On 22 March 1916, *U-68* fired a torpedo at *Farnborough* off Britain's west coast. It missed the bow. Campbell, the kind of officer for whom deception was a form of discipline, held course and speed as if nothing had happened. Twenty minutes later the submarine surfaced 1,000 yards astern, manoeuvred to her port quarter, and fired a warning shot. *Farnborough* did what a frightened collier would do: she stopped, blew off steam, lowered a boat as if to surrender. The U-boat closed to 800 yards. Then the merchant flag came down, the White Ensign went up, the wooden flaps fell away, and three 12-pounders began firing. The British gunners hit *U-68* repeatedly out of twenty-one rounds. As the submarine slid under, Campbell steered *Farnborough* over her position and dropped a depth charge. The bow of *U-68* lifted clear of the water for an instant before she sank for good. It was the first kill in history by depth charge, a weapon that would define anti-submarine warfare for the next eighty years. *U-68*'s entire crew of thirty-eight men went down with her.

For eleven months after sinking *U-68*, *Farnborough* found no further action. Campbell came to a conclusion that would have ended most careers had he been wrong: to lure a U-boat close enough to destroy, the Q-ship had to let itself be torpedoed first. On 17 February 1917, off southern Ireland, his theory was tested. A torpedo came in at extreme range. Campbell did not evade. The hit caught the ship in the hold and she began settling. The crew, drilled relentlessly for this exact moment, abandoned with theatrical panic - the 'panic party' was a Q-ship specialty - while the gun crews stayed at hidden stations. When the U-boat surfaced ten yards from the apparently sinking wreck, *Farnborough*'s six-pounder and machine guns opened fire. The first shot killed the German commander, Kapitänleutnant Bruno Hoppe, instantly. *U-83* was reduced to scrap in minutes. Eight of her sailors made it out of the hull. Only two could be pulled from the water alive. One died of his wounds shortly after.

*Farnborough* herself was finished. Campbell sent a radio message that became one of the more famous signals of the war: 'Q5 slowly sinking respectfully wishes you goodbye.' The destroyer HMS *Buttercup* and the sloop HMS *Laburnum* arrived within an hour and began towing her toward land. During the night a depth charge on board exploded accidentally and they had to drop the tow. Campbell ordered the twelve men still aboard into a lifeboat to make a final survey, and was driven back by another exploding charge. When he reached the rail he discovered that First Lieutenant Ronald Stuart had disobeyed his order to leave - Stuart had stayed aboard to make sure his captain got off safely. *Farnborough* was beached the same day. The Admiralty bought her on 22 October 1917, refloated her, and sold her back into commercial service in April 1919 as *Hollypark*. She was scrapped at Briton Ferry in 1928.

Gordon Campbell received the Victoria Cross for the action against *U-83*. The crew shared £1,000 in prize money. Ronald Stuart, the lieutenant who had refused to leave his captain, and Engineer-Lieutenant Len Loveless were both awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Most of *Farnborough*'s officers and men transferred together to her successor, HMS *Pargust*, another disguised Q-ship. On *Pargust*, Stuart earned his own Victoria Cross. The Q-ship service was a peculiar kind of warfare - it depended on patient deception, on the willingness of an entire crew to absorb a torpedo and then keep moving as if dying, on a captain who could send a polite goodbye signal while standing on a sinking deck. *Farnborough*'s men did this twice. The thirty-eight German sailors of *U-68*, and the captain and crew of *U-83* who died alongside them, were drawn into the same ruthless game from the other side of the periscope. None of them survived to write it down.