Somewhere I heard that, before WWI, military bureaucrats objected to spending on submarines. They thought subs would be useless in warfare because "there's nowhere to keep the survivors". Any documentation this is true? It "smells" wrong to me.
I've never come across any contemporary sources that suggest this was the case. It's important, first, to make a distinction between the sinking of warships and merchant ships. Submarines were expected to take an active part in military operations – they were originally designed to help protect coasts against enemy raids, blockade and invasion, though by 1914 the had become more seaworthy and had greater range and endurance, and there were plans to use them either to enforce a blockade (in British service) or to prevent blockade (the Germans). Either way, there was no question under international law that warships took their chances in wartime and there was no overriding requirement that a vessel which sank an enemy warship stop to pick up survivors if, by doing so, she put herself at risk (which a submarine, vulnerable on the surface, would likely do). Nor was there any requirement, legally or morally, that a ship refrain from attacking and sinking an enemy unless she was equipped to pick up any and all survivors. (After all, where would that have left torpedo boats and destroyers?)
The situation with regard to merchant ships is a bit more complicated, but again it's vital to understand that the sinking or an enemy without warning was against international law and it was widely thought, certainly in Britain, that no civilised western nation would use submarines in this way against enemy civilians (which is what merchant seamen were.) Churchill's rather robust view was this: "There are a few points on which I am not convinced. Of these the greatest is the question of the use of submarines to sink merchant vessels. I do not believe that this would ever be done by a civilized power. If there was a nation vile enough to adopt systematically such methods, it would be justifiable, and indeed necessary, to employ the extreme resources of science against them: to spread pestilence, poison the water supply of great cities, and, if convenient, proceed by the assassination of individuals."
What they were supposed to do was act under the law governing commerce raiding. That meant a submarine would need to surface, signal to an enemy to heave to, and then send a boarding party on board to inspect her papers. If it turned out she was carrying contrabrand (war supplies), the boarding party would be within its rights to destroy the cargo or sail their prize to one of their ports. Only if neither of those things was possible were they justified in sinking her. In the latter case it was their responsibility to make sure the crew got away in the ship's boats – not to take them on board their own vessel.
This is what actually happened in quite a few cases early on in the war, but of course a submarine rendered herself highly vulnerable by acting in this way, and there was also a problem in that sub crews were not large enough to allow for boarding parties and prize crews. (There was some debate in the UK, c.1915, about adding prize crews to submarines, but they simply weren't large enough for this measure to be practicable.)
Of course, what none of the people involved in this debate had considered is what a nation involved in a war of national survival (rather than the short sharp war expected before 1914) would be willing to do in order to secure its own position.
For sources and more about all this, if I can be immodest, see my PhD thesis "British Submarine Policy 1853-1918", pp.257-64, available here: