A hundred years this month the sinking by German U-boats of
three large ships, one civilian, two naval, alerted the world to the fact that the
submarine was now a serious menace. A mere decade before the first puny craft
to enter service in half-a-dozen navies were regarded as little more than an
expensive and puny novelty. Now they represented a serious threat both to trade
and to conventional naval forces. Their impact went far beyond the tactical
however. On May 7th the liner Lusitania
had been sunk off the south coast of Ireland with massive loss of life, some of
it American, triggering outrage in the United States and almost bringing it
into the war. On May 25th and 27th respectively the British
pre-dreadnought battleships Triumph
and Majestic were sunk of Gallipoli
by a German submarine, forcing withdrawal of all heavy naval units from
providing fire-support to British and Empire forces. It was the first step in the
road to recognition that the campaign to force the Dardanelles could never
succeed, and to final evacuation early in 1916.
 |
| HMS Audacious, 23,400-tons, ten 13.5" guns, sunk by a single mine, 27 October 1914 |
The focus on these three spectacular U-boat actions has however
drawn attention for a much lower profile, but equally serious, U-boat offensive
against a humbler target, Britain’s fishing fleet. Hundreds of trawlers and
drifters had been active in the North Sea before the war and fish represented
an important component of the British national diet. One surprise of the early
months of World War 1 was just how serious a hazard mines represented – indeed the
brand new super-dreadnought HMS Audacious
had been sunk by one within two months of the start of the war. It is indeed
surprising that the mine should have been so underestimated by the Royal Navy,
since they had proved their worth ten years before in the Russo-Japanese War. Fixated
as it was on powerful battleships, fast battlecruisers and swarms of light
cruisers and destroyers for supporting heavier units in fleet actions, the
Royal Navy had made no provision for mine-sweeping craft. The response – a
creditably fast one – was to commandeer large numbers of small civilian vessels
for hasty conversion for this role. Trawlers, already equipped with net-handling
winches, were especially suited to such work and indeed a flotilla of them,
still manned by civilian crews, had attempted, unsuccessfully, to sweep the
Dardanelles of Turkish mines at the start of the Gallipoli campaign. The trawlers’
sea-keeping ability also made them suitable for anti-submarine patrolling, and a
number were hastily equipped with light naval guns.
 |
| Typical armed trawler, HMT John Edmund. Note White Ensign and 12-pounder at bow (with acknowledgement to www.naval-history.net) |
The sudden conscription of large numbers of fishing craft
placed an extra burden on those which remained in fishing service. Britain, a
major food importer, and with her supply lines threatened by U-boats, was now
more dependent than ever before on fish catches and the North Sea, now a
battleground, was the usual source. This then was the background to the German
U-boat offensive against Britain’s fishing fleet. The losses were very heavy. In
May 1915 – the month of the Lusitania,
Triumph and Majestic sinkings – four
U-boats, U-9, U-30, U-39 and U-41 – sunk a total of 23 trawlers in the North Sea.
Six of these became victims on May 2nd and no less than eleven on
May 3rd.
 |
| Typical requisitioned trawler, HMT Quail, armed with 2 3-pounders only (with acknowledgement to www.wrecksite.eu) |
Serious though the losses were in material terms the crews
remained relatively unscathed. At this stage of the war, before maritime
aircraft and semi-rigid airships were available for systematic reconnaissance, the
U-boats could surface with little risk of detection by any but their targets.
Only the largest civilian vessels carried radios, and none of the trawlers. These
latter were judged by the Germans as too small to merit expenditure of a
torpedo. The most common U-boat tactic was to surface, order their targets’
crews to abandon ship in their boats, and then sink them by gunfire. In the
case of larger craft, German boarders placed explosive charges to blow out the bottoms.
Mines represented a more deadly hazard for the fishermen. Six trawlers were
victims in May 1915, a typical case being the Uxbridge, which on the 3rd. of the month caught a mine
in her nets, which then exploded and sank her.
Given the scale of the losses to the fishing fleet it is
gratifying to learn of a U-boat receiving its come-uppance at the hands of a
trawler, albeit one taken into Royal Navy service as a patrol vessel. The German submarine U-14 had come on station
east of the Scottish coast at the beginning of June. On the 2nd and
3rd of the month she sank two neutral ships, the 1670-ton Danish Cyrus and the 2240-ton Swedish Lappland respectively. The campaign
against the fishing boats was still in full swing, with seven sunk by other
U-boats on June 3rd and five on June 5th. The U-14’s newly
commanding captain, Oberleutenant Max Hammerl, would have had every expectation
of joining in the massacre. His luck was however to run out two days later, on
June 5th, off Peterhead, when he encountered what appeared to be a
fishing trawler. The Oceanic II was
indeed a trawler, but one that had now been armed.
 |
| U-14 |
Hammerl, unsuspecting, ordered the gun crew of his surfaced
U-14 to fire two warning shots across the Oceanic
II’s bows. Joined now by a second trawler, the Hawk, the Oceanic II returned
fire at a range of one mile. Hammerl responded by ordering diving – a manoeuvre
that would almost certainly saved his craft had there not been a problem with the
vents of the forward diving tanks. The U-14’s
stern sank but the bows remained above water, a target into which the the Oceanic II’s gunners poured fire while the
Hawk steamed in to ram. This ended
the contest. Hammerl ordered “abandon ship” and all six officers and twenty-one
enlisted men managed to escape and be taken prisoner. Hammerl himself went down
with his submarine.
----------------------------
If you want to read about adventure in the late 19th Century, as sail yielded to steam, and as new weapons made their deadly appearance then try "Britannia's Shark". You can get it in Kindle or paperback format. Click on the image below for details and to read a sample.
No comments:
Post a Comment