The first thing the Americans discovered was that instead of being under Sims’ direct command they were under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly and, in fact, part of the Royal Navy.
Admiral Bayly had the reputation of knowing his destroyers, but was a martinet of the old school. He was reputed to hate Yankees, particularly. He’d once been Naval Attaché in Washington and had left there, virtually by request, imbued with a profound distaste for everything American. Since the war began he had been further embittered by being removed from command of the first battle squadron of the Grand Fleet, where he’d flown his flag on the superdreadnaught Marlborough. Detailed to the Channel fleet he had the humiliation of losing the Formidable by torpedo to a submarine, while engaged in routine target practice off the Devon coast, and had been relegated to the antisubmarine patrol at Queenstown.
Winning Admiral Bayly’s heart for the American destroyer crews was as important a victory for Sims as was his putting over of the convoy system.
Their relationship couldn’t have started out worse. Bayly was ordered to London, where he was at odds with most of his superiors, to meet Sims when Sims first arrived; and so Sims put it, the old tartar “was as rude to me as one man can be to another.”
Sims swallowed his pride and went to Queenstown full of honeyed words to prepare for the American destroyers which were already on their way. Sims admired Bayly for his seamanlike qualities: he told all and sundry that personal feelings must be subordinate to the needs of the service.
The two admirals “walked around each other for three days.” Then Bayly growled to his niece, who kept house for him at glum old Admiralty House on a hill overlooking the harbor, “That man is on the square.”
Bayly, a childless old bear, had one soft spot in his heart, and that was for the spinster niece whose loving care offered him what few amenities his life contained. Sims, who had as much of the blarney as any Irishman, managed from the first to get into the good graces of Miss Violet Voysey and of her little spaniel Patrick. Soon Miss Voysey was declaring that she loved Americans, and particularly her American admiral. The two of them began to club together to rescue Uncle Lewis from the results of his own churlishness.
Back in London Sims put it up to the Admiralty board that Bayly was one of the ablest men in their navy as well as one of the most snappish. At that he had just gripes. He hadn’t had a leave since he’d undertaken the particularly worrisome and exacting command of the antisubmarine patrol, and he was treated as a subordinate by the naval authorities in London.
The First Lord, Sir Edward Carson, eventually agreed. Bayly got his independent command and immediate leave. Bayly made the retort courteous by asking Sims to take over his command when he went off for his short rest late in June. Sims flew his flag from the destroyer tender Melville and, for five days, personally directed the patrol work, in which convoy protection was little by little taking the place of the old hit or miss system.
When Sims went back to the Admiralty, where he had virtually become an additional Sea Lord, he left his own right hand man Captain Pringle as Admiral Bayly’s Chief of Staff. Captain Pringle knew as much about destroyers as Sims did and he was even more adept at fitting square pegs into round holes. Captain Pringle, Admiral Sims and Miss Voysey became a sort of triumvirate to keep old Bayly’s rude remarks from ruffling the feelings of the men under his command; and also to keep from Bayly’s ears the fact that the Americans called him “old Frozen Face.”
By midsummer there were thirtysix American destroyers, tendered by two motherships and assisted by a group of converted yachts, operating out of Queenstown. Similar bases for antisubmarine and convoy work were established at Brest and Gibraltar. From the supreme menace to Allied hopes the German submarines were gradually being reduced to a dangerous nuisance.
As early as June 8, Page, whose letters accurately reflected the state of morale among ruling circles in England, was writing the President: “Praise God our destroyers are making the approach to these shores appreciably safer … Admiral Sims is the darling of the kingdom.”
Meanwhile Woodrow Wilson, beset with everincreasing problems he felt no man could handle but himself, stewed with impatience whenever he thought of the great British fleet, lying idle it seemed to him, at Scapa Flow, under the protection of flotillas of destroyers that would be better employed defending the merchantships that were the lifeline of the armies in France. July 5 he let his impatience show in a confidential message to Sims.
“From the beginning of the war I have been greatly surprised at the failure of the British Admiralty to use Great Britain’s great naval superiority in an effective way. In the presence of the present submarine emergency they are helpless to the point of panic. Every plan we suggest they reject for some reason of prudence. In my view this is not a time for prudence but for boldness even at the cost of great losses. I would be very much obliged to you if you would report to me, confidentially, of course, exactly what the Admiralty has been doing, and what they have accomplished, and add to the report your own comments and suggestions … Give me such advice as you would give … if you were running a navy of your own.”
The President had immediately backed up Sims in the matter of convoys, but he didn’t yet feel satisfied with the results. He wanted more protection for merchantmen. He was looking forward to the execution of a project for fencing the U-boats into the North Sea with a barrage of mines across its entrances which he and Franklin Roosevelt, the increasingly active Assistant Secretary of the Navy, spent hours conferring about during the summer months. Most especially Wilson wanted an attack on the German submarine bases in Heligoland Bight and back of Ostend and Zeebrugge.
Early in August he stole a weekend from his overloaded desk to slip out of Washington on the Mayflower, in the company of Edith Wilson and some of her Bolling relatives, for a private visit to the Atlantic fleet. The trip was strictly off the record. The ships were forbidden to fire the twentyone gun salute. He addressed the fleet’s officers collected for the purpose on the flagship Pennsylvania. Those who heard his speech likened it to a pep talk the coach might deliver to his team between the halves at a football game:
“This is an unprecedented war and, therefore, it is a war in one sense for amateurs. Nobody ever before conducted a war like this and therefore nobody can pretend to be a professional … Now somebody has got to think this war out. Somebody has got to think out a way not only to fight the submarine but to do something different from what we are doing.
“We are hunting hornets all over the farm and letting the nest alone … I am willing to sacrifice half the navy Great Britain and we together have to crush out that nest, because if we crush it the war is won. I have come here to say that I do not care where it comes from, I do not care whether it comes from the youngest officer or the oldest, but I want the officers of this navy to have the distinction of saying how this war is going to be won … I am ready to put myself at the disposal of any officer in the Navy who thinks he knows how to run this war … We have got to throw tradition to the winds … Every time we have suggested anything to the British Admiralty the reply has come back that virtually amounted to this, that it had never been done that way, and I felt like saying: ‘Well nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.’