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At 3:59 o'clock that afternoon Admiral Mayo sent this message from his flagship at Guantanamo:

Unless instructions are received to the contrary, propose to shift fleet base to Gulf of Guacanayabo after spotting practice February 5th; then proceed with schedule of all gunnery exercises.

Before that message reached Washington, in fact in less than ten minutes after it was handed to the operator in Cuba, the following to Admiral Mayo from Admiral William S. Benson, Chief of Operations, was being sent from the Department:

Position of fleet well known to everybody. If considered advisable on account of submarines, shift base to Gulf of Guacanayabo or elsewhere at discretion. Inform Department confidentially.

The first duty was protection of the Fleet from submarine attack. Four months before the U-53 had called at Newport, and sallying forth, had sunk British vessels just off our coast. On January 16th a Japanese steamer, the Hudson Maru, captured by Germans, a prize crew placed on board, had put into Pernambuco with 287 survivors from half a dozen vessels sunk by a German raider. That raider, as was learned later, was the famous Moewe, which captured twenty-six vessels, sinking all except the Hudson Maru and the Yarrowdale, which carried several hundred prisoners to Germany, among them fifty-nine American sailors.