. And when one of the men fell into a dull stupor, then he would be aroused by the sweat which ran incessantly over his forehead and into his eyes, and would awake to new torment.

It was almost like a blessed deliverance when the eight hours of rest were over, and a new watch was called to the central or the engine-room.

In order to see that everything else was tight and in good order, I gave the command to set the boat upon the sea bottom at a spot which, according to the reading upon the chart, had a depth of some 30 meters. Once again everything grew silent. The daylight vanished the well-known singing and boiling noise of the submerging vents vibrated about us. In my turret I fixed my eyes upon the manometer. Twenty meters were recorded, then twenty-five. The water ballast was diminished—thirty meters appeared and I waited the slight bump which was to announce the arrival of the boat at the bottom.

Nothing of the sort happened.

Instead of this the indicator upon the dial pointed to 32—to 33—to 35 meters....

I knocked against the glass with my finger—correct—the arrow was just pointing toward thirty-six.

"Great thunder! what's up?" I cried, and reached for the chart. Everything tallied. Thirty meters were indicated at this spot and our reckoning had been most exact.

And we continued to sink deeper and deeper.

The dial was now announcing 40 meters.

This was a bit too much for me. I called down to the central and got back the comforting answer that the large manometer was also indicating a depth of over forty meters!

The two manometers agreed.

This, however, did not prevent the boat from continuing to sink.

The men in the central began to look at one another....

Ugh! it gives one a creepy feeling to go slipping away into the unknown amidst this infernal singing silence and to see nothing but the climbing down of the confounded indicator upon the white-faced dial....

There was nothing else to be seen in my turret. I glanced at the chart and then at the manometer in a pretty helpless fashion.

In the meantime the boat sank deeper; forty-five meters were passed—the pointer indicated forty-eight meters. I began to think the depth of the Chesapeake Bay must have some limit; we surely could not be heading for the bottomless pit? Then—the boat halted at a depth of fifty meters without the slightest shock. I climbed down into the central and took counsel with Klees and the two officers of the watch.

There could be only one explanation; we must have sunk into a hole which had not been marked upon the chart.[5]

We knew that the most dangerous moment of our entire voyage was now approaching. We once more marked our exact position, and then proceeded to make all the preparations necessary for our breaking through.

Then we dived and drove forward. All our senses were keyed to the utmost, our nerves taut to the breaking-point with that cold excitement which sends quivers through one's soul, the while outwardly one remains quite serene, governed by that clear and icy deliberation which is apt to possess a man who is fully conscious of the unknown perils toward which he goes....

We knew our path. We had already been informed that fishermen had been hired to spread their nets along certain stretches of the three-mile limit; nets in which we were supposed to entangle ourselves; nets into which devilish mines had very likely been woven....

Possibly these nets were merely attached to buoys which we were then supposed to drag along after us, thus betraying our position....

We were prepared for all emergencies, so that in case of extreme necessity we should be able to free ourselves of the nets. But all went well.

It was a dark night. Quietly and peacefully the lighthouses upon the two capes sent forth their light, the while a few miles further out death lay lowering for us in every imaginable form.

But while the English ships were racing up and down, jerking their searchlights across the waters and searching again and again in every imaginable spot, they little surmised that, at times within the radius of their own shadows, a periscope pursued its silent way, and under this periscope the U-Deutschland.

That night at twelve o'clock, after hours of indescribable tension, I gave the command to rise.

We Had Broken Through!

Slowly the Deutschland rose to the surface, the tanks were blown out and the Diesel engines flung into the gearing. At our highest speed we now went rushing toward the free Atlantic.[6]

The design of this submarine oyster-dredging vessel is such that the vessel goes down to the bottom direct, and the water is forced out of the centre raking compartment so that the oysters may be seen by the operator in the control compartment. With only a few inches of water over them, headway is then given to the submarine and the oysters are automatically raked up, washed, and delivered through pipes into the cargo-carrying chambers. Centrifugal pumps are constantly delivering water from the cargo compartments, which induces a flow of water through the pipes leading from the "rake pans" with sufficient velocity to carry up the oysters and deposit them into the cargo holds. In this manner the bottom may be seen, and by "tracking" back and forth over the bottom the ground may be "cleaned up" at one operation.

This boat has a capacity of gathering oysters from good ground at the rate of five thousand bushels per hour. The use of the submarine will make the collection of oysters more nearly like the method of reaping a field of grain, where one "swathe" systematically joins on to another, and the whole field is "cleaned up" at one operation.