[Illustration: British Submarine.]
The Germans, wishing to kill off their victims one at a time, were
ready for the French and Russian Navies, but not for the British. They
had less than forty sea-going submarines when the war began. But
nearly four hundred took part, or were ready to take part, before the
war was over, while many more were building.
We have already noted the weak points of submarines. They are "tender"
because they must be thin. An old collier that couldn't steam faster
than you could walk sank a submarine by barging into it, end-on--one
can hardly call it ramming. Submarines are slower on the surface than
dreadnoughts, cruisers, and destroyers; and, after doing a total of ten
or twelve hours under water, they have to recharge their batteries; for
they run by oil engines on the surface and by electricity submerged,
and the crew would be smothered if the oil engines tried to charge
batteries without coming up.
Then, firing torpedoes is not at all like firing big guns. At a range
of five miles a shell will still be making 2000 feet a second or 1400
miles an hour.
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