"Throughout the day the discipline and behaviour of the crew was excellent. This was particularly noticeable at the time of the third explosion. At this time the crew had been fallen out from their stations, and many of them were asleep. On being called to their stations every man went quietly to his place, although the violence of the explosion was such as to convince every one that the boat was badly damaged.
"... Petty Officer Sims, L.T.O., was in charge of the after-switchboard, and continued throughout the day to work the starboard motor, although much hampered by smoke and pieces of molten copper, due to the damage received by the motor and starting resistances while freeing the propeller."
Lieut.-Commander Cochrane attempted to escape, but after covering 200 miles was, with Lieut.-Commander Stoker of "AE 2," captured ten miles from the coast. They received a year's imprisonment, and on August 18, 1918, Lieut.-Commander Cochrane started his successful trip, accompanied by seven military officers, back to England.
In 1916 we began to look to Germany to produce something very unpleasant in the way of submarines. We were certain she would follow the obvious course indicated by the lessons all belligerents were learning, and produce the big U-cruiser. Very fortunately for us, she produced nothing of the sort until well into 1918, when one small U-cruiser did us a great deal of damage. The point was this--We were worrying and chasing U-boats with trawlers, motor-boats, destroyers, and numbers of other comparatively small and weakly-armed craft. If a U-cruiser, armed with, say, four 6-inch guns, and armoured along her top-strakes, had risen to fight her tormentors--well, it is clear that our small patrol-vessel service would have become suddenly very expensive. Each convoy would have required cruiser protection, and we had not enough cruisers to provide this. In 1917, by our constructor's reckonings, there was no reason why a German submarine could not have been produced which could proceed safely to the East Indies (round the Cape), and repeat (on a bigger scale) the exploits of the _Emden_. Well, the Germans didn't do it; they produced U-cruisers with two 5·9" guns apiece in 1918, but the type was unsatisfactory and unstable. It is still a puzzle to us that the idea came to them so slowly. We had K-class boats with the fleet in 1916 of 2600 tons, and had shown that a big submarine was a working proposition. (The K boat, of course, is not a cruiser-submarine; she is a fast and lightly-gunned type for use in battle only, and she does not leave the fleet except when detached for watching patrols.) We produced the M-class in 1917, and--for obvious reasons--we kept the type as secret as possible until the Armistice. The M boat is rather smaller than the K, and is of only seventeen knots speed, but she has far better under-water capabilities than her big companion. She carries, besides her torpedo armament, a 12-inch gun of the normal battleship type. This gun can be carried loaded submerged by the use of a watertight tampion and breech. The boat can rise in the wake of an enemy, fire as she "breaks surface," and submerge again--all in a matter of seconds.