Sunk Light Vessel

Diary of the Second World War – August 1945

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Graphic commemorating the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, featuring a bold 'V' with '80' above and 'VJ DAY' below.

The Terukuni Maru

In our final Diary of the Second World War, 80 years after VJ Day on 15 August 1945, we take a brief look at what it took in terms of shipping losses to enemy causes in the immediate post-war world before we circle back to the early months of the war and a rare loss of a Japanese vessel in English waters, and an even rarer one under the circumstances of war.

Sweeping the Peace

The immediate post-war world was dedicated to achieving the peace and in this the world’s navies and merchant fleets played as large a part as they had done during the days of war – but in shipping lanes that were considerably safer than they had been for the past six years: no approaching aircraft with a payload of bombs, no warships on the prowl on the surface of the sea, no submarines waiting to loose a torpedo and hole a vessel below the waterline.

Even as the new world order started to take shape and ships brought home troops, POWs and refugees, home, carried occupation forces, and took dispossessed persons and GI brides to new lives on other continents, there remained one more issue that was harder to deal with than simply ceasing fire.

After both World Wars there were occasional losses to stray mines following the cessation of hostilities (see our post on losses after the First World War, which were recorded right up to 1925). Between VE Day on 8 May 1945 to VJ Day 15 August 1945, there was only one war-related loss in English waters: HMS Kurd, mined off the Lizard with the loss of 16 crew while on those self-same necessary clearance activities in July 1945.

As late as 1950 the Ramsgate trawler Volante exploded after striking a mine in the Thames Estuary, although fortunately, in that case, all hands escaped.

These were the very last direct maritime victims of the Second World War within English territorial waters. Mines continued to wash up on beaches on a regular basis until the 1950s and 1960s and less frequently since then, although they still occur and require dealing with.

A Japanese liner in 1939

From the immediate post-war period, we now circle back to think about VJ Day and events earlier in the Second World War. Of course, the events in question – the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the surrender of Japan – took place on the other side of the world and so we cannot commemorate the end of the war directly with events in our waters in the year of 1945.

The war, however, came to Japan’s door in the waters of the Thames Estuary in November 1939 with the loss of the Terukuni Maru – described in the contemporary press as a ‘crack liner’ – i.e. a first-class liner (a slightly old-fashioned usage now, but which survives in expressions such as ‘crack shot’). Her prestige was demonstrated in several ways, such as the fact that she was a motor-driven vessel, rather than a steamer.

1930s lithograph postcard of the Terukuni Maru in port bow view at sea, with the legend of her owners NYK Line to top right, underneath her name and tonnage in both English and Japanese
1930s postcard of the motor vessel Terukuni Maru (Public domain: Wikimedia Commons)

Terukuni Maru and Nagasaki

The Terukuni Maru was completed in 1930 for the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) Line as a link between Japan and Europe. She was built by Mitsubishi at Nagasaki, reflecting the increasing pre-war Japanese industrial confidence which saw ships built domestically, rather than via orders placed with foreign shipyards. [1] This shipyard would be devastated by the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. An annotated aerial view of Nagasaki in the US National Archives from 1945 identifies the shipyard (marked 2 on plan), while the shipyard is seen devastated in this aerial view of 1946 with sunken shipping also visible.

The final voyage of Terukuni Maru

The Terukuni Maru left Yokohama for London on 24 September 1939 – but not without war risk insurance: it was a journey that may have seemed safe in the Far East but would become increasingly risky as it neared a Europe in conflict.

As they neared the English coast in November 1939, that journey would become riskier still. There had been plentiful recent minelaying all along the east coast of England: by U-boats on the Suffolk coast and off the mouths of the Thames and Humber by destroyer groups, each claiming several ships. US naval intelligence warned that ‘thirty-nine mines had been sighted adrift off the English coast’. [2] British intelligence suggested that on the nights of 20 and 21 November German mine-laying aircraft had been active. [3] Among the ships attributed to the Thames destroyer group’s activities was the Dutch liner Simon Bolivar, bound from Amsterdam to South America, on 18 November.

There were already swept War Channels off the coast of the UK for Allied shipping and neutrals alike – mines being no respecter of neutrality – for at the outset of war Japan was neutral. Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 was yet to come.

Both the British naval authorities and the captain of the Terukuni Maru were well aware of the dangers ahead.

Captain B Matsukura gave an interview to The Times. in which he said that, having arrived in the Channel on the morning of 19 November, his vessel was boarded by naval officers for clearance and guidance towards the swept War Channels. [4] They finally weighed anchor for London with their 28 remaining passengers on the morning of 21 November with the assistance of a British pilot, while five crew were posted to scan for mines. However, as lunch was being served, ‘there was a terrific explosion . . . the ship shot up, several plates were broken, and three of the passengers were injured.’ [5] To Reuters he said that ‘When we struck the mine the ship shivered and jumped into the air.’ [6] The master gave his opinion that: ‘I would say it was a deep mine. If it had been an ordinary floating mine at least one of my look-outs would have seen it. My own belief is that it was a magnetic mine.’ [7]

All on board saved – including an unusual passenger

The ship’s engines were disabled and the pilot suggested beaching the ship, but it proved impossible to do so, and she began to list. However, the time it took for her to finally sink, 40 minutes later, and the relatively few passengers (most having disembarked earlier in the voyage) meant that it was possible to save all on board in eight lifeboats: 28 passengers, a passenger’s dog, 177 crew, and the pilot. The ship then finally heeled over to starboard and sank. [8]

There was another passenger – a stowaway of sorts. A falcon had flown on board, exhausted and hungry in the eastern Mediterranean, and was ‘taken care of by the bath-steward, but otherwise regarded as a bird of ill-omen.’ It was placed on board the Beaverford, one of the ships which had come to the rescue, and taken to London Zoo. The Beaverford was in Convoy HXF (Halifax-UK Fast), having made the journey ‘northabout’ via Scotland and bound for Dover, which suggests the convoy was on scene and others may well have been able to assist, including their escorts HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent. [9] The falcon’s survival made a good story and a feelgood picture for the press, even if its feathers had been somewhat ruffled by its extraordinary journey.

Images flashed around the world

But someone else also took good pictures of the wreck as it was taking place – the ship’s photographer, K Asami. The Daily Mirror told its readers: ‘You owe the amazing pictures in today’s Daily Mirror to a boy of eighteen . . . His photographs will be well paid for. It won’t be only camera work that will have earned him the money, but initiative and enterprise.’ [10]

That picture of the wreck itself is now in the Mirrorpix archives – search on Terukuni Maru – and and tells the full story at a glance – the ship heeling over to starboard, her bows already below water, the passengers escaping, and the swarms of other vessels giving assistance at the scene. The viewpoint is high, and taken from some distance, so he was able to take his photograph safe on board another vessel, giving him a stable platform to create a coherent image that told a powerful story.

Clearly he was able to take his most precious – and portable – possession with him, and became an accidental war journalist. Photography – and the democratisation of photography – made it possible to record shipwrecks as they actually happened, a trend which started to significantly come into its own during the First World War, can be said to have come of age during the Second World War, and is a precursor to today’s crowdsourced mobile phone footage that contributes so much to modern television news bulletins.

Orderly evacuations such as those on board the Terukuni Maru, or aboard the WWI loss Ballarat (subject of an earlier post) made it easier to do so, or those on board rescuing vessels could also take pictures (covered in our post on HMHS Anglia, also WWI). The teenage Asami’s astonishing photograph was syndicated around the world by radiophoto – a means of remote transmission of photography which emerged in the 1920s and 30s (also called Wirephoto by the Associated Press). For example, it was reproduced in the New York Times, where it was described as ‘passed by British censor’. [11]

Those who were there could thus bring a perspective that professional journalists just could not cover, but the conventional press could, of course, avidly film and interview survivors: check out this Gaumont newsreel of 23 November 1939.

Censorship and the War Channels

The reason Asami’s picture passed by the censor was that there was no identifiable detail as to the vessel’s location and no press report gave details other than ‘North Sea’ or ‘England’s east coast’, in conformity with British wartime censorship, even internationally. For example, in the Daily Mirror, we are told: ‘Crowds saw the crack Japanese liner Terukuni Maru sink off the East Coast yesterday after striking a Nazi mine.’ [12]

Hidden in plain sight

Yet there is an interesting story that is hidden in plain sight and wartime censorship has nothing to do with it. The position of the wreck has received no commentary as far as I am aware, until now.

The wreck’s position and identity have always been known with a consistent charting history since the date of loss, wartime reports on her position and marking, and dispersal activity in 1950 – an unbroken chain of reporting. [13]

The official Lloyd’s casualty report was finally made on 19 February 1940, and stated ‘reported to have sunk in forty minutes after striking a mine off Harwich on the 21st November, 1940’ although further correspondence ensued with the owners, who were reluctant to give up the possibility of salvage. However, by May 1940, they had ‘no objection to the record ‘Sunk – War Loss 11.39′ being made against this ship’s name in the Society’s Register Book.’ [14]

The wreck is charted and located around 3.5 miles or so NNE of the Sunk Head Tower light, and 2 miles ENE of the Inner Sunk light, nearly 12 miles east of Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. [15] The pilot’s suggestion of beaching the ship confirms its proximity to local sandbanks. [16] The Daily Mirror had said ‘crowds’ witnessed the wreck, which appears to be corroborated by the reminiscences of an eyewitness standing as a boy with his friend on the cliffs at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, on 21 November 1939: he saw a liner he believed to be the Terukuni Maru sailing near the Sunk lightvessel go up in ‘an enormous plume of water’ and ‘turn on her side’. [17] This position also seems consistent with two boats from the Terukuni Maru, still complete with their oars and a quantity of ships’ biscuits still inside, fetching up at Den Hoorn and De Koog on the Dutch coast a couple of weeks later. [18]

What exactly was the Terukuni Maru doing there? She was heading north from the Downs off the eastern coast of Kent for London, so how come she was as far north as off the Sunk light vessel? The location of the wreck is nearly 30 miles north of Margate, where she could ’round the corner’ west into the Thames.

Map showing the location of the Terukuni Maru near the east coast of England, Frinton to the west, the approaches to the Thames to the south-west, and Margate almost due south.
Maps Data: Google Earth; Image: Landsat, Copernicus; Data: SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO

The Terukuni Maru had a British pilot on board, familiar with the many sandbanks of the Thames, and who will have been up-to-date with the war channels, adding a new layer of requirements for careful navigation – and the vessel was proceeding in accordance with instructions given when boarded by naval officers. She might well have drifted a little after being mined, since her engines were disabled, but she cannot have drifted very far, if at all, in the 40 minutes it took her to sink. Yet she was seen off Frinton-on-Sea near the Sunk light vessel by witnesses, with many vessels coming to her rescue; she was recorded by Lloyd’s as mined off Harwich; and has a consistent history of charting and identification by the UK Hydrographic Office since the time of loss.

So why was she there? Examination of data for wrecks which were mined in English waters during the first four months of the war shows that there is a small cluster off this area corresponding to those few days of activity noted above. It seems natural that the Simon Bolivar, coming across from Amsterdam on 18 November, would have joined the war channel close to Harwich (after all, Harwich and the Hook of Holland have been connected by a regular service for centuries) but it is harder to work out exactly why the Terukuni Maru was so far north of her expected peacetime course, when the weather was not a factor and her crew had expert pilotage and Admiralty advice.

The clue, perhaps, is in the words ‘the expected course’. The vessel will have been directed towards the swept War Channels, and it could be that the wreck remains of the Terukuni Maru form a tangible record of something short-term and ephemeral – a set of instructions, a change of course, a temporary alteration to the war channels, and direction towards known channels believed swept and safe – as the area near the recent wreck Simon Bolivar would have seen significant sweeping activity to make the area safe. Or was she directed away from London to Harwich?

There is an intriguing comment in a secondary source, synthesised from contemporary Australian and Singaporean newspapers, [19] which describes the position of loss as 8 miles north of Margate, 20 miles east of Shoeburyness. That position is some 24 miles south of the known and charted position of the wreck, but it would certainly be a location more compatible with a vessel turning east into the Thames from the Downs. Yet she cannot have drifted 24 miles to her final location of loss when she was seen off Harwich having exploded.

There is clearly more to discover.

Conclusion

The Terukuni Maru demonstrates the sense of menace present in the world’s shipping lanes from the outset of the Second World War and which would finally be brought to a close worldwide on VJ Day. The losses of Simon Bolivar and Terukuni Maru in close temporal and geographical proximity brought home in headlines around the world the danger posed to neutrals by unsignalled minefields in the early years of – and throughout – the war. As a neutral at this stage of the war, Japan was outraged, and this was a rare maritime loss for Japan prior to her entry into the war at Pearl Harbor in December 1941. So this wreck marks a moment in time for Japanese vessels during the Second World War.

Despite press censorship, we see also a positive shift in the documentation of shipwrecks by the growing medium of photography and the development of war journalism. The wreck’s dispersal in 1950 echoes the parallel efforts made in post-war minesweeping and the constant reminders of war debris in various forms. From September 3, 1939 to August 15, 1945, the Terukuni Maru was but one of many victims of the war in English territorial waters: the remains of some 349 vessels, some positively identified, some with potential attributions, and some unknown, are recorded in Historic England’s dataset, with many more known only from documentary evidence. [20]

It seems there is more to discover, so we may well return to the Terukuni Maru in due course.

The one Japanese loss of the Second World War in English waters, the Terukuni Maru has been an appropriate wreck to mark the final edition of the Diary of the Second World War on this blog. We will continue to cover other shipwreck stories within English waters: all Second World War entries, and those for the Diary of the First World War will remain archived and accessible.

Footnotes

[1] Lloyd’s Register Foundation Archive and Library, completion report for the Terukuni Maru, 28th June 1930, LRF-PUN-W283-0129-R. There is some confusion in some secondary sources over whether she was built at Kobe or Nagasaki, possibly because some elements of her construction were overseen by the Kobe surveyor, necessitating some correspondence with the Nagasaki surveyor, all of which is also in the Lloyd’s Register Foundation archives.

[2] Rohwer, J and Hümmelchen, G 2007-2025 Chronik des Seekrieges 1939-1945 November 1939 (Württembergische Landesbibliothek: published online) (in German); New York Times, 23 November 1939, No. 29,888, p2 (subscription service).

[3] Terukuni Maru Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) Line 1930-1939 https://www.derbysulzers.com/shipterukunimaru.html, based on contemporary newspapers. This source covers the Terukuni Maru as a motor vessel fitted with Sulzer engines. Attribution to a parachute mine is supported by eyewitness accounts from Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, reminiscences in 2007 of a witness who had, with a friend, seen parachute mines being dropped as a boy of 14 on 20 November 1939.

[4] The Times, 22 November 1939, No.48,569, p8

[5] ibid.

[6] Malaya Tribune, 22 November 1939, p1

[7] Straits Times (Singapore), 6 December 1939, p10

[8] The Times, 22 November 1939, No.48,569, p8

[9] The Times, 25 November 1939, No.48,572; convoyweb Convoy HXF 8. The falcon was a peregrine falcon which arrived at the Zoo on 23 November 1939, listed as ‘caught at sea’ and presented by the Chief Officer of the SS Beaverford, Surrey Commercial Docks. It died on 29 July 1940. With very warm thanks to the Librarian at the Zoological Society of London for this information.

[10] Daily Mirror, 22 November 1939, No.11,220, pp 1, 10-11, 20

[11] New York Times, 23 November 1939, No. 29,888, p7 (subscription service)

[12] Daily Mirror, 22 November 1939, p20

[13] United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) report 14537, 28 November 1939 onwards

[14] Lloyd’s Register Foundation Archive & Library, Report of Total Loss, Casualty, &c. for Terukuni Maru, 29 February 1940 LRF-PUN-W283-0109-W

[15] Correlation of the wreck’s charted position with key seamarks and landmarks using geospatial information tools

[16] The Times, 22 November 1939, No.48,569, p8

[17] Eyewitness writing in 2007 on his experiences as a teenager witnessing the wreck on the Warsailors Forum

[18] e.g. in De Limburger, Vol. 70, No.284, 5 December 1939, p6 (in Dutch)

[19] https://www.derbysulzers.com/shipterukunimaru.html

[20] Examination of the National Marine Heritage Record (NMHR), Historic England, August 2025

Diary of the War – May 1944

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MMS 227 – Hr. Ms. Marken

The focus this month is on motor minesweeper MMS 227 and to recognise the contribution of the Free Dutch forces.. After the fall of the Netherlands, Dutch vessels contributed to the Dunkirk evacuation and to the British trooping and convoy effort, including the liner Johan de Witt, which became a troopship and convoyed many British troops around the world, including my own late father in 1944. [1] Dutch ships also served in other theatres of war such as the Italian campaign of 1943 and at D-Day. [2]

A number of small motor minesweepers were built during the war by small contractors in sheltered coastal waters around the country. As always, production was dispersed for security and to take advantage of the specialist skills of the smaller boat-builders.

These builders, like Curtis of Par, Cornwall, who built MMS 227/Marken, specialised in the manufacture of wooden ships. Wood was ideal for motor minesweepers for several reasons: to take pressure off raw materials for steel ship production and because, unlike steel, it would not set off magnetic mines.

It remained a dangerous job: over the course of both World Wars this blog has highlighted how frequently minesweepers fell victim to the very danger they were working to save others from, and small wooden craft were extremely fragile in such an explosion.

Nevertheless over 400 of these vessels were built in two classes, one slightly larger than the other, either 105ft or 127ft long. [3] In an official Admiralty photograph campaign showcasing the work of the motor minesweepers and their crews from all walks of civilian life, they were labelled as ‘The Little Ship with a Big Job.’ [4]

Several of the smaller class of minesweepers were then cascaded to Free Dutch forces operating in the 139th Minesweeping Flotilla out of Great Yarmouth and Harwich. They were all renamed after locations in the Netherlands, rather than merely numbered, as they had been in the Royal Navy.

Thus it was that MMS 227 became Hr. Ms. Marken, after the island on the IJsselmeer. (Hr. Ms. or Harer Majesteits is the prefix of ships of the Koninklijke Marine or Royal Netherlands Navy, which is conventionally translated into English as HNLMS or His/Her Netherlands Majesty’s ship.) Several would survive the war and be incorporated into the peacetime Dutch Navy to continue the postwar work of mine clearance in the North Sea.

On 18 April 1944 Queen Wilhelmina visited Dutch minesweepers at Harwich, an event that would not be reported in the press until 9 May, and even then in only the briefest of terms: ‘Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands recently visited men of the Dutch fighting forces and Dutch minesweepers whose crews were originally trawler fishermen.’ [4]

Historic black & white photograph of a dockside scene. Queen Wilhelmina, in a coat and hat and accompanied by 3 men in navy uniform, clutches a large bouquet of flowers in her arm. She walks along the quay with shipping beside her on the right, and dockside infrastructure, such as cranes, to the left and in the background.
Queen Wilhelmina inspects Dutch minesweepers at Harwich in the company of Dutch and British officers. To the right the name Putten can be seen, another of the motor minesweepers lent to Dutch forces. (A 22874) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205155024

On 20 May 1944 Marken was clearing the War Channels when she struck an acoustic mine near the Sunk Lightvessel in the Thames Estuary, and was blown in half with the loss of 16 out of her 17 crew, including her captain Gerardus Albertus Smits of the VRH (Vrijwillige Reserve Hulpschepen, approximately equivalent to the Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve). [6]

The wreck was clearly visible as broken in two until around 1981, but by 1990 had shown signs of further deterioration and beginning to be covered by sand and buried by the following year. [7] MMS 113, of similar type, lies on the western foreshore of Portsmouth Harbour, another relic of the era of the ‘little ship with the big job’.

Footnotes

[1] Oral history reminiscence, Corporal R F Cant RAF, recorded in unpublished family notes

[2] Karremann, J, 2019 “D-Day en de Koninklijke Marine”, marineschepen.nl [in Dutch]

[3] Nautical Archaeology Society, nd “Minesweeper MMS 113” nauticalarchaeologysociety.org

[4] See, for example, IWM (A 15539) et seq. in the collections of the Imperial War Museum

[5] Press release widely published in e.g. Evening Dispatch, 9 May 1944, p4, Gloucestershire Echo, 9 May 1944, p3, etc.

[6] Visser J nd “105 feet class – minesweepers” Royal Netherlands Navy Warships of World War II; Hr. Ms. Marken Wikipedia

[7] United Kingdom Hydrographic Office record No.14566; Historic England National Marine Heritage Record no. 908141

No. 96 HMT Resono

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Diary of the War No. 17

In the second part of our Christmas double bill, we commemorate a loss on Boxing Day 1915 and finish off with a poem as an extra special feature.

We have looked at fishing vessels in the War Diary before – how, at the outbreak of war, neutral fishing vessels found themselves on an unexpected front line of minefields, how the sailing fishing fleets of Lowestoftwere targeted and how they fought back.

In commemorating the loss of HMT Resono 100 years ago, today’s post pays tribute to the efforts of the steam trawling fleets. They saw action principally as minesweepers and patrol vessels, many requisitioned from the beginning of the war. They were eminently suitable to backfill these roles: as smaller ships, they were at less risk of detonating mines, their crews knew the seas intimately, and they needed little modification.

Sweeping was monotonous, deadly, and dangerous, with a high casualty rate: it was inevitable that a number of sweepers and patrol vessels would be lost in the minefields littered around the coastline. On 26th December 1915, Resono, one of the famous Sleight fleet of trawlers operating out of Grimsby, was blown up 2 miles SE of the Sunk Light Vessel in the Thames Estuary.

The Sleight fleet saw distinguished service in both World Wars. Sir George Sleight’s obituary of 1921 states that over 50 of his ships were requisitioned: it also states that he developed from a cockle-gatherer to the owner of the largest steam trawler company in the world. (1) His fleet is readily identifiable among wartime casualty lists by its distinctive house naming scheme: Recepto, Remarko, and Remindo were other First World War losses from the fleet. Many Sleight vessels participated in both wars: Resolvo and Resparko, First World War veterans, were both lost in 1940. Yet others survived two wartime services, including the Revello, built in 1908 and therefore a contemporary of Resono, which was eventually wrecked in 1959.

Black and white photo of steam trawler, with steam coming out of its funnel.
Sleight trawler Revello, which sprang a leak and sank off Kilnsea in 1959, after seeing service in both World Wars. She had been sunk in 1941, but was salvaged a few months later. © Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre. George Scales Maritime Photographs.

To conclude this month’s edition of the War Diary, here is Kipling’s poem Mine Sweepers, also a century old. It was first published as the introduction to an article on the work of the minesweeper-trawlers for the Daily Telegraph, 23rd November 1915: the original can be read here.

Dawn off the Foreland – the young flood making

Jumbled and short and steep –

Black in the hollows and bright where it’s breaking –

Awkward water to sweep.

“Mines reported in the fairway,

“Warn all traffic and detain.

“Sent up Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain.”

 

Noon off the Foreland – the first ebb making

Lumpy and strong in the bight.

Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking

And the jackdaws wild with fright!

“Mines located in the fairway,

“Boats now working up the chain,

“Sweepers – Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain.”

 

Dusk off the Foreland – the last light going

And the traffic crowding through,

And five damned trawlers with their syreens blowing

Heading the whole review!

“Sweep completed in the fairway.

“No more mines remain.

“Sent back Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain.”

To borrow a phrase: the poem counted them all out and counted them all back!

(1) The Times, Monday 21 March, 1921, No.42,674, p16.

No. 85 The Menace beneath the Sea – the Minelaying Submarine (Diary of the War No.11)

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New Developments in the War

This month sees the centenary of the sinking of two torpedo boats on 10 June 1915 as the war entered a new phase. Increased enemy activity around the entrance to the Thames between June 1 and June 9, 1915, was a cause of concern: one of the ships lost during this period was another interned German vessel now serving as a British collier, the Erna Boldt, on June 9 (see last month’s post on the Horst Martini).

The source of this activity required investigation and triggered a ‘vigorous submarine hunt by the Nore Defence Flotilla’, which included torpedo boats TB 10 (Greenfly) and TB 12 (Moth). (1) These two vessels belonged to the Cricket class of torpedo boat, their names redolent of their intended function as small, light, fast, darting attack vessels.

TB 12 was the first to sink, 2 miles NE of the Sunk Light Vessel, ‘when an explosion wrecked her fore-part and killed her commanding officer.’ TB 10 closed in to assist and take her in tow, when she herself succumbed to an explosion which broke her in two. The apparent track of a torpedo was seen heading towards her by a vessel in company, the Vulture, which set off in the direction of the torpedo’s trajectory.

It was later suggested, however, that the flotilla saw what they were expecting to see, namely a torpedo fired from a submarine: ‘they were, as on so many occasions, deceived.’ There was certainly U-boat activity in the area, but it was clear that the U-boat threat was no longer merely from attack submarines armed with torpedoes: there was a new, and worrying, threat. ‘Their loss represented the first fruits of the new German policy of laying minefields from specially built submarine-minelayers.’

Crew of a German UC-1 class submarine. Geiser Theodore (Mons) Collection. © IWM Q 20220
Crew of a German UC-1 class submarine. Geiser Theodore (Mons) Collection. © IWM Q 20220

UC 11 was the first of these new submarines to become operational, joining the Flanders Flotilla. She was nearly lost on her first mission to sow 12 mines in the Dover Barrage. Although she avoided the British defensive mines of the barrage, she fouled a buoy which she could not shake off, leading to a hunt by two successive British patrols, which she successfully managed to evade to fulfil her deadly mission.

On her next voyage, she also managed to break free of a British defensive net to deposit another deadly cargo of mines near the Sunk Light Vessel, which were those that accounted for the Erna Boldt, TB 10 and TB 12. (2)

Had she succumbed to British defences on either mission, it is conceivable that this month I would be writing about the loss of the first operational UC-class submarine, rather than the first ships claimed by this new development in warfare: indeed, there were investigations into how UC-11 had literally slipped through the net not once, but twice. It was to be 1918 before UC-11 was sunk in her turn: reflecting her chief field of operations, less than a hundred miles from her Flanders base, she too now lies off the Sunk Light Vessel near her first victims.

(1) Naval Staff Monographs (Historical) Vol. XXIII, Home Waters – Part IV, from February to July 1915. Admiralty, London, 1925, pp253-5, from which all quotations are taken.

(4) ibid; uboat.net