by Deborah Lake
The story Lloyd George told bore little relationship to the facts. That did not matter. When it comes to propaganda, to rousing a nation’s soul, the mundane truth is usually less than inspiring. Lloyd George, having peopled the trawler’s deck with dead and dying, glossed over the details. Ethel & Millie did not rate a mention. Their presence would detract from Lloyd George’s thrilling tale of derring-do.
Four days later, the Fifth Supplement to the London Gazette of 2 November 1917 announced an award to Thomas Crisp, Skipper, Royal Naval Reserve. His name came immediately below those of Charles Bonner and Ernest Pitcher.
In 1917, only two awards could be made posthumously. One was a Mention in Despatches. The other was the Victoria Cross.
FIFTEEN
THE OCEANS BECAME BARE AND EMPTY
September 1917 brought faint glimmers of hope. Allied naval policy had, since the war began, been devoted to two aims. The first was that U-boats should not reach open waters. The second was that, should they succeed, they would be hunted to destruction. Admirable ambitions that met with little success.
It took three years of war for the Royal Navy to produce a reasonably efficient mine. Based almost in its entirety on the German version, it did at least explode when required. The minefields of the Straits of Dover and the Heligoland Bight, did not, however, stop the U-boats of the High Seas Fleet and the Flanders Flotilla.
Swarms of German minesweepers, protected by destroyers, swept the Bight regularly. They kept it clear enough for the big U-boats to journey more or less as they pleased.
The Straits of Dover proved no great obstacle either. A reasonably competent captain could take his boat through their minefields on the surface at night. Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, in command of the Dover Patrol, considered that his major function was protection of cross-Channel traffic. As long as that remained safe, he believed his deterrents worked.
Bacon, like many highly intelligent men, found it difficult to acknowledge that he was ever wrong. He refused to accept that any U-boats ever found their delicate way through the complex system of mines, 750 miles of nets and myriad of surface craft, including two cruisers and, until the end of 1915, an ancient battleship.
Bacon agreed that smaller U-boats might try to run the gauntlet. Ocean-going boats, however, had to take the longer route around Scotland. The Kaiserliche Marine assiduously fostered this assumption. A directive to commanders stressed, ‘Those craft which in exceptional cases pass around Scotland are to let themselves be seen as freely as possible, in order to mislead the English.’
U-boat commanders had strict instructions not to attack shipping in the area between the minefields and the nets. If the British realised that the Straits were regularly breached, they would take more effective measures.
Bacon was, however, substantially correct in respect of the High Seas Fleet boats that sank the majority of the deep-water merchant shipping. The big U-series boats essentially stopped using the Dover passage after U 37 went down in April 1915. Apart from a few stray incursions and the brief periods of February to early March 1917 and December 1917 to January 1918, the big boats took the long route to their patrol areas. It was the smaller boats, the UC II Class minelayers and others, that sneaked through the Channel.
An event in August 1917 severely challenged Bacon’s stance. According to Royal Navy sources, British low cunning sank the minelayer UC 44 in one of its own minefields in shallow water near Waterford. She entered a field that the British pretended to have cleared. Subsequent research almost certainly proves she went up when laying her ninth mine. The explosion wrecked her stern. Minesweepers subsequently found eight other mines.
Whatever the cause, she yielded a rich intelligence harvest. Papers in her safe proved without doubt that the U-boats considered the Straits of Dover no hazard at all. That the documents referred only to the smaller boats made no difference. To many admirals, to Downing Street, and most of the British public, all U-boats were one and the same.
Apart from better mines, technical advances did not amount to much. Hydrophones were finally in service, although they gave poor results. Hunting flotillas so equipped chased around the ocean, only to learn that to track a submerged U-boat was no simple task. Under water, she altered course and speed at a rate the hydrophones could not detect.
Better depth charges appeared, along with mechanical ‘throwers’ that spread the charges in a pattern.
Most British submarines now patrolled the areas through which the U-boats passed to the war zones. They saw rather too many U-boats for complacency. They destroyed rather too few for congratulations. Low speed underwater and notoriously unreliable torpedoes handicapped the notion of the hunter-killer submarine.
Air patrols showed promise. Both aeroplanes and airships ranged far out over the sea. Working with direction-finding stations on land, they pinpointed surfaced boats by their wireless messages. Air attacks failed to destroy any U-boats. They did become one more niggle at the morale of U-boat crews.
At an inter-Allied conference in early September 1917, held to review the anti-submarine war, most delegates still believed the outlook was, at best, bleak. At worst, total defeat remained possible.
Jellicoe made two proposals. Both satisfied the Admiralty’s yearning for aggressive moves. His first was to mount a colossal blocking operation against all the German harbours in the North Sea and the Baltic. The move envisaged the capture of one or more islands in the Heligoland Bight to act as a base. From there, British ships could sally forth on offensive operations. The possible enemy reaction was glossed over. Not surprisingly, the assembled admirals felt it was impracticable.
As an alternative to this stupendous scheme, they reached agreement on constructing a huge minefield to block the North Sea from Shetland to Norway. An enormous number of minelayers and escorts would drop 100,000 mines as soon as ships and weapons became available. As the British munitions industry, with all its other commitments, had no chance of making so many mines, the scheme required American help. The promise came. Production would, though, take some while.
As Kapitänleutnant Max Valentiner commented about a similar proposal to block the Otranto Straits: ‘One day they will realise what every reasonable person knew from the beginning: the attempt to completely block a stretch of water 40 miles across is condemned to failure at the outset.’
Norway to the Shetland Islands is rather more than 40 miles.
Jellicoe’s second scheme was to seal the German North Sea bases by sinking block ships at their exits. Destruction of the bases themselves was an alternative which, Jellicoe admitted, ‘was an operation involving large military assistance’. A note of desperation sounds in this proposal. It was another step on the path to the 1918 Zeebrugge and Ostend raids that so thrilled the British public.
Only one man among the plethora of gold-braided sleeves realised that the answer to the U-boat had already arrived. Admiral William Sims of the United States pointed out that, contrary to most naval opinion, the convoy system was actually an attacking measure. It forced the U-boats to fight at a disadvantage. Then he sounded a note of prophetic warning. If the Germans decided that the convoy system frustrated the U-boat campaign, they might use surface ships. A determined attempt to attack convoys with heavy powerful ships would force the Allies to use their dreadnoughts as escorts.
If the conference had met four weeks later, the situation would have seemed brighter. In September, shipping losses fell to 351,478 tons from all causes. Further, in October, it became clear that the U-boats had moved to inshore waters from the open ocean where they failed to find targets.
The Atlantic is large. In good weather, a U-boat could spot a merchant ship up to 10 miles distant. A U-boat 15 miles away would not sight a convoy of twenty ships. In contrast, those twenty ships sailing separately could each be seen from anywhere on a 20-mile-diameter circle.
A certain Kapitänleutnant Karl Dönitz, sometime later an admiral in Hitler’s navy, expressed the problem clearly:
. . . the oceans at once became bare and empty; for long periods at a time the U-boats, operating individually, would see nothing at all; and then suddenly up would loom a huge concourse of ships, thirty or fifty of them or more of them, surrounded by a strong escort of warships of all types. The solitary U-boat that most probably had sighted the convoy purely by chance, would then attack, thrusting again and again and persisting, if the commander had strong nerves, for perhaps several days and nights, until the physical exhaustion of both commander and crew, forced a halt. The lone U-boat might well sink one or two of the ships, or even several; but that was but a small percentage of the whole. The convoy would steam on. In most cases no other German U-boat would catch sight of it, and it would reach Britain, bringing a rich cargo of foodstuffs and raw materials safely to port.
Dönitz wrote of his time in the Mediterranean. The same applied around Britain. For the U-boats, it seemed as if someone had waved a magic wand. Ships became invisible. Like all predators, the U-boats duly migrated to seek their prey. They moved from the ocean to coastal waters. They still sank ships in large numbers but these were minnows of less than 500 tons that sailed alone.
Inshore, the Kaiserliche Marine also found the convoys – well protected by patrols and aircraft. No longer were the U-boats wolves among sheep. Attacks became a most risky business. Firing a torpedo invited almost instant retribution.
The statistics proved it. Ten per cent of ships sailing alone fell to U-boats. In convoy, the proportion plummeted to one or two in every hundred.
Convoys were not the sole reason for lower lost tonnage. Some redeployment of U-boats caused a drop in patrols. Temporary exhaustion of crews and support services also cut the effort. During September, some sixty U-boats put to sea. Eleven were lost by various means, the first month in which U-boat losses reached double figures. Seven new boats came into service. They entered the fray with inexperienced crews. In the British service, every submariner was a volunteer. In the more disciplined world of the Imperial Navy, ratings did not enjoy that luxury.
Q-ships still roamed hopefully, with little success. Decoys even fooled each other, as Lieutenant Muhlhauser of the Tay & Tyne recalled:
. . . a large steamer of about 5,000 tons appeared coming towards us. This was the very sort of ship that Fritz was looking for, a slow, unescorted tramp of comfortable tonnage, and the CO decided to escort her along the coast. The lack of depth charges handicapped us very severely as far as attacking was concerned, but he hoped if the big ship were torpedoed we might manage to get a blow in somewhere. We accordingly closed the approaching steamer and signalled: ‘There is an enemy submarine ten miles south-east of you. I will escort you to the Tuskar.’ The reply shook us to the core. ‘Thank you. There is no need. I can look after myself. I am HMS Starmount.’ It was another ‘Q’ ship!
Starmount served as an alias for Stormount, a Q-ship of half the tonnage Muhlhauser estimated. Less than three weeks later, on 28 September 1917, an unsympathetic U-boat torpedoed her without warning. She managed to reach Devonport.
In October, shipping losses increased to 458,558 tons, mostly down to the unchecked rampage in the Mediterranean. There, convoys were not yet standard practice. The five Allied powers working the area – Britain, France, Italy, the United States and Japan – squabbled over precedence, prestige, politics and policy at the expense of fighting the enemy. Convoys only began to operate in November, between Port Said and Gibraltar. They were poorly organised, with inadequate escorts both in number and ability and with little air cover. Ships continued to go down at a high rate.
In British waters, individual boats destroyed fewer and smaller ships on each patrol. Despite hopeful British claims that the morale of the U-boat crews had slumped, the volunteers and pressed men of the Kaiserliche Marine showed an unyielding single-mindedness. They fought on, to the best of their considerable ability. Against them, the Royal Navy showed equal resolution to control the sea lanes.
On 1 October 1917, an elaborate ambush operation began in the North Sea. Intercepted wireless messages suggested that a number of U-boats would return to base by the northern passage and down the North Sea. Accordingly, forty-seven destroyers, twenty-four trawlers and forty-two drifters, equipped with mine nets, and four submarines attempted to put a barrier across and along the route. The flotilla had some 300 miles of narrowing funnel to patrol. It needed 10 miles of mined nets to block the narrowest part alone.
Bad weather intervened. Some destroyers returned to harbour three times. Others abandoned their patrols to fight towering seas and howling winds. Only the fishing boats of the Auxiliary Patrol rode out the weather. In spite of ferocious seas, driving rain and gales, the skippers grimly maintained their posts, listening to the odd sounds that came from their primitive hydrophones.
At the end of ten days, the Admiralty believed that they had destroyed three U-boats, identified as U 50, U 66 and U 106. These certain identifications came from intelligence reports, interrogations and guesswork. As was often the case, reality was vastly different. All three were destroyed elsewhere on various dates. The body of Kapitänleutnant Gerhard Berger, commander of U 50, washed ashore on 23 September 1917, three weeks after his boat succumbed to a mine off Terschelling. Similarly, U 66 perished on 3 September, again from a mine, with Kapitänleutnant Gerhard Muhle and the entire crew. U 106 failed to return from her maiden patrol. Kapitänleutnant Hans Hufnagel and forty men were lost in a newly laid minefield near Heligoland.
The forebodings of Admiral William Sims at the September Conference came harshly true in October. The Scandinavian convoys that had operated for nearly five months became the target. The Admiralty listening service warned on 15 October that German warships were about to move. Some eighty Royal Navy vessels flooded into the North Sea to stop them.
SMS Brummer, captained by Fregattenkapitän Max Leonhardi, and Fregattenkapitän Siegfried Westerkamp with SMS Bremse, both ‘baby’ cruisers of more than 4,000 tons and a top speed of 28 knots, hammered north from Wilhelmshaven. Designed as minelayers, they also carried four 15cm quick-firing guns. Their mission was simply to aid the U-boat war.
On 17 October, 65 miles east of Lerwick, they found a twelve-vessel convoy escorted by the British destroyers Strongbow and Mary Rose and two armed trawlers, Elise and P. Fannon. Strongbow was just astern of the convoy, Mary Rose some 6 to 8 miles ahead of it. Matters had not gone well for the escorts. What followed was a demonstration that chance in war can sometimes mean death, glory or both.
Mary Rose, under Lieutenant Commander Charles Leonard Fox, and Strongbow, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Edward Brooke, left a rain-swept Lerwick on Shetland on 15 October. With the two trawlers, they escorted a convoy bound for Scandinavia. Shortly before noon the next day, Mary Rose hurried ahead to meet an incoming convoy off Marsten in Norway. Strongbow was to continue westward, to oversee the dispersal of the convoy before rejoining Mary Rose at sea.
Darkness had already fallen when Brooke and Strongbow overhauled the Marsten convoy of two British, one Belgian, one Danish, five Norwegian and three Swedish merchantmen on the evening of 16 October 1917. A wireless fault prevented Mary Rose and Strongbow talking to each other. Brooke used his initiative to take up a position on the left of the convoy.
At 0600 British time the next morning, in poor visibility, Strongbow saw two ships she assumed to be British cruisers. Brummer’s war diary detailed the action:
. . . vessel in sight . . . is identified as a destroyer with three funnels and two masts. Astern, 11 steamers in a two-column formation are soon discerned. Approximate course West by South. At the end of the north column, stationed somewhat north, is another three-funnelled destroyer of the same type as the first.
The first destroyer sends recognition signals with a small searchlight. It is immediately repeated by Brummer, initially with a low-powered lamp, then with a proper signal light. She is apparently fooled by this and maintains her course. She then signals again with a series of char
acters to which Brummer replies with a string of poorly semaphored letters. In the meantime, Brummer turned about one point to starboard. Range about 3,000 metres.
7:06 First salvo at the lead destroyer. Range 2,800; splashes short right. At this, the destroyer turns starboard. Second salvo: hit observed that apparently went into the engines so that she was without power. Brummer had by now turned to starboard, so the enemy was about 4 points to port. More straddling salvos and apparently many hits. Substantial smoke and steam engulfed her amidships.
A steamer, apparently a trawler, two points ahead to starboard, fired on Brummer. Judging from an impact 50 to 100 metres short, and bright yellow-green in colour, apparently with gas shells.
In the meantime, a larger steamer from the south column brought under fire, about 3 points to starboard. Vessel was armed and definitely fired a shot. Then numerous steamers of the convoy brought under fire in turn.
Brummer chases a steamer that is trying to escape. Bremse busy with destruction of the convoy. A destroyer is sighted to the NW, which is promptly flashed recognition signals. The destroyer sends six to eight characters in Morse code. Distance circa 6,000 metres.
Opened fire, which was returned at 7:40. Engagement with varying courses and speeds lasts until 8:06. Opponent fires quick salvos with good ranging on the bridge. Several straddling salvos. Brummer takes a hit on the forecastle that causes only minimal splinter damage. The destroyer received in total 15 hits. At 8:03 fire was no longer being returned. The destroyer is by now so badly damaged that she is dead in the water and enveloped in smoke and steam. Approached to circa 500 metres and fired three salvos. The boat was at the point of sinking. Brummer chases after a steamer.