Warship Wednesday January 1, 2014 : The Baron Pirate, His UBoat, and the Sea Serpent
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
– Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday January 1, 2014 The Baron The U Boat and the Sea Serpent
Here we see SM U-28, a Type 27 U-Boat of Kaiser Wilhem’s Kaiserlachemarine during World War One. For such a diminutive ship, she has a fascinating service record to say the least.
Ordered 19 February 1912 from Kaiserliche Werft, Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), she was built to the doppelganger design of her sister boat, U-27 (who was later the first submarine to ever sink another in warfare when she sent the British submarine HMS E3 to the bottom of the North Sea in October 1914). The U-28 was large for her time but still very small by today’s standards– what would be called a ‘Baltic Boat’ similar to those built and operated by the Swedish Navy these days. She was but 213 feet long and weighed 878 when ballasted submerged. Her mild steel hull was tested to 50 meters (164 feet). She had very long legs for a small boat, capable of traveling nearly 10,000 miles on her efficient diesel-electric suite. When commissioned 26 June 1914 (two days before the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, lighting the fuse to the First World War) her first captain was (Baron) Freiherr Georg-Günther von Forstner.
A propaganda post card which was given as a token of appreciation to participants in the fund-raising campaign for supporting the submarine warfare of the First World War. Painted by seascape artist Willy Stöwer (1864-1931), a personal artist friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II, it depicts a scene from the so-called “traders warfare” (Handelskrieg). A submarine very much like a U27 type sinks a British merchant ship, while her crew has boarded the life boats and are rowing away. (KFB Collection).
U28, as part of IV Underseebotte Flotilla took to the war with earnest. Between 1914-1917 she completed four patrols, sinking 39 ships totaling 93,782 tons. She further damaged another 2 ships damaged totaling 11,188 tons, and took two ships prize totaling 3,226 tons for a total of 104,589 tons of shipping. Almost all 43 of these vessels were small merchant ships under 5,000-tons of British, Belgian, Dutch and Norwegian flags.
Note we said he captured two ships as prizes. Like a pirate. Just sailed out of port, grabbed a pair of steamers, and sailed back in with them one spring day in 1915.
Here we see U28 coming heading out from Zeebrugbee with the tender W2. Even though the tender is a small ship, she still dwarfs the U28. The below series of pictures, taken by a neutral Dutch photographer, were published by the British paper Graphic on March 27, 1915, show the sequence of events of the U28 capturing both the Batavia and the 1657ton Zaanstroom just an hour later.
While under the Baron’s command, U28 sighted the British steamer SS Iberian, 5223-tons , on 30 July 1915. After sending her to the bottom, the captain and crew observed the wreckage, seeing what can only be termed as a 65-foot long crocodile-like sea serpent.
According to the Baron’s own statement archived here :
“the description of an animal estimated at 20 meters in length, seen by me and some of the crew of the submarine U28 on 30 July 1915 in the Atlantic Ocean; [it] was sighted on the starboard side, about 60 nautical miles south of Fastnet Rock, off the southwest corner of Ireland, after the sinking of the British steamer Iberian. This animal was hurled some 20 or 30m into the air by an underwater explosion about 25 seconds after the sinking of that vessel, thrown full length from the water. It is possible that this was caused by the detonation of an explosive device on board, the existence of which we assumed was concealed in the ship’s papers, or from a small boiler explosion… This explosion certainly could have been the result of a detonation, but in my opinion only the bursting of the spaces deep inside the ship could have produced such air pressure.
The animal was about 20 meters long and crocodile-like in shape, with pairs of strong front and hind legs adapted for swimming, and a long head that tapered towards the nose… Our senior engineering officer, marine engineer Romeihs, watched the animal for 10 to 15 seconds at a distance of about 150 to 100m in bright sunshine with the aid of powerful glasses.”
We aren’t making this up.
The description is believed by many to mirror that of the (believed extinct) Tylosaurus a large, predatory marine lizard of the Late Cretaceous period closely related to modern monitor lizards and to snakes. Too bad the term ‘pictures or it didnt happen’ wasn’t popular then.
The Good Baron von Forstner completed his war service in apparently a desk-bound training capacity, no longer at the helm of
a U-boat. That’s what you get when you spy a sea sepent and put it in the ship’s log. He had his journal detailing his wartime experience published logically enough as, “The Journal of Submarine Commander Von Forstner” ( free Libravox audio book here) (Gutenburg Text version here for free ) which has been in the public domain for decades.
(Read it, its pretty good stuff)
The Baron did, however, live to a ripe old age of 58 dying in 1940. His nephew was none other than Korvettenkapitän Siegfried Freiherr von Forstner, winner of the Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes for his 70,000-tons of shipping sunk in WWII while skipper of U-402 (which included the armed yacht Cythera, a past Warship Wednesday ship). Small world.
Well, back to the story of the U28.
She went back out to sea under a series of three more captains until her final skipper, Georg Schmidt, assumed command on 15 January, 1917. On her last patrol she found herself face to face on 2 Sep 1917 with the 4649-ton British steamer SS Olive Branch 85 miles north-by-northeast of North Cape, Norway in the Arctic Sea. The Olive Branch, most unlike her name, was loaded to the gills with munitions, lorries, and artillery shells for the Russian military machine. After sending a torpedo into her, U28 closed in to assess the damage to the stricken ship. It was then that the steamer’s hold detonated, sending deck cargo– including a number of vehicles– skyward. One of these flying trucks landed square on U28 and holed her, sending the boat and all 39 of her men to the bottom.
Her final location is unknown.
So there you have the true story of the pirate German submarine that tangled with a sea serpent and, in turn, was sunk by a truck.
Specs
Displacement: 685 tons surfaced
878 tons submerged
Length: 64.7 m (212.3 ft)
Beam: 6.32 m (20.7 ft)
Draught: 3.48 m (11.4 ft)
Speed: 16.4 knots (30.4 km/h) surfaced
9.8 knots (18.1 km/h) submerged
Range: 9,770 nautical miles (18,090 km) at 8 knots (15 km/h) surfaced
85 nautical miles (157 km) at 5 knots (9.3 km/h) submerged
Test depth: 50 m (164.0 ft)
Armament:
4 x 50 cm (19.7 in) torpedo tubes
1 x 8.8 cm (3.46 in) deck gun (listed as 105mm in some sources), note line drawing shows two deck guns as fitted to the later U29 and U30.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO)
They are possibly one of the best sources of naval warship research and has since 1964 publishes Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval
vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of
which are unique in their sweep and subject.
I’m a member, so should you be!