In the spring of 1917 there was a 2,905-ton steamship, called the Bracondale, in the employment of the Admiralty as a collier. It was decided that she would make a very useful Q-ship, so at the beginning of April she was thus commissioned and her name changed to Chagford. She was fitted out at Devonport and armed with a 4-inch, two 12-pounders, and a couple of torpedo tubes, and was ready for sea at the end of June. Commanded by Lieutenant D. G. Jeffrey, R.N.R., she proceeded to Falmouth in order to tune everything up, and then was based on Buncrana, which she left on August 2 for what was to be her last cruise, and I think that in the following story we have another instance of heroism and pertinacity of great distinction.

Chagford’s position on August 5 at 4.10 a.m. was roughly 120 miles north-west of Tory Island, and she was endeavouring to find two enemy submarines which had been reported on the previous day. At the time mentioned she was herself torpedoed just below the bridge, and in this one explosion was caused very great injury: for it disabled both her torpedo tubes and her 4-inch gun; it shattered the boats on the starboard side as well as the captain’s cabin and chart room. In addition, it also wrecked all the voice-pipe connections to the torpedo tubes and guns, and it flooded the engine-room and put the engines out of commission, killing one of the crew. Lieutenant Jeffrey therefore ‘abandoned’ ship, and just as the boats were getting away two periscopes and a submarine were sighted on the starboard side 800 yards away. As soon as the enemy came to the surface fire was opened on her by the two 12-pounders and both Lewis and machine-guns, several direct hits being observed. The submarine then dived, but at 4.40 a.m. she fired a second torpedo at Chagford, which hit the ship abaft the bridge on the starboard side.

From the time the first torpedo had hit, the enemy realized that Chagford was a warship, for the 4-inch gun and torpedo tubes had been made visible, and now that the second explosion had come Lieutenant Jeffrey decided to recall his boats so that the ship might genuinely be abandoned. The lifeboat, dinghy, and a barrel raft were accordingly filled, and about 5.30 a.m. the enemy fired a third torpedo, which struck also on the starboard side. Having sent away in the boats and raft everyone with the exception of himself and a lieutenant, R.N.R., two sub-lieutenants, R.N.R., also an assistant-paymaster, R.N.R., and one petty officer, Lieutenant Jeffrey stationed these in hiding under cover of the fo’c’sle and poop, keeping a smart look-out, however, through the scuttles.

Here was another doomed ship rolling about in the Atlantic without her crew, and only a gallant handful of British seamanhood still standing by with but a shred of hope. To accentuate their suspense periscopes were several times seen, and from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. a submarine frequently appeared on the surface at long range, and almost every hour a periscope passed round the ship inspecting her cautiously. During the whole of this time Chagford was settling down gradually but certainly. At dark Lieutenant Jeffrey, fearing that the enemy might attempt boarding, placed Lewis and Maxim guns in position and served out rifles and bayonets to all. Midnight came, and after making a further examination of the damage, Lieutenant Jeffrey realized that it was impossible for the Chagford to last much longer, for her main deck amidships was split from side to side, the bridge deck was badly buckled, and the whole ship was straining badly. Therefore, just before half-past midnight, these five abandoned the ship in a small motor-boat which they had picked up at sea some days previously, but before quitting Chagford they disabled the guns, all telescopic sights and strikers being removed.

Having shoved off, they found to their dismay that there were no tanks in the motor-boat, so she had to be propelled by a couple of oars, and it will readily be appreciated that this kind of propulsion in the North Atlantic was not a success. They then thought of going back to the ship, but before they could do so they were fortunately picked up at 7.30 a.m. by H.M. trawler Saxon, a large submarine having been seen several times on the horizon between 4 and 7 a.m. The trawler then proceeded to hunt for the submarine, but, as the latter had now made off, volunteers were called for and went aboard Chagford, so that by 4 p.m. Saxon had commenced towing her. Bad luck again overcame their efforts, for wind and sea had been steadily increasing, and of course there was no steam, so the heavy work of handling cables had all to be done by hand. Until the evening the ship towed fairly well at 2 knots, but, as she seemed then to be breaking up, the tow-rope had to be slipped, and just before eight o’clock next morning (August 7) she took a final plunge and disappeared. The Saxon made for the Scottish coast and landed the survivors at Oban on the morning of the eighth. In this encounter, difficult as it was, Chagford had done real service, for she had damaged the submarine so much that she could not submerge, and this was probably U 44 which H.M.S. Oracle sighted in the early hours of August 12 off the north coast of Scotland, evidently bound to Germany. Oracle chased her; U 44 kept diving and coming to the surface after a short while. She had disguised herself as a trawler, and was obviously unable to dive except for short periods. Oracle shelled and then rammed her, so that U 44 was destroyed and Chagford avenged. Nothing more was seen of Chagford except some wreckage found by a trawler on August 11, who noticed the word Bracondale on the awnings.

After Lieutenant Jeffrey and crew had returned to their base they proceeded to fit out the 2,794-ton S.S. Arvonian. This was to be a very powerful Q-ship, for she was armed with three 4-inch guns instead of one, in addition to three 12-pounders, two Maxim guns, and actually four 18-inch torpedo tubes. She was, in fact, a light cruiser, except for speed and appearance, but the Chagford crew were destined to disappointment, for this is what happened. The reader will recollect that in her engagement of June 7, 1917, Captain Campbell’s famous ship Pargust received so much damage that she had to be left in dockyard hands while he and his crew went to sea in the Dunraven. Now, at the beginning of October Admiral Sims asked the British Admiralty for a ship to carry out this decoy work, and to be manned by the United States Navy. The Admiralty therefore selected Pargust, and Admiral Sims then assigned her to the U.S.N. forces based on Queenstown. Her repairs, however, took rather a longer time than had been hoped; in fact, she was not finished and commissioned again until the following May, so it was decided to pay off Arvonian on November 26, 1917, and she was then recommissioned with a United States crew under Commander D. C. Hanrahan, U.S.N., and changed her name to Santee. By the time she left Queenstown for her maiden cruise she was a very wonderful ship. Her 4-inch guns had been disguised by being recessed, and by such concealments as lifebuoy lockers, hatch covers, and so on. The 12-pounder gun aft had a tilting mounting, as also had the two 12-pounders forward at the break of the fo’c’sle on either side. Thus they were concealed, but could be instantly brought into position. Her four torpedo tubes were arranged so that there was one on each beam, one to fire right ahead, and one to fire right astern. She also boasted of a searchlight, a wireless set, and an emergency wireless apparatus. She had two lifeboats, two skiffs, two Carley floats, and also a motor-boat. She was thus the last word in Q-ship improvements, and embodied all the lessons which had been learnt by bitter and tragic experience. Two days after Christmas, 1917, she left Queenstown at dusk on her way to Bantry Bay to train her crew, but in less than five hours she was torpedoed. It was no disgrace, but a sheer bit of hard luck which might have happened to any other officer, British or American. Commander Hanrahan was one of the ablest and keenest destroyer captains of the American Navy, and no one who had ever been aboard his ship could fail to note his efficiency. He had been one of the early destroyer arrivals when the United States that summer had begun to send their destroyer divisions across the Atlantic to Queenstown, and he had done most excellent work.

But on this night his Q-ship career came to a sudden stop, though not before everything possible had been done to entrap the enemy. It was one of those cloudy, moonlight, wintry nights with good visibility. As might have been expected under such a captain there was a total absence of confusion; all hands went to their stations, the ‘panic’ party got away in accordance with the best ‘panic’ traditions, while on board the crews remained at their gun stations for five hours, hoping and longing for the submarine to show herself. No such good fortune followed, for the submarine was shy; so just before midnight Commander Hanrahan sent a wireless message to Admiral Bayly at Queenstown, and very shortly afterwards the U.S. destroyer Cummings arrived. At 1 a.m. the tug Paladin took Santee in tow, escorted by four United States destroyers and the two British sloops Viola and Bluebell. Santee got safely into port and was sent to Devonport, where she was eventually handed back by the U.S.N. to the British Navy, owing to the time involved in repairs. On June 4, 1918, she was once more recommissioned in the Royal Navy and took the name of Bendish, the crew having come from the Q-ship Starmount. By this date the conditions of submarine warfare had undergone a modification. In home waters it was only the quite small Q-ships of the coaster type, of about 500 tons, which could be expected to have any chance of successfully engaging a submarine. This class would normally be expected to be seen within the narrow seas, and the enemy would not be so shy. But for such vessels as Bendish and Pargust the most promising sphere was likely to be between Gibraltar and the Azores and the north-west coast of Africa, where German so-called ‘cruiser’ submarines of the Deutschland type were operating. Therefore a special force, based on Gibraltar but operating in the Azores area or wherever submarines were to be expected, was organized, consisting of four Q-ships. These were the Bendish (late Santee), Captain Campbell’s former ship Pargust but now named the Pangloss, the Underwing, and the Marshfort, the whole squadron being under the command of Lieut.-Commander Dane in Bendish. After being at last ready for sea in May, 1918, Pangloss, commanded by Lieutenant Jeffrey, who for his fine work in Chagford had received the D.S.O., had then been assigned to serve under the Vice-Admiral Northern Patrols until she was sent south.

Under the new scheme just mentioned these four Q-ships were so worked that they always arrived and sailed from Gibraltar as part of the convoy of merchant ships, from which class they could not be distinguished. But already long before this date Q-ships had been employed in such distant waters. For instance, in the middle of November, 1916, the Barranca (Lieut.-Commander S. C. Douglas, R.N.) was sent from Queenstown via Devonport, and proceeded to operate in the neighbourhood of Madeira and the Canaries, based on Gibraltar. This ship, known officially as Q 3 (alias Echunga), had been taken over from Messrs. Elders and Fyffes, Ltd. Her registered tonnage was 4,115, and she had a speed of 14 knots, so she was eminently fitted for this kind of work. She had been employed as a Q-ship since June, 1916, and was armed with a 4-inch, two 12-pounders, and two 6-pounders, and terminated her service in the following May. Her captain had been one of the earliest officers to be employed in decoy work, having been second in command to Lieut.-Commander Godfrey Herbert when that officer commanded the Antwerp. Soon after this date the Q-ship Dunclutha left for that part of the Atlantic which is between the north-east coast of South America and north-west coast of Africa. This ship, together with Ooma, both of them being vessels of between 3,000 and 4,000 tons, had commenced their special service at the end of 1916 and been sent to work under the British Commodore off the east coast of South America in the hope of falling in with one of the German raiders, such as the Moewe. In May, 1918, both these vessels had to be withdrawn from such service, as the shortage of tonnage had become acute, and were required to load general cargo in a Brazilian port. Another of these overseas Q-ships was the Bombala (alias Willow Branch). She was a 3,314-ton steamer and had left Gibraltar on April 18, 1918, for Sierra Leone. A week later, off the West African coast, she sighted a submarine off the port quarter, and a few minutes later a second one off the starboard bow. Both submarines opened their attack with shells, this class of submarine being armed with a couple of 5·9-inch guns. After about thirty rounds the enemy had found the range, and then began to hit the ship repeatedly, carrying away the wireless and causing many casualties. Bombala shortened the range so that she could use her 4-inch and 14-pounder, and the action went on for two and a half hours. By that time Bombala was done for, and it was impossible to save the ship; so the crew were ordered into the boats, and then the ship foundered, bows first. However, the Q-ship had not sunk without severely damaging the enemy, for when the submarines came alongside Bombala’s boats it was found that in one of the submarines there were seven killed and four wounded.

Q-ships were kept pretty busy, too, in the Mediterranean. On March 11, 1917, when Wonganella (Lieut.-Commander B. J. D. Guy, R.N.) was on her way from Malta to England via Gibraltar, she was shelled by a submarine, and while the ‘panic’ party were getting out the boats, a shell wounded the officer and several of the crew in the starboard lifeboat. Another shell went through the bulwarks of the ship, wounding some men and bursting the steam-pipe of the winch, thus rendering unworkable the derrick used for hoisting out the third boat, and the port lifeboat was also damaged. Shells burst in the well deck and holed the big boat, so in this case, as all his boats were ‘done in,’ the captain had to give up the idea of ‘abandoning’ ship. There was nothing for it but to open fire, though it was not easy for orders to be heard in that indescribable din when shells were bursting, steam pouring out from the burst winch-pipe, wounded men in great pain, and Wonganella’s own boiler-steam blowing off with its annoying roar. As soon as fire was opened, the submarine dived and then fired a torpedo, which was avoided by Wonganella going astern with her engines, the torpedo just missing the ship’s fore-foot by 10 feet. No more was seen of the enemy, and at dusk the armed steam yacht Iolanda was met, from whom a doctor was obtained, thus saving the lives of several of the wounded. In this engagement, whilst the White Ensign was being hoisted, the signal halyards were shot away, so the ensign had to be carried up the rigging and secured thereto.

Wonganella was holed on the water-line and hit elsewhere, but she put into Gibraltar on March 13, and on the evening of June 19 of the same year we find her out in the Atlantic west of the south-west Irish coast on her way homeward-bound from Halifax. A submarine bore down on her from the north, and at the long range of 8,000 yards was soon straddling Wonganella. Now the Q-ship happened to have on board thirty survivors from a steamer recently sunk, so again it was impossible to attempt the ‘abandon ship’ deception. She therefore used her smoke-screen—at this time ships were being supplied with special smoke-making apparatus—and then ran down the wind at varying speeds and on various courses, with the hope that the enemy would chase quickly. Wonganella would then turn in the smoke-cloud and suddenly emerge and close the enemy at a more suitable range. But the best-laid schemes of Q-ships are subject to the laws of chance, for now there appeared another merchant ship heading straight towards this scene, and thus unwittingly frustrated the further development of the encounter. This ‘merchant ship’ was the Q-ship Aubrietia (Q 13), who did, in fact, receive a signal from Wonganella that no assistance was required; but by that time it was too late to withdraw. The submarine, after shelling Wonganella through the smoke, abandoned the attack and withdrew without ever scoring a hit.

During all these months the disguised steam trawlers were continuing their arduous work. On August 20, 1916, the Gunner from Granton engaged a submarine during the afternoon, but the German subsequently dived. Gunner then proceeded on a westerly course whilst she altered her disguise, and then that same evening encountered this submarine again, shelled her, but once more the enemy broke off the fight. The disguised Granton trawler Speedwell was also operating in a manner similar to Gunner, and in the following March the trawler Commissioner began her decoy work. She was a 161-ton ship armed with a 12-pounder, her method of working being as follows: Lieutenant F. W. Charles, R.N.R., was in command of the fighting portion of the crew, but her fishing skipper was otherwise in charge of the ship. Commissioner proceeded to join the Granton fishing fleet, looking like any other steam trawler, and then shot her trawl and carried on like the rest of the fleet. When a submarine should appear Commissioner would cut away her fishing gear and then attack the enemy. Such an occasion actually occurred the very day after she first joined the fishing fleet, but the submarine was not sunk.

A similar decoy was the Granton steam trawler Rosskeen, which left the Firth of Forth to ‘fish’ about 20 miles east of the Longstone. Three days later she was just about to shoot her trawl when a shot came whistling over her wheelhouse, and a large submarine was then seen 8,000 yards away. After twenty minutes, during which the enemy’s shells fell uncomfortably close, Rosskeen cut away her gear and ‘abandoned’ ship. The submarine then obligingly approached on the surface towards the rowing boat, and when the range was down to 1,200 yards Rosskeen, who was armed with a 12-pounder and 6-pounder, opened fire from the former and hit the submarine, the conning-tower being very badly damaged by the third shot. Two more shells got home, and by this time the enemy had had enough, and dived.

These trawlers were undoubtedly both a valuable protection to the fishermen (who had been repeatedly attacked by the enemy) and a subtle trap for some of the less experienced submarine captains. During May two more trawlers, the Strathallan and Strathearn, were similarly commissioned, and even steam drifters such as the Fort George (armed with one 6-pounder) were employed in this kind of work. On the thirteenth of June Strathearn was fishing 19 miles east of the Bell Rock when five shots were fired at her, presumably by a submarine, though owing to the hazy weather nothing could be seen. The enemy then evidently sighted a destroyer and disappeared. On the following day Fort George was fishing about 35 miles east of May Island, when she was attacked by submarine at 2,000 yards. It was ten o’clock at night, and the drifter, after the third round, secured her fishing gear and returned the fire. The enemy was evidently surprised, for after the drifter had fired three shells the German broke off the engagement and submerged, but with his fourth and fifth rounds he had hit Fort George, killing two and wounding another couple.

But on the following twenty-eighth of January Fort George was about 14 miles east of May Island, with the decoy trawler W. S. Bailey (Lieutenant C. H. Hudson, D.S.C., R.N.R.). The two ships were listening on their hydrophones when a submarine was distinctly heard some distance away, and it was assumed that the enemy was steering for May Island, so the W. S. Bailey after proceeding for a quarter of an hour in that direction listened again, and the sounds were heard more plainly. For an hour and a half the enemy was determinedly hunted, and just after 9 p.m. the sounds became very distinct, so the trawler steamed full speed ahead in the submarine’s direction, dropped a depth charge, listened, and then, as the enemy was still heard on the hydrophone, a second charge was dropped. The trawler then went full speed astern to check her way, and just as she was stopping there were sighted two periscopes not 20 yards away, on the starboard quarter, and going full speed. The trawler then dropped a third depth charge over the spot where the periscopes had disappeared, and nothing further was heard on the hydrophone, but a fourth charge was then let go to make sure, and the position was buoyed, and the disguised craft remained in the vicinity until January 30. A few days later the W. S. Bailey swept with her chain-sweep over the position, and on each occasion the sweep brought up in the place that had been buoyed, and a quantity of oil was seen. Local fishermen accustomed to working their gear along this bottom reported that the obstruction was quite new. In short, the W. S. Bailey had succeeded in destroying UB 63, a submarine about 180 feet long and well armed with a 4·1-inch gun and torpedoes. For this useful service Lieutenant Hudson received a bar to his D.S.C., while Skipper J. H. Lawrence, R.N.R., was awarded the D.S.C.

Thus, in all waters and in all manner of ships wearing every kind of disguise, the shy submarine was being tempted and sought out, though every month decoy work was becoming more and more difficult: for though you might fool the whole German submarine service in the early stages of Q-ships, it was impossible that you could keep on bluffing all of them every time. The most that could be expected was that as a reward for your constant vigilance and perfect organization you might one day catch him off his guard through his foolishness or lack of experience or incautiousness. But every indecisive action made it worse for the Q-ships, for that vessel was a mark for future attack and the enemy’s intelligence department was thereby enriched, and outgoing submarines could be warned against such a trawler or such a tramp whose guns had a dead sector on such a bearing. Thus an inefficient Q-ship captain would be a danger not merely to himself and his men, but to the rest of the force. Nothing succeeds like success, and there was nothing so useful as to make a clean job of the submarine-sinking, so that he could never get back home and tell the news. Surprise, whether in real life or fiction, is a factor that begins to lose its power in proportion to its frequency of use. It was so in the Q-ships, and that is why, after a certain point had been reached, this novel method became so difficult and so barren in results.