by Deborah Lake
Farnborough’s Morse sputtered across the ether to Sir Lewis Bayly. ‘7.5 Ship being fired at by submarine.’
Campbell’s carefully rehearsed crew immediately went into action with a sparkling performance. Steam billowed. Engines idled. The panic party scrambled across the deck to lower the lifeboats, pushing, jostling, in well-simulated alarm.
U 68 surfaced, ahead, on the port side. She closed towards Farnborough’s bow, showing her full length, 800yd distant. Her deck gun barked again. The shot fell mere feet from Farnborough’s magazine. U 68 came on, conning tower and deck gun manned, ready to deal a death blow.
Campbell reacted smartly. The next shot might blow him, the ship, and the remaining crew to eternity. He blasted a whistle, the prearranged signal for action. The White Ensign broke at the masthead. Wheelhouse and side-ports clattered down. Three 12-pounders, the Maxim and a selection of rifles stormed into action.
Campbell’s deck guns pushed out twenty-one rounds as U 68 crashdived. One gun alone managed twelve shots. The machine gun and supporting rifles fired about 200 rounds at the gun crew and conning tower. Farnborough thrashed towards the spot where the U-boat went down. Deck crew rolled two primitive depth charges into the water.
Even as they spiralled into the depths, U 68 appeared, almost vertical in the water, as Farnborough steamed forward. The after-deck gun crew saw the torn bows, slammed two further shots into the stricken boat. Two more converted mines plopped into the water. Debris boiled to the surface. Shards of wood. Oil. Wreckage. No bodies. Güntzel went to the bottom with the thirty-seven men of his crew.
Campbell’s wireless buzzed another message to the Commander-in-Chief. ‘7.45 Have sunk enemy submarine.’
Twenty-five minutes dragged by. Farnborough’s signals interrupted the Admiral’s breakfast. Sir Lewis did not hurry. Another signal came to his table. ‘8.10 Shall I return to report or look for another?’
Bayly’s answer was short and specific. ‘Very well done. Please return to Queenstown.’
The Admiral might not have relished the stream of messages that disturbed his attack on his eggs and bacon and intruded into the toast and marmalade if they reported dismal failure instead of success. As it was, Sir Lewis declared jovially that Farnborough’s signals were as good as a morning paper. When Campbell docked the next morning at 0700, the Admiral’s barge arrived with a letter of congratulations and some freshlaid eggs. Two hours later, Bayly arrived in person to congratulate the crew. Campbell’s tight discipline and strict observance of procedure had proved that decoys could deal with U-boats.
Farnborough went back on patrol. She returned after one week. The Admiral came on board again with a letter of commendation from the Admiralty. He promulgated Campbell’s accelerated promotion to commander. He announced the award of £1,000 for division among every man on board, regular Royal Navy officers aside. There was only one of them on the decoy. Commander Gordon Campbell.
Bayly also brought news of immediate medal awards. Campbell received the Distinguished Service Order. Beswick, the first lieutenant, collected a Distinguished Service Cross, as did the engineer lieutenant. Three Distinguished Service Medals went to crew members.
Oberleutnant zur See Herbert Pustkuchen and UB 29 had already added a new twist to the maritime war. To sink passenger ships without warning was, as every U-boat captain knew, strictly forbidden. The Flanders Flotilla found a loophole. In that hard-fighting organisation, orders stated clearly that surface ships heading for Channel ports during the hours of darkness were deemed military transports. In short, legitimate targets.
On the night of 19 March 1916, Pustkuchen followed his orders. He torpedoed three anchored ships in succession. One French, one Norwegian, one Danish. Four days later, in daylight, he set an angry cat among some pigeons.
The French-registered cross-Channel ferry SS Sussex took a torpedo strike. She did not sink, but some fifty men, women and children on her crowded decks died in the explosion. Others were injured, among them American citizens. On the return journey to Zeebrugge, 4 miles off Dungeness, Pustkuchen used his final torpedo on the 3,352-ton SS Salybia.
The case for a renewed offensive gained momentum when von Pohl died suddenly in April 1916. The redoubtable Admiral von Scheer took over the High Seas Fleet. Aggressive, determined, vigorous, he had no doubts that the U-boat would triumph.
Unfortunately for the exponents of unrestricted U-boat attacks, political and diplomatic pressures were stronger. After news of the Sussex attack crossed the Atlantic, that part of the American press that was pro-Ally screeched in banner headlines. The President, Woodrow Wilson, a man who cherished the notion that he saw, with unerring clarity, all sides of an argument at the same time, declared it ‘a truly terrible example of the inhumanity of submarine warfare as the commanders of German vessels for the last twelve months have been conducting it’. His convoluted sentence was replaced by the measured tones of the US note of 19 April 1916 to Berlin. This stopped just short of being an ultimatum but nobody could mistake its meaning. ‘Unless the Imperial German Government shall now immediately declare and carry into effect its abandonment of the present method of warfare against passenger and freight carrying vessels, the Government have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Government altogether.’
Deliberately irritating the United States to the point of war was not part of Germany’s war agenda as far as the politicians, and a weathercock Kaiser, were concerned. On 20 April, all U-boats received emphatic instructions to adhere strictly to international law. In other words, stop, visit, search. Destroy only if they were bound for an Allied port.
Scheer did not tolerate such specious nonsense. Rather than hazard the High Seas boats, he recalled them from the Western Approaches. Only the Flanders Flotilla very occasionally continued to operate in British waters. They had few boats with any offensive capacity. Their efforts hardly rippled the water.
Every U-boat man knew that the British used decoys. Not only the Baralong affair alerted them to the ruse. Campbell, the careful, determined victor, gave away the information through no fault of his own because of an incident on 15 April 1916.
A thick mist that reduced visibility to 2 miles covered the swelling Atlantic waters off the south-west coast of Ireland. As dusk approached, at 1830hr, a U-boat surfaced to challenge the Rotterdam-Lloyd Company’s 7,000-ton steamer SS Soerakarta, bound from Java to the Netherlands. In the distance, another steamer approached. Farnborough, steaming northward, flying the Swedish ensign, saw the Dutch ship on her starboard bow. The U-boat floated between the two ships. She hoisted a signal. ‘T A F’, the commercial flag code for ‘Bring me your papers’.
Soerakarta acknowledged, stopped. She began to lower a boat. Campbell in Farnborough also replied. ‘Signal seen, but not understood.’ The decoy slowed, blew off some steam to give the impression that she was losing way, but continued to sidle ahead. The deck crew prepared to lower a boat.
The U-boat fired a warning shot across Farnborough’s bows. A Dutch eye-witness, Second Officer R.R.F. Jeneson on the Dutch ship, claimed that Farnborough opened fire when approaching the scene. He stated clearly that Farnborough was already in action before ‘a Navy flag’ broke out at her foremasthead.
Campbell’s report does not mention the matter. He merely states that the U-boat fired first, at which one of his gun crews assumed the order had been given to engage the enemy. Farnborough thus returned fire only after she herself had been attacked, a nicety that cleared tardy hoisting of the White Ensign, should anyone query the matter.
The action was short and apparently decisive. Twenty rounds came from the 12-pounder guns, six from the 6-pounders and 250 shots from the small arms on Farnborough. The U-boat managed some five shells in reply. Two hits registered near the conning tower before the U-boat went down. Some saw her go down by the stern. Others noted she sank by the bow. For some, she rolled to her left. To others, she revolved to her right. One witness positively saw her turn over, befor
e she plunged under, covering the sea with oil.
From Soerakarta, the first mate recorded his own impressions:
At about 6.15 pm . . . a dark shape appeared on the surface. . . . It gradually became clearer and when we got closer, it was obviously a U-boat, marked with a large white ‘U’. The conning-tower hatch opened and about ten men appeared on deck. The German war ensign was hoisted on a short mast and underneath were the signal flags: ‘T A F’ (bring your papers on board). As soon as the U-boat was recognised, the engines of the Soerakarta were stopped and, after the signal was acknowledged, the port lifeboat No. 1 was manned and lowered once the ship’s deed box with the papers was handed over. The boat had just left the ship, to row across to the waiting U-boat, when the accompanying steamer – which had also slowly stopped and we eventually saw the signal ‘I shall send a boat’ – suddenly hoisted the English war flag and fired a shot. The shell flew over the U-boat and fell into the water. The engines of the Soerakarta were put to slow astern to get out of the way of the line of fire. We were barely 200 metres from the U-boat. They fired back meanwhile as the English steamer approached. Several shots missed, some falling 40 to 50 metres in front of our bows, until the U-boat’s conning-tower was hit. Several men on the deck hurriedly tried to go inside while four or five suddenly vanished; probably they were hit or fell into the water. On the Soerakarta, we saw the stern of the U-boat rise and then quickly sink away, leaving a large patch of oil on the surface at the spot where it went down.
The steamer responsible was, to outward appearance, an ordinary merchant ship, hull painted black above and brown below, black funnel with a wide, white band. Rear amidships, there were guns, hidden by the bulwarks.
Campbell dropped two depth charges. They exploded. Farnborough’s crew saw no oil. No wreckage bobbed to the surface. Campbell doubted he had scored a kill.
The U-boat indeed survived. She was U 67. Her commander, Kapitänleutnant Hans Nieland, had been in charge of the boat for less than a month. As soon as Campbell opened fire, Nieland bellowed the order to crash-dive. Her war diary gives a slightly different scenario from that of Farnborough:
Black Rock Light abeam to port, distance 19 nm.
Surfaced and sighted two steamships, one to port, the other to starboard, on converging courses. Closed with steamers and signalled them to stop. Order carried out. Ship to starboard is flying the Dutch flag and painted in Dutch colours. The name Soerakarta is painted on her side in large letters – according to Lloyd’s Register she is a steamship of the Rotterdam Lloyd line. She is empty. The vessel to port is flying the Swedish flag but displaying no national colours, has one funnel with a white ring, seems to have a yellow bridge, 2 masts, with lowered derricks fore and aft. Size around 4,000–4,500 tons.
Both ships have stopped and are about 5,000–6,000 metres apart. I signal ‘Send papers’ and stand off the Swede at about 3,000 metres. After a while with no response, I fire a shot across the Swede’s bows. At the same moment she opens fire on me with a gun mounted broadside below the funnel (7–10 cm). Shots initially fell very short, but with a rapid rate of fire. Alarm, crash-dive. The last observed shot fell about 100 [metres] short, aft of the boat. Impact could be heard very clearly aft in the boat. At 20 metres [depth], violent detonation close to the boat, at 25 metres another detonation, presumably from charges dropped by the steamer on the presumed position of the boat. I had ordered an immediate and sudden change of course. Descended to 35 m. The steamer flew the Swedish flag while she fired and it was not hauled down as long as we observed her. It is likely that, in addition to the broadside gun, she had another gun aft. It seems she is a trapship, like the Baralong. I think it unlikely that she was working with the Dutchman.
Safely away, U 67 surfaced to inspect for damage. ‘We find that no. 3 port diving tank has been hit at the waterline. The longitudinal seam is leaking badly and the tank cannot be blown.’
Kapitänleutnant Nieland was convinced that Farnborough still flew the Swedish flag when U 67 crash-dived. The Kriegstagebuch, the war diary of U 67, contains a drawing of Farnborough in her neutral disguise. U 67 returned home safely to spread the story of the English decoy.
When Soerakarta reached Rotterdam, the crew told their tale to anybody who cared to listen. The Dutch press spread the news. Nobody could doubt that the British used disguised ships to patrol the sea lanes.
Despite the uncertainty of U 67’s fate, Bayly at Queenstown was swift to declare that the U-boat’s demise was 90 per cent probable. The Admiralty duly coughed up a further £1,000 for the crew. Bayly further gave them all six days’ leave, starting when Farnborough arrived at Plymouth. In a sudden reversion to tight-lipped secrecy, he advised that it was ‘undesirable to allow Special Service vessels to give shore leave in the ports near which they operate, as it is not possible to prevent the men’s conversations giving away the nature of their employment.’ It was a precaution without purpose. Q-ships were no longer a secret.
British observers comforted themselves that Campbell saved Soerakarta from a watery end. As she was an empty neutral on her way to her home port, she was probably in no danger under the Prize Regulations. Nieland might, though, have decided that a neutral that unloaded her cargo of tin and rubber at Falmouth was better off at the bottom of the sea.
The US note effectively brought the U-boat campaign in British waters to a halt. Operations in the less dangerous Mediterranean continued. Five German boats of the 30s Class operated from Austrian ports. The tactics of Flottille Pola pioneered by Kapitänleutnant Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière in U 35 cut a swathe through Allied shipping. In the Mediterranean, ‘stop and search’ tactics were hardly necessary. Most heavy merchant shipping belonged to belligerents. As Allied defences against U-boats were all but non-existent, von Arnauld’s methods paid handsome dividends. On the surface, some 5,000 or 6,000m from his quarry, he would fire a warning shot. Once the crew abandoned ship, he would cautiously edge forward to within 2,000m, usually in the vicinity of the abandoned vessel’s lifeboats. This move alone inhibited possible resistance from his target. A few well-aimed shots from the deck gun, commanded by a first rate gunlayer, settled the matter.
Arming merchant ships helped stem the depredations. Q-ships, British, French and Italian, had little success. In the last six months of 1916, German and Austrian U-boats sank 256 ships, a total of 662,131 tons.
But success in the Mediterranean would not win the war.
Scheer continued to demand unrestricted U-boat warfare. He considered it absurd not to employ a weapon to the utmost of its ability, and he carried his ideas into practice. The full-strength sortie that he planned for May employed airships as well as U-boats. The latter came both from the Hochseeflotte and Flottille Flandern. His aim was to draw out the Grand Fleet to a position where its superior strength was neutralised.
The weather intervened. Scheer’s plan did not fully develop. The sortie became the Battle of Jutland.
Captain Charles Fryatt, master of SS Brussels, met the Kaiserliche Marine once more on 23 June 1916. En route from the Hook of Holland to Tilbury, this time he had no chance to ram or escape. A squadron of torpedo boats from Zeebrugge intercepted him in the North Sea. They escorted Brussels, with its cargo of food and some unfortunate Belgian refugees to the home of the Flanders Flotilla. Fryatt found himself at the business end of a court martial. The day after his execution, an official statement, with echoes of the Baralong affair, came from the German authorities on 28 July 1916:
The accused was condemned to death because, although he was not a member of a combatant force, he made an attempt on the afternoon of March 20, 1915, to ram the German submarine U 33 near the Maas lightship.
The accused, as well as the first officer and the chief engineer of the steamer, received at the time from the British Admiralty a gold watch as a reward of his brave conduct on that occasion, and his action was mentioned with praise in the House of Commons.
On the occasion in question, disregarding the
U-boat’s signal to stop and show his national flag, he turned at a critical moment at high speed on the submarine, which escaped the steamer by a few metres only by immediately diving. He confessed that in so doing he had acted in accordance with the instructions of the Admiralty.
One of the many nefarious franc-tireur proceedings of the British merchant marine against our war vessels has thus found a belated but merited expiation.
A high-quality spat followed. Arthur Balfour, formerly a prime minister, now First Lord of the Admiralty, took up the cudgels. In a cold analysis, he drew attention to U-boat ‘pirates’, stating that it was not illegal to try to stop an aggressor. He added, with a touch of mystery, that ‘there was a suspicious character on board the Brussels, who spoke German fluently, and was afterwards treated with the utmost consideration by the Germans’.
Balfour played the patriotic card. Fryatt’s ‘British courage’, he stated, ‘revolted at the thought of surrender.’ The captain had the ‘undoubted right under international law’ to disregard the U-boat’s commands and to resist.
A German reply wasted no words. After a swift reference to the Admiralty bounty, the statement continued that it ‘was not an act of self-defence, but a cunning attack by hired assassins’. He received the death sentence ‘because he had performed an act of war against the German sea forces, although he did not belong to the armed forces of his country’.
Q-ship sailors wondered how they would fare if captured. Wearing a GER jersey offered a short cut to the cemetery. Claims to be servicemen rang hollow without proof. Those who had acquired poison capsules fingered them thoughtfully. Nearly all accepted the Admiralty’s offer of a silver-coloured lapel badge that told the world they were on war service. Whether this would impress a court of hard-nosed German naval officers was, luckily, never put to the test.