Let me quote in part a letter from a Princeton man, Pleasants
Pennington, who was a passenger on the French transatlantic liner
_Rochambeau_, on one of its trips late in 1917.

"What about the submarines? They haven't put in an appearance yet. We
haven't worried about them because we only got into the war zone last
night; but I may have more to write about before we get into Bordeaux on
Wednesday or Thursday. There are several people on board--especially
ladies of the idle rich--who have been much concerned about the safety
of the ship and incidentally their own skins.... The Frenchmen, the
officers of the ship and especially the captain (his name is Joam) take
a very philosophic view of the situation, and shrug their shoulders with
Gallic fatalism. If they shall be torpedoed--_tant pis!_ But why
worry?... I had a talk with our captain the second day out, and he
seemed to have made a pretty thorough study of tactics for avoiding
submarines. He said they did not go more than 800 miles from land, and
that the best protection is to go fast and keep one's eyes open. The
_Rochambeau_ had two beautiful new 6-inch guns mounted on the stern and
a 3-inch gun in the bow.... As near as I can gather, our tactics seem to
be to keep a lookout ahead and trust to getting a shot at any submarine
that shows its head before it can launch a torpedo. I believe torpedoes
are not accurate at over a mile, and the speed of a submarine is only
nine knots while ours is nineteen.... I think the most distinctive
feature of war-time travel is the fact that the boat must be perfectly
dark at night to an outside observer. This rule is observed on the
entire voyage, and results in heavy iron shutters being bolted on all
port-holes and windows as soon as dusk falls so that the entire
atmosphere of the cabins, smoking-room, reading-rooms, etc., becomes
very vile in a surprisingly short time after dark.... We now sleep on
deck and are very comfortable. The deck is crowded at night with people