Kemal’s One Submarine

The Toronto Daily Star

NOVEMBER 10, 1922

CONSTANTINOPLE.—Before the British fleet steamed into the Sea of Marmora, Constantinople was in a state of panic, the Turkish pound rocketing and falling, the European population panic-stricken, and ugly talk of massacres was blowing about everywhere.

Then the great, gray fleet came in one day and the town settled back in relief. There was no more massacre talk, for it was made known to Hamid Bey, Kemal’s Constantinople representative, that if there was any massacre of Christians started, Stamboul would be razed to the ground. It may have been a bluff but the Turks believed it.

Perhaps it is because of the navy’s treatment of war correspondents that it so effectively remains the Silent Service. It has a way with war correspondents, a most definite way. It divides them into friends and enemies.

Enemies receive the treatment the Daily Mail man got after North-cliffe’s attack on Admiral Jellicoe, the idol of the Navy. He shared every hardship with his men and was loved like a father. The Daily Mail came out with an attack on him and shortly after the man who wrote it was assigned to the Grand Fleet. The journalist arrived armed with a letter from the admiralty ordering the commanders of all ships to give him transportation wherever he desired to go. He presented himself to a certain admiral.

“You can’t come on board,” said the admiral.

The Daily Mail man produced his letter. The admiral read it.

“Good,” he growled. “This is a definite order. Where do you wish to go and when?”

The Daily Mail man told him.

“Good,” said the admiral. “Send for Lieutenant Wilson.”

Lieutenant Wilson arrived and saluted.

“This man has a letter from the admiralty ordering us to give him transportation. It is a definite order. But it says nothing about comfort, aid or anything else. You will take this man where he wishes to go on your destroyer but do not allow him off the deck or in the wardroom.”

Lieutenant Wilson saluted again.

When the journalist went aboard no one spoke to him except the destroyer commander. “Oh, by the way, Paddock, [that is not his name] “this letter doesn’t say anything about food. If you want to eat you’d better dig yourself up some grub ashore and bring it aboard.”

That is the way the navy has with enemies. Its friends it entertains so amply, completely, thoroughly and enthusiastically that they retain only a vague and idyllic picture of the visit.

Kemal’s only submarine was the principal problem and joy of the fleet at Constantinople. This submarine was given to Mustapha Kemal by Soviet Russia and sent out from Odessa. The captain was not enthusiastic about going and the Bolshevists told him he would be hanged if he came back to Odessa without having sunk a British warship.

British naval intelligence officers were advised of the undersea boat’s departure and orders were given to sink it on sight with no questions asked or answered as soon as it crossed an imaginary line drawn across the Black Sea entrance to the Bosporus. Destroyer commanders were also instructed that this line was to be fairly elastic and subject to a little stretching.

As soon as the submarine was sighted, two destroyers were to put out into the Black Sea and get behind him so he couldn’t go back. Four others were to proceed along the narrow channel of the Bosporus dropping depth charges at regular intervals.

Destroyers sighted the submarine on six different occasions, but he was always too far at sea for them to go after him, even allowing for extreme stretching of the imaginary deadline. Then the submarine disappeared.

He next turned up off Trebizond as a full-fledged pirate, halting ships, searching the passengers and crew and doing a very good business. He is still under the “Jolly Roger” and the captain is laying away plunder enough to enable him to retire if he escapes the gallows that are waiting for him at Odessa and the six lean gray destroyers cruise up and down the Bosporus waiting for him to appear.

The destroyer patrols have exciting times in the Bosporus. At one time, during the Mudania Conference, a destroyer was running a night patrol along the Asiatic side of the straits. No one knew whether there was going to be peace or war, and the destroyer had been picking up small boats with armed Turks in them who were making their way across to Constantinople.

Their searchlight showed something suspicious-looking in a cove near Belcos, not twelve miles from Constantinople, and a boat put ashore to investigate.

As the boat neared the beach, it was fired upon. It kept on going and after the first ragged volley there was no shooting. As the boat landed on the beach a horseman rode out of the black shadow at the side of the searchlight beam and spoke in French.

“We are a squadron of Kemalist cavalry,” he said, and the officer in charge of the boat could see the horses huddled back of the little hill. “We have come here to show we could if we want to. Now we are going back.”

There was nothing for the British officer to do. The cavalry were some thirty miles inside the neutral zone—but all the British army and navy’s efforts in those days were directed to avoiding war instead of accepting provocations for making it. The officer went back with his boat to his destroyer.

Another night a destroyer patrol near the suburb of Bebek stopped a boatload of Turkish women who were crossing from Asia Minor after the ferries were stopped. On being searched for arms or contraband it turned out all the women were men. They were all armed—and later proved to be Kemalist officers sent over to organize the Turkish population in the suburbs in case of an attack on Constantinople.

But whether they were checking the infiltration of Kemalist troops, seizing Russian gold rubles and propaganda tracts that were being brought up the straits in crazy old fishing smacks from Batum, or simply seeing that the Turkish boats kept their riding lights lit, the destroyer flotilla remained a part of the Silent Service. Now with the censorship off, this is the first account of their activities or of the sad career of Kemal’s Bolshevik submarine.