Danger! Conan Doyle and the Submarine
Danger! Conan Doyle and the Submarine is an article written by Laurence Price published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 7, 1996/7).
The article studies Arthur Conan Doyle's story "Danger!" and examines how it anticipated the strategic use of submarine warfare and blockades before World War I. It compares the fictional scenario with the later German U-boat campaign, arguing that Conan Doyle's warning proved remarkably prophetic.
Danger! Conan Doyle and the Submarine
White Star Olympic
Postcard showing Captain Schweiger and the S.S. Lusitania hit by the torpedo from the U-20.
The threat of an enemy submarine blockade that might hold England to ransom was a particular concern of Conan Doyle's in the years immediately preceding the Great War. When his warnings to leading naval men and powerful editors appeared to go unheeded he felt compelled to write the prophetic story 'Danger!', in which England is indeed brought to her knees by the effective submarine blockade of 'one of the smallest Powers in Europe'.
It was written in the spring of 1914 (1) and published in The Strand Magazine in July of that year, one fateful month before the outbreak of the Great War. The danger that Conan Doyle had warned of very nearly happened when German submarines operated an initially effective campaign against all merchant shipping from February 1917, stopping vital food supplies reaching the island.
How did Conan Doyle come to these conclusions, and how quickly? Was he a prophet or was he actually late off the mark in identifying the submarine menace? Was he 'naïve' to have written the story, as suggested by one of his biographers? (2) These and many other questions relating to the attitude of Conan Doyle on submarines will the subject of consideration in the course of this article.
The story itself is in the form of a retrospective report from the log of Captain John Sirius who was in command of a flotilla of eight submarines belonging to the navy of one of the smallest Powers in Europe. The country, Norland, was in dispute with England concerning a Colonial frontier. England had issued an ultimatum that war would be declared within forty-eight hours should she not accede to England's demands.
When Sirius was invited into the presence of the King and the Foreign Secretary by his commander, Admiral Horli, it was evident to him that the terms of capitulation were unreasonable and humiliating. The King and minister were, nevertheless, in favour of surrender, seeing no possibility of standing up against the colossal power of Great Britain. The following extracts are taken verbatim. from the log:
- The King shook his head.
- 'It would be madness to resist,' said he.
- 'And yet, Sire,' said the Admiral, 'before you come to a decision I should wish you to hear Captain Sirius, who has a very definite plan of campaign against the English.'
- 'Absurd!' said the King, impatiently. 'What is the use? Do you imagine that you could defeat their vast armada?'
- 'Sire,' I answered, 'I will stake my life that if you will follow my advice you will, within a month or six weeks at the utmost, bring proud England to her knees.'
- There was an assurance in my voice which arrested the attention of the King....
- 'Then what will you do?'
- 'I will tell you, Sire.' And I did so. For half an hour I spoke. I was clear and strong and definite, for many an hour on a lonely watch I had spent in thinking out every detail. I held them enthralled. The King never took his eyes from my face. The Minister sat as if turned to stone.
- 'Are you sure of all this?'
- 'Perfectly, Sire.'
- The King rose from the table.
- 'Send no answer to the ultimatum,' said he. 'Announce in both houses that we stand firm in the face of menace. Admiral Horli, you will in all respects carry out that which Captain Sirius may demand in furtherance of his plan. Captain Sirius, the field is clear. Go forth and do as you have said. A grateful King will know how to reward you.....
- The fame of my eight submarines, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Theta, Delta, Epsilon, Iota, and Kappa have spread through the world to such an extent that people have begun to think that there was something peculiar in their form and capabilities. This is not so. Four of them, the Delta, Epsilon, Iota, and Kappa, were, it is true, of the very latest model, but had their equals (though not their superiors) in the navies of all the great Powers. As to Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Theta, they were by no means modern vessels, and found their prototypes in the old F class of British boats...
Sirius had then selected a secret base for his operations against England-a little whitewashed villa of a retired confectioner, standing alone nearly five miles from any village and thirty miles from any port-especially Blankenberg, which he had pragmatically accepted would quickly fall to the English.
Leaving the four second class submarines submerged at his base, Sirius had divided the other four boats into two divisions, keeping Iota and Kappa under his command, while a Captain Miriam had Delta and Epsilon. Miriam was to operate separately in the British Channel, while the station of Sirius was to be the Straits of Dover and Captain Stephan of the Kappa the west end of the Solent.
As they departed, they had heard the British Fleet open fire on Blankenberg — it was 6 p.m. on 10 April 19--. The war had begun. Setting course south westwards at 18 knots Sirius was off the coast of Norfolk approximately eleven hours later, seeing the lights of Yarmouth on his starboard bow.
Sirius continued down to the mouth of the Thames, carefully avoiding any contact or engagements with the Royal Navy. He has a cold, pragmatic view of war and a cool disregard for its articles. 'Ah, well! war is war, and if one is foolish one must pay the price.'
The first victim is the 15,000 ton steamer, the Adela of London, bound from New Zealand with frozen mutton, and selected for destruction by Sirius 'as great countries are not provisioned by small steamers.' Then swiftly follows the P & O line 15,000 ton Moldavia, a huge floating granary' that sinks almost instantaneously, with all hands. Three smaller steamers meet a similar fate.
The 12,000 ton Virginia of the Bibby Line is sunk in seven minutes the following morning. Sirius then decides to cross the channel on discovering that three great British steamers are harbouring for safety in the neutral French port of Boulogne. On his way over he surfaces, to be heartily cheered by the North German Lloyd Altona, bound from New York to Bremen, who dips her tricolour flag in greeting to the Iota. (3) Proceeding to Boulogne the three ships are under the waves within the hour!
Sirius, utterly without emotion, simply has a job to do, namely, to bring a great and proud Nation humbly to her knees. Dodging aeroplanes and torpedo boats his amoral plan continues.
His next victim on the following morning of the third day of his blockade is a great steamer flying the American flag. The log reports the encounter:
- It was all the same to me what flag she flew so long as she was engaged in conveying contraband of war to the British Isles. There were no torpedo-boats about at the moment, so I ran out on the surface and fired a shot across her bows. She seemed inclined to go on so I put a second one just above her water-line on her port bow. She stopped then and a very angry man began to gesticulate from the bridge. I ran the Iota alongside.
- 'Are you the captain?' I asked.
- 'What the 'I won't attempt to reproduce his language.
- 'You have food-stuffs on board?' I said.
- 'It's an American ship, you blind beetle!' he cried. 'Can't you see the flag? It's the Vermondia, of Boston.'
- 'Sorry, Captain,' I answered. 'I have really no time for words. Those shots of mine will bring the torpedo-boats, and I dare say at this very moment your wireless is making trouble for me. Get your people into the boats.'
- I had to show him I was not bluffing, so I drew off and began putting shells into him just on the water-line. When I had knocked six holes in it he was very busy on his boats. I fired twenty shots altogether, and no torpedo was needed, for she was lying over with a terrible list to port, and presently came right on to her side. There she lay for two or three minutes before she floundered. There were eight boats crammed with people lying round her when she went down. I believe everybody was saved, but I could not wait to inquire.
Later on the same day, he surfaces by a small yachting party from Eastbourne, who are 'frightened to death' at his sudden appearance from the depths. They are carrying a morning edition of the London Courier. Sirius is not surprised at the headlines, which he has expected:
- CAPTURE OF BLANKENBERG!
- DESTRUCTION OF ENEMY'S FLEET
- BURNING OF TOWN
- TRAWLERS DESTROY MINE FIELD LOSS OF TWO BATTLESHIPS
- IS IT THE END?
There is a little column 'on the round-the-corner page, at the back of the glorious resonant leaders', simply headed 'HOSTILE SUBMARINES', which confirms the kills of the Iota together with numerous other sinkings carried out by the other three submarines from Ventnor to the Needles to Lundy Island and from Dublin to Liverpool.
The matter is played down but Sirius records the all important, knock-on effect on food supplies and prices:
- The price of wheat, which stood at thirty-five shillings a week before the declaration of war, was quoted yesterday on the Baltic at fifty-two. Maize has gone from twenty-one to thirty-seven, barley from nineteen to thirty-five, sugar (foreign granulated) from eleven shillings and threepence to nineteen shillings and sixpence.
The sinkings continue, but on a much reduced scale, as it is evident that commerce is being diverted round the North of Ireland to unload at Glasgow. Sirius despatches a cypher telegram to send the four 'second-rate' boats 'to work' in the Irish Sea.
As torpedo supplies are getting low it is agreed the submarines will surface and destroy their victims with their guns. This is how the Kappa meets her fate, at the hands of the P & O steamer Macedonia armed as an auxiliary cruiser, (4) unknown by Captain Stephan until it is too late. His epitaph, nevertheless, reads:
- Wheat (average) 66, maize 48, barley 50.
One more sinking must be quoted from the log:
- Just before sunset, however, so magnificent a prey came within my radius that I could not possibly refuse her. No sailor could fail to recognise that glorious monarch of the sea, with her four cream funnels tipped with black, her huge black sides, her red bilges, and her high white top-hamper, roaring up Channel at twenty-three knots, and carrying her forty-five thousand tons as lightly as if she were a five-ton motor-boat. It was the queenly Olympic, of the White Star-once the largest and comeliest of liners. What a picture she made, with the blue Cornish sea creaming round her giant fore-foot, and the pink western sky with one evening star forming the background to her noble lines.
- She was about five miles off when we dived to cut her off. My calculation was exact. As we came abreast we loosed our torpedo and struck her fair. We swirled round with the concussion of the water. I saw her in my periscope list over on her side, and I knew that she had her death blow. She settled down slowly, and there was plenty of time to save her people. The sea was dotted with her boats. When I got about three miles off I rose to the surface, and the whole crew clustered up to see the wonderful sight. She dived bows foremost, and there was a terrific explosion, which sent one of the funnels into the air. I suppose we should have cheered-somehow, none of us felt like cheering. We were all keen sailors, and it went to our hearts to see such a ship go down like a broken egg-shell. I gave a gruff order, and all were at their posts again while we headed north-west. Once round the Land's End I called up my two consorts, and we met next day at Hartland Point, the south end of Bideford Bay. For the moment the Channel was clear, but the English could not know it, and I reckoned that the loss of the Olympic would stop all the ships for a day or two at least.
The carnage continues until eventually England is on the verge of starvation and sues for peace. There is virtual civil war in England.
- In the great towns starving crowds clamoured for bread before the municipal offices, and public officials everywhere were attacked and often murdered by frantic mobs, composed largely of desperate women who had seen their infants perish before their eyes. In the country, roots, bark, and weeds of every sort were used as food. In London the private mansions of Ministers were guarded by strong pickets of soldiers, while a battalion of Guards was camped permanently round the Houses of Parliament. The lives of the Prime Minister and of the Foreign Secretary were continually threatened and occasionally attempted. Yet the Government had entered upon the war with the full assent of every party in the State. The true culprits were those, be they politicians or journalists, who had not the foresight to understand that unless Brittin grew her own supplies, or unless by means of a tunnel she had some way of conveying them into the island, all her mighty expenditure upon her army and her fleet was a mere waste of money so long as her antagonists had a few submarines and men who could use them. England has often been stupid, but has got off scot-free. This time she was stupid and had to pay the price. You can't expect luck to be your saviour always.
After thirty three days (5) of the submarine blockade, the Norland cruiser Juno signals Sirius that the war is over — it is peace.
- The terms of peace were not made onerous... a mutual salute of flags was arranged, the Colonial boundary was adjusted by arbitration... so ended the war!
So concluded this remarkable account of the imagined confrontation between England and Norland. Certain points will shortly be studied in more detail to demonstrate how singularly prophetic Conan Doyle actually proved to be in the period of 1915-17. But, first, some conjecture on other interesting elements that Conan Doyle incorporated into the story.
On Captain Sirius and the Iota: An Etymological Study
The very name of the main protagonist in 'Danger!' demonstrates once more Conan Doyle's inspired use of distinctive or unusual names for characters in his stories.
Sirius is the Dogstar — Alpha Canis Major, the first and brightest star in the heavens; Sirius also gives name to the 'dog days', that period when dogs are supposedly especially liable to rabid hydrophobia or a horror of water.
It is possible to surmise, therefore, that Conan Doyle intended Captain Sirius, as the saviour of his country to metaphorically be the first and brightest star in the Norland firmament'. In addition, in his rôle as a deadly hydronaut, inflicting appalling losses on merchant shipping, Sirius was literally 'a horror in the water'.
The flotilla of eight submarines that Sirius commanded were all named after letters in the Greek alphabet, thus:
| The old 'F' class submarines (6) | Trans-literation | |
|---|---|---|
| Alpha | First letter of Greek alphabet; also first and brightest a star of constellation. | a |
| Beta | Second letter | b |
| Gamma | Third letter | g |
| Theta | Eighth letter (once ninth) | h |
| The four new boats (25% advance on 'F' class) | Trans-literation | |
| Delta | Fourth letter | d |
| Epsilon | Fifth letter | e |
| Iota | I. Ninth, and the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. A jot. A very small amount. | i |
| Kappa | Tenth letter (once eleventh) | k |
The command submarine of Sirius was the Iota. Why was it not named Alpha — the first? This would seem logical in the context of the Greek meaning and a stellar choice for her 'star' captain!
Yet the subtle use by Conan Doyle of the name Iota is surprisingly apt for this 'insignificant' submarine which will have such a major effect on the outcome of the hostilities with England, being so small and hard to find between kills it successfully evades both the enemy torpedo boats and aeroplanes.
Using the Iota as a weapon of destruction, Sirius gives not one 'jot' for the rules governing naval warfare as he dispatches the ships supplying his enemy one after one.
Where was Norland?
Who might that small power have been with Colonial interests? One is minded to consider Belgium on two counts. The first being that Conan Doyle had written a book The Crime of the Congo in 1909, condemning the atrocities and abuses of colonial power commited by the King of the Belgians in the Congo. Secondly, the imaginary port of Blankenberg is so very similar in name to the real town of Blankenberge (7) on the coast of Flanders in Belgium, as to seem more than merely coincidental.
Conan Doyle's vague co-ordinates would, however, seem to put paid to this theory, but some rough calculations to ascertain the possible position of Norland can still be made.
Sirius sets off on 10 April 19-- at 'sundown' (4.30 p.m.), sailing westwards for ninety minutes at 12mph, (18 miles). He hears gunfire from Blankenberg and notes it is 6 p.m. — war has begun with England. He changes course travelling south-west 'all night' at an average 18 knots until five in the morning when he sights the Norfolk coast. (11 hours @ 18 knots 198 knots 228 miles). At 5.15 a.m. the port of Yarmouth is about 10 miles west-south-west, (41/2knots = 5 miles). 18+228 + 5+ 10 = 251 miles.
Now if one takes a point 250 miles north eastwards from Yarmouth and follows that co-ordinate one will find oneself at a point about 90 miles out into the North Sea from the nearest landmass of Denmark and the far northern reaches of Germany. Even rounding up to a 300 mile radius on this bearing would still find a navigator in the North Sea itself.
Despite such vagueness, probably deliberate, on the part of Conan Doyle, as to the identity and location of the imaginary Norland, many readers must have concluded that Germany was the intended Power, a hypothesis that would unfortunately be proved true only six months later as the first of the blockades commenced in February 1915.
Conan Doyle as Prophet
'For a long time I never seriously believed in the German menace'. So began. Chapter XXVI — 'The Eve of the War' — of Conan Doyle's autobiography, Memories and Adventures (1924). Following, however, his experiences in the Prince Henry Competition, an amateur motor race in 1911 between England and Germany, in which the atmosphere between the fiercely nationalistic competitors of the two countries was less than cordial, Conan Doyle at last sensed war in the air.
This was amplified when soon after he read the German General Bernhardi's book Germany and the Next War in which Bernhardi wrote of a 'necessary and inevitable war' with England and France.
Conan Doyle outlined his impressions of it in an article called 'Great Britain and the Next War' which appeared in the Fortnightly Review in February 1913. He considered England's real danger lay in the submarine and the airship, but most particularly the former.
What exact effect a swarm of submarines, lying off the mouth of the Channel and the Irish Sea, would produce upon the victualling of these islands is a problem which is beyond my conjecture. Other ships besides the British would be likely to be destroyed, and international complications would probably follow. I cannot imagine that such a fleet would entirely, or even to a very large extent, cut off our supplies. But is is certain that they would have the effect of considerably raising the price of whatever did reach us. Therefore, we should suffer privation...
He also considered the Channel Tunnel 'essential to Great Britain's safety'. By 1913 Conan Doyle was increasingly corresponding to the press on the need for a Channel Tunnel, such as his letter to The Times of 26 December 1913 (8):
- The following dialogue which I had recently with a distinguished naval officer of the younger school may seem to bear upon this subject:
- Q. - What would be the result if a flotilla of submarines got among a fleet of transports carrying troops?
- A. - They would be helpless. They would be destroyed.
- Q. - Could submarines be prevented from coming down the North Sea in war time?
- A. - I don't see how they could.
- Q. - Would a cordon across the Straits of Dover protect transports to the south of that cordon?
- A. - Submarines could easily dive under any cordon. In a word it would be impossible under present conditions to send any expeditionary force abroad without grave risk of appalling disaster. Is this not a sound military argument for a tunnel?
In June 1916 he was able to inform the readers of the Glasgow Herald (9) that he had 'foretold submarine danger, and showed how a tunnel would meet it'.
As late as 1922, in a letter to The Times (10), Conan Doyle was still on his hobbyhorse but concluded that 'the matter has... ceased to press... only in view of a great Continental war was it of really vital importance.'
In the opinion of Conan Doyle his sound scheme for a Channel Tunnel to overcome the threat that a submarine blockade would pose was largely ignored, or worse, ridiculed by the Military, the House and the Press.
Conan Doyle loved England and was a fiercely proud defender of the British Empire. But he could not countenance, nor would he keep silence on, what he regarded as arrogance or stupidity or lack of preparedness by those who were elected to protect it.
Even amongst the flag-waving hyperbole and jingoism of his description of 'days with the army' in his autobiography, he is still critical of its conduct.
- 'Down the track there comes a Colonial corps of cavalry-a famous corps, as we see when our glasses show us the colour of the cockades. Good heavens, will we never have sense beaten into us? How many disasters and humiliations must we endure before we learn how to soldier? The regiment passes without a vanguard, without scouts, without flankers, in an enemy's country intersected by dongas. Oh, for a Napoleon who might meet such a regiment, tear the epaulettes of the colonel from his shoulders, Stellenbosch (11) him instantly without appeal or argument. Only such a man with such powers can ever thoroughly reorganize our army.
That was the view of Conan Doyle while serving in South Africa during the Boer War in 1900 and nothing had fundamentally changed about the arrogance or stupidity of England by 1914, as far as he was concerned. So Conan Doyle put pen to paper and wrote 'Danger!' As a 'prophet' he may, perhaps, have been late, for reasons that will be studied next, but it was surely not through naïvety that he wrote 'Danger!'
Conan Doyle — The Late Prophet?
By 1914, there was nothing new or novel about recognising the potential of the submarine as a weapon of destruction. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was claimed to have created a submarine but left no sketches or description, stating 'I do not publish or divulge on account of the evil nature of men who practice assassination at the bottom of the sea'.
In 1653 a Monsieur de Son built a submarine at Rotterdam of which he boasted that it 'doeth undertake in one day to destroy an hundred ships'.
Over the next two hundred years development of submarines for warfare continued at a slow and perilous rate, the main victims usually being the submariners themselves.
On the night of 17 February 1864, during the American Civil War, the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, commanded by Lieutenant George E. Dixon and carrying a crew of eight, crossed Charleston Harbour to attack the Union frigate, the new 1,264 ton Housatanic. A thirty foot spar 'torpedo', supporting a canister of gunpowder, exploded on contact with the starboard side of the ship. She was literally blown out of the water and sunk rapidly by the stern. The Hunley simply disappeared too, lost with all hands, and swamped by her own explosion.
In 1901, Britain laid down her first submarine but Germany did not follow with the U-1 until 1906. By 1914 Germany had twenty-nine submarines and Britain and France had about double that number. German submarines, however, had the advantage of a German invention, the diesel engine, that gave them a long-range capacity of about 3000 miles.
Yet, by 1914, only one ship had ever been sunk in anger, the aforementioned Housatanic, a full half a century before. The potential of the submarine for warfare was, nevertheless, well established. The great French author, Jules Verne, had not only used the Nautilus super-submarine of his imagination for such purposes in his 1870 classic 20,000 Leagues under the Sea: he also stated unequivocably 'the future of the submarine, as I regard it and let me here disclaim all gift of prophecy-is to be wholly a war future' and '. improvements have all tended to one point-its efficiency as a war weapon; and that will be its one use in the future, I believe.' (12)
What seemed to hold back the development of the submarine for warfare was the attitude prevailing since Leonardo himself-its use was cowardly and morally indefensible.
A moral code of civilised naval warfare governing the use of warships, assumed to include submarines, had actually been set out under the terms of the Hague Convention of 1899. The rules said a warship was not to fire on unarmed merchantmen.
In the case of a submarine she would have to surface to stop a merchantman, thereby exposing herself to attack. Crew numbers were insufficient to oversee a merchantman were she taken as a prize: nor enough room in the submarine to hold the crew of a merchantman should she choose to sink her. It was assumed submarines would only attack other warships.
When 'Danger!' was published in July, 1914 this view still prevailed, as was evident from several opinions, seven from retired admirals, that the editor appended to the story, regarding whether or not the situation depicted by Conan Doyle might come true.
Admiral Sir Compton Domville, KCB, thought it 'most improbable, and more like one of Jules Verne's stories than any other I know.'
Admiral C. C. Penrose Fitzgerald did not think that any civilised nation would torpedo unarmed and defenceless merchant ships.
Other suggestions included hanging the perpetrators of such acts and one opinion was that any submarine commander who tried this would be court-martialled and shot by his own people!'
Conan Doyle despaired at these responses but the fact remained that only one ship had ever been sunk in a time of war by a submarine and that had been in America fifty years before. The submarine was still, from that now distant July 1914 point of view, unproven except within the realms of fiction, whether from the pen of Jules Verne or Conan Doyle.
But cold, harsh facts were soon to prove that Conan Doyle had been uncannily correct in how the conduct of submarine warfare would be executed. Late or not, he was a true prophet.
'Danger!' as Prophecy
The German submarine blockade would confound the critics of Conan Doyle by proving Germany had little or no regard for the letter, or the spirit, of the rules governing the Hague Convention. Sirius's first kill, the Adela is sunk with no warning to the ship or her crew. Fortunately most of them are able to man the boats but this is clearly of no concern or consideration to the amoral submarine commander.
Although the Iota is on the surface for the second kill, her victim the Moldavia is caught amidships with a torpedo and there is a tremendous explosion; she sinks almost instantaneously and more than two hundred people, including forty passengers, are drowned.
Most shocking of all, even to the present day reader, is the sinking of the White Star liner the Olympic (on which Conan Doyle had himself sailed on his visit to North America in May 1914). Conan Doyle sets the scene beautifully, with a seemingly idyllic description of a 'blue Cornish sea' with the 'pink western sky with one evening star forming the background to her noble lines', in which sails 'that monarch of the seas', the queenly Olympic.
There is surely irony in the mention of the evening star as Sirius strikes her without warning and knows she has had her death blow; although, in this instance, there is plenty of time to save her people.
Like her ill-fated sister ship, the Titanic that had sunk in 1912 with the loss of 1495 lives, she 'settles down slowly' and then she dives bow foremost, losing one of her funnels. Conan Doyle came uncomfortably close with his choice of the Olympic, for she would later be hit by a torpedo during the war; fortunately the weapon failed to detonate. She was also attacked by another U-boat but was able to ram and sink it-a charmed ship indeed.
Germany was able, however, to do something far worse than Conan Doyle's imagined sinking of the Olympic. On 4 February 1915 she began the first of three periods of unrestricted submarine warfare, declaring the waters around the British Isles a war zone. Merchantmen within the zone, including neutrals, were to be sunk without warning.
In the early afternoon of 7 May 1915, Captain Schweiger of the U-20 sent a torpedo into the side of the British liner, the S. S. Lusitania. She was on the bottom within twenty minutes and 1198 of her crew and passengers, including many children, were dead. Among the victims were 128 Americans. Although the Germans claimed she was carrying ammunition the world was sickened by this flagrant breach of the accepted codes of war.
Such was the universal revulsion against Germany that U-boat actions diminished, with further recurrences of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1916 and 1917.
It was the 1917 blockade that came nearest to bringing England to her knees, as Conan Doyle had prophesied. By April 1917 U-boats were successfully sinking one in every four ships entering the war zone. Britain was down to a six week food supply. If it had not been for America belatedly entering the war in the same month, together with the introduction of convoys in May 1917, (a throwback to the Napoleonic wars and before) proud England might indeed have been starved into submission.
The words of Conan Doyle, again quoting from his autobiography, can perhaps best sum up the accuracy of the prophecies he made in 'Danger!':
- It was singularly prophetic, for not only did it outline the actual situation as it finally developed, but it contained many details, the zig-zagging of the merchant ships, the use of submarine guns, the lying for the night on sandy bottoms, and so forth-exactly as they occurred.
There is, however, one very important paragraph in the story about which Conan Doyle sadly was not prophetic. It is an understatement to say that it is a pity he was wrong; it is worth quoting that paragraph in full but the reader should substitute 'Germany' in place of 'Britain' and 'Island Power'.
- The terms of peace were not made onerous, for we were in no condition to make Great Britain our permanent enemy. We knew well that we had won the war by circumstances which would never be allowed to occur again, and that in a few years the Island Power would be as strong as ever- stronger, perhaps-for the lesson that she had learned. It would be madness to provoke such an antagonist. A mutual salute of flags was arranged, the Colonial boundary was adjusted by arbitration, and we claimed no indemnity beyond an undertaking on the part of Britain that she would pay any damages which an International Court might award to France or the United States for injury received through the operations of our submarines. So ended the war!
If only the Treaty of Versailles had been drafted in the same generous and even-handed manner, rather than the document of humiliation it actually became how different a century this might have been.
For, after all, Germany was party only to an Armistice in November 1918, not a formal declaration of unconditional surrender. As far as many in Germany were concerned, including a certain Corporal Adolf Hitler, her soldiers had returned home undefeated. What act of dishonour and treachery was this Treaty?
The matter would only be formally resolved in 1945, after six more years of bloody attrition and misery-and the return of the submarine menace.
'Danger!' as Science Fiction?
'Danger!' was included in The Best Science Fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle (1981) edited by Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg.
Some controversy has since arisen as to whether 'Danger!' actually has a place within the genre, this being the view of Rodin and Key in their Lost Worlds in Time, Space, and Medicine-The Science Fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle (1988).
The writer personally does not consider it to be science fiction but the story is sufficiently singular and interesting, nevertheless, to stand on its own merits.
It might, perhaps, be very loosely termed science fiction in the sense that the story is set in the presumably not too distant future. (13) 10 April and some May references are the only dates Conan Doyle provides. The story, in my opinion, had an immediate, contemporary feel rather than a futuristic one.
It is also of interest that in his A Sherlock Holmes Handbook (1993), Christopher Redmond considers that the Holmes tale 'The Bruce-Partington Plans' (1908), about the stolen blueprints of a submarine, might have been included in a science-fiction compilation because of its 'modern flavour... with its talk of double valves with automatic self-adjusting slots'.
Conan Doyle's 'Last Bow'
In September 1917 'His Last Bow-The War Service of Sherlock Holmes' was published in The Strand, in which it was revealed that the Irish-American, Altamont [[[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]], had been selling British military secrets to the German agent, Von Bork. The night is the second of August 1914-'the most terrible August in the history of the world'-and Von Bork is informing Baron Von Herling, the Chief Secretary of the Legation, that Altamont is delivering the latest 'Naval Signals' codes.
Through the character of Baron Von Herling, Conan Doyle once more succeeded in airing his view on the submarine and Britain's lack of preparedness for war:
- 'Tut, my dear sir, we live in a utilitarian age. Honour is a mediaeval conception. Besides, England is not ready. It is an inconceivable thing, but even our special war-tax of fifty millions, which one would think made our purpose as clear as if we had advertised it on the front page of The Times, has not roused these people from their slumbers. Here and there one hears a question. It is my business to find an answer. Here and there also there is an irritation. It is my business to soothe it. But I can assure you that as far as the essentials go the storage of munitions, the preparation for submarine attack, the arrangements for making high explosives-nothing is prepared....'
Thankfully, Holmes is there to avert disaster-the naval signals turn out to be a Holmes monograph, 'Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen', and while Von Bork gazes in silent amazement at the small blue book, he is chloroformed into unconsciousness by Holmes. In conversation with Watson soon afterwards, Holmes is able to reveal that:
- 'I may say that a good many of these documents have come to him through me, and I need not add are thoroughly untrustworthy. It would brighten my declining years to see a German cruiser navigating the Solent according to the mine-field plans which I have furnished....'
Presumably, some equally unpleasant surprise may be in store for the German submarines! Because of the denouement, one can forgive Holmes his appalling American dialogue, for which it is frankly amazing that the great detective had successfully passed muster during the previous two years!
The Submarine as Merchantman
In his preface to 'Danger!' Conan Doyle had intimated at the possibility of submarine merchantmen 'which at the estimate of Mr Lake, the American designer, could be made up to 7,000 ton burden...'
Although the Germans made headlines in 1916 when the cargo vessel, U-Deutschland arrived in Baltimore, U.S.A., having crossed the Atlantic in sixteen days, the submarine merchantman was never developed as a serious proposition.
Interestingly, Jules Verne had stated that 'I do not believe that undersea ships will be built in future years to carry traffic across the ocean's bed to America and Australia. Even if the air difficulty were successfully overcome (and I have my grave doubts at to the possibility of that), what would be gained by any such sub-ocean traffic except freedom from seasickness? No submarine would ever cross the bed of the Atlantic faster than a ship above the waves would traverse it, and surely freedom from that bugbear is not sufficient incentive for the creation of a Cunard line beneath the sea.' (14)
This was, therefore, one aspect of the future of the submarine in which Conan Doyle was over-optimistic.
On the Conan Doyle and a Submarine
One incident that must surely have given Conan Doyle some satisfaction during the dark days of that war to end all wars must have been the knowledge that the trawler Conan Doyle succeeded in sinking one of the German submarines that constituted that menace he had so accurately prophesied. (15)
Conclusion
For all its prophetic power there are, nevertheless, two weaknesses in the story, namely there are not enough submarines to form an effective blockade and England is starved into submission too quickly, in little more than six weeks!
The logistics may be wrong but the principle and purpose of the story was surely right: the 'average' Strand reader was likely to have been caught up in the drama of the events Conan Doyle so excitingly and entertainingly portrayed, and, more importantly, to heed its important, if exaggerated warning. It is just conceivable that England had acceded so early outraged at the lack of 'fair play' on the part of Sirius. Sinking a defenceless liner-and British too!
Conan Doyle was criticised for giving the Germans the idea for a submarine blockade: it was alleged Admiral von Tirpitz based his U-boat campaign on the story. It is known too, that after the relative failure of the High Sea Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, in which submarines had played a disappointing and indecisive role, Admiral Scheer put his weight behind using the U-boats as the major German naval sword, to be used in unrestricted warfare against British commerce.
Should Conan Doyle have written 'Danger!'? Or was he only warning of the inevitable, having previously observed first hand the unsporting character of the Germans in that ill-fated road race in 1911?
The last words shall rest with Conan Doyle:
- I need hardly say that it is very painful for me to think that anything I have written should be turned against my own country. The object of the story was to warn the public of a possible danger which I saw overhanging this country and to show it how to avoid that danger.
- In the story I place the incidents of the submarine blockade some years hence... and if the submarine during that time had gone on improving as rapidly as it had done in the past, England would have been placed in a most serious position, exactly as outlined in the story. (16)
Notes
1. There is some controversy over exactly when 'Danger!' was written. Conan Doyle and one biographer, Charles Higham, specify 1912, but John Dickson Carr suggests it was written in the period between Winter 1913 and Spring 1914. Conan Doyle begins the preface of the 1918 collection Danger! and Other Stories by stating 'the Title story of the volume was written about eighteen months before the outbreak of the war....' I think, notwithstanding this, that late 1913 onwards is the more likely period, as it was not until 1913 that his correspondence intensified on ways to combat the submarine menace, and it was in response to such warnings being ignored that Conan Doyle wrote 'Danger!'
2. Pearsall, R. Conan Doyle: A Biographical Solution. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977, p. 140.
3. Conan Doyle, otherwise adopting a scrupulous discretion throughout 'Danger!' regarding the identity of Norland, gives a big clue at this point of the narrative as to the true feelings of Germany towards England in this demonstration of support for the Iota.
4. During 1916 the British introduced 'Q'-ships, decoy vessels with concealed guns.
5. The Iota sails from Norland on 10 April. The next specific date mentioned in 2 May and the text suggests that ten days later peace is declared, i.e., a total period of 33 days.
6. English 'F' Class submarines were in use during the Great War, and they are described in Jane's Fighting Ships of 1915.
7. 'Next in importance to Ostend', with 30,000 summer visitors, according to Forester and Ormond in Belgium. A & C Black, 1908.
8. Gibson, J. M. & R. L. Green. The Unknown Conan Doyle: Letters to the Press. London: Secker & Warburg, 1986, p. 194.
9. Letters to the Press. p. 239.
10. Letters to the Press. pp. 299-300.
11. Stellenbosch. Military slang meaning to relegate to a post where incompetence matters less. From 'Stellenbosch', Cape of Good Hope, such a dumping ground.
12. Taves, B. & M. Michaluk, Jr. The Jules Verne Encyclopaedia. Lanhma, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996, p. 54.
13. Orel, H. (Ed). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Interviews and Recollections. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1991, p. 218. 'In the story I place the incidents of the submarine blockade some years hence; it was a story of the future... if this war had been delayed for five years... England would have been placed in a most serious position, exactly as outlined in the story.'
14. Jules Verne Encyclopaedia. p. 54.
15. Carr, J. D. The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1994, p. 289.
16. [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]]: Interviews and Recollections. pp. 217-8.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
