line some of the larger achievements of the United
States Navy in this war. In chapters to come our navy's course from
peace into war will be followed as closely as the restrictions of a wise
censorship will permit.

CHAPTER I

First Experience of Our Navy with the German U-Boat--Arrival of Captain
Hans Rose and the U-53 at Newport--Experiences of the German Sailors in
an American Port--Destruction of Merchantman by U-53 off Nantucket--Our
Destroyers to the Rescue--Scenes in Newport--German Rejoicing--The Navy
Prepares for War

How many of us who love the sea and have followed it to greater or less
extent in the way of business or pleasure have in the past echoed those
famous lines of Rudyard Kipling:

"'Good-bye Romance!' the skipper said.
He vanished with the coal we burn."

And how often since the setting in of the grim years beginning with
August of 1914 have we had occasion to appreciate the fact that of all
the romance of the past ages the like to that which has been spread upon
the pages of history in the past four years was never written nor
imagined. Week after week there has come to us from out the veil of the
maritime spaces incidents dramatic, mysterious, romantic, tragic,
hideous.

Great transatlantic greyhounds whose names evoke so many memories of
holiday jaunts across the great ocean slip out of port and are seen no
more of men. Vessels arrive at the ports of the seven seas with tales of
wanton murder, of hairbreadth escapes. Boat crews drift for days at the
mercy of the seas and are finally rescued or perish man by man. The
square-rigged ship once more rears its towering masts and yards above
the funnels of merchant shipping; schooners brave the deep seas which
never before dared leave the coastwise zones; and the sands of the West
Indies have been robbed of abandoned hulks to the end that the
diminishing craft of the seas be replaced. And with all there are
stories of gallantry, of sea rescues, of moving incidents wherein there
is nothing but good to tell of the human animal. Would that it were all
so. But it is not. The ruthlessness of the German rears itself like a
sordid shadow against the background of Anglo-Saxon and Latin gallantry
and heroism--a diminishing shadow, thank God, and thank, also, the navy
of Great Britain and of the United States.

For more than two years and a half of sea tragedy the men of our navy
played the part of lookers-on. Closely following the sequence