Mute testimony against Captain Fryatt was a gold watch found upon his person. This carried an inscription testifying that the watch had been presented by the mayor and people of Harwich in recognition of the Captain's bravery in attempting to ram a submarine, and his successful escape when the U-boat called upon him to surrender.
The prisoners who were captured with Captain Fryatt were sent to the prison camp at Ruhlaben, but Captain Fryatt was condemned to death as a "franc-tireur." The news of the murder was sent to the world through a German communique dated July 28th. It stated:
The accused was condemned to death because, although he was not a member of a combatant force, he made an attempt on the afternoon of March 20, 1915, to ram the German submarine U-33 near the Maas lightship. The accused, as well as the first officer and the chief engineer of the steamer, received at the time from the British Admiralty a gold watch as a reward of his brave conduct on that occasion, and his action was mentioned with praise in the House of Commons.
On the occasion in question, disregarding the U-boat's signal to stop and show his national flag, he turned at a critical moment at high speed on the submarine, which escaped the steamer by a few meters only by immediately diving. He confessed that in so doing he had acted in accordance with the instructions of the Admiralty. One of the many nefarious franc-tireur proceedings of the British merchant marine against our war vessels has thus found a belated but merited expiation.
This brutal action by Germany coming after the murder of Edith Cavell created intense indignation throughout the world. It ranked with the poison gas at Ypres, the Lusitania, the Belgian atrocities, the killing of Edith Cavell and the unrestricted submarine sinkings, as a factor in arousing the democratic peoples of the world to a fighting pitch.
Germany sowed its seeds of destruction in the wind that bore the fumes of poison gas, and in the ruthless brutality that decreed the sinking of the Lusitania and the murders of Edith Cavell and Captain Fryatt.
It reaped the whirlwind in the world-wide wrath that brought America into the war, and that visited disgrace and defeat upon the German Empire.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
First to feel the effects of German terrorism through poison gas were the gallant Canadian troops on the afternoon of April 22, 1915, at Ypres, Belgium. Gas had been used by the Germans previously to this, but they were mere experimental clouds directed against Belgian troops.