The Story of the Submarine - Farnham Bishop

Engagement between the Birmingham and the U-15.

1. Submarine’s periscope shot away.
2. Submarine dives, temporarily safe but blinded.
3. Submarine exposes conning-tower.
4. Conning-tower shot away, U-15 sinking.

But these early affairs were now overshadowed as completely as the first Union victories in West Virginia were overshadowed by Bull Run. Another British squadron encountered another German submarine and this time the periscope was not detected. Lieutenant-Commander Otto von Weddigen had had ample time to take up an ideal position beside the path of his enemies, who passed in slow and stately procession before the bow torpedo-tubes of the U-9. The German officer pressed a button and saw through his periscope the white path of the “Schwartzkopf” as it sped straight and true to the tall side of the Aboukir. He saw the cruiser heaved into the air by the shock of the bursting war-head, then watched her settle and go down. Round swung her nearest consort to the rescue, lowering her lifeboats as she came. But scarcely had the survivors of the Aboukir’s company set foot on the deck of the Hogue than she, too, was torpedoed, and the half-naked men of both crews went tumbling down the slope of the upturned side as she rolled over and sank. Up steamed the Cressy, her gun-crews standing by their useless pieces, splendid in helpless bravery. Half reluctantly, von Weddigen sent his remaining foe to the bottom and slipped away under the waves, the victor of the strangest naval battle in history.

Not a German had received the slightest injury; fourteen hundred Englishmen had been killed. It was the loss of these trained officers and seamen, and not that of three old cruisers that would soon have been sent to the scrap heap, that was felt by the British navy. Realizing that no fears for their own lives would keep the officers of a British ship from attempting to rescue the drowning crew of another, the Admiralty issued the following order:

“It has been necessary to point out for the future guidance of his Majesty’s ships that the conditions that prevail when one vessel of a squadron is injured in a mine-field or exposed to submarine attack are analogous to those which occur in an action and that the rule of leaving disabled ships to their own resources is applicable, so far at any rate as large vessels are concerned. No act of humanity, whether to friend or foe, should lead to a neglect of the proper precautions and dispositions of war, and no measures can be taken to save life which prejudice the military situation.”

Another old cruiser, the Hermes, that had been turned into a floating base for sea-planes, was torpedoed off Dunkirk by a German submarine, most of the crew being rescued by French torpedo boats. On New Year’s day, 1915, the battleship Formidable was likewise sent to the bottom of the English Channel. She too was a rather old ship, of the same class as the Bulwark, which had been destroyed by an internal explosion two weeks earlier in the Medway, and the Irresistible, afterwards sunk by a mine in the Dardanelles.

But there was nothing small or old about the Audacious. She was—or is—a 24,800 ton superdreadnought, launched in 1911 and carrying ten thirteen-and-a-half-inch guns. This stupendous war-engine was found rolling helpless in the Irish Sea, her after compartments flooded by a great hole made either by a drifting mine or, what is more likely considering its position, by a torpedo from a German submarine. The White Star liner Olympic, which had been summoned by wireless, took the disabled warship in tow for several hours, after which the Audacious was cast off and abandoned. A photograph taken by one of the Olympic’s passengers and afterwards widely circulated shows the huge ironclad down by the stern, listing heavily to one side, and apparently on the point of sinking. But her loss has never been admitted by the British Admiralty, and it has been repeatedly declared by reputable persons that the Audacious was kept afloat till the Olympic was out of sight, and was then towed by naval vessels into Belfast, where she was drydocked and repaired at Harland and Wolff’s shipyard to be sent back to the fighting line. Her fate is one of the most interesting of the many mysteries of the war and will probably not be made clear till peace has come. The silence of the British Admiralty is explained by the standing orders forbidding the revealing of the whereabouts of any of his Majesty’s ships, particularly when helpless and disabled. It should be noted in this connection that the German government has never admitted the loss of the battleship Pommern which the Russians insist was sunk by one of their submarines in the Baltic.