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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday to look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024: A Tough Little Wolf

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-constructed Flyvefisken 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.

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.

The Søridderens went a bit faster than designed on trails, hitting 28.3 knots.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Danes likewise “entertained” assorted German naval personnel as well during the war, such as the crew of Zeppelin L.3. 

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.

Her shell and shrapnel-ridden hull were on public display for the world to see.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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 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.

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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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