While it thus floats in the submarine's path the destroyers speed
away out of eye-shot. In a large majority of cases it is claimed the
submarine runs into that net, or one like it. Results are a probable
disarrangement of her machinery and her balance upset. She may be thrown
over on her back. If she comes up she goes down again for good and all
with a hole shot in her hull; if not, it is just as well, a shell has
been saved.
Submarines occasionally escape by changing their course after the nets
have been set; but there appears to have been no instance of the
destroyers themselves having been picked up by the periscope. This
because they set pretty nearly as low as a submarine, and with their
oil-burning propulsion give forth no telltale cloud of smoke. Other nets
are hung from hollow glass balls, which the periscope cannot pick up
against the sea water. These nets are set in profusion in the English
Channel, the North Sea, or wherever submarines lurk, and they are tended
just as the North River shad fishermen tend their nets. When a
destroyer, making the rounds, sees that a glass ball has disappeared,
there is more than presumptive evidence that something very valuable has
been netted.
Naval Lieutenant Weddingen, of the German submarine U-17, has related
the following experience with the British net system. The U-17 had left
her base early in the morning and had passed into the North Sea, the
boat being under water with periscope awash. "I looked through the
periscope," said Weddingen, "and could see a red buoy behind my boat.
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