The Hunters and the Hunted

by Bryan Perrett

  Leake ordered her to proceed west by south for a detailed examination by Dundee. At 14.40, as the raider was closing in on Dundee, Day signalled WHAT SHIP IS THAT? There was no reply and five minutes later he flashed a second signal: STOP INSTANTLY. This drew the response AP, which was simply gibberish. PAY ATTENTION TO MY SIGNALS ordered Day. Again, there was no reply and at 14.50 he ordered a blank round to be fired. Nine minutes later he asked WHAT IS YOUR CARGO? and received the reply GENERAL.

  A boat containing a boarding party consisting of one officer and five ratings had been despatched at 14.42 but was no longer visible, being in the lee of the stranger. The easygoing attitudes that had resulted in the loss of The Ramsey and the Alcantara had long gone. Day’s crew were at action stations and he had positioned Dundee so that her broadside was across the raider’s stern. Laffert was perfectly aware that his ship could be raked, with terrible consequences, and that he could make little or no reply with his own guns. By using his port or starboard screws he tried to improve his position but Day correctly interpreted the water disturbance created by the propellers and adjusted his own position accordingly. Leopard’s behaviour, her appearance, the information contained in his confidential books and the lack of communication from his boarding party all reinforced Day’s suspicion that she was a raider. At 15.10 he signalled WHERE ARE YOU FROM? The answer MOBILE came back. That seemed improbable but he decided to wait a little longer. At 15.30, still not having heard from the boarding party, he decided to test the other’s veracity, signalling WHEN DID YOU LEAVE? There was no reply.

  Laffert, unable to calculate the time required for the voyage, knew that he had been found out and decided to make the best of it. Ten minutes later Day was alerted by an unusual noise. One of the raider’s Norwegian flags, painted on large boards hinged at the bottom, had fallen outboard. The aperture within could only contain guns and he immediately gave the order to fire. Leopard was now turning slowly to port to bring her own broadside to bear but Day responding by ordering half-ahead to deny any such advantage. Hardly had Dundee began to gather way than two torpedoes sped 20 to 50 feet past her stern.

  Dundee’s guns were now hammering away at 1,000 yards range. Forty-four 4-inch and twenty-five 3-pounder rounds had been fired before Leopard got off her first shot. ‘Every shot was a hit,’ wrote Day in his report.

  The first (from our aft 4-inch) raked her port battery deck, causing an explosion and volumes of smoke. The fore gun fired through the deck into her engine room and volumes of steam spread with intense smoke and flames caused by further hits, so as to completely the ship from us from bridge to stern. The 3-pounder gun fired at her bridge. Dundee was then in the smoke to leeward and both ships were practically obscured from each other in consequence. Observing Achilles on an almost opposite bearing, I turned and went to full speed and down the lane of smoke so as to clear the range for the cruiser. On turning, one torpedo was fired at us, and also three salvoes, two short and one over, of three or four guns by her port broadside. There followed some very wild single shots, including shrapnel, fragments of the latter only hitting the ship. The aft gun was bearing and made consistently excellent on any visible part of the enemy. Ignited oil was observed streaming from her port beam.

  Meanwhile, Achilles had joined in the fray at 5,300 yards as soon as it had started. ‘The raider was firing at her,’ recorded Captain Leake, ‘but with more intensity at Dundee, whose safety was due to the prompt manner in which Commander Day answered the raider’s first hostile act, and the initial success she gained in getting raking hits; hers was a most dangerous position and she extracted herself with the utmost credit.

  ‘On opening fire the raider at once enveloped herself in smoke of a light colour. At 15.55 she fired a torpedo at Achilles, which broke surface off the port quarter. Hits were now being obtained and the raider was on fire forward. About this time she was hit in the bow (on the gripe) by a torpedo from Achilles.’

  By 16.10 Dundee had expended all her ammunition. Leopard had become a floating inferno but continued to fight with one gun. Finally, at 16.33, the raider finally succumbed to Achilles’ fire, listed slightly to port and sank horizontally. There were no survivors and the fate of Dundee’s boarding party remains unknown; presumably, once aboard the raider they were overpowered and then confined during the action. In other respects, there were no British casualties.

  Leopard was the last commerce raider to be sent out by the Imperial Navy. A small number of raiders had achieved spectacular success, others had produced modest results, and some had barely justified their conversion costs. The fact was that they were too few in number and the world’s oceans too vast for them to make any difference. While, with the exception of some peripheral activity in the Baltic and at the northern and southern extremities of the North Sea, the High Seas Fleet had rotted at its mooring since Jutland, the U – boat arm had brought the United Kingdom to the verge of starvation until the tide was turned by the introduction of escorted ocean convoys in May 1917.