is crew and
passengers into lifeboats. A torpedo was sent against her hull and
found the engine room, causing a tremendous explosion. One hundred
and eleven persons lost their lives because they had not been able
to get off in time, or because they were too near the liner when
she went down. This was the most important merchantman which had
been sent to the bottom by a submarine since the proclamation of
February 15, 1915.

The next two victims of this sort of warfare were the steamships
_Flaminian_ and the _Crown of Castile_, one of which was sunk by
the _U-28_, and the other by an unidentified submarine on April
1, 1915. They went down off the west coast of England with no loss
of life, though the _Crown of Castile_ was torpedoed before her
crew could get off. The _Flaminian_ had tried to get away, but
had to stop under fire from deck guns on the submarine. The shells
did not hit her in vital spots, however, and it was necessary to
send a torpedo into her hull to sink her.

The ease with which submarines had been able to bob up in unexpected
places and to sink British merchantmen, in spite of the patrols
maintained by British warships, caused the captains of merchant
vessels to petition the British Government to be allowed to arm
their vessels on April 1, 1915. This was not granted, because their
being armed would have made the steamship legitimate prey for the
submarines, nor was any attention paid to the demand made by the
British press that the crews and officers of captured German submarines
be treated, not as prisoners of war, but as pirates. Reprisals on
the part of the Germans was feared.

Beachy Head on the 1st of April, 1915, was again the scene of two
successful attacks on merchantmen by submarines. On that day the
French steamship _Emma_, after being torpedoed, went to the bottom
with all of the nineteen men in her crew. The same submarine sank
the British steamer _Seven Seas_, causing the deaths of eleven
of her men.

In order to indicate the amount of harm which the submarine warfare
caused British shipping, the admiralty on April 1, 1915, announced
that though five merchantmen had been sent to the bottom and one
had been only partially damaged by submarines during the week ending
March 31, 1915, some 1,559 vessels entered and sailed from British
ports during the same period.

Efforts were made to damage the base, from which many of the German
submarines had been putting out at Zeebrugge, with air