A. P. L. still wants to know whether they were good detectives or not.
There was a member of the Division who sold automobile tires. A Naval officer came to him to buy a tire, and wanted to know if the tire could not get to the boat that afternoon. This salesman suggested the next morning at noon. The officer innocently said that he would have sailed by that time. He also named his boat, the Leviathan. This salesman asked how it would do to have the tire ready when the ship came back, and asked how long it would be. The officer said sixteen and a half days—which tallied with the former Leviathan record of seventeen days. The salesman also learned that the stop at Bordeaux was from forty to seventy-two hours. Incidentally, he also learned that the boat carried 12,000 troops, had five hundred officers and a crew of fifteen hundred.
This figure of 12,000 troops checks perfectly with the A. P. L. estimate made by the baby-carrying member. This tire-hunting officer of the boat also told a great many things which he ought not to have told anyone. He told the means used to protect the Leviathan against U-boats, saying that the ship depended mostly on her speed. He said the ship drew only forty-two feet of water, so it had not been necessary to dredge the channel at Bordeaux. The operative then asked the officer how late he could receive the tire, and was told about two hours before sailing. "You can refer to your local newspapers and figure on fifteen minutes after the tide begins to go out," he said. This, of course, was so that the boat could get the benefit of the ebb tide in warping out.
From these facts, both the Military and Naval Intelligence were able to stop such leaks of information, and stiffened up the guarding of ships and cargo, besides giving, in many ways, a far greater degree of protection to the task of embarkation. It is thought that the League investigations caused recommendation to be made regarding more secrecy in regard to embarkation. The Armistice cut off these matters. Sufficient has been shown here, however, to indicate how an enemy might sometimes get information.
There did not seem to be much to start with in this case
