110 years ago this week, 3 November 1914. Admiral Maximilian von Spee’s victorious German East Asia Squadron (Ostasiengeschwader) basking at anchor in Valparaiso, Chile just a few days after the Battle of Coronel, which delivered the Royal Navy its first major naval defeat at sea via surface engagement since the War of 1812 (when the 20-gun brig USS Hornet under the command of James Biddle captured the 19-gun brig-sloop HMS Penguin off Tristan da Cunha after a well-fought battle on 23 March 1815).
U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph NH 59638
The German ships are in the distance, with the 13,000-ton armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the lead, followed by the 4,900-ton Königsberg-class light cruiser Nürnberg. Watchful Chilean Navy warships in the middle distance include (from left to right): cruisers Esmeralda, O’Higgins, and Blanco Encalda along with the old (commissioned 1890) ironclad battleship Capitan Prat.
November 4, 1914. Valparaiso. Scharnhorst 3 days after the Battle of Coronel. She is taking on provisions
While Von Spee could take on water and limited provisions and patch their damage from the running fight at Coronel, they could never replace the shells they expended in the scrap with RADM Sir Christopher Cradock’s outclassed and out-fought squadron.
The light cruisers SMS Leipzig and Dresden are not present in the above photos of Von Spee’s force. Post-Coronel, they had escorted the Ostasiengeschwader’s collier train to remote Mas a Fuera (Alejandro Selkirk Island) in the Juan Fernández Archipelago, where the squadron would gather on 6 November.
The decrepit Bussard-class light cruiser SMS Geier, too slow to tag along with Von Spee’s force was already long out of the game. After surviving 11 weeks on the run as an independent unit she had been interned under American guns at Hawaii on 17 October.
Likewise, thehilfskreuzerCormoran, which was the captured 3,400-ton Russian freighter SS Ryazan with a crew from the old Bussard-class cruiser SMS Cormoran and the stricken survey ship SMS Planet, was quietly poking around the Western Pacific and would eventually present herself to American custody at Guam on 14 December 1914.
Dresden’s sister, SMS Emden, is also missing from the above images. She was just six days away from her final engagement with the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney, some 9,500 miles away off the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. But that is a whole different story.
80 years ago this week. 23 October 1944. Ramgarh, India, CBI theater.
“Man Bites Mule. Although it’s only a slight variation on the popular prescription for ‘news,’ it isn’t news when man bites mule, unless you aren’t acquainted with the ways of muleskinners, Sgt. Fred Parker of Ozona, Tex., bites the ear of a mule to take the animal’s mind off branding operations. Lt. Carl W. Shultz, Independence, MO, of the Army Veterinary Corps, wields the branding iron, and Sgt. R. Sterling (right), Crawford, Neb., assists. The mule is one of a group of new arrivals at Ramgarh in the C.B.I.”
U.S. Army Signal Corps photo from the Allison collection, MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History.
A reliable four-legged means of cargo transport in out-of-the-way areas used by the Army going back to Washington’s Days, the U.S. Army’s Pack Service was only formally established in 1871 for use during the Indian Wars.
And, while the Army tried to retire the beasts in 1931 in favor of wheel and track, the need for them in WWII saw something of a big comeback.
5307th Composite Unit Provisional (Merrills Marauders) use mules to help pack supplies in the CBI
Army Mules are tied in a long picket line at the docks in Palermo, Sicily, before being loaded on a U.S.T. boat for the invasion of Italy. 20 September 1943. SC 180044
Mules carry supplies for the 3rd Bn., 87th Inf. Regt., 10th Mtn. Div., going up the road towards Tole, Italy. 16 April 1945.
While upwards of 3,000 mules were used in the CBI by the Army, 5,000 in Italy, and another 10,000 in Greece, the final two U.S. Army mule pack units– the 35th QM Pack Coy and the 4th Field Artillery Battalion (Pack)– were deactivated on 15 December 1956 at Fort Carson, Colorado, ending an 85-year run. The 322 remaining mules on hand were sold or transferred to other agencies including the National Park Service and the Forest Service. (The British Army held on to theirs until 1966.)
However, that isn’t the end of the story.
West Point, in a tradition dating back to 1899, keeps a few mules (and Mule Riders) on hand as mascots.
Further, the U.S. Army Special Forces annually send teams to the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in California to learn the use of pack animals– just in case.
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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024: A Tough Little Wolf
Nationalmuseet, Danmark, asset THM-3367
Above, we see the Danish Soridderen (Sea Knight) class torpedobåden patrol boat Søulven(Sea Wolf)—also cited in the West as Soloven, Soeulven, and Søulv —as she passed near the Trekroner Søfort at the entrance to the Copenhagen harbor before 1920.
A small boat with a fearsome name, her skipper and crew proved all-heart during the Great War, and a noteworthy British admiral doubtlessly owed his life to her pluck.
The Søridderen trio
Between 1879, when Hajen, Torpedobaad Nr.4, joined the fleet through Svaerdfisken, which entered service in May 1913, the Royal Danish Navy fielded 40 assorted torpedo boats across several different classes to include designs from British (Samuel White, Yarrow, Thornycroft), French (Forges & Chantiers), German (F. Schichau) and domestic (Burmeister & Wain, Orlogsvaerftet) yards. No less than 17 of these were still in service by the time Gaviro Princep caught up to Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, and set the world alight.
In 1911, a program of three new German Schichau-designed boats and a matching set of three British Yarrow-designed boats were ordered. The lead ship would be built overseas in each case, and the two follow-on units would be constructed domestically. This led to the Schichau-designed and built 250-ton Tumleren (and Orlogsvaerftet-constructed sisters Vindhunden and Spaekhuggeren) and the 230-ton Yarrow-designed and built Søridderen (accompanied by the Burmeister & Wain-constructedFlyvefisken and Soulven).
The ships were competing designs of similar size, armament, and capability with the Tumlerens running 250 tons, 186 feet long, 18 feet on the beam, and with a 6-foot draft while the Søridderen went 181x18x6 feet.
The German-built Danish torpedobåden Tumleren. Note her trainable torpedo tubes. THM-3340
Both classes were coal-fired steam turbine-driven and fast (27.5 knots), as well as armed with five 18-inch torpedo tubes (one fixed in bow and four trainable on deck) and two 12-pounder 3″/52 M.07 QF guns.
Danish Torpedobåden Tumleren i Svanemøllebugten, 1915, by Christian Benjamin Olsen. These boats were notoriously smokey especially when using the thrifty Danish navy’s (preferred) cheap coal to stretch training dollars.
The Søridderens went a bit faster than designed on trails, hitting 28.3 knots.
Søridderen class member Flyvefisken, seen in a color period postcard. THM-30779
Søridderen member Flyvefisken, the port view seen underway. THM-4490
Jane’s 1914 listing for the Søridderen class.
The British-designed ships were also seen as more seaworthy than the German-designed boats. However, the events of 1914 precluded further orders.
Meet Soulven
Our subject carried a traditional Danish navy moniker and repeated one used by one of the Scandinavian country’s first batch of torpedo boats, a little 95-footer built in France that remained in service until 1911.
Photo showing the first torpedo boat Søulven, Torpedobaad Nr.5, launched in 1880 at anchor in Copenhagen. The picture also shows the visiting German armored battery ship Heligoland and the French cruiser Chateau Renault. Photographed Sep 8, 1891. THM-9524
The second Danish torpedo boat Soulven joined the fleet in 1911, likely recycling most of the crew of her namesake which was decommissioned at the same time.
Note her forward bow tube and trainable singles.
She would spend her first three years as a training ship, and there are some great images of her pier side conducting training with Madsen light machine guns complete with massive 40-round detachable box magazines. A treat for any gun nerd!
Soluven crew at Flådens Leje with Madsen LMGs THM-6173
Soulven note bridge and Madsens THM-6175
THM-6175 inset
War!
When the Great War began in August 1914, Denmark armed-up to protect her neutrality, having just fought Germany in 1864 and the Brits in 1807. This meant mobilizing 52,000 reserves and new drafts to add to the professional 13,000-man Army and building the 23 km-long Tunestillingen line of defenses outside of Copenhagen. Likewise, the Danish Navy dusted off its guns and torpedo tubes and began to actively patrol its waters.
With that, Soulven left her training duties behind and became the flagship of 1. Torpedobådsflotille, assigned to patrol in the Oresund, the strait that separates Denmark and Sweden.
Torpedo inspection on board Soulven 1914 THM-4687
Her skipper at this time, and dual-hatted commander of the 1st TBF, was Kapt. Eduard Haack, 43, a career regular with 28 years of service on his seabag that included tours in the Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) on the old steam frigate Jylland, Med cruises on the gunboat St. Thomas and cruiser Hejmdal, a stint as an officer instructor at the service’s NCO academy, service aboard the coastal battleships Iver Hvitfeldt and Herluf Trolle, command of a section of the naval mine corps (Søminekorpsets), and command of the icebreaker/OPV (inspektionsskibet) Absalon on the Greeland-Iceland-Faeroes beat.
Haack was a professional.
Haack, on Iver Hvitfeldt before he war. THM-4745
The E-13 Affair
It was during this time that the British started sending small E-class submarines through the Skagerrak and the Kattegat around Jutland then through the Oresund and across the Baltic to the Tsarist port of Revel in the Gulf of Finland. HMS E-1 and E-9 made it by October 1914, while E-11 turned back. They would soon be joined by HMS E-8, E-18, and E-19. One of their less fortunate sisters was HMS E-13.
Around 2300 on 17 August 1915, while E13 was attempting to make the passage through the Oresund to join the other British Submarines operating with the Tsar’s Navy, she experienced a gyro compass failure and ran aground in the mud on the Danish Island of Saltholm, her hull surrounded by nine feet of water.
English submarine E13 grounded on Saltholm THM-12243.
Spotted by the old (circa 1888) Danish Thornycroft-built torpedo boat Narvalen at 0500 on the morning of 18 August, the Dane dutifully notified E13 they had 24 hours to get unstuck or be interned for the duration. LCDR Geoffrey Layton, RN replied that he understood and would work to free his boat. His executive officer, LT Paul Leathley Eddis, was sent ashore to see if he could arrange a tug.
Soon after, at 0620, two German S90-class large torpedo boats on patrol, SMS G132, and G134, likewise spotted the disabled British sub, with her crew resting atop E13’s casing. The 215-foot S90s were really more destroyer than TB, and ran large at 535 tons, carrying an 88mm gun, two 2″/40 guns, and three torpedo tubes.
S90-class Hochsee-Torpedoboot SMS S-125, a good representative of her class. Photographed by A. Renard of Kiel, probably before 1911. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command NH 45400
To guard the beached sub, flotilla leader Søulven arrived on the scene at 0845 with Narvalen’s sister Støren. The Danish bathtub battleship Peder Skram, armed with 9.4-inch guns and swathed in as much as 8 inches of armor, was just over the horizon and making steam for the area.
With the greenlight from RADM Robert Mischke, head of the Küstenschutzdivision der Ostsee, by radio, at 1028 the German torpedo boats went on the offensive.
Signaling “Abandon Ship Immediately,” G132 and G134 heeled over and made maximum revolutions for the grounded E13, sailing into Danish coastal waters with their guns blazing. Some 15 British submariners were killed outright.
English leave E13 after the shelling, 19 Aug. 1915 THM-4679
Despite being outgunned by the two larger German boats, Søulven’s skipper, Kapt. Haack gave the order to move his boat directly between E13 and the German guns to shield the British, with the Dane calling on the Germans to halt. The maneuver worked and at 1035, the German boats turned away and left Danish waters, having closed to within 300 yards of the submarine. Haack noted that the German commander of G132 raised an arm in the air as a sign that the protest was accepted.
The Danes soon went to work rescuing the survivors of E13, including Storen’s boatswain, one AFP Olsen, who reportedly dived into the frigid water and pulled a wounded Tar, Leading Seaman Herbert Lincoln, off the bottom. Olsen would be awarded an Albert Medal by the British government for his action, but not allowed by the Danish Foreign Ministry to accept it.
The wounded were passed on to Peder Skram, who would take them to Copenhagen. The recovered bodies of 14 of the 15 men lost were loaded aboard Søulven’s sister Søridderen and brought to Lynettehavnen. The 15th was later recovered and joined his shipmates.
The reaction in the British and Scandinavian press to the German violation of neutrality was understandable.
What occurred over the next several days in Denmark was an outpouring of mourning for the British submariners who were killed in their waters. This included some 200 Danish sailors providing an honor guard for the recovered bodies during a funeral procession in Copenhagen where the survivors of E13, clad in Danish dress uniforms, were assisted in carrying their shipmate’s coffins to the refrains of Handel’s Dead March. The proceedings were well-attended by the international legations.
Photos from the event show Haack and his men prominently.
THM-3427
Note the Remington falling block 1867s with sword bayonets. THM-3426
THM-3421
While most foreign bodies recovered in Danish waters during the war– such as Jutland sailors buried at Frederikshavn cemetery– were simply interred in Danish soil with military honors, London approved a Danish ship to carry the E13 crew remains to return speedily to England.
This led the procession solemnly to the Det Forenetede Dampskibsselskab (DFDS) steamer SS Vidar (1,493 tons) while a crowd of thousands of Danes stood by to observe in procession, with Dannebrogs lowered at half-mast across the country.
Vidar carried the remains to Hull, accompanied by the Danish torpedo boats Springeren and Støren as escorts. Vidar carried a Danish Ministry of the Navy’s representative, CDR Rørd Regnar Johannes Hammer, a Knight Commander Dannebrogorden, with 39 years of service on his record, who was responsible for the steamer’s grim cargo. Most were later interred at the Haslar Royal Naval Cemetery. CWGC in Hampshire.
The British consul in Denmark, Robert Erskine, commended the Danish authorities for the dignity and efficiency with which the handling of the dead was conducted.
As for the survivors, interned for the duration of the war under international law, they were put up at the Copenhagen Naval Yard under very loose custody– referred to by the Danes as engelske orlogsgaster (“English military guests”)– and allowed to travel around the city on their own recognizance.
The crew of the English submarine E13 before leaving for Russia in 1915. Half of these men would perish in Danish waters and the other half would cool their heels in Copenhagen for the duration. Had it not been for Soulven, their story would have been likely very different. THM-4680
The Danes likewise “entertained” assorted German naval personnel as well during the war, such as the crew of Zeppelin L.3.
German Navy zeppelin LZ-24 (Luftschiff.3) participated in 24 reconnaissance missions over the North Sea, including the first raid on England on 20 January 1915. She was scuttled by her crew after a forced landing caused by an engine failure during a snowstorm on Fanø Island, Denmark on 17 February 1915. The crew were interned. Remnants of the zeppelin are displayed in a museum in Tonder, Denmark.
Rather than enjoy this comfortable prison, E13‘s skipper, LCDR Layton, accompanied by his No. 1, LT Paul Leathley Eddis, released himself from polite custody/parole, leaving a note behind to explain his actions, and made his way back to England via Sweden three months later.
The rest of E13’s crew remained in Denmark until after the Armistice. The sub’s third officer, Sub-LT William Garriock, RNR, was left behind to command these marooned submariners.
Largely to prevent the Germans from attempting to do so, the Danes recovered E13 and towed it to Copenhagen.
E13 grounded at Saltholm, 1915 THM-6768
Shell-wrecked English submarine, E13, beached at Saltholm THM-12244
Salvage work on English submarine E13 at Saltholm THM-12245
English submarine E 13 under tow between pontoons and salvage steamers Odin and Thor. 1915. THM-4482
Her shell and shrapnel-ridden hull were on public display for the world to see.
English submarine E13 at Copenhagen harbour THM-12255
As were recovered relics including her pierced periscope and a shot-up prayer book.
The sub was put in drydock at Orlogsvaerftet, with her interned sailors allowed to come and claim personal property and mementos. Several even reportedly helped in the ultimately futile three-year effort to repair the vessel and place it in Danish service.
Ultimately, E13 was refloated and tied up alongside the Danish submarine tender Helka in 1918, used for training purposes.
U-bådsstationen, Cophenhangen. Petty officers aboard the Danish submarine tender Hekla in 1918. The group was photographed on deck in front of the ship’s stack. To the right is the tower of the salvaged HMS E13. THM-3494
In February 1919, after the Danish Navy washed their hands of the hulk, the British sold it to a local Danish company for its scrap value.
But back to our Søulven.
Continued Service
Søulven, returning to her role in protecting Denmark’s territorial sea, conducted several rescues and police actions in the Oresund before the end of the war, including capturing Swedish smugglers on two different occasions.
Photo showing the bridge of a torpedo boat with her bow 3″/52. To the left of the picture is the torpedo boat Soulven underway, seen from the front to port. Taken in the 1920s. THM-22312
Transferred to the reserves in 1929, along with her two sisters, Søridderen and Flyvefisken, and the three rival Tumlerens, they were collectively stricken in 1935-1937 and disposed of after they were replaced by the new and very strongly armed torpedo boats of the Dragen and Glenten classes.
Their hulls were stripped of anything usable and scrapped, with their 3″/52s recycled for use as coastal artillery around the Danish littoral for another decade.
Danish Den næstnordligste 7,5 cm kanon i Hørhaven from old torpedo boats
Epilogue
Of our cast of characters, Soulven’s skipper and commander of the 1st TBF during the Great War, Eduard Haack, finished the war as head of coastal defense for Northern Denmark. He retired from the Navy in 1920, with his last post as inspector of lighthouses. He became chief ship inspector at Statens Skibstilsyn, the Danish Shipping Authority, the next year, and remained in that post until 1936. He then helped organize the Icelandic Shipping Authority and received, among other things, a knighthood in the Icelandic Falcon Order (Islandske Falkeorden) and was made a commander of the Dannebrogordenen order. Capt. Haack passed in 1956 and is buried at St. Olai cemetery in Kalundborg, aged 85.
The German admiral who gave the go-ahead for the attack on E13, Mischke, would end the war as a vizeadmiral and pass in 1932. His family is the owner of Lahneck Castle, which he purchased in 1907.
The two torpedo boats used in the attack on E13, G132, and G134, at the end of the war were disarmed and served as minesweepers out of Cuxhaven. Retained briefly by the Reichsmarine they were scrapped in 1921.
E13’s skipper went on to be known as ADM Sir Geoffrey Layton, GBE, KCB, KCMG, DSO. After returning to England via Sweden in time for Christmas in 1915, he was given command of the experimental steam submarine HMS S-1. Transitioning to capital ships in the 1930s, he started WWII as commander of the 1st Battle Squadron, consisting of the battleships HMS Barham, HMS Warspite, and HMS Malaya. Sent to command the ill-fated China Station in September 1940, he handed it over to Tom Phillips just before the Japanese went ham in the Pacific in December 1941. He went on to command British forces in Ceylon through 1945. Retiring in 1947 as head of Portsmouth, he passed in 1964.
ADM Layton
Layton’s XO, LT Paul Eddis, survived continued submarine service in the Great War only to be killed when his boat, HMS L24, was tragically lost with all hands in a collision with the battleship HMS Resolution off Portland on 10 January 1924. Subs are a dangerous game even in peacetime.
Speaking of which, the funeral transport for E13’s 15 recovered sailors, the Danish steamer Vidar, was herself sent to the bottom during WWII while traveling from Grimsby to Esbjerg via the Tyne with coal and general cargo, torpedoed by the German submarine U-21 (Kptlt. Wolf-Harro Stiebler) in the North Sea in January 1940– four months before Germany invaded neutral Denmark. In tragic irony, she carried 15 of her crew to the bottom.
The very well-marked Vidar. Photo courtesy of Danish Maritime Museum, Elsinore
The Danes would recycle the name of Soulven for use with a new class of fast torpedo boats ordered in the early 1960s from Britain (heard that before?). This Danish third torpedo boat Soulven (P 515) would serve from 1967 to 1990.
Danish Sea Lion Class Vosper PT boat MTB P 515 Søulven (The Sea Wolf)
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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105 years ago today. Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania. 22 October 1919. Obsolete “pre-dreadnought” type battleships in the Reserve Basin almost a year after the conclusion of the Great War, awaiting a very near future that would turn nearly all of them into recycled scrap iron or sunk in live fire exercises.
Courtesy of Frank Jankowski, 1981. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 92300
Ships in the front row are, from left to right: USS Iowa (BB-4), USS Massachusetts (BB-2), USS Indiana (BB-1), USS Kearsarge (BB-5), USS Kentucky (BB-6), and USS Maine (BB-10), while at least three other battlewagons are in the rear, almost certainly including USS Missouri (BB-11) and USS Ohio (BB-12). Although some including the three Maine-class ships were rather “low mileage” — Ohio had only joined the fleet 15 years prior and had spent much of her latter career in ordinary, only venturing out of mothballs for summer midshipman cruises– others were relics of the Span-Am War, with Indiana credited with having dispatched two Spanish destroyers at the Battle of Santiago.
While all had seen updates in their service life, switching from pole masts and the gleaming paint schemes and bow crests of the Great White Fleet days to lattice masts and haze grey, they could not compete with the new way of war. For instance, a single Colorado-class super-dreadnought, the first of which would enter service in 1921, weighed 32,000 tons and carried eight 16-inch guns compared to Indiana’s circa 1893 10,000-ton displacement and main battery of four 13″/35s.
Of the above nine or ten battleships, all save for Kearsarge— the only United States Navy battleship not named after a state– would be sold for scrap or sunk (Iowa and Massachusetts) by 1923 to comply with the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty. They were left to be remembered only by their silver services, bells, and bow crests, typically preserved somewhere in their namesake states.
Soon after the above image was snapped, Kearsarge was converted into a cruising heavy-lift crane ship (AB-1) in 1920, then was unimaginatively renamed Crane Ship No. 1 in 1941, before being finally sold for scrap in 1955.
Heavy Lift Crane Ship No1,(Ex Lead Ship, Battleship USS Kearsarge) pictured in dry dock at Charlestown Navy Yard, Boston. c.1925.
During her “second life,” Kearsarge raised the lost submarine USS Squalus in 1939 and would lift into place much of the heavy guns, turrets, and armor for cruisers and battleships constructed or rebuilt at Norfolk/Newport News through 1945. Here, she is seen, left, alongside the new SoDak-class fast battleship USS Alabama (BB-60), right, fitting out at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1942. Note the size difference between the two hulls. NH 57767
Interestingly, the wreck of Massachusetts scuttled off Pensacola in shallow water in 1923, was still used as a target through WWII when she passed to the ownership of the state of Florida.
Following up on our Warship Wednesday this week, which covered the Great War-era Admiralty Strath-class “battle trawler” HMT William Barnett (3632) and its later life as the French Navy’s auxiliary minesweeper Roche Noire during WWII, how about a great series of related period maritime art?
British portrait painter, landscape artist, and printmaker Francis Edgar Dodd, RA, turned 40 as the “lamps are going out all over Europe.”
Volunteering to serve as an Official War Artist during World War I, he spent some time at sea with the hired trawler HMT Mackenzie (Adty No 336) during the conflict.
One of more than 1,400 British trawlers taken up from trade— some dating back to 1880– Mackenzie was built in 1911 (Hull-reg H.349) and retained her original name while in naval service. A craft of some 335 tons, she was hired in August 1914 and would remain in RN service, armed with a single 6-pounder Hotchkiss gun, likely taken from an old torpedo boat or battleship fighting top.
Primarily serving as a minesweeper, Mackenzie was returned to her owner in 1919.
She was one of the lucky ones. Of the 1,456 hired trawlers used by the British during the war, 266 were lost during the conflict including no less than 142 to enemy action. They fought a war very much as real as those with the Grand Fleet at Jutland.
Dodd captured the life on Mackenzie in great detail. You can almost smell the pipes’ smoke and coal dust.
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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024: A Cat with Several Lives
Photo by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD/Défense
Above we see, some 85 years ago this week in October 1939, a bachi-clad fisherman-turned-sailor and his hard-bitten cat mascot, aboard the merchant marine trawler Roche Noire (Black Rock), requisitioned and armed by the French Navy in the early days of WWII to serve as an auxiliary minesweeper (dragueur de mines auxiliaire). Sadly both the fisherman and his cat are lost to history.
As for Roche Noire, it wasn’t even her first war.
The RN’s Battle Trawlers
When the early days of the Great War showed that the British, while rich in battleships and cruisers, were lacking in small coastal escorts and mine warfare craft, the Admiralty soon turned to trawlers.
Dozens were taken up from trade in Hull and other fishing ports, others were requestioned on the builder’s ways, and still others were purchased from overseas. e.g. the large fishing fleets maintained in Spain and Portugal.
Trawlers on patrol at Halifax, CWM
By 1916, with the Royal Navy hungry for an ever larger number of such hardy coastwise vessels, and many fishing boat yards near idle, the Admiralty soon placed orders for what would be an amazing 609 armed trawlers by the end of the war– many of which wound up being canceled.
As detailed by “British Warships 1914-1919” by F J Dittmar & J J Colledge, the RN ordered “military class” trawlers to three “standard” (and yes, that needs to be quoted) designs, this would include the 156-strong Mersey class (665 tons full load,148 feet oal), some 280 of the Castle/TR class (550 tons, 134 foot oal) and 173 members of the Strathclass (429 tons full, 123 feet oal).
Lord Talbot was one of the new Admiralty Mersey class of trawlers. All were capable of using an auxiliary sail rig as shown.
Using a simple coal-powered boiler with a single vertical triple expansion reciprocating engine generating between 480 and 600 ihp depending on class, these vessels had a top speed of around 10 knots.
A stoker tending fires in an armed trawler. IWM (Q 18996)
Crewed by 15 to 20 men/boys, they had allowances in their plans for hydrophones and wireless sets, although precious few carried either– with the extra berths used for such specialists needed to operate the gear.
Most had the very basic armament of a single deck gun, typically a 3″/40 QF 12-pounder 12 cwt salvaged from retired destroyers and torpedo boats, placed well forward, along with whatever small arms could be scrounged.
The crew of a British armed trawler, including a boy sailor, receiving gun instruction. Great War. IWM (Q 18974)
Sailors on board British Steam trawler HMT Strathearn firing her 12-pounder gun, Great War. IWM (Q 18965)
A few carried larger 4-inchers, while some had to make do with smaller 6-pounders. Occasionally they would carry a bomb thrower (early depth charge projector), and some had basic mechanical sweeping gear installed.
Small arms were as motley as the trawlers themselves.
Naval Reservists at Rifle Drill on a quayside; fixing bayonets. The crew of a British armed trawler drilling on shore. Great War. Note that the rifles appear to be a curious mix of Canadian Ross rifles, German Mausers, and old Lee-Metfords! IWM (Q 18972)
Same as above. You have to love the Martini-Henry cartridge cases. IWM (Q 18973)
The Straths were the smallest of the three designs. Compact little steam trawlers.
Ordered from a mix of 13 yards starting in February 1917, the most prolific of these builders would be the Scottish firm of Hall, Russell & Co Ltd, in Aberdeen, who had 66 under contract.
With so many different yards going all at once, the design inevitably changed from yard to yard and sometimes even from hull to hull, while the Admiralty itself contributed to the chaos by ordering minor “non-standard” changes of their own.
Delivery of the first standard Strath, HMT George Borthwick, occurred in August 1917.
With so many warships in need of names, these armed trawlers (His Majesty’s Trawler, or HMT) were bestowed the names drawn from the official crew rosters of ships at Trafalgar in 1805, with the Straths, in particular, coming from members of the crew of HMS Royal Sovereign and of Nelson’s HMS Victory.
Meet HMT William Barnett
Roche Noire entered the world in December 1917, constructed over four months at Hall, Russell (as Yard No. 622) as a more or less standardized Strath-class armed trawler with a T3cyl (12, 20, 34 x 23in) engine constructed by the Dominion Bridge Co of Montreal.
Our subject as built was christened with the name of Petty Officer (Gunner’s Mate/Gunsmith) William Barnett, 31, of Scotland, who appeared on HMS Victory’slist of the 820 men who were awarded prize money and a Government Grant for enemy ships destroyed or captured during Trafalgar.
Digging deeper into Barnett’s service, he was born in Glasgow and volunteered for service in 1803 on the 64-gun HMS Utrecht as a Landsman before his transfer to Nelson’s flagship– where he would serve through Trafalgar. He would go on to serve on HMS Gelykheid, Zealand, Ocean, Salvador Del Mundo, Milford, and Prince Frederick, advancing to the rate of Armourer’s Mate, leaving the service in 1814.
Any gunner who sailed for more than a decade against Bonaparte deserves a ship named in his honor!
HMT William Barnett’s Admiralty Number was 3632.
Great War
Sadly, I could find no details of HMT William Barnett’s Great War service. Suffice it to say she almost assuredly spent 11 months across 1918 in a mix of dodging U-boats, escorting coastal traffic, searching for those lost at sea, guarding anti-torpedo/submarine nets at anchorages, and training young ratings.
Of her class, one member, HMT Thomas Collard (3686), was sunk in March 1918 by the German submarine SM U-19 while escorting the armed merchant cruiser HMS Calgarian North of Rathlin Island. Her crew survived.
Some deployed as far as the Adriatic and Aden.
Another classmate, HMT James Fennell (3753) would be wrecked at Blacknor Point, Portland.
Royal Navy armed trawlers in Dover harbor. IWM (Q 18226)
Eight early Straths (HMT Charles Blight, Peter Barrington, Joshua Budget, Richard Bowden, John Britton, Thomas Billincole, James Bashford, and Michael Brion) were loaned to the U.S. Navy during the war for patrol/mine work, specifically in laying and later taking up the Great North Sea Mine Barrage. The Americans would dispose of them in 1919.
British armed trawlers minesweeping in the North Sea. IWM (Q 18987)
Post-war, 23 Straths that were still under construction were canceled in 1919 while another 45 others that were sufficiently complete were finished to mercantile standards (unarmed) and sold as trawlers.
The 94 surviving members of the class in RN service were, following the dismantling of the North Sea Barrage, paid off slowly between 1919 and 1926– including Barnett— and, disarmed, were disposed of on the commercial market.
River Kelvin. Built 1919 for Scott & Sons Bowling Glasgow as Strath Class Trawler HMT George Lane. 05/1923 Acquired by Consolidated Steam Fishing & Ice Co Grimsby renamed River Kelvin. 09/1927 Registered to Consolidated Fisheries Ltd. 12/1938 Transferred to Lowestoft renamed Loddon registered LT 309. 1958 Sold to Craigwood Ltd Aberdeen. Photo via Deepseatrawlers.co.uk
Peacetime: Gone Fishing
Sold to Val Trawlers of London in 1919, Barnett became what she was designed to be from the outset– a commercial fishing boat. Named Valerie IV (sometimes seen as Valerie W), she would continue on this service out of Hull and Milford until October 1924.
Moving across the Channel, her registry soon changed to Soc. Nouvelle des Pecheries a Vapeur (New Steam Fisheries Co), in Arcachon along the Bay of Biscay just southwest of Bordeaux. With the name of Valerie IV no doubt needing a more Gallic upgrade, she became Roche Noire (ARC 3918).
In 1934, SNPV went belly up and its assets were liquidated by Credit de l’Quest. This left Roche Noire to be scooped up for a bargain price by Saint-Nazaire Penhoët Shipyards and Workshops, and operated by Nouvelle société de gestion maritime (New Maritime Management Company) out of Bordeaux (radio call sign TKED).
War! (Again)
With so many retired Straths floating around (pun intended) in 1939, it was a foregone conclusion several wound return to martial service.
Three ex-HMTs– William Hallett, James Lenham, and Isaac Harris— which had been sold on the commercial market in 1921, were taken back up by the RN in 1939– with Harris lost in December.
Three Straths in Australian waters, ex-HMTs William Fall,Samuel Benbow, and William Ivey; were taken up by the RAN as coastal minesweepers.
HMAS Samuel Benbow was in Sydney Harbour during the Japanese midget submarine attack in 1942. RAN image
Ex-HMTs William Bentley and Thomas Currell became Kiwi mine vessels in the RNZN.
Strath class HMT Thomas Currell as RNZN minesweeper during World War II
Meanwhile, in France, our William Barnett/Valarie IV/Roche Noire was requestioned by the French Navy in August 1939– even before the beginning of the war– and given hull number AD 355. Armed with a single elderly 75mm Schneider modèle 1897, she was to serve as an auxiliary minesweeper.
In October, during the doldrums of the “Phony War,” she was visited at Brest by photographer Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot who captured an amazing series of images of the (re)armed Admiralty trawler and her laid-back crew, now in the ECPAD archives.
Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Note her recently installed 75mm Schneider modèle 1897. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Note the mix of uniforms and civilian attire, augmented with bachi caps. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Dressing salted cod. Again, the only “uniform” item on many is the bachi. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Raidoman is at work. Among the “war installations” for the trawler was a radio set and searchlight. Other than that, she was all 1918. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Note her searchlight. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Commanded by a Petty Officer. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Who may have come from the retired list. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD
Sadly, our humble Roche Noire was caught up in the fall of France in June 1940 and got the short end of the stick.
Two weeks after the “Miracle of Dunkirk” and just three days before the Armistice that brought about the Vichy regime, all ships fit to go to sea in Brest were ordered to either make for England or French colonies in Africa, ultimately carrying some 80,000 Commonwealth, Free Polish, and French troops with them.
The last ships to leave on the night of 18/19 June included the incomplete battleship Richelieu (bound for Dakar with just 250 shells and 48 powder charges for her main battery) and a flotilla under RADM Jean-Emmanuel Cadart composed of the five liners and cargo ships transporting 16,201 boxes and bags of gold– carried from Fort de Portzic by garbage trucks– escorted by the destroyers Milan and Épervier as well as the auxiliary cruiser Victor Schœlcher, bound for Casablanca.
Unable to sail, the torpedo boat Cyclone, patrol boat Étourdi the non-functional submarines Agosta, Achille, Ouessant, and Pasteur, the condemned tanker Dordogne, the auxiliary minelayer Alexis de Tocqueville, avisos Aisne, Oise, Laffaux, and Lunéville; the old armored cruisers Waldeck-Rousseau, Montcalm, and Gueydon; and a host of net-laying vessels, tugs, and assorted cargo ships were scuttled. They were joined by the armed trawlers Mouette, Trouville, Roche Noire, and Flamant.
Many of the crews of the scuttled ships made it out with RADM Cadart’s gold-carrying flotilla, so Roch Noire’s fishermen may likely have gone on to further adventures in North Africa and Senegal.
The port facilities were likewise sabotaged, with 800 tons of gasoline and assorted ammunition stocks blown up.
Joachim Lemelsen’s 5th Panzer Division entered Brest on the 19th, and the Germans found little of immediate use, with the fires reportedly taking several days to die down.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101II-MW-5683-29A, Brest, June 1940
The strategic port would go on to endure 1,553 days of occupation and a 43-day siege before the Germans surrendered in September 1944.
And, Back to Fishing
Immediately after taking control of Brest in 1940, Kriegsmarine VADM Eberhard “Hans” Kinzel would inspect the facility to see what was salvageable.
In his report, he would note:
The auxiliary minelayer Alexis de Tocqueville, the auxiliary patrol boat Mouette, and the auxiliary sweepers Roche Noire, and Flamant are recoverable, but the three latter are of little interest to the Kriegsmarine and could be returned to the Government of Herr Laval to ensure supplies for the population.
Shortly after, Roche Noire was raised and, after a stint in Vichy use, was removed from the French naval rolls in November 1941. She was allowed to return to fishing.
Post-war, she continued to harvest her stocks from the deep for over a decade.
In 1957, she was sold across the Channel again, returning home to be added to the inventory of Wood & Davidson – J. Wood, Aberdeen. That year she was listed in Lloyds as FV Shandwick.
Eventually, all things come to an end, and our little trawler, which served in both wars, was finally broken up in 1964.
Epilogue
Little remains of the hardy Strath-class armed trawlers, save for a few wrecks and scattered relics.
The City of Aberdeen, where many Straths were completed, maintains several models, photos, and records of these otherwise forgotten trawlers.
German VADM Kinzel, who moved to resurrect our little trawler at Brest in 1940, survived the war only to take his own life in June 1945 near Flensburg.
And, while the Admiralty hasn’t elected to recycle the names of the old Strath class, Armourer’s Mate William Barnett included, HMS Victory, currently under a “Big Repair,” endures at Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard.
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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110 Years Ago. October 1914. RN LCDR Norman Wilkinson‘s depiction of the sailing of Canada’s First Contingent of troops, the Canadian Expeditionary Force, over 31,000 strong, from Canada to England to fight the Germans.
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, 19710261-0791
“After taking soldiers, horses, and equipment on board in Quebec City, the liners carrying the First Contingent formed up with British warships in Bay of Gaspé, Quebec, before leaving for England. Along the way, they were joined by another liner carrying soldiers from Newfoundland and by several other warships, including one of the Royal Navy’s largest battlecruisers, the 26,000-ton HMS Princess Royal, seen here in the foreground.”
The force, including the whole of the 1st Canadian Division and supporting units, comprised 1,547 officers; 29,070 men; 7,679 horses; 70 guns (QF 18-pounders), 110 motor vehicles, 705 horsed-pulled vehicles, and 82 bicycles. They were the first tranche of what would be more than 650,000 Canucks sent “Over There.” To put those numbers into perspective, Canada in 1914 had a population of just 8 million. The current Canadian Army is authorized at just 22,500 active personnel (and is 13 percent short of those numbers), drawn from a population of some 39 million.
The flotilla of 31 merchantmen was protected by seven battleships and cruisers under convoy commander RADM Robert Phipps-Hornby CMG, Commanding North America and West Indies Station, with his flag in the old 14,000-ton Canopus class battlewagon HMS Glory. Several flotillas of destroyers would join once the convoy was nearing the sea area of maximum U-boat threat southwest of Ireland.
As for the artist. Wilkinson achieved fame for inventing the dazzle-painting technique, a form of camouflage applied to a ship’s hull to make it more difficult to detect.
In his April 1917 proposal to the British War Office, he described it as “large patches of strong colour in a carefully thought out pattern and colour scheme.
Some 105 years ago this week: USS H-2 (Submarine No. 29) partially submerged in the Hudson River, while on recruiting duty at New York City, on 6 October 1919, with the Manhattan skyline in the background. At about that time, while commanded by LCDR Clarke Withers, she performed the remarkable feat of sending a wireless message while submerged.
Note the submarine “fish flag” atop her periscope. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 45615
The second of her class of nine Electric Boat 26A/26R design subs, the 150-foot/467-ton H-1s were ordered by the U.S. Navy and the Tsarist fleet (hence the 26A and 26R designations) with the first three originally given then-traditional “fish” names: Seawolf, Nautilus, and Garfish. These were later changed before commissioning to a more homogenous H-1 through H-9 once the Tsar’s boats were acquired after the Russian Revolution and Civil War prevented delivery.
Constructed at Union Iron Works, San Francisco, H-2 would deploy with her H-1 sister to the Atlantic in October 1917, where they would spend the Great War on a series of patrols and tests of new equipment, coupled with training tasks.
Her wireless arrangement was novel for the time.
USS H-2 Description: (Submarine # 29) At the New London submarine base, Groton, Connecticut, in 1919. This photograph has been annotated to identify H-2’s radio antenna installation and features an associated diagram. This image was used in RADM R.S. Griffin’s History of the Bureau of Steam Engineering. NH 45618
Postwar, the class was soon withdrawn from service, with H-1 wrecked in 1920 and the remaining eight boats all decommissioned by 1922, later sold for scrap.
The Navy, however, would soon recycle the name “Nautilus” to two follow-on submarines, SS-168 and SSN-571, both of which set milestones of their own.
30 September 1918. Original Caption: “Front view Thomas-Morse type SH-4 Naval Training Hydroplane furnished the United States Navy during 1916-1917. Fitted with Curtiss OX-5, 100 H.P. aeromotor; wing spread 43ft., high speed 68 M.P.H., climb 2400 ft. in 10 minutes. Manufactured by the Thomas Morse Aircraft Corporation. Ithaca, New York. U.S.A.”
Signa Corps 165-WW-185D-63. National Archives Identifier 31485301
The SH-4 was one of the first aircraft obtained by the Navy that had practical military experience behind its design, several predecessor models having been sold to Britain in 1915-1916 by the Thomas Aeroplane Co before its merger with the Morse Chain Company to form Thomas-Morse. Fourteeen SH-4s (A134-A136, A396-A406) powered by 100 hp engines were bought by the Navy as observation and trainer types in 1917.
Of note, Thomas-Morse also sold the Navy 14 improved (using 80hp Le Rhone engines) S-4B/Cs whose armament was “principally a camera gun,” another half-dozen olive-drab painted S-5s in 1917, and its masterpiece: more than 250 MB-3/3As that would continue use with the Army, Navy, and Marines through the 1920s.
By 1929, “Tommy Plane” had been taken over by the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation.
Above we see the business end of the Surprise class three-masted canonnière de station, Zéléein her gleaming white tropical service livery, before 1915.
Some 110 years ago this week, this humble colonial gunboat stood up to a pair of German armored cruisers that outclassed her in every way, and in the end, forced them to retire empty-handed.
The Surprise class
Built for colonial service, the three sisters of the 680-ton Surprise class– Suprise, Décidée (Decided), and Zelee (Zealous)– were compact steam-powered gunboats/station ships, running just 184 feet overall length and 26 of beam with a mean draught of just over 10 feet.
They were one of the last designs by noted French naval architect and engineer Jacques-Augustin Normand, who built the country’s first steamship.
Composite construction, they were wooden framed with a hull of hardened steel plates sheathed in copper below the waterline. The hull was segmented via nine waterproof bulkheads. A small generator provided electric lighting topside and belowdecks as well as a powering a large searchlight atop the wheelhouse. Radio sets would be retrofitted later.
Using a pair of Niclausse boilers (Surprise had cylindrical boilers) to supply steam to a horizontal triple expansion engine of 900 horses, they had a maximum speed of 13.4 knots and a steaming radius, on 75 tons of mid-grade coal, of 2,700nm at 10 knots. They carried three masts and were rigged as a barkentine, reportedly able to make six knots under canvas to stretch that endurance.
Armament was a pair of Mle 1891 3.9″/45 guns, fore and aft with limited firing arcs, four Mle 1891 2.6″/50 9-pounders on the beam, and six M1885 37mm 1-pounder Hotchkiss rapid fire guns including one in the fighting tops of each mast and two on the bridge wings.
No shell hoists meant chain gangs to reload from an amidships below deck magazine. While torpedo tubes would have been ideal for these slow gunboats, there seems to have been no thought to adding them.
Crew would be a mix of six officers and 80-ish ratings including space for a small det of marines (Fusiliers marins), to be able to land a platoon-sized light infantry force to rough it up with the locals if needed. Speaking of the locals, in line with American and British overseas gunboats of the era, when deployed to the Far East these craft typically ran hybrid crews with most service and many deck rates recruited from Indochina and Polynesia, which had the side bonus of having pidgin translators among the complement.
Meet Zelee
Our gunboat was the second in French naval service to carry the name. The first was a trim 103-foot Chevrette-class corvette built at Toulon for the Napoleonic fleet and commissioned in 1812. Armed with a pair of 4-pounder cannon and 12-pounder carronades, she saw extensive service in the Spanish Civil War in 1823, was on the Madagascar Expedition in 1830, and later, after conversion to steam power in 1853, was used as a station ship in assorted French African colonies for a decade then, recalled to Lorient, spent another 20 years as an accommodation ship and powder hulk before she was finally disposed of in 1887 after a long 71-year career.
She is probably best known for taking part in Jules Dumont d’Urville’s second polar expedition to Antarctica together with the corvette Astrolabe, a successful four-year voyage that filled reams of books with new observations and charts. The report on the expedition (Voyage au pole sud et dans l’Océanie sur les corvettes l’Astrolabe et la Zélée exécuté par ordre du roi pendant les années 1837-1838-1839-1840) spans 10 volumes alone.
The expedition discovered what is known as Adélie Land, which endures as France’s Antarctic territory and base for their Dumont d’Urville Station. Zelee’s skipper on the voyage was LT (later VADM) Charles Hector Jacquinot, a noted French polar explorer in his own right who went on to be a big wheel in the Crimean War.
The Corvettes Astrolabe and Zélée in the ice, likely near the coast of Antarctica, 9 February 1838. By Auguste-Etienne-François Mayer c. 1850, via the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Our second Zelee was the third of her class and laid down at Arsenal de Rochefort in April 1898, built in the same slip that sister Décidée had just departed. Of note, Surprise was constructed by Normand at Le Havre and completed in 1896.
As completed, she originally carried a black hull. Her first of eight skippers was LT Louis Rémy Antoine Exelmans.
French gunboat Zélée, fitting out near the aviso Mésange, in 1899 at Rochefort.
Canonnière Zélée sur la Charente, 1900, soon after delivery.
Same as the above.
Quiet Antebellum Service
Soon after delivery, class leader Surprise was later joined by sisters Décidée and Zelee caught orders for the Far East.
Painted white and given a lot of leeway in appearance, they roamed, typically separately, from Indochina to China where they served on the Yangtze and as station ships in Nanchang, to Japan, New Caledonia, and Polynesia.
Décidée Saigon
French Canonnière de station Surprise, Haiphong, with canvas covering her decks and her laundry aloft. Surprise would later be moved to Africa, where she would remain until 1916.
The gunboat Zélée in Hanavave Bay, Baie des Vierges, Fatu Hiva Island, 1910. Collection: The Marquesas Islands
Zelee while visiting Australia. Australian National Maritime Museum. Samuel J. Hood Studio ~ Object № 00035067
French Zélée gunboat Papeete Tahiti
In December 1913, Lieutenant de Vaisseau Maxime Francois Emile Destremau (Ecole Navale 1892) arrived to take command of Zelee, then stationed in the backwater Tahitian capital of Papeete.
While ostensibly a “French” colony since 1880, at the time the little harbor only had 280 French residents along with over 350 British and Commonwealth, 215 Chinese, 100 Americans, 50 Japanese, and some 30 or so Germans as well as a few Greeks, Swedes, and Spaniards. The truth was you were far more likely at the time to hear English on the narrow palm-lined streets of Papeete than French.
The colony had big plans. It was even slated to receive, sometime in 1915, a station de téléphonie sans (TFS) wireless station. Until then, it had to rely on semi-regular mail services from France, typically a six-week trip at its most rapid.
As for Destremau, the 37-year-old lieutenant had seen over 20 years of sea service including on the avisoes Scorff and Eure, the cruiser Eclaireur, and the early submarines Narval, Gustave-Zéde and Pluviose. His mission in French Oceania consisted mainly of showing the Tricolor from island to island and doing the old “hearts and minds” thing that goes back to the Romans.
Destremau, who had spent his career largely at Toulon and Brest, seemed to enjoy his Pacific deployment, creeping his shallow-draft gunboat into atolls that rarely saw the Navy.
Since yesterday we have been sailing in a truly strange way. We have crossed a large lagoon of about sixty kilometers, of which there is no map and which is full of submerged rocks. You can distinguish them by the change in color of the water and you avoid them as best you can. After four hours of this exercise under a blazing sun, we are very happy to arrive at the anchorage, where I find a charming little village hidden in the coconut trees. As the Zélée had never been there, we were given a real ovation. A meeting on the water’s edge of the entire population in full dress; gifts of coconuts and chickens, and organization of songs for the evening. Ravishing choirs, extremely accurate voices, and harmonies of a truly astonishing modernism. Just ten men and ten women are enough to compose an ensemble in at least six parts, with solo calls, an ensemble in at least six parts, with solo calls, admirable rhythm, and measure!
Postcards exist of her idyllic time in Polynesia.
gunboat Zélée (left) and the armored cruiser Montcalm in Tahiti in 1914
Tahiti Papeete Harbor– Arrival of Australian and American Couriers, Zelee is in the center background, with a giant Tricolor
Tahiti. – Pirogues ornées, 14 Juillet 1914, et Zelee
War!
In early August 1914, the entire armada under the command of RADM Albert Louis Marie Huguet’s Division navale d’Extreme-Orient— a force whose area of operation spanned from the Bay of Bengal to the Yangtze to Noumea to Tahiti– was not very impressive and, worse, was thinly spread.
His flag was on the cruiser Montcalm (9,177 tons, 21 knots, 2×7.6″, 8×6.4″, circa 1902), then steaming to New Caledonia after a rare visit to Polynesia. Another old cruiser, Dupleix (7,432 tons, 20 knots, 8×6.4″, circa 1903), was in Chinese waters. The dispatch vessel Kersaint (1,276 tons, 16 knots, 1×5.5″, 5×3.9″, circa 1897) was laid up at Noumea but was soon to be rearmed. Décidée was in Saigon. And in Polynesia was Zelee.
That’s it.
When the news hit that France and Germany were at war on 6 August– three days after the fact– Zelee was visiting the island of Raiatea, about 150 miles west of Tahiti. Immediately, the 36-year-old artist Joseph Ange Léon Octave Morillot, a naval officer who had resigned his commission in 1906 while on Polynesian station to go native, paint local topless women, and smoke opium, presented himself to Destremau and voluntarily returned to duty as a reserve ensign.
Setting out for Papeete with the news and an extra officer, Zelee arrived on the 7th.
By that time the colony was in full panic mode, with the belief that the German Bussard-class unprotected cruisers SMS Geierand Cormoran(1900t, 15 knots, 8×4.1″/35 guns, 2 tt) were typically in Samoa, just a five-day steam away from Tahiti. As Tahiti was a coaling station for the French fleet, some 5,000 tons of good Cardiff coal was on hand, which would make a valuable prize indeed.
As far as coastal defenses at Tahiti, as early as 1880, the French Navy had built a fort equipped with nine muzzle-loading black powder cannons to protect the entrance to Papeete but it had fallen into disrepair, its garrison removed in 1905 and its guns dismounted. As noted, by 1914, “the artillery pieces were lying limply on the ground among the flowers and moss. The gun carriages, covered with climbing plants, were firmly secured by a tangle of perennial vines of the most beautiful effect. In short, the tropical forest, exuberant, had reclaimed its rights and buried the battery.”
The island’s Army garrison consisted of a Corsican lieutenant by the name of Lorenzi and 25 Troupes Coloniales. When the Tahitian gendarmes were mobilized, they added another 20 locals and a French adjutant. Soon the word got around and reservists stumbled forward until Lorenzi commanded a mixed force of 60 rifles, who were soon drilling 12 hours a day.
French reservists also come running. each of whom is assigned a post. From the bush, we see emerging, with long beards and tanned skin, Frenchmen steeped in the land of Tahiti and who have become more Maori than the Maoris themselves, men who live, love, and think in Tahitian. At first, they hesitate a little to speak the beautiful language of France, but very quickly they find it again in their heads the marching songs that they sang every day during the field service hikes, so hard under the tropical sun.
With the possibility that two German cruisers, capable of landing a 150-man force, could be inbound, and with the likelihood that Zelee could survive a gun battle with either, the decision was made to write off the gunboat and move most of her men and guns ashore to make a dedicated land-based defense.
Destremau had a small wardroom– Ensign 1c PTJ Barnaud as XO, Ensign LSM Barbier, Ensign RJ Charron, Midshipman H. Dyevre, Midshipman 2c JA Morier, and Asst. Surgeon (Medecin de 2e classe, Medecin-major) C. Hederer. Meanwhile, his crew numbered 90.
Using sweat, yardarm hoists, and jacks, the crew dismounted the stern 3.9-incher (for which there were only 38 shells), all four 2.6-inchers, and all six 37mm 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns. They left the forward 3.9 mount and 10 shells.
Rigging a line from the harbor to the top of the 100-meter hill overlooking it, a roadcrew was formed to slowly muscle up the five large guns to the top. Meanwhile, the six Hotchkiss guns were mounted on as many requisitioned Ford trucks from a local copra concern– primitive mobile artillery– led by Ensign Dyevre. Ensign Barnaud formed a group of 42 riflemen who, with Dyevre’s gun trucks, formed a mobile reserve.
Destremau (center, with cap) and his staff in Tahiti: Ensigns Barbier and Barnaud, midshipmen Dyèvre and Le Breton, colonial infantry LT Lorenzi.
One of the ship’s engineers formed a section of dispatch riders mounted on proffered bicycles. The signalers formed a series of semaphore stations at the top of the hill battery visible to the old fort 18 km to the east, and the end of the lagoon five km to the west. Bonfires were built to signal at night. Within days, telephone lines connected the whole affair. Two old bronze cannons were mounted at the hilltop semaphore station and Pic Rouge in the distance, ready to fire as signal guns. Gunners mined the channel markers, ready to blow when needed. Likewise, plans were made to burn the coal depot.
The colony’s resident Germans as well as the Teutonic members of the captured Walküre’s crew, were interned and moved to the island of Motu-Uta in the harbor. In deference to their neighbors, they were not placed under guard, simply left in their own tiny penal colony in the middle of paradise.
The painter Morillot, taking it upon himself to become a one-man recruiting officer, made daily trips to the island’s interior in search of warm bodies. Soon there were more volunteers than there were rifles or positions on the gun crews.
With the whole island in a state of tense pre-invasion alarm, on 12 August the British-built German Rhederei line cargo steamer Walküre(3932 GRT) appeared offshore. Loaded with a cargo of phosphates from Chile and headed to Australia, she was unaware of the state of war.
Ensign Barbier, racing to Zelee with a skeleton crew, managed to raise steam and, with 10 shells quickly returned to the gunboat by Dyevre for its sole remaining 3.9-incher, soon set off to pursue the German steamer.
With Dyevre leading the boarding crew, pistols in hand, Walküre was captured without a shot. Impounding the vessel– with the support of her mixed British and Russian crew– our gunboat and her prize returned to Papeete to the reported wild cheers of her colonists.
By 20 August, the colony was as ready as it was going to get, with the five large guns of the ersatz battery commanding the harbor and pass, trenches dug, observation posts manned, 150 armed if somewhat motley irregular infantry, and six 37mm gun trucks, all there was to do was wait.
They had a month to stew.
Enter Von Spee
While Geier and Cormoran never made it to Tahiti, Admiral Maximillian Von Spee’s two mightiest ships in the Pacific, the 11,400-ton twin armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, did.
Scharnhorst and her sister were very distinctive with their four large funnels.
With a mission to seize the port and its desperately needed coal supply, and with no Allied warships within several days of the isolated colony other than our tiny (and largely toothless Zelee), it should have been a cakewalk.
With each of the big German cruisers packing eight 8.2-inch and another six 5.9-inch guns, and able to put a battalion size landing force ashore, the sight of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau appearing like a phantom from the sea smoke just 2,000 meters off the reef at Papeete at 0630 on 22 September 1914 was a shock to Destremau.
The signal cannon fired and the phones rang. Soon, Papeete became a desert as its inhabitants, long ready to bug out, took to the interior.
Orders came quick.
Barbier was ordered to rush to Zelee with 10 men and light her boilers, to ram the German cruiser closest to the pass once she had enough steam. The coal yard was set alight. The channel beacons went up in a flash of light and smoke. A crew on Walküre rushed to open her seacocks and she soon began settling on the bottom of the harbor.
Ensign Charron, in charge of the battery, was ordered to hold his fire until small boats began to gather for a landing which was logical as the popguns wouldn’t have done much to the German cruisers but could play god with a cluster of packed whaleboats.
By 0740, after a 70-minute wait, after steaming slowly in three circles just off the reef, first Scharnhorst and then Gneisenau opened up on the town and as retribution for the billowing smoke from the prized coal yard and the sinking Walküre.
By 0800, the fire shifted to Zelee, whose funnel was making smoke.
By 0820, the wrecked gunboat was filling with water, Barbier and his men moving to abandon their little warship– the crew in the end finished the job of the Germans by opening Zelee’s water intakes to the harbor.
Some accounts list 14 shots of 8.2-inch and another 35 of 5.9-inch fired by the German cruisers by 0900, others put the total count higher to 80 shells. Von Spee, afraid the harbor could be mined, retired, his plan to fuel his ships with French coal spoiled. He would miss those irreplaceable shells at the Falklands in December.
Two residents of the colony, a Polynesian child and a Japanese expat, were killed as well as several injured.
Estimates that as much as half of Papeete was destroyed in the bombardment.
The bombardment of Papeete, capital of Tahiti, a French possession in the Pacific. Showing a panoramic view of Papeete, capital of Tahiti, after being shelled by the German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The numbers indicate: 1. German prisoners under an armed guard, after having been compelled to assist in clearing away the debris resulting from the bombardment. 2. The market where all perishable food (…?) 3. Ruins of the back premises of Messrs A B Donald Ltd., with the Roman Catholic Cathedral in the background and the signal station on the hill to the right. Supplement to the Auckland Weekly News, 22 October 1914, p.43. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19141022-43-01
Divers went down to Zelee just hours after the Germans steamed away, and recovered the ship’s tricolor. It was presented to Destremau.
German propagandists remembered the raid in spectacular fashion, complete with incoming fire from shore batteries and the ships coming in far closer to the harbor.
Die Kreuzer Scharnhorst and Gneisenau beschießen Papeete, die Hautpstadt von Tahiti, by Willy Moralt, via the Illustrierte Geschichte des Weltkrieges 1914.
Epilogue
Zelee would be partially salvaged in 1925 but remains a well-known dive site in the Tahiti area.
Her on-shore 3.9-inch gun is preserved at Bougainville Park in Papeete.
Décidée survived the conflict and went to the breakers in 1922.
The French navy recycled Zelee’s name once again in 1924 on the 285-ton remorqueur-patrouilleur Zelee (ex-Lakeside) which served into 1950.
As for the German freighter Walküre, she was salvaged and repaired, then sold to an American company and would remain in service until 1925.
The painter Morillot hung up his uniform after the bombardment and returned to his painting, opium, and women, passing in 1931.
Denigrated by the governor general of Tahiti– who hid in a church during the bombardment while Destremau handled the defense– our gunboat skipper was ordered back to France to face an inquiry board. Given interim command of the destroyer Boutefeu while the board hemmed and hawed about meeting, Destremau died in Toulon of illness on 7 March 1915, aged but 39.
His decorations came posthumously.
He was cited in the order of the army nine months after passing (JO 9 Dec. 1915, p. 8.998):
Lieutenant Destremau, commanding the gunboat La Zélée and the troops in Papeete, was able, during the day of 22 September 1914, to take the most judicious measures to ensure the defense of the port of Papeete against the attack of the German cruisers Sharnorst and Gneisenau. Demonstrated in the conduct of the defense operations the greatest personal bravery and first-rate military qualities which resulted in preserving the port of Papeete and causing the enemy cruisers to move away.
After the war, he was awarded the Legion of Honor in March 1919.
The colony’s newest station ship/gunboat, the 262-foot Teriieroo a Teriierooiterai (P780) arrived at Papeete in May after a two-month transit from France.
The more things change…
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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