Smoke and Mirrors

by Deborah Lake

  Herbert was on the bridge when D5 hit a mine, possibly a drifting British one. If it were British, his luck was truly out, for they were often temperamental about exploding. More probably, Stralsund had claimed a victim. In the days that followed, a series of fishing smacks and foreign merchantmen suffered the same fate.

  Nineteen died as the submarine went under the water. Herbert himself, with six others on the bridge, struggled in the cheerless sea. Two trawlers, Homeland and Faithful, finally came to the rescue. Only Herbert with two others remained alive. The bitter North Sea claimed the rest.

  Back on shore, Herbert learned he had no instant new command. Moving officers, submarine captains in particular, like pawns on a chessboard, to accommodate one unfortunate lieutenant commander, was low on the Admiralty’s list of war-winning priorities. Even so, despite his reverses, Herbert had his value as a recognised expert in the submarine world. In December 1914, he received his next appointment.

  He went to the French navy’s Archimède, based at Harwich, as liaison officer. He knew little French but experience outweighed linguistics.

  An engineering monstrosity, a retractable funnel, distinguished Archimède from other submarines. Her designers considered steam engines ideal for surface use. Submerging became a leisurely process as the funnel was first lowered, then secured under a watertight hatch.

  On 14 December 1914 Archimède and her British companions, E10, E11 and E15 of the 8th Flotilla, left Harwich. Keyes commanded the group from the destroyer Lurcher. Orders sent them to patrol a line 30 miles NNW of the island of Terschelling off the Dutch coast. Room 40, the Admiralty’s code-breaking office, had deciphered German wireless messages. Hipper intended to raid once more.

  Keyes was to prevent any attempt by German ships to reach the English Channel. The small flotilla waited patiently without result. A further instruction ordered Keyes towards the Heligoland Bight. Anxious to preserve their code-breaking secret, the Admiralty’s wireless messages often lacked specifics. Keyes detached E11 to the area of the Elbe and Weser. The three remaining submarines stayed to guard the Channel approach. They spent the night of 16 December resting peacefully on the ocean floor.

  Winter gales the next evening whipped the sea into a fury. Archimède’s captain decided to submerge to escape the battering by the wind and waves. The funnel had other ideas. Damaged by heavy seas, it refused to lower fully. The watertight hatch stayed open. Every billow that washed across the vessel poured water into the hull. Archimède wallowed heavily in the restless seas. A bucket chain tried to bale her out. The situation worsened. Her captain, Lieutenant Deville, decided to head for the Netherlands and internment.

  Herbert disagreed. After some stimulating dialogue between the two, in a mixture of French and English, the bucket chain baled harder than ever, buoyed by Herbert’s wisecracks and enthusiasm. Archimède laboriously lurched back to Harwich at a steady 10 knots. It took two days.

  Herbert’s career as a tactful connection between two proud navies abruptly ended when Deville reported to his seniors. The lieutenant commander returned to the depot ship, HMS Maidstone. Disconsolate, he suspected that the Admiralty viewed him with disfavour. His gallantry was undoubted, his professional ability profound. He was not, though, a lucky officer. Luck often made careers.

  Nevertheless, he knew submarines and submariners. He understood the psychology of men who served under the waves. He was flamboyant, inventive, a man with ideas, a man who thought for himself. He was the ideal type of man to command the secret new weapon against the U-boat.

  At the end of January 1915, Lieutenant Commander Godfrey Herbert took command of the Royal Navy element aboard SS Antwerp – one sub-lieutenant, one petty officer, eight seamen and twelve Royal Marines. The ship remained under the control of her merchant captain, who retained his ordinary crew. He would, however, steam wherever Herbert instructed, rather in the manner of an old-time sailing-master.

  Antwerp had two 12-pounder guns, hidden from view. In her GER livery, she plodded her familiar path between Harwich and the Hook of Holland. Herbert, determined to fool even the keenest eyes that peered through a periscope, regularly adopted a disguise on the bridge. In hat, overcoat and untidy blond wig, he had no doubt that he passed as a Dutch pilot.

  To no avail. Antwerp, the former Vienna, sailed back and forth, totally unmolested. The reason was, almost certainly, a complete lack of security. A report from the Continental Manager of the GER in Rotterdam pointed out that ‘Vienna is well known in Rotterdam and therefore in Germany.’ He explained that her civilian crew gossiped with their friends from other ships. They, in turn, repeated the news to people they met. As a clincher, he drew the Navy’s attention to the simple fact that ‘all the G.E.R boats have had their appearance altered . . . so that Vienna stands alone in the original appearance of a Great Eastern steamer.’

  After six weeks of mind-numbing lack of action, Herbert started to patrol between Southampton and Le Havre. Not a single contact appeared. He received orders to work in company with the opportunistic Lieutenant Commander Gardiner and SS Lyons. Both were to patrol the Irish Sea and the Western Approaches, a killing ground for determined U-boat captains.

  The sharp-featured Otto Weddigen was one. He and his crew all received the appropriate class of the Iron Cross. The Kaiser was said to be ‘in seventh heaven’ after the destruction of Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue. His navy had shown his dead grandmother Victoria, his dead uncle Edward and his very much alive cousin George that their vaunted navy had an equal.

  The blue-enamelled cross of the Pour le Mérite now dangled at Weddigen’s throat for further valuable services to the Fatherland. Spiess, the ‘Heinrich’, took command of his own boat.

  Promoted, with a fresh vessel, U 29, Weddigen left Ostend on 10 March 1915. In the next forty-eight hours, he sank two merchantmen, SS Headlands and SS Indian City, close to the Scilly Isles. Wireless messages alerted Antwerp, cruising hopefully some 60 miles north of the sinkings. Herbert hurried south.

  Some 10 miles west of the Scillies, 12 miles north of the Bishop Rock lighthouse, Antwerp closed on a sailing ship. On board huddled the survivors of Weddigen’s latest victim, SS Andalusian, a 2,349-ton steamer from the Ellerman and Papayanni Line. Weddigen had scuttled the ship but she still floated sluggishly, low in the water, when Antwerp arrived. A wary 4 miles distant, U 29 watched.

  Herbert kept up the pretence of a peaceful merchantman. He transferred the survivors to Antwerp. Then he turned towards the German to offer himself as a target. Weddigen was not tempted. Antwerp raised speed, her nose pointed towards the U-boat. U 29 observed. Before Herbert was even close, she dived.

  Weddigen probably had his suspicions about Antwerp. She was clearly a railway ferry, still in the colours of the GER. The Western Approaches were an unlikely spot for a North Sea packet ship. When she steamed towards U 29 instead of hurrying away like a prudent merchantman, Weddigen’s suspicious instincts probably sharpened. He may well have heard of Captain Charles Fryatt, commanding a genuine Great Eastern steamer, SS Brussels, on the Rotterdam route. On 3 March 1915, Fryatt dodged a U-boat attack with a spirited display that won him a gold watch from the owners.

  U-boat captains were well informed about ships, civilian and military. They sailed with a collection of documents ranging from Lloyd’s Register of Shipping to Jane’s Fighting Ships. Captain and crew were mariners. They knew ships. Some had served in the British Merchant Navy. As the Senior Naval Officer at Queenstown explained to an enthusiastic Q-ship captain later in the war: ‘I sometimes think that you gentlemen in Q-ships do not quite realize that you are up against the best brains in the German Navy. Pray give the commanders of German submarines credit for possessing as much common sense as you have yourself – or even a little more.’

  Weddigen never did explain his doubts about Antwerp. He chose to go home the long way, up the Irish Channel, past the Isle of Man and round Scotland. By 18 March, he was in the Pentland Firth between the Orkney Islands and the S
cottish mainland, the 8-mile-wide channel that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the North Sea.

  The Grand Fleet was out. A series of sitting ducks for a determined U-boat skipper. Weddigen fired a torpedo at HMS Neptune, a dreadnought battleship. It vanished into the distance. Close behind Neptune steamed the 4th Battle Squadron. Too close for Weddigen.

  On HMS Dreadnought, the lookout raised the alarm. ‘Periscope, 20 degrees off the port bow!’ On the bridge, Lieutenant Commander Basil Piercy demanded full speed. The battleship’s 27,500hp drove her 17,900 tons of steel directly at the 65m length of U 29. The Danzig-built boat broke in two. The entire crew, thirty-two officers and men, perished.

  Herbert had no chance of recruitment as a sunbeam when he returned to shore. In a service phrase, he ticked like a runaway clock. ‘This . . . ship’, he grumbled, ‘is too fast . . . or she is known to the enemy, although in the latter case he would simply have tried to attack me, diving on sighting me.’ Nonetheless, Herbert could claim one tiny footnote in the annals of naval warfare. The encounter, abortive though it was, was the first meeting between Q-ship and U-boat.

  Herbert’s superior was Captain Henry Grant, Assistant Director of Operations at the Admiralty. Grant ensured that Herbert’s opinions rapidly reached Fisher. The First Sea Lord summoned Herbert to London. The commander’s name was not unknown in the rarefied wood-panelled atmosphere of the Admiralty. Apart from his earlier exploits, Herbert had flooded the Admiralty with proposals on how to make Q-ships more lethal. He overwhelmed Grant with a series of suggestions.

  Herbert had already earmarked a tramp steamer berthed at Portland as a likely vessel. Mercantile Fleet Auxiliary No. 5, serving in an unheroic but vital role as a squadron supply ship, was another vessel commandeered from civilian service. She came from the same group of companies as the luckless Andalusian, this time from Ellerman and Bucknall. Displacing 4,192 tons, with a single funnel, SS Baralong was an unremarkable cargo steamer. She was a ‘three-island’ vessel, a phrase that simply means her bridge, engine room and cabins were in the centre, while the front and rear contained the cargo holds.

  Fisher listened. Fisher considered. He then gave the lieutenant commander a free hand. He could choose his ship. He could name his own crew. He could roam the sea as he pleased. As long as he destroyed U-boats.

  Nor was that all. Henry Grant was also impressed by Herbert’s stream of plans. Without a single destroyed U-boat to give it credence, Admiralty Operations authorised, in February 1915, the fitting out of two more ‘special service’ ships. They were to operate under Herbert’s control.

  Neither the 1,459-ton SS Peveril nor the 1,198-ton SS Princess Ena were particularly suited to their new roles. Princess Ena, indeed, was a fruit boat from another railway company, the London & South Western, originally intended to run between the Channel Islands and Southampton.

  Slow, lethargic, Peveril lasted only a few weeks as a Q-ship before returning to normal service. She was, nonetheless, recommissioned as a Q-ship in February 1917. A U-boat sank her off Gibraltar in November of the same year.

  Herbert moved Baralong to Pembroke Dock in Wales for fitting out. The two 12-pounder guns that had graced Antwerp moved to the new ship. Mounted on the front deck, they both fired to either side. A wooden cover, looking like an animal pen, hid a third gun on the stern. The grubby freighter had fangs.

  Herbert picked his crew. Along with the 12-pounder guns came his second in command from Antwerp, Sub-Lieutenant Gordon Steele. Third officer on the Anchor Line’s SS Caledonia when war began, he was a rare bird among RNR officers. He had served in a submarine. For five months, he was aboard D8, only leaving when she went into dock for a lengthy refit. Chief Petty Officer Dickinson also joined Baralong from Antwerp, together with the senior Royal Marine, Corporal Frederick Collins of the Royal Marine Light Infantry.

  Steele was an outstanding cadet at the Merchant Navy training ship Worcester. He won a P&O scholarship at the completion of his training. He had courage, and later won the Victoria Cross during the British intervention in Russia in a suicidal attack on the Red Fleet in Kronstadt.

  Apart from these three stalwarts, Herbert retained most of the Baralong’s crew. Her master, George Swinney, stayed on board as the navigating officer after he obligingly joined the RNR. Of the sixty-six others, nineteen were regular Navy men, nine were merchant seamen and the remainder were RNR or Marines. This was twice the number normally needed to run a vessel of Baralong’s size. Half would fight the ship when they met a U-boat.

  Much of the detailed supervision of Baralong’s conversion to a decoy was left to Gordon Steele. Herbert himself had two more immediate concerns.

  First, he wanted to improve Baralong’s buoyancy. If she was to fight after being attacked, she had to stay afloat as long as human ingenuity could devise. He therefore requisitioned 2,680 empty casks from Devonport. Baralong had four holds. Casks would fill the forward hold, number 1, and the after hold, number 4. Coal would occupy the other two. The engines and boiler room were in the middle of the ship. As Herbert explained with an accompanying sketch to Captain Grant, himself no mean seaman, if the ship were holed anywhere as far aft as number 3 hold, her trim would not greatly alter. Hit elsewhere she would survive because of the empty casks in numbers 1 and 4 holds.

  Second, Herbert laid down ground rules for his crew. Baralong would not pass muster as a scruffy tramp steamer if the visible crew marched around like regular sailors. It was not enough simply not to wear uniform. Everyone, from Herbert downwards, must look and act appropriately for the more slovenly end of the mercantile marine.

  Herbert banned the use of regular naval terms. A loose word in harbour could spill the Baralong’s secret. The wardroom turned into the saloon. Ranks and trades went out of the window. Herbert became the master, not the captain. Stokers lost their ranks to become firemen. The Royal Marines gritted their collective teeth when they yielded up their uniforms. King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions as to the appropriate dress of the day no longer existed. Sub-Lieutenant Steele alone was later authorised to wear ‘some sort of uniform’ to help maintain a semblance of discipline. The 22-year-old thoughtfully used his old P&O midshipman’s kit. Even more pensively, he purchased a pistol in Portsmouth. Mutiny by the ill-assorted crew was not far from his mind.

  Watch changes happened out of sight. Nobody ran anywhere. Rubbish was thrown over the side. Herbert encouraged the off-duty stokers to lounge around on the deck when Baralong entered or left harbour. They smoked. They spat. They whistled at any woman they saw.

  Away from curious eyes, Herbert brought his gun crews up to standard. Some were positioned close to their action stations, pretending to do odd jobs. Others remained hidden. Baralong could not be seen with a rash of men on board. As the wives of merchant skippers were not unknown on board, Herbert even tried to have one of the crew dress as a woman. Captain Henry Grant stepped on that idea with a certain firmness.

  Captain Fryatt of the Brussels did not help the Q-ship concept when he decided to ram a U-boat. On 28 March 1915 Fryatt saw one on the surface. He considered that it was about to fire a torpedo. He turned his ship and went to full speed to try and ram her. The U-boat crash-dived. Fryatt received another gold watch, this time from the Admiralty. His picture appeared in papers that crossed the North Sea. German anger flared. Merchant captains were not combatants. If they behaved as such, they deserved retribution.

  At the end of March 1915, Baralong was ready. Her first port of call was Devonport to load her barrels. Herbert’s instructions from the Admiralty were concise and clear. His normal cruising area was the English Channel. He must not pass Folkestone or the western limit of the Scillies. If U-boats operated off Queenstown, however, he could extend his patrol.

  Herbert now had Lyons and Princess Ena under his command. The former fruit boat, although relatively fast, was out of place in the Irish Sea. Herbert ordered her to seek the enemy in the English Channel. She had hardly more luck than the wretched SS Vict
oria with her display of vegetables. Princess Ena did manage to sight the enemy in the distance when she dashed to the aid of SS Anglo-Californian on 4 July 1915.

  The 59-year-old master of the Anglo-Californian, Frederick Daniel Parslow from Islington, stubbornly refused to leave his command at U 39’s behest. Resolute, under withering fire from Kapitänleutnant Walther Forstmann’s boat, Parslow continually changed course, circled, dodged and weaved his way across the water. He died on his shattered bridge. The traditional gold watch for gallant Merchant Navy captains, such as Fryatt received, seemed an inappropriate gesture for such defiance. Difficulties arose with finding a suitable decoration. Merchant Navy men were civilians. They did not qualify for military awards that were, except in two clear cases, only for the living. In addition, German anger about mercantile captains who resisted U-boat commands partly inhibited the authorities. His widow finally received the Victoria Cross he won from the sovereign’s hands at Buckingham Palace in May 1919. It took an amendment to the Royal Warrant in 1918 before Parslow became the first Merchant Navy officer to gain the decoration. Parslow’s son, on board the ship as second mate and helmsman throughout the action, received the DSC for his part in it.

  Princess Ena, alerted by Parslow’s distress signals, hurried towards the action. Official sources declared that her opening shots – fired from some 5 miles away – drove off the enemy.

  Lyons spent much time in the Irish Sea. She cruised the shipping lanes between Liverpool and the southern coast of Ireland. Her chances of intercepting a U-boat were slim. She was slow and stolid. A salvage tug stubbornly insists on looking and behaving precisely as a salvage tug should.

  Further, Gardiner suffered a stream of Admiralty orders, requests and instructions which complicated his patrols. The chief culprit was Rear Admiral Henry Oliver, who detested amateur officers, rarely delegated any task to his juniors, seldom changed his mind, and was easily aroused to fury.