First World War wrecks

Diary of the War: September 1917

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The Schooners’ Last Stand

It is easy to say with the benefit of hindsight that shipping losses could have been considerably reduced had coal been circulated at home by rail during the First World War, instead of being sent out into a North Sea full of minefields and lurking U-boats (although what would have been done with all the colliers lying idle in port is a moot point – doubtless sent to replace shipping on other routes – but this is all hypothetical.) The capacity for destruction from the air was less developed than in the Second World War, so, on paper, the railways appear an obvious route that was unaccountably not taken.

Matters were not quite that simple. Focusing on the seaward end for this blog (discussing the railway end would be a blog post or three in its own right), the infrastructure of coal supply was geared to despatch by sea, even for the internal market. It had traditionally been so before the coming of the railways and continued to be so thereafter, the Industrial Revolution making it easier to link coalfields to the ports, rather than make use of the new-fangled railways to circulate coal inland.

Steam trains thus ran the extracted coal from the large Durham coalfield the short distances to Blyth, Shields, Sunderland, and Hartlepool, whence the steam colliers took over and carried the coal to London and elsewhere, a seamless chain from mine to depot or power plant.

But this regular supply route was not only being disrupted by the war, it was being decimated, as steam collier after steam collier sank in the North Sea. Over the course of the war other measures were taken to spread the risk: output from other coalfields increased and shipping movements accordingly transferred to other ports on the other side of the country. For example, as production shifted towards the mines of north-west England and Wales, Liverpool and Barry in Wales saw a rise in collier traffic.

The sourcing of supplies from elsewhere and the re-routing of traffic through other ports had its parallel in the deployment of a more diverse collier fleet. Small sailing schooners already handled coal as ’round Britain’ coasters or shuttling between Great Britain and Ireland on an exchange cargo basis, but now they were deployed to supplement the steamers in ensuring coal reached France by the relatively less ‘exposed’ west coast route which was at least less heavily mined (but was still dangerous as the focus of considerable U-boat activity).

A diverse group of sailing vessels accordingly left various ports in Liverpool Bay for Cherbourg and Dieppe in September 1917. They were redolent of an era fifty years earlier: the Mary Seymour, schooner of Portsmouth, 150 tons gross, built 1865; Mary Orr, ketch of Glasgow, 91 tons gross, built 1868; the Jane Williamson, Irish schooner, also described as a brigantine, 197 tons, built 1870; the Water Lily, schooner of Barnstaple, 111 tons, built 1876, and the Moss Rose, schooner of Chester, 161 tons, built 1888. Such ages were not uncommon in the coasting trade, but nevertheless it was a fairly elderly set of small coasters that set out in the hope of a passage free of encounters with the enemy. All were outward-bound in company from the Mersey for Dieppe and Cherbourg with at least one other ship, carrying much-needed coal for the French market.

The Moss Rose was the first to be attacked and sunk by gunfire from UC-51 at 10.30am, 7 miles NNE of Pendeen Lighthouse. The master of the Mary Orr watched events unfold, and bowed to the inevitable without attempting to escape. He gave the order to abandon ship and the crew waited then watched the ensuing destruction of the Mary Seymour, around 11.15 to 11.30am. It is said that the crew of the Moss Rose and the Mary Seymour then rowed to, and were picked up by ‘the schooner Mary of Glasgow’, (1) and transferred to the Padstow lifeboat. This introduces some confusion, since the Mary Orr also belonged to Glasgow, but there was probably yet another ship named Mary involved.

The abandoned Mary Orr was then literally next in the firing line: scuttling charges were placed aboard, and she sank 8 miles NE of Pendeen Lighthouse. The Mary Orr‘s boat was then used to carry more charges over to the Water Lily, which was likewise sunk 8 miles NE of Pendeen Lighthouse some time after noon. These crews, however, were both picked up by the Belgian SS Adour.

It seems unlikely, therefore, that the crews of the Moss Rose and Mary Seymour rowed over to a vessel which had been abandoned by her own crew, and much more likely that there was another Mary in the little convoy of sailing ships. It was common in attacks on small sailing vessels for one ship in the group to be spared, to enable survivors to escape. (2)

The last ship to be sunk that day was the Jane Williamson, 20 miles NNE of St. Ives, at around 4pm. The attacking submarine was also UC-51, and it was this particular sinking that attracted the attention of the press, because there was apparently no such care for the survival of the crew. It was widely reported that not only was she shelled on approach, but also the crew as they escaped in their open boat, with only two men being left alive to tell the tale.

The inquest upon the dead at Penzance returned a verdict of ‘wilful and diabolical murder’. At the funerals of two of the dead men, wreaths were donated by a grieving couple, each inscribed ‘in tenderest memory of a stranger from Capt. and Mrs Henry Row, who are sorrowing over their own two murdered boys.’ (3)

With the same hindsight with which I started this blog, it is also easy to say that pitting small schooners against U-boats was a forlorn hope. They were generally unarmed and unable to outrun a fast-moving submarine (hence the skipper of the Mary Orr giving up any hope of escape as a bad job), and, small and constructed of timber as they were, they stood little chance against shelling and were easily despatched by scuttling charges.

Such was the pressure on shipping, however, that it was imperative to try to spread the risk by any means possible, and perhaps it was easier to sacrifice small sailing vessels approaching the end of their careers, than the more modern and much larger steamers which took up huge resources in materials and manpower to build. Also, as prey, they were far less significant than the grand ocean liners and the everyday steamers, which were a more tempting prey, accounting for a higher tonnage and a greater commercial impact and disruption to trade when sunk. The personal cost to the schooner crews, though, must have been immense: death, injury and the destruction of their livelihoods.

Nevertheless, the experiment in circulating coal by ‘acting sail colliers’ would be abandoned by November 1917 after further losses: that same month the submarine responsible for sinking the little fleet (UC-51) would also meet her end in English waters.

Not all such vessels perished in the war, however: the Kathleen and May schooner, built in 1900 in Liverpool, gives a very good impression of what the schooners lost a century ago looked like, not least in her longevity. She survived the First World War (and the Second). Her wartime logbooks for 1915 also survive and reveal regular boat drills and testing of lifesaving appliances, given the risks she was running during the war. (4)

She is now part of the National Historic Fleet.

A ship in the centre of the image sits against a blue sky, the sea occupying the bottom third of the image. The ship has three masts, with three square red sails spread, and four triangular sails between the foremast and bowsprit, which faces to the right of the image.
The three-masted schooner Kathleen and May (1900) is a contemporary of the five sailing ships lost on 10 September 1917, most of which were also schooners. Like the Jane Williamson, she was originally built in north-west England and was in Irish ownership during the First World War. © and by kind permission of National Historic Ships UK

(1) Larn, R & Larn, B 1995. Shipwreck Index of the British Isles, Vol.1: Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset. London. Lloyd’s of London Press (based on ADM/137 reports, The National Archives)

(2) This modus operandi is attested, for example, in an incident off the East Anglian coast on 30 July 1915, when the survivors of eight fishing smacks sunk by the same U-boat, boarded a ninth which had been spared, and other similar incidents. Cant, S 2013. England’s Shipwreck Heritage: from logboats to U-boats. Swindon: Historic England (p166)

(3) See, for example, Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 17 September 1917, No.12,231, p3

(4) ‘Kathleen and May‘, entry in WW1: Britain’s surviving vessels, a microsite of National Historic Ships UK

 

Diary of the War: August 1917

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The Azira

Many years ago, while working on ships of the First World War, I became intrigued by a large number of wrecks with names unusual for British ships, among them Eidsiva, Gefion, Herdis, Nordstrand, Reidar, Rinda, Slaattero,  and Sten. All appeared in British Vessels Lost at Sea 1914-1918 and 1939-45, and further research revealed that they were all managed by the Shipping Controller, the British ministry responsible for shipping from late 1916. (1)

I realised that here was a tale to be told.

The Azira is part of that tale, and is commemorated today, a century after she was lost. She is part of a thread that has woven itself into this summer’s War Diary commemorations. June 1917‘s post looked at the diverse composition of crews aboard British merchantmen sunk in that month and at other times, including many sailors from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. July’s post concentrated on the loss of the Vanland and the problems that neutral vessels were facing in English waters. These two themes are brought together in this month’s post, for there was another way for seamen from Scandinavia to join the British mercantile marine . . .

As we have seen so often during the War Diary, the Azira was yet another example of the pressures faced by the collier lines, claimed by a U-boat in the North Sea. She was torpedoed on 4 August 1917, only five miles out from her departure port of Sunderland, bound for Cherbourg with coal.

During the course of the war, Britain negotiated separate “Tonnage Agreements” with the governments of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. These agreements fulfilled mutually pressing needs: Britain required the tonnage urgently – her ships were still being sunk faster than she could build replacements – while on the other side the ability to import vital supplies or to export goods in the face of blockade was of paramount importance. Each country had differing needs, on which the negotiations were based, and agreements reached at different dates, that with Sweden being the last, in 1918. (2)

As part of these Tonnage Agreements, ships were requisitioned by the British Shipping Controller, a specific ministry created for wartime needs. Where placed into collier roles, as many of these requisitioned ships were, they were managed by specialist collier fleet management firms based in the key coal ports such as Cardiff, Newcastle, Sunderland or Swansea. Generally these ships retained their own crews and skippers and were intended to revert back to their country of origin on the cessation of the war.

There were practical matters of ship preservation too – under the British flag they could be armed, with British gunners, and could join convoy, neither of which they could do as neutrals without compromising their position. Not that this necessarily saved them from loss to war causes: either way, as undefended neutrals without escort provision trading with or passing through the waters of a belligerent nation, or as ships armed and under the flag and the convoy of the same belligerent, they were very vulnerable.

Nevertheless, to all intents and purposes, these ships became temporary British merchantmen and their crews part of the British mercantile marine. They were hidden in plain sight and continue to be so today, as their story is little-known, so this post is part of redressing that balance.

The Azira was among them, a Norwegian ship under the British flag, and acknowledged as such in contemporary records. (3)  Many were ships belonging to companies still well-known today: the Norwegian Fred. Olsen (which then was a cargo carrier, not a cruise specialist) and the Danish DFDS, for example Fred. Olsen’s Bamse, torpedoed in the Channel in 1918. (4)

One man among the Azira‘s 18-strong crew was killed. He is commemorated on the Tower Hill memorial. He was Andrew Lehtman, carpenter, aged 28, born in Russia. (5) As discussed in previous posts, at this time a birthplace or homeport of one larger state current in the 19th or early 20th centuries may mask a diversity of nationalities associated with subsequent nation-states (indexing the former and current nationalities of a lost vessel is an excellent way to understand historical geopolitical changes).

So it proved in this instance. Andrew Lehtman was born in the then Russian ‘Governorate of Estonia’. Things were changing fast in 1917, a pivotal year for both Russia and Estonia. Following the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia, Estonia and Livonia were united to form an autonomous governorate. Full Estonian independence would not be achieved until 1920, for the October Revolution of 1917 intervened. Estonia then saw several years of struggle with Bolshevik usurpation, German occupation and Russian invasion.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that the lists of Estonian seamen who died in British waters or in British hospitals were not published until November 1920, presumably when the situation had become sufficiently politically stable to do so. Lehtman’s name appears in a list furnished by the British police which was published across several newspapers so that they could be traced by relatives. It is likely that his name is somewhat garbled: his first name looks as if it has been anglicised, and there are variant spellings of the name Lehtman. (6)

Labelled a ‘Russian’, an Estonian by nationality and probably by birth, his surname suggests a ‘Baltic German’ affiliation (in common with other seamen on the list), while he died as part of the crew of a Norwegian steamer taken into British service. Was he ever traced, I wonder?

This remains of this shipwreck near Sunderland are not only a tangible link to the Anglo-German conflict of the First World War, but also connect with Anglo-Norwegian diplomacy and the struggles of Estonia for self-determination.

(1)  Four separate HMSO publications collated and republished as facsimile reprints under the title of British Vessels Lost at Sea 1914-18 and 1939-45, Patrick Stephens Ltd., Cambridge, 1988, (BVLS). For the First World War the relevant publications were Navy Losses (1919) and Merchant Shipping (Losses) (1919), reprinted as Section I and Section II in BVLS.

(2) For a fuller overview of requisitioned wrecks from Denmark and Norway in English waters, please see Cant, Serena, England’s Shipwreck Heritage: from logboats to U-boats, Historic England, Swindon, 2013, pp 81-91. For the economic background, see also: Haug, Karl Erik, Norway , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, Freie Universität Berlin; Riste, Olav, The Neutral Ally: Norway’s relations with belligerent powers in the First World War, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, 1965; Salmon, Patrick, Scandinavia and the Great Powers 1890-1940, Cambridge, 1997

(3) BVLS, Section II, p62; Lloyd’s War Losses: Casualties to Shipping through Enemy Causes, 1914-1918, Lloyd’s of London, facsimile reprint, 1990, p161

(4) Cant 2013, based on research in the Fred. Olsen archives, expanding on information in Historic England’s shipwreck records of the National Record of the Historic Environment (NRHE) for both Fred. Olsen and DFDS. Brief company histories, including their wartime service, are available for both Fred. Olsen and DFDS.

(5) Commonwealth War Graves Commission record for Andrew Lehtman

(6) Sakala (in Estonian), 19 November 1920, No.134, p7

 

 

 

 

Diary of the War: July 1917

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The Vanland

July 1917 saw the loss on the 9th of the unique battleship HMS Vanguard in Scapa Flow in an explosion with 843 lives lost, now a Controlled Site under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986.

This month’s War Diary looks at a wreck in English waters with a not dissimilar name, the SS Vanland, a story of a valiant attempt to evade attack and salvage cargo. On 16 July Vanland left her home port of Gothenburg, bound for London, under the command of a temporary captain, one Grönvall, since her usual master was on leave. (1)

She was laden with characteristic exports from her resource-rich and forest-dense homeland: iron goods, paper, boxwood and undipped matches. An uneventful voyage led to a call at the Tyne: thence she commenced an unescorted journey through the East Coast War Channels. (2)

It might be thought that the ships belonging to the belligerent nations had the worst of it – but this was not necessarily the case. Those of neutral nations were hard-pressed, particularly those from Scandinavian countries which had to traverse the North Sea with its extensive minefields, submarines lurking beneath the sea, and search patrols blockading trade with the enemy. Mines were no respecter of nationality, but at least the swept War Channels provided some protection from that particular danger.

Neutrals, however, had no protection against torpedoes, and in British waters ships trading with Britain were considered legitimate targets for attack by Germany regardless of their belligerent status (or otherwise). By this point in 1917, the convoy system was under way, but it was difficult for neutrals to join convoy, since by doing so, they were de facto aligning themselves with the escorting power. Nor could they carry armament for self-defence, since their home nations were neutral, unlike British cargo vessels, which were routinely armed with at least a stern-mounted quick-firing gun and dedicated crew to operate them. Either way, neutrals were very vulnerable. In English waters alone, dozens of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish ships fell victim to U-boat torpedoes, and dozens more to minefields.

In desperation, from as early as 1915, neutral ships from the Nordic countries adopted a generic livery as their best hope of self-defence. They had no guns, but they had paint. Their national flags were painted fore and aft, sometimes amidships as well, and the ship’s name and nationality, NORGE or SVERIGE, were painted amidships in bold white capitals, emphasizing their neutral status, that could be easily read from a distance through a periscope. Indeed the Vanland was painted in such a livery, as in this image from 1915. Yet the torpedoes kept coming. (3)

Thus all Vanland could do was steam south unescorted and hope for the best. On 23 July a periscope was sighted off Kettleness Point (or Kettle Ness) and evasive zig-zagging action was taken to keep the U-boat astern.

The U-boat, however (believed to be UB-21), was not to be so easily shaken off. She surfaced and began to shell the Vanland, so the next evasive manoeuvre was to try to run her ashore in Runswick Bay. Unfortunately she then struck on Kettleness Point, leaving her still long enough to be vulnerable to a torpedo. The subsequent explosion killed six men, although 18 other crew escaped and were rescued by the Runswick lifeboat. They were then taken to a local inn to recover, an incident recalled years later by the then landlords’ son, John ‘Jazzer’ Johnson. (4)

It seems that the vessel was shelled again, probably while the escape and rescue were taking place, since the International Conference of Merchant Seamen in 1917, which took place not long afterwards, named the Vanland as an example of survivors of U-boat attack being fired upon in their boats, accusations which refused to go away. (5)

The Vanland then burned for a week before sliding beneath the waves, inevitably assisted by her combustible cargo of boxwood, greaseproof paper, and matches. Astonishingly, some of it must have escaped the flames, for a few weeks later, some boxwood and rolls of paper were salved and offered for sale by auction. (6)

Portrait format photograph showing all that remains of the burnt-out Falcon, with the bottom ribs infilled with stones and green seaweed, sea lapping at the upper right-hand edge of the photograph.
Wreck of the Falcon, Langdon Steps, Dover, lost when her cargo of jute and matches caught fire in 1926. DP114192 © Historic England

Over half a century later, the Vanland‘s bell was also recovered and presented to representatives of her owners: and the little boy who had seen the rescued men in his parents’ hostelry was chosen to make the presentation. (7)

The remains of the wreck site are known locally and are well dispersed and broken, consistent with the circumstances of her loss, although, with the recovery of the bell, little remains to conclusively identify the site, and a nearby site is charted with another name, that of the Onslow of 1911, so there is some confusion. (8)

The wrecks in the Historic England National Record of the Historic Environment are indexed according to their manner of loss, often with a cause and an effect (e.g. torpedoed and foundered), so that vessels can be searched for or statistically interpreted by cause of loss. It is not enough to state that a ship was torpedoed, and assume that she then foundered: not all torpedoed vessels were lost, while others managed to limp in to the nearest friendly harbour and were then abandoned as a constructive total loss.

The Vanland was shelled (gun action), then grounded on Kettleness Point, was then torpedoed, caught fire (burnt), and finally she capsized and foundered after the space of a week: quite an eventful end, even by wartime standards.

(1) Kalmar, 27 July 1916, No.118, p5, and 28 July 1916, No.119, p6 (in Swedish)

(2) Carl Racey, East Coast Shipwreck Research, 2009, published on http://wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?10921

(3) For more on this subject, please see Cant, England’s Shipwreck Heritage: from logboats to U-boats, Historic England, 2013, pp89-91. In undertaking the research for that volume, I was very kindly given access to Fred. Olsen’s archive of ship photographs, showing many in such wartime livery, one of which is published in the above book.

(4) Racey, 2009; “War on Shore”, untraced newspaper clipping of 1997,  published on http://wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?10921; Jazzer Johnson, The Nagars of Runswick Bay, Runswick

(5) Times, 20 August 1917, No.41,561, p4; People’s Journal, 26 October 1918, No.3,174, p3

(6) Whitby Gazette, 10 August 1917 [issue number illegible as digitized], p1

(7) Receiver of Wreck droits, NHRE record for Vanland; “War on Shore”, 1997.

(8) UKHO 6026; Video footage of the wreck of the Vanland, 2008

Diary of the War: May 1917

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The Gena

In the second instalment of our double bill covering 30 April and 1 May 1917 we take a look at the Gena, sunk on 1 May. On the face of it, Gena was fairly typical in both vessel type and location of loss, a collier sunk in the North Sea while steaming south with her cargo from Tyneside.

Yet there are two things which are very unusual about this particular wreck site. The first is that the position of loss is very precisely specified in relation to a relatively small and impermanent seamark.

She sank “¾ mile S by W ½W of ‘A’ War Channel Buoy, Southwold”. (1)

Unsurprisingly, with this level of detail, the wreck site has a secure history of recording that goes back to the date of loss. (2) It also gives some clue to the location of one of the buoys marking out the East Coast War Channels, or safe swept channels, that kept the shipping lanes open and (relatively) free of mines, swept largely by minesweeper-trawlers such as the Arfon whose loss on 30 April 1917 was commemorated in yesterday’s post.

These War Channels have been the subject of recent investigations on behalf of Historic England  (2014) by Antony Firth (Fjordr), illustrated with maps and charts showing the extent of the War Channels. One unofficial chart marking the buoys further north up the East Coast is known to have been used by an airman providing cover for North Sea shipping (Fig. 7 in report).

If aircraft could provide cover for shipping, tracking U-boats and indeed collaborating with patrol vessels to destroy enemy craft, it followed that ships were also vulnerable to attack from the air. The Gena was the first ship within English territorial waters to be sunk by aircraft, torpedoed from the air by two Hansa-Brandenburg GW seaplanes of Torpedostaffel II, operating out of Zeebrugge. This was not the first aerial attack on merchant shipping by aircraft, but it was one of the first to successfully sink a ship.

So unusual was it that Lloyd’s struggled to fit it into an appropriate category in their ‘ledger’ of war losses. In the “How Sunk” column, the standard abbreviations S (sunk by submarine) and M (mine) were clearly inappropriate, and even this distinction was outdated, since ships had been sunk by mines laid by U-boats since 1915, so arguably fitted both categories (see earlier post on minelaying submarines, introduced in 1915). The only other category available was C (cruiser or raider), which was still inadequate, but it seems that a new category was not considered necessary, and ‘raider’ was at least appropriate in intent, if not in ‘vessel type’ as such. A marginal annotation clarified matters: “German seaplane”. (3)

The Gena was an armed merchant, however, and her attackers did not have it all their own way. Sunk by the planes, her gunner nevertheless managed to down Hansa-Brandenburg 703, whose two crew were rescued to become prisoners of war. (4) An interesting photo gallery of the Hansa-Brandenburg GW can be found here, including stablemate 700, a view of the torpedo loading bay, and film stills of the aircraft landing on the water.

The course of the war at sea was changing: terror could strike from above as well as below, and aircraft though slow, unreliable, and terrifying to fly by modern standards, were proving to be amphibious and adaptable. Finally, the increasing presence of aircraft at sea meant that wrecks at sea were no longer necessarily ‘shipwrecks’, although, on this occasion, the aircraft was also picked up for examination: (see previous double bill on Zeppelin wrecks from February 1916 and March 1916).

The whole incident was recognised at the time as ‘a new phase of warfare’  and a ‘noteworthy development of aerial craft’ (5) so that, unusually for the time, the Admiralty released details of the ‘duel’, in part because there was some propaganda value in demonstrating that the Gena had not gone down without a fight.

(1) Lloyd’s War Losses: The First World War: Casualties to Shipping through Enemy Causes 1914-18, facsimile reprint, Lloyd’s of London Press, 1990, p127

(2) United Kingdom Hydrographic Office record no. 10320

(3) Lloyd’s War Losses: The First World War: Casualties to Shipping through Enemy Causes 1914-18, facsimile reprint, Lloyd’s of London Press, 1990, p127

(4) for example: http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/241938-naval-historynet-bvlas-errata/

(5) Yarmouth Independent, Saturday 5 May 1917, No.4,529, p1

Diary of the War: April 1917

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A Mounting Toll: G42, G85, Ballarat, Medina, and HMT Arfon

In the first of this weekend’s double bill for 30 April and 1 May 1917 we look at the continuing attrition of British and foreign shipping. On 6 April 1917 the United States declared war on Germany, as unrestricted submarine warfare also began to take its toll on American ships. Within the extent of English territorial waters as currently defined, the figures demonstrate that 71 wrecks were recorded for this month, of which 32 represent sites, the majority positively identified.

At this point during the war, there were no U-boats reported sunk within English waters for the month of April 1917, appearing to underline the success of the continuing submarine campaign.

German warships were also active in the Channel, mounting a raid on the Dover Patrol on the night of 20-21 April and shelling Margate and Ramsgate on 27 April. In contrast to the lack of sinkings of U-boats, however, two German torpedo boats, G42 and G85, were sunk as the raid developed into the Battle of Dover Straits. G42 was rammed by HMS Broke, while HMS Swift despatched G85 with a torpedo, making these vessels the only two German warships sunk in English territorial waters during the war.

The closing week of April 1917 provides a cross-section of the war at sea:

On 25 April 1917 the Australian troopship Ballarat, was torpedoed, but fortunately without loss of life. Ironically, it was the war itself which was probably the major factor in saving the lives of all on board when she was torpedoed. On that day all were mustered at their stations for a deckside Anzac Day service, remembering their fallen compatriots at Gallipoli in 1915, which in turn allowed for an orderly evacuation.

On 28 April 1917 the P&O liner RMS Medina was sunk. Her history was intertwined with that of the contemporary British Empire and its liner routes which continued to ply during wartime. Her maiden voyage in 1911 was as a Royal Yacht taking King George V and Queen Mary to Delhi for the Durbar of 1911, after which she reverted to the commercial role for which she was built. On her final voyage she left India with passengers and cargo for Sydney, New South Wales, to take on Australian meat and thence for England via the Suez Canal. She was torpedoed off Start Point, the torpedo exploding in the starboard engine room, killing six men, five of them seamen from the Indian subcontinent, known as lascars, who had a long tradition of working aboard British ships, usually, as here, in the engine room. (See previous posts on the Mahratta I in 1909 and the Magdapur in 1939 for more on wrecks involving lascars.)

On 30 April 1917 HM trawler Arfon was mined while on minesweeping duty off the Dorset coast with the loss of ten lives. She lies virtually intact with her minesweeping equipment and deck gun in situ, a rare but representative example of an early 20th century steam trawler adapted for war purposes, and as such was designated under the 1973 Protection of Wrecks Act in 2016. A new interpretation board at St. Aldhelm’s Head commemorates the site, while an accessible fully-captioned video trail released for the centenary explores the site through 3D high-resolution images.

The last week of April was therefore a crucial week of a crucial month.

The statistics outlined in Lloyd’s War Losses for April 1917 make grim reading. Over the course of the month 220 British, 103 Allied and 135 neutral vessels had been sunk worldwide for 882,227 tons. (1) Statistics for recent shipping losses were published in the press, followed by a stark warning in Parliament which was widely reported.

‘One hears on many sides that people refuse to be rationed or to ration themselves, because they say the shortage is only newspaper talk.

‘The position is now plain, that if within the next six or eight weeks there is not a very substantial reduction “there will be no alternative but to apply compulsion.” (2) That meat aboard RMS Medina, for example, had not got through.

(1) Lloyd’s War Losses: The First World War: Casualties to Shipping through Enemy Causes 1914-18, facsimile reprint, Lloyd’s of London Press, 1990, p127

(2) Daily Telegraph, April 26 1917, No.19,356, p5

Diary of the War: March 1917

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Mousse Le Moyec

This is the tale of two events across the Channel – one in French waters on this day a hundred years ago (29 March 1917) during the First World War, and a later wreck in English waters from the Second World War, linked by a name.

The latter was one of the very first wrecks I ever encountered on the database 20 years ago, with the unusual and evocative name of Mousse Le Moyec. The name has stuck with me ever since: mousse means ‘ship’s boy’ in French (“a young sailor under the age of 17”, according to Larousse) so I always wondered who he was and why he was commemorated by having a ship named after him.

On 29 March 1917 a French sailing trawler, the Irma, took up her station 15 miles SSW of Cordouan, off the Gironde, France, with her crew of five. As she was preparing to shoot her nets, a U-boat commenced shelling the vessel, approaching closer with each shot. The ship’s boat was shot away and mousse Maurice Le Moyec, aged 14, was killed.

 

Enfant Moyec2
Commemorative plaque for mousse Maurice Le Moyec, stating his date of death as 29 March 1916 (in error for 1917). La Rochelle © and by kind permission of M Bruno Baverel

The master was seriously injured, but the other three members of the crew, the mate, aged 18, and two boys, aged 15, remained calm under fire, even though also injured, and got the little ship back to the Gironde under a jury rig. The survivors were decorated for gallantry.

After the war, a number of French colliers were built for the French Government to a standard design, each named in honour of one of those who had fallen for France. The vessel named after mousse Le Moyec was built for a company which had also lost a ship called Irma, in 1916, so it may be that there was some confusion over the ship on which young Le Moyec was lost.

This collier, commemorating a victim of the First World War, would play her part in the Second. In the 1920s and 1930s she regularly criss-crossed the Channel to pick up Welsh coal for France. After the fall of France in 1940, she was therefore a natural candidate to bring over a number of young Frenchmen to Britain, answering de Gaulle’s call for Free Frenchmen to join him in the fight against the Nazis. Their story can be read here (in French): one of those passengers was André Quelen, who is remembered here (in English).

As with so many other vessels which escaped to Britain from occupied Europe, she was then placed at the disposal of the British Government (my own father travelled on a Dutch trooper under the British flag, which had escaped the night Amsterdam fell). Mousse Le Moyec continued to ply her usual trade as a collier, but solely within English waters on the Bristol Channel – Plymouth run, until she was wrecked near Hartland Point in December 1940.

When I first encountered Mousse Le Moyec all those years ago, the internet was in its infancy and it was difficult to find out more. Thanks to the power of online resources, in particular the French pages14-18 forum, I have been able to discover the moving connection between a wreck in English waters in 1940 and the French counterpart of Jack Cornwell, of Jutland fame, who died 100 years ago today, a reminder of cross-Channel co-operation in time of war.

 

 

 

Diary of the War: February 1917

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The Resumption of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare

On January 31, 1917,  the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany was announced to the Reichstag, to come into effect the following day. It was a policy summarised by the Daily Telegraph as ‘sink on sight’. (1)

As on the previous occasion in 1915, the seas around Britain were declared a war zone by Germany, and vessels of any nationality, not just British, were liable to be attacked: in effect it was a submarine blockade of Britain. The lifeline of the seas was envisaged as a noose with which to strangle the British Isles, preventing food and other imports from coming in, exports sustaining the economy getting out, and disrupting vital supplies, such as coal, which were circulated domestically by sea. .

Sepia-toned poster with German text "Der Magische Gurtel" at the top in black overlying a map of Britain, with surrounding U-boat silhouettes forming the sea. Two larger U-boats in black occupy the lower third of the image, with white superimposed text, "Deutsche U-boote Wider England"
Advertising poster for a German film depicting U30. The title, “Der magische Gürtel” (The Enchanted Girdle) is illustrated by a surrounding sea composed of nothing but U-boats around the English coast. Hans Rudi Ernst, 1917, © IWM (Art.IWM PST 7268)

Wartime censorship has been a leitmotif throughout this War Diary strand, in contrast with the pre-war situation..It seems appropriate to discuss it further here in the context of unrestricted submarine warfare. Prior to the war shipping news was a major staple of the national and regional press, in which shipping movements appeared in their own dedicated columns. During the war these were no longer circulated, while reports of ships sunk were in the main were reduced to a few brief lines which gave away no detail as to the shipping routes involved. Even to state the cargoes suggested particular routes, so this, too was avoided.

The British public were therefore not exposed to the full impact of the existing submarine campaign and were ill-prepared for the onslaught that was to follow.

An editorial for the Telegraph contrasted the state of knowledge in Britain and in Germany: ‘The Germans receive full reports from their submarine commanders of every vessel torpedoed, its name, tonnage, and cargo; they are informed of the date and longitude and latitude of attack. Month by month they issue for the encouragement of the civil population a very full summary. I have seen that for December – the latest. It occupies two columns of a German newspaper, and is very specific.’ (2)

From this source the Telegraph quotes 419,166 lost tons of British shipping. An official British source shows that 114,508 tons of British shipping were lost in December 1916 for 40 ships, while the overall total of mercantile shipping of all nationalities lost that month to all causes (mine, submarine torpedo, and surface ships) was 357,420 tons. (3). In fact, the 419,166 tons figure was probably misunderstood or used for dramatic effect: it is close to a modern tally that quotes 413,428 tons for ships of all nationalities worldwide December 1916, which included over 66,000 tons of ships damaged but not sunk. (4)

January 1917 saw a similar figure of 408,806 tons worldwide for 211 ships sunk and 11 damaged, but following the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in February, that total climbed to 651,995 tons for 301 ships sunk and 27 damaged, and the death toll also rose accordingly. (5)

The Telegraph could see this coming, and spelt out the consequences for its readers in stark terms:

‘It is peculiarly necessary that the facts should be known to the British people, because only thus can they understand that they must economise in everything. Why? Because they live on an island, and nearly all they need must come in ships, of which the number is declining. It may seem smart to dodge the Food Controller’s regulations, yet such an action is unpatriotic . . . ‘

Among those 651,995 tons of shipping sunk in February 1917 was the 539-ton Essonite, the first British victim of the new policy in English waters. She was torpedoed without warning on 1 February 1917, while bound from Caernarfon for Rochester with stone. Under the heading ‘German Piracy’, newspapers stated the bare facts: ‘Lloyd’s Agency reports the trawler Violet, the Briitish steamer Essonite, and the Spanish steamer Algorta have been sunk.’. (6)

Although Lloyd’s War Losses shows that the Essonite was sunk by submarine 3 miles NNW of Trevose Head, Cornwall it is to the official loss report that we must turn to find out more about what happened. The torpedo struck at 1.10pm and within 9 minutes the vessel had sunk. The human impact of torpedoing a vessel without warning is powerfully illustrated by what happened next: ‘The master got hold of a lifebuoy as the ship sank under him and was picked [up] about half an hour afterwards by the ship’s boat in which were two of the crew. The remainder of the crew were lost.’ (7)

On the SS Essonite of Glasgow ten men lost their lives that day. They were: Arthur Altoft, mate, 22; John Dempsey, fireman, 47; David Lynn Dunlop, 1st engineer, 36; John Kenneway, trimmer, 19; James Letson, 2nd engineer, 22; John MacArthur, steward, 64; Allan McFadyen, able seaman, 39; John McPhedran, ordinary seaman, 16; Nevin McVicar, boatswain, 54; and Harry Williams, fireman, 35. (8)

Black and white photo of a wrecked submarine, which bisects the photograph longitudinally. In the foreground dark rocks and an inlet, in which the white sail of a dinghy can be seen. The background grey, featureless sea and sky.
A wrecked U-boat: UB 112 was among the U-boats surrendered to Britain in November 1918 at Harwich. Here she is seen in on the rocks at Falmouth in 1921, one of six U-boats which broke tow in a gale en route to disposal as gunnery targets. A party of visitors have used the dinghy in the foreground to access and inspect the wreck, led by Captain Jack Casement RN, based at Falmouth. © Historic England/ Patrick Casement jxc01_01_011

 

(1) The Daily Telegraph, Thursday 25 January 1917, No.19,279, p7

(2) ibid.

(3) Lloyd’s War Losses: The First World War: Casualties to Shipping Through Enemy Causes 1914-1918, p80, facsimile reprint, Lloyd’s of London Press Ltd. 1980

(4) uboat.net statistics for December 1916

(5) uboat.net statistics for January 1917;  uboat.net statistics for February 1917

(6) e.g. Leeds Mercury, 3 February 1917, p3

(7) ADM 137/2961, The National Archives, Kew

(8) Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Diary of the War: January 1917

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Henry Blogg and the Fernebo

On the stormy winter morning of 9 January 1917, a distress signal brought out the lifeboatmen of Cromer in their lifeboat Louisa Heartwell, which launched into heavy seas to reach the Greek steamer Pyrin, drifting two miles out at sea. Since all men of fighting age were away at war, the lifeboat crew were all either middle-aged or elderly men, and were led by coxswain Henry Blogg, who had joined the crew in 1894, and a relative youngster at the age of 40. It took a party of 40 men, including soldiers, to launch the lifeboat, and over two hours for the crew to reach the wreck and successfully rescue and land 18 survivors.

henry-blogg-modified-photo-1
Henry Blogg. RNLI

In the middle of this force 9 gale, another ship got into difficulties. The Swedish Fernebo, en route from Gavle for London with timber, was in distress, lurching in the sea with one crew member injured – and was even further out to sea, between 3 and 4 miles offshore.

The very wildness of the weather meant that none of the other local lifeboats could put out to the rescue the crew of the Fernebo in the stead of the Cromer lifeboat. The Louisa Heartwell was the nearest and the only suitable craft, being larger and heavier than other local lifeboats, but several attempts to launch her failed, even with all the willing helpers from the town.

A party of men aboard Fernebo saw their chances of rescue slipping away and took matters into their own hands, launching one of the ship’s boats. Almost at the shoreline the vessel capsized and it took a party of onlookers, led by Private Stewart Holmes, one of the soldiers stationed locally, to rescue them by forming a human chain at the risk of their own lives. By this means all six men were rescued from their little boat, which had somehow made it all the way to shore despite the storm.

In the meantime further disaster had literally struck the Fernebo, in the form of a mine laid by UC-19, which had been caught and depth-charged off the Isles of Scilly in the previous month, leaving behind a deadly legacy of sown mines. The explosion split the steamer in two, but her timber cargo kept both halves afloat: fortunately all the crew were in one half, rather than drifting apart on two different wrecks.

The storm drove the stricken Fernebo closer inshore, where, around 5pm, both parts struck Cromer beach, but in different locations. The aft section of the Fernebo came ashore near the groyne at the Doctor’s Steps, Cromer. Once more it was clear that only the Cromer lifeboat and her crew stood between the Swedish sailors and death: with the help of army searchlights trained on the beach and the wreck, further attempts were made to launch. Once launched, several oars were wrenched from the lifeboatmen’s hands and others broken by the violence of the sea, so the crew had to put back then, then return with fresh oars.

At last – success! The crew managed to reach the survivors, safely bringing off eleven men, eleven people who would have died had it not been for the ‘great intrepidity, splendid tenacity, and endurance’ quoted in the citation for the RNLI’s gallantry award to the Louisa Heartwell‘s crew. (1)  This was the occasion on which Henry Blogg, the ‘greatest lifeboatman of them all’, received his first RNLI gold medal, but the entire crew also received awards, with another being made to Pte. Holmes, leader of the shore party which rescued the six men from the boat.

Black and white photograph of two rows of en, seated in front, standing at the back, in front of the open doorway through which the bows of a lifeboat can be seen.
The crew of the Cromer lifeboat, wearing the medals awarded for this rescue. RNLI

But for the courage of the Cromer lifeboatmen, the Fernebo‘s crew would all have shared in the fate of their injured colleague, who was killed when they struck the mine. This was certainly a rescue against all the odds, when human endurance overcame the power of nature and the violence of war.

Colour photograph of ribs of wreck, partly covered in seaweed, in the foreground of the image, on a beach, which stretches to the background of the image. The top sixth of the image is taken up by a flat band of blue sky and sea.
The wreck of the Fernebo as she now lies at Cromer. RNLI

Over 5,000 lives were saved by the RNLI during the First World War: their work is showcased in an RNLI travelling exhibition Hope in the Great War, which is touring the country for the duration of the centenary. It features the Fernebo, and another rescue we have already featured in the War Diary, the Rohilla. Do go and see it – check for a venue near you.

(1) Widely reported in a nationwide press release, for example in the Newcastle Journal,  13 February 1917, No.22,371, p3

Diary of the War: December 1916

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The Quo Vadis

The conditions on the night of 18 December 1916 as the French schooner Quo Vadis prepared to cross the English Channel were too good to be true: a clear moonlit night and a flat calm. Some 20 miles south of the Lizard, the moon gave away her white sails to Ralph Wenninger in UC-17, one of the most prolific U-boat commanders of the First World War.

Quo Vadis was bound from Swansea for Mortagne-sur-Gironde with 160 tons of coal under Joseph Guegot of Lannion and his crew of five. They were hailed and ordered to leave their vessel, and scuttling charges placed aboard by a party from the U-boat. Twenty minutes later Quo Vadis was beneath the waves, while her erstwhile crew took to their boat and rowed for two miles before being picked up by a British destroyer.

It was impossible for small sailing vessels such as the Quo Vadis of 110 tons gross to outrun a submarine, and, being of timber construction, they were also very vulnerable to gunfire. Quo Vadis was just one of several sailing vessels of various nationalities stopped and scuttled during December 1916. At least the crews of these vessels had a chance to escape, all being ordered off their ships on capture and allowed to leave in their lifeboats. For the crew of the Quo Vadis, moreover, the conditions meant that they had neither heavy seas nor utter darkness to contend with before being rescued.

Incidents of this kind, so minor yet so common during the First World War, demonstrated that the sailing vessel faced a hazard greater than any political enemy: obsolescence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diary of the War: November 2016

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The Goodwin Sands strike again

There are occasions when the Goodwin Sands just seem to claim more victims than usual and the night of 19-20 November 1916 was one of those nights, when two steamers, the Italian Val Salice, and the American Sibiria, bound to London with a cargo of Canadian wheat, stuck fast on the South Sand Head of the Goodwins, in a violent storm with extremely heavy seas which claimed wrecks elsewhere, particularly in Northumberland.

The Val Salice was the first to strike with the Kingsdown lifeboat Charles Hargrave and Ramsgate lifeboat Charles and Susannah Stephens bringing off all 30 survivors. (The latter’s cox’n would shortly afterwards be awarded a medal by the RNLI for his 25 years’ service.) (1) Captain Bolognini of the Val Salice was widely quoted in the press as never having been shipwrecked before in all his career, but he clearly considered that he had shipped a ‘Jonah’ on board: ‘who during four months had been shipwrecked no fewer than three times’. (2)

It was a long and arduous night for the lifeboat crews who had to resort to the assistance of the searchlights from a patrol vessel to locate the Val Salice, before going out again to the Sibiria, which was being pounded to pieces on the Goodwins. The Sibiria‘s situation was reported while the rescue effort was still in progress as a ‘drama of the seas which may result in tragedy’. (3)

The seas were raging so high that both the Deal and Ramsgate lifeboats and their crews were in danger of being lost. They capsized but fortunately righted without losing any of their crew members overboard, although it was a close-run thing. The impact left several men on both boats so injured that, together with the damage to the lifeboats, they were forced to turn back – leaving behind 52 crew and passengers huddled in an exposed position in the sole portion of bridge still holding together,’in momentary peril of the vessel being engulfed in the treacherous quicksands.’ (4) How desolate those on board must have felt at seeing their rescuers turning back!

It was a race against time to save the crew and passengers of the Sibiria but finally the Kingsdown lifeboat Charles Hargrave was manned with an uninjured crew comprising members from different lifeboat stations, and towed out by a patrol vessel, which trained its searchlights to find that all 52 persons were still alive awaiting rescue. They were taken off and once more the patrol vessel took the lifeboat in tow ‘weighed almost to the water’s edge with sixty-eight on board,’ i.e. all 52 survivors plus the 16 lifeboatmen. (5) (One of the local lifeboats in service at that period, the reserve lifeboat Francis Forbes Barton, is still extant and is on the National Register of Historic Vessels.)

The warships of the Dover Patrol thus enabled not one but two successful rescues under atrocious conditions. However, the real-life war was followed by a transatlantic newspaper war full of icy innuendo. Neither side overtly stated the issue at hand in so many words but each understood the other all too well.

The Times thundered: ‘The stranding of the United States steamer Sibiria on the Goodwins this week has opened British eyes to the fact that this vessel, which was a Hamburg-Amerika liner, has been transferred to owners in the United States during the war.’ (6)

Note the use of the word ‘transferred’, not ‘sold’. This was enough to elicit a clarification from the vessel’s agents through the New York Times: the Sibiria had been chartered at the time of the outbreak of hostilities to an American company, which bought her outright in May 1915, then sold it on to the Hudson Bay Company of Canada, while retaining her American crew. (7)

The question at issue was the Trading with the Enemy Act 1914, under which the Hamburg-Amerika Linie was defined as an ‘enemy’. (8) The British press continued to niggle at the question of whether ownership of former German vessels in neutral countries (for the United States was not yet in the war) was a ‘front’ or ‘flag of convenience’ with a view to the long-term preservation of the German fleet. (9)  Just a few months after the loss of the Sibiria, their premises in Cockspur Street, London, were offered for sale in 1917, under the Trading with the Enemy Amendment Act, 1916.

The sales particulars noted that the premises were partially in the occupation of the Ministry of Munitions for the purposes of ‘the present war’, with the Canadian Red Cross, and the Allan Line, which would soon be subsumed into the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, also tenants.

The particulars had a form of declaration at the back for the buyer to confirm on purchase that they were not purchasing on the behalf on any nation ‘at war with Great Britain’. The cover of the auction catalogue is annotated with the name of the corporate buyer, the unexceptionably British P&O.

Together a wreck and a building tell a tale of socio-economic disruption and atmosphere of suspicion wrought by war, which overshadowed the remarkable rescue of all on board the Sibiria under unimaginably difficult conditions. The former Hamburg-Amerika House at 14-16 Cockspur Street still stands today and is Grade II listed. Despite their relatively recent date, the remains of Val Salice and Sibiria have not been located, but the Francis Forbes Barton still survives as a witness to that dreadful night a century ago.

Front cover of auction catalogue for the sale of commercial premises, with b&w photograph of doorway to the premises in the centre.
Sales particulars for the Hamburg-Amerika Line premises, built 1906-8. The annotation at top right reveals the price realised at auction and the name of the buyer: P&O. SC00686. Source: Historic England Archive

(1) Thanet Advertiser, 23 December 1916, No.2,995, p5

(2) Dover Express, 24 November 1916, No.3,045, p2. A ‘Jonah’ is a person who brings ill-luck to a ship, from the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale (Jonah 1-2)

(3) New York Times, 22 November 1916

(4) Ibid.

(5) Dover Express, 24 November 1916, No.3,045, p2; see also comment left below, which establishes the identity of the lifeboat involved. The confusion of that night is reflected in the contemporary sources.

(6) The Times, 25 November 1916, No.41,334, p9

(7) New York Times, 26 November 1916

(8) London Gazette, 29 October 1915, No.29,343, p.10,697

(9) Yorkshire Post, 12 December 1916, No.21,678, p4