Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  At dawn on September 22, U-9 started her electric motors and rose to the surface. Weddigen had traveled 200 miles on this patrol so far and was ready to turn back for home. Before leaving, he decided to take a last look at his surroundings. When her periscope broke the surface, Weddigen and his First Officer, Johann Spiess, got an agreeable surprise: “Light streamed from the eastern horizon and spread over a cloudless sky,” Spiess wrote after the war. “The wind was a whisper and the sea was calm save for a long, low swell. Visibility was excellent. The horizon was a clear, sharp line where sea met sky. . . . A few Dutch fishing boats lay shadowed against the sunrise as if in some vividly colored print.” There was nothing else. The submarine rose and lay on the surface, and Weddigen went down for breakfast. While the captain was below, Spiess in the conning tower spotted smoke and a mast on the horizon. He immediately turned off the kerosene motors to eliminate the column of smoke overhead and summoned the captain. Weddigen hurried up the ladder, took a look, and ordered the U-boat to dive.

  At periscope depth, Weddigen, glued to his eyepiece, watched the mast grow into a ship, then two ships, then three. They were warships steaming parallel, 4,000 yards apart. He thought at first that they must be a screen for a fleet, but, seeing no larger ships behind, he made preparations to attack. Steering in their direction, alternately raising and lowering his periscope, he reported, “three cruisers, each with four funnels.” “I could see their gray-black sides riding high out of the water.” Weddigen steered for the middle ship of the three. Approaching on his target’s port bow, he moved in close “to make my aim sure.” At 6:20 a.m., he fired a torpedo from bow tube number 2 and ordered a dive to fifty feet. As the submarine slid down, the crew listened. At a range of 550 yards, the time required for the torpedo to travel to the target and for the sound of an explosion to travel back would be thirty-one seconds. Thirty-one seconds later, the submariners heard “a dull thud, followed by a shrill-toned crash.” Cheers broke out on U-9, and Weddigen and Spiess forgot formality and slapped each other on the back.

  The torpedo hit Aboukir amidships on the starboard side below the waterline. Water flooded into the engine and boiler rooms, bringing the cruiser to a stop and causing a list to port. On the bridge, Captain Drummond, seeing no sign of a submarine, assumed that his ship had hit a mine. He hoisted the mine warning signal and ordered the other two cruisers to come closer so that he could transfer his wounded men. As Aboukir’s list increased to twenty degrees, he tried to right her by flooding compartments on the opposite side. The list increased and it became obvious that the ship would sink, but when “Abandon ship” was sounded, only a single boat was available. The others had been smashed in the explosion or could not be swung out and lowered for lack of steam to power the winches. Twenty-five minutes after she was hit, Aboukir capsized. She floated, her red-painted bottom up, for five minutes, tempting a few seamen to scramble up her slimy bottom and cling to her keel. When she sank, the clingers went with her.

  As Hogue and Cressy approached to help, Captain Wilmot Nicholson of Hogue realized that he was dealing with a submarine and signaled Cressy to look out for a periscope. Even so, Nicholson steamed slowly among the men in the water while his crew threw overboard mess tables, chairs, anything that would float, and then stopped and lowered all his boats. His men—those who had a moment to look—were transfixed by a sight none of them had ever seen: a big ship rolling over in her death agony. One young officer remembered seeing “the sun shining on pink, naked men walking down her sides, inch by inch, as she heeled over, some standing, others sitting down and sliding into the water, which was soon dotted with heads.” At 6:55 a.m., as Aboukir was giving her final lurch, Hogue, nearby, was struck by two torpedoes, five seconds apart. There was “a terrific crash . . .” recalled an officer, “the ship lifted up, quivering all over . . . a second later, another, duller crash and a great cloud of smoke followed by a torrent of water.”

  After firing a single torpedo at Aboukir and going deep, Weddigen cautiously brought U-9 back near the surface and raised his periscope. Watching the stricken Aboukir, he saw white steam blowing out of the ship’s four funnels as the cruiser heeled over and was impressed by the “brave sailors,” remaining at their gun stations. He also saw Hogue and Cressy creeping through the water, lowering boats. He now knew that his target had not been a light cruiser, as he had originally believed, but a large armored cruiser. And before his eyes were two identical sisters. Weddigen reloaded his empty torpedo tube and selected his second target, Hogue. Through his periscope, he saw the big, gray, four-funneled ship, her White Ensign waving in the morning breeze, her colored signal flags fluttering from their halyards. The ship was stationary, only 300 yards away. Taking no chances, Weddigen fired both bow tubes. As the two torpedoes leaped from the tubes, the shift in weight distribution affected the submarine’s balance and her bow rose and suddenly broke the surface. Hogue’s gunners immediately opened fire. Weddigen struggled to regain ballast, succeeded, and took the U-boat down again to fifty feet. A few seconds later he heard two explosions.

  Hogue’s gunners continued to fire even after the two torpedoes exploded against her side. Captain Nicholson ordered all watertight doors closed, but within five minutes the quarterdeck was awash and the cruiser rolled over to starboard. An explosion sounded deep inside and Nicholson repeated the order given by Captain Drummond: “Abandon ship.” Ten minutes after she was struck, Hogue capsized. When she sank, at 7:15 a.m., her boats were just returning with the survivors of Aboukir.

  Weddigen, advised by his chief engineer that his electric batteries were running low, nevertheless decided to continue his attack. Two torpedoes remained in U-9’s stern tubes and he had one reserve for a bow tube. Coming back up to periscope depth, he and Spiess looked and saw the water “littered with wreckage, crowded lifeboats, and drowning men.” The third cruiser had stopped to rescue survivors. Weddigen maneuvered so that his stern was aimed at this immobile ship and at 7:20 a.m., one hour after his first shot, he fired both stern torpedoes. “This time we were so bold that we did not dive below periscope depth but watched,” Spiess said. “The range was a thousand yards. We waited and then a dull crash came. We waited for the second. But it never came. The second torpedo had missed.” Weddigen had one torpedo left. He brought the U-boat around again, aimed the bow at the enemy, moved in to 550 yards, and fired his last torpedo.

  When a periscope was reported on Cressy’s port bow 300 yards away, Captain Robert Johnson opened fire and put his engines to full speed, intending to ram. He saw and hit nothing and Cressy slowed, stopped, and lowered her boats. While his crew attempted to rescue the men in the water, Johnson began sending wireless signals to the Admiralty: “Aboukir and Hogue sinking! . . .” The message and position were constantly repeated. About five minutes later, a periscope was seen on the starboard quarter and the track of a torpedo at a range of 500 yards was plainly visible. “Full speed ahead, both,” Johnson ordered, but he was too late. Before Cressy could gather momentum, she was hit forward on the starboard side. Those already in the water saw “a sudden explosion and a great column of smoke, black as ink.” The cruiser heeled about ten degrees to starboard, then momentarily righted herself. A second torpedo passed behind her stern, but at 7:30, about a quarter of an hour after the first hit, a third torpedo struck the ship on the port beam, rupturing the tanks in a boiler room and smothering the men there in scalding steam. On deck, Captain Johnson walked around saying, “Keep cool, my lads. Pick up a spar and put it under your arm. That’ll keep you afloat until the destroyers pick you up.” Cressy rolled over to starboard and lay on her side. She paused, then continued to roll until she was floating bottom up with her starboard propeller out of the water. She remained in this position for another twenty minutes and then, at 7:55 a.m., she too went down. Cressy’s distress signal was picked up by Tyrwhitt at 7:07 a.m. The first message gave no account of what had happened or where they were, but Tyrwhitt said, “Knowing where they were supposed to b
e, I dashed off at full speed and a few minutes later we received their position from Cressy and part of a signal which ended abruptly and then there was no more.”

  Cressy’s survivors suffered even more than the crews of her sisters. All of Cressy’s boats had been away, picking up survivors of Hogue and Aboukir; these now returned crowded with men from the other ships. Survivors struggled to climb over the gunwales; as many as five men clung to a single life jacket and a dozen to a single plank. There were Dutch fishing trawlers nearby, but having seen three big ships explode, capsize, and go down before their eyes, they hesitated to approach. Not until 8:30 a.m. did a small Dutch steamship, Flora, out of Rotterdam, arrive, and, regardless of danger, rescue 286 men. “It was very difficult,” said the captain of Flora. “The survivors were exhausted and we were rolling heavily. All were practically naked and some were so exhausted that they had to be hauled aboard with tackle.” Another small Dutch steamer, the Titan, rescued 147 men. Then two British trawlers arrived and pulled more men from the sea. Commodore Tyrwhitt with his eight destroyers came up at 10:45 a.m. Tyrwhitt steamed alongside an English trawler loaded with men and later recalled, “They looked just like rows and rows of swallows on telegraph lines, all huddled together to keep themselves warm; they were all naked or nearly so.” Four of the destroyers began to take aboard survivors from the trawler, while the other four began to hunt for the U-boat. Of those aboard the three old armored cruisers, 837 were disembarked at Harwich, shoeless, wrapped in blankets, their hair and bodies soaked in oil. Sixty-two officers and 1,397 men had drowned.

  Weddigen watched his last torpedo hit Cressy’s side, producing a white cloud of smoke and steam. As the stricken cruiser slowly rolled over to port, “men climbed like ants over her side and then, as she turned turtle completely, they ran about on her broad flat keel until a few minutes later, she slid beneath waves.” The U-boat captain was filled with admiration for the British sailors. “She careened far over but all the while the men of the Cressy . . . stayed at their guns looking for their invisible foes. They were brave and true to their country’s sea traditions.” Then, jubilant, Weddigen set a course for Wilhelmshaven, knowing that in the relatively calm sea, British destroyers soon would be coming. His electric power was almost exhausted and he could not remain submerged. On the surface, he saw that the weather was radiant and the swell of the ocean had subsided even more. There was no sign of destroyers, but it could not be long, and U-9 was vulnerable. She could not outrun them; with her plume of kerosene smoke, she could not hide; lacking electrical power, she could not submerge for long. Accordingly, he steered for the Dutch coast, deciding to risk grounding on the shoals in an effort to lose the silhouette of his conning tower against the outline of the shore. At noon, he caught sight of Tyrwhitt’s pursuing destroyers coming up fast, each throwing an enormous bow wave, but fortunately, they did not detect the small U-boat. That night, he again sank to the bottom to wait. At dawn the following day, Weddigen rose to find another clear morning and an empty ocean. As he approached the lightship at the mouth of the Ems, he signaled, “On 22 September between six and nine a.m., U-9 sank three British warships . . . with six torpedoes.”

  Rumors of the victory had reached Germany the previous night, following the arrival of Flora and Titan in Holland. On the twenty-fourth, U-9 arrived in Wilhelmshaven to receive an enthusiastic reception from the ships of the High Seas Fleet. Thereafter, all Germany rose in ovation at Weddigen’s achievement. The kaiser awarded Weddigen the Iron Cross, First Class. The Iron Cross, Second Class went to every member of U-9’s crew. Weddigen became Germany’s first naval hero of the war. With a 493-ton boat and twenty-eight men, he had sunk 36,000 tons of British warships and killed nearly 1,400 British seamen. The effect was enormous in neutral countries where, although the prowess of the German army was taken for granted, the supremacy of the British navy had never been doubted.

  In Great Britain, the shock was profound. No one believed the German announcement that the catastrophe had been the work of a single U-boat; it was assumed that as many as five or six submarines must have been involved. “It is well-known that German submarines operate in flotillas of six boats,” declared The Times on September 25. “If it is true that only one, U-9, returned to harbor, we may assume that the others are lost.” Practically speaking, the loss of the three old ships scarcely affected the overwhelming superiority of the Royal Navy. The three cruisers, said Churchill, were “of no great value; they were among . . . [our] oldest cruisers and contributed in no appreciable way to our vital margins.” It was the loss of life and the blow to Britain’s naval prestige that stunned the nation. The number of men who died was small compared to the casualties the army was suffering in France, but the suddenness and totality of the loss at sea struck hard. From within the navy came harsh criticism. Beatty, once a lieutenant on Aboukir, wrote to his wife, “We heard Aboukir crying out yesterday morning . . . over 400 miles away, but never contemplated it was a disaster of . . . [this] magnitude. . . . It was bound to happen. Our cruisers had no conceivable right to be where they were . . . sooner or later they would surely be caught by submarines or battle cruisers. . . . It was inevitable and faulty strategy on the part of the Admiralty.” From retirement, Fisher wrote angrily, “It was pure murder sending those big armoured ships in the North Sea.”

  A wave of public criticism rolled over the First Lord. Later, Churchill himself ironically summarized his opponent’s arguments: “The disaster . . . followed from the interference of a civilian minister in naval operations and the over-riding of the judgement of skilful and experienced admirals.” In fact, of course, the dispositions were the responsibility of the First Sea Lord and the Chief of Staff, while the faulty tactics were the fault of the admiral and captains on the scene. These, Churchill did not spare: “One would expect senior officers in command of cruiser squadrons to judge for themselves the danger of their task and especially of its constant repetition; and while obeying orders, [they] should have spoken up, rather than going on day after day and week after week, until superior authority intervened or something lamentable happened. . . . Moreover, although the impulse which prompted the Hogue and Cressy to go to the rescue of their comrades in the sinking of the Aboukir was one of generous humanity, they could hardly have done anything more unwise or more likely to add to the loss of life. They should at once have steamed away in opposite directions, lowering boats at the first opportunity.”

  Officially, a naval Court of Inquiry, employing hindsight, declared that “a cruiser patrol established in a limited area at so short a distance from an enemy’s submarine base was certain to be attacked by submarines, and the withdrawal of the destroyers increased the chance of a successful attack, while diminishing those of saving life.” On October 2, Admiral Christian was removed from command and placed on half pay. Battenberg later exonerated him and also made allowances for the three ship captains, who “were placed in a cruel position, once they found themselves in waters swarming with drowning men.” Captain Drummond was criticized for not zigzagging and for not ordering out destroyers on the night of the twenty-first as the weather began to moderate, but praised for his conduct once his ship had been hit. Battenberg did not feel that a court-martial for Drummond was justified, but he remained on half pay and did not command again at sea. When Fisher arrived at the Admiralty two months later, he observed “that most of the officers concerned were on half pay, that they had better remain there, and that no useful purpose could be served by further action.”

  The sinking of the three ships stimulated immediate changes. The two surviving sisters, Euryalus and Bacchante, were banished from the North Sea and sent to duty at Gibraltar, beyond the range of U-boats. Zigzagging at 13 knots was made mandatory for all large warships in submarine waters. The Admiralty sent a grim command to the navy: “If one ship is torpedoed or strikes a mine, the disabled ship must be left to her fate, and other large ships clear out of the dangerous area, calling up minor vessels to render assi
stance.” Never again, either in Parliament or the press or at one of his London clubs, did Admiral Lord Charles Beresford describe submarines as “playthings” or “toys.”

  Three weeks later, Otto Weddigen was back at sea and, because British captains were still ignoring both the lesson of the Bacchantes and Admiralty orders, he sank a fourth British armored cruiser, this time off Aberdeen on the coast of Scotland. Six ancient ships of the 10th Cruiser Squadron, including the twenty-three-year-old, 7,350-ton Hawke, were patrolling off Aberdeen. On the morning of October 15, these vessels were spread in patrol formation at ten-mile intervals. At 9:30 a.m., Hawke and her sister Endymion stopped dead in the water for fifteen minutes to permit Hawke to send a boat to pick up mail. By 10:30, Endymion had moved out of sight and Hawke, her boat rehoisted, was proceeding at 13 knots but without zigzagging. Suddenly, there was an explosion under her forward funnel, she began to list, and there was time only to lower two boats before she capsized and sank. Because the squadron had steamed over the horizon, none of this was known until, at 1:20 p.m., another ship in the squadron reported a submarine attack. Immediately, the flagship signaled all ships to steam northwest at full speed. All ships replied, except Hawke. A destroyer, sent to search, found a boat holding twenty-one men; a day later a Norwegian steamer picked up another forty-nine survivors from a second boat. The rest of the crew, nearly 500 men, was lost.