Show r D 1 Z 4 f HEADLINE HUNT k CILUS U boat by FLOYD GIBBONS H TJ ERES a lad with an amazing story he is thomas P carey i of brooklyn N Y and the experience he had was on one e that has happened to mighty few people in the world tom an american had the rare thrill of cruising on a german submarine while it raided our shipping along the atlantic coast that of course happened during the war on may 22 1918 tom shipped as a seaman on the schooner hattie dunn sailing out of charleston S C bound tor for new york with a cargo of cotton the third day out off the virginia capes a submarine broke brok e the surface of the water and fired a shot across the hattie dunns dunn bow the skipper heaved to and dropped the topsail tom says say that all that happened so quickly that standing there on the hat ties deck he hardly realized that anything exciting was happ happening ne he little dreamed he was about to start out on a great adventure blew the hattie up in a hurry the submarine swung a boat over the side and an officer and four german sailors boarded the hattie just then another schooner appeared on the horizon and bedlam broke loose the subs commander command er shouted across the water to the searching party the searching party ordered the batties Hat ties crew into the lifeboats hurriedly a charge of TNT was set off in the batties Hat ties innards and as the hattie went down her crew in their boats watched the submarine pursue and sink the second schooner the second schooner was the Haup page bound for portland maine when men it was blown up the sub came back the crews of both schooners ners were herded aboard the undersea craft tom then learned that he was on the german submarine U commanded by a skipper named von nostitz there were 17 prisoners aboard but tom was the only one who could speak german so I 1 went to the skipper tom says and pleaded with him to set us adrift in the small boats he refused to do it because he want it known that a submarine was present in american waters ile he told me he had a task to complete ile he said he had planted 50 mines in chesapeake bay and had 50 more to plant in the mouth of the delaware trying time for the poor prisoners at that time there was room enough aboard to accommodate all the prisoners without crowding the ship submerged and that was an uneasy moment for a lot of captured sailors who had never been under 1 A charge of TNT was set off the water before they been down long when the periscope watch sighted another schooner the edna bound from philadelphia to santiago with a cargo of gasoline that was captured and blown up and six more prisoners were taken aboard while tom acted as interpreter the commander questioned the newcomers they assured him there was no news abroad of a submarine lurking in american waters tom says all of them gave von nostitz advice about the shore line they knew only too well that their own lives depended on his navigation it was a trying time for the prisoners and their nerves were frayed to the breaking point for in addition to the hazards of living on a submarine which might be sunk any moment by an american battleship they were remembering things read in the papers tales of subs that had shelled lifeboats life boats full of helpless men of prisoners tortured killed of men shot u up p through torpedo tubes and left to drown in the empty ocean still the german crew seemed friendly and hospitable they shared their bunks with the prisoners and made them as comfortable as possible under the circumstances the U was running toward Ve delaware laware bay and at that night the watch sighted overall Ovy Ovir rall trall lightship then without warning the boat gave a ter terrific lurch disabled by striking bottom the lurch larch took tom completely off his feet the boat bumped two or three times then leaped toward the surface there was general pandemonium aboard the officers were yelling all kinds of orders some of the prisoners were praying some yelling while others were so stunned they move the engineer cried she wont stay down I 1 cant control her they had struck bottom and disabled the steering apparatus the ship was spinning around helpless in an eddying current lights were looming up ahead and any one of them might be an american patrol boat A large steamer passed a few hundred feet away two more passed almost as closely the current was pulling them toward the lightship we could hear its bell and it sounded like a death knell imell to an all of us says tom down below the crew was working with a fine frenzy at last came the order to close the hatches and dive again the break had bad been repaired they cut two transatlantic trans atlantic cables the sub lay on the bottom for a few hours then came up in a thick night fog to plant the remaining mines at t ten en the next rn orning they were on the bottom again while the crew took a nap that evening they set out for new york on may 28 they were off fire island to cut the transatlantic trans atlantic cables with a newly devised instrument after two days angling they had cut two of them one to south america and another to europe from there the sub went back to delaware bay where it took the S S winneconne Winne conne and the schooner isabel B wiley the lifeboats of both ships were drawn alongside and then it was that commander von nostitz told tom the time had come for a friendly farewell the prisoners put off in motor lifeboats and landed at lewes del after eight days of captivity eight days in which they witnessed and lived through a wartime war time epic of the sea we were all suo supposed posed to hate the germans during the war but tom found it pretty hard to hate commander von nostitz As a matter of fact he and tom parted the best of friends and to this day they keep up a correspondence A war may separate h a couple of nations but theres nothing lik like e a good adventure to bring them together 0 service |