wrecks in 1916

Diary of the Second World War: October 1939

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

U-16

In wartime there are some vessels whose fate seems to involve one thing after another, exacerbated by the ‘fog of war’ in which events are not wholly clear even to those who have taken part in them: War Knight during the First World War was a case in point, and U-16 on 25 October 1939 another.

The news of U-16‘s loss followed the recent tragedy of HMS Royal Oak, torpedoed in the apparent safety of the Scapa Flow anchorage, Orkney, on 14 October 1939, by U-47 under the command of Günther Prien. Barely six weeks into the war it was already apparent that the U-boat threat to Britain was significant.

On the afternoon of Tuesday 24 October 1939 an anti-submarine indicator loop at St. Margaret’s Bay, Kent, picked up suspicious activity in the Straits of Dover. The Kingfisher-class patrol sloop HMS Puffin and the requisitioned trawler HMS Cayton Wyke were sent to investigate. So far the defence of the Straits of Dover differed little from the previous war in the use of loops (see post of August 1918), of smaller patrol vessels in the form of naval and requisitioned fishing vessels, and of a mine barrage.

As their counterparts had also done in the previous war, one after the other, the two vessels dropped depth charges in the vicinity of their target some three miles east by south of St. Margaret’s Bay. (1)  

It seems that the effect of this was to disable the submarine, but not so severely that communications were disrupted: the U-boat was able to send a radio message in the early hours of 25 October 1939. (2) 

On Thursday 26 October, a German U-boat was discovered stranded on the Goodwin Sands but with no explanation of how it had got there. A statement prepared by the Admiralty and widely disseminated in the press, said:

‘How the submarine went aground was not explained last night. Gunfire was heard off Deal on Wednesday, when it was believed that an enemy submarine might have been attacked, but nothing could be seen because of mist.

‘Another theory is that the submarine may have been sunk a few days ago off Folkestone and may have drifted or bumped along the sea bed and become fast on the Goodwins.’ (3)

There was not only a sea haar, but also a smokescreen thrown up by the Admiralty. Both ‘theories’ allowed to materialise in the press certainly had a germ of truth to them – an enemy submarine was certainly attacked ‘a few days ago’ somewhere between Deal and Folkestone barrage. An emphasis on ‘gunfire’ nicely side-stepped the use of depth charges or the presence of a mine barrage, although some further conjecture from Deal also made it into the press release, albeit still carefully worded:

‘It is thought possible at Deal that the U-boat did not go on to the Goodwins under her own power, but was sunk in deeper waters by depth charges or bombs and that some of her bulk heads may have remained undamaged, permitting her to bump along the seabed, carried along by the current.‘ (4) 

To coin a phrase apt in the maritime context, the waters were muddied by a claim that ‘a large German submarine has been sunk by the French. This is confirmed by the finding of the bodies of the crew. A message from Dunkirk states that the British Admiralty was represented when the French authorities gave a Naval funeral yesterday to a U-boat officer and five German sailors . . . ‘ (5)  

This funeral was well attended by both French and British naval representatives, and jointly led by both Protestant and Catholic clergy to cover Germany’s two principal religions. (6) The Yorkshire Post was of the view that the funeral was ‘almost the last flicker of chivalry in warfare’.

The German High Command admitted the loss of three U-boats. (7)  Five are recorded as lost for the month of October 1939, but none of these are attributed to French action. Two were depth-charged by British ships in the North Atlantic south-west of Ireland on 13 and 14 October respectively (U-42 and U-45) , and three in the Straits of Dover: U-12, which was mined on 8 October; U-40, which also fell to a British minefield on 13 October; and U-16, attributed to a British minefield. (8) 

Could French action have contributed to the demise of U-16? The French press reported that their Navy had recently been active and that a patrol vessel had recovered some bodies from a submarine sunk off Dunkirk. (9) That patrol vessel was the Épinal, which had launched a night attack on a submarine on 26 October (presumably in the early hours of that day), while acting on intelligence that U-boat activity was expected in the Straits of Dover on 26-27 October. (10)

It thus seems that the Épinal might have been the last on the scene, which is also suggested by her crew recovering the U-boat commander alive. (11) Action by British and French patrols, unknown to each other, would also account for the actions reported in the press as heard at different times in different places. Some sources suggest that the Épinal was first on the scene, with the British second, but this fits less well with the time frame and the known actions of Puffin and Cayton Wyke. 

That U-boat commander subsequently died despite being taken to hospital. He was identified as Kapitänleutnant Horst Wellner and, it seems, the loss may have been attributed to U-14. It is possible that his lifejacket was marked U-14, which he had commanded up until two weeks previously, his service aboard U-14 ending on 11 October 1939, before taking on the command of U-16 the following day.

The British and French press widely reported the discovery of ’50 or 60′ bodies, surely a conjecture or an exaggeration for propaganda purposes, since the normal crew complement was 22-24. (12) In total 19 bodies washed ashore or were picked up at sea on the Kent coast, near Dunkirk, and Ameland, Netherlands. (13) It seems likely that four bodies were recovered from the wreck by the British, since four German seamen whose date of death is 25th October 1939 are buried in Cannock Chase German Cemetery, namely, Paul Hanf, Hans Keil, Rolf Krämer, and Friedhelm Mahnke, and these four, together with the other 19 bodies, would fit with a crew complement of 23. (14) 

Did the Goodwin Sands themselves play a part in the U-boat’s loss? It would have been all too easy for a disabled submarine to drift helplessly and become ensnared upon the sands, an easy prey for any patrol vessel happening by. The ‘Demon Sands’ headline in the Manchester Evening Press made good copy and the article rehashed the many legends of the Goodwin Sands: though fanciful, it almost seems to suggest that the Sands themselves had reached out to snare the enemy. (15)

The expression ‘ships that pass in the night’ reveals a fundamental truth about not only shipping movements but also shipping losses: a spider’s web spins out interconnecting one wreck with another. Wellner in U-14 (which would be scuttled in 1945 off Wilhelmshaven as the Allies closed in on Germany) had been responsible for the reconnaissance mission which had led to the very recent loss of HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow. (16) 

Similarly, U-16‘s British attacker HMS Cayton Wyke would herself be lost to war causes on 8 July 1940, near the U-16 on the Goodwin Sands: her position of loss links her both to her victim and to the landscape of war in which she served as patrol vessel. HMS Puffin would survive the war, closing the war as she had begun, by accounting for a German submarine.

By the end of October the U-16 was regarded as unsalvageable: ‘The submarine is little more than a shattered wreck, and the remains are gradually sinking into the sand owing to the continuance of the bad weather.’ (17) 

Fairly unusually for the Goodwin Sands, where even very recent wrecks have disappeared completely, the site of the U-16 has a secure charting history since early 1940 as the location of a submarine, although the identity of the site is not confirmed.  (18) However, the description of her position  ‘near’ two other wrecks, now among those which have disappeared, may provide a clue to their location: the uncharted Sibiria and the Val Salice, both lost in the same storm in 1916, whose charting is now regarded as ‘dead’. (19) This suggests that in 1939 either that they remained partially visible or at least their positions were still within living memory among the seamen of the Kent coast.

 

(1) based on the location of the vessel identified as U-16, UKHO 13666.

(2) https://uboat.net/boats/u16.htm

(3)  or example, in The Scotsman, Friday 27 October 1939, No.30.083, p9, and elsewhere in the British national and regional press.

(4)  Birmingham Mail, 27 October 1939, No.22,988, p9

(5) Belfast News-Letter, 30 October 1939 [no issue number] p5, and also reported elsewhere in the British press.

(6) Nord-Maritime, 29/30/31 October 1939, repr. http://dkepaves.free.fr/html/u_16.htm (in French) ; Yorkshire Evening Post, 27 October 1939, No.15,302, p6

(7)  Belfast News-Letter, 30 October 1939 [no issue number] p5

(8) uboat.net

(9)  Nord-Maritime 29 October 1939, repr. http://dkepaves.free.fr/html/u_16.htm (in French)

(10) ibid; also an article from 11 years later in Le Nouveau-Nord, 27 October 1950, clearly commemorating the anniversary of previous events, similarly repr. http://dkepaves.free.fr/html/u_16.htm (in French)

(11) Le Nouveau-Nord, 27 October 1950, repr. in http://dkepaves.free.fr/html/u_16.htm   with further commentary on the same link (in French)

(12) https://uboat.net/types/iib.htm

(13) https://uboat.net/boats/u16.htm

(14) Commonwealth War Graves Commission 

(15) Manchester Evening News, 27 October 1939, No.21,989 p1, p6

(16) Konstam, A. 2015 U-47 in Scapa Flow: The Sinking of HMS Royal Oak 1939 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd) p20

(17) The Scotsman, 31 October 1939, No.30,086 p11

(18) UKHO 13666

(19) North-Eastern Gazette (later Middlesbrough Gazette), 27 October 1939 [no issue no.], p1; Val Salice, UKHO 13729

Diary of the War: February 1917

~ Serena ~ 3 Comments

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: December 1916

~ Serena ~ 2 Comments

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

~ Serena ~ 2 Comments

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

Diary of the War: October 1916

~ Serena ~ 1 Comment

The wreck in two places at once

In this blog we’ve occasionally encountered wrecks that are in two places at once. The Mary Rose is a good example: after being raised in 1982, her principal structure lies in the Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth, but she is still a designated wreck site offshore with some remains still in situ. We’ve also looked at the ship that was wrecked in two separate countries, leaving different bits behind each time.

HMS Nubian is another example of a similar phenomenon. One of the Tribal-class destroyers which patrolled the Dover Straits during the First World War (see the story of Viking, Ghurka, and Maori in action against U-8), she was sent out to intercept a surprise Channel raid by the enemy in the early hours of 27 October 1916. A visit by the Kaiser to Zeebrugge had led the Admiralty to expect a German landing west of Nieuwpoort (possibly a diversionary tactic which succeeded in drawing out some of the British naval forces towards Dunkirk?) (1)

There were six Tribal-class destroyers stationed at Dover, with HMS Zulu patrolling out at sea further west, and the net barrage guarded by 28 auxiliary trawlers and drifters, in company with the destroyer HMS Flirt. Against them 24 German destroyers were steaming up Channel: Flirt issued a challenge, which was returned, and they steamed past in the dark, assumed to be part of the British movements that night.

This was a fatal mistake since the first attack of the night resulted in the sinking of HMT Waveney II off the net barrage. Flirt went to her assistance: in the meantime those on board the auxiliary yacht Ombra had grasped the situation, reporting enemy activity to the authorities and ordering the remaining HMTs back to Dover. Flirt herself came under attack at ‘point blank range’ which blew up her boilers, causing her to sink within five minutes. The Queen troopship was then captured and despatched. remaining adrift for about six hours before foundering off the Goodwin Sands. Fortunately she was carrying mail on her run from Boulogne to Folkestone, rather than troops.

By this time the destroyers in Dover were steaming out to investigate. As Nubian approached the net barrage destined to snare submarines, she was on her own without support, though by now further assistance was coming from the Dunkirk and Harwich quarters, attempting to trap the German force in a pincer movement.

Six of the retreating patrol drifters, four of which were unarmed, were then sunk by the German raiders – Spotless Prince, Launch Out, Gleaner of the Sea, Datum, Ajax II and Roburn (which had also been involved in the engagement with U-8)

The Nubian reached 9A Buoy in the net barrage, from which the commotion had come, then turned about – straight into the German 17th Flotilla steaming towards her. The first two enemy torpedoes missed, but the third found its target and blew off her bows. The rest of the ship was taken in tow, but, as a gale sprang up, she drove ashore near the South Foreland.

You might think from the title of this article that that’s it: Nubian now rests in two places: in mid-Channel and near the South Foreland. In fact, her story is much more interesting than that. We return now to a bit-player in the events of 26-27 October 1916, HMS Zulu: a minefield in the Straits of Dover would ‘terminate her career’, in the words of the official history. (2) On the afternoon of 8 November 1916 she struck a mine which ‘shattered her after part’, with her bow section being towed to Calais.

Something of a pattern was emerging here . . .

In what was later described as a ‘grafting’ operation, (3) using the language of the pioneering plastic surgery techniques which emerged out of the injuries of the First World War, the two grounded sections – the  bow section of Zulu and the aft section of Nubian – were salvaged, joined together and given the portmanteau name HMS Zubian.

As Zubian, therefore, both wrecks rejoined the Dover Patrol. Who knows how many times she passed over the remains of her component ships below?.She would later be credited with ramming UC-50 (a misidentification: probably UC-79) (4) and would participate in the Zeebrugge raid of 23 April 1918. Several of the Tribal-class were disposed of in 1919 : unsurprisingly, Zubian was among them, after everything she had been through. (5)

Nubian was the ship that was salved because another ship was wrecked: fortuitous and resourceful recycling in a time of war.

Black and white photograph of warship at sea in the lower half of the photograph, seen in starboard view, bows towards the right of the image.
Aerial view of HMS Zubian, from starboard. To modern eyes this image looks commonplace, but we should remember that aerial views were literally a fresh perspective on ships at war. © IWM Q61101.

 

(1) Naval Staff Monographs, Vol. XVII. Home Waters, Part VII: June 1916 to November 1916  London: Admiralty, 1927, p185-189. The acccount here is principally derived from this source, supplemented by information from the wreck records in the National Record of the Historic Environment for each vessel lost (see links).

(2) ibid., p208

(3) The Times, 28 February 1935, No.47,000, p13

(4) uboat.net

(5) The Times, 22 November 1919, No.42,264, p9

 

Diary of the War: September 1916

~ Serena ~ 4 Comments

Ville d’Oran

Today we unpack the tale of the steamer Ville d’Oran which foundered 4 miles ESE of Scarborough on 4 or 5 September 1916 (1) while bound from North Shields for Dunkirk with coal.

As was usual in this colonial era, the nationality by which she was recorded at the time was not the nationality we would accord to her now. Her eponymous home port of Oran lies in modern-day Algeria, which at the time was under French rule, and she was accordingly described at the time as a French steamer.

She was a very small steamer of around 400 tons, belonging to the firm of Scotto, Ambrosino, Pugliese & Cie, based in Oran. (2) Her master was one Cantarelli and the ownership and crewing of this vessel reveals a snapshot of the Italian diaspora of the mid-to-late 19th century. Many settled in Algeria, where by the early 20th century they had largely become naturalised French citizens. (3)

This may explain some of the Ville d’Oran‘s background. Built as Islander in 1896 for a Bristol coasting firm, she was then sold into Austro-Hungarian service, registered at Dubrovnik (now in Croatia). Following this her penultimate owners would also be Austro-Hungarian, but this time based in Trieste, now in modern Italy. (For more on Croatian wrecks in English waters, see this post here.)

Scotto, Ambrosino, Pugliese & Cie were primarily involved in the coasting trade, but diversified into longer-range seagoing routes during the First World War, explaining the presence of this small coasting vessel far out of her normal operating grounds in the North Sea. Wrecks of Algerian vessels are rare in English waters and half of the known wrecks date from the First World War, forming a distinct group of three. All were lost running coal from Britain to France, reflecting the demand for British coal in France as the war disrupted access to their own coalfields.

(The other group of Algerian vessels dates from the time of the Sallee Rovers or Barbary corsairs which ventured to England and beyond in the 17th and 18th centuries. There are therefore two historical ‘spikes’ of Algerian ships in English waters for entirely different reasons.)

It is certain that the crew of the Ville d’Oran were rescued by the British trawler Dora Duncan, whose crew received lifesaving medals from a grateful French government in 1917, a ‘silver medal, 2nd class’ for the master, and five bronze medals for each of the other crew members. (4) What they were actually rescuing them from was less clear. The loss of the Ville d’Oran was attributed to a mine, said to have been laid by SMS Kolberg, and she found her way into Lloyd’s War Losses on that basis, but she does not appear in the relevant post-war Naval Staff Monograph which usually covers war losses in some detail.

Wartime censorship meant that her sinking was not widely reported in the press: similarly, by now few newspapers were reporting ship arrivals and departures either as it gave away too much information of use to the enemy. The Liverpool press was one of the few that continued to print these details and by the time the Ville d’Oran‘s departure from North Shields had appeared in their shipping movements column she had already been lost. (5)

The story emerges through the account in another paper of the pilot who gave public and grateful thanks to his rescue by the Dora Duncan:

‘Captain Arthur Dye, of 26, Upper Cliff road, Gorleston-on-Sea, Great Yarmouth, wishes to thank Captain Hutchinson (master) and the crew of the Tees tug Dora Duncan, to whom he owes his life.

‘Captain Dye is a North Sea pilot, and recently left – with the steamer -, bound south. The morning after, when off -, a heavy concussion was felt under the ship’s bottom, and the vessel immediately commenced to settle, taking a heavy list to starboard. Captain Dye seized a lifebuoy, and clambered onto the port side of the ship, which soon sank, drawing him down with her.

‘. . . As the vessel was sinking the lights of the Dora Duncan were seen about a mile and a half distant. The whistle cord was tied down, to keep the whistle blowing to attract her attention.’ (6)

The account goes on to say that in heavy seas and poor weather the Dora Duncan located the sound of the ‘syren’ but her crew could see nothing in the dark. The master made the decision to stand by until daylight, an act of ‘very skilful manoeuvring’, given the conditions. This decision saved the lives of four men of the Ville d’Oran and Captain Dye, who was spotted at half-past five in the morning.

The gallantry awards bestowed by the French Government on Captain Hutchinson and the crew of the Dora Duncan were thus eminently well deserved in their determination to pull off the rescue regardless of the conditions.

The ‘heavy concussion’ might be consistent with a mine but there is no account of an explosion or the disintegration of the vessel (although, again, some censorship might be involved) and elsewhere it is said that the vessel sprang a leak (‘voie d’eau’ in French). (7)

Something caused that ‘concussion’. At this stage of the war there were few mine losses off Scarborough, with most of the casualties for 1916 having occurred in the first quarter of the year and the Rutil disappearing, presumed mined (but unconfirmed) on 13 September. If it was a mine, it was probably an old one, as the attribution to SMS Kolberg suggests (laid in December 1914 during the raid on Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool).

We shall never know, but, interestingly, could the Ville d’Oran have struck the remains of another vessel? For example, the remains of the M C Holm, lost in December 1914 to one of Kolber’s newly-laid mines, lie exactly 4 miles ESE of Scarborough. It is certain that Ville d’Oran does not lie near that vessel, but she clearly took some time to sink, so she may have drifted some distance before finally disappearing beneath the waves. To date she has not been located.

The complex history of the Ville d’Oran is far from over.

 

(1) Sources differ, probably as a result of the vessel’s loss in the middle of the night.

(2) It seems that she may have recently passed out of their ownership to the Société nationale maritime, Rouen, according to the Miramar Ship Index.

(3) Llinares, C, and Lima-Boutin, D, 2008. La Grande Famille de Procida & Ischia: L’émigration italienne de 1830 à 1914: causes, conditions, et conséquences socio-économiques. Paris.

(4) Journal officiel, 17 janvier 1917, p741

(5) Liverpool Daily Post, 6 September 1916, No.19,117, p2

(6) Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 11 September 1916, p2

(7) http://pages14-18.mesdiscussions.net/

Diary of the War No.21

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

Today’s post commemorates the Danish cargo vessel Asger Ryg, which disappeared in the English Channel on 6 April 1916.

She was built as the German Mimi Horn in 1902, but was sold the same year into Danish service as Asger Ryg for A/S D/S Skjalm Hvide (The Skjalm Hvide Steamship Company). The company’s name commemorated an 11th century chieftain of Sjaelland in Denmark, so what more appropriate name for one of their ships than that of one of his sons, Asger Ryg?

The Asger Ryg was bound from the Tyne with coal for Algiers when she disappeared with all hands. An official Danish source attributed the sinking to “being torpedoed or collision with a sea-mine”. That source was the Statistical Overview of Shipping Losses for the year 1916 of Danish Ships lost in Danish and Foreign Waters and Foreign Ships lost in Danish Waters (1) modelled on the British Board of Trade Casualty Returns, which had similar contents, but the Danish version also places a strong emphasis on narrative, making it more detailed in many respects.

Asger Ryg was sighted ‘to the south of the Isle of Wight in a badly damaged condition. It is supposed that she has been torpedoed.’ (2) The wreck was claimed by UB-29 as having been torpedoed just west of Beachy Head, (3) suggesting that her victim had drifted some distance before finally sinking.

The Asger Ryg‘s entry in the Statistical Overview reveals that she was valued at 700,000 kroner, and, together with many of the other vessels registered as lost that year, was also insured for war risks, at 924,000 kroner. Neutral Denmark was in a difficult position, with Germany on her sole land border and trade with Britain across the North Sea an important source of income. On the other hand, mines were no respecters of nationality or neutrality.

Denmark therefore continued to trade with both nations, but, as the German blockade of Britain intensified, ships carrying British cargoes became collateral damage in the efforts to strike at British trade. In English waters alone, we know of some 30 Danish ships lost during the First World War after being torpedoed, with further Danish vessels being lost to mines. (4) In a worldwide context losses were even greater. A few days after the loss of Asger Ryg it was reported that up to this point in the war the tally of Danish losses was 42 worldwide. (5) One of those was the Skodsborg, torpedoed a few weeks earlier, also by UB-29, off Suffolk.

Black and white profile view of steamship with single prominent funnel.
This may be Asger Ryg‘s wartime livery. Note that her name is painted in large white letters amidships. This was certainly the practice adopted by Norwegian vessels 1916-17, signalling their national identity at a distance in an effort to avoid being targeted.  Copyright unknown: wrecksite.eu

War risk insurance, therefore, was essential, a contingency that was prepared for from the outset, at least in Britain, where the State War Risk Insurance office opened the day after the declaration of war: the result of a collaboration between the Government and Lloyd’s of London. This innovative approach for British ships in 1914 would see further changes in the insurance industry to ease the pressure as their clerks left for the forces. In May 1916, therefore, a new Policy Signing Office opened, staffed almost entirely by women, to speed up the processing of policies. (6)

As the mounting toll of Danish ships demonstrates, by the early summer of 1916 it was acknowledged that neutral vessels were running significant risks: ‘For some time past a rate of 1 per cent has been accepted on the London market to cover the war risk in goods on neutral steamers across the North Atlantic.’ (7)  Thus, although neutral, each Danish ship was fighting its own war to stay afloat.

This is not the first post on the subject of neutral shipping lost in English waters – the War Diary opened with the Skúli Fógeti – and will not be the last.

(1) Statistisk Oversigt over de I Aaret 1916 for Danske Skibe i Dansk og Fremmede Farvande samt for Fremmede Skibe i Dansk Farvande: Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen, 1917

(2) New York Times, 10 April 1916

(3) uboat.net

(4) National Record of the Historic Environment, valid as at 5 April 2016.

(5) New York Times, 13 April 1916

(6) The Times, 7 May 1916, p9

(7) The Times, 5 June 1916, p15

 

Diary of the War No.20

~ Serena ~ 1 Comment

L15

In the second part of our Zeppelin double bill, we turn now to the tale of L15 as a counterpart to the story of L19 and Franz Fischer in Part 1. Like L19, L15 was a veteran of the raid on the West Midlands of 31 January/1 February 1916, and had, unlike the former, returned safely from that operation. She would survive to see two more months of activity.

Her final operation, together with six other Zeppelins, was planned for the week beginning March 31, when there would be minimal moonlight. (1) Admiral Scheer’s signal, briefing the German High Sea Fleet on the impending raid on southern England that night, was intercepted by British intelligence and a minesweeper tracked the Zeppelin, sending a report to Lowestoft. The British naval machine swung into action, with destroyers taking station off the east coast, just as the raid began over Essex and Suffolk.

L15 crossed the coast over Suffolk and, according to the later British official history, ‘followed the track of the Great Eastern Railway towards London, dropping a few bombs on Ipswich and Colchester as she passed’. As she lumbered south-westwards over the Thames ‘she was heavily engaged by the numerous anti-aircraft batteries’ on both the north and south banks at Purfleet, Erith, and Plumstead. L15 was forced to jettison her bombs over Rainham and turn back towards Germany, but not before the Purfleet battery had scored a hit.

The disabled Zeppelin was then intercepted by Alfred de Bathe Brandon of the Royal Flying Corps at Hainault, in a BE 2C biplane: he climbed above his target, attempting to bring her down by means of Ranken darts, a specific anti-Zeppelin weapon designed to pierce the skin of the hull. The airship then circled over Foulness, Essex, and dropped away, crashing into the sea near the Kentish Knock.

Colour image of Ranken dart next to its casing plate.
Ranken anti-Zeppelin dart, © IWM (MUN 3278)

It has been a matter of speculation ever since whether the Purfleet gun battery or Brandon’s action was ultimately responsible for the Zeppelin’s demise, or whether it was the combination of the two that made her the first Zeppelin to come down within English territorial waters. Official sources say nothing about a small explosion on board, but contemporary newspapers suggest that the crew had drawn lots as to who would be the last to stay behind after the rescue and blow up the airship, which would have meant almost certain death for the unlucky crew member. (2)

Oil painting of the hulked Zeppelin against a red and orange sky reflected in the sea with the black hulks of vessels in attendance.
St George and the Dragon, Donald Maxwell, 1917, depicting the downed L15 in the Thames. © IWM (IWM ART 888)

 

In the event, no self-immolation occurred, although, as the patrol trawler Olivine approached, a small explosion in the motor room was noted just before the Zeppelin crew surrendered. (2)

In contrast to the story of L19, the crew were not left to their fate by the trawler. All but one of the crew were rescued by the Olivine, and taken prisoner, although one had drowned before he could be picked up. But then the Olivine was not out alone in the remote expanses of the North Sea, but in a busy shipping lane bristling with warships and civilian vessels alike. The Zeppelin came down ‘in a flotilla of net drifters’ which the Olivine was guarding (1) and other patrol vessels were nearby: ‘That stretch of water . . . swarms with patrolling craft.’ (2)

‘She came down like a sick bird, flopping at both ends as though they were wings’, said one witness. (2) An hour and a half later, destroyers from the Nore tried to take her in tow but the operation was fraught with  difficulty, since ‘her stern was under water, the envelope was partly broken, and her back was broken.’ (1) After proceeding a very short distance, she collapsed and sank within hours of coming down,  but was eventually salvaged off Westgate, Kent.

The crew were taken to Chatham and the New York Times conducted an interview with the prisoners at the barracks, interrogating them on the impact of the raids and the loss of life among civilians, particularly women and children, so that on the whole the authorities’ decision to allow access to the prisoners resulted in a pro-British piece in the US press.

It turned out that Lieutenant Kuehne had been married only 8 days previously and he ‘was rather surprised to learn that his captors would allow him to write a letter to his bride. He confessed that he had no idea that the British could be so sympathetic.’ (3) He also sent his greetings to a London newspaper editor whom he had met before the war, demonstrating that there was still a residue of the mutual cordiality of pre-war Anglo-German relations. One final detail that emerged from the interview was that the night had been so cold and the Zeppelin flying so high that it was coated in frost and they ‘suffered severely’.

I’d like to end this blog on a personal note. Zeppelins would continue their raids on England in 1916 and beyond: for me these raids are only two generations away. My paternal grandmother went to see the site of another Zeppelin which came down at Great Burstead, Essex, in September 1916. She found the wreck guarded by policemen and soldiers but was profoundly shocked on arrival to see that the soldiers had already looted pieces of debris and were selling them to the public! This was hardly surprising since souvenirs from L15 are also known to survive, with several being in the collections of the Imperial War Museum, London (no images available).

(1) Naval Staff Monographs No.31, Vol. XV: Home Waters: Part VI: From October 1915 to May 1916, pp178-180. Admiralty, London

(2) New York Times, April 2, 1916

(3) New York Times, April 3, 1916

Diary of the War No.19

~ Serena ~ 1 Comment

Franz Fischer

Interned German vessels have been a recurring theme or leitmotiv in this Diary of the War blog. This month’s double bill begins with another example, the Franz Fischer, detained as a prize at Sharpness in 1914, and the doubts over her manner of loss.

It is a story that exemplifies the dangers of the sea as the war drew near to its half-way mark, with terror from above and a message in a bottle.

As with most other detained prizes, Franz Fischer helped to fill the gaps in the ranks of sunken colliers, being one of 34 ships managed as colliers for the Admiralty by the Newcastle firm of Everett & Newbigin.(1) (Ironically she was the ex-British Rocklands, sold to Germany in 1913.) Despite reverting to Britain as a prize, she retained her recent German name, and it was as the Franz Fischer that she set off on her final voyage from Hartlepool on 31 January 1916, bound for Cowes with 1,020 tons of coal.

Around 9.30pm the following evening, having been informed that there were mines to be seen ahead, Franz Fischer prudently joined a group of laden vessels at anchor off the Kentish Knock Buoy.

What happened next was shrouded in some mystery. At 10.30pm Franz Fischer was rocked by an explosion amidships and sank within a couple of minutes at most. Only three men out of her 16-strong crew – a seaman from Newfoundland, the chief engineer, from Tyneside, and the steward,  a Londoner – survived to be picked up alive by the Belgian steamer SS Paul, by which time they were ‘close to collapse’, having heard the cries of other survivors gradually dying away overnight. (2)

Their story was told by Alfred Noyes in his serial for the Times, “Open Boats”, (3). (His radio drama of the same name was published in the New York Times as a powerful illustration of the sufferings endured by torpedoed crews.) The crew heard a noise approaching from the SE, which appeared to go away, then became ‘deafening’. As they investigated in the ‘black dark’ they were knocked off their feet by a ‘great mass of sea water which had been heaved up by the explosion.’ One survivor described an eerie sense that there was an aircraft ‘circling overhead in the darkness, dropping closer and closer to the vessel, like a great night-hawk’, the noise ‘several express trains all crossing a bridge together’ followed by a brief silence, then the explosion.

The chief engineer managed to swim to the lifebelt box, which rolled over when some of the crew tried to get onto it, so he decided to swim away. He managed to grab a lifebelt before passing out in the water: when he came to, he was aboard the Paul. (3)

The British press kept a beady eye on their German counterparts in a war of words that mirrored the physical war. The Wolff Bureau circulated a press release to German news outlets, claiming that the Franz Fischer had been sunk by a Zeppelin returning from the raid on England. The raid is well-documented, taking place on the night of 31 January to 1 February, so even at the Zeppelins’ lumbering speed they had already crossed the North Sea by the time the Franz Fischer was attacked.

All except one. L19 had engine trouble and crashed into the North Sea, where she was eventually found by a British fishing vessel, the King Stephen. The trawler crew rejected appeals from the Zeppelin crew for rescue, fearing that they would be overpowered and their vessel hijacked. The last heard from L19 was a despairing final report cast away in a bottle, dated at 1pm on 2 February, ‘wohl die letzte Stunde’, ‘at our last hour’. This message would wash up on the Swedish coast some 6 months later.

Front cover of French newspaper, with colour pen and ink illustration depicting an airship upended into the sea against a sunrise.
The front cover of Le Petit Journal, 27 February 1916: the headline reads “Punishing the Pirates”. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The trajectory of L19 can be reconstructed, from the Midlands (although the crew believed they had targeted Liverpool) to the east coast at Winterton, Norfolk, well north of the Kentish Knock, whence she drifted as far east as the Dutch coast. Anti-aircraft fire from the Dutch drove her away again and she came down in the North Sea.  The wreckage was eventually discovered some 120 miles off the Spurn, so her wanderings throughout appear to have been too far north for her to be Franz Fischer‘s nemesis.

The most likely cause of the explosion was not from the air but from below. UB–17 was in the area, and her Kriegstagesbuch, ‘war diary’ or log book survives (4) noting an attack on a steamer at the Hoofden (the Kentish Knock). The first torpedo missed her target, but the second struck, sinking her within a minute and sending up a ‘column’ of smoke. This sounds close to British accounts, and by the time the official history of the war had been written in the 1920s, the wreck had been attributed to UB-17. The official history of the war at sea also came to the same conclusion: UB-17 was responsible, since ‘no enemy aeroplane or seaplane from Belgium is known to have gone out that evening; and probably the aircraft heard was one of our own.’ (5)

One hundred years ago the survivors of Franz Fischer felt themselves overshadowed by an aerial presence, which had nothing to do with the loss of their ship. L19 has overshadowed the story ever since. However, recent research and retranslation of the very difficult Suetterlin script of the original Kriegstagesbuch has uncovered that the first torpedo not only missed the target, but also misfired. ‘No track was to be seen: it was a dud.’ Could this misfiring have been part of the ominous noise heard by the survivors?

With especial thanks to Thomas Foerster,who transcribed the Kriegstagesbuch, and helped unlock its meaning, and to everyone who helped in various ways with this story – Angela Middleton and Marion Page of Historic England, and Matt Skelhorn of the MoD.

(1) Hansard, 2 June 1919

(2) Times, 4 February 1916, No.41,081, p.7

(3) Times, 23 December 1916, No.41,358, p.4

(4) UB-17 Kriegstagesbuch, 22 January-6 February 1916, Deutsches U-boot Museum, Cuxhaven

(5) Naval Staff Monographs No.31, Vol. XV: Home Waters: Part VI: From October 1915 to May 1916, pp62-5. Admiralty, London

 

 

Diary of the War No.18

~ Serena ~ 1 Comment

The Algerian

For the first post of 2016 I am delighted to welcome our guest blogger, Amelia Astley, a PhD student at the University of Southampton, who has specialised in the study of shipwreck site formation processes through the use of multibeam bathymetry time-series. Here she describes one of the wrecks she has studied, the Algerian, lost a century ago on 12 January 1916.

Life of the Algerian

The Algerian, originally named Flintshire, was built in 1896 by the Sunderland Shipbuilding Company and made up part of the Shire Line [1]. She had a tonnage of 3815grt, length of 111m, beam of 13m and a service speed of 10 knots [2]. Following 21 years of service she was bought by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co., where she remained for six years, before being purchased by the Ellerman Line Ltd. for their Levant service, under the name Algerian.

Black and white photograph of a ship with the name Algerian in letters beneath the bows,
A photo of the Algerian. [3]
Fate of the Algerian

At 8.20am on the 12th January 1916 the Algerian departed from Cowes Road, Isle of Wight, heading for Avonmouth [4]. After travelling just 26km along her 600km journey, at 10:15am, she hit a mine 4km southwest of the Needles.  It was later determined that this mine had been laid by the German submarine, UC-5, almost three months earlier [5]. The contact mine exploded on her starboard side, abreast of No. 2 hatch [6]. All of the crew bailed into three lifeboats. However, after realising the vessel wasn’t sinking, the captain and a few other members of the crew re-boarded [4]. For now the flooding was contained to just holds No. 1 and No. 2.

Three Admiralty armed drifters responded to distress signals, as well as the SS Warden, a Trinity House vessel, which assisted in the tow for Southampton, as did the tug Walvisch. By 2pm the vessel was approaching the boom defence near Cowes [4]. The tide was running strong and there were concerns that the Algerian was set on course to collide with the boom vessel Magda. As a result the Algerian was ordered to drop anchor.

Colour map of the Solent with purple line showing outbound voyage and yellow line depicting inbound voyage, with terminal points marked by a mine symbol and a wreck symbol representing the location where the vessel struck the mine and where she sank.
Route of the final voyage of the Algerian, showing the mine laid by UC-5, and the final wrecking position.

The No. 1 bulkhead finally gave way as the ship came to a standstill (it is not known whether or not this was a direct result of letting the anchor go). Attempts were made at securing tows to the beach, but these failed as the ship started to rapidly sink, bows first, causing the crew to again abandon ship. The vessel sank on her port side into a deep water channel to a depth of 22m just one mile off Egypt Point at a time of 2:30pm [6].  Fortunately all crew made it off the ship safely and the ship was in ballast at the time, so there was no cargo to retrieve [1].

Originally a diver was to be sent down to the wreck to ascertain the cause of the explosion (it was not yet confirmed to be a mine). However, the loss of the HMT Albion II to a mine near the Needles the following day is thought to have satisfied the Admiralty that a mine was the cause, since there is no record of a diver ever visiting the wreck [4]. The wreck, like many others, lay undisturbed until the end of the war.

A series of attempts were made to disperse the wreck throughout the 1920s and her structure was reduced in height by approximately  6.5m [7]. Although the ship had a beam of just 13m, the wreck structure in 1978 measured 30m wide[7], suggesting that the ship lies directly on her side, and is consistent with the vessel’s hull depth of 28m.

Present day

The wreck of the Algerian is situated approximately 1.25km northwest of Gurnard, Isle of Wight, at a depth of 20 to 22m below chart datum and is aligned 61/241° (with its bow towards the north-east). The wreck structure measures 107m long, 28m wide and stands proud of the seabed by 5.8m at its highest point.

Location map of the Algerian, seen as a black star, with the land on either side illustrated in black and white, and the surrounding seabed depth illustrated by different colours shading from red at the shallowest to blue at the deepest.
Location map of wreck of the Algerian and the location of the nearest Tidal Diamond and Wave Buoy, overlain on 2006 and 2011 MCA multibeam bathymetry (Contains public sector information, licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0, from Maritime Coastguard Agency).

Five high-resolution multibeam bathymetry surveys spanning three years have been collected using the University of Southampton’s vessel Callista. These multibeam bathymetry time-series are used to study the evolution with time of the wreck structure and surrounding seabed. The site is remarkably sheltered and is situated on a bed made up of coarse gravels, which require strong currents to be transported. As a result the wreck site has undergone little change over the three year (2012 – 2015) observation period.

Nevertheless, divers have observed that the wreck frequently acts as a nucleus for the collection of traffic cones, patio chairs, drinks cans and other debris. [8]

Computer-generated image of the wreck site on the seabed, showing a jumbled mass of darker metal in grey against a grey background of sandwaves.
Point cloud image of the wreck with sunlight shading, seen from the northern side of the wreck, derived from the 2015 survey. © Amelia Astley, University of Southampton

 

References

[1]         Tennent A J. British Merchant Ships Sunk by U-boats in World War One. 2nd ed. Penzance: Periscope Publishing Ltd; 2006.

[2]         Merchant Navy Association. Shire Line 2015. http://www.red-duster.co.uk/shire7.htm (accessed May 1, 2015).

[3]         PhotoShip. Album: Old Ships A 2015. http://www.photoship.co.uk/JAlbum Ships/Old Ships A/index12.html (accessed March 20, 2015).

[4]         Maritime Archaeology Trust. Forgotten wrecks of the First World War: SS Algerian 2015. http://www.forgottenwrecks.org/index.php/forgottenwrecks/casestudywrecks/ss-algerian (accessed May 1, 2015).

[5]         Naval staff monographs (Historical). Volume XV. Home waters – part VI. From October 2015 to May 1916. London: Admiralty; 1926.

[6]         Larn R, Larn B. Shipwreck index of the British Isles: Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Sussex, Kent (Mainland), Kent (Downs), Goodwin Sands, Thames. London: Lloyd’s Register of Shipping; 1995.

[7]         United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO). Hydrographic Office wreck index: Algerian (013503820). n.d.

[8]         pers. comm., Wight Spirit Diving Charters, 2015