War in the Underseas

by Harold Wheeler

“The Defender,” he writes, “having sunk an enemy, lowered a whaler to pick up her swimming survivors; before the whaler got back an enemy’s cruiser came up and chased the Defender, and thus she abandoned her whaler. Imagine their feelings; alone in an open boat without food; twenty-five miles from the nearest land, and that land the enemy’s fortress, with nothing but fog and foes around them. Suddenly a whirl alongside, and up, if you please, pops His Britannic Majesty’s submarine E 4, opens his conning-tower, takes them all on board, shuts up again, dives, and brings them home 250 miles! Is not that magnificent? No novelist would dare face the critics with an episode like that in his book, except, perhaps, Jules Verne; and all true!”

Another survivor asserts that while he was in the whaler about two hundred shells burst within twenty yards without doing the slightest damage to the company. A lieutenant and nine men of the Defender were stowed below in E 4, while a German officer, six unwounded men, and twenty-six others who had sustained injuries of various kinds were provided with water, biscuit, and a compass, and told to make for land. A German officer and two A.B.s were taken prisoners of war. “Lieutenant-Commander Leir’s action,” the Commodore justly remarks, “in remaining on the surface in the vicinity of the enemy, and in a visibility that would have placed his vessel within easy gun range of an enemy appearing out of the mist, was altogether admirable.” The enemy suffered the loss of three cruisers and a destroyer, and one cruiser and at least seven torpedo-boats were badly mauled.

Reference has already been made to the running fight in the North Sea on the 24th of the following January, when Sir David Beatty very effectively prevented a raid on the North-east Coast, and to the Battle of Jutland.[^[22]] The former affair, characterized by the Germans as having been broken off by the British, and in which they sank a hypothetical battle-cruiser, ended in the loss of the Blücher and serious damage to two other enemy battle-cruisers. The enemy squadron escaped because Sir David Beatty had chased them to the verge of “an area where danger from German submarines and mines prevented further pursuit.” The Germans were so keen on meeting the hated British that they sheered off immediately they sighted our ships and laid a straight course for home. Although the Lion and the destroyer Meteor were disabled, they reached harbour safely and the necessary repairs were speedily effected.

These are some of the high lights of a picture which has in it many dark and sombre shadows. Enemy submarines exacted a heavy toll of the British Navy. It would be a tedious business to detail the loss of every man-of-war lost by enemy action. Casualty lists make uncongenial reading, but it is well to bear in mind that Germany’s campaign was not entirely devoted to commerce-destroying. I shall therefore deal with some of the more outstanding triumphs of her attempt to control the Empire of the Ocean from below before dealing with the victories of her British rivals in the Realm of the Underseas.

H.M.S. Pathfinder was the first naval vessel to be lost by submarine action in the Great War. When the news was given to the public, it was announced that this fast light cruiser of 2700 tons had struck a mine “about twenty miles off the East Coast,” a geographical expression conveying the minimum of information. The intimation sent to relatives of those who lost their lives stated that the ship had been sunk by a submarine, which was the case. The discrepancy in the two statements was due to a belief that the Pathfinder had been blown up in the manner originally described. Subsequent investigation proved this to be incorrect. It was not contradicted at once because the Admiralty held that possibly the intelligence might hamper operations for catching the offender. It must have occurred to many people, however, that a notice issued shortly after the original communiqué, that all aids to navigation on the East Coast of England and Scotland were liable to be removed, was more or less connected with the loss of the cruiser and the presence of enemy submarines. When letters from survivors began to appear in the newspapers it was clear that a torpedo had caused the loss of the ship, which foundered twelve miles north of St Abb’s Head, Berwickshire. The approach of the weapon was observed by some of those on board, and the order was given for the engines to be stopped and reversed. It was too late. The explosion took place close to the bridge, causing the magazine to blow up.

“I saw a flash” says a survivor, “and the ship seemed to lift right out of the water. Down went the mast and forward funnel and fore part of the ship, and all the men there must have been blown to atoms.” When the order to man the boats was given it was found that only one boat was left whole; it capsized on reaching the water. Nothing could be done to save the Pathfinder, now partly on fire and in extremis. The death-knell of hope rang out sharp and clear: “Every man for himself.” Officers and crew jumped overboard and made for anything floatable that had been flung adrift by the explosion or thrown out by the men themselves when the last dread order had been given. Wonderful work was done by a lieutenant and a chief petty officer. Both of them powerful swimmers, they paddled about collecting wreckage, and pushing it toward those in need of help. One of the most miraculous escapes was that of Staff-Surgeon T. A. Smyth, who got jammed beneath a gun, was carried down with the ship, and escaped with a few bruises.

The dramatic swiftness attending the loss of the Aboukir, the Hogue, and the Cressy accentuated the ruthless nature of the sea campaign in the public mind. The three armoured cruisers were struck down within an hour by the same submarine. They were patrolling in company, and two of them were lost while going to the assistance of the Aboukir, which was believed to have struck a mine.

Sixty officers and over 1400 men, many of them reservists, perished as a sequel to Otto Weddigen’s prowess and their own humanity, or more than the total British losses at the battles of the Glorious First of June, St Vincent, the Nile, and Trafalgar. From a naval point of view the loss of the ships was unimportant. One is apt to forget that men-of-war have often a floating population equal to many a place in the United Kingdom which prides itself on being called a town. If several hundred inhabitants of such a spot were wiped out in a few minutes it would be regarded as a terrible happening. The tragedy of the affair would come home to us because a similar thing might occur where we live. Yet often enough a naval disaster arouses nothing more than scant sympathy and a mere comment. During the Great War those at sea in our big ships faced such disasters every hour of every day and every night.

Fortunately the Aboukir, the Hogue, and the Cressy did not constitute the “British North Sea Fleet,” as ultra-patriotic German newspapers inferred. According to his own statement, the commander of U 9 was eighteen nautical miles to the north-west of the Hook of Holland when he first sighted the cruisers, time 6.10 a.m. The vessels were proceeding slowly in line ahead, and the first torpedo struck the Aboukir, which was the middle ship. The reverberations of the explosion could be felt in the submarine, for “the shot had gone straight and true.” The Aboukir’s consorts closed on her, intent on offering assistance, but, as Weddigen points out, this was playing his game. They were torpedoed in rapid succession. “I had scarcely to move out of my position, which was a great aid, since it helped to keep me from detection.” One shot from the Cressy, he adds, “came unpleasantly near to us.” The commander pays a generous tribute to his foes: “They were brave, true to their country’s sea traditions.” In one thing only was he unsuccessful. The cruisers were unattended by a covering force of destroyers, but while U 9 was returning to her lair he came across some of these vessels. By exposing his periscope at intervals Weddigen hoped to entice them into a zone where capture or destruction by German warships was probable. Although the destroyers failed to put an end to his career, he likewise failed to get the flies into the spider’s parlour.

The Admiralty held that the commanders of the Hogue and the Cressy committed a pardonable error of judgment, and noted that “the conditions which prevail when one vessel of a squadron is injured in a mine-field or is 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.”