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- $Unique_ID{how04684}
- $Pretitle{}
- $Title{True Stories Of The Great War
- Through The Jaws Of Death In A Sunken Submarine}
- $Subtitle{}
- $Author{Vedel, Emile}
- $Affiliation{}
- $Subject{monge
- boat
- feet
- water
- austrian
- submarine
- told
- last
- morillot
- sinking}
- $Date{1917}
- $Log{}
- Title: True Stories Of The Great War
- Book: Through The Jaws Of Death In A Sunken Submarine
- Author: Vedel, Emile
- Date: 1917
- Translation: Benington, Arthur
-
- Through The Jaws Of Death In A Sunken Submarine
-
- I - Story Of The Prisoners In Bohemia
-
- Told by Emile Vedel in L'Illustration, Paris
-
- [Many a novelist and some dramatists have tried to imagine the last agonies of
- the crew of a submarine boat that has received a mortal wound and sunk. Here
- is a first-hand account of the dreadful reality, told by men who actually
- experienced the tragedy. How these men slipped out from the very jaws of
- death just as they were closing on them, even they cannot fully explain; but
- some strange freak of the machinery made their submarine bob back to the
- surface after the water pouring into it had sent the vessel down 200 feet.
- Emile Vedel, who is writing the story of the French naval operations in the
- Adriatic and publishing it serially, under governmental authority in
- L'Illustration, obtained the facts from the signed statements of two petty
- officers of the boat. Translated by Arthur Benington in the New York World.]
-
- A composite flotilla of French, British and Italian gunboats and
- submarines attacked an Austrian flotilla which had sneaked out from the
- Bocche di Cattaro, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic and shelled the port
- of Durazzo. The engagement resulted in the sinking of an Austrian destroyer.
- The following day the French picked up some sailors from another Austrian
- destroyer, the Llka, which had struck a mine and sunk. These sailors told
- them that in attacking the Austrian fleet the Allied boats had narrowly
- escaped killing the survivors of a French submarine that had been sunk and
- the crew of which had been rescued by Austrian gunboats.
-
- What submarine it was they were at a loss to know, but as time passed
- and nothing was heard from the Monge, they became convinced that it must have
- been she. This conviction was strengthened two months later, when Mme.
- Roland Morillot, wife of Lieut. Morillot, commander of that boat, received
- a letter signed "Crew of the Monge," mailed from the concentration camp for
- prisoners at Deutsch Gabel, Bohemia, of which the following is a translation
- of a part:
-
- "Notwithstanding the distance, we unite our grief with yours in weeping
- over the memory of him who in spite of all will ever remain our captain.
- Stricken by a blow of fate just when victory smiled most brightly, Commandant
- Morillot died like a hero, after having accomplished the almost impossible
- to save his vessel and his crew."
-
- More months elapsed; then Chief Master Electrician Joffry and
- Quartermaster Mahe, both of the Monge, were returned to France from Austria
- in an exchange of prisoners. And they told the story.
-
- II - Story Of A Collision At 30 Knots
-
- The Monge belonged to the class of submarines that have to use a steam
- engine for recharging their diving accumulators. It had been scouting ahead
- of the rest of the flotilla and had crept close to the Bocche di Cattaro that
- night when the Austrian fleet came out. At 12.15 A. M. Commandant Morillot
- sighted the lights of the Austrian vessels. How many he couldn't tell, nor
- how far away they were. He submerged to 20 feet, leaving the night periscope
- above the surface. Suddenly he was aware of a rapidly approaching huge black
- mass, and was giving orders to fire a torpedo from the port tube when a
- hitherto unseen vessel passed at 30 knots right over the Monge. Its keel
- struck the submarine; the shock was terrific. The little boat rolled almost
- over. The conning tower was smashed and the sea poured in through a gaping
- hole.
-
- The crew of the Monge tumbled in heaps against the partitions of the
- compartments in which they happened to be. The stern dropped, the bows rose,
- and the boat began sinking stern foremost at an angle of 30 or 40 degrees.
- Abominable gases rose as the sea water flooded the tanks of sulphuric acid.
-
- The electric lights went out. The Monge wabbled downwards in pitch
- darkness.
-
- It is such moments as these that test master and men. How both were
- equal to the emergency, let Chief Electrician Joffry relate:
-
- III - Two Hundred Feet Beneath The Sea
-
- "Clutching the periscope table," he said, "the Commandant faces this
- blow. He is a man whom nothing disconcerts. He orders that all submerging
- tanks be emptied. Several times he repeats the order to discharge the water.
- But the compressed air is not powerful enough to expel it, and we continue
- to sink. The hull creaks all over, but especially astern, for the stern, by
- reason of the angle at which we are going down, is sixty feet lower and under
- a pressure of two atmospheres greater than the bow. It is the steel heart
- of the Monge that is groaning. We must have at least 180 or 200 feet of
- water above us. Believing that this is the end, we sing the 'Marseillaise.'"
-
- Quartermaster Mahe says the electric batteries were short-circuited by
- the crash and the inrush of water. The turbines stopped at the moment the
- lights went out.
-
- "But if we see nothing, we can hear," adds the brave Mahe. "We hear
- everything, and every noise echoes like a knell: dull murmurs of surging
- water, nerve-wracking falls of men and things; questions anxiously spoken,
- crash of objects upon each other, sinister creakings of the hull under the
- terrible and ever increasing pressure. The smell of burning, the vile
- emanations of chlorine - fore-runners of asphyxia - are inhaled everywhere,
- and grip our throats. Tango, the bob-tailed Arab dog, is stuck somewhere
- between the boilers."
-
- IV - The Song Of Death - From Down Below
-
- All at once in this antechamber of death there rises a song! To the
- steel heart of the Monge the even more highly tempered hearts of the French
- sailors are replying. They are singing! If the plates are springing, these
- hearts do not give way. Like their ancestors, the ancient Gauls, they fear
- nothing; and they prove it by intoning a hymn for France at 200 feet below
- the surface of the ocean. Yes, in their half overturned, flooded cage which
- threatens to crush like an eggshell, they sing! No audience is theirs and,
- so far as they know, none will ever know how they met their end. But no
- matter, it is for themselves they sing, possessed by the sublime exaltation
- that makes martyrs and heroes.
-
- Groping about, they manage to make a lamp flash for a few seconds. This
- reveals the full gravity of the situation, for it shows the pointers of the
- manometers standing still at their limit, proving that they are far below the
- greatest depth permitted to the Monge.
-
- Commandant Morillot's hand is upon the lever that controls the lead
- ballast, his last resource, but he hesitates to release it. If the leads be
- released the submarine will rise to the surface, but must be captured at
- once, for she will then be unable to submerge again. He looks at the men in
- the fitful light of the flashing lamp, questioning them with his eyes, as he
- thinks: If it is good to live it is also good to die for one's country.
- Their silence responding to his immobility expresses their acquiescence in
- the sacrifice.
-
- But at last, under the direction of the Commander, the engineers get the
- turbines working again. The creaking diminishes, then it ceases. Ensign
- Appell strikes a match and holds it to the manometer. The pointer moves from
- its maximum (135 feet).
-
- "Courage!" he cries, "we are rising!"
-
- Quick to the periscopes! Alas, one of them has gone, and the other is
- blind!
-
- Still they rise. Suddenly a crash above, and then another. Four shells
- explode right overhead. They are at the surface, and the Austrians are
- firing on them!
-
- There is nothing for it but to submerge again, come what may. Scarcely
- has the Commandant given the order than a shell bursts right in the port
- periscope chamber, tearing a great hole in the hull. This time nothing can
- save the Monge. Only now does the captain let go the lead ballast. Since
- his vessel is lost, he will profit by the brief respite this lightening will
- give to save the crew. After closing the water valves he orders the forward
- hatchway opened and leads his men to it.
-
- "Not that way, my boys," he says to those who take the wrong direction,
- "this way. As soon as you get out, leap overboard to show that the Monge is
- sinking and stop the enemy's fire."
-
- V - Good-By To The "Monge"
-
- Flashes from a lighthouse on shore show the men leaping overboard and
- the boat sinking lower and lower. The Austrians have ceased their fire.
-
- "We marched forward singing the 'Marseillaise,'" said Joffry, "and with
- a cry of 'Vive la France!' we jumped. Then, nothing under our feet. Good-by
- Monge!"
-
- We felt the shock of an explosion. The floating debris of the deck
- helped us to swim. Twelve of us clung to a floating gangway, swimming with
- our feet, for half an hour. Quartermasters Morel and Goulard were missing.
-
- At last boats from the enemy destroyers came and picked us up.
-
- And Morillot? He went down with the Monge. The details of his end are
- uncertain, but it is not difficult to reconstruct them. Joffry says: "He did
- not come up on deck. He remained at his post. Very calmly he stood watching
- the manometer reveal the gradual sinking of the vessel under him. He was
- surely saying in his heart 'If only my men can get away in time!' He told the
- last of us to hurry, and he helped us to find our way. What he did when he
- saw us all safe I do not know, but it seemed to me that the Monge sank more
- swiftly. He might have opened the water ballast valves to make her sink
- before the hand of the Boches could touch her. That is undoubtedly what he
- did, but I did not see him, nor did any one."
-
- And Mahe, who was in the control chamber, says: "The captain told us:
- 'Our poor Monge is lost, but you have yet time. Come this way, my lads.' He
- opened the door and added: 'Au revoir, and courage, my lads!' I dared not
- tell him to come up with us, for I saw he had made up his mind to die with
- his ship, as he had already told some of us he would."
-
- VI - The Last Torpedo
-
- The captain of the Austrian gunboat Balaton told the survivors that he
- had delayed launching boats to pick them up, because a torpedo had been fired
- at his boat from the Monge as she went down. He believed that Commandant
- Morillot, having seen all his men safely overboard, had gone below alone and
- deliberately fired a last torpedo. That is possible, or it may be that a
- torpedo was accidentally discharged from the sinking boat. Joffry spoke of
- feeling an explosion after getting into the water.
-
- In an order of the day published as soon as the facts became known,
- Admiral the Duke of the Abruzzi paid tribute to the "heroic sacrifice in
- which Lieut. Morillot decided to remain on board his sinking boat," and
- added: "To do honor to this deed of the purest marine valor, his Majesty the
- King has deigned to confer upon him, motu proprio, the gold medal for valor."
- This was the first time this rare distinction had been conferred since the
- war began. In transmitting this notice to the French Admiral, Vice-Admiral
- Cutinelli-Rendina added:
-
- "His memory will ever remain for us an object of admiration and
- worship."
-
-