Smoke and Mirrors

by Deborah Lake

  On approaching this boat my attention was temporarily distracted from the work in hand and I suddenly realised the ship had too much weight on. I immediately reversed engines, at the same time putting the helm hard a port. The boat was not struck by the ship and came past along the port side. The prisoners, however – when the boat in which they were – was some twenty yards from my bows, both dived overboard. The boat was in no way damaged.

  Wilmot-Smith insisted that the two survivors were treated reasonably, given comfortable beds, with plenty of blankets, were issued with dry clothes and left alone. Nobody asked Corporal Collins for his version.

  Baralong’s log did not even mention the sinking.

  The war went on. Some U-boat men decided that any trapship crews they caught would pay the price there and then. Q-ship men heard about the threats. Some carried poison in case they faced capture.

  The Q-ships continued to duel with the Kaiserliche Marine. To the bitter end.

  EIGHT

  THE ACE IN THE HOLE

  On 4 February 1915, the day after Cecil Foley Lambert suggested the use of decoy ships, Rear Admiral Henry Oliver, Chief of the Admiralty’s War Staff, minuted the file:

  One steamer is already operating on the Harwich, Hook of Holland route: she was finished fitting out about a week ago. A second steamer is being fitted out with guns now to commence duty in the English or Irish Channel. About two months ago a steamer was fitted out at Portsmouth and worked off Havre but it was evident she was not being run on the proper lines and she was paid off. There should be little difficulty in getting four more small steamers, the greatest difficulty is to get the right sort of Commanding Officer for an enterprise of this kind. The Commanding Officer in the steamer fitting now has been engaged in mine laying and blockade running, and is an enterprising man who will probably be a success.

  Oliver’s summary covered the dismal career of SS Victoria. The steamer on the Harwich route was, presumably, Antwerp, once Vienna. The ship ‘fitting now’ was apparently Lyons. Opinions changed about Gardiner, although he certainly showed enterprise both during and after the war.

  The Admiralty had much to concern it in February 1915. The U-boat problem, essentially no more than a minor headache, came well down the list. The Grand Fleet, with its myriad requirements in personnel, fuel, rations, training and 24-hour readiness took highest priority, closely followed by the threat of hit-and-run raids in the Channel, now that the enemy occupied Zeebrugge. Zeppelin raids, the need for a myriad of small vessels for minesweeping and coastal patrols, a supply of ships and munitions to force the Dardanelles, the ongoing demands of the distant blockade, the Dover Patrol, mined steel nets to protect the Grand Fleet in harbour, all clamoured for attention. And, much as the Navy needed resources, the demands of the Army on the Western Front took precedence. Wars create priorities. Flanders came first.

  The Admiralty largely discounted sustained U-boat attacks on merchant shipping. The Kaiserliche Marine had too few boats. They had done little damage to the British merchant fleet. Set against the available tonnage, the amount destroyed in the first six months of the war scarcely registered.

  Mercantile trade would continue no matter how much the German wolf huffed and puffed. A State Insurance scheme, introduced at the start of the war, that paid compensation for goods and vessels lost to enemy action kept ships on the trade routes.

  The Admiralty and the British government failed to realise that Germany had changed her mind. Once the ideal of a swift victory vanished, a new realism gripped the German military mind. Ruthlessness. Ruthlessness not merely against the obvious enemy but to embrace the neutral accomplices in Britain’s cowardly attack on German trade.

  Three factors determined whether the Kaiser’s navy would win the battle of the high seas. The first was obvious. The U-boats must sink so many ships that Britain starved. The second component was morale. The risk of sudden death by explosion, of a slower death by drowning or exposure in open lifeboats or on life rafts, would deter men from sailing as merchant seamen. Without men, the ships stayed idle. Third, and most important, was world opinion, especially that of the United States. If the damage inflicted on the British outweighed the hostility of nations outside the conflict, the campaign could succeed.

  In the last two weeks of February, the unrestricted campaign despatched thirteen ships. One a day. By the end of April, the handful of U-boats at sea had launched fifty-seven torpedo attacks without warning on merchant ships. Of these, thirty-eight brought sinkings, four severely damaged the target, and fifteen ended with the intended victim escaping unscathed. A further ninety-three ships came under surface attack. Forty-three escaped.

  These losses did not alarm Whitehall. New ships on the slipways easily made up the deficit. Only a few noted the statistics. In the ten weeks or so of the campaign, five U-boats perished. But German yards also thrived. Another twenty-five U-boats joined the Kaiserliche Marine during the period. One hundred ships sunk, against five U-boats destroyed. Not the best of odds.

  Decoys became the Admiralty’s secret ace in the hole.

  Logic suggested that a single authority should control decoys. This did not happen. Admirals proved touchy about their authority. Decoys in their area must report and belong to their command.

  London showed some dismay when U-boats attacked the North Sea fishing fleets. Fish was a staple for many people. Cheap, nutritious, plentiful, with a range of helpful by-products, any interruption to supplies caused fierce annoyance. Trawlers and drifters proved easy prey for prowling U-boats.

  The grey steel shape would rise from the depths. The deck gun menaced the unarmed fleet. Shouted orders led to abandoned boats. After helping themselves to fresh fish, the U-boat crews then sank the helpless targets. That some U-boat men asked the dispossessed fishermen to pass on greetings to friends and even family in England was a final thumb to the nose.

  Armed trawlers appeared among the fishing vessels. On 5 June, U 14, under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Max Hammerle, attempted to sink Oceanic II near Peterhead. Unfortunately for Hammerle and his crew, the target returned fire. Surprised, Hammerle screamed for an emergency dive. In the ensuing panic, nobody flooded the forward tanks. Oceanic II, joined by another armed trawler, moved in for the kill. Hammerle went down with his boat. The gathering trawlers picked up the rest of the crew.

  A more elaborate scheme originated in Beatty’s 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron at Rosyth. His secretary, Paymaster Frank Spickernell, suggested that a trawler tow a submarine, the two in contact by a telephone cable. When a U-boat surfaced, the trawler would inform the submarine of the course and behaviour of the enemy. The British submarine would then slip the tow and sink her enemy.

  Beatty was enthusiastic. With him, enthusiasm reaped results. He placed the submarine C24 under the control of Admiral Sir Stanley Colville, the Admiral Commanding Orkney and Shetland. Colville was already busy fitting out a personal fleet of decoys. Like Beatty, he seized upon the paymaster’s idea with relish.

  A genuine Aberdeen fishing boat, the Taranaki, set out with C24. On 23 June, about 50 miles off Aberdeen, Kapitänleutnant Gerhard Fürbringer and U 40 sighted the tethered goat. Complex tricks sometimes have problems. Taranaki told C24 of the new arrival. The submarine found herself unable to slip the tow. In desperation, her commander told the trawler to cut the cable at her end.

  Yard upon yard of cable and telephone cord swirled in the water. C24 struggled to maintain her trim as the wires came close to fouling her screws. Luckily, Fürbringer and his companions on the bridge were distracted by reactions on board Taranaki. C24 neatly put a torpedo into U 40’s hull, just beneath the conning tower. Fürbringer and the bridge watch were the only survivors.

  Less than one month later, on 20 July 1915, the trawler and submarine combination struck again. Princess Louise and another C Class submarine, C27, met U 23 at 0755hr, close to Fair Isle. Oberleutnant zur See Hans Schulthess opened fire from about a mile as he took his U-boat across the t
rawler’s bows. Princess Louise warned C27. Seconds later, the telephone wire snapped. C27 released the tow and surfaced. She fired a single torpedo at U 23. Without success.

  On Princess Louise, a panic party pretended to abandon ship. As the boat swung out on its davits, a second torpedo from C27 scored a bull’s-eye, a few feet aft of the U-boat’s conning tower. Four officers and six men of the Kaiserliche Marine survived, Schulthess among them.

  Despite two successes, the decoy trawler and submarine ploy had limited use. Seaworthiness proved a major problem. A submarine tow needed calm seas. Despite the size of the Royal Navy and the relative obsolescence of C Class submarines, demands for their services were legion. Further, the trick had a limited life. Genuine trawlers hauled in their nets every two hours or so. Decoys could not both fish and tow at the same time. After a couple of narrow escapes, U-boat captains studied their target extremely carefully. No fishing meant a trapship.

  With Beatty’s support and Colville’s enthusiasm, decoys, proper Q-ships that operated on their own, soon roamed the seas. In the north, armed trawlers patrolled. Quickly and Gunner met a U-boat. Despite apparently being hit by some 12-pounder rounds, and the dropping of an explosive charge, the U-boat escaped. Quickly was commanded by Captain James Startin, RNR, the Senior Naval Officer at Granton in the Firth of Forth. Startin was a former vice-admiral who cheerfully dropped several notches in rank to come back into service.

  On 20 July 1915, Colville sent a 370-ton collier, Prince Charles, to look for U-boats. She carried a naval crew of one officer, one petty officer and seven ratings in addition to her regular merchant seamen. Her captain, Lieutenant William Mark-Wardlaw, had precise, particular orders from Sir Stanley:

  The object of the cruise is to use the Prince Charles as a decoy, so that an enemy submarine should attack her with gunfire. It is not considered probable, owing to her small size, that a torpedo would be wasted on her. In view of this I wish to impress upon you to strictly observe the role of decoy. If an enemy submarine is sighted, make every effort to escape. If she closes and fires, immediately stop your engines and with the ship’s company except the guns’ crews who should most carefully be kept out of sight behind the bulwarks alongside their gun (and one engineer at the engines), commence to abandon ship. It is very important if you can do so to try and place your ship so that the enemy approaches you from the beam. Allow the submarine to come as close as possible, and then open fire by order on whistle, hoisting your colours. It is quite probable that a submarine may be observing you through her periscope unseen by you and therefore on no account should the guns’ crews on watch be standing about their guns.

  Mark-Wardlaw observed his instructions to the final full stop. Near North Rona Island in the Outer Hebrides, Prince Charles met U 36 on the surface, close to a hove-to coaster in Danish markings. In a textbook display, Mark-Wardlaw pretended to notice nothing amiss. U 36 fired a warning shot. Mark-Wardlaw stopped, blew three blasts on the ship’s whistle, ordered his panic party away and stood by. Kapitänleutnant Ernst Graeff came closer. At 600yd from Prince Charles, he turned broadside on to sink the collier at leisure.

  Mark-Wardlaw opened fire. His two guns, one 6-pounder and one 3-pounder, both missed with their first salvo. The German gunners ran for safety as U 36 tried to crash-dive. The second shots hit the mark, some 20ft aft of the conning tower. Graeff’s escape attempt resulted only in the U-boat presenting her other side as a target. Prince Charles steamed towards U 36 in high excitement, firing all the while. The U-boat lifted vertically out of the water, hung motionless for a moment, then slid to the bottom of the sea.

  Fifteen of the crew, including Graeff himself, were rescued. Mark-Wardlaw received a DSC, subsequently upgraded to a Distinguished Service Order. The crew received a bounty of £1,000 to share among themselves.

  The Prince Charles flew the Red Ensign during the engagement. In purely technical terms, she was thus a pirate as she was not commissioned as a warship.

  But all that really mattered was success. On 15 August, the armed trawler Inverlyon met UB 4 off Yarmouth. The U-boat came from the Flottille Flandern, based at Zeebrugge. Oberleutnant zur See Karl Gross commanded a boat designed for coastal attack rather than deep-sea killing. He had only two torpedoes. Inverlyon let him come to within 30yd before she showed her teeth in the shape of a single 3-pounder gun.

  A few days earlier, on 11 August 1915, a similarly disguised trawler, the 61-ton G&E, saw off UB 6, another Zeebrugge-based boat. Oberleutnant zur See Erich Häcker and his crew escaped with a shaking.

  When Baralong, in her turn, sent U 27 and U 41 to the bottom, the Admiralty congratulated itself. The U-boat menace was on the wane. Attacks tailed away although that had nothing to do with the Royal Navy’s endeavours.

  A shortage of U-boats and crews slowed the campaign just as politics intervened. World indignation at the Lusitania sinking increased when news of the Arabic encounter, suitably filtered, reached the papers.

  Bethmann-Hollweg, never a supporter of the U-boat offensive, was in cahoots with Admiral Georg von Müller, the Chief of the Naval Cabinet, who served as the normal conduit to Wilhelm II for the Kaiserliche Marine. Müller, a total abstainer, considered himself something of an artist. He also enjoyed the company of pacifist-minded friends. He was thus no crony of Tirpitz.

  The pair worked on the Kaiser. The Unterseeboote may have sunk ships but the results were less impressive than hoped. Worse, all-out U-boat action badly hurt Germany in the diplomatic war. Their efforts met success. On 27 August 1915, Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered that, in future, passenger steamers were to receive a warning. They could be sunk only if passengers and crew were not in danger.

  Lack of boats and crews. Political pressure. The two factors forced the U-boat offensive to a crawl from a canter. In June 1915, fifteen boats were at sea. By the end of August, it fell to eight. Five raiders went on patrol in September. During October, the North Sea and Flanders Flotillas mustered only four boats at sea. The next month, they had three. In December, four boats went out. They all came from Zeebrugge.

  Things would change. The din sounded day and night as the shipyards in Kiel, Bremen, Hamburg and Danzig moved into top gear. In the Wilhelmstrasse, a mood of determination ran through the German Naval Staff. Bethmann-Hollweg and von Müller were old women. The U-boats were Germany’s maritime steel fist. Steel fists delivered knock-out blows.

  If the war began to go against Germany, if some desperate throw of the dice were needed to knock out one of her potent enemies, the U-boat campaign of 1915 pointed firmly in one direction. Enough U-boats, given free rein, would decide the war.

  By autumn 1915, the Royal Navy believed it had the measure of the U-boat with its decoy ships. The Admiralty pressed ahead with more trapships. The expansion needed commanding officers of quality, together with dedicated crews. This was a problem. Whatever the War Staff might demand, the administrators of appointments and postings worked to their own arcane rituals. A quick skim through an officer’s file revealed whether he would be happier away from the flinty gaze of authority.

  For Gordon Campbell, the call came in the nick of time. His tenure as a destroyer captain did not go well once the war began. His command of the elderly HMS Bittern was limited to a dreary round of escort duties and routine patrols. The 225 destroyers of the Royal Navy all worked hard. Most were relatively modern but even the ninety-eight that were more than a decade old possessed a nifty turn of speed. Their engines, though, did not retain a fierce reliability.

  Campbell discovered this in September 1915, when he pursued a mysterious ship that ignored his signals. Bittern’s engines, pushed to their limit, gave up the fight. She hobbled back to harbour at a miserable 4 knots. No consolation came with the revelation that the stranger was a British seaplane carrier.

  A bored Campbell, having reached his time advancement to lieutenant commander, wanted excitement before the war finished. He volunteered for a Persian Gulf gunboat command to support the Indian army in
its disorganised Mesopotamian campaign. When that failed, he asked for an appointment to a Harwich-based destroyer. They, at least, had a chance of meeting the enemy when they patrolled the bleak waters of the North Sea. Gunboats and modern destroyers were not on the Admiralty’s agenda for the lieutenant commander. His career had not sparkled. His service record held some unfavourable comments from his seniors. They were not necessarily fair comment, but fairness is not a word always found in military dictionaries.

  The Admiralty plucked Campbell, his deputy, Lieutenant W. Beswick, RNR and other officers from their files. ‘Special service’ beckoned. It promised, the selected few learned, action, adventure and glory. Campbell went to London for an interview about his mysterious new duty.

  He was to serve under Vice-Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly at Queenstown in the south of Ireland. The Queenstown ships patrolled the Western Approaches, the vital seaway between the Atlantic and the Irish Sea. Bayly had no doubts about the value of decoys. Sailing ships or steamers both had their uses:

  I entirely agree with the principle of disguising armed ships as the best means of sinking submarines. The armed yachts, sloops and trawlers are excellent for protection of trade, rescuing crews and passengers, escorting etc., but except in thick weather or at night, their chance of getting close to a submarine is small. What at first is not apparent, though very real, is that the appearance of our sloops, armed yachts, and trawlers very often frighten the submarines away from the area in which they are working, and save the ships which are in, or approaching, that area, though none except the submarine knows or will know that such a thing has happened.

  Bayly was content that U-boat crews knew that decoys existed. That knowledge alone deterred attacks. Few U-boat captains used several thousand Reichsmarks’ worth of torpedo on a sailing ship or a small steamer. They were prey for deck guns. If decoys were known to be on patrol, enemy skippers would hesitate to attack. The innocent would escape.