Excerpt from The United States in the World War (1918-1920) Two visits to our ports by the merchant submarine Deutsch-land, one by the armed undersea boat U-53, and the torpedoing by her of five ships off Nantucket Island in the autumn of 1916 made it certain, now we were at war, that sooner or later our Atlantic coast would be the scene of this form of German frightfulness. No surprise, therefore, was felt when, about the middle of May, 1918, rumors of the presence of a submarine off the capes of Virginia became current. The master of a British steamship which reached an Atlantic port May 22 reported that he had seen a submarine one hundred and fifty miles off the Virginia capes, and had fired five shots at her. The captain of a Clyde Line steamer which reached port a few days later had sighted three derelicts with cargoes untouched, sides torn open, and crews gone. One, a large four-masted schooner, was floating with her starboard side up, and had a great hole well below the water line. Another, found in latitude 37 north, longitude 75 west, was half submerged with bow down and stern high in air. Four small fishing vessels were standing by, examining her. A search for the missing crews, made by the Clyde liner, revealed no trace of them. Near the wreck were floating a few unmarked cork-ring life boats. Apparently the vessels had been hurriedly abandoned. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."