anything that comes out of the sea.

None the less, the government began to feel that it would be wiser not
to mention the names of ships engaged with submarines, and thus when the
next good fight occurred the name of the vessel engaged was not given.
Aside from hoping thus to keep a vessel from being marked it had been
the experience of the British Government that when Germans had
identified captured sailors as having belonged to vessels that had sunk
or damaged submarines they subjected them to unusual severity. Our navy
wished to avoid this in the case of our men.

However, the name of the vessel which engaged in a fight on May 30, was
given out the day after the Washington report by the French Ministry of
Marine. It was the _Silvershell_, commanded by Captain Tom Charlton with
a gun crew commanded by William J. Clark, a warrant-officer from the
battleship _Arkansas_. The battle occurred on May 30, in the
Mediterranean and in addition to strength added by an efficient gun
crew, whose commander, Clark, had been a turret captain on the
_Arkansas_, the _Silvershell_ was an extremely fast ship. As a
consequence, when the submarine poked her nose out of the Mediterranean
blue, expecting easy prey, she found confronting her a man's-size
battle. In all sixty shots were exchanged, and the submarine not only
beaten off, but sunk with the twenty-first shot fired from the
_Silvershell_. It was a great fight, and Clark was recommended for
promotion.

While the government jealously guarded details of this and subsequent
fights, the country had adequate food for pride in such announcements
from the Navy Department as that of July 26, when certain gun-crew
officers were cited for promotion and an outline of reasons therefor set