The German pirate

by Ajax

This outrageous German crime was the sequel to a series of accusations by the Berlin Government to the effect that Great Britain was misusing her hospital ships. The evidence produced by the Germans in support of their assertions proved to be of a flimsy and wholly untrustworthy character, as the following examples taken from the British Government White Paper, Miscellaneous, No. 16 (1917), will show.

A man named Alexander Buttler, of Hamburg, swore that he had sailed in the s.s. Escaut from Brooklyn to La Rochelle, where he arrived about the middle of July, 1915. There he saw a British hospital ship being loaded with munitions from the Escaut, which carried no cargo but munitions of war: The reply of the British Government was as follows:—“No British hospital ship was at La Rochelle during July, 1915. All British hospital ships have their names painted distinctly on them in the usual place, and all fly the Red Cross flag and the British defaced Blue Ensign worn by transports. The credibility of the witness may be judged from the fact that the log of the steamship Escaut, on which he claims to have been serving, shows that that vessel called neither at La Rochelle nor at La Pallice in June, July or August, 1915, and that she was fitted at the time for the transport of horses. He cannot have been in a position to know that the ship on which he served, if his story is not entirely fabricated, carried no cargo but munitions of war.”

Another witness is thus described by the German Government:—“... merchant, a Dutch subject, living at Rotterdam,” ... declared that he was at Cardiff on business from the beginning of December to the end of January, 1916. About the middle of December the hospital ship Formosa arrived, was docked and took in coal and a number of cases. On the 29th December about 300 infantrymen in marching order were taken on board, besides about 50 naval officers who went on board on the 1st January, the date of departure. He adds: “I can confidently assert that the soldiers and the 50 naval officers sailed with her.”

To this the British Government replied:—“The witness’s statement that the Formosa arrived at Cardiff about the middle of December is incorrect. She was at Belfast from the 16th November to the 30th December, 1915, and did not arrive at Cardiff till the 2nd January, 1916. His statement that she left Cardiff in the night of the 1st and 2nd January is therefore also incorrect. It is, moreover, contradicted by the witness cited by the German Government in Annex 14, who states that the Formosa was still at Cardiff on the 7th January. She actually left Cardiff for the Mediterranean on the 13th January with no passengers on board.”

It was on the strength of such trumped-up evidence as this that Germany decided to commit the crowning inhumanity of sinking hospital ships. In all probability, she was judging others by her own standards, and, knowing that in Britain’s position she would not have hesitated to misuse hospital ships, she came to the conclusion that the British Government was doing so. Her unfounded charges were denied. In a despatch dated 5th October, 1917, Mr. Balfour stated:—“His Majesty’s Government have already issued the most categorical denial of the assertions of the German Government that British hospital ships have ever been used except in accordance with the provisions of the Hague Convention.”

However, Germany was not to be deterred from her new path of atrocious crime, and so we find 75 men murdered through the sinking of the Donegal and the hospital ship Lanfranc, 15 of the victims being Germans.

The s.s. Addah left America, homeward bound, on the 1st June, 1917. All went well until the 15th June, when a loud explosion was heard on the port side, and the ship began to settle down very quickly. The wireless was put out of action, and the master gave the order to abandon ship, which was carried out with the two boats. Ten minutes later the chief officer saw the periscope of a submarine, and then her hull, about a point on the starboard bow. From this position the submarine fired several shots, hitting the vessel seven times. She then came alongside the chief officer’s boat, which was entered by five Germans. They boarded the steamer and returned with some stores and the ensign. After they had been rowed back to the submarine, the Germans told the chief officer’s boat to shove off.

Meanwhile the master’s boat, which had been badly smashed by a shell, was about 350 yards away. The submarine now opened fire with common shrapnel, taking the stern of the master’s boat right off and killing eight men. Having sunk the boat in this way, the submarine shelled her crew as they were swimming about in the water, still with shrapnel. Apparently under the impression that he had wiped out the unfortunate men, the submarine commander next opened fire on the chief officer’s boat. He fired eight shrapnel shells, and succeeded in holing the boat, breaking the oars, and slightly wounding several men. Fortunately, no one was killed this time. The submarine then proceeded in a northwesterly direction on the surface. The master and the survivors from his boat were taken on board the chief officer’s boat, which was eventually picked up by a French patrol steamer on the 16th June.

On the morning of the 15th July, 1917, at about 3 o’clock the steamer Mariston was struck by a torpedo. Just afterwards there was a second explosion, which destroyed all the midship cabins, and the vessel began to sink rapidly. When she had gone down, a large black submarine came to the surface; an officer opened a trap-door in her conning-tower and watched the survivors struggling in the water. The unfortunate men called to him for help, but he ignored their appeals, although there were no other ships in sight at the time and he could have rescued them without any danger to himself.