Her first appearance in our waters was on July 21st, when she bobbed up near Cape Cod, Mass., and attacked the tug Perth Amboy and four barges in tow. Three torpedoes were fired at the tug, it was stated. A shell crashed through the wheelhouse, and cut off the hand of a sailor as he grasped the spokes of the steering wheel. The tug on fire, the German turned his attention to the barges, and kept firing away until several men were wounded and the helpless craft went down. Three women and five children were aboard the barges. They, with the crews, were reached by boats from Coast Guard Station No. 40, and landed at Nauset Harbor.
Seaplanes from the Chatham naval air station flew to the scene and attacked the submarine, dropping aerial bombs. Though the haze obscured the view, bombs fell very near the U-boat, and one or two, it was reported, actually struck her but failed to explode. Not relishing this attack from the air, the German submerged and started for Canadian waters.
Sinking a fishing schooner 60 miles southeast of Cape Porpoise, and burning another near the entrance to the Bay of Fundy, the raider turned her attention to the fishing fleet around Seal Island, Nova Scotia, sinking four American schooners and three Canadians. She also sank the Canadian tanker Luz Blanca and the Swedish steamer Sydland. On August 11 the British steamship Penistone was torpedoed and sunk, her master, David Evans, taken prisoner, and the Herman Winter, an American steamer, was attacked, but escaped uninjured. Sailing southward the U-boat, a week later, sank the San Jose, and Evans was released and allowed to get into a lifeboat with the Norwegian crew.
The U-156 then went northward again, and on August 20 captured the Canadian steam trawler Triumph, and armed her as a raider, placing a German crew aboard. Operating together, they sank a dozen schooners in Canadian waters. Sinking the Canadian schooner Gloaming, on August 26, the U-156 started on her homeward voyage. The only attack she made returning was unsuccessful, an encounter on August 31 with the U. S. S. West Haven, which drove her off.
Beginning by attacking barges and tugs, devoting most of her time to sinking small fishing craft, the U-156 met an inglorious end in the Northern Mine Barrage. Attempting to "run" the barrage, she struck a mine and sank so quickly that, apparently, many of her men did not have time to escape. Twenty-one survivors were landed on the Norwegian Coast; the fate of the rest of the crew is unknown. It seems like fate that this raider which destroyed so many helpless little American vessels should have been sent down by that creation which was mainly American, the great barrage which, 3,500 miles from this country, stretched across the North Sea.
At the same time the U-156 was slaying fishing craft in the north, another German submarine, commanded by Korvetten-Kapitän Kophamel, the U-140, was operating in southern waters. Leaving Kiel June 22, only a week after the U-156, this big undersea boat began work almost in mid-ocean July 18, gunning the American tanker Joseph Cudahy. On the 26th she fired on two British vessels, and later on the Kermanshah. All these attacks were unsuccessful, but she succeeded in sinking the Portuguese bark Porto, and on August 1 the Japanese steamship Tokuyama was torpedoed 200 miles southeast of New York.
The U-140 had a long and hot fight, before she sank, August 4th, her first American vessel, the tanker O. B. Jennings, Captain George W. Nordstrom, master; one man being killed and several wounded, before the ship was sent down. Then the U-140, sinking a schooner on the way, headed for Diamond Shoals, on the North Carolina coast, near Cape Hatteras.
The Merak, a Dutch steamship taken over by the Americans, was sailing along at eight knots, when, at 1:40 p. m., a shot crossed her bow. Putting about, the Merak made for shore, zigzagging, the submarine pursuing, firing a shell a minute. After the thirtieth shot, the Merak ran aground and her crew took to the boats. The Germans boarded the steamer, bombed her, and then turned their attention to other vessels. Three were in sight, the steamers Beucleuch and Mariner's Harbor, and the Diamond Shoals lightship.
First they turned their guns on the lightship. Unarmed, with no means of defense, this vessel of 590 tons was of the same type as the other ships which are stationed at various points along the coast to keep their lights burning and warn mariners off dangerous points. To destroy one of these coast sentinels is like shooting down a light-house. But the Germans evidently thought its destruction would cause a shock and arouse indignation, if nothing else. So they shot down the sentinel of Diamond Shoals, while the lightships' crew took to the boats and saved their lives by rowing to shore. Then the U-140 attacked the Beucleuch, but the British steamer was too fast for her, and in the meantime the Mariner's Harbor, too, had escaped.
No more was heard of the U-140 until August 10, when she attacked the Brazilian steamer Uberaba. The destroyer Stringham went at once to the steamship's assistance and drove off the enemy. The Brazilians later presented the destroyer with a silk American flag and a silver loving-cup, to express their thanks for the timely aid given by the Stringham in saving the Uberaba from destruction.