Wrecks in 1915

No.82 Condemned as a Prize (Diary of the War No.10)

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Hard on the heels of last week’s Gallipoli blog comes this week’s contribution, featuring May’s First World War wreck on the centenary of her loss on 1 May 1915. The circumstances were neither unusual – sunk by collision in fog off Beachy Head – nor a result of wartime action, but her background provides the opportunity to illustrate a lesser-known aspect of the war at sea between 1914 and 1918.

The First World War saw huge technological advances and the mechanisation of combat as aircraft took to the skies, tanks rolled across landscapes, and submarines prowled the seas. Yet, given the century that had elapsed since the last major pan-European conflict ended in 1915, it was perhaps unsurprising that older practices and technologies were still retained in many respects: we may think, perhaps, of the cavalry regiments who saw action on the Western Front.

Many a Lloyd’s List of the 18th century lists details of vessels ‘taken’ by enemy warships or privateers and subsequently ‘condemned’ as prizes. Condemnation as a prize did not mean that the ship was intended for destruction, but rather that it was adjudged a lawful prize by an Admiralty court, and would sail again under a new flag.

On the declaration of war on August 4, 1914, a number of German and Austrian vessels were detained in British or Empire ports. A month later the London Gazette published the names of these vessels, which were to be brought before the Prize Courts and condemned as prizes, a fate that appears at first sight more redolent of the age of sail. Today’s vessel, the Horst Martini, was one of this group, detained in Newport, Wales.  She had started out life as the British vessel Crosshill in 1883, but was sold into German service in 1900, initially as the Hugo und Clara, then renamed Horst Martini.  With the judgement of the Prize Court, she was about to re-enter British service as a collier. (1)

While her prize status had no bearing on the wreck event, it did have an impact on the subsequent court case. The owners, master and crew of the Horst Martini brought a claim against the owners of the other vessel involved in the collision, the Runic:, who were not permitted to counterclaim against the owners of the Horst Martini,  who proved to be none other than the ‘Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom’. As a concession, they were allowed to sue her master instead. Both vessels were found to have contributed to the accident, with three-quarters of the blame being assigned to the Horst Martini. (2)

Turning these prize vessels over to the colliery service made a significant contribution to the landscape of war since coal was the national fuel. The circulation of coal was based on well-established historical routes from the colliery to the consumer by sea, even for the domestic market. Routes to market were slow to adapt to wartime exigencies: with hindsight it is easy to wonder why recourse was not had to the less immediately vulnerable rail network. (There were many reasons for this, including the integration of the colliery and shipping industries under the coal magnates.)

In turn this meant that that sinking colliers was an effective way of striking at the British economy. The nation needed all the colliers it could get, and those German ships interned in British ports on the outbreak of war fulfilled an immediate need: the seemingly old-fashioned prize law plugged the gaps of a market that, to modern eyes, appears to have been slow to respond to the dangers posed by modern forms of warfare.

(We will follow the adventures of several other ‘prize’ German colliers over the course of the War Diary.)

(1) The Times, 22 January 1915, No.40,758, p34

(2) The Times, 20 May 1915, No.40,859, p3.

No.78 U-8, Straits of Dover

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Diary of the War No.8

On 4th March 1915 the first confirmed loss of a German U-boat in English waters during the war took place with the capture of U-8 off Dover, the culmination of a hunt that began when she was spotted in the Channel by HMS Viking. Viking opened fire, forcing U-8 to submerge but not without returning fire with a torpedo which missed its target, and U-8 was lost to sight.

Black and white illustration of U-8 submarine on the surface being approached by a destroyer, the crew assembled on the conning tower appealing for help.
Postcard of a contemporary illustration of U-8 being approached by a British destroyer. It is a work of subtle, as well as overt, propaganda, the text being complemented by the viewpoint from the side of a British destroyer, her lifeboat hanging from its davits, suggesting British humanity in coming to the rescue of an enemy crew appealing for help. By courtesy of Mark Dunkley

As the submerged U-8 continued on her way through the Straits of Dover, she became enmeshed in an anti-submarine net barrage. The requisitioned drifter Roburn spotted movement in the nets, and alerted the destroyers of the Dover patrol for assistance. The destroyer Ghurka* towed an anti-submarine sweep wire. These wires were fitted with explosive charges which detonated on contact with the target. Successful contact forced U-8 to the surface, whereupon Ghurka and Maori opened fire.

The crew were taken off and an attempt was made to tow the submarine back to Dover, but she foundered approximately one and three-quarters of a mile west of the southernmost tip of the Varne Bank, where she has now been positively identified by internal features.

The rescued crew, now firmly in British custody, were lined up at Dover on arrival. As the Daily Telegraph for 6 March 1915 (p9) had it: “The Germans were for the most part sturdily-built fellows – no doubt the pick of the German naval service mans the submarines”. The prisoners were marched through the town, escorted by the garrison of the Castle, and a crowd of local sightseers curious to see the enemy, to the Castle itself.

A view of Dover Castle on top of the hill, with the town below.
Dover Castle viewed from the High Street, Dover DP049659 © English Heritage Picture Library

The official Admiralty communiqué quoted in the paper gave away few details, stating only that U-8 had been sunk in the Channel off Dover, but the human interest aspect of the prisoners’ reception more than made up for it, as did the speculation over the intelligence value of the submarine (p8) and what it was thought to reveal about the U-boat war.

As for Roburn and Ghurka, they resumed their successful patrols off Dover, but they, too, were destined to fall victim to enemy action in the Straits of Dover. Roburn sank on 27 October 1916, after being shelled in a Channel raid by German torpedo boat destroyers. She was lost together with a Tribal class destroyer, which formed the nucleus of the Dover Patrol (Ghurka, Maori and Viking, as their names implied, were also Tribal class ships). Ghurka herself was mined on 8 February 1917 off Dungeness, and is one of those vessels whose remains are designated under the Protection of Military Remains Act.

The seabed of the Straits of Dover reveals a common heritage of sunken British and German vessels, a memorial to the warfare on the surface a century ago.

*not a misspelling: she was indeed Ghurka, rather than Gurkha.

No.75 Andromeda (Diary of the War No.7)

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One hundred years ago, on 13 February 1915, the English steel barque Andromeda struck the rocks while inbound for Falmouth, en route to London, with 3,000 tons of grain from Oregon.

Her inclusion in the War Diary for this month illustrates the fact that while ships faced new threats from enemy action in time of war, they continued to be just as vulnerable as ever to environmental hazards. It could be said that wartime voyages were doubly hazardous. For the year 1915 there were some 59 recorded strandings on beaches, sandbanks, and rocks, or approximately one eighth of all wrecks recorded for that year. (1)

The Andromeda is a snapshot in time: in the early 20th century the barque became a specialist carrier of grain cargoes, and her manner of loss was linked to another aspect of seafaring heritage: for she was inbound to Falmouth ‘for orders’. In effect, when a vessel was loaded at her departure port, her master and crew did not necessarily where the final leg of the voyage would take them. It would only be in making landfall in England at Falmouth, with its noted anchorage, that crews would receive their ‘orders’ for their final destination.

When the Andromeda ‘spoke with’ an armed patrol vessel off the Isles of Scilly on 12 February messages were exchanged: the patrol vessel warned of U-boat activity in the Channel, while the Andromeda requested a message be sent to Falmouth requesting a pilot to take her in there.

The vessel got into difficulties off Falmouth as squally, stormy weather ensued and the master continued to wait, with reduced sail, for a pilot who failed to materialise. As so often, the loss of the Andromeda was the result of a chain of circumstances. To quote the Board of Trade Inquiry report into the loss:

‘his implicit reliance on the wireless message of the patrol officer, the warning as to submarines, his knowledge that pilotage was compulsory at Falmouth, his anticipation that the harbour was mined’ kept him waiting off Falmouth, exposing his vessel to difficulties on a lee shore onto which she could not but be driven ashore. (2)

Thus it was that while not a war loss, the Andromeda was wrecked through environmental hazards – the weather driving her onto local rocks – in circumstances shaped by the heightened fear of wartime conditions.

With many thanks to Mark Milburn, who has located the bow of the Andromeda off Killigerran Head, east of Falmouth, and researched her history, enabling us to update our records.

(1) Source: National Record of the Historic Environment (NRHE) database

(2) Board of Trade Wreck Report for Andromeda

No.73 HMS Formidable (Diary of the War No.6)

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Lifebelt from HMS Formidable washed up on the Dutch coast during the First World War, presented to the Imperial War Museum in 1920. © IWM (MAR 66)
Lifebelt from HMS Formidable washed up on the Dutch coast during the First World War, hundreds of miles from the site of the sinking in mid-Channel off the Bill of Portland. Presented to the Imperial War Museum in 1920. © IWM (MAR 66) http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30004000

As the year turned to 1915, the 5th Battle Squadron were deployed in the English Channel some 25 miles off the Bill of Portland on exercises, among them HMS Formidable, a pre-dreadnought battleship of 1898. Two hours and twenty minutes into the New Year, as the fleet crossed the path of some fishing vessels, and the weather began to worsen, a torpedo launched from U-24 roared out of the dark and into the Formidable. She began to list to starboard, compounding the difficulties of getting out the boats at night and in rough weather.

Twenty minutes later another torpedo struck the Formidable, causing her to capsize and sink completely at about 4.45am. One survivor told the Daily Telegraph of his ordeal bobbing about in the water as he watched the ship before she finally went under: “It was one of the saddest sights I have ever seen in my life . . . All this time a very loud hissing noise was coming from the sinking warship.” To him the water temperature seemed warmer than standing in his pyjamas for “over two hours in the terribly cold wind on the deck”. (Daily Telegraph, 4 January 1915, No.18,636, p9). Out of a complement of 780, only 199 men were saved.

It was a fishing vessel, the Provident or Providence, a Brixham smack out at sea off Berry Head, Devon, which picked up a significant number of the survivors. One of the Formidable‘s boats was spotted under the lee of the smack and after several perilous manoeuvres in waves 30 feet high, all 71 men were successfully transferred from their open boat to the smack in half an hour – just in time, for she had “a hole under her hull. This had been stuffed with a pair of pants, of which one of the seamen had divested himself for the purpose”. Another survivor downplayed the situation they were in: “undress uniform: swimming costume!” (Daily Telegraph, 2 January 1915, No.18,634, p9).

Captain Pillar and his crew aboard the Provident received numerous awards for the rescue, including a Gold Medal from the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society, ‘only given in exceptional cases of bravery’. There is a memorial to those who lost their lives at Lyme Regis: the site of the wreck itself is a Controlled Site under the Protection of Military Remains Act.

It would not be the last time that wartime naval exercises in mid-Channel off Lyme Bay were interrupted by enemy action. During the Second World War, as Exercise Tiger was taking place in April 1944, German E-boats torpedoed two of the American landing craft which were taking part, Landing Ship Tanks LST 507 and LST 531.