Castles of Steel (141 page)

Meanwhile, the U-boats were not only eating away the imported food stocks needed by Britain’s civilian population, they also were directly sapping the lifeblood of the Royal Navy itself. The fleet’s newest and most powerful dreadnoughts, its new light cruisers, and all of its destroyers burned fuel oil. The tankers bringing oil from Hampton Roads in America were large and slow, presenting fat, easy targets for submarines. So many tankers had been sunk that Britain’s reserve of fuel oil had dropped alarmingly; a six-month reserve had shrunk to a supply sufficient for only eight weeks. In consequence, the Admiralty had ordered Grand Fleet battle squadrons to cruise at no more than three-fifths speed except in case of emergency.

Jellicoe had come to the Admiralty to deal with the submarine menace, but once in office and seeing its dimensions, he was shaken. “The shipping situation is by far the most serious question of the day,” he wrote to Beatty at the end of December 1916. “I almost fear it is nearly too late to retrieve it. Drastic measures should have been taken months ago to stop unnecessary imports, ration the country and build ships. All is being started now, but it is nearly, if not quite, too late.” Late was better than never; the effort to build merchant ships faster than the enemy was sinking them was set in motion. Merchant vessel design was standardized and 35,000 skilled workers were recalled from army service and returned to the shipyards. To provide steel for new merchant ships, the Admiralty canceled orders for five new light cruisers and three giant battle cruisers. A dragnet was set to locate and purchase neutral ships. “The world’s ports were ransacked for tonnage. . . . Decrepit steamers fetched fabulous prices and even old sailing vessels, derelict or used as harbor hulks, were reconditioned and sent to sea again,” wrote Ernest Fayle, the official historian of the British merchant marine in the Great War. The result was an additional 1,163,000 tons brought into the merchant fleet in 1917. Unfortunately, this addition equaled only about one-quarter of Britain’s losses of 4.01 million tons of merchant shipping during that year.

Much of this work was done by ministries and departments other than the Admiralty; the navy’s task was to see that once these ships were built or reconditioned and sent to sea, they survived. On December 18, 1916, Jellicoe appointed Rear Admiral Alexander Duff as head of a new Anti-Submarine Division. Duff laid out new protected trade routes for merchantmen sailing independently to Britain, frequently changing these routes to confuse U-boat commanders. Destroyers and smaller craft were deployed to patrol these ocean highways. More mines were laid and more merchantmen were armed. Still the rate of shipping losses continued to mount. “The position is exceedingly grave,” Jellicoe wrote to the First Lord and the War Cabinet on February 21, 1917. Soon, he feared, the government would have “to determine how long we can continue to carry on the war if the losses of merchant shipping continue at the present rate.”

One approach to fighting the U-boats was guile, trickery, and ambush. Former merchant ships with Royal Navy crews and hidden guns were sent to sea, in the hope that their apparent innocence and vulnerability would lure submarines to their destruction. These vessels, which fought some of the most heroic actions of the war, were known variously as Special Service ships and mystery ships. Eventually the name that stuck was Q-ships.

To the eye, a Q-ship seemed merely one of the myriad small freighters, tramp steamers, motor drifters, even sailing vessels crossing the ocean on a hundred different courses with a thousand separate purposes. At first, honest ships this size were plums ripe for picking by German U-boat commanders. The submarine rose to the surface, allowed the crew and passengers to enter lifeboats, and then, hoarding their torpedoes for more important targets, placed time bombs in the victim’s hold. It did not take long, once the war against commercial shipping had begun, for the Admiralty to realize that this procedure—the U-boat abandoning the safety of the deep in order to approach the vessel it meant to sink—offered opportunity. No ship is more vulnerable than a submarine on the surface. The idea of tricking such deadly craft into presenting themselves in their condition of greatest jeopardy appealed to the inventive mind of Winston Churchill; not surprisingly, these dangerous theatricals were initiated during his administration of the Admiralty. But Churchill’s few Q-ships, fitted out in the winter of 1914–15, had no success: one never saw a submarine; another caught a single glimpse of a U-boat, which dived and disappeared. In May 1915, an even more ingenious bit of trickery was conjured up and sent to sea. A lonely trawler flying the British flag was sent out to move slowly across the ocean on seemingly innocent business. From its stern, however, two lines—one a tow cable, the other a telephone wire—dropped off the stern into the depths, where both were attached to a submerged British submarine. Should a U-boat take the bait, the fact would be communicated by telephone to the friendly submarine, which would cast off the tow and maneuver underwater into position to torpedo the U-boat. In June 1915, the British submarine
C-24,
cruising off Aberdeen in tow from the trawler
Taranaki,
torpedoed and sank
U-40.
On being brought aboard the trawler, the rescued U-boat captain bitterly complained that his boat had been sunk by a “dirty trick.” The following month, north of Scapa Flow, the submarine
C-27,
working with the trawler
Princess Louise,
torpedoed and sank
U-23.
By then, however, Churchill had left the Admiralty and the Q-ship–submarine tandem did not survive him long.

Nevertheless, the Q-ship concept itself survived and flourished. The idea that camouflage could lure a deadly, but fragile, submarine within range of a well-aimed 4-inch gun had a continuing, seductive attraction for the navy. The crews of the Q-ships, all volunteers, were naval officers and seamen who disguised themselves as civilians and learned to mimic the appearance and crisis behavior of a freighter’s crew. In the presence of a submarine, a “panic party”—some members of the Q-ship’s crew—would hurriedly abandon the ship, tumbling into lifeboats and rowing away. Those still on board would remain concealed, waiting for the submarine to surface and come within range of their hidden guns.

The concept was simple, but staging this deadly nautical theater required much delicate nuance. Q-ships were crowded, since half the men on board had to depart as the panic party when the ship was attacked. Thus, a merchant ship designed for six officers and twenty-six men now might carry eleven officers and sixty men. To deceive the captain of a surfaced U-boat staring intently through his binoculars across the water, or surveying his prey through his periscope, the Q-ship crew had to become actors. Stripped of their uniforms and clothed in rags picked up in dingy waterfront shops, they let their hair and beards grow long and their mustaches sprout and droop. One Royal Navy captain paced his Q-ship bridge wearing a long blond wig, which he thought made him look like a Dutch pilot. The regular navy’s scrupulous deference to rank was laid aside: no salutes were given or returned; seamen slouched and shuffled, kept their hands in their pockets and their pipes in their mouths. Garbage was dumped carelessly over the side—anathema in a man-of-war. Yet, despite their slovenly appearance, the discipline and readiness for action of a Q-ship crew was greater than that on the flagship of the Grand Fleet.

Most important, of course, was the concealment of the guns. Some were placed behind wooden bulwarks, which, at the pull of a lever, would instantly collapse, nakedly exposing the gun to the submarine and the submarine to the gun. Later, when U-boats became more cautious, they would sail submerged around the halted “merchant ship,” minutely scrutinizing its decks and sides, looking for signs such as seams or hinges in deck house bulwarks that might betray its true identity. In response, the guns were concealed in hatchways and covered by tarpaulins as if they were cargo. Sometimes guns were placed inside false lifeboats, which would suddenly fall away, giving the gun its freedom. Eventually, Q-ships carried hidden depth charges that could be rolled off the stern, and some were even equipped with submerged torpedo tubes.

The British could continue this kind of masquerade warfare only as long as the Germans delivered themselves into British hands; success, therefore, depended upon secrecy as to the existence, whereabouts, and tactics of mystery ships. Best for the British would be for the Germans to know only that some submarines did not return from sea—perhaps they had hit mines. But it was inevitable that eventually a Q-ship attack would fail and a surprised U-boat would survive to creep home and report what had happened. Once the secret was out, German newspapers described Q-ship warfare as “barbarous” and “contrary to the rules of civilized warfare.” Now, to the U-boats, every British or Allied merchant vessel became a possible Q-ship. Submarines could no longer board and place bombs on ships; they were forced to stay beyond the range of a freighter’s guns and sink by long-range gunfire, or remain beneath the surface and fire precious torpedoes. This was not what the U-boats wanted. And so the Q-ships improved their acting to convince their nervous prey that all was well, suspicions were groundless, and no peril lay in coming closer.

Q-ship duty was a unique blend of extreme danger and the dullest monotony. Back and forth through dangerous waters steamed the ships, hoping to meet a submarine. Success in this strange service could mean seeing the white bubbles of a torpedo approaching from the port or starboard beam. Sometimes when a torpedo struck, Q-ship men would be killed, but the ship itself was unlikely to sink quickly. This was the result of further guile: Q-ship cargo holds were crammed with wood or empty oil drums to provide the vessel with additional buoyancy.

Everything that happened from the moment a U-boat announced itself was designed to deceive the watching submarine captain. The panic party ran up and down the deck in apparent dismay and then scrambled into a lifeboat. Sometimes on lowering a boat, one end would deliberately be lowered too fast, spilling the men into the water. A seaman pretending to be the captain would be the last to board, carrying a bundle of “the ship’s papers.” The submarine might surface and make for these boats to collect the papers or take prisoners. Once U-boat captains became aware that they might be dealing with a Q-ship, the procedure changed. To satisfy himself, the captain would surface two or three miles away and shell the apparently abandoned merchant ship, calculating that if men had been left aboard, his shells would kill them. The Q-ship gun crews, stretched out on deck beside their guns, had to endure this bombardment without moving. Meanwhile, the Q-ship captain lay on his bridge, peeking through a hole in the canvas wall, waiting to use his voice tube to command his gunners. If the submarine was persuaded that the merchantman was abandoned, it would approach submerged to within a few hundred yards. The submarine captain would steer completely around the stricken vessel, using his periscope to study every detail. If something provoked doubt, the U-boat captain faced a decision. To surface so near a Q-ship meant the loss of his submarine. On the other hand, to leave a merchantman still afloat meant that it might be saved. If the U-boat captain decided to come up, the Q-ship captain would see the swirling water that signified a submarine was surfacing not far from the muzzles of his hidden guns. “Stand by,” he would whisper through the voice tube—then, at the top of his lungs, “Let go!” The White Ensign would soar up the halyard, the false bulwarks and lifeboats would collapse, and the guns would open fire. The submarine’s only chance was to submerge rapidly. Submariners were always ready to dive, even at the cost of losing those comrades on deck or in the conning tower who were unable to get below before the hatches closed. Often, however, before the boat could submerge, trained Q-boat gun crews could blow a dozen holes in its hull. When this happened, it was only minutes before the U-boat took its final plunge, leaving behind a heaving mixture of black oil, pieces of floating wood, and, sometimes, a few survivors.

From the beginning, the primary sphere of Q-ship operations was off the southwest coast of Ireland, where the U-boats concentrated their attacks on merchant shipping headed for the British Isles. In this region, early in the history of Q-ship operations, a dark stain was smeared across the otherwise bright pages of Allied mystery ship exploits. On August 19, 1915, 100 miles south of Queenstown,
U-27
stopped the British steamer
Nicosian
with her cargo of munitions and 250 American mules destined for the British army in France. The freighter’s crew and passengers, including American mule drivers, had taken to the lifeboats and the submarine was about to sink the vessel when, from a distance, the British Q-ship
Baralong,
disguised as an American cargo vessel and flying the American flag, observed what was happening and hurried forward. The submarine at this early stage of the war accepted the Stars and Stripes as neutral and remained on the surface, permitting
Baralong
to approach. Steering carefully,
Baralong
’s captain managed to keep
Nicosian
between his ship and the U-boat so that the German captain never had a serious, long look at the oncoming Q-ship. When
Baralong
finally emerged from behind the deserted
Nicosian,
the range was only 600 yards. Thirty-five British shells quickly sank
U-27,
which left a dozen German survivors in the water swimming for the nearby
Nicosian.
Whereupon,
Baralong
’s captain, fearful—he said later—that if the swimmers were allowed to board the freighter, they would attempt to scuttle it, ordered the twelve Royal Marines on board his ship to open fire. Some of the swimmers, including the U-boat captain, were killed in the water; others were shot as they struggled up a rope ladder hanging from
Nicosian
’s side. Four German sailors managed to reach the deserted freighter’s deck and vanished. A party of marines followed them on board, hunted them down, and killed them. Whether this shooting was done in cold blood or whether the Germans were, in fact, caught trying to scuttle the ship was never known; the Admiralty immediately embargoed all news of the affair. Nevertheless, the appalled American mule drivers, who had watched from their lifeboats, eventually reached home and told the American press that the Germans had been murdered and that the false American colors, supposed to have been set aside before the Q-ship went into action, had never been replaced. Outraged, the German government demanded that
Baralong
’s crew be tried for murder. The Admiralty dismissed the demand, explaining that perhaps the Q-ship’s captain and crew had been on edge because eight British steamers were sunk that day on the Western Approaches, one of these being the 15,000-ton White Star liner
Arabic,
which
Baralong
had heard crying for help. The London press came up with the additional excuse that on that same day, two German destroyers had fired on the crew of a British submarine grounded on a Baltic sandbar, killing fourteen British sailors—although how this news might have reached and inflamed
Baralong
’s crew 700 miles away was left untold. The
Baralong
marine corporal who put a bullet into the head of the swimming German captain explained simply that, in his view, all Germans were “vermin.”