The Hunters and the Hunted

by Bryan Perrett

  The ship was taken over by her new commander, Captain Noel Grant, on 6 August. Grant was aged forty-five and had a reputation within the Royal Navy as being a fine navigator, a stickler for detail and a strict disciplinarian. He was also a very sick man who was suffering from consumption, which he attempted to disguise as asthma. He had handled his earlier commands efficiently enough but had no experience of manoeuvring anything as huge as Carmania, which was 675 feet long and drew 44 feet of water when she was fully laden. He was, therefore, grateful for the Admiralty’s permission to offer Barr the position of his adviser, with the rank of Commander, and Barr was grateful to be allowed to remain aboard what he inevitably regarded as his ship. This was a situation that would, in due course, lead to friction between the two men.

  Having completed her conversion, Carmania sailed for Bermuda where, on the evening of 28 August, her officers held a dinner at the Bermuda Yacht Club. One of the guests was introduced as a Mr Gordon, described as the Admiralty’s special representative. A gloomy individual who spoke to none of his neighbours during the meal, he subsequently depressed them. He explained that the strategic situation had changed somewhat. German activity was now centred on the southern Caribbean and South American coasts and it was affecting the important sea route from that area to the United Kingdom, along which flowed vital supplies of beef, coffee and raw materials. For that reason homeward-bound merchant ships would, for the present, follow a more southerly route after leaving the Plate and be re-routed via St Nazaire. In addition, Admiral Cradock’s responsibilities had been extended to include the South American coast and as his cruisers were now working at their operational limit they would need a regular source of supplies close at hand. The same, of course, applied to the enemy’s supply ships, which must be found and destroyed. For these reasons Carmania was to be detached from the Atlantic Patrol and was, for the moment, to act as a supply ship for Cradock’s squadron and sail for Trinidad, West Indies, next morning. Understandably, the use of his fine ship in this way pushed Barr to the edge of apoplexy, but he was in no position to and kept his opinions to himself. There was, nevertheless, much in what Mr Gordon had said, for two days earlier Dresden had sunk the collier Holmwood with 6,000 toms of coal aboard.

  On 2 September Carmania reached Trinidad, where she topped up her fuel bunkers before setting off for the mouth of the Plate two days later. The previous night had been a busy one for British intercept radio operators, listening to orders issued by the German communications centre in New York to freighters, colliers and other vessels lying in or off the South American coast, via the local embassies and consulates:

  Colliers Prussia and Ebenberg to sail from Pernambuco to Trinidad [sic] and there rendezvous with armed merchant cruisers Cap Trafalgar and Kronprinz Wilhelm… .

  Freighter Corrientes off Rio to move south to Bahia Blanca. On voyage you will be contacted by cruiser Karlsruhe to whom you will deliver supplies….

  Empty Santa Lucia and Santa Isabel off Trinidade to recoal at Rio Pontos and Eleonore Wouvermans will remain at Trinidade to resupply Dresden.

  At this stage the British hunters were still in ignorance of their quarries’ whereabouts, but on 5 September another transmission gave them their first hard evidence. Before taking Cap Trafalgar out on her first patrol Wirth had ordered the Berwind to start transferring her coal to the Pontos and the Eleonore Wouvermans. Unfortunately, some of the Berwind’s crew had already given trouble and as the ship had been chartered by a German government agency her master considered that he was not subject to orders given by naval officers and refused to obey. Eber had left for Bahia Blanca some days earlier, but by using her call sign and a standard American commercial code he signalled the Berwind’s owners in New York as follows:

  Your original instructions countermanded by local commander. Now ordered stay until Dresden and Kronprinz Wilhelm join Cap Trafalgar either here or Rocas. Advise which orders are acceptable. Berwind.

  British naval intelligence was unaware that Eber had left German West Africa and drew the conclusion that the other named ships would joined her there or at the unidentified Rocas, having been frightened off the South American trade route by Cradock’s cruisers. Did Rocas mean Rocks? Possibly. A search of the charts revealed a feature named St Paul’s Rocks some 1,500 miles east-south-east of the West Indies where Dresden and Karlsruhe were known to have operated previously. Cradock was well liked in the Navy and known to be both honourable and courageous, but he was also known to be impulsive. In his view, the enemy had gathered in the area of St Paul’s Rocks and thither he set off on a long wild goose chase in the cruiser Good Hope, to which he had transferred his flag when the Suffolk had failed to catch the Karlsruhe, leaving the cruiser screen off the South American coast dangerously thin.

  Suddenly, the truth became apparent, triggered by the Eber’s arrival off Bahia on 11 September. Her presence was noted by a member of the British Consulate and passed via Buenos Aires and Montevideo to Naval Headquarters in the West Indies. Reading Berwind’s transmission in this light it was clear that if the gunboat had been meeting Dresden, Kronprinz Wilhelm and Cap Trafalgar, the rendezvous had taken place much closer than South West Africa. Therefore, Eber had been steaming at between 12 and 14 knots for five or six days to reach Bahia, covering a distance of approximately 1,400 miles. Taking Bahia as the centre of a drawn circle, part of the circumference passed through the Vas Rocks, not far to the east of the Islhas de los Trinidade. The result was that during the morning of 13 September, Carmania received orders to abandon her resupply task and inspect the Vas Rocks.

  Given the number of German warships said to be in that area, Captain Grant believed that he was about to enter a hornet’s nest and decided to disguise Carmania. He believed, incorrectly, that most German liners were equipped with three or four funnels and was obviously unaware that Cap Trafalgar normally carried only two. He therefore gave orders for a third funnel to be erected immediately from wood and canvas behind Carmania’s two. As far his orders were concerned, he believed that a cautious approach from the north would enable him to inspect Vas Rocks and Trinidade from a point short of but almost between the two. This would enable the masthead lookout to report on the presence of possibly enemy shipping in the area while Carmania herself remained hull-down below the horizon.

  At 09.30 on the morning of Monday 14 September the lookout reported that Trinidade’s peak was visible. Grant altered course towards the island. At 10.00, believing that an engagement was possible within an hour or too, he followed the Royal Navy’s tradition by sending the crew to an early meal. Forty-five minutes later he took the precaution of going to action stations. Grant and Barr were both studying the island intently through their binoculars. At 11.04 they both spotted three sets of masts beyond the headland. As they watched, the tallest began to move towards the open sea. A lookout post had been established at the summit of the peak and those manning it had warned Wirth of Carmania’s approach. Deciding that she could only be an armed merchant cruiser, he decided to give battle.

  Cap Trafalgar’s appearance puzzled those on Carmania’s bridge. Barr, believing that the German’s two funnels were all that she had ever carried, suggested that the strange liner could well be British and possibly belonged to the Union Castle Line. Grant told his radio operator to order the stranger to identify himself and simultaneously sent Carmania’s battle ensign soaring aloft. As the transmission remained unanswered he steered for more open sea room. Wirth, observing the change of course, swung Cap Trafalgar so that she was now heading directly for Carmania, bows on. In an event which can have few if any parallels in naval history Carmania, disguised as Cap Trafalgar, was about to engage in a duel to the death with the Cap Trafalgar, disguised as the Carmania.

  At 12.15 Commander Lockyer, Carmania’s gunnery officer, reported that the enemy was now within range. Grant ordered a shot to be fired across Cap Trafalgar’s. The response was immediate. Up went the Imperial Navy’s battle ensign and two flashes indica
ted that she had opened fire. Both shots went high, one passing overhead and the other bringing down her radio mast and signal halyards. A third round smashed one of her bow guns and killed most of its crew. The return salvo had devastating results. Two shells exploded in the Winter Garden, shattering acres of glass, splintering marble columns, piercing deck steam pipes and starting fires. On the bridge the quartermaster fell dead beside the wheel, while hydraulic and steam lines that provided power for the steering machinery were ruptured. The wheel itself spun wildly to port, dragging the ship off course. By main force Wirth and one of his officers managed to bring the ship back on course. By now, the foredeck and the dummy bridge that had been added as part of Cap Trafalgar’s disguise was blazing fiercely, blinding those on the real bridge or manning the forward gun with smoke carried inboard over the bows by the wind. Wirth leaned over the bridge to shout at the forward gun crew that while they could not see the Carmania clearly, they should aim at her gun flashes. The order had hardly been acknowledged than a shell ricocheted off the foremast to explode against the gun shield, jamming the gun at an unusable angle, killing the gun captain and seriously wounding two of his three-man crew.

  Despite this, the temporary change of course enabled Wirth’s after gun to open a rapid and accurate fire on the Carmania’s bridge, which was soon ablaze. The range had now closed sufficiently for Wirth to employ his 3.7-inch heavy machine guns. Everyone on the bridge, including the damage control party trying to extinguish the fire, dived for cover. When his rangefinder was smashed, Lockyer jumped down into the bridge, shouting to Grant that it would be a good idea to move out of machine gun range. Grant gave the order for the bridge to be abandoned and ran down the more sheltered port side of the ship to the after control position.

  Barr remained a little longer to communicate with the engine room by means of the voice pipe: ‘Full ahead starboard engine – full astern port!’

  The ship swung to port through an arc of 90 degrees, during which the wind blew the forward off the bridge, adding to a blaze on the foredeck. Her starboard guns and after port guns promptly went into action as soon as they could bear.

  ‘Steady!’ shouted Barr. Carmania settled on to her new course with Cap Trafalgar now astern. Barr was confident that the menace of the machine guns had been reduced sufficiently and gave his final instructions: ‘Full ahead all engines! Transferring to aft control!’

  He then abandoned the blazing bridge to join Grant at the aft control. Grant, watching the Cap Trafalgar, which was making a sharp turn to starboard to follow them, commented that the German captain seemed determined to come alongside. The sheer lunacy of the idea may have raised amused grins, but the fact was that Wirth had trained a large number of his crew in boarding techniques.

  While making her turn, Carmania had lost ground so that the distance between her and her opponent was now down to less than 1,000 yards. Lockyer saw that the moment had come to finish the business. He ran along the line of guns, ordering the crews to fire at will, aiming at the enemy’s waterline. Shells began to slam into the starboard side of German hull, low down. One exploded in a coal bunker, another at the point where a bulkhead met the hull and a third penetrated a reserve bunker. The sea began to pour into the stokehold. The conventional answer was to counter-flood using the port-side tanks. Unfortunately, at that moment Wirth decided to make a sharp turn to port. The result was that the starboard side was pushed ever deeper so that even more water flooded into the hull. Frantic, an engineer officer yelled at Wirth through the voice pipe that unless he reversed the turn sharply they were finished. The captain did as he was told. This brought Cap Trafalgar’s stern round so that it was pointing directly at Carmania. Wirth appreciated at once that if he did not open the range at once his ship would be battered into a wreck. As he did so, he was surprised to see that Carmania was also breaking off the action and heading away.

  The fact was that the British ship also had urgent problems to attend to. Although no one had been aware of the passing of time, the fight had raged for an hour and a half. Carmania’s fires were so bad that the flames had reached funnel height. Barr had been sent below to fight them with reinforced damage control parties but shell splinters had punctured water mains and hoses alike and it was no easy matter. Barr ordered the ventilators to be closed off in order to deprive the blaze of oxygen while his men struggled to beat out the blaze with stokers’ shovels. At length Grant decided to renew the contest and steered towards his opponent, opening fire as soon as he was in range. Aboard Cap Trafalgar the situation was even worse. The raging fires below were causing the forward deck plates to glow red and the ship was making more water than could be pumped out. When Carmania opened fire anew Wirth changed the ship’s position a point or two so that his stern gun could bear. The gunner excelled himself, firing some of the battle’s best-aimed shots. In short order, the Carmania’s aft control position was wrecked, as was the stern anchor winch. Grant hauled off until his 4.7-inch guns outranged the solitary German 4.1-inch and continued to batter the enemy ship while lines of men shouted orders to the tiller flat and engine room below.

  It was soon apparent that the Cap Trafalgar was dying. She was stopped and beginning to list steadily to starboard. Simultaneously, the engine room warned Wirth that it was only a matter of time before the rising water reached the boilers. At this point a bizarre interruption took place. The collier Eleonore Wouverman suddenly interjected herself between the two ships. Aboard her was Captain Langerhannz, the Cap Trafalgar’s original civilian skipper. On a visit to the island’s peak he had discovered an ancient Spanish mortar which he had brought down. He had restored it to working order, emplaced it on the collier’s foredeck, made some propellant out of black powder fog maroons and manufactured an assortment of missiles from scrap metal. Now he felt the moment had come to go to the assistance of his former command. He fired the mortar, but apart from dense powder smoke that hid the entire scene, does not appear to have done any damage. The collier then moved into the lee of the Cap Trafalgar while he struggled to reload.

  Casualties were beginning to mount aboard the stationary German liner. A shell burst against the ship’s superstructure, driving a jagged fragment of bridge rail into Wirth’s left armpit. Recovering slightly, he gave the order for the crew to abandon ship, specifying that no officer should do so until the last man had gone. Many of the boats had been smashed but enough were lowered to accommodate most of the survivors, although some were forced to swim. The officers assembled on the bridge then, as the ship lay on her starboard side, walked down it into the water, assisting those who were wounded. The bow was now under water but suddenly the ship lurched and for a moment she returned to an even keel, then her stern lifted and she slid beneath the surface, gathering speed as she did so. Sharks added an horrific element to the scene, taking some of the swimmers before turning on each other in a feeding frenzy. The Eleonore Wouvermans did not fire her mortar again and concentrated on taking survivors aboard. Wirth was not among them, the effects of his wound and the effort of swimming having resulted in a fatal heart attack. In total, fifteen member of the Cap Trafalgar’s lost their lives as a result of the action, five were seriously wounded and another sixty-one received less serious injuries.

  It was about this time that Barr shouted something to Grant. Just what has never been recorded officially and although Barr made a brief reference to it in later life, the precise meaning of what he wrote is far from clear. His tone, however, was sharp enough for those around to stop what they were doing and look at the two senior officers. Was he suggesting that as the collier was now fully engaged in picking up survivors the Carmania should cease firing on her? In fact, the gun crews ceased firing of their own accord. Or was it in his mind that if she remained on an upwind heading the fire would gut her long before it could be brought under control? Probably the latter as Grant gave the order to go about, commenting to Barr in a normal conversational tone that they should now concentrate on getting the fire out. It
would certainly have been to the fore of Barr’s mind that his own well-loved ship had taken more than enough punishment and the time had come to end it. She had sustained no less than seventy-nine major hits, which was remarkable considering that Cap Trafalgar only mounted two guns. Her casualties amounted to nine killed and twenty-six seriously wounded.

  By dusk, the blaze was under control but she still lacked engine room and steering controls while her boats and all her deck machinery had been shot to pieces. Her crew, however, did manage to activate a spare radio and rig a jury antenna and in response to her signals the cruiser Bristol arrived, sending an engineering party aboard to assist with temporary repairs. In the meantime the Eleonore Wouvermans was allowed to leave the area unmolested, on passage to Buonas Aires where those aboard were interned. Bristol then escorted the Carmania to Abrolhos Rocks where she handed over her charge to Cornwall. After further repairs the two sailed in convoy to Gibraltar where Carmania was returned to duty after eight weeks’ intensive work.

  It was some time before the crew knew the identity of the ship they had sunk. Grant asked the Admiralty to pay prize money and on 27 March 1916 the High Court granted the sum of £2,115 for distribution. Grant had already taken up a post ashore and was created a Commander of the Bath. All but two of his officers received a Mention in Despatches. Barr also received the CB but because of ill health he was declared unfit for sea duty with the Royal Navy and returned to the Merchant service, becoming Cunard’s Senior Commodore. Lockyer was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and returned to retired life shortly after the action.