Submarine and Anti-submarine

by Sir Henry John Newbolt

This legitimate use of the submarine formed part, as we have seen, of both British and German war policy—though, in our own case, it was originally considered rather as a means of defence against invasion; than of offence on the high seas. It was, therefore, not unnatural that the U-boat should score first. Besides, we were offering a hundred targets to one. Our cruisers were all over the North Sea, while no German ships could be met there except an occasional mine-layer like the Königin Luise. This state of things has only become more invariable as the War has developed; and the most remarkable result, so far, of the contest between the two submarine services is the practical equality of the score on the two sides. With infinitely fewer and more difficult chances, the British submarine has actually surpassed the U-boat’s record, in successes obtained against enemy ships of war, and immensely surpassed it in the proportion of successes to opportunities.

The first war-ship to fall to the torpedo of a submarine was the Pathfinder, a light cruiser of about 5,000 tons, with a complement of 268 officers and men, of whom some half were saved. The boat which sank her was the U. 21, commanded by Lieutenant Hersing, who raised high hopes in Germany which he was not destined to fulfil.

A greater captain is said to have been Captain Otto Weddigen, who achieved the sensational feat of pulling down three of our cruisers in one hour, and was supposed by some of his fellow-countrymen to have solved the problem of reducing the British Fleet to an equality with the German. But he owed more to luck and our inexperience than to any peculiar skill of his own. In the early morning of September 22, 1914, he stalked the armoured cruisers Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy, old ships of 12,000 tons and 18 knots’ speed, which were out on patrol duty in the North Sea, and were about to take up their stations for the day’s work. The danger of the submarine was hardly yet fully recognised; and when the Aboukir was struck by a violent explosion, the general belief in the squadron was that she had run foul of a mine. She listed heavily and sank slowly, her funnels almost level with the water, and the smoke coming out as from the water’s edge. The other two ships closed her at once, and had got within two cables of her when the Hogue was struck in turn by two torpedoes almost simultaneously. The effect was extraordinary. ‘She seemed,’ says an eye-witness, ‘to give one jump out of the water and then to go straight down.’ So quickly did she go, that she was out of sight long before Aboukir, who took twenty minutes to sink, so that her men (as one of them said) ‘got time to do the best.’

The moment the Hogue was struck, it was realised that submarines were at work, and Cressy opened fire from one of her 9·2-in. guns. She was hit herself by two torpedoes immediately afterwards, and listed heavily, so that everything began to roll down the deck. But she sank slowly and her gunners kept up their fire most gallantly, giving up their chance of being saved for the hope of killing their enemy before they went down. They fired a dozen shots in all, and are said by Lieutenant Harrison to have sunk one of the attacking U-boats. ‘I reckon her gunners,’ said a survivor from the Aboukir, ‘were about the bravest men that ever lived. They kept up the firing until she had 40 degrees of list. They died gamely, did those fellows.’ Their shipmates were worthy of them. ‘There was absolutely no panic on the cruiser; the men were as calm as at drill.’ At last some trawlers came up; and, after two hours, some destroyers. Only 777 of the three ships’ crews were saved, out of a total of about 2,100; and 60 officers were lost out of 120. ‘Some of our men must have been in the water for three or four hours. The Aboukir men were taken to the Hogue; when the Hogue was sunk, they were taken to the Cressy; when the Cressy was taken, they were thrown in the sea again. Yet here they are, and there is only one thing they want—to go to sea again and have another whack at the men who torpedoed them.’

Possibly they had their wish; for some of them may have been on board the British ship which, a few months later, destroyed U. 29 (Weddigen’s boat) by a brilliant and almost reckless feat of seamanship, which, in later days, will form a favourite yarn of the Service.

The only other war-ship lost by submarine action in 1914 was the Hawke, an armoured cruiser twenty-five years old, which was torpedoed while on patrol in the North Sea, and sank in ten minutes, only seventy of those on board being saved. The year 1915 began badly for us, and ended by being decidedly our worst year on one side the account, though it was our best on the other. At 2 o’clock in the morning of January 1, a squadron of battle-ships, of the older types of 1901 and 1902, was steaming down Channel in line ahead. There was a gale blowing, and the sea was running high. The last two ships of the line were the London and the Formidable, the latter of which was suddenly shaken by a violent explosion, and not long afterwards by a second one. Even then, the ship did not sink till forty-five minutes after; and if it had not been for the rough weather and icy water, boats and rafts might have been got away with most of the crew. As it was, no steam-pinnaces could be got out, and the oars of the 42-foot cutter and other boats were nearly all smashed against the ship’s sides. The whole company, from the officers, giving quiet orders on the bridge, to the men smoking on the slant deck, behaved as if at manœuvres, and Captain Loxley, who went down with his ship, distinguished himself by signalling to the London not to stand by him, as there was a submarine about. One boat came ashore at Lyme Regis, with forty-six live men and nine dead in her; seventy more men were brought in after three hours’ hard and dangerous work by the 50-ton smack, Provident, of Brixham—William Pillar, skipper. His crew consisted of three men and a cook-boy. Out of a total complement of more than 700, only 201 were saved in all. Among the lost were thirty-four officers, including eight midshipmen and a sub-lieutenant.

On March 11, the Bayano, an armed merchant-cruiser, was torpedoed off the Firth of Clyde, and went down with 170 of her 200 men. On April 11, the Wayfarer transport was torpedoed, and ran ashore off Queenstown. On May 1, the Recruit, a small torpedo-boat of 385 tons, was sunk in the North Sea, with thirty-nine out of her sixty-four officers and men.

‘Were brought in by the 50-ton smack, Provident, of Brixham.’

Then came two grave losses on two consecutive days. The British Fleet off Gallipoli had already lost the Irresistible and Ocean by floating mines; and now the U-boats succeeded in inflicting another double loss on us, at a moment when the Army needed the strongest support to ensure success. On May 26, a single torpedo sank the Triumph, while she was co-operating with the Australian and New Zealand troops before Ari Burnu. She was accompanied by an escort of two destroyers, and was about to open fire when the submarine got a shot into her. She listed till her deck touched the water, and in five minutes capsized completely, but remained floating for twenty minutes, keel upwards. Some 460 of the officers and men were saved.