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Show TRIP OF UNDERSEA CRAFT THRILLING Story of Voyage of German U-Boat U-Boat Across Ocean Outrivals Out-rivals Fiction. HOSTILE SHIPS ARE DODGED Submarine, During Hazardous 3,800-Mile 3,800-Mile Run, Submerged Many Times to Escape Possible Attack From Enemy. Baltimore, Mil Pictures of adven-Sure adven-Sure no less thrilling than those which 611 the pages of Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," are called up by the amazing story of the trip of the German U-boat Deutseli-land Deutseli-land across the Atlantic ocean a voyage voy-age that has been pronounced the most daring in the history of the sea. The story of the remarkable voyage made by this submarine the first to cross the Atlantic ocean through a maze of hostile warships, has been told simply by Capt. Paul Koenig, commander com-mander of the undersea craft. Koenig was modest about it all. He had a few words of praise for his crew and none for himself. When he -spoke of the fatherland his eyes sparkled spar-kled and his whole body twitched with eagerness. When he talked of "just dropping down when he saw a destroyer" de-stroyer" his voice was calm. Would He Surrender? Just once did he display real emotion. emo-tion. That was when toward the end of the interview this question was suddenly shot at him : "Suppose on your way back, just as you left the Virginia capes, you saw a destroyer bearing mercilessly down upon you. Suppose there wasn't time to dodge, wasn't time to submerge, what would you do? Would you surrender?" The undersea skipper's face turned a sudden red that looked queer under his thick weather tan. His. hands clenched, his eyes flashed, then slowly each word painfully thought out, came the answer : "Would I surrender? I couldn't tell about that positively I can't. I don't know surrender? I think the moment ould bring the decision. Yes, that moment would carry its own decision." de-cision." That was the spoken reply, but in very bit of the man's tone, in every set line of his face .could be read the real answer Capt. Paul Koenig has no Intention that the Deutschland shall ever fall into enemy hands. Fears No Enemy Warship. And he has every confidence that he will take the Deutschland back to Bremen loaded with the rubber and nickel that the Fatherland so craves for its munition factories. "Six, ten, a dozen, twenty cruisers outside will not stop us," he exclaimed. "We will go back ; we will go back easy. And we will come again, and others will come and trade will go tack and forth, and the British blockade block-ade that will be a thing to laugh at. "The future of the submarine has now been proved to be unlimited," he asserted. "There Is practically no maximum to their capacity ; their mechanism has been perfected ; we have shown that they do anything any other ship can do, and more besides. "About that I am positive. The coming of the Deutschland, 3.S0O miles to America, and her arrival with a range of almost ten thousand miles left, with fuel and water and supplies and everything for that much travel still aboard, shows that you can go with a submarine simply where you want to go." Koenig is a small man, ordinarily looking until he begins to talk, when his force and personality become at once apparent. First Submarine Trip. One of the first questions asked of him brought one of the most surprising surpris-ing replies of the interview. Requested Request-ed to tell in detail of all the submarine experience he had before being selected select-ed to attempt the crossing, he replied quickly : "But you see I have not had any. Of course we practiced after we went aboard. We practiced a groat deal. Navigation I know. Submarines I think I know now. "Was it fun? Sometimes, yes. Most it was fun In the English channel. There we lay ten hours on the bottom. Ming and comfortable. Some of us slept and some of us read, and most of us listened to our graphoplinne playing play-ing a beautiful song from "Peer Gynt." -while above us raged the destroyers and cruisers that would have thought us the very choicest of prey had they hut known what lay hidden there below be-low them. It was not a long ten hours. We drank a little champagne, and we ate and attended to the machinery. ma-chinery. "No, we didn't submerge because of any cruiser chasing us ; not once were we chased." How They Submerged. Nothing imwe vivil "bout adventure adven-ture could he drawn from Koenig than the detailing of these times "we jus' sank." As far as his words went, that was all there was to It. A vessel was sighted; the Peutsohland was quickly submerged ; she ran along under water for a time, and then she came up and opened her hatches for fresh air. while officers and men went about their worV, their rest, or their play. I "Once each day we submerged as n practice drill," he said, "and besides we submerged, as I remember, five times in the North sea, six in the English Eng-lish channel, and three or four in th' open water. "Yes," laughing heartily, "yes, each time there was a reason. "The longest we actually stayed under un-der was that ten hours in the English channel, but we could stay four days. At the end of that time our batteries would be exhausted, and we would have to rise and recharge them. During Dur-ing the entire trip w-e traveled a total of ninety miles under water. "As far as the physical effect on the ship's company is concerned, we could remain forever. We can submerge fifty fathoms three hundred feet but as a matter of fact we never went nearly that deep, and probably never shall," Liked the Submerging. Those on the Deutschland besides himself were First Mate Krapuhl, Second Sec-ond Mate Gyring, Chief Engineer Kleis and a crew of 2o men. Kleis, he said, over and over again, was "the most important im-portant of all." Then he told how the crew spent the time. "On board they busied themselves with the machinery, for practically a of them are mechanics. They played cards, and they had their singing and their sleeping and their sitting about, and the time passed. "Best of all, they all of us, in fact liked the submerging. Unpleasant? Indeed it was not. It was just like sinking into a sort of blue nest. We open the portholes, and then through the glass we could see the fish and the formations of the sea, and always wa listened, listened, listened. "How do we listen? There are aboard two microphones, and with them we were able to hear the whistling whis-tling of a buoy six miles off when we were under water. And just before we came up about thirty miles from the Virginia capes, we were able to hear the ringing of a bell buoy six miles from us. "The screw of a ship we could hear quite plainly while it was yet a safe distance from us. More than hearing it, we could tell whether it was a cruiser or a destroyer. It was quite fascinating to listen so. Details of the TriD. Captain Koenig did not take the Deutschland around Scotland, as has been conjectured. He came straight through the Channel, he said. "We left Bremerhaven at noon on June 14. We proceeded quietly to Helgoland Hel-goland ; there we stayed four days. There were three reasons for that : No ship proceeds all the way after starting. start-ing. It is too easy to calculate when she may be expected at some given place. So we lay in wait a while. Then, too, we wanted to train the men. During those four days we drilled and taught them hard, and when once more we proceeded we had a capable submarine sub-marine crew. "Again, w-e had to trim the cargo. That must always be done after a start is made. We must shift things about and stow them away. And everything every-thing needs to be tested. All worked nicely. "We carried ISO tons of fuel oil. Of that we have 95 tons left more thar enough to take us back and we shar not ship any more here. Then we car ried many tons of oxygen and twenty tons -of fresh water, of which we had ten left. "The last time we submerged was as we were nearing the Virginia capes and we saw an American boat approaching. ap-proaching. We thought it was a fruit boat so we just dipped under for the last time. The men were always glad when we did that it made such smooth traveling. The Deutschland scarcely rolls at all under water. "And that about completes the story of the voyage. We traveled, we saw ships ar.d submerged, we traveled again on the surface and at last we arrived." The Deutschland, built by the Krupp Germania works, cost $500,000. This voyage will pay for her, he said. Boat a Mass of Machinery. As described by Dr. John C. Trovers, assistant U. S. health officer, who was taken through the boat by Captain Koenig. the Deutschland's interior appears ap-pears to be mainly a mass of machinery. machin-ery. She has hut one deck below and 8 eventeen-foot depth of hold for her cargo. Dr. Travers descended through the forward hatch, where he found the crew's quarters, bunks on either side of a narrow passageway leading to compartments occupied by the captain cap-tain and his two officers. The captain's cap-tain's room is scarcely six feet square and barely high enough for a man to stand. It is furnished all in metal, with the exception of a small oak desk. Directly benealh the officers' quarters is the dynamo, whicn stores electrical energy to drive the vessel when submerged. sub-merged. Next Dr. Travers was taken into the officers' messroom, scarcely larger than the staterooms, with a galley built with all the economy of space of a Pullman dining-car kitchen. Aft the messroom. about one-third the ship's lenglli from her stern, is the submerging machinery and two fieris-copes. fieris-copes. Calls It Amazing Sight. "I never saw such a mass of machinery ma-chinery in my life." said Dr. Travtrs "It was an amazing sicht and I doubt if it would mean much except to the engineer who designed it. There seemed to be 5. mil) different pieces, an inexplicable tangle of burnished copper and glistening steel." Aft of the submerging machinery were the submarine's two powerful Diesel oil engines which propel her on the surface. Captain Koenig told the doctor that while on the surface the noise of tha machinery was almost deafening. |
