Q-Ships and Their Story

by E. Keble Chatterton

Most people would have thought that the sail-driven decoys would have had a very short life, and that they would speedily have succumbed. On the contrary, though their work was more trying and demanded a different kind of seamanship, these ‘mystery’ ships went on bravely tackling the enemy.

The Lowestoft armed smacks, for instance, during 1916 had some pretty stiff tussles, and we know now that they thoroughly infuriated the Germans, who threatened to have their revenge. Looked at from the enemy’s aspect, it certainly was annoying to see a number of sailing smacks spread off the coast, each obviously trawling, but not to know which of them would in a moment cut her gear and sink the submarine with her gun. It was just that element of suspense which made a cautious German officer very chary of going near these craft, whereas he might have sunk the whole fishing fleet if he dared. It was not merely annoying; it was humiliating that a small sailing craft should have the impertinence to contend with the super-modern ship of a German naval officer. That, of course, was not the way to look at the matter; for it was a contest, as we have seen, in which brains and bravery were factors more decisive than anything else. The average British fisherman is ignorant of many things which are learnt only in nautical academies, but the last you could accuse him of being is a fool or a funk. His navigation in these sailing smacks is quaint and primitive, but he relies in thick weather chiefly on the nature of the sea-bed. He can almost smell his way, and a cast of the lead confirms his surmise; he finds he is just where he expected to be. So with his character. Hardened by years of fishing in all weathers, and angered to extreme indignation during the war by the loss of good ships and lives of his relatives and friends, this type of man, so long as his decoy smack had any sort of gun, was the keenest of the keen.

One of these smacks was the Telesia, armed only with a 3-pounder, and commanded by Skipper W. S. Wharton, who did extraordinarily well in this dangerous service. On March 23, 1916, he was trawling roughly thirty-five miles S.E. of Lowestoft, when about midday he sighted a submarine three miles off, steering to the north-east. At 1.30 p.m. the German, who was evidently one of the cautious type, and having a careful scrutiny before attacking, approached within 50 yards of the Telesia’s starboard bow, and submerged with her periscope just showing. She came back an hour later to have another look, and again disappeared until 4.30 p.m., when she approached from the north-east. Having got about 300 yards away she attacked, but she had not the courage to fight on the surface a little sailing craft built of wood. Instead, she remained submerged and fired a torpedo. Had that hit, Telesia and her men would have been blown to pieces; but it just missed the smack’s bows by four feet. Skipper Wharton at once brought his gun into action, and fired fifteen rounds at the periscope, which was the only part of her that could be seen, and an almost impossible target. The enemy disappeared, but arrived back in half an hour, and this time the periscope showed on the starboard quarter, coming straight for the smack, and rising out of the water at the same time. Again she fired a torpedo, and it seemed certain to hit, but happily it passed 40 feet astern. At a range of only 75 yards the smack now fired a couple of shots as the enemy showed her deck. The first shot seemed to hit the conning-tower, and then the fore part of the hull was observed coming out of the water. The second shot struck between the conning-tower and the hatch, whereupon the enemy went down by the bows, showing her propeller. She was a big craft, judging by the size of her conning-tower, and certainly larger than those which had recently been sinking Lowestoft smacks. Skipper Wharton, whilst fishing, had himself been chased, so he was fairly familiar with their appearance. Whether the enemy was actually sunk is a matter of doubt. Perhaps she was not destroyed, although UB 13 was lost this month; how and where are unknown. One thing is certain, however, that the little Telesia caused her to break off the engagement and disappear. The smack could do no more, for the wind had now died right away, and this fact demonstrated the importance of these decoy smacks being fitted with motors, so that the craft would be able to manœuvre in the absence of wind; and this improved equipment was now in certain cases adopted. Skipper Wharton well deserved his D.S.C. for this incident, and two of the ship’s company also received the D.S.M. The whole crew numbered eight, consisting of Skipper Wharton, a naval chief petty officer, a leading seaman, a marine, an A.B., and three fishermen.

On the following April 23 Telesia—this time under the name of Hobbyhawk and under the command of Lieutenant H. W. Harvey, R.N.V.R.—together with a similar smack named the Cheero, commanded by Lieutenant W. F. Scott, R.N.R., put to sea from Lowestoft. They had recently been fitted with specially designed nets, to which were attached mines. It had been found that with 600 yards of these nets towing astern the smack could still sail ahead at a speed of 3 knots. A bridle made out of a trawler’s warp was stopped down the towing wire and from forward of the smack, so that she would look exactly like a genuine smack when fishing with the ordinary trawl. All that was required was that the submarine should foul these nets astern, when, if everything worked as it should, destruction to the enemy would follow.

At 5.45 that afternoon, when 10 miles N.E. of the Smith’s Knoll Pillar Buoy, the nets were shot and the batteries connected up to the net-mines. The wind was light, so Cheero, towing away to the south-east, was going ahead very slowly. Each of these two smacks was fitted with a hydrophone by means of which the beat of a vessel’s engines could be heard, the noise of a submarine’s being very different from that of reciprocating engines in a steamer. About 7 p.m. Cheero distinctly heard on her instrument the steady, quick, buzzing, unmistakable noise of a submarine, and the noise gradually increased. About three-quarters of an hour later the wire leading to the nets suddenly became tight and stretched along the smack’s rail. The strain eased up a little, became tight again, then an explosion followed in the nets, and the sounds of the submarine’s engines were never heard again. The sea was blown by the explosion 20 feet high, and as the water was settling down another upheaval took place, followed by oil. The crew remained at their stations for a few minutes awaiting further developments, and then were ordered to haul the nets, but a great strain was now felt, so that instead of two men it required six. As the second net was coming in, the whole fleet of nets took a sharp angle down, and a small piece of steel was brought on board. Other pieces of steel came adrift and fell into the sea. As the third net was being hauled in, the whole of the nets suddenly became free and were got in quite easily, whilst the crew remarked on the strong smell of oil. It was found that one mine had exploded, and when the nets were eventually further examined ashore in Lowestoft there could be no doubt but that a submarine had been blown up, and more pieces of steel, some of considerable size, dropped out. Thus UC 3, with all hands, was destroyed. She was one of the small mine-layers which used to come across from Zeebrugge fouling the shipping tracks along the East Anglian coast with her deadly cargoes, and causing the destruction of merchant shipping, Allied and neutral alike. On May 18 of the same year Hobbyhawk (Telesia) and a similar smack, the Revenge (alias Fame), had a stiff encounter with a submarine in about the same place, but there is reason to suppose that in this case the enemy was not sunk.

This idea of commissioning sailing smacks as Q-ships now began to be adopted in other areas. Obviously only that kind of fishing craft could be employed which ordinarily were wont to fish those particular waters; otherwise the submarine would at once have become suspicious. Thus, at the end of May, a couple of Brixham smacks, which usually fished out of Milford, were fitted out at Falmouth, armed each with a 12-pounder, and then sent round to operate in the Milford district. These were the Kermes and Strumbles respectively. They were manned by a specially selected crew, and the two commanding officers were Lieutenant E. L. Hughes, R.N.R., and Sub-Lieutenant J. Hayes, R.N.R. But although they were given a good trial, these craft were not suitable as soon as the autumn bad weather came on. Their freeboard was too low, they heeled over too much in the strong prevailing winds, so that it was difficult to get the gun to bear either to windward or leeward; and, except when on the top of a sea, their range of vision was limited, so before November was out these ships ceased to be men-of-war and were returned to their owners.

Along the Yorkshire coast is found a type of open boat which is never seen farther north than Northumberland and never farther south than Lincolnshire. This is the cobble, a peculiar and rather tricky kind of craft used by the fishermen of Whitby, Scarborough, Bridlington, Filey, and elsewhere. They carry one lug-sail and can be rowed, a single thole-pin taking the place of a rowlock. The smaller type of cobble measures 28 feet long by 2¼ feet deep, but the larger type, capable of carrying nine tons, is just under 34 feet long by 4¾ feet deep. Here, then, was a boat which, with her shallow draught, could with safety sail about in the numerous minefields off the Yorkshire coast. No submarine would ever suspect these as being anything but fishermen trying to snatch a living. In the early summer of 1916 two of these boats, the Thalia and Blessing, were commissioned. They were sailing cobbles fitted with auxiliary motors, and were sent to work south-east of the Humber in the Silver Pit area. Here they pretended to fish, towing 300 yards of mine-nets, 30 feet deep, in the hope that, as had happened off Lowestoft, the submarine would come along and be blown up. However, they had no luck, and after a few months’ service these boats also were returned to their owners. But in spite of this, Q-sailing-ships were still being taken up, the difficulty being to select the right type. Even in the Mediterranean the idea was employed. Enemy submarines had been destroying a number of sailing vessels, so the Admiralty purchased one local craft, gave her a small auxiliary motor, and towed her to Mudros, where she could be armed and equipped in secrecy. One day she set forth from Malta in company with a British submarine, and two days later was off the coast of Sicily. Here the sailing craft attracted a large enemy submarine, the British submarine of course watching, but submerged. Unfortunately, just when the enemy might have been torpedoed, the heavy swell caused the British submarine to break surface. The enemy was quick to observe this, dived for his life, and disappeared. The rest of the story is rather ludicrous. The British submarine remained submerged in the hope that the enemy would presently come to the surface, while the sailing craft lost touch with her consort and turned towards Malta, using her motor. The next incident was that she sighted 6 miles astern an unmistakable submarine, which was at once taken for the enemy. Being without his own submarine, the somewhat inexperienced R.N.V.R. officer in command made an error of judgment, and, abandoning the ship, destroyed her, being subsequently picked up by a Japanese destroyer. It was afterwards discovered that this was our own submarine who had been working with the sailing craft, and was now on her way back to Malta!

The other day, laid up hidden away at the top of a sheltered creek in Cornwall, I came upon an interesting brigantine. Somehow I felt we had met before, but she was looking a little forlorn; there was no life in the ship, yet she seemed in that curious way, which ships have in common with human beings, to possess a powerful personality. Freights were bad, the miners were on strike, and here was this good little vessel lying idle, and not so much as noticed by those who passed. Then I found out who she was. Here was an historic ship, the famous Helgoland, which served right through to the end of the war from the summer of 1916. Now she was back in the Merchant Service, and no one seemed to care; yet hundreds of years hence people will write and talk of her, as they still do of Grenville’s Revenge or the old clipper-ships Cutty Sark and Thermopylæ.

Helgoland had been built in 1895 of steel and iron at Martenshoek in Holland, where they specialize in this kind of construction, but she was now British owned and registered at Plymouth. She measured 122 feet 9 inches long, 23 feet 3 inches beam, drew 8 feet aft, and her tonnage was 310 burthen and 182 net. In July, 1916, this ship was lying in Liverpool undergoing an extensive overhaul, and here she was taken over from her owners and sent to Falmouth, where she was fitted out forthwith as a Q-ship. Armed with four 12-pounders and one Maxim, she was known officially in future under the various names of Helgoland, Horley, Brig 10, and Q 17. Her crew were carefully chosen from the personnel serving in Auxiliary Patrol vessels at Falmouth, with the exception of the guns’ crews; the ship’s complement consisting of two R.N.R. officers, one skipper, one second hand, two petty officers, six Royal Navy gunnery ratings, eight deckhands of the Trawler Reserve, one carpenter, one steward, and one cook, the last three being mercantile ratings. Of her two officers one was Temporary Sub-Lieutenant W. E. L. Sanders, R.N.R., who, by reason of his sailing-ship experience, was appointed as mate. This was that gallant New Zealander who had come across the ocean to help the Motherland, performed amazing service in Q-ships, fought like a gentleman, won the Victoria Cross, and eventually, with his ship and all his crew, went to the bottom like the true hero that he was. The story must be told in a subsequent chapter.