The New York Times/1916/11/22/Submarine Deutschland Sails in Daylight; Has $2,000,000 Cargo; Crowds View Start
Submarine Deutschland Sails in Daylight; Has $2,000,000 Cargo; Crowds View Start
Special to The New York Times.
NEW LONDON, Conn., Nov. 21—The German merchant submarine Deutschland left here suddenly at 2:30 o’clock this afternoon, and when last seen was far beyond Race Rock Light on her way to Bremerhaven.
On her previous return voyage, the submesrible stole away from Baltimore under the cover of night, but today, for some inscrutable reason, Captain Paul Koenig took his vessel out in sunshiny mid-afternoon when any allied warship on watch could discern the low craft.
The boldness of Koenig’s second venture is generally accounted for by the fact that once out of the Thames River and past Race Rock Light, there was deep water on all sides, so that an enemy cruiser apparently had slight chance to get him. When he passed out the Virginia Capes on his first trip back to Germany his emerging point was to some extent localized.
The tug Alert and the steam fishing vessel Frank E. Beckwith, chartered by the T. A. Scott Company, convoyed the submarine as far as the light. Both of them kept astern of her, making a repetition of the fatal accident of last Friday morning, when she sank a tug, causing the drowning of five of the crew, impossible. On the deck of the Beckwith, huge megaphone in hand, stood Captain Frederick Hinsch, shore superintendent for the Eastern Forwarding Company, the American agents for the Deutschland's owners.
Though the manifest of the ship’s cargo has not been made public, it is fairly well established that she carries nearly a thousand tons of crude rubber, nickel, crude tin, and “iron alloy,” estimated to be worth $2,000,000. She also has seven pouches filled with mail, brought here by members of the German Embassy at Washington.
The Deutschland apparently was ready to sail late last night or early this morning, but for some unknown reason plans were changed. Two tugs had steam up all night ready to act as convoys, but finally they were dismissed at 2:30 o’clock this morning. During the forenoon there was unusual activity on the State pier and on board the Willehad, the submersible’s mother ship.
The Alert and the Frank Beckwith went up the harbor to the pier at 2 o’clock. Fifteen minutes later the steel net guarding the pocket was hauled up and the pontoon bearing a fence fifteen feet high was pulled to one side. When the Deutschland was ready to start the waterfront was lined with spectators, housetops were crowded, and there was a rush for ferryboats and small craft.
The great whaleback poked her stern out into the river, her convoy keeping respectful distance. Then she swung her nose slowly down stream, turning almost in her own length, and slid away. The ferryboat Governor Winthrop stopped to give her passengers a good look, several tugs edged near, the decks of a couple of Government transports became alive with watchers, and from the side of the United States naval cruiser Columbia a small launch loaded with officers shot out into the river.
In the conning tower of the submarine were Captain Koenig and Chief Officer Kraohl, while the twenty-seven others of her ship’s company posed about her clean, cleared decks. She carried no pilot. Her telescoped masts were snug in their grooves in the deck floor, her wireless aerials had not been strung up, and it was evident it needed but the command “diving stations” and the touch of a lever or two to send her quickly below the surface.
So artfully had the Deutschland been repainted that she blended amazingly with her surroundings. The whole of her had been colored a wave green at least as far as the water line, and she melted into sky and sea at a startlingly short distance.
The submarine rounded Race Rock at 3:45 o’clock and headed for the sea, apparently intending to pass east of Block Island not far from No Man's Land off Martha’s Vineyard. Before dark she was beyond the three-mile limit and there was activity about her decks that indicated that her masts were about to be raised, her wireless strung, and her running lights illuminated, unless she decided to submerge.