Wrecked submarine at Bruges, Belgium, a German submarine base

Wrecked submarine at Bruges, Belgium, a German submarine base

Wrecked submarine at Bruges

18771

Here, reduced to scrap iron, lies what is left of one of the Kaiser's sea pirates. Who shall tell how many ships she sunk ; how many human beings she sent to the bottom of the sea! The bones of 50,000 men, women and children lie bleaching on the ocean's bed through the inhuman use of these vessels. By April, 1917, when our country entered the war, the submarine menace dwarfed all others. Unless some way could be found to defeat the U-boat, Germany would surely win the war. The keenest scientific minds of four great nations attacked the problem. Steel nets were hung in the sea to trap them ; drag nets with bombs attached were hauled through infested waters ; seaplanes hovered overhead ; patrol boats skimmed the seas ; merchant vessels were armed and fitted with smoke-raising devices to aid their escape. Finally Uncle Sam's navy closed the exit from the North Sea between Norway and Scotland by a barrage of mines. At that point the sea is 450 miles wide. Sixty-seven thousand mines were suspended in the water at three different depths. This mine field was fifty miles broad and extended from coast to coast. The doom of the U-boat was sealed. German crews refused to serve in them, for several submarines were destroyed and others, terribly damaged, returned to port with the news of this new peril. In removing these mines after the war occasional submarine wrecks like the one before us were hauled up by the grappling irons. Swift was the fate of their crews ; in the silence of the deep a sudden, terrific explosion—and death. Once in the mine field there was no escape, turn which way they would, a mine was before them, a mine so sensitive that the slightest contact with its trailing wires wrought destruction

1 stereograph : b&w

1 gelatine silver print stereograph (8 x 15 cm) mounted on card (9 x 18 cm)

Copyright. The Keystone View Company

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World War through the stereoscope