A Naval History of World War I

by Paul G. Halpern

  The British attempted to establish barriers in the Dover Strait and in the North Channel to the Irish Sea. The British minefields were a disappointment, if only because British mines for much of the war were defective. In the Straits of Dover and North Channel there were also lines of drifters towing so-called indicator nets equipped with flares, which, in theory, would fire should a submarine foul the net. Other drifters were equipped with “explosive sweeps”—wires fitted with explosive charges. The British also tried an ambitious steel net, supported by wooden booms, moored to buoys running from Folkestone to Cape Gris-Nez. Weather and strong tides frustrated the attempt, and the British abandoned it in May of 1915. Nevertheless, after a few submarines had experienced difficulties in the Straits of Dover, the F.d.U., Bauer, on 10 April ordered the route to be abandoned. Submarines were forced to proceed to their operational areas around the north of the British Isles, which added approximately 1,400 miles to their passage and cut the time they could remain on station. The large German submarines eventually returned to the Dover route, but not until the end of 1916.35

  The Germans were able to offset some of the disadvantages by the development of the Flanders Submarine Flotilla once the UB and UC boats began to enter service. The Marinekorps Flandern under Vice Admiral Ludwig von Schröder had been expanded from division to corps strength in November 1914, and was directly responsible to the kaiser. There were four submarines at Zeebrugge by the end of 1914, and one, U.24, had been responsible for sinking the battleship Formidable on 31 December (see chapter 2). The objective was to conduct a naval guerrilla war against the British, although in February von Pohl successfully resisted an attempt by the Admiralstab to send a half-flotilla of the High Sea Fleet’s destroyers to Flanders.36 The Germans eventually turned the Belgian coast into one of the most heavily fortified areas in the war, including the 11-inch gun batteries “Tirpitz,” “Hindenburg,” and “Turkijen” and the 15-inch gun batteries “Deutschland” protecting Ostend; and the 12-inch gun battery “Kaiser Wilhelm II” and 11-inch gun batteries “De Haan” and “Donkerklok” protecting Zeebrugge.

  The Flanders U-boat flotilla, commanded by Kapitänleutnant (soon promoted Korvettenkapitän) Bartenbach, used Bruges, which was about 7 miles inland, as its base and reached the open sea by canals that ran to Zeebrugge and Ostend. The first UB boat arrived on 27 March, and the flotilla was formally commissioned on the 29th. The other boats arrived gradually. There were six UB boats operational in the latter part of April, the first UC boat became operational in early June, and by October 1915 the strength of the flotilla had risen to sixteen. The coastal submarines operated at first in the Hoofden, the German name for the area southwest of the line Terschelling-Flamborough Head, against traffic between England and the Netherlands. The UC boats at first concentrated on mining the mouth of the Thames, but by early July the UB boats were passing through the Dover Strait demonstrating that the barriers that had caused the deviation of the larger High Sea Fleet submarines were not insurmountable. The UC boats also passed through the Strait in August, working off Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne. On the whole the German submariners were pleasantly surprised by the performance of the coastal submarines of which they had, initially, not expected significant results. The next series, the UB.II and UC.II boats, were even more capable.37

  The diplomatic implications of the German submarine campaign were as important, if not more so, than its military effects, and from the very beginning there were incidents involving neutral shipping. Shortly after the German war zone went into effect, the Norwegian tanker Belridge carrying oil from the United States to the Netherlands was torpedoed without warning by U.8 on 19 February in the approaches to the Dover Strait. The ship, which was not trading with Britain or France, did not sink and was towed into port. The Germans later admitted it was a mistake and agreed to pay compensation. On 13 March the Swedish steamer Hanna carrying coal from the Tyne to Las Palmas was torpedoed and sunk without warning off Scarborough with the loss of nine lives. Dutch shipping soon fell victim too. On 25 March the steamer Medea (1,235 tons) was stopped by U.28 off Beachy Head and then, although there was no doubt about her nationality, deliberately sunk. The second week in April, the Dutch steamer Katwijk, bound from Rotterdam to Baltimore, was torpedoed and sunk without warning off the North Hinder light vessel in the channel the Germans had declared to be safe. Shortly afterward, the Greek steamer Ellispontos bound from Amsterdam to Montevideo was torpedoed and sunk without warning. These were both neutral steamers, trading between neutral ports. The sinking of the Katwijk aroused considerable indignation in the Netherlands, and the German government and the German Foreign Office replied to Dutch protests that if the sinking of the Katwijk was actually the work of a German submarine, they would pay compensation. The Germans later offered compensation for the Ellispontos as well.38

  The Katwijk affair and German friction with the Dutch are now largely forgotten, along with similar incidents with other neutrals. The major question was, of course, what of incidents between Germany and the United States? They too were not long in coming. On 27 March U.28 stopped the Elder Dempster liner Falaba (4,806 tons), outward bound from Liverpool to Sierra Leone. The submarine gave the liner only five minutes to abandon ship, and then, before the process was ended, torpedoed her. There were 104 people who lost their lives, and one of them turned out to be a United States citizen. The United States government eventually chose not to make a major issue over the death, largely due to the pacifist sentiments of the secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan. Other incidents followed. On 28 April the American freighter Cushing was bombed by German aircraft in the North Sea, without loss. On 1 May the tanker Gulflight, en route to Rouen, was torpedoed without warning off the Scilly Islands. Two men dove overboard and were drowned, and the master died of a heart attack, but the tanker managed to reach port.39 These incidents are also largely forgotten, but the incident remembered to this day, the sinking of the Lusitania, would follow within a few days.

  The Germans had a difficult time resolving their somewhat conflicting orders. They lost two submarines in March. U.12 was rammed by the destroyer Ariel off the Forth, and U.29, whose commander, Weddigen, had been responsible for sinking the Aboukir, Cressy, and Rogue the preceding September, was rammed and sunk by the Dreadnought while attempting to attack the battleship Neptune. The Germans did not learn the full circumstances of Weddigen’s loss until after the war, and there were strong rumors he had been lost as a result of a trap laid through the misuse of neutral flags. On 2 April the kaiser ordered submarines to no longer surface in order to establish the identity of neutral vessels, although it was not clear how this could be reconciled with the instructions to spare certain neutrals. Moreover, after the Katwijk affair, the German government issued orders on 18 April that no neutral vessels were to be attacked.40

  The Cunard liner Lusitania (30,396 tons) was not a neutral steamer; none of the neutrals, not even the Dutch, had a large four-funneled liner. Moreover, the silhouette of the Lusitania and her sister ship Mauretania had appeared in the 1914 edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships as auxiliary cruisers. In an age that looked with awe on great passenger liners, both were among the best-known ships in the world, and the Mauretania held the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing. The commander of the submarine U.20, Kapitänleutnant Walter Schwieger, could have had little doubt what he was firing at when he put a torpedo into the liner in the western approaches off the coast of Ireland on 7 May. The Lusitania sank with the loss of 1,201 lives, many of them women and children, and 128 of the dead were United States citizens. The incident set off a major diplomatic controversy between Germany and the United States in which the torpedoing without warning of the homeward-bound American steamer Nebraskan off the Irish coast on the 25th seemed to add insult to injury, although the damaged ship was towed back to port.

  Schwieger appears to have believed the liner was being used as a troop transport, and ever since there has been considerable ink spilled ov
er how much ammunition the Lusitania was carrying, because there had been a second explosion. There have even been suggestions that Churchill manufactured the incident to embroil the Americans as the liner was reported to be foolishly steaming at a slow speed. There is no space to enter into the question in detail, but the Germans, however strong their case from the legal and perhaps even moral point of view given the ruthless nature of the Allied blockade, had committed a particularly brutal act, and in the long run they paid the consequences in the alienation of American public opinion and the circumstances that eventually resulted in American entry into the world war.41

  The Germans, in what today might be called diplomatic “damage control,” managed to avoid an open break with the United States and to ward off President Wilson’s demands for a virtual cessation of submarine warfare against commerce. They paid a price, even before any public compromise with the Americans. On 5 June Bethmann Hollweg, despite the fierce opposition of the naval authorities, won the kaiser’s agreement to an order that submarines would not attack large passenger liners even if they flew the enemy flag. Bachmann and Tirpitz submitted their resignations, which were not at first accepted. The Germans proposed to the Americans that a special transatlantic service be established for Americans who desired to travel. The ships would be clearly marked and the Germans would be notified in advance of their movements. The Americans indignantly rejected the proposal, but President Wilson seemed to be moving toward acceptance of submarine war as conducted in June and July, that is, with passenger liners spared and no incidents involving American seamen.42

  How did the U-boats perform under the restrictions? The answer is not badly at all. The tonnage sunk in June and July was only slightly less than it had been in April and May, and the number of ships sunk was actually higher. Both the number of ships sunk and total tonnage was greater in August and September than it had been in April and May. The average number of submarines at sea each day during August and September was also high, 8.6 compared to 5.6 between March and May. The relevant figures concerning sinking were: June, 114 ships and 115,291 tons; July, 86 ships and 98,005 tons; August, 107 ships and 182,772 tons; and September, 58 ships and 136,048 tons. The Germans lost 10 submarines and gave another to the Austrians during these months, but they commissioned 15 new boats, of which 10 were UC coastal minelayers.43

  There was another reason why the Germans, whatever fhe laments of the naval leaders, continued to do well despite the restrictions imposed after the sinking of the Lusitania. Ships had been torpedoed without warning when they were too large or too fast for the submarine’s gun to be effective. Submarine commanders much preferred to use gunfire or explosive charges in order to preserve their precious and limited supply of torpedoes. Therefore, from June to September 1915 the number of ships torpedoed without warning decreased, but the number of those sunk by gunfire and explosives increased. Ironically it seemed more humane. It is a peculiarity of public opinion that the sinking of passenger liners carrying innocent men, women, and children aroused great indignation, but the slaughter of grubby freighters and merchant seamen plying their hard trade was passed over, if not in total silence, at least with far less comment—provided of course they were not American. However, it was upon those rusty and unglamorous freighters, not the passenger liners, that the British depended for the bulk of their vital supplies.

  The arrangement was threatened by any spectacular incident, which remained likely because submarines were still authorized to torpedo without warning when they could not establish a ship was neutral. Moreover, while British antisubmarine defenses were relatively ineffective, they were employing one weapon that made it very dangerous for the German submarines to observe the proper restraints. This weapon was the Q-ship, which made it too hazardous for submarines to employ the customary forms of cruiser warfare and made it, perhaps, inevitable that they would be involved in another incident with the United States. The Q-ships were decoys, generally tramp steamers but sometimes sailing vessels, deliberately designed to appear harmless and easy prey. They carried concealed guns and hoped to entice a submarine close enough to where it could be destroyed. On 26 November 1914, Churchill ordered the commander in chief Portsmouth to fit out a small- or medium-sized steamer to trap the German submarine operating off Le Havre. The first vessel chosen proved unsuitable and was soon paid off, but the second, the salvage tug Lyon, began operations in February 1915.

  The British also concealed guns on fishing trawlers in order to protect the fishing fleets. There was another variant, a trawler working in coordination with a submarine. The trawler would tow the submarine, which was linked to it by telephone, and should a German U-boat approach on the surface the submarine would be warned, the tow would be slipped, and the submarine would attempt to attack the U-boat. The first Q-ship success actually came in this manner when the trawler Taranaki working in conjunction with the submarine C.24 sank U.40 on 24 June. The trawler Princess Louis and C.27 accounted for a second U-boat, U.23, on 20 July. The Germans learned of the ruse, however, took precautions, and the trawler-submarine combinations had no further success and were later ended. On 24 July the Prince Charles became the first Q-ship operating alone to destroy a U-boat, U.36, and the Baralong sank U.27 on 19 August and U.41 on 24 September. The successes achieved by the Q-ships in the summer of 1915 were all the more important because so few methods had appeared to work against the submarine. This resulted in Q-ships being employed in sizable numbers for much of the war, and long after they had passed the peak of their effectiveness.44

  The destruction of U.27 by the Baralong caused another diplomatic incident in which the Germans were able to charge the British with committing an atrocity which they attempted to use to offset charges of German atrocities. This was very convenient, because on the same day Kapitänleutnant Schneider in U.24 had torpedoed and sunk without warning south of the Irish coast the White Star liner Arabic (15,801 tons), which had been en route to America. The destruction of the liner was a violation of German assurances to the United States, and there were two or three Americans among the forty-four dead. The steamer had only one funnel but was large—600 feet long—and should have been easily recognized as a liner. Schneider, who had had a brush with a large steamer a few days before, reported that the unknown steamer had turned toward him and he thought she was attempting to ram.

  The Baralong, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Godfrey Herbert, was more than 100 miles away and had intercepted the wireless calls from the Arabic. Herbert knew the Germans had committed what in his and his ship’s company’s mind was another atrocity when, later in the day, they steamed to the assistance of the Leyland Line steamer Nicosian (6,369 tons), carrying a cargo of mules from America, which had been shelled and then stopped by Kapitänleutnant Wegener and the U.27. The Baralong, wearing American colors, made the international signal that she was approaching to rescue the crew, but when shielded from the submarine’s view by the Nicosian, hoisted the white ensign and opened fire. The submarine was repeatedly hit and began to sink, but Herbert noticed about a dozen Germans who had dived overboard swam to the Nicosian and were seeking to climb the ropes left hanging when the steamer had lowered her boats. Herbert feared that the Germans would either scuttle or set fire to the ship and opened fire on them. Six Germans succeeded in getting back aboard the Nicosian, and Herbert sent a boarding party of Marines to the ship. The Germans in the Nicosian were killed, and when some American muleteers who had been accompanying the mules returned to port, they spread stories of a massacre. The stories varied, some were suspect, but when seen in the context of the Lusitania and Arabic affairs, it is probable that the Marines, searching an unlit and strange ship for a hated enemy they thought had committed atrocities, and in this particular case might have been armed, shot first and asked questions later.45

  The Germans now had a “British atrocity” charge of their own to counter the charges against them and undoubtedly would have charged Herbert as a war criminal had they won the war
. The Baralong affair doubtlessly hardened the attitude of U-boat commanders, and the use of Q-ships made it much more dangerous for the Germans to wage the submarine war under prize rules. The Arabic and Baralong incidents, coming on the same day, also demonstrate how difficult it was to reconcile the submarine war and the methods used to counter it with what had been the traditional rules of warfare. Technically, until 15 September 1915, Q-ships might well have been considered “pirates,” for it was only on this date that the Admiralty finally decided they must be commissioned.46

  The Arabic affair caused another crisis between Germany and the United States, which was fueled by the sinking of the Allan liner Hesperian (10,920 tons) southwest of Fastnet, Ireland, by Schwieger and the U.20—the man who had sunk the Lusitania—with the loss of thirty-two lives, none American. There was an equally severe crisis within the German government. Falkenhayn, chief of the general staff, supported the chancellor, for he wanted to avoid further complications with neutrals because of the impending entry of Bulgaria into the war and the prospect of a Balkan campaign. He would have been hard pressed to find sufficient troops to meet the situation in the north had the Dutch been drawn into the war. The crisis ended with another temporary victory by Bethmann Hollweg over the admirals when the kaiser issued the order that henceforth no passenger liners, even small ones, would be sunk without warning and safeguarding the passengers. Shortly afterward the kaiser ordered that for the time being U-boats would not be stationed in the western approaches, which were where passenger liners were most likely to be found and where the worst incidents had occurred. Now the question was would a submarine commander have to stop and search even a small ship that appeared to be a freighter to make sure it was not carrying any passengers? Von Pohl believed this would make further prosecution of the U-boat campaign impossible and asked to be relieved. Müller replied he had submitted von Pohl’s protest but not his resignation to the kaiser. Müller did help to arrange for Bachmann, whose opposition had incurred the kaiser’s displeasure, to be replaced as head of the Admiralstab by Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, a known enemy of Tirpitz. Holtzendorff assumed office on 6 September, but the situation in the navy was so acrimonious that Müller, in consultation with the new chief of the Admiralstab, drafted a memorandum for the kaiser’s signature warning against insubordination and criticism.47 Tirpitz had also submitted his resignation for the second time, but he was considered too popular and was retained in office. He was, however, deprived of his advisory status with the Admiralstab and restricted to purely administrative duties at the Imperial Naval Office.