On the 23rd October the cruiser Prinz Adalbert, although escorted by a couple of destroyers, one on each bow, was sent to the bottom by a British submarine near Libau. Regarding the manner of her death, the commander of the boat which wrought her destruction has this to say:
Fired bow tube at enemy’s fore-bridge. Observed very vivid flash of explosion along water-line at point of aim. This was immediately followed by very large concussion, and entire ship was immediately hidden in huge columns of thick grey smoke, fore magazine having evidently been exploded by torpedo.
For some unknown reason a newspaper correspondent’s account of the loss of this ship was allowed to be sent by the German official wireless to New York. The writer asserted that the affair took place in hazy weather—“ideal conditions for an attack,” according to the British commander—and that the vessel was struck by two torpedoes almost simultaneously. According to him the Prinz Adalbert went down “immediately, like a piece of iron.” How the following paragraph came to be passed by the censor is a greater mystery: “The enemy submarines in the Baltic offer a difficult problem. The Admiralty is confronted with the practically impossible task of keeping them out. The Admiralty can mine or set barrier nets in the Sound between Denmark and Sweden only up to the three-mile limit, where the neutral waters of the two countries begin. The problem is causing the Admiralty serious thought.”
The range was some 1300 yards, and the “very large concussion” so great that it upset the working of the torpedo mechanism of the submarine and necessitated the craft’s burying herself in deep water to avoid injury from the great masses of débris that were falling over a wide area. The Prinz Adalbert was not wrecked, but annihilated.
The light cruiser Undine was dispatched by two torpedoes in three minutes, while convoying the steam ferry Preussen from Trelleborg to Sassnitz on the 7th November, 1915. The first missile missed, and merely put a couple of attendant torpedo-boats on the qui vive. In attempting to ram the assailant, one of them uncovered her charge, with the result that the second weapon struck the Undine full amidships. The underwater craft, uninjured by the withering fire of the disconcerted cruiser, ducked and was seen no more. As a neutral captain remarked, “the submarines pop up everywhere, and disappear again with an alertness which only an intimate knowledge of the waters would allow. Several times they have been seen in close proximity to the mine-field, but they seem to be as much at home as in the North Sea.” A little later the Preussen played into the enemy’s hands by ramming and sinking her escorting torpedo-boat, of whose company only five were picked up.
The Flying Dutchman of the Great War was surely the German light cruiser Bremen, completed in 1904 at the port whose name she bore. This little 3200–ton warship, mounting ten 4.1–in. guns and fourteen smaller weapons, was reported from time to time as having been seen in the Atlantic, the North Sea, and the Pacific. Then she appeared—and disappeared—in the Baltic. On the 18th December, 1915, Berlin admitted her loss, together with a torpedo-boat escorting her. This double event of the previous day was due to a British submarine.
In May 1916, when the eastern and southern parts of the Baltic were once more free from ice, British submarines lost no time in renewing their activity, to the utter discomfiture of traders who did not mind running big risks for big money. A German convoy was also intercepted off the coast of Sweden by Russian torpedo-boats, destroyers, and submarines. The squadron sank the auxiliary cruiser König von Sachsen, and set fire to another auxiliary ship, the Hermann. The latter was afterward blown up by her crew.
The raid in the Gulf of Finland in November 1916, again under cover of a fog, showed the efficiency of the Russian Baltic Fleet to be still unimpaired, but the Revolution achieved what the enemy failed to do. “Confusion and mistrust prevailed”: in these words Admiral Koltchak summed up the whole unhappy situation. In October 1917 the German High Sea Fleet held the mastery of the Gulf of Riga. The most belligerent representative of the London Press went frantic because the enemy’s object had been carried out “without any interference from the British Fleet, which, as we are accustomed to say, commands the sea.” Presumably it would have had battleships and vessels of Sir David Beatty’s celebrated ‘Cat Class’ forging ahead through the entrance, disregarding the imminent likelihood of their being sent to the bottom by U-boats and mine-fields. The difficulties surmounted by underwater craft in penetrating the Baltic, to which I have already drawn attention, is surely sufficient answer to the most amateur of amateur strategists, who, indeed, were somewhat roughly handled by Sir Eric Geddes in the House of Commons. What it was possible for the British Navy to do it achieved.
On the 23rd it was announced that a British submarine had fired two torpedoes at an enemy Dreadnought of the Markgraf class mounting ten 12–in. guns, with what result was unknown. The Germans made it somewhat too hot with shells from ships and bombs from seaplanes for her commanding officer to wait and see. She certainly succeeded in blowing up a big transport.
Opportunity is four-fifths of the battle where underwater craft are concerned. As the war progressed and Britain learned how to tackle those of the enemy, so the Germans gained experience in dodging our boats. Three Dreadnoughts, a light cruiser, and several torpedo craft hailing from Kiel were chased for four hours by one of our submarines. Every ounce of energy was got out of the motors, but never once did she succeed in getting closer than eight miles. A decent-sized gun would have reached readily enough, but no torpedo has ever achieved so distant a range. The squadron covered a wide area of sea, frequently changed course, and manœuvred in such a way that the British skipper candidly confessed that his German rival “made use of very confusing and successful anti-submarine tactics.”