On Thursday week four British vessels were sunk by German
submarines—a schooner and three steamships, the largest of which was 4,656 tons. The submarine which sank the schooner off the Fastnet carried dummy funnels from which smoke issued, so that she resembled a heavily laden steamer. On Monday, off the Irish coast, the London steam- ship ' Anglo-Californian,' 7,333 tons, made one of the pluckiest attempts to escape from a submarine which have been recorded during this war. The captain refused to respond to the submarine's order to abandon his ship. Although without guns, he continued to dodge the submarine, which circled round him shelling the vessel heavily. The submarine came so close that her crew used rifles, but the skill of the captain of the Anglo-Californian,' who steered his vessel himself, was such that no torpedo was fired. The attack lasted four hours, during which ten men on board the Anglo-Californian ' were killed and eight wounded. The captain himself was also killed. This out of a crew of about forty. Ultimately the mate, Mr. Parslow, who is the captain's son, brought the vessel into Queenstown. Surely this "bout of passive strife," in Henley's phrase, deserves a ballad as much as any sea adventure in our history.
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