Hard riding, wet, and cramped, the “L” boats of World War One were a far cry from today’s spacious nuclear submarines. A veteran of the early submarine service recalls what it was like aboard a “Pig Boat” more than 90-years ago

n 6 December 1917, 4000-tons of TNT exploded in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This was the result of a gain boat colliding with a munitions ship in the harbor. Two thousand died and 20,000 were injured. Until the atom bombs of World War Two settled on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this horrendous explosion was called “The worst in world history.” A number of years ago, Drew Collett recalled the news of the Halifax horror with thanks for his narrow escape. Two-or three-days before this occurrence, the little fleet of World War One submarines on which he was a radioman was docked in Halifax harbor. He had mailed a postcard from Halifax to his mother, who thought he was the cataclysm. About 49-hrs or so before the explosion, the fleet was ordered to sail for Bantry Bay, Ireland, and their involvement with the Great War. Spared from the fires of Hell at the start of his journey, Drew wondered what

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trials awaited him and his crew-mates. The fleet of “Pig Boats,” so called because their sanitary facilities consisted of galvanized bucket toilets and cramped accommodations, had not long to wait. Originally slated to cross the Atlantic tethered to there mother ship, the USS Bushnell, they soon found their passage in this manner barred by an Atlantic storm. The wraps were cast off and the little submarines were told to go it alone. Crew of USS AL-11 lined up for informal inspection. Twenty-six days later, after subsisting on crackers and ketchup in the final days of their journey, the weary men and flotilla of subs reached the Azores. When the L-boats limped into these Portuguese-held islands about two thirds of the way to their destination, they were a welcome sight; German U-boats had been lobbing shells over the seawall and into the town, and any help was appreciated. After weeks of repairs and replenishment Charles Drew Collett on board the AL-11, Bantry Bay, Ireland in the island port of Ponta Delgada the L-11 and her six sister subs once again took to the seas. Their next stop was Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, in Cork Harbor, County Cork. Again the ships needed repairs and supplies, and finally made the last leg of their journey, about 100-mi up the west coast to Berehaven in Bantry Bay. The L-boats became a permanent war installation here, used for antisubmarine patrols. They soon became confused with British submarines, which had also been classified as “L-boats,” so the letter “A” (for American) was added to the designation, and our ships became the AL-boats. Drew was assigned to the AL-11 for his tour of duty. The patrol assignments took the subs out from the harbor on eight-day shifts

USS Bushnell, “Mother Ship” to the fleet of L-boats shown here in Bantry Bay, Ireland with three L-boats tied to her in 1918 where they would listen, submerged, during the day and watch for enemy subs from the surface at night. They had to surface at night to recharge their underwater batteries with 650-hp Nelseco diesel engines, which also aired out the stuffy quarters. Sometimes during the day, if there were no enemy vessels in the area, they would go topsides to get some fresh air circulating. Drew remembered one harrowing experience that makes him chuckle. “During the day, we didn’t want to come to the surface, we would be vulnerable. The air got so bad, and we couldn’t do anything about it submerged, so we had to surface. Part of my duty was to use the listening device to detect moving propellers in the water. Our radio didn’t work while we were submerged, so I listened with “T-Tubes,’ which were sort of like large stethoscopes. This particular time, it was all very quiet; this meant there weren’t any ships in the area. I said ‘all clear’ and the captain said to take her up for air. “Well, we came up right alongside a destroyer just sitting there in the water. It was one of ours, fortunately, but they didn’t know we were an American submarine. In those days, whenever you saw a submarine, you assumed it was a U-boat, there were so many, and only seven of us. We were scared; we shot flares, yelled, and waved our flag so they wouldn’t shoot; they had their guns trained on us. Fortunately, the captain of the destroyer, and we all laughed about it later. I was in trouble for awhile, until they found out from the captain of the destroyer that they weren’t running their engines; they

were stopped for repairs” Submarine warfare in 1917 was a far cry from the nuclear-powered wonders of today that can circle the globe without surfacing. Drew says the L-boats were about a third the size of a present-day sub, the Holland-type L-boats had a dimension in feet of 169 x 13.6, four 8-in torpedo tubes, and a 3-in AA gun mount on the superstructure. The L-boats were slow; top speed surfaced was 14-kts, and submerged, 10.5-kts. They had a range of 4500-mi surfaced, and 150 at 5-kts submerged. The submarines in this complement, built by the Electric Boat Company, were numbered L-1 through L-4 and L-9 through L-11. Each sub had a crew of 30, plus three officers. Fifteen people manned the sub while 15 bunked. It was so cramped, the crew usually bunked and ate on the submarine tender, the USS Bushnell. Even so, when they made their Atlantic crossing, all 33 were on board. Drew said, “One guy was so seasick they had to get him off when they got to the Azores. He didn’t do anything but lie in the bunk and spit up.” He confessed it took him three-days to get his sea legs and stop spitting u, himself. The other seasick sailor was a radioman, and USS Bushnell with her brood of subs....hoisting L-2 in Irish Drew took hi place. waters in WW I. Drew had been trained for the job through three radio schools - Brooklyn, Harvard, and MIT. He was the only “Freshman” on the whole ship. All the other crewmen were old-timers, some having been with the sub for 10 yrs. The worst scare of the war for Drew and his crew mates came when a young seaman from the Bushnell, with no sub experience, relieved one of the overworked deck hands on the L-11. They were cruising along underwater and the ship kept trying to come up; it needed more water in the ballast tanks to keep it down. There was a 100-lb capacity tank right in the middle that they ordered him to fill, but he opened the wrong valve and accidentally took on 2,000-lbs of water in the forward main ballast tank. They sank like a rock, 300-ft down, and were driven 25-ft into the muddy bottom. The sub looked like a tent peg sticking out of the mud. The ship had only been tested to 200-ft, so they were afraid to use compressed air to blow the water out; the sub might implode. Some of the men had their .45s out on their bunks. One of the old-time engine men on board figured he could get the sub loose. His

plan was to direct the two side engines full astern on one and full ahead on the other, rocking and loosening the sub, then full back on both engines, making a few feet headway each time. After several hours of this, the sub rest flat on the bottom. To get the sub up to the 200-ft test level, they planed the sub by running full ahead and rising on their bow planes. When 200-ft was reached, the chief ordered full pressure blown on the ballast tanks, and they popped to the surface like a dolphin. The sub jumped almost clear of the water and splashed back down. Everyone went out on deck and took a deep breath, then went back inside and put away their .45s.

The L-boats lined up....L-11 has her front planes unfolded. As far as actual enemy contact, Drew said there was only one incident: “The only time the L-11 fired a torpedo was at one sub we were close enough to, and able to fire at; we were submerged and they were on the surface. We fired the torpedo, and it stayed true on its course, but the water was very choppy. We heard a loud explosion a short time later, but whether the torpedo exploded by broaching and falling back or hitting the submarine, we didn’t know; we assumed and hoped it had hit the German sub. We weren’t crazy enough to get up and go over there and find out. We didn’t get credit for an actual sinking unless we recovered some integral part of the enemy; a survivor, or a body, or part of the sub.” According to a 1918 newspaper article that showed the L-boats after the war, one of his sister subs, the L-2 was credited with sinking the German U-65, Drew is not sure about this, but he did come back to the US one a captured German sub, the UB88, which anchored in Galveston, Texas.

He says that after the Armistice, the Germans surrendered 125 U-boats, some badly damaged. They were towed into Harwich, England, on the English Channel. The Americans were allowed 25 of these, the others divided among the British and French and other allies. Of the 25 subs, the captain of the Bushnell selected a few that were in good shape to be fixed; they ended up with five. These came to the United States under their own power. Drew said, “Thank goodness some of our crew spoke German; all the instructions were in German, and we had signs everywhere, translating. We came into the harbor in New York, and stopped out in the harbor so the mayor and other officials could ride in with us.” After the war the Submarine Flotilla, Atlantic Fleet, Division 5, was disbanded. Drew spent a little time on Bushnell in stateside service, then got his discharge and went back to college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The USS Bushnell went on to serve as the renamed Summer, helping the fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Always interested radio work, Drew was involved with early pioneering experiments and then found a job with General Electric Corp., where he worked for 39 yrs. After his retirement, he worked for Civil Defense in Shreveport, Louisiana, and ultimately came to Houston, Texas. When the new nuclear submarine, the USS Houston, made a visit to her namesake city in 1983, Drew’s daughter, Mary, phoned the US Navy and told them about her dad; she said he would like to see the new sub, but all the passes had been given out. When VIP Day rolled around, Drew was there on the sub along with Capt. George E. Mensch, her commanding officer, and Sen. John Tower; the oldest submarine veteran in Houston met the newest submarine in the US Naval fleet.

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