by Deborah Lake
The shell exploded a single depth charge. It caused havoc. Statham, of the 2½-pounder gun crew, fell, severely wounded. Seaman A.S. Morrison, 25 years of age, from New Brighton, responsible for the depth charges, was thrown through the poop doors. A member of the panic party found him staggering back to his post despite fearful injuries.
Able Seaman Bennison, of the 4in gun crew, recalled:
. . . the magazine caught fire, and we got a message from the bridge to abandon ship. We thought, if we abandon ship we’ll give the game away more so we stuck though the decks were getting red hot where we were laid and kneeling. The decks were quite hot, not red hot, but we couldn’t bear it. When you go into action, you more or less throw all your clothes off and went [sic] barefoot – I was in stockinged feet. I always had an idea I wouldn’t like to die with boots on; I had seaboots on previous to that and I just threw them off and was knocking around in bare feet. When the decks got hot we had some magazine boxes there and we stood on those and the other people were looking after themselves. We stayed out at the gun; the others weren’t in stockinged feet but all kinds of rig, we were disguised to look like any old sailors.
Bonner was in command of the gun; he was in his controls which consisted of a dummy wire reel. His action stations was standing under the poop so that he could look right round the horizon. He did get blown out of that after the explosion. . . . We were alright, not serious wounds, except the man who was in charge of the depth charges. He was very seriously wounded. . . . he eventually died about two days later.
Bonner, the Number One, initially stunned by the explosion, crawled to the hatch in which the 4in gun and crew lay in wait.
The second and third shots from UC 71 also landed on the poop. Fire raged across the deck. Flame fondled wood and canvas. Smoke, thick, murky, choking, curdled into lungs. One sailor ripped his shirt to pieces to provide gags against the fumes. Others lifted boxes of cordite clear of the hot deck. Nobody showed themselves to the watching U-boat.
Aboard UC 71, a mass of orange-red fire and black smoke billowed directly towards them from the steamer’s poop. The U-boat moved closer to Dunraven’s stern.
Campbell made another signal to any ships that hastened to help. ‘Keep away for the present.’ He used his three letter Q-ship call sign, three letters in urgent Morse that naval wireless operators recognised. Campbell had decided to fight on.
The poop blazed with flame. The 4in gun crew, above the magazine, remained stoic. Communication between the bridge and the poop was cut. Campbell knew that the magazine would explode. So did the gunners. When it went it would take with it the gun, its crew and anybody nearby, as well as revealing Dunraven for what she was: a trap.
It is a measure of Campbell’s leadership that every man on board was ready to die if necessary. If the magazine exploded, it might take the whole ship with it. Chances are there to be taken.
The U-boat was hardly visible through swirling smoke. But she came on. Soon, she would pass behind the decoy, out of the smoke into the clear light. Saltzwedel and his gun crew were below, the conning-tower hatch slammed shut. Not ideal for an attack. Campbell waited, prepared to take the chance. Duty decreed that Dunraven sink the U-boat. A handful of lives lost against the saving of ships, supplies and other sailors was no bad bargain.
UC 71 passed the stern. Only seconds remained before the three 12-pounders would have her in their sights. At 400yd distance, at 1258hr on 8 August 1917.
At that precise moment, an explosion rocked the 3,000 tons of freighter. The 4in gun, complete with crew, flew into the air. The ammunition, stacked around, took flight, thumping back to the decks in every direction. The gun smashed into the well deck. One member of the gun crew fell straight into the water. The panic party rowed to his rescue. The others slammed down on top of the wood and canvas of the fake railway trucks. Petty Officer Pitcher, wounded, bleeding, finished up near the engine room. Bonner, head pouring blood, scorched, burned on his hands, found his way to Campbell on the bridge. Still the complete Number One, he apologised for leaving his gun position without orders. Dazed, he enquired what they were fighting. Campbell told him. Bonner expressed surprise. ‘Is that all?’ he answered. ‘I thought it was at least a battle-cruiser.’
Bennison recalled little: ‘I don’t remember going through the air. There was just the explosion and I did nothing until I was picked up and taken to the wardroom; I don’t remember who took me and I don’t remember going there.’
The 12-pounder on the boat deck cracked off a couple of rounds. Saltzwedel did not wait for more.
‘Alarm! Tauchen! U-Boot-Falle! Zwanzig Meter!’ UC 71 vanished below the surface.
Campbell knew that U-boat captains detested decoys. As long as Dunraven stayed afloat, she presented a tempting target. If the U-boat had the ability, she would try to sink the trapship. Dunraven waited. The White Ensign drooped at her masthead. Her civilian sister hung in the wreckage of the poop. The guns were clear to see. Campbell realised he still had a chance to win.
He ordered the doctor, Surgeon Probationer Alexander Fowler, to move the wounded into cabins and the saloon. The remaining crew fought the crackling wall of flame on the poop deck. The steel deck glowed cherry-red. The magazine, however, had not exploded. The depth charges had caused the damage, set off by a single shell.
At 1320, Saltzwedel came back to the fight.
From 1,000yd out on the starboard side, Campbell watched, with a sense of detachment, a torpedo head for his ship. It cracked into Dunraven between the engine room and the stern. Hatches and the long-suffering railway trucks scattered into the air and across the deck. The bulkhead between the hold and the engine room collapsed. The Atlantic rushed in to claim the space.
Campbell gave the command he introduced on Pargust.
‘Q Abandon Ship! Q Abandon Ship!’ A fresh panic party rushed into its performance. One boat splashed into the water. A makeshift raft of barrels and rigging spars joined it. The original panic party rowed back to take on a few extra men. With luck, it looked like the final curtain.
The crews for two guns remained to work the forecastle 12-pounder gun and either of the cabin pair. Four men occupied the bridge. Two torpedo operators stayed behind. Below, Fowler attended nine wounded men.
Nothing happened.
Twenty minutes passed. Flames continued to lick the poop. Boxes of cordite and shells exploded without warning as the heat reached them. The sea steadily flooded the ship. The boilers lost steam. Slowly, Dunraven began to die. Out on the water, the panic party huddled in the lifeboats and dinghy. The raft, abandoned, floated away.
At 1340, UC 71’s periscope poked above the waves on the starboard bow. For the next fifty minutes, Saltzwedel inspected his prey. From the starboard, from the port, from the stern, from the bow. All the time carefully submerged.
Campbell was reluctant to try and torpedo her. If he missed, which was probable, the end for him and his crew would be swift, sudden and brutish. Dunraven’s torpedoes were strictly a weapon of last resort.
By 1430, Saltzwedel was satisfied. Satisfied but still cautious. UC 71 came out of the water to finish the business. Dead astern, 500m away. None of Campbell’s guns could bear.
The hatch opened. The gun crew emerged. The first shot burst on the bridge. So did the second. Shell splinters buried themselves in the providential armour plate. For twenty minutes, UC 71 battered the stationary ship in leisurely but determined fashion. To add to the unpleasantness, a Maxim machine gun joined the fray. Bullets rattled off deck fittings into the water. The men in the boats wondered if its evil snout would turn towards them.
No man on Dunraven left his post. No man moved. Campbell’s crew were ready to follow him to the end.
At 1450, Saltzwedel submerged. Another inspection through the periscope. At 1455, when the U-boat passed a mere 150yd from Dunraven, Campbell tried his final card. He personally fired the port torpedo. It passed over UC 71, just ahead of the periscope. Saltzwedel did not see it. Sev
en minutes later, Campbell tried once more. Lieutenant Francis Hereford fired the starboard torpedo. This ran behind the periscope to pass over the conning tower. This time, Saltzwedel knew. The periscope vanished as it slid into its housing.
Dunraven’s wireless muttered for help. Campbell, game to the end, arranged yet another panic party. He fully anticipated that the U-boat would make another attack.
He was wrong. With no torpedoes remaining, short on ammunition for his deck gun, the Oberleutnant called it a day. UC 71 went home.
Vincent Astor’s private yacht, Noma, arrived. The millionaire loaned her to the US Navy as a patrol vessel in May 1917. As the USS Noma, equipped with guns and depth charges, she became the first vessel to reach the crippled decoy. She fired at what might have been a periscope before she arrived at 1600hr. Close on her heels came HMS Attack, an Acheron Class destroyer, bone between her teeth, from the 3rd Battle Squadron. She had waited patiently in response to Campbell’s earlier requests. HMS Christopher from Devonport followed.
Noma and Christopher sent their medical officers across to Dunraven. The two badly wounded men were transferred to Noma, which promptly headed for Brest at full speed. Christopher took Dunraven in tow once the fire was out and the worst damage patched. At 1845, the long haul began. Dunraven took in water faster than the pumps could handle it. Several feet of water sloshed about in the engine and boiler rooms. The rudder failed. No power. No steering. Dunraven was a disabled hulk.
The weather worsened. Christopher towed on through the night. As grey dawn stole across the Atlantic, hope still triumphed. Although the ill-assorted pair travelled at less than 2 knots, the stern was under water and the sky threatened poorer conditions to come, Dunraven showed no immediate signs of going under.
The sea tightened its grip. The swell broke over the stern with increasing anger. Campbell ordered sixty men still on board to transfer to the trawler Foss that arrived to give help. Twenty men stayed, including the injured Bonner. Head bandaged, unfit for duty, he persuaded Campbell to let him remain.
By 2100hr, Dunraven had little left. Most of the ship was flooded and under water. Two tugs, Atlanta and Sun II, arrived to take over the tow from a struggling Christopher. By 0130 the next morning, nobody doubted that the ship was done for. The remaining men assembled on the well-deck, forward. The tugs cast off the tow. Nothing could save Dunraven.
In the black night, in a freshening cold wind, Christopher closed on the decoy. Her open whaler prepared to take off Dunraven’s men. With the heavy sea, Campbell realised that only four men could make the trip to safety without mishap.
Campbell gave the order. ‘Four men only to get into the boat.’
Nobody moved. Not a single man wanted to desert his mates. Campbell rapped out four names. They went. Reluctantly.
Rising water forced the remaining men to the forecastle head. Nobody shouted. Nobody panicked. On board Christopher, Lieutenant Commander Frederick Thornton Peters, her captain, took decisive action. The destroyer moved forward to bump her bow against that of Dunraven as it slowly rose higher. Each time the destroyer’s delicately sharp nose bumped against the decoy, it fell away with the sea. Each time she bumped, one man from Dunraven jumped, in the darkness, onto her deck.
No man leapt until Campbell gave the order. No man questioned his discipline and control. Every man knew that Campbell himself would be the last man to go. If time ran out, Campbell would die. Real leaders accept the agony.
Dunraven fought to the last, abandoned as she was. Shells from Christopher failed to sink the hulk. Finally, the destroyer dropped a depth charge to deliver the final blow. At 0317, the Tyne-built steamer reluctantly slipped to her grave in 60 fathoms of water. The White Ensign still flew defiantly as her stern disappeared.
The Admiralty produced a rash of honours. Awards went to no fewer than forty-one members of the crew. Campbell himself received a second bar to his DSO, although many thought it should have been a second VC. The bronze cross did, indeed, go to two men. The Number One, Lieutenant Charles George Bonner, received his for exceptional personal bravery.
More controversial was the award of the Victoria Cross to Petty Officer Ernest Pitcher under the rules of Clause 13. To invoke the ballot for a group so tiny as the crew of a single gun caused comment. Nonetheless, their gallantry was an inspiration. Pitcher had commanded the gun. The other members received the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal.
The London Gazette of 30 October 1917 carried the news of the awards. The same issue advised that Campbell received the French Croix de Guerre by order of the President. Rear Admiral Sir Henry Oliver at the Admiralty was honoured with the Order of the Sacred Treasure, First Class, by the divine will of the Japanese Emperor.
Saltzwedel and UC 71 reached Zeebrugge on 11 August 1917. A few days later, news came from Berlin that the Supreme War Lord had approved the award of the blue enamel cross with its gilt eagles to the Oberleutnant.
Glory could still be won in dark waters.
FOURTEEN
THROW THE CONFIDENTIAL BOOKS OVERBOARD AND THROW ME AFTER THEM
Details of trapships circulated throughout the U-boat arm. Commanders became wary. Further, once a vessel was identified as a decoy, it became a point of honour with the men of the underwater arm to put it out of business.
On 13 August 1917, Lieutenant Commander William Sanders, VC, and Prize patrolled the seas north-west of Ireland. The schooner had a companion: submarine D6 under the command of Lieutenant Commander William Reynard Richardson. The two vessels sailed in loose formation, often several thousand yards apart. In theory, when Prize met an enemy, the submarine would be an unseen ally. D6 would work her way round to torpedo the U-boat.
At about 1630hr, with the Swedish flag hoisted at her stern, Prize sighted a U-boat on the surface. D6 was out of contact.
On UB 48, the crew came to action stations. The first of the UB III Class, she was on passage from Travemünde to join the Mediterranean Flotilla. Her commander, Oberleutnant zur See Wolfgang Steinbauer, enjoyed a reputation as a pugnacious and aggressive officer. Steinbauer decided to look more closely at the little Swedish schooner. The deck gun pumped out a single warning shot. Prize backed, her sails flapping, and heaved to.
Signal flags ran up the U-boat’s mast. ‘Leave your ship.’
Six men from Prize, the panic party, left the ship.
Steinbauer submerged. UB 48 eased through the water to take a closer look at the schooner. She lay, sails flapping idly, apparently deserted. A slight list showed her empty deck. The U-boat motored round the little ship. Steinbauer saw nothing suspicious. No sign that she was a trapship. He moved some 1,200m away. UB 48 surfaced. The lifeboat moved towards Prize. Steinbauer sent a warning shot over her head. Stay clear. The U-boat advanced a few hundred metres. The gunlayer squinted through the sights of the 8.8cm gun. Steinbauer, like most U-boat captains, maintained that his man was the best gunner in the U-boat arm if not the whole fleet.
Nothing stirred on Prize.
At 250m, Steinbauer ordered his gunlayer to open fire. Even as the words left his mouth, the Swedish flag came down. For a split second Steinbauer thought his earlier shot had damaged the jackstaff. Prize ran up the White Ensign. A gangway collapsed to reveal a small gun muzzle. The best gunlayer in the German fleet did not react. He suspected more to come. The small gun fired. Fragments hit the wireless mast. A deck side came down. A much larger barrel poked out.
‘Alarm! Tauchen!’ The helmsman, next to Steinbauer, jabbed the button that sent the alarm bell clanging through the boat. The bows dipped. The gunlayer, water already up to his knees, shot a single round, then ran for the conning tower, the deck falling away beneath his feet. His shell smashed into the 12-pounder as the water lapped over UB 48 as she sought safety. Two shots from Prize followed her. They did no damage.
UB 48 positioned herself for a torpedo attack. Her periscope slid up. Prize moved out of her line of fire. Periscope down. Steinbauer tried again. Periscope up. Prize changed cour
se. After several attempts, during which the decoy moved as if she read Steinbauer’s mind, he gave up. He later recalled:
I decided to try and sink this ship because it was dangerous for all our boats. I went away, under water and stayed submerged until it began to get dark. It was late afternoon and, while on the surface to look around, I didn’t see anything. It was too dark. Nothing to see around the horizon.
I went some miles to where I reckoned to find the schooner – but I saw nothing. It was pitch dark. I wondered how to find her.
When he surfaced, Steinbauer discovered how his target had read his mind. A shell had stopped the signal mast, next to the periscope, from fully retracting. Still with its flagged command to leave the ship, it poked up nearly 2m higher than the periscope. Every time Steinbauer looked for his target, the flags signalled his presence. The boat’s engineer had to cut it down with an oxygen burner.
Prize and D6 met in the gathering gloom. Sanders told Richardson about the scrap with the U-boat. Although the schooner had taken minor damage, they agreed to continue the patrol. D6 would always be within a few miles of Prize.
Steinbauer decided to sail in a wide circle. The schooner could not have gone far. A circle would cut across its course. He spent two hours in the search. Nothing to be seen. He could not afford to use up much more fuel. It was a pity but he would have to let the decoy escape. He had to set course for Gibraltar.
