A Naval History of World War I

by Paul G. Halpern

  The Möwe’s career in the Fernando-Noronha-Rocas zone was successful, although the British missed a chance to catch her on 9 January when the Minieh (2,890 tons), serving as collier for the cruiser Amethyst, failed to report the approach of a suspicious vessel until it was too late to get off a warning message by wireless. A later study made by the Admiralty was inclined to believe the German account that the Minieh’s master had been found in a semi-intoxicated state. On the other hand, the Amethyst’s wireless operators did not recognize the importance of the jammed signal from the Minieh, although the cruiser was very close. The failure to realize a jammed signal might be evidence of a ship under attack undoubtedly permitted the Möwe to escape. The raider also survived an encounter on 10 March with the steamer Otaki (9,575 tons), which put up a plucky fight with her single 4.7-inch gun. Merchantmen were not equipped with range finders, which put them at a great disadvantage when faced by the more heavily armed raiders, but this action took place at very short range because of the rough seas and the Otaki hit three times before being sunk, starting a fire in the Möwe’s bunkers that took two days to extinguish and was dangerously close to the ammunition supply.

  On 22 March the Möwe returned safely to Kiel after a four-month cruise, having sunk or captured 22 steamers (20 British) and 3 sailing ships, a total of 123,265 tons. This was the most successful cruise of any of the German raiders. Most of the Allied loss was probably unnecessary. An Admiralty study on cruiser operations made during the Second World War with the obvious intent of countering similar German operations was quite harsh in its conclusions. The Möwe had continued to sink ship after ship on the principal trade routes despite the expenditure of an enormous amount of fuel and energy by the British and French navies to stop her. The reason, of course, was “the fundamental difficulty of locating ships on the wide expanse of the ocean.” The conclusion: “There can now be little doubt that if the Atlantic trade had been organised into convoys and escorted by the numerous cruisers that were scouring the sea, these heavy losses would have been prevented.”116

  The raider Wolf(II) sailed on 30 November 1916, little more than a week after the Möwe. The raider was formerly the Hansa Line’s Wachtenfels (5,809 tons), now armed with seven 15-cm guns, three smaller guns for arming auxiliaries, four torpedo tubes, 465 mines, and a Friedrichshafen seaplane, dubbed Wölfchen. Her commander, Korvettenkapitan Karl-August Nerger, had by far the longest cruise—close to fifteen months—of any raider during the war, for the Wolf did not return to German waters until the latter part of February 1918. The Admiralstab ordered Nerger to mine the approaches to major ports in South Africa and British India and to continue the war against commerce only after he had expended his mines. His major objective was then to be the grain trade between Australia and Europe.

  The Wolf was escorted through the North Sea by U-boats, passed through an ice field in the Denmark Strait, and then made the long journey to South African waters without attacking any ships. She laid her first minefield off the Cape on the night of 16 January. Nerger laid minefields off Capetown, Cape Agulhas, Colombo, and Bombay during the months of January and February. On 28 February he captured the British steamer Turritella (5,528 tons), which he commissioned as the auxiliary cruiser Iltis, and, after arming her and transferring 25 mines, ordered her to operate in the Straits of Perim and mine the main channel between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The captured Chinese crew agreed to work under the Germans.

  British, French, and Japanese warships on the Cape, East Indies, and China stations had been placed on guard against raiders in January, but this had been based on news the Möwe was out. There was no definite intelligence of the Wolf until 5 March. In February, March, and April of 1917 there were approximately 31 cruisers (including 10 Japanese and 3 French), 14 destroyers (British, Australian, and Japanese), and 9 sloops searching for the raider. By the end of March, there was even the old battleship Exmouth working the transport route between Colombo and Bombay, and in April the light cruisers Gloucester and Brisbane were detached from the Adriatic and Australia, and a seaplane carrier, the Raven II, arrived at Colombo. The significant Japanese contribution has largely been forgotten, although Newbolt admitted in the official history that the Japanese did rather more than was asked of them and really became the predominant partner in the Indian Ocean.117 There was eventually a Japanese vice admiral at Singapore with four cruisers and four destroyers, and another Japanese rear admiral with two cruisers protected commerce on the east coast of Australia. Two Japanese cruisers patrolled in the region of Mauritius and then escorted traffic between Mauritius and the Cape, and another detached squadron of two Japanese cruisers escorted traffic between Australia and Colombo.

  The Iltis was not particularly successful. Shortly after laying her minefield, which subsequently damaged but did not sink two ships, she was challenged by the sloop Odin in the Gulf of Aden on 4 March and scuttled herself to avoid capture. The Admiralty responded to the news by first halting all transports in the Indian Ocean and then escorting one or two transports with cruisers while other patrols searched fruitlessly for the raider. The Wolf continued to coal from prizes, and after six months at sea overhauled her engines and boilers at remote Sunday Island in the Kermadecs northeast of New Zealand. Nerger then proceeded to lay mines off the northwest corner of New Zealand and then near the Cook Strait and in the Bass Strait. The Wolf’s final minefield was laid off the Anamba Islands near Singapore. The Admiralty, having had no news of the Wolf for some time, had canceled the Indian Ocean escorts on 2 June, and when the raider reentered the Indian Ocean in September, shipping was unprotected.

  Nerger, thanks to coaling from prizes, was able to prolong his voyage beyond original expectations. He was always far ahead of Admiralty intelligence in the vast oceans. For example, the report of the Wolf’s visit to the Maldive Islands in September did not become known to the Admiralty until December. They promptly resumed escorts of transports in the Indian Ocean. By this time Nerger was far away in the Atlantic, on his way home in company with the captured Spanish steamer Igotz Mendi (4,468 tons), which had been serving as a collier since her capture on 10 November. The Wolf, by now leaking badly, finally reached German waters on 17 February 1918, although the Igotz Menai ran aground in fog off Skagen and was interned by the Danes. The Wolf’s mines had sunk a total of 13 steamers (11 British) representing 75,888 tons. Three ships had been damaged by mines but brought safely into port. The Wolf also captured or sank another 7 steamers (5 British) and 7 sailing ships (one British), representing 38,391 tons for a combined total of 114,279 tons.118 This is of course impressive, but it represented a cruise of almost 15 months and would only average out to about 7,700 tons of shipping destroyed per month. It appears minuscule compared to what the U-boats were accomplishing.

  The last of the German raiders that proved so troublesome in 1917 was the Seeadler (1,571 tons), which sailed on 21 December 1916. She was by far the most romantic, for she was a full-rigged sailing ship equipped with an auxiliary motor. Originally the American Pass of Balmaha, she had been captured by the U.36 and then fitted with two 10.5-cm guns hidden under a cargo of timber. Her commander, Kapitänleutnant Felix Graf von Luckner, thanks to his own. memoirs and the admiring work of the American correspondent Lowell Thomas, became one of the best-known and certainly most popular German naval officers in the interwar period.119 The Seeadler had been meticulously disguised as a Norwegian ship, and the Germans had taken pains to obtain some Norwegian-speaking sailors for the crew. They were equipped with carefully prepared Norwegian cover stories and ephemera such as letters and photographs. The Seeadler was therefore able to pass inspection when stopped by a cruiser of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron. She was able to proceed to her first operating area in the South Atlantic northwest of St. Paul Rocks and begin taking prizes. This was the same area where the Karlsruhe had been so successful in 1914 (see chapter 4). By the time the Admiralty received definite intelligence she was at work when a barque carrying her prisoners
arrived at Rio de Janeiro on 30 March, Luckner had left the area to round Cape Horn well to the south and proceed to the sailing ship route in the Pacific.

  The Seeadler’s career came to a premature end when she called at the uninhabited island of Mopihaa (Mopeha) in the Society Islands to obtain fresh food to counter the scurvy that had appeared among the crew. On 2 August a sudden wind and heavy sea developed with little warning, the ship’s anchor dragged, and the Seeadler was wrecked. Two of the Seeadler’s boats survived, and three weeks later Luckner and five officers and seamen set out in one to attempt to capture a schooner. They did not succeed, and in late September the Germans were captured at Wakaya in the Fiji Island group. Luckner was transferred to New Zealand and succeeded in escaping from rather lenient imprisonment to the Kermadec Islands before he was recaptured. The Germans left by Luckner at Mopeha set out in the other boat and managed to capture a small French schooner, which they renamed Fortuna (126 tons), and sailed to Easter Island. A Chilean cruiser picked them up and brought them to the mainland where they were interned. The Seeadler’s career, eight and a half months long, may have been colorful and romantic, but it was the least productive of the 1917 raiders. She captured or sank only 3 freighters and 13 sailing ships, a total of 30,099 tons. Only six of the ships were British.120

  The Leopard, the last of the German raiders during the war, had only a brief career and no success. She was the Möwe’s prize the Yarrowdale (4,652 tons), which was armed with five 15-cm guns, four 8.8-cm guns, and two torpedo tubes. The Germans apparently hoped to profit from the intelligence they had gleaned through wireless intercepts of the Northern Patrol’s movements and dispositions. They did not succeed. The Leopard passed through the Little Belt on 7 March 1917 but had not yet taken any prizes when on 16 March in the waters between Scotland and Norway she was intercepted by the armored cruiser Achilles and the boarding vessel Dundee (2,187 tons) of the Northern Patrol. The latter sent a boat to examine the suspicious ship, which claimed to be Norwegian, but the British were cautious and escaped damage when the raider suddenly disclosed her identity and fired a torpedo. The Germans made no attempt to surrender, and after a hot fight the Leopard was sunk with all hands, including the British boarding party.121

  The German raiders were a popular subject for authors in the 1920s. They seemed a romantic link with an earlier age, far removed from the grim slaughter and spurlos versunkt—sunk without a trace—activities of the U-boats. Their commanders also seem to have behaved chivalrously and have received a good press—particularly von Luckner—and were usually well spoken of by their former prisoners. The losses they inflicted were nowhere near the losses inflicted by the U-boats. Nevertheless they were not negligible, for a 1940 study by the Admiralty points out the cruisers of 1914 and the auxiliary cruisers of 1916–17 had captured more than 620,000 tons of shipping. These losses were described as “very heavy” and were obscured only by the even greater success of the submarines. However, more than half of these losses were due to the early cruisers, such as the Emden and Karlsruhe. The three raiders of 1916–17 sank only about 268,000 tons. Given the worldwide shortage of shipping, these losses were painful; and the raiders also, as we have seen, tied down a large number of cruisers. Many of those Allied losses may have been unnecessary. The Admiralty study pointed out that the success of the raiders could have been drastically cut had the British and French resorted to convoys and employed the cruisers wasted on useless patrols as escorts. In addition the raiders would have been deprived of the coal they took from their prizes, which certainly would have curtailed their activities. In fact, as the Admiralty study pointed out, even if convoys had been confined to vessels carrying coal, the raiders “would very soon have been brought to a dead stop.”122 The raiders, though, were secondary. The real decision in the naval war would depend on the success or failure of the submarine campaign, and here the introduction of the convoy system was decisive.

  THE HIGH SEA FLEET AND THE SUBMARINE CAMPAIGN

  What of the High Sea Fleet during the U-boat campaign? The High Sea Fleet had the constant task of supporting the essential minesweeping activities that kept the vital Wege clear for the U-boats in the Bight. But could or would the great ships do anything more? Certainly the demands of the submarine service caused a constant drain on the personnel of the High Sea Fleet. The effects were especially felt among the officers. It was true that the submarine war was one of relatively junior officers, with little scope for the more senior, who had traditionally found employment in the big ships or staffs of squadron commanders. Nevertheless the submarines took the most experienced of the younger officers, who then had to be replaced, and their replacements were neither experienced nor, as events proved, as successful in relations with their men.123 The first serious disturbances in the High Sea Fleet occurred in August 1917 and were dealt with harshly.124

  In March 1917 Scheer planned a sortie by the High Sea Fleet into the Hoofden to attack convoy traffic between the east coast of England and the Netherlands where U-boat attacks on shipping were hampered by the presence of destroyer escorts. On a night when the moon would provide plenty of light German light cruisers and destroyer flotillas would sweep the convoy route with the battleships in direct support. The kaiser, on the advice of the deputy chief of the Admiralstab, Vice Admiral Koch, ruled that the sweep could only be undertaken if air reconnaissance was assured to counter the danger the Grand Fleet might receive intelligence of the German sortie in sufficient time to intercept the High Sea Fleet. Scheer protested that the often unreliable airship reconnaissance was not really necessary and resented the implied lack of trust in him that the kaiser’s and Admiralstab’s limitations implied. The controversy marked a definite rift between the High Sea Fleet commander and the Admiralstab, because Scheer, with great disgust, assumed they were reverting to the policy in which the fleet would be saved for peace or in the unlikely event the British would try to force the Belts. The decision was not changed, and consistently bad weather prevented air reconnaissance during the period when the phase of the moon was judged ripe for the operation. Scheer reluctantly dispersed his flotillas for exercises planned long in advance, well aware of the harmful effects the cancellation would have on morale.125

  In the autumn of 1917, the Germans decided to support the submarine campaign with surface ships by striking at the Scandinavian convoys. Scheer wanted to terrorize the neutrals trading with the British and force the latter to divert ships from the antisubmarine campaign to protect the Scandinavian traffic. The light cruisers Brummer (Fregattenkapitän Leonhardi) and Brummer (Fregattenkapitän Westerkamp) were well suited for the task. They had originally been laid down as minelayers for the Russian navy and had proportionately high speed and a good radius of action. Moreover, they resembled British light cruisers, and the Germans repainted them a British-style dark gray to heighten the illusion.

  On 17 October, about a half hour after dawn, the Brummer and Bremse attacked the westbound Scandinavian convoy of twelve ships approximately 70 miles east of Lerwick. They sank the escorting destroyers Mary Rose and Strongbow and nine neutral ships in the convoy. Two armed trawlers and three freighters escaped. The Strongbow was sunk before she could get off a wireless signal; the Mary Rose appears to have attempted one, but it was jammed by the Germans. Consequently, the British did not receive word of the attack until the Germans had gotten safely away. The Admiralty had, as usual, intelligence the Germans were preparing some move, but they did not know where. On the 15th strong light cruisers and destroyer patrols—a total of 3 cruisers, 27 light cruisers, and 54 destroyers—from the Grand Fleet and Harwich Force had been ordered to sea. The British, however, had not expected the Germans to operate so far to the north, and the British patrols were well south of the Scandinavian convoy route and not in the right place to intercept.126

  There is evidence that the old excessive secrecy and watertight compartmentation between different departments played some role in the tragedy. Room 40 knew from the call s
ign that the Brummer was at sea and that she was a minelayer and assumed the mission involved minelaying. They had no information as to what British ships were at sea, for those positions were shown only on charts in the Operations Division. Had they seen the position of the convoys on their own charts, they might have guessed what the Germans were up to. It is difficult to understand why the Operations Division, which had the information on British positions, did not make the proper deductions about a possible threat to the convoy or send more timely information to Beatty, who reportedly was furious and subsequently paid an angry visit to the Admiralty.127

  The British attempted to retaliate with a raid of their own into the Bight on 17 November. Their objective was the cruisers or battle cruisers, which they knew usually covered the minesweepers working to keep the Wege clear. The extensive British mining had by now forced the German minesweepers to work as far as 150 miles from the coast. The British striking force under Vice Admiral T. W. D. Napier consisted of the light battle cruisers Courageous (flag) and Glorious and two light cruiser squadrons (8 light cruisers) plus the indispensable destroyer screens. The Courageous and Glorious had been Fisher’s idea for Baltic operations; they were large, very fast, armed with 15-inch guns, but very lightly armored. They were supported by Vice Admiral Pakenham—who commanded the whole operation—with six battle cruisers and nine destroyers. The First Battle Squadron with six dreadnoughts and eleven destroyers was a few hours steaming distance away. They hoped to catch and destroy the Germans before the High Sea Fleet could put to sea.

  The British surprised the German minesweepers, which were covered by Rear Admiral von Reuter and the Second Scouting Group’s four light cruisers. There were also two German dreadnoughts, the Kaiserin and Kaiser, out in support near Helgoland. Reuter engaged the British while the minesweepers fled, and then retired at high speed toward his battleship support behind dense clouds of smoke. The British assumed the Germans were using channels that were free of mines and followed, but the smoke provided them with few clear targets. Napier lost his chance to catch the Germans when he altered course on reaching the position his chart indicated was the limit of British minefields. The Germans had as usual made good use of smoke, and Napier could not be certain they had not altered course because of mines. When the smoke cleared sufficiently for Napier to realize the Germans had not changed course, he resumed the chase for another 12 miles until he reached a point his chart indicated as a dangerous mined area. He then turned back. The minefield actually referred to a British field laid in 1915 and was not shown on the charts in the two light cruiser squadrons; they continued the pursuit together with the battle cruiser Repulse, which Pakenham had detached to support the light cruisers. The Repulse and the light cruisers ended their pursuit when the dreadnoughts Kaiserin and Kaiser came in sight and opened fire on them. The British wisely retired without serious damage, but they had failed in their objective and had actually sustained more hits (7) than they scored (5). None of the damage was severe, although the cruiser Calypso’s captain was mortally wounded by a shell from the German light cruisers and a shell from the Repulse started a serious fire in the Königsberg. The Germans lost only a single armed trawler, overwhelmed at the start of the action.