Smoke and Mirrors

by Deborah Lake

  Creaks and groans told Matheson that his ship strained to stay in one piece. If a bulkhead collapsed, it would all be over. He ordered the crew to abandon ship in the one remaining lifeboat and a skiff.

  Two destroyers hustled into position. HMS Christopher and HMS Orestes arrived minutes before the rear bulkhead gave way. Water rushed in. The code books went overboard; the depth charges made safe. Matheson joined Orestes, then returned in a futile attempt to arrange a tow before his command vanished under the water.

  The Admiralty, working from wireless intercepts and more craftily garnered information, decided that the U-boat was U 85, under the command of Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm Petz. It was certain that Petz had not returned from his third operational patrol in command.

  U 85 left port in company with U 81, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Raimund Weisbach, on 6 March 1917. Both boats soon encountered extremely heavy seas, so bad that Weisbach reported his boat was taking in water. She also developed an oil leak. U 81 carried extra oil in her ballast tanks to increase her range. Consequently, she sat low in the water with a considerable loss of sea-keeping qualities. Weisbach, intending to go through the Straits of Dover, decided against it. He turned back to head north around Scotland.

  U 81 returned home on 27 March 1917. Petz was overdue. Weisbach wrote: ‘From the report of U 85 that she had a larger oil leak and the detail from U 81, that U 85 took a northerly course from Terschelling, it is inferred that U 85 took the Northern Route. This would be in accordance with Flotilla instructions.’

  It also ties in with Petz’s own opinions. He was no enthusiast of the Dover route. He said as much in his patrol summary from his previous trip. The two factors effectively rule out U 85 as Privet’s victim. If she took the long route, she would have been nowhere near the scene by the time of the action. With a severe oil leak and bad weather, it is possible that Willy Petz and his men perished on the long haul around Scotland. As there are no unexplained sinkings in U 85’s patrol area, it is possible she foundered or met a mine on her way to war.

  The Q-ship undoubtedly engaged a U-boat. A prime contender for the role of victim is UC 68. She sailed from Zeebrugge two days before the fight to lay mines in the Plymouth area. En route, she probably torpedoed the 2,897-ton SS Tandil. Four men died.

  Minelayers usually cleared their cargo within the first couple of days, on their way out rather than on the return journey. On 14 March 1917, the 12,036-ton SS Orsova, a P&O liner, in service as a troopship, struck one less than 10 miles from where Privet sank her U-boat. UC 68 was under orders to lay mines in the exact area where Orsova was hit. It would have taken UC 68 two days to get there.

  Eight people died on Orsova. She survived to sail again, eighteen months later.

  The coincidence of date casts UC 68 neatly as Privet’s victim.

  The Royal Navy subsequently claimed that the British submarine C7 sank UC 68 on 5 April 1917 in the North Sea. For this to be valid, the U-boat needed to be on an exceptionally long patrol. The claim arose from intelligence that UC 68 did not return to base. As C7 had reported destroying a U-boat it followed, with dubious logic, that she must have met UC 68.

  There is a chance that UC 68 sank on one of her own mines. On 13 March 1917, a fierce underwater explosion occurred in the English Channel, some 25 miles south of Torquay, east of Start Point. After the detonation no débris, apart from dead fish, floated to the surface. Some German mines were found but random mine explosions happened. Similarly, mines sometimes did deploy prematurely and blow up their own boat.

  No wreckage. No remains. All that can be said firmly is that UC 68 failed to return from patrol.

  Decoys had a busy month. Some had good fortune, others bad. On 13 March 1917, U 61, under Kapitänleutnant Victor Dieckmann, torpedoed Warner, otherwise known as Q27. Dieckmann suspected that he faced a trapship. Her ‘high bridge and high deck erections’, combined with ‘meaningless deviations from her route and her wild zigzag course’, persuaded him that a torpedo was safer than a deck gun. When the crew managed to lower only one boat in a clumsy manner, suspicions hardened into certainty.

  A survivor from the Q-ship, Lieutenant Frederick Yuile of the RNR, later claimed that the U-boat captain told him that Warner was a victim of U 38. This was the command of Kapitänleutnant Max Valentiner. Both he and his boat were with Flottille Pola in the Adriatic. Yuile suffered either a ponderous Teutonic joke or subtle propaganda to show that Valentiner had torpedoes with an extremely long range.

  At Lowestoft, the sailing ship Result finally completed her trials. She had a new auxiliary motor to help her manoeuvre in action. On 15 March 1917, sailing as the Capulet, she met her first U-boat, UC 45 under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Hubert Aust. Muhlhauser recalled:

  The wind was freshening at the time, and we were just lowering and stowing the topsails when a submarine was sighted coming up astern, and immediately afterwards the report of a gun was heard. In a few seconds the men were at their stations, but only five showed on deck. The CO ordered the helm to be put down, to bring the ship into the wind, and the headsails to be hauled down. While this was happening shells were dropping around, and bursting. One of them grazed the flying jib stay, and went on making a most curious whistling noise. The submarine commander refused to accept our apparent surrender, and continued firing steadily from a distance of 2,000 yds.

  Aust’s tactics, like those of many other U-boat men, had changed. Shell from long range. The action continued.

  The CO then ordered the panic party to abandon ship . . . they made a gallant attempt to capsize the boat when lowering it. We thought that this would give a realistic touch to the affair, but the boat refused to capsize and righted itself when it reached the water and they had to get into it as it was. Reid and four hands were then in the boat, and they were supposed to represent the whole of the crew, while the ship was lying head to wind with the sails flapping, and apparently deserted.

  No one showed on deck, but below the bulwarks were the three guns’ crews lying alongside their guns, the LTO alongside his torpedo tubes, the engineers standing by the motor ready to start it when required, while the CO perambulated the deck on his hands and knees watching the course of events through holes in the bulwarks, and I sat on deck at the wheel trying to keep the ship in the wind so as not to get too far away from the boat. As soon as the latter left the ship the submarine ventured to approach to 1,000 yds, but would not come any closer. They went on firing from that distance for some time without hitting the hull or a spar. The sails and gear were cut about by shells and splinters, but as long as nothing vital was hit we would continue to lie low in the hope that it would come nearer. But that was just what it had not the slightest intention of doing unless it could first get hold of the boat. That, on the other hand we could not allow, as with the boat alongside them we should not be able to fire should an opportunity occur. Things therefore remained at a sort of deadlock.

  Lifeboats that stayed close to their ship alerted U-boat crews. Either the men in the boat planned to return on board if the U-boat went away or they were proof of a U-Boot-Falle.

  Reid rowed about first in one direction, and then in another, as if he did not know what to do for the best, but he took care to keep within 200 yds of the ship. He said afterwards that he felt very lonely with a large and hostile submarine in his immediate neighbourhood, and the ship tending to work away from him. Never had the latter seemed to him so desirable. He even found time to admire the beauty of her lines. Then the submarine turned its gun on the boat, possibly with the idea of inducing it to approach, but it had the opposite result, and Reid rowed away. After firing three shells, the first of which went short, the second over, while the third nearly hit it, the submarine commander seemed to come to the conclusion that the men in the boat were too much upset to understand what was required, and turned his attention to the ship once more.

  Staying at relatively long range was often enough to tempt the Q-ship captain into action. As seconds
became minutes, the temptation to open fire on the seemingly unsuspecting enemy increased.

  Our ordeal had started again. The CO on hands and knees, with his eye to a hole in the bulwarks, watched the firing in an impersonal and critical spirit. He considered that it was bad. The submarine was only 1,000 yards distant, and, though there was a nasty short sea which caused it to roll a good deal, he thought that it should have done better. It was firing about one shell short to three over. ‘Ah,’ he said once, ‘that was better. That very nearly hit the counter.’ As I was sitting at the counter, it did not strike me at all as an admirable effort on their part. On the contrary; . . . added to the feeling of personal insecurity caused by shells and fragments of shells hurtling past one’s ears, was a distinct feeling of humiliation. It was true that was what we were there for, and it was all part of the game, but somehow it did not seem right to be sitting in water at an idle wheel, doing nothing, while a submarine plugged shells at the ship for what seemed an interminable time.

  Lieutenant Philip Mack, the Result’s captain, broke the impasse.

  At length after the firing had gone on for 45 minutes, and the submarine commander seemed as determined as ever not to come any nearer, the CO decided to try and wing him as he was within easy range, and accordingly gave the word to open fire. The White Ensign shot aloft, the engine was started, down crashed the bulwarks, and round came the guns.

  The submarine had taken alarm at the first movement, and was doing a crash dive, but the aft twelve-pounder, Gunlayer W. Wreford, AB, hit him at the base of the conning tower at its junction with the deck, and the 6-pdr, Gunlayer H.G. Wells, AB, also hit the conning tower higher up. The second shot from the 12 pdr missed. In 30 seconds the submarine had disappeared. Had we sunk it? We knew that the 12 pdr had hit it, and that in a good spot, but beyond that it was impossible to say anything.

  Shells hitting the conning tower regularly feature in Q-ship combat accounts. They apparently did remarkably little damage. Hubert Aust and UC 45 escaped with nothing more than a shaking.

  During the cold, bitter March of 1917 that blustered across the North Sea and the Western Approaches, eighteen Hochseeflotte deep-sea boats and fourteen coastal minelayers from Flottille Flandern sank 211 ships for a total of 507,000 tons with a loss in cargo capacity by damaged ships of a further 60,000 tons.

  Only four U-boats were lost during the month: U 85, UC 68, U 43 and UB 6. The British submarine G13 torpedoed Kapitänleutnant Erwin Sebelin and U 43 as she passed the Shetland Islands, north of the finely named Muckle Flugga. Nobody survived from the crew of twenty-six. Oberleutnant zur See Oskar Steckelberg in UB 6, of the hard-worked Flanders Flotilla, ran aground on the Dutch coast in thick fog. He and his men were politely interned, then repatriated as shipwrecked mariners.

  Four boats lost. To replace them, nine new boats entered service.

  April 1917 saw no remission in sinkings. The Admiralty worried at ways to stop the slaughter. Thoughts about convoys met the same, apparently insuperable, argument. The Royal Navy did not have enough escort vessels. Signs that the convoy system was the answer were, nonetheless, there for the looking. France had lost nearly all of its coalfields to German occupation. In consequence, she imported about 1½ million tons of coal from Britain every month. The coal came from the mines of Wales and the pits of Northumberland and Durham: coal to make gas for light and heating, coal for the railways, coal for power stations, coal for industry, coal for French ships. Colliers from Cardiff, colliers from Newcastle made some 800 trips every single month, in good weather and bad. They were easy prey for the U-boats. They gobbled up the vital colliers by the dozen. In the face of anxious demands from France, the Admiralty agreed to ‘controlled sailings’ for the New Year. Convoys by any other name.

  The first, scarcely organised, had an escort of a few armed trawlers. Not a single collier went down. Other ‘controlled sailings’ followed, with the same result. Over the next weeks, hardly an escorted ship was lost. The convoys avoided known danger areas but that alone was not the full solution. That came because U-boats preferred to attack unescorted ships. Even a couple of trawlers, each with a 4-pounder deck gun, shaded the odds against the U-boats. In March, 1,200 coal ships plodded between England and France. Three fell to the U-boats. Similar figures marked the ‘Beef Route’ between Britain and the Netherlands. The Admiralty failed to appreciate their significance.

  At last, on 6 April 1917, the United States joined the fray. As the German High Command predicted, their entry did little to improve the Allied situation. Nonetheless, the US Admiral William Sims arrived in England on 9 April 1917. He travelled incognito as Mr W.S. Davidson. As President of the US Naval War College, he saw all the information sent to Washington by US naval attachés throughout the world. Their despatches came nowhere near reflecting the gravity of the situation. What Sims learned in a few short days in Britain about the effects of the U-boats appalled him.

  The Allies, he reported to Washington, had ‘not been able to, and are not now, effectively meeting the situation presented’. The Royal Navy’s policy, he explained, relied essentially on three factors – patrolled routes, dispersion and arming merchant steamers.

  Sims immediately offered help to the Admiralty. This was not much. The US Navy could provide six destroyers immediately, with the promise of more to follow.

  Jellicoe was, by nature, no optimist. As the daily toll of sinkings rose, his confidence slumped into his shoe leather. Unwilling to delegate, he spent long hours of each day writing minutes, reading memoranda, and doing tasks that the other Sea Lords should have handled. Each day he reported to the War Cabinet with gloomy figures that showed that the war at sea was Germany’s to win.

  The British offensive in Flanders, at Arras and Vimy, would be in vain if the flow of supplies to the fighting soldiers collapsed. The First Sea Lord decided that it was a race against time. He believed that Britain was losing it.

  On 23 April 1917, St George’s Day, Jellicoe penned a particularly gloomy forecast for the War Cabinet. With the ponderous title of ‘The Submarine Menace and the Food Supply’, he revealed that sinkings for the first two weeks alone in April came to 419,621 tons. Even the most innumerate Cabinet member could double the number to make an estimate for the whole month.

  Jellicoe’s paper, with no apparent irony, observed that ‘it appears evident that the situation calls for immediate action’. Sadly, Sir John had nothing new to suggest, other than the proposal that enormous unsinkable ships could solve the problem. As none existed, this did not impress his readers. To build them would take eighteen months. Otherwise, the admiral proffered the same panacea of more destroyers and patrol vessels, more merchant ships, more depth charges and mines, more armed cargo vessels.

  The War Cabinet, led by a ferocious Lloyd George, discussed the paper with Jellicoe on 25 April. The Prime Minister, like a terrier with a rat, dragged convoys into the middle of the arena. They were not mentioned in Jellicoe’s paper. He wished to know why.

  Jellicoe did not duck the question. He replied that the convoy system was under consideration. He added that trial convoys to Scandinavia had not been a great success. He then reiterated his eternal objection. The Navy did not have enough ships. He personally was not prepared to withdraw patrol vessels from the trade routes to employ them as escorts.

  He could have added that both the French Ministry of Marine and the US Navy Department supported the Admiralty. They also believed that merchant ships, especially the more aged tramp steamers, had neither the engines nor the crews to operate in a disciplined convoy. Some steamers did not even have a voicepipe to connect the bridge and engine room, so they could not possibly maintain station.

  Lloyd George issued what might be thought a threat. He would visit the Admiralty himself. He would chair a meeting of the whole Board to take, in his words, ‘peremptory action on the question of convoys’.

  In fact, the ground had already shifted beneath Jellicoe’s pessimistic black leather shoes. Admiral
Alexander Duff and his Anti-Submarine Division had studied the convoy question for some while. One of Duff’s officers, Commander Reginald Henderson, analysed the statistics. The weekly statement of ships entering and leaving British ports stood at a staggering 2,500 each way every week. These would make many enormous convoys. The figures, though, held a significant flaw. They included every ship over 300 tons, be it a cross-Channel ferry, a coaster edging along the Suffolk shoreline or a collier sneaking across the Irish Sea from Liverpool to Belfast.

  A different picture emerged when only deep-water, long-distance hulls came into the calculation. The ships that needed protection numbered between 120 and 140 per week. Henderson, who organised the ‘controlled sailings’ of the colliers, had demolished one of Jellicoe’s main arguments.

  The commander, very properly, supplied the statistics to his superior, the tall and handsome Admiral Alexander Duff. More clandestinely, he also gave them to Sir Maurice Hankey. He passed them on to Lloyd George.

  Duff lost no time in presenting proposals to Jellicoe, in a memorandum in which he stated that a comprehensive convoy scheme should be introduced. He outlined a selection of prospective schemes. Jellicoe, if not convinced, agreed. By the time that Lloyd George swept into the Admiralty on 30 April 1917, ready to slice admirals into thin salami with his sharp tongue, the question was already settled.

  Lloyd George, in later years, unhesitatingly claimed full credit for introducing the convoy system. As he constantly reminded readers of his memoirs, the Admiralty was ‘palsied and muddle-headed’. Without his personal intervention, Lloyd George modestly implied, the war would have been lost. His interest may well have spurred Jellicoe and Duff into action. Henderson, thoughtfully passing his researches to Number Ten, gave impetus to the Prime Minister’s intervention.