December 28, 1917 -- Embarking at Liverpool, England

        And then the disembarking in Liverpool and overnight stay.

Don Martin diary entry for Friday, December 28, 1917: 
Left the ship at Liverpool

Left the St. Louis at 10 a.m. with Russell and went to the Adelphi Hotel which seems about like the best class American hotels. Went at once to the police and registered. Then to the office of Morris & Co. with Russell. I left him and came to the hotel to read and take a nap. Had our London office on the phone and gave someone details of the submarine incident to be cabled to N.Y. Liverpool is nothing like I had expected. Streets are overrun with soldiers – many of them wounded – legs and arms off. Had dinner at the Adelphi with Russell, Wente of Liverpool, James, Missitt and James’ brother. James and Missitt officers on St. Louis. Missitt pretty loud. James fine chap. Wound up with too much Scotch whiskey. Am glad I don’t touch it. Liverpool like a tomb at night. Lights in buildings all out. Curtains at every window. My room here is a beauty. Fireplace and fine bath room. 

Weather normal. Cloudy and damp.

Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, completed 1914 (View 2011)

        The New York Herald ran Don Martin's story about the submarine encounter on its front page of Part 2 of the Saturday, December 29, 1917, edition. This was the first story published with with a Don Martin byline. The story he cabled is a bit different from what he wrote in his diary and in his letter to Dorothy; the style gives a foretaste of the stories he would later send home on how he saw the war taking place.

ANOTHER U-BOAT SUNK BY AMERICAN SHIP AS PASSENGERS APPLAUD

Vessel at British Port; Crew Certain That Shot Destroyed Submarine

ENCOUNTER DESCRIBED BY HERALD REPORTER

Those Aboard Refused to Go Below While Naval Gunners “Potted” the Submarine

By Don Martin

Special Despatch to the Herald

London, Friday. – We have just arrived on board an American steamship. The voyage was uneventful until the vessel was nearing this side when we had an adventure with a German submarine, which we have every reason to believe we sank before it could attack us.

It was noon, with most of the passengers on deck, and while many were in the midday promenade thee were scores of faces lining the rails and scanning the sea, as they had done for hours since we entered the barred zone.

The sea was calm, with hardly a ripple, and the steamship was cutting along swiftly, the lookouts at the posts and telescopes pointed in every direction of the compass.

Submarine is Sighted

Soon there was a cry that an enemy submarine had been sighted. Directions were hastily called form the crow’s nest to the bridge and gun positions. For hours and days the gunners had been waiting this moment eagerly.

The quickness with which they sprang to the alarm was remarkable. There was a snap and click and we knew that the guns were pointing, and soon there would be a crash and a bang. Officers not actually engaged in the encounter with the submarine hurried among the passengers and advised them to go to their staterooms, but to be prepared, with lifebelts on, to hurry to the decks and get into the lifeboats. It was feared that if the U-boat fired shells at us passengers on the decks would be injured by shrapnel.

No One Goes Below Decks

But, so far as I could see, there was not a single passenger who would miss the opportunity of seeing the fight. Not one of them went below decks.

It must be said that whatever excitement there was, if any, was so well suppressed that it was not evident. There were no hysterical women and the men leaned on the rails, shaded their eyes with their hands and even joked a bit. Among us were numerous passengers who had crossed the ocean many times since the war began and never saw a submarine. This was the chance for which they had been waiting, if not praying.

I do not know how they did it, but those gunners of ours had the range of that periscope, a mile away, so quickly that the first shot was fired before many of us reached advantageous paces from which to see the encounter.

The First Shot Misses

The shell apparently missed the moving target, but the explosion as the shell left the gun, and again as the shell “popped’ in hitting the water, sounded good to everyone on board. Every shot of the gunners brought applause from the passengers.

Soon after another shot was fired and that was the one which we believe ended the existence of that submarine. It apparently hit very near the periscope. A volume of water spurted into the air, a cloud of smoke rose from the submarine and then the sea at that spot settled and became calm like the rest of the ocean.

Officers of the steamship believe that a good hit was made, that the submarine was severely damaged if not actually sunk. 

Then the destroyers acting as our convoy hurried up to the scene and circled the spot where the submarine had been but found nothing.

A dirigible airship accompanying the convoy searched the sea near there but failed to see anything of the enemy.

The naval officers on board also are firmly of the belief that we sank the submarine. They say that certainly another submarine has been accounted for.