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Warship Wednesday, March 12, 2025: Spymaster Farm

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a 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, March 12, 2025: Spymaster Farm

“Received from Office of Naval Intelligence,” U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 64250

Above we see the beautiful new kleiner kreuzer SMS Dresden as she transits the Kiel Canal under the Levensau High Bridge in early 1908. Caught at sea in August 1914 in bad repair and already on her way back to Germany, she would end up being the last of the Kaiser’s cruisers at large on the high seas, sent to the bottom some 110 years ago this week.

The Dresden Class

The two Dresden-class light cruisers– our subject and the infamous SMS Emden— were ordered as part of the Kaiserliche Marine’s 1905-06 program to a modification of the earlier Königsberg class design and used the same hull form, armament, and armor plan but carried slightly different machinery. Some 388 feet long, they had a 44-foot beam and drew 18 feet of water under their hull.

Armament consisted of ten 4.1-inch SK L/40 naval guns— the standard weapon of almost all of Germany’s smaller cruisers and large colonial gunboats– in six single shielded pedestal mounts and four casemated, with 1,500 shells for these guns held in the magazine.

The German light cruiser SMS Dresden in a harbor. Note her forward 4.1-inch guns. IWM (Q 53072)

The secondary armament consisted of eight 2″/52 SK55 popguns with 4,000 rounds between them, backed up by a pair of submerged bow-mounted 17.7-inch torpedo tubes with space in the magazine for five fish. Landing party equipment included four Maxim machine guns and enough rifles, revolvers, and packs to outfit a company-sized force drawn from the 343-member crew. A light 6cm L/21 boat gun on a carriage along with 241 shells was also part of the ship’s bill.

When it came to armor, they carried a 3.1-inch belt of Krupp nickel steel along with 3.9 inches of protection over their conning towers and engines and about an inch over the deck. Meanwhile, the gun shields on the 4.1″/40s were two inches thick. Damage control was built into the design with 14 watertight compartments and a double-hulled bottom.

Dresden class cruiser diagrams Janes 1914

When it came to engineering, both used 12 coal-fired Schulz-Thornycroft marine boilers with Dresden using four Parson’s steam turbines generating 15,000shp while Emden had two reciprocating VTE engines that produced a less powerful 13,500shp. Likewise, Dresden carried more coal bunkerage (860 tons) while Emden could only stow 790 under normal conditions. Speed was virtually the same (23.5 Emden, 24 Dresden) as was cruising range with Emden having a longer (3,760nm) endurance at 12 knots while Dresden could only steam 3,600 but at 14 knots. Äpfel zu Organen.

Meet Dresden

While sister Emden was constructed at KW in Danzig, Dresden was laid down at the same time as Yard No. 195 (Ersatz Comet as she was originally to be named to replace the 19th-century sloop of that name) at Blohm & Voss, Hamburg. Launched on 5 October 1907 with Lord Mayor of Dresden, Otto Beutler, as a sponsor, she was commissioned on 14 November 1908, beating Emden to the fleet by eight months.

Outfitting Dresden class cruiser in Stettin

Meeting some early disaster, while on her shakedown on 28 November, Dresden was involved in a collision with the two-masted Swedish sailing ship Cacilie, sinking the Swede and sending the cruiser back to Hamburg for six months of repair, which was followed by a turbine explosion on follow-up trails.

Dresden at Wilhelmshaven in 1909. Farenholt Collection NH 65782

Finally emerging ready to serve, Dresden set sail under Kapitän zur See Eduard Varrentrapp in a three-ship task force along with the 6,500-ton training cruisers Victoria Louise and Hertha, bound for New York, where they would join the 3,700-ton Ostamerikanischen station cruiser (stationskreuzer) Bremen. Of note on Bremen during this period was a young ensign, one multilingual Wilhelm Canaris, who at the time was planning to spend his career in torpedo boats.

Peacetime ship of intrigue

The four German ships, Dresden included, arrived in New York in late September 1909 to attend the international naval review as part of the 300th Hudson-Fulton Exhibition. The force, under the command of the white-bearded and well-mustached 65-year-old Grossadmiral Hans von Koester– the first German naval officer to hold the rank– would take in the sites and become one of the more celebrated contingents, with thousands of ethnic Teutons and recent emigres from the region in NYC at the time.

Dresden was extensively photographed in the fortnight she spent on the Hudson.

German cruiser SMS Dresden. Picture taken between 24.September and 9.October 1909 during the Hudson Fulton fleet parade in New York. Note protected cruisers Victoria Louise and Hertha, other units of the German Squadron, in the background. Bain News Service collection, LOC 04281.

Dresden during Hudson-Fulton. H. C. White Co. image. LC-DIG-stereo-1s43331

Dresden during Hudson Fulton with her glad rags flying. Detroit Publishing postcard. LOC LC-D4-22624

Dresden during Hudson Fulton. Detroit Publishing postcard. LC-D4-39223

Photographed before World War I, probably at New York. NH 43303

Returning to Germany, Dresden suffered another collision, this time with the light cruiser Konigsberg, and spent some time in the training division in the Baltic.

She was beautiful in all respects, as shown off in period postcards.

She was then along with the cruiser Strassburg, dispatched to join the Mittelmeer-division in the Med between April and September 1913 under the command of FKpt Fritz Ludecke, where she kept tabs on the Balkans as the region descended first into war with the Ottomans and then among themselves, giving birth to the new nation of Albania.

SMS Dresden at Swinemunde

In December 1913, with Ludecke swapped out for FKpt Erich Kohler so that Ludecke could take command of the new light cruiser SMS Karlsruhe, Dresden skipped a much-needed overhaul to hold down the Ostamerikanischen station for six months as Bremen returned home after spending nearly 10 years in the Americas. The plan would be that Karlsruhe, her shakedown finished, would arrive in the summer of 1914 to tap Dresden out and take over the station. Joining Dresden for this deployment, fresh off a year in the Baltic on torpedo boat duties, was a now Lt. Canaris, who had proven very capable when on the old Bremen of making and utilizing local contents across Latin America.

Bremen, fresh from evacuating 1,200 European civilians during the Mexican revolution along with the HAPAG steamers Kronprinzessin Cecilie and Bolivia, was relieved on 21 January 1914 and returned home to Germany, via Port-au-Prince, on 13 February, leaving the station in Dresden’s hands.

With Germany backing Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta, Dresden got involved with the local affairs at a ground level. Besides continuing to evacuate nearly 2,000 American and European non-combatants to HAPAG liners alongside British and U.S. warships during the occupation of Veracruz, the cruiser sent a detachment of armed sailors to guard the German embassy in Mexico City and helped the HAPAG steamer SS Ypiranga escape U.S. custody in April 1918, the latter filled with 30 train car loads of German-made Mauser rifles and cartridges bound for Huerta in violation of the American weapons embargo on the dictator. The German-flagged steamer SS Bavaria likewise arrived with another load of guns in May.

Canaris’ contacts and agents in the region, cultivated during his time on Bremen, often proved invaluable. The young officer had a reputation as a “fixer.”

Vera Cruz, Mexico, warships off Fort San Juan de Ulua near the time of the U.S. landing in April 1914. The three ships in the foreground from left to right are the German cruiser Dresden, the Mexican gunboat Nicolas Bravo, and the Spanish cruiser Carlos V. The ship behind the bow of Carlos V may be the Mexican Zaragoza as Bravo’s sister Morales was probably in the Pacific at this time. NH 42501

However, no matter how many guns the Germans sent, they arrived too late to help Huerta turn the tide against the Constitutionalists of Carranza, Obregon, and Villa in the north and the Zapatistas in the south. “El Chacal,” with his Federal Army soundly defeated at the Battle of Zacatecas in July 1914, resigned his office. His ride out of the country? Dresden, with Canaris as the general’s interpreter and handler, took him into exile as far as Kingston, Jamaica along with his vice president, Aureliano Blanquet, and their families.

The deposed dictator would later work with German naval spymaster Kapt. Franz von Rintelen during WWI on a series of anti-American and anti-Mexican for that matter initiatives until he passed under sketchy circumstances in Fort Bliss, Texas, with Von Rintelen writing after the war that, perhaps, Huerta was poisoned.

This brings us to…

War!

The fresh and brand-new Karlsruhe, finally complete and deployed to American waters on her maiden cruise, rendezvoused with the well-worn and homebound Dresden at Port-au-Prince, Haiti on 26 July 1914. The ships respective skippers changed places with Kohler, who was intimately aware of the current situation in the theatre, cross-decked from Dresden to Karlsruhe to take command of the new cruiser while Ludecke, who handled the vessel’s commissioning and shakedown, took up residence in his old cabin on Dresden for what he expected to be a ride back home. Likewise, Dresden transferred ordnance, spare parts, and even part of her small arms locker to Karlsruhe as the latter would need them more.

About that.

With the two cruisers departing Haiti on the evening of 26 July, they intercepted a radio message stating that diplomatic relations between Austria-Hungary and Serbia had been broken off and war in Europe was imminent. Karlsruhe made for Havana to top off her provisions and coal bunkers, then, instead of roaming West into the Caribbean, sortied East towards the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Ludecke in Dresden, heading back to Germany with not enough coal to make it there without stopping to refill her bunkers, was ordered to turn around and engage in independent cruiser warfare (Handelskrieg: commerce raiding) in the event of war– a suicide mission for a ship in Dresden’s condition some 4,800 miles away from home and in waters teaming with British warships.

Topping off at St. Thomas in the Danish Virgin Islands on 31 July, Dresden made ready for war and sailed south in radio silence.

By 3 August war was at hand and Dresden turned wolf. Pairing up with the HAPAG steamer Corrientes out of Pernambuco which was placed at her disposal, the cruiser began stopping passing merchant ships off the coast of Brazil to inspect their papers. Encountering four British vessels, she let two go (SS Drumcliffe and SS Hostilius) on parole after deeming their cargo to be neutral and sank two whose cargo was considered contraband: SS Hyades (3,352 tons) on 14 August and SS Holmwood (4,223 tons) on 26 August.

A fictional depiction of SMS Dresden firing at Mauretania. Zeichnung von Paul Teschinsky, August 1914. Illustrierte Zeitung, 1915

Headed further into the South Atlantic, Dresden was joined by the HAPAG steamers Prussia, Baden, Persia, and Santa Isabel. The Admiralty then dispatched orders for her to proceed into the Pacific with her train to link up with the Bremen-class light cruiser SMS Leipzig which, after an eight-year tour in Chinese waters as part of VADM Maximilian von Spee’s East Asian Squadron (Ostasiengeschwaders zusammentreffen), had been dispatched to relieve the light cruiser SMS Nürnberg on the west coast of Mexico, where the latter had been protecting German residents during the revolution. Picking up coal and provisions at San Francisco in August just after the outbreak of the war, Leipzig melted into the Southeast Pacific, lurking between Baja and the Galapagos Islands, where she, like Dresden, soon picked up a train of coal-carrying German steamers (Anubis, Abyssinia, Amasis, and Karnak of the DDG Kosmos line).

After a stopover to effect repairs before rounding Cape Horn, Dresden transitioned to the Pacific.

Panic ripped through the Western seaboard of Canada as Dresden and Leipzig were believed in the area (they never got within 1,000 miles), with the Canadian government rushing the newly-formed Cobourg Heavy Battery from Quebec and its two new 60-pounder 5-inch BL guns for a transcontinental rail trip to establish an emergency coastal battery (at Point Grey– now the University of British Columbia) to protect Vancouver. Likewise, the Condor-class sloop HMCS Shearwater landed two QF 4-inch naval guns for positioning in Stanley Park, named for Lord Frederick Stanley, Governor General of Canada in 1888. The RCN’s largest warship, the old Apollo-class protected cruiser HMCS Rainbow, missed Leipzig by only a day at San Francisco in mid-August.

Following an invitation from the British Ambassador in Tokyo, the 9,500-ton Japanese armored cruiser Izumo was dispatched to Esquimalt as reinforcement. The Japanese cruiser Asama, battlecruisers Kurama and Tsukuba, and the patchwork battlewagon Hizen (former Russian Retvizan) later joined her in what the IJN referred to as the American Expeditionary Force (Amerika ensei-gun) under RADM Keizaburo Moriyama. A separate Japanese task force built around the battleship Satsuma and cruisers Hirado and Yahagi sailed as the Special Southern Expeditionary Force (Tokubetsu nanken shitai) to search the Philippines, Palau Islands, and East Indies area and after Coronel moved towards the South-Central Pacific with the battlecruiser Ibuki. Had Spee crashed into either of these forces, it would have no doubt been one of the most interesting naval clashes in history.

Linking up with Leipzig off the west coast of Chile on 3 October, the two cruisers and their train of makeshift supply tenders on 12 October joined Von Spee’s primary force– the big, armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the light cruiser Nürnberg— at Easter Island. The admiral’s squadron had been on the run from their homeport at Japanese-besieged Tsingtao since August and had stopped along the way to plaster French Tahiti (wasting 80 irreplaceable shells to level Papeete) and sweep the Marquesas Islands on the ever-present search for coal.

Besides her guns, Dresden’s very handy fixer, Canaris, was able to provide the admiral with intel, garnered via his carefully cultivated contacts around the continent. He was one of the first to pass the reports of a British cruiser force approaching from the Horn.

From 26–28 October the squadron coaled in Cumberland Bay of the volcanic and sparsely populated Isla Más a Tierra (Robinson Crusoe Island)– it’s as remote as it sounds, situated some 350 west of Chile– and made ready. There, the auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich, which had been raiding in Australian waters with little luck, arrived and took over reasonability for the collier train.

By 1 November, Von Spee’s force would mix it up in the lopsided sea battle of Coronel against British RADM Craddock’s 4th Cruiser Squadron. While recounting the whole engagement is beyond the scope of this blog post, suffice it to say that Dresden, unscathed, accounted well for herself, landing a reported five hits on the Town-class light cruiser HMS Glasgow and one on the armed merchant cruiser Otranto. However, she expended 102 shells she could not recover from magazines that were already depleted.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, on the evening of 4 November in deep water east of Trinidad, Karlsruhe mysteriously met her end at the hands of an explosion that has yet to be explained. She sank in just 27 minutes, taking two-thirds of her crew to the bottom with her. Until then, she had a successful raiding career, taking 17 prizes.

The same week, in the Indian Ocean, on 9 November, Dresden’s sister, SMS Emden, was defeated in a battle with the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney near the Cocos Islands, having collected 23 prizes. The number of German cruisers on the high seas was shrinking rapidly.

Back in the Pacific, Von Spee’s squadron sailed triumphantly into Valparaiso to coal and replenish, unafraid of the Royal Navy for a change.

German Vice Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee’s cruiser squadron, leaving Valparaiso, Chile, on November 3, 1914, following the Battle of Coronel. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph NH 59638

Dresden in Valparaiso, Chile, November 1914. Blickrichtung Backbord Richtung Bug

Dresden in Valparaiso, Chile, November, 1914

After replenishing at Valparaiso with the rest of the victorious squadron, Dresden was released to patrol the area and sank the British steamer North Wales (3,691 tons) on 16 November.

Crossing back into the Pacific, Von Spee anchored his force at remote Picton Island on 6 December and called a council of his skippers. Leaving Prinz Eitel Friedrich and the collier train hidden along the south coast of Argentina, he wanted to take his cruisers and raid the British coaling station at Port Stanley in the Falklands. His captains for the most part disagreed with only Capt. Schonberg of the Nürnberg sided with Von Spee and urged to break up the squadron to proceed on independent raiding sorties ending in either internment or a trip back home. The loss of Emden was sobering.

Von Spee, being the boss, went his way and on 8 December crashed headlong into British VADM Doveton Sturdee’s waiting force of two hulking battlecruisers (HMS Invincible and Inflexible along with the cruisers HMS Cornwall, Kent, Carnarvon, Glasgow, and Bristol; and the old battlewagon HMS Canopus.

It was over by late afternoon, with Strudee’s flotilla of bruisers chasing down Von Spee’s smaller cruisers and pounding them one by one beneath the sub-polar waves of the South Atlantic.

A German light cruiser in action, Dresden’s profile, probably at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, 8 December 1914, by William Lionel Wyllie, RMG PV3152

The Splashes of Canopus’s Guns- Scharnhorst and Dresden at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, 8 December 1914, about 13.30, William Lionel Wyllie, RMG PV1022

light cruiser Dresden at the Battle of the Falklands painting by Alexander Kircher

Of Von Spee’s cruisers off the Falklands that day, only the turbine-powered Dresden, with Ludecke pushing his stokers and boilers to the point of breaking– somehow hitting a record 26 knots on cranky engines– managed to gain a few miles on her pursuers and, with darkness falling, slip into the nameless fjords and inlets of Tierra del Fuego

Von Spee and four of his cruisers found themselves in the embrace of Poseidon that day along with 2,200 German sailors– including both of the admiral’s sons.

Sinking of the Scharnhorst painted by Admiral Thomas Jacques Somerscales currently on display at the Royal Museums Greenwich

Endgame

For a time, the world thought Dresden was dead, lost with the rest of Von Spee’s squadron.

However, she was still very much alive. She had suffered no damage in the clash. With the help of one of Canaris’ contacts, the German-Chilean mariner and harbor pilot Albert Pagels, Dresden was able to hide in the Punta Arena region, with Pagels guiding the cruiser into scarcely charted Quintupeu Fjord for safekeeping.

“SMS Dresden of the shores of Chile, 1914”

Eventually, the word got out and the British, along with the rest of the world that could do basic cruiser math, knew Dresden was still at large, a fleet in being if nothing else. Canaris provided constant reports on British fleet movements, and she was able to relocate a few times during this period, keeping one step ahead of the Royal Navy.

On 18 January 1915, Dresden was able to take on 1,600 tons of coal– twice her normal load– from the NDL freighter Sierra Cordoba. Ludecke nursed a plan to strike out across the remote Southern Pacific, skirting Antarctica until rising north to raid the Solomon Islands and, coaling at the Dutch East Indies, head into the Indian Ocean.

On 27 February, she sank the British barque Conway Castle (1,694 tons), her last prize, bringing her total to 12,927 tons of Allied merchant shipping.

German surface raiders– both actual cruisers and hilfkreuzers– captured or sunk an amazing 623,406 tons of Allied shipping in the Great War.

Nearly bumping into the cruiser HMS Kent at 11,000 yards on 8 March, Dresden lit all boilers and cranked almost 25 knots against Kent’s 22 to keep over the horizon successfully. However, this five-hour chase drained her bunkers dry– down to her last 80 tons– and a promised replenishment shipment on the NDL steamer Gotha, coming out of Montevideo with 3,000 tons of coal and spare parts for Dresden’s turbines, was likely not coming. It was clear the time came to end the race.

Ludecke ordered his ship to the closest neutral port, Robinson Crusoe Island, and made ready to intern Dresden under the safety of Chilean supervision, anchoring 500 yards offshore. Informing the Admiralty by coded wireless message of his status, he received “Seine Majestät der Kaiser stellt Ihnen frei, aufzulegen” (“His Majesty the Emperor gives you the freedom to hang up”) in reply.

Last Cruise of Dresden, via Canaris, by Heinz Hohne

On 9 March, Ludecke reported to the local governor at Robinson Crusoe of his intentions, who simply shrugged– he had no police or soldiers to take the cruiser into custody on an island with 45 inhabitants– and said he would send a letter by sail coaster to the mainland for orders how to proceed. In the meantime, Ludecke ordered Dresden’s guns elevated and pointed harmlessly at the island’s dormant volcano, with her steam punt tied to her stern ready to pull her around to face an incoming threat in extremis. With coal so low, shore parties were landed to retrieve wood to burn in the boilers for heat and auxiliary power.

While the Chilean navy three days later dispatched the protected cruisers Esmeralda and Ministro Zenteno to accept Dresden’s passage into internment, it was the British who found her first.

On the foggy morning of 14 March 1915, with many of the German cruiser’s complement ashore, a squadron made up of the cruisers HMS Kent and Glasgow along with the auxiliary cruiser Orama, appeared on the horizon– bird-dogged there by a decrypted wireless signal. Any question of the battle’s outcome was a foregone conclusion. The three British man-o-wars carried a total of 34 6- and 4-inch guns against Dresden’s 10. Nonetheless, as her pinnacle turned Dresden’s scarcely manned battery seaward, her fate was sealed.

SMS Dresden at Juan Fernandez Island, 14 March 1915. The white flag of surrender is flying from the foremast. IWM Q 46021

Capt. John Luce, Glasgow’s skipper, opened fire on Dresden at 3,000 yards despite the fact both ships were inside Chilean territorial waters. He had orders to destroy the German and, having faced off with her unsuccessfully at Coronel and the Falklands, took them seriously. Four minutes into the battle, with Dresden firing all of three rounds, she raised the white flag and struck her colors. Canaris motored out in the pinnacle for parley while Ludecke ordered her scuttled via a mix of open sea valves and torpedo warheads in her magazine.

Within a half hour of Glasgow’s first shot, Dresden capsized to port at 1115 and sank in 230 feet of water. Seven members of her crew were killed, three outright and four from wounds. Another 14 were seriously injured. The British suffered no casualties.

German cruiser Dresden surrendered and on fire after engagement with Royal Navy cruisers at the Battle of Mas a Teierra, March 14, 1915. Library of Congress Lot 9609-20

Sinking off the coast of Chile, 1915. NH 528

Sinking of Dresden, British postcard

Epilogue

Strongly worded notes of protest flew between London, Santiago, and Berlin over the sinking and violation of neutrality.

Most of Dresden’s crew survived the ship’s final battle.

As they were on Chilean territory, they were not picked up by the British as PWs and instead were, awkwardly, interned. After waiting five days on Robinson Caruso Island as guests of the local governor, existing on a cargo of 1,000 lobsters, they were picked up by the tardy Esmeralda and Ministro Zenteno then were deposited on Quinquirina Island, adjacent to Coronel.

The crew from German cruiser Dresden Aboard Chilean Cruiser Esmeralda, German war newspaper, May 1915

Settling into an easy life, funded by the German embassy in Santiago, the men kept chickens and cows, and tended neat gardens. The city of Dresden took up a public subscription for gifts sent to the crew for the Christmas of 1915. Two men died while in exile, one in 1916, and the other in 1917.

Allowed flexible leave periods, many men simply released themselves from their gilded cage, aided by the German naval attaché, KKpt August Moller. Kplts Kurt Nieden and Friedrich Burchardi, along with ObltzS Kurt Hartwig were among the first to leave, the latter arriving in Germany just three months after Dresden’s sinking and, switching to submarine duty, earned a Blue Max as the skipper of SM U-32, sending 44 enemy ships to the bottom including the battleship HMS Cornwallis.

Canaris followed suit. Traveling under a Chilean passport arranged by Moller, “Senior Reed Rosas” arrived in Europe on a Dutch steamer in October 1915, including a stopover at Plymouth. Within a few months, Canaris would be reassigned from the surface fleet to Directorate N, naval intelligence, and, still traveling as Rosas, would proceed to Spain to set up a spy network before joining the U-boat arm himself.

Canaris was a good surface sailor and a better submariner but proved most suited to the role of spymaster, running the Abwehr from 1935-45. Turning against his boss in the end, he perished just before the war was over at the hands of his own countrymen.

Another officer, Lt. Lothar Witzke, his leg broken in the sinking of Dresden, escaped Chilean confinement in early 1916 and, proceeding to California, joined German intelligence and was named as part of the munitions explosions at Black Tom Island in New York Harbor in 1916 and Mare Island in 1917. Subsequently arrested by U.S Army counterintelligence, he was sentenced to death, but the sentence was not conducted due to the Armistice, and ordered released by President Coolidge in 1923. He was welcomed with an Iron Cross when he returned home. He later, without a shock here, worked for the Abwehr.

The largest group of Dresden sailors to leave Chile, six officers and 45 men led by Lt. Karl Richarz, escaped an old three-master barque, Tinto (137 feet, launched in 1852). They arrived some four months and 12,000 miles later in Germany via Iceland and Norway. This feat was accomplished despite inadequate charts and condemned sails, with a stop (and release) by the British armored cruiser HMS Minotaur as a cherry on top. One of the officers aboard, a young ensign Friedrich Wilhelm Fleischer, would go on to become a vice admiral during WWII only to end that war in a British PW camp. Jack Higgins would borrow the story for the basis of “Storm Warning” albeit changing the date to 1944.

As for Ludecke, Dresden’s final skipper, he remained in exile, reportedly untethered after the loss of his proud ship. He did not return to Germany until the end of 1919. Retained by the Reichsmarine briefly until March 1920, he was the operations officer for the fleet’s sole remaining cruiser squadron’ until he retired at the rank of rear admiral. He passed in 1931, aged 58, having only written briefly of his wartime experience, a chapter in a forgotten 1920s German text.

Ludecke served 30 years in the German Navy. He is seen to the left of Von Spee during the council of the admiral’s skippers at Picton Island on 6 December 1914.

Of Dresden’s other skippers, her Hudson-Fulton commander, Varrentrapp, went on to command the battleships SMS Schleswig Holstein and Konig Albert during WWI, ending the conflict as a rear admiral in charge of the defenses of Wilhelmshaven. He was discharged in 1919 and passed in 1928, aged 60. Erich Köhler, who Lüdecke relieved in July 1914, perished at age 41 aboard Karlsruhe when the ship went down.

One other Dresden crewmember deserves mention. Immediately after the sinking. A rating on Glasgow noticed a pig swimming in the water and succeeded in rescuing him. The crew named said swine “Able Seapig Tirpitz” and he served as their mascot for a year before being transferred for shoreside duty at the Whale Island Gunnery School at Portsmouth.

Late in the war, he was auctioned off for charity but his “trotters” were turned into a carving set delivered to Glasgow while the head was mounted.

Both relics made their way to the Imperial War Museum, where the head is now on display, as Catalog No. EPH 9032 in the First World War Galleries. IWM Q 47559 IWM (Q 20554)

It seemed that almost all of the German cruisers that Dresden sailed with died in battle, the ship something of an albatross for the Kaiserliche Marine.

Besides Karlsruhe, Dresden’s own sister Emden, and the other four cruisers of Von Spee’s squadron, Konigsberg, who she literally bumped into in 1910, would scuttle up the Rufiji River in Africa in July 1915, her crew eventually captured by the British in 1917. Likewise, the old Bremen was sunk in the Baltic by a mine in December 1915. Strassburg, who she patrolled the Balkans with back in 1913, would be sunk at least twice in WWII.

The Japanese only disbanded the Amerika ensei-gun patrol force in May 1915, after Asama was recovered from being grounded off Baja in shallow water. The secondary Tokubetsu nanken shitai had been ordered back to Japan in January 1915 following Von Spee’s death off the Falklands. It was the beginning of the Combined Fleet’s experimentation with squadron operations outside of home waters. It would not be the last.

As for Dresden herself, as Robinson Crusoe gets little traffic, her hull is still there, as are 6-inch shells from Glasgow— the latter embedded in the cliffs behind her final anchorage. Dresden was illegally salvaged several times, likely by “treasure” hunters. Legal expeditions in 1965 and 2006 recovered numerous relics including her binnacle, flags, and her 340-pound ship’s bell. After display in Chile, the latter was sent “home” to a place of honor at the Militärhistorische Museum der Bundeswehr (MHM) in Dresden, unveiled in 2008 on the ship’s 100th birthday.

Schiffsglocke des Kleinen Kreuzers SMS Dresden, Leihgabe der Republik Chile, Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr, Dresden, via Wiki commons

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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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Warship Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024: Inadvertent Records

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a 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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024: Inadvertent Records

Above we see a great action shot of the late Victorian-era Hermes class protected cruiser HMS Highflyer living up to her name while fighting the Atlantic, circa 1905.

Although a dated design by the time of the Great War, Highflyer still made short work of a faster and larger German auxiliary cruiser some 110 years ago this week.

The Hermes Class

The Admiralty, starting in 1889, began to order several successive batches of “second-class” protected cruisers: rakish steel-hulled steamers capable of 20 or so knots (fast for their age) and, while girded with an internal curved steel armored deck protecting their vital machinery spaces, weren’t meant primarily for fleet-on-fleet action but instead tasked with the role of overseas patrol and protection.

With an armament of 6 and 4.7-inch QF guns and a few torpedo tubes, as well as the ability to land 100 or so Tars armed as light infantry for work ashore, these vessels were seen as capable of keeping the peace against either local rebellions or foreign interlopers short of a battleship during times of peace. In times of war– something not seen against a European power by the Royal Navy since the Crimea– such warships could both capture enemy shipping, using the very gentlemanly “cruiser prize rules” and protect the crown’s own merchantmen from the enemy’s own raiders.

In the short period between just 1889 and 1898, the Royal Navy ordered 38 of these cruisers: 21 Apollo-class (3,600t, 19.75kts, 2×6″, 8×4.7″, 4x 14″ TT), 8 Astraea-class (4,360t, 19.5kts, 2×6″, 8×4.7″, 1x 18″ TT), and 9 Eclipse-class (5,600t, 18.5kts, 5×6″, 6×4.7″, 3x 18″ TT).

Following in the wake of this hectic building spree, the Admiralty ordered a further five vessels in the Estimates of 1896-1901, laid down in five different yards. Repeats of the Eclipse class with a few tweaks, the Hermes (or Highflyer) class were roughly the same size, a little faster, and carried a more homogenous armament of 11 6″/40 (15.2 cm) QF Mark I guns instead of the mixed 6-inch/4.7-inch batteries.

These were arranged in single open mounts, one forward, two aft, and eight arranged in broadside. Armored with a 3-inch thick steel front shield, these mounts were capable of lobbing a 100-pound HE shell to 10,000 yards at a rate of fire of 5-to-7 rounds per minute depending on crew training.

Two 6″/40 (15.2 cm) guns on the aft quarterdeck aft of HMS Hermes.

The 373-foot Hermes/Highflyer class, second-rate protected cruiser HMS Hyacinth pictured c1902. This three-color peacetime livery shows off her waist broadside 6-inchers well.

For countering torpedo boats, these new cruisers would carry nine 3″/40 12pdr 12cwt QF Mk Is and a half-dozen 47mm/40 3pdr Hotchkiss Mk I guns. Their torpedo battery consisted of two 18-inch tubes below the waterline on the beam. Two Maxim machine guns and an 800-pound QF 12-pounder 8 cwt landing gun on a carriage were also carried for the ship’s ashore force.

Carrying 500 tons of Harvey armor, this ranged from 6 inches on the CT to 5 inches over the engine hatches with a 3-inch deck.

Powered by 18 Bellville boilers which drove a pair of 4-cylinder VTEs on two screws, the designed speed was 20 knots with a planned endurance, on 1,100 tons (max load) of good coal, of 3,300nm at 18 knots. On builder’s trials, over an eight-hour course at full power, most beat the 20-knot guideline while, when driving at 30 hours on 3/4 power, still ranged from 17.34 to 19.4 knots. Not bad for the 1900s.

Published builder’s speed trials for 1899, with three of our class, Hermes, Highflyer, and Hyacinth, listed in the middle:

With a 21-foot draft (more when carrying a double load of coal), these cruisers carried a flotilla of small boats including two 36-foot sail pinnaces, a 32-foot steam cutter, a 30-foot gig, and several smaller gigs and whalers as ship-to-shore connectors.

Listed in journals as having a 450-man ship’s company, this size was often larger during peacetime overseas sailing– especially when an RM platoon was embarked– and drastically reduced while in ordinary.

The class consisted of five cruisers: the first flight Hermes, Highflyer, and Hyacinth, then the follow-on modified (with heavier boilers) Challenger and Encounter.

Jane’s 1914 listing for the class.

Meet Highflyer

Our subject is the fourth Royal Navy vessel named Highflyer, a tradition that began with the (brief) capture and reuse of the 5-gun American privateer of that name in 1813 by the HMS Poictiers. The second was a small 2-gun tender while the third was a well-traveled 21-gun wooden-hulled screw frigate that served in the Crimean War and the Second Opium War with time out to bombard the Arab fort at Al Zorah.

Ordered alongside class leader Hermes (Yard No. 401) at Fairfield, Govan, Highflyer was Yard No. 402 and was laid down on 7 June 1897. Launched on 4 June 1898, she was completed on 7 December 1899– the last RN cruiser commissioned in the 19th Century.

Peacetime career

Dispatched to serve as the flagship of RADM Day Bosanquet’s East Indies Station, Highflyer set out in February 1900 for Trincomalee, Ceylon. There she remained for over three years, cruising around the region as directed, and served the same mission for the next East Indies Station commander, RADM Charles Carter Drury.

HMS Highflyer NH 60585

Next came a stint as flag for the North America and West Indies Station, again under RADM Bosanquet until 1908 when she was rotated back to England for drydocking and refit.

HMS Highflyer IWM (Q 42674)

Again deploying overseas, she left for East Indies Station in early 1911 to relieve her sister Hyacinth, and carried the flag of RADM Edmond Slade until April 1913.

Relieved by HMS Swiftsure, Highflyer was sent back to England to join the 3rd Fleet, detailed as a training ship for the new Special Entry Cadet scheme which took lads 17½ to 18½ years of age and gave them up to 18 months of training before sending them to the fleet. Such training meant hours and hours of holystoning decks, chipping and painting bulkheads, polishing brightwork, and drills, drills, drills.

HMS Highflyer IWM (Q 75385)

Her “lucky 13th” skipper, Capt. Henry Tritton Buller, assumed command on 1 July 1913.

Her complement was nearly doubled during this period, as noted by this log entry while at Chatam in late 1913.

Officers: 32
Seamen: 164
Boys: 24
Marines: 50
Engine-room establishment: 134
Other non-executive ratings: 466

She undertook a three-month Med training cruise in the Spring of 1914, roaming to Malta from Devonport with stops at Villefranche, Tangier, Naples, Algiers, and Gibraltar.

War!

With Europe under tension of war, on 13 July 1914 at 0100, Highflyer logged a note to mobilize for fleet service and began receiving Marines and ratings from the Devonport depots and hospital. Three days later, she weighed anchor for Spithead via Bournemouth, leading the Astraea-class protected cruiser HMS Charybdis and class leader HMS Eclipse out to sea.

Putting in at Portsmouth, she soon took on ammunition and coal. With Sarajevo on fire from Austrian shells and the Kaiser sending his troops into Belgium, on 3 August, Highflyer’s complement– augmented by fresh reservists arriving every day– began fuzing lyddite shells and arranging torpedoes.

With the news of war declared against Germany flashed at 23:23 on 4 August, Highflyer made ready to prepare for battle and sortied out into the Channel with the Arrogant-class cruiser HMS Vindictive.

On the morning of the second day of Britain’s war, Highflyer spotted the 13,000-ton Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd liner SS Tubantia and promptly stopped her for inspection. Returning from Buenos Aires with £500,000 in gold destined for German banks, the liner’s steerage berths held 150 German military reservists returning home from South America and a cargo of Argentine grain likewise destined for the Vaterland.

With such a floating violation of neutrality, Highflyer’s prize crew directed the liner to Plymouth with the cruiser closely escorting. Once there on 6 August, Royal Marines escorted the German reservists off while the gold was confiscated– along with her German-bound mail which included bundles of rubber and wool– and taken ashore.

Tubantia, relieved of contraband, was later released and allowed to resume her voyage.

Putting back to sea to patrol the Bay of Biscay for German blockade runners, Highflyer sailed to Gibraltar and, with orders for Cape Verde, it was off the Spanish Northwest African enclave of Río de Oro
that she spotted a familiar ship on the morning of 26 August.

The Norddeutscher Lloyd liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, at 24,000 tons and 649 feet overall, was the largest ship in the world when she put to sea in 1897.

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse circa 1897 card by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y. LC-USZ62-69220

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse circa 1897 card by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y. LC-USZ62-69219

Capable of carrying as many as 1,500 passengers, the liner’s Baroque revival decor, overseen by Johann Poppe, can be seen in this view of her smoking cabin, North German Lloyd pamphlet c. 1905. LC-DIG-ppmsca-02202

Size comparison by the Gray Lithograph company for the lines North German Lines of the ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse with the Trinity Church, the St. Paul Building in New York, the Washington Monument, and the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsca-50050

One of the fastest ships in the world as well, she twice captured the Blue Riband, sustaining a 22.3 knot Atlantic crossing in 1898.

By July 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse caught orders to chop over to the Kaiserliche Marine and, while at Bremerhaven, quickly converted to become an auxiliary cruiser (hilfskreuzer) under the command of Fregattenkapitän Max Reymann. While she had been designed to carry as many as eight 5.9-inch and four 4.7-inch guns as well as up to 14 Spandau machine guns, only four old 4.1-inchers were on hand for the conversion.

Ordered to sea on 4 August to take a route northeast of Iceland, Reymann took his barely converted cruiser to sea, with orders to make for the South Atlantic. He promptly sank three British ships, taking 126 of their crew aboard. Several other ships were stopped but the enemy passenger problem was getting out of hand so Reymann simply disabled their wireless and allowed them to proceed.

KWdG’s brief raiding record:

7 August: trawler Tubal Cain (227 GRT), sunk.
15 August: passenger ship Galician (6,757 GRT), allowed to proceed.
15 August: passenger ship Arlanza (15,044 GRT), allowed to proceed.
16 August: frozen meat freight Kaipara (7,392 GRT) and Nyanga (3,066 GRT), sunk.
16 August: coal steamer Arucas, captured for use as an escort ship with a prize crew.

Needing a breather from the Royal Navy dragnet looking for him, Reymann put into Río de Oro for a couple of days on 17 August to take coal from Arucas and two German ships (Magdeburg and Bethania) sheltering there.

Reymann never got to finish his cruise before Highflyer appeared on the horizon on the 26th in what was, technically, a breach of neutrality.

A series of signals were exchanged between the two ships:

Highflyer: “Surrender.”

Highflyer: “I demand your surrender.”

KWdG: “German warships will not surrender. I request you to respect Spanish neutrality.”

Highflyer: “This is the second time you have been coaling in this harbor, I demand that you surrender; if not, I will open fire on you immediately.”

KWdG: “This is the first time I’m coaling here, and besides, this is a Spanish matter.”

Highflyer: “Surrender immediately.”

KWdG: “I have nothing more to say to you.”

Putting ashore his prisoners and non-combatant complement, Reymann figured the end was near, and, sailing out, Highflyer soon opened up at 1515, with the German replying.

Although KWdG was faster, Highflyer had an excellent position and continued to exchange fire with her larger guns at ranges past 7,500 yards while the artillery duel between the two lasted until 1615 when the German ship ceased fire and, smoking, withdrew behind some sand hills.

Reymann, low on ammunition and with two men dead and zero chance of escaping, smashed his wireless, scuttled his ship (she had rolled on her side by 1710), and put his crew ashore via lifeboats.

The shipless Fregattenkapitän and his men landed on a Saharan beach five miles from the Spanish fort at Villa Cisneros (Al-Dakhla) where they were interred.

Buller, ever the gentleman, attempted to send his own medical teams to help the crew of the German cruiser but recalled them once he determined they were not needed. Highflyer suffered one killed– RJ Lobb, Leading Carpenter’s Crew, ON M.2882– and 10 wounded during the engagement. A prize court would later grant Highflyer’s crew £2,680 for the sinking.

The battle made Highflyer famous, and newspapers around the globe celebrated the fight. 

Assuming the flag of the Cape Verde station by October, Highflyer remained on a sharp lookout for German raiders and runners for the next two years without the same sort of brilliant luck she had in the first three weeks of the war. She spent much of this time combing the seas off West Africa, often haunting Sierra Leone and St. Vincent.

By 1917, she was engaged in cross-Atlantic convoy escorts from Halifax to Plymouth as part of the North American Squadron.

May 1917,”S.S. Durham Castle with [S.S.] Ayrshire and HMS Highflyer ahead.” Exterior view from the deck of the SS Durham Castle looking fore at two ships ahead. Lt. Irvine of the RAMC, having just graduated in medicine, was shipping out on the SS Durham Castle to the campaign in German East Africa. The image is from an album chronicling the wartime experiences of Archibald Clive Irvine (1893-1974) in East Africa. During this time he would meet Dr John W Arthur which in turn would lead to his missionary work at Chogoria in Kenya. Acc.12016/1 (reference number), International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960 (collection), National Library of Scotland (subcollection), NLS DOD ID: 97047298 (file).

It was while at Halifax on 6 December that Highflyer had a ringside seat for the great Halifax explosion when a collision between the relief ship SS Imo and the munitions ship SS Mont Blanc sent the latter sky-high in the world’s largest pre-atomic explosion, killing over 1,900.

With the Mont Blanc ablaze and abandoned by its crew, six volunteers from Highflyer rowed almost a mile across the harbor to the ship to offer assistance. All perished but one when the Mont Blanc’s cargo exploded when the whaler was only 300 feet away.

The survivor, Second Class Able Seaman William Becker, J5841, was propelled 1,600 yards across the harbor by the explosion. Becker swam through the icy water to safety and lived until 1969. He earned an Albert Medal and was entered in the Guinness Book as the “Farthest-Flying Human Projectile (Involuntary).”

From Highflyer’s deck log:

8:40 am: Port watch of stokers landed for route march.
8:45 am: Collision between IMO (Belgian relief ship) and S.S. MONT BLANC (French) .
8:48 am: Fire broke out on MONT BLANC.
8:55 am: Commander Triggs and Lieutenant Ruffles proceeded in whaler to investigate.
9:08 am: Mont Blanc exploded (cargo, ammunition previously unknown) causing large wave and setting Richmond on fire. Damage was done to HIGHFLYER and to most of its boats. The skiff was sent to find the whaler’s crew and picked up Murphy AB who was unconscious and later died. Becker AB was found on the shore, having swum there. No trace of the remainder of the whaler’s crew was found. HIGHFLYER received wounded from other ships, made temporary repairs and cleared debris. The ship had to be unmoored at one point because of the danger from its proximity to the PICTON and the fires. The watch of stokers which had been landed administered first aid on shore.
Casualties
Killed
Jones, Robert DCS 270699 ERA 1st class
Kelly, Francis DK 21331 Sto. 1st class
Rogers, Edn. Benjamin DK 33240 Sto. 1st class
Murphy, Joseph DJ 2308 Able Seaman, [who was picked up in the water] (whaler’s crew)
Missing (Whaler’s crew)
Triggs, Tom Kenneth Commander
Ruffles, James Rayward Lieutenant RNR
Rushen, Claude Eggleton LS DCS 234241
Fowling, James Able Seaman DCS 22261
Prewer, Samuel David Able Seaman DCS 236276
Wounded: 2
Slightly Wounded 25
Minor Injuries 20
Several Officers with facial injuries and injured tympanic membranes who carried on with their duties.
From other ships:
2 Pte. of Composite Regiment
2 of crew of Tug HILFORD (one, Perrin, Charles died later)
5 from S.S. PICTON
6 from S.S. IMO
3 others injured
55 other survivors, several with minor injuries were accommodated on board

Halifax explosion, with HMS Highflyer shown in the channel, via the Halifax Naval Museum

Repaired at Devonport, Highflyer was sent to Bermuda to serve as a guard and station ship for the first half of 1918 then returned to convoy work, escorting Yanks to Europe. She was off Glasgow on one such run when the Armistice was announced on 11 November.

Late-war she apparently had a dazzle scheme drawn up by British Vorticist (the very English modernist movement that grew out of Cubism) artist Edward Wadsworth who supervised the camouflaging of over 2,000 ships during the Great War.

HMS Highflyer, 1917 dazzle camo, Edward Wadsworth Art.IWM DAZ 37

Following a post-war refit at Devonport, Highflyer was sent once more to assume the role of flagship for the East Indies Station. Hoisting the flag of RADM Hugh H. D. Tothill, she held down the station from July 1919 to January 1921.

Paid off, she was sold for scrap at Bombay on 10 June 1921, at the time, she was the last Victorian-era cruiser in RN service.

Epilogue

The RN has not reissued the name “Highflyer” to another vessel.

However, in a salute to her extensive service on the East Indies Station– which was both her first and last posting– the “stone frigate” of the Royal Navy shore establishment in Trincomalee was named HMS Highflyer from 1943 until 1958 when the dockyard, wireless station, hospital, and headquarters facility was taken over by the Royal Ceylon Navy. I believe the old cruiser’s bell was located there during WWII but I can’t discern if/where it still exists. 

Our cruiser is remembered in maritime art.

HMS Highflyer by Alma Claude Burlton Cull 1880-1931

As well as in Delandres vignettes from the period.  

Of her sisters and half-sisters, Hermes was converted to a seaplane carrier in 1913, and sunk on 31 October 1914 by SM U 27.

HMS Hermes, sank after being struck by a torpedo from U-27 on October 31, 1914

Hyacinth spent her Great War career off Africa and assisted in the blockade of the German cruiser SMS Konigsberg there. She was decommissioned in 1919.

HMS Hyacinth listed to increase the range of her 6-inch guns, firing on German positions north of Lukuledi River, Lindi, German East Africa, 11th June 1917.

Near-sisters Challenger and Encounter, the latter in Australian service, spent the Great War off Africa and in the Pacific. While Challenger was broken up in 1920, Encounter would endure as a disarmed depot ship for the Royal Australian Navy throughout the 1920s until she was scuttled in 1932.

Modified Hermes class Challenger class protected cruiser HMAS Encounter IWM (Q 75381)

As for Highflyer’s hard-charging early war skipper, who captured Tubantia and sank Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, Admiral Sir Henry Tritton Buller, G.C.V.O., C.B., went on to command three different battleships and HM yachts before moving to the retired list in 1931. He passed in 1960, aged 86.

Meanwhile, KWdG’s skipper, Max Reymann, released himself from Spanish custody and managed to make it as far as Switzerland before the war ended. The bulk of his crew, some 350 men, were not as lucky and, catching a ride to the U.S. aboard the Spanish steamer Bethania, were intercepted in the Caribbean by the British armored cruiser HMS Essex and spent the rest of their war in a POW camp in Jamacia. Reymann returned to service, was appointed president of the Marinefriedenskommission (Naval Peace Commission) with the post-war Reichsmarine, and retired as a vice admiral in 1923. He passed in 1948, aged 76. He is remembered on the Ehrenrangliste der Kaiserlich Deutschen Marine (list of honorable men of the Imperial German Navy.)

Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, partially salvaged, is still in Rio de Oro, now in Moroccan waters. What is left of her wreck was located in shallow waters in 2013 and can be dived, with the proper permission.

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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Warship Wednesday, April 10, 2024: Mongolia by way of Massachusetts

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a 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

Warship Wednesday, April 10, 2024: Mongolia by way of Massachusetts

Photo by Geo. H. Russell. Library of Congress, Box PAN US Military-Army No.92 (E size). Control number 2007664426

Above we see, 105 years ago today (10 April 1919), the well-armed troopship USS Mongolia (ID 1615) arriving at Boston with the returning hometown boys of the 26th “Yankee” Division aboard.

Don’t let her passenger liner appearance fool you, she was a fighter and had the honor of the first surface engagement between U.S. Naval personnel and sailors of the Kaiserliche Marine.

The Beautiful Twins of the Pacific Mail Steamship Co.

Founded in 1848 originally to service the Panama Route across the isthmus during the California Gold Rush, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company had flown its red, white, and blue house flag from more than 60 passenger steamers before the 19th Century was out.

While the majority of these were smallish (2,000-3,000 ton) coastwise vessels, by the late 1890s the company had ordered four progressively larger liners– SS China (10,200 tons), SS Nile (11,000 tons), SS Korea (18,000 tons), and SS Siberia (18,500 tons)– to build its reputation and expand its reach across the Pacific, kicking off its Trans-Pacific service.

By 1901, it moved to pick up two new liners– SS Mongolia and SS Manchuria— that would be its crown jewels.

The sister ships, ordered from the nascent New York Shipbuilding Co in Camden, were huge for their era at 615 feet oal with a registered gross tonnage of 13,363 tons. They could carry 1,712 passengers in four different classes, with speeds sustained at 16 knots, intended for cruises from San Francisco to ports in China and Japan, with a midway stop in Hawaii. The service was later extended to Hong Kong and Manila.

At the time, they were the largest passenger vessels constructed in America, with class leader Mongolia delivered in February 1904. 

“Speed and Comfort” Pacific Mail Steamship Co. poster with artwork by Fred Pansing, showing Mongolia and citing the names of her fellow Trans-Pacific line vessels. LOC LC-DIG-ppmsca-58680

S.S. Mongolia at Manila, Philippine Islands, in 1913. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 45962

By August 1915, with a downturn in Pacific sailings, both Mongolia and sister Manchuria, along with the smaller Korea and Siberia, were sold to the Baltimore-based Atlantic Transport Line and soon began working from the East Coast.

As a war was going on in the Atlantic (ATL had already lost several of its ships to government requisition and U-boats), Mongolia made nine wartime crossings while the U.S. was neutral, carrying munitions and foodstuffs to a hungry England.

In this role, she had “American S. S. Mongolia” painted in large white letters along the sides of her hull flanked by American flags.

S.S. Mongolia, painted with neutrality markings, circa 1915-1917. 165-WW-274A-004

War!

On March 13, 1917– still three weeks away from the U.S. declaration of war– Secretary of the Navy Josephus “Cup of Joe” Daniels issued regs governing the conduct of armed American merchant vessels, on which Navy personnel designated as Armed Guards manned the guns. The Bureau of Ordnance would follow up on the directive and issue guidance to the fleet for the removal of 20 5-inch/51-caliber, 20 6-inch/40-caliber, 4 5-inch/50-caliber, and 26 3-inch/50-caliber guns from storage and warships in reserve for use on merchantmen.

Talk about armed neutrality!

The first to be armed would be the passenger liners Manchuria, Mongolia, and St. Louis, along with the steamships New York, Philadelphia, Kroonland, Aztec, and St. Paul.

Just two days after the SECNAV’s orders, the New York Navy Yard completed the installation of deck guns aboard Manchuria, St. Louis, Aztec, and New York, and on the 16th of March, Manchuria— outfitted with two 4-inch guns forward, one 6-inch gun aft, two 1-pounders, and two Lewis guns– left NYC to become the first American armed merchantman to sail for the European war zone.

Mongolia would receive three 6″/40 Mark 4s, two forward and one over her stern, and later add two additional mounts, giving her a total of five of these large guns– the rough equivalent of a light cruiser. Her initial Armed Guard, consisting of one officer (Massachusetts-born LT Bruce Richardson Ware, Jr., USNA ’07) and 22 enlisted (a size that would later double), likewise carried sidearms and had a locker of rifles and a pair of Lewis guns at their disposal as well.

S.S. Mongolia. One of the ship’s forward six-inch guns, taken while Mongolia was at sea in April 1917. These guns were manned by Armed Guard crews supplied by the U.S. Navy. NH 41973

Mongolia, 1917. Note 6″/40 on stern. 165-WW-335D-021

Mongolia would make history on the early morning of 19 April– the Anniversary of the Battle of Lexington– when, at 0522, the Armed Guard aboard her engaged and drove off a U-boat with their stern 6-inch gun—No. 263, nicknamed “Teddy Roosevelt”—while some 7 miles southeast of Beachy Head in the English Channel. She fired on the submarine, wrecking the periscope and conning tower, and forced it to submerge. These are considered the first shots by the U.S. Navy against Germany in the Atlantic.

S.S. Mongolia. Two officers on board the ship soon after her 19 April 1917 action with a German submarine. They are identified in the original photo captions as Lieutenant Charles F. (or Bruce R.) Ware, USN, and First Officer Waldo E. Wollaston (or Mollaston). Note the right-hand officer’s high boots, communications gear, and .45 caliber M1911 pistol; binoculars worn by both; and non-U.S. Navy insignia on the left-hand officer’s cap. NH 52704

USS Mongolia. The ship’s after six-inch gun, with several shells, circa 1918. This gun was nicknamed Teddy, after former President Theodore Roosevelt. The original image is printed on postcard (AZO) stock. Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2009. NH 106599

S.S. Mongolia. The ship’s after six-inch gun and its crew, April 1917. The two officers at right are identified, in the original photo caption, as Lieutenant Ware and Captain Emory Rice of the U.S. Naval Reserve Force. Note shells on deck, painted with letters: T-E-X-A-S and T-E-D-D-Y. NH 781

The news was electric and widely reported on both sides of the Atlantic, eventually passing into the post-war record.

The engagement was the subject of an art piece by Joseph Christian Leyendecker, used widely in reference to the Mongolia vs U-boat fight, with the gunners, in Leyendecker fashion, shirtless.

As noted by press accounts of interviews given by the ship’s skipper, Capt. Emery Rice:

“It was twenty-two after five o’clock in the morning of the 19th that we sighted the submarine. The officer commanding the gunners was with me on the bridge where, in fact, we had been the most time throughout the voyage.” Captain Rice continues, “There was a haze over the sea at the time. We had just taken a sounding for we were getting near shallow water, and we were looking at the lead when the first mate cried: “My God, there’s a submarine off the port bow!”

“The submarine was close to us, too close in fact for her purpose, and the boat was submerging again in order to maneuver into a better position for torpedoing was where we sighted her.” Rice continues “We saw the periscope go down and the swirl of the water. I quickly ordered the man at the wheel to put her to starboard and we swung the nose of the ship toward the spot where the submarine had been.”

“We were going at full speed ahead and two minutes after we first sighted the U-boat it emerged again about 1,000 yards off. Its intention probably had been to catch us broadside, but when it appeared he had the stern gun trained full on it. The gun crew commander, Lieutenant Ware gave the command “1,000 yards, Scale 50” and the big gun boomed. Gunner’s Mate James A. Goodwin was on the gun at the time, and he actually fired the shell that hit the U-boat. We saw the periscope shatter and tumble end over end across the water and the submarine disappeared. I can’t speak too highly of the cool manner in which the lieutenant handled his crew of gunners. It was a fine exhibition of the efficiency of American Naval men.” The whole encounter lasted only about two minutes. Lt. Ware gave the order to fire, and Gunner’s mate Goodwin pulled the lanyard firing the first shot, which missed. Reloading quickly, the gun crew fired again, and this time they were right on target hitting the conning tower of the U-boat. This shell exploded and hit the area of the conning tower. Quickly in a foamy froth of bubbles, the German slipped beneath the sea. America had just inflicted its first blood at sea against Germany, and it was over as quickly as it had started.

Captain Rice continues, “I assure you we did not stop after the incident, but steamed away at full speed, for it was not improbable that there was another submarine about. The one I got undoubtedly had been lying on the bottom at the spot waiting for the ship and came up when it heard our propellers. I immediately sent a wireless stating that a submarine had been seen.” Rice ended his statement with this “That’s about all the story except this. The gunners had named the guns on board the Mongolia and the one which got the submarine was called “Teddy” after Theodore Roosevelt; so Teddy fired the first gun of the war after all.” Captain Rice stated that Teddy Roosevelt was from Allison, Massachusetts, and that the encounter with the submarine occurred on the date when Massachusetts was celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington.

Ware’s version was less verbose:

We were just leaving New York Harbor when word reached us that Congress had declared war. On the way over we had daily gun practice and some ill luck with our 6-inch fixed ammunition. By the time we reached the submarine zone, our two bow guns had damaged bores and were not firing true. It was at dawn on the morning of the 19th of April, the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, that we sighted the U-boat coming at us off the bow. Realizing that our forward guns were unreliable, we swung the Mongolia hard to starboard. The submarine, delighted to see us offering a broadside target for its torpedo, also swung around, coming into the range of our port guns. Our first shot caught the sub square on the conning tower beneath the periscope. There was a splash and when the water cleared away, there was no more submarine.

Post-war analysis doesn’t show a U-boat lost in these waters at the time Mongolia reported the incident, but it is posed by some that the boat involved may have been S.M. UB 40, an extremely successful member of the Flandern Flotilla, which reported taking gunfire in the same area without significant damage around this time.

Both Ware and Rice (who was sheep-dipped as a USNRF officer) were soon issued the Navy Cross.

While widely celebrated, the Armed Guards of Mongolia received what was possibly more press coverage due to an accident that occurred on a later voyage the following month.

On 20 May 1918, while just a few hours out of New York, while conducting target practice with the famed Teddy, an accident occurred that left a group of Red Cross nurses crossing over to France, who were observing the crew at work, with two dead and a third injured.

As noted by the SECNAV’s office at the time:

When about 100 miles to sea, in accordance with the usual procedure, guns were fired to test mounts, ammunition, and to practice the navy crew in their use. The guns were of the 6-inch caliber for which the shell and powder are loaded separately into the gun. The powder charge is contained in a brass case and there held in place by a pasteboard wad, distance pieces, and a brass mouth cup that fits closely, thus making a moisture-tight joint in order that the powder may always give the velocity and pressure intended. When the gun is fired this brass cup is propelled some distance, sometimes whole and sometimes in pieces, but always in front of the gun. Several nurses who were watching the firing were sitting on the promenade deck some 175 feet abaft and 10 feet above the gun. On the third shot the brass mouth cup struck the water peculiarly, boomeranged directly back to the ship, struck the stanchion near where the nurses were sitting and broke. Its pieces instantly killed Mrs. Edith Ayres and Miss Helen Burnett Wood, of Chicago

“Miss Helen B. Wood, the Chicago Red Cross nurse who was instantly killed in a gun accident while the gun crew of the armed American liner Mongolia was at target practice at sea,” followed by an ARC photo of Miss Edith Ayres. Signal Corps 165-WW-55B-84 via NARA/LOC LC-A6195- 4962

For what it is worth, later Congressional hearings into the incident charged that the fuzes involved were of “inferior workmanship” and that the Navy had not inspected them before accepting them from the Raleigh Iron Works, which was in the midst of rushed war work. In the hearings, the makers of the fuzes rebutted the charge, and the whole thing was written off as a terrible, but freak, accident.

Mongolia and her guard, then under one LT Philip Seymour, would, on 1 June 1917, engage another U-boat in a surface action. As noted in Seymour’s Navy Cross citation, the “enemy submarine fired a torpedo at that vessel, which, through quick maneuvering, missed the ship. Four shots were fired at the periscope when the submarine disappeared.”

On 9 April 1918, SECNAV Daniels announced that seven Army-run War Department transports and store ships—Finland (ID-4543), Pastores (ID-4540/AF-16), Tenadores, Henry R. Mallory (ID-1280), Lenape (ID-2700), Mongolia (ID-1615), and Manchuria (ID-1633)—were to be taken over by the Navy.

This led USS Mongolia to be commissioned in the Navy on 8 May 1918, with CDR E. McDowell in command. She went on to make 13 cross-Atlantic voyages from the U.S. to France, transporting over 33,000 troops, before decommissioning on 11 September 1919 for return to her owner. Likewise, her sistership Manchuria had bested that number, carrying 39,000 troops in 13 round trips to Europe (nine of them after the Armistice).

World War I Troop Transport Convoy at Sea, 1918. The most distant ship, in the left center, is the USS Mongolia (ID # 1615). The nearer ship, misidentified on the original print as USS Mercury (ID # 3012), is USS Madawaska (ID # 3011). Note the small destroyer ahead of the forward ship. Photographed by V.J.M. Donation of Charles R. Haberlein Jr., 2008. NH 106288

USS Mongolia (ID # 1615) at the New York Navy Yard, 28 June 1918, after being painted in pattern camouflage. NH 50252

USS Mongolia (ID # 1651) In port, while painted in dazzle camouflage, circa 1918. Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2008. NH 105722

Nurses of Mobile Hospital #39, onboard Mongolia. A.T.S. Base Section #1. St. Nazaire Jan. 20. 1919 111-SC-46348

Homeward-bound troops taking their afternoon walk. St. Nazaire, Jan. 20 1919 111-SC-46349

USS Mongolia. Brest, 1919 111-SC-158226_001

102nd Artillery 26th Division loading on the Mongolia. Brest 3.31.19 111-SC-158223_001

103rd Artillery, 26th Division loading on the S. S. Mongolia. Brest, Finistere, France 3.31.19 111-SC-158225_001

LC-DIG-ggbain-23572

With troops aboard. Note her 6″/40. LC-DIG-ggbain-28781

Officers and men of Mongolia

Camouflaged U.S. Navy transport in harbor with barge and a passenger ferry alongside, circa 1918 or very early 1919. This ship is probably the USS Mongolia (ID # 1615). Donation of Charles R. Haberlein Jr., 2009. NH 106646

Returning to Trade

Post Versailles, Mongolia and Manchuria were operated by the rebooted New York‑Hamburg steamship line, making regular trips to Weimar-era Germany.

SS Mongolia at the St. Pauli Landing Stage, Hamburg, Germany, while in commercial service after World War I. Donation of Captain Stephen S. Roberts, USNR (Retired), 2008. NH 105919

Re-acquired by the Panama Pacific Lines in 1925, within a few years she was under the flag of the Dollar Steam Ship Lines, then in 1938, under the ownership of the American President Lines, was renamed SS President Fillmore.

Mongolia in Gaillard Cut March 17, 1926 185-G-1094

During the first days of WWII, she was sold to Wallam & Co. on 2 February 1940 and would sail for Cia Transatlantica Centroamericana under the Panamanian flag named (wait for it) SS Panamanian, and would carry commercial cargo through the conflict, managing to avoid further U-boat activity.

After suffering a fire at Freemantle’s North Quay while carrying a 10,000-ton cargo of flour in January 1945, she was scrapped at Shanghai in 1946.

As for her sister Manchuria, she had a similar interbellum history but, as the American-flagged President Line’s SS President Johnson, was requisitioned by the War Shipping Administration in 1941 and carried troops throughout the Pacific during WWII. 

Sold post-war to a Panamanian firm, she continued sailing as SS Santa Cruz, typically carrying European war refugees to South America, and was scrapped in 1952.

Epilogue

Mongolia’s naval plans are in the National Archives, as are her USS and USAT deck logs.

One of her 6″40s, No. 155, is preserved at Gosport Park, in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Speaking of Mongolia’s Armed Guard, Ware, its Navy Cross-wearing commander, went on to become an instructor at the Naval Academy then, after passing through the Naval War College program and later the Army War College, would become the XO of the transport USS Gold Star in the 1920s and then filled the same billet on the dreadnought USS West Virginia— during which the battlewagon was first in gunnery in the fleet. He also published extensively.

Retiring from the Navy as a captain in 1935, he passed in San Diego and is buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.

Mongolia is well remembered in the period of maritime art and postcards. 

S.S. Mongolia artwork, printed on a postal card issued by the Jewish Welfare Board to Soldiers and Sailors of the U.S. Army & Navy, during World War I. NH 45961

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.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International.

They are one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

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.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I am a member, so should you be!

Legion calling…

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70 years ago today: 5 Septembre 1953 – Indochine Française. Radioman 1er bataillon du 3e Régiment Etranger d’Infanterie (1/3e REI).

Photo by Pierre Ferrari/ECPAD/Défense TONK 53-84 R3

Note the M1 Thompson submachine gun in the center of the photo and a MAS 36 on the ground to the left. Also, drink in the Mle. 47/49 bush caps– “Le Chapeau de Brousse“– and a “canne du poilus,” a staple of French soldiers going back to 1914. 

Formed 11 November 1915 to serve in the Great War from the shattered remnants of other Foreign Legion units, the 3e REI earned its kepis under the command of the famed Lt. Col. Paul-Frédéric Rollet, “the father of the Legion” at the siege of de Belly-en-Santerr, the Somme, Verdun, and in piercing the Hindenburg Line. Following inter-war service in Africa and combat against the Germans in 1940 and 1943-45, the regiment embarked for Indochina in 1946 and served through Dien Bien Phu, losing 3,837 Legionnaires in Southeast Asia. Notably, its Indochina-era march, “Anne-Marie du 3e REI” has its lyrics in German, a clear reference to the old “Devil’s Guard” days when much of the Legion were former Wermacht and even Waffen SS troopers.

Following combat in Algeria, the regiment moved to Madagascar in 1962 when that country became independent and then, in 1973, back to the jungles when it shifted garrison to Kourou in French Guiana where it still exists today as a battalion-sized light infantry force guarding France’s space center and operating the French Army jungle warfare school.

The more things change…

La Tragedie…or Non-conformite?

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The French Interior Ministry, on the basis that the country had as many as six million unregistered firearms in public hands, recently sought to get them surrendered. 

This gun “surplus” in the government’s eyes came due to several factors. A crossroads of large-scale military campaigns going back centuries– the first recorded European battle where cannons were used was at Crecy in Northern France in 1346– the country has seen most of the modern armies of the continent fight their way across its soil at one time or another, leaving lots of gear behind. Added to this was an extensive underground Resistance army that swelled to 400,000 freedom fighters equipped by Allied weapon drops during World War II, which saw many guns quietly squirreled away afterward, just in case. Finally, the country saw a vibrant and active shooting sports community that, in more recent years, has declined. 

Now, to get those “off-record” inherited or heirloom guns either recorded on the government’s books or destroyed, the French government held a nationwide “amnesty” for “armes héritées et trouvées” or “legacy and found weapons.” The event, held from Nov. 25 through Dec. 2 at more than 300 locations, allowed individuals to bring in undeclared guns and either relinquish them or register them with the government, joining the growing list of 5 million firearms already documented. 

In other words, the event wasn’t aimed at getting guns out of the hands of criminals, but out of the average resident’s closet and garage. 

In all, only some 150,000 firearms and 4 million rounds of ammunition were abandoned while another 50,000 guns were registered, falling far short of the government’s estimate of six million, meaning that non-compliance among many off-book gun owners remains high.

Still, some of the guns turned in were amazing.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Warship Wednesday, April 20, 2022: A Member of the Easter Egg Fleet

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a 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

Warship Wednesday, April 20, 2022: A Member of the Easter Egg Fleet

Historic New England Nathaniel L. Stebbins photographic collection negative 13620

Here we see the fine Glasgow designed-and-built steam yacht Christabel steaming offshore on 8 August 1902. While this elegant little schooner doesn’t look very formidable, she would prove herself in the Great War soon enough.

Built for Arthur Challis Kennard, Ironmaster and Justice of the Peace of the Falkirk Iron Works, Falkirk, Christabel was a steel-hulled schooner-rigged steamer some 150 feet overall and 248 grt. Designed by the famed GL Watson firm and built by D & W Henderson & Co. of Meadowside Yard as Yard No. 370, she was completed in October 1893, with her first port of register being Glasgow. Mr. Kennard was a well-known yachtsman, and his name and vessels can be found in numerous yachting and rowing calendars of the day.

From Llyod’s Register of Yachts 1901, see entry #206, with the 248 grt Christabel listed:

Unfortunately, Mr. Kennard would pass in 1903, aged 72, and sold his beautiful Christabel sometime prior, hence appearing in New England waters in the above circa 1902 image.

Christabel 8 September 1906, now with a white scheme, something else that would indicate new owners. Stebbins negative 17648

By 1909, she was listed as being owned by Mr. Walton Ferguson, Sr. of New York City. Ferguson was well known as President of St. John Wood-Working Company as well as Stamford Electric, Vice President of Stamford Trust Company, and a director of Union Carbide, in addition to a longtime Commodore of the Stamford Yacht Club.

From Lloyd’s Register of American Yachts, 1914, listing her as #575 under Mr. Ferguson still as 248 grt with an overall length of 164 feet and waterline length of 140:

By 1916, Christabel was one of at least two large yachts in the fleet of Irving Ter Bush, one of the wealthiest men on the planet and founder of Bush Terminal in Brooklyn, Bush Tower in Manhattan, and Bush House in London.

When the U.S. entered the war with Germany, Mr. Bush sold Christabel to the Navy Department in April 1917– some 105 years ago this month– and after a very short conversion period she was commissioned on 31 May 1917 at the New York Navy Yard, becoming USS Christabel (SP-162). Her skipper was a regular officer, LT Herbert Berhard Riebe (USNA 1906), whose prior experience was in cruisers and destroyers.

Her conversion saw her pick up a speckled gray paint scheme, two 3-inch deck guns, a pair of M1895 potato digger-style machine guns, and some depth charges. More on the depth charges in a minute.

She was in good company, as no less than 40 large steam and auxiliary yachts also designed by G. L. Watson were armed for wartime work– although most were by the Royal Navy.

Christabel is listed on the bottom left, along with her near sisters and cousins

Off to war!

Assigned to Squadron Three, Patrol Force, Atlantic Fleet even before she was commissioned, Christabel was one of eight hastily armed East Coast yachts– including USS Corsair (S. P. 159), Aphrodite (S. P. 135), Harvard (S. P. 209), Sultana (S. P. 134), Kanawha II (S. P. 130), Vedette (S. P. 163), and Noma (S. P. 131)-– being fitted out to go to France for the purpose of coastal convoy and anti-submarine work. Of these eight, Christabel had the dubious distinction of being both the oldest and slowest.

Shoving off to cross the Atlantic on 9 June, Christabel and five other patrol yachts arrived in Brest (via the Azores) appropriately on July 4th, 1917. With CPT (later RADM) William B. Fletcher, U.S.N., as squadron commander, the force made a splash due to their hastily applied camouflaged paint schemes, applied while underway in some cases.

Via “On the Coast of France,” by Joseph Husband, Ensign, USNRF:

Due to the unusually fantastic scheme of camouflage which disguised the ships of the Second Squadron, these yachts were commonly known as the ”Easter Egg Fleet,” every conceivable color having been incorporated in a riotous speckled pattern on their sides.

USS Christabel (SP-162) In port, circa 1918-1919. Taken by Carl A. Stahl, Photographer, USN. NH 300

Although often nursing cranky machinery– Christabel had almost 30 years on her engine and broke down often– she was part of no less than 30 coastal convoys, being particularly useful in the role of bringing up the rear of convoys and policing stragglers and survivors of lost vessels.

First, she saves

Speaking of saving lives, on the night of 17 April 1918, the U.S.-flagged cargo ship SS Florence H. (3,820grt) suddenly erupted in a brilliant fireball while at anchor in Quiberon Bay as her cargo of 2,200 tons of smokeless powder lit off. Several vessels in the harbor rushed to her aid, including Christabel. Although 45 of her complement and Naval Armed Guard perished, 78 men were rescued, although about half of those were extensively burned and injured. For the rescue, one of Christabel’s CPOs earned a DSC.

Chief Pharmacist Mate Louis Zeller, United States Navy. Member of the crew of the USS Christabel while on patrol duty off Brest, France, during World War I, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by Admiral Wilson. Zeller dove into the water filled with burning exploding powder boxes from the Florence H., to rescue severely burned seamen, managing to accomplish this within seconds of a severe explosion. NH 63045

Then she attacks

Just a month after saving men from the Florence H., Christabel had a close brush with one of Kaiser Willy’s U-boats and at the time was credited with damaging it enough to put it out of the war.

Via “Account of the Operations of the American Navy in France During the War with Germany,” by VADM Henry Braid Wilson, United States Navy Commander, United States Naval Forces in France: 

On the afternoon of 21 May 1918, the CHRISTABEL, the smallest of the converted yachts operating in French waters, was escorting a slow ship which had dropped behind the north-bound convoy from La Pallice to Quiberon Bay.

This vessel, the British steamer DANSE, was about eight miles behind the convoy, making about seven and a half knots, with the CHRISTABEL on her port bow. The sea was smooth, weather clear with no wind.

When about two miles outside of Ile de Yeu a well-defined oil slick was sighted on the port bow. The CHRISTABEL cruised around it but saw nothing definite.

At 5 :20 p. m. The Officer-of-the-Deck and the lookout suddenly sighted a wake, about six hundred yards distant on the port quarter, the CHRISTABEL at this time being about 300 yards on the port bow of the DANSE.

The CHRISTABEL headed for it, making all possible speed—about ten and a half knots—whereupon the wake disappeared, and a number of oil slicks were seen.

The Commanding Officer followed this oil as well as he could and at 5:24 p. m., believing that his ship was nearly ahead of the submarine, dropped a depth charge, but no results were obtained although the charge exploded.

At 7:00 p. m. the convoy changed course following the contour of the land and was making about nine knots. The CHRISTABEL was astern, making about eleven knots to catch up.

At 8:52 p. m. the CHRISTABEL sighted a periscope about two hundred yards off the starboard beam. She turned and headed for it, whereupon the periscope disappeared.

At 8:55 p. m. a depth charge was dropped which functioned in ten seconds, followed by a second one a few moments afterwards.

Nothing followed the explosion of the first charge, but following the explosion of the second there was a third very violent explosion which threw up between the stern of the CHRISTABEL and the water column raised by the second charge, an enormous amount of water and debris.

The CHRISTABEL then turned and cruised in the vicinity and noticed a quantity of heavy black oil and splintered pieces of wood, with very large oil bubbles rising to the surface.

Nothing further was heard of this submarine, but, on May 24, 1918, an enemy submarine, the U. C. 56, arrived at Santander, Spain, in a very seriously damaged condition, and from such information as was received, it was believed that this was the vessel attacked by the CHRISTABEL.

German Submarine UC-56 (KptLt/in Wilhelm Kiesewetter). Caption: At Christabel, Spain where she interned herself, 24 May 1918, after injuries received in an encounter with a U.S. Patrol Yacht. The explosion of one of the Yacht’s depth charges was followed by a second detonation after which splinter wood and much heavy oil came to the surface. The UC-56 is primarily a mine-laying submarine, her elaborate camouflage is distinct in the photograph. NH 111101.

Christabel’s skipper, LT Riebe, earned the Navy Cross for the attack and was made an Honorary Commander in the OBE through the offices of the Admiralty. He retired from the Navy in 1938 as a Captain with the Bureau of Navigation, died in 1946, and is buried at Arlington.

Another of Christabel’s officers, Ensign Daniel Augustus Joseph Sullivan, USNRF, came away from the action earning one of just 21 Medals of Honor presented to U.S. Navy personnel in the Great War.

Medal of Honor citation of Ensign Daniel A.J. Sullivan (as printed in the official publication “Medal of Honor, 1861-1949, The Navy”, page 125):

For extraordinary heroism as an officer of the U.S.S. Christabel in conflict with an enemy submarine on 21 May 1918. As a result of the explosion of a depth bomb dropped near the submarine, the Christabel was so badly shaken that a number of depth charges which had been set for firing were thrown about the deck and there was imminent danger that they would explode. Ensign Sullivan immediately fell on the depth charges and succeeded in securing them, thus saving the ship from disaster, which would inevitably have caused great loss of life.

Portrait photograph, taken circa 1920. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism while serving in USS Christabel (SP-162) during action with a German submarine on 21 May 1918. He was a Naval Reserve Force Ensign at that time. Note the overseas service chevrons on his uniform sleeve. Sullivan would go on to serve in destroyers, and then in the U.S. Navy headquarters in London at the end of the war and into 1919, leaving the USNRF as an LCDR. He died on 27 January 1941 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. NH 44173

In September, VADM Wilson signaled Christabel she was entitled to carry a white star on her stack, denoting an enemy submarine kill. Only two other American ships in France, USS Fanning (Destroyer No. 37) and the yacht Lydonia (S. P. 700) would join the same club.

USS Christabel (SP-162) View of the ship’s smokestack, circa 1919. The star painted on it represents the German submarine she was then credited with having sunk during World War I. Note steam whistle on the forward side of the stack. NH 55162

Epilogue

Completing her war service, the little Christabel left Brest in early December 1918 and headed home. She would celebrate Christmas in Bermuda and arrive in New London, Connecticut on New Year’s Eve.

Placed in reserve at the Marine Basin in Brooklyn on 17 May 1919, she was disposed of the next month, and sold to the Savannah Bar Pilots Association for $22,510.

According to The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2 (June 1934), pp. 145-175, she was renamed for the first time in her life to Savannah and used as a pilot boat well into the 1930s. 

Christabel/Savannah‘s final fate is unknown, but she was apparently disposed of by the pilots before World War II.

Speaking of WWII, post-war research discounted Christabel’s role in damaging SM UC-56, but the minelaying U-boat still missed the rest of the conflict. Surrendered post-Armistice Day, she was turned over to the French and scuttled.

U-boats U-108 and UC-56, in Brest docks in 1918, turned over to the French under armistice terms, UC-56 in the foreground. NARA 45511774

The subject of much controversy, UC-56’s only success of the war was the marked and unarmed HMs Hospital Ship Glenart Castle, which sunk on 26 February 1918 with the loss of 162 including eight female nurses and 99 patients. The submarine reportedly attempted to cover up the action actions by shooting survivors in the water.

The British arrested her commander, KptLt/in Wilhelm Kiesewetter, as he was returning to Germany from Spain and tossed him in the Tower of London as a war criminal before eventually releasing him without trial. Kiesewetter, at age 61, was recalled in 1939 and is cited as the “oldest Kriegsmarine officer to command an operational U–boat,” having been the skipper of UC–1 from November 1940 to May 1941. “This boat was the ex-Norwegian submarine B-5, captured in 1940 and commissioned into the Kriegsmarine on 20 November 1940.”

Specs:

Tonnage: 248 GRT, 103 NRT
Length: 164 ft overall (per DANFS)
Beam: 22 ft
Draft: 9 ft 8 in (12.5 ft depth of hold) (listed as 11 ft. 3 in the draft in 1914 Lloyds
Installed power: 1-screw. T3Cyl. (13, 20 & 33 – 24in) 160lb. 53NHP triple expansion engine
Auxiliary sail rig: two-masted schooner
Speed: 12 knots
Complement (1917) 55 officers and enlisted men
Armament:
2 x 1 3″/23 caliber deck guns
2 x M1895 Marlin/Colt .30-06 machine guns
Depth charges

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

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.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021: Behold, the Destroyerzooka

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a 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

Warship Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021: Behold, the Destroyerzooka

Here we see the Soviet Orfey (Orpheus)-class destroyer Engels (formerly Desna) with his (Russian warships are always masculine by tradition) unique stern 12-inch (305mm) Kurchevsky pattern “Dynamo-Reactive” recoilless rifle, circa the summer of 1934. A tough little ship going past his goofy one-off experimental gun, he had an interesting life.

Background

With a shredded naval list after the Russo-Japanese War, having lost two out of three fleets, the Tsarist Imperial Navy needed new ships of every stripe in the 1910s as they were facing an increasingly modern Ottoman fleet in the Black Sea as well as the Swedes (always a possible opponent) and the German juggernaut in the Baltic. Part of the naval buildout was a series of 52 destroyers derived from the Novik.

Novik was a great destroyer for 1910. At some 1,600-tons full load, he could make 37.3 knots, which is still fast for a destroyer today, and carried four twin 18-inch torpedo tubes (eight tubes total) as well as four 4-inch guns.

The follow-on Orfey-class upgrade from Novik, planned to number 23 vessels, ended up being trimmed back to just 16 due to the Great War and Russia’s series of revolutions and civil war, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Some 1,440-tons when fully loaded, the 321-foot tin cans used a plant that had two Curtis-AEG-Vulkan turbines and four Normand-Vulkan boilers on two shafts to make 32 knots, making them still very fast for the age but slightly slower than the 6-boiler/3-turbine/3-shaft plant seen in Novik. However, they carried more torpedo tubes, a total of nine, in addition to their four 4″/60 Vickers-Obukhovski Pattern 1911 guns.

Ofrey class destroyer plan. These ships, benefiting from the Russo-Japanese war experience, had double the main transverse bulkheads of pre-1904 Russian destroyers with 12 watertight sections (each with their own pumping systems) as well as individually compartmentalized boilers, hence all the funnels. The keel was made of doubled 6mm steel sheets set at angles to each other, creating a double hull of sorts. Lacking true armor, the conning tower/bridge was made of half-inch ordnance steel sheets to provide splinter and small arms protection. Interestingly, the topside radio room (one 2 kW transmitter and two receivers) and two 45-cm searchlights were fed by a separate 10kW Penta kerosene dynamo protected centrally, rather than the rest of the ship’s power which was provided by two 20 kW turbo generators.

Desna, shown here in fitting out at the Kolpino Metalworks in Petrograd (Great War-era St. Petersburg) had nine 18-inch torpedo tubes.

Closer detail on those tubes

And even closer

His initial armament, as with the rest of the class, included four long-barreled 4″/60 Vickers-Obukhovski Pattern 1911 guns, one over the bow, and three crowding her stern. These could fire a 66-pound HE or 52-pound “Diving” shell at 12 rounds per minute, providing the crew was drilled properly, to a range of 17,600 yards. Two 150-shell magazines, fore, and aft, were installed below deck. The guns were directed by a 9-foot Barr & Stroud 30x stereoscopic rangefinder of RN F.Q. 2 pattern.

Laid down in November 1914, three months into the Great War, Desna was named after the famed tributary of the Dnieper that runs through Smolensk to Kyiv.

Commissioned 16 August 1916, he was rushed into operations and famously came to the defense of the heroic but obsolete Borodino-class battleship Slava during the long-running Battle of Moon Sound, in which the Russian battlewagon gave, by all accounts, a full measure against a much larger and more powerful German force.

Slava, after the Battle of Moon Sound

Helping to evacuate Slava’s crew, Desna fired torpedoes into the stricken battlewagon to prevent it from falling into German hands. Desna’s brother, Grom, was sunk during the operation.

Caption: A newly -completed Destroyer of the improved “Novik” Type, either DESNA (1915-1941) or AZARD (1916-1919). Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., 1983. Catalog #: NH 94295

Same, NH 94294

Same, NH 94296

Civil War

Becoming part of the Red Baltic Fleet by default during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Desna took part in the “Ice Campaign” during which the force broke through the frozen Baltic to escape Helsinki ahead of the Germans in April 1918.

Based at the fortress island of Kronstadt, Desna took part in operations against the British in 1918-19. (During this period, brother Gavriil helped sink HM Submarine L-55 and three British torpedo boats, while brothers Konstantin and Vladimir/Svoboda were sunk in turn by British mines. Another classmate, Kapitan Miklucha Maklai/Spartak, was captured by the British and turned over to the Estonians.)

Then, in the continued evolution of counterrevolution, Desna and company fought against the Bolsheviks in the 1921 revolt of the Red Fleet.

Rudolf Franz’s 1936 painting depicts the storming of Kronstadt by the Red Army to put down the revolt. Over a thousand were killed on both sides and an estimated 2,100 rebellious sailors were executed or disappeared into labor camps.

In part to wipe out the stain of his role in the brutally suppressed Kronstadt revolt, Desna was renamed in 1922 to Engels, celebrating the German socialist philosopher of the same name who helped develop Marxism.

An ice-bound Engels

Then came several years of lingering operations and refits, as the Soviets were cash strapped for operational funds throughout the rest of the decade. During this period, classmates Orfey and Letun, in bad technical condition after Great War damage, were broken up after the Civil war.

Dynamo-Reactive!

In 1932, Engels was refitted and rebuilt, emerging two years later with a new engineering plant as well as a new gun over his stern in place of two of his 4-inchers.

A design came from the mind of weapon engineer Leonid Kurchevsky, who was fascinated with recoilless rifles. He had spent time in Stalin’s gulag system then emerged in 1929 to catch the eye of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the “Red Napolean” military theoretician who wanted to see Kurchevsky’s simple designs fitted on everything.

Kurchevsky and some of his recoilless rifles in the early 1930s.

The Kurchevsky gun fitted on Engels was awkward, only able to fire to port and starboard with a low train and elevation.

It fired a 660-pound shell to 14,000 yards but proved inaccurate, unreliable, and prone to malfunction. A larger 15-inch model was to be installed on a cruiser but never made it off the drawing board.

I mean, come on…

While some 2,000~ Kurchevsky guns were delivered, fitted to tanks and vehicles as well as ships, it turns out they sucked.

Via Global Security: 

Soon the “bubble” burst. It turned out that the armor-piercing shells of anti-tank DRP, even when fired at point-blank, were not able to penetrate armor thicker than 30 mm. The accuracy and range of field artillery guns do not meet the requirements at all. At the same time, the guns themselves are unreliable and unsafe during operation, there had been numerous cases of rupture of barrels during firing.

Aircraft and naval automatic cannons of the Kurchevsky caliber from 37 to 152 mm gave constant failures and delays during firing due to incomplete combustion of the nitro-fabric sleeves and the unreliable operation of the pneumatic recharge mechanism, which made this weapon absolutely not combat-ready. Soon all PDDs were removed from the troops and destroyed. By June 22, 1941, there was not a single Kurchevsky gun in service with the Red Army.

While Tukhachevsky was sacked in 1937 for other reasons and scapegoated as a Trotskyist in the Great Purge before WWII, Kurchevsky got the wrap at around the same time directly for his funky weaponry. Thrown back in the gulag the inventor was executed sometime in the late 1930s.

War, again, and again

With the Russians flexing against the Finns in the 1939-40 Winter War, Desna/Engels, his Kurchevsky gun landed, and his old 4-inchers reinstalled, bombarded Finnish positions and installations, a task for which his 9-foot draft no doubt assisted.

When the Germans invaded in 1941, Engels was used in coastal minelaying and convoy duty.

Just two weeks after Barbarossa kicked off, on 6 July, he and two other destroyers (Serditogo and Sil’nyy) clashed with two German minesweepers (M-23 and M-31) in what is known today as the Battle of the Irbensky Strait. Famed in Russian naval lore as it was the largest surface battle they fought in the Baltic in WWII; it is much less known outside of the Motherland. This is probably because all vessels involved sailed away after the engagement, a tactical draw.

Damaged extensively on 7 August 1941 by a 550-pound bomb dropped via Stuka, Engels was soon patched up and two weeks later sailed from Tallinn in occupied Estonia to Kronstadt as part of one of the desperate convoys headed north from the doomed port. That month, some 190 Soviet ships and 40,000 souls attempted to escape. The seaborne evacuation of encircled Tallin to Krondstadt and Leningrad went down in history as the “Soviet Dunkirk.” 

With the route obvious to the Germans and Finns, the Axis planted 2,000 mines in what became known as the Juminda Barrage. 

A German map from 1941 showing the location of the Juminda mine barrage

It was on this voyage that he stumbled across a German minefield off Cape Juminda, hitting one with his bow and shrugged it off, damage control successful. However, while the damaged destroyer was being rigged for towing by the icebreaker Oktyabr, Engels hit a second mine that exploded under her stern and triggered the aft 4-inch magazine. That was it and she rolled over and sank. 

Four days later, classmates Pobiditel/Volodarski and Azard/Artyom were lost in a similar minefield in the same Tallinn-to-Kronstadt run. Some 80 ships eventually hit mines in the Jumidia Barrage, with at least 21 Soviet warships, including five destroyers sent to the bottom in August alone. 

Epilogue

As with Desna/Engels, few Orfey-class destroyers made it out of WWII. Three units that survived by nature of serving with the Northern Fleet out of Murmansk and two more with the Pacific Fleet out of Vladivostok remained in service into the early 1950s but were soon discarded. The last remaining example of the class, Spartak, spent her final days in Peru’s Pacific coast as the Estonians had sold her to that Latin American country in the 1930s.

The class is remembered in some Soviet-era maritime art.

Meanwhile, a fishing net-wrapped wreck off Estonia’s Cape Yuminda, documented in 2016, could be the bones of Engels.

As for Leonid Kurchevsky, he was “rehabilitated posthumously in 1956” after the end of the Stalin regime. The next year, Marshal Tukhachevsky and his codefendants in the Purge trial were declared innocent of all charges and rehabilitated, posthumously.

Specs:


Displacement: 1,260 tons (standard) 1,440 tons (full load)
Length 321 ft 6 in
Beam 30 ft 6 in
Draught 9 ft 10 in
Machinery: 4 boilers (30,500 shp) 2 steam turbines, 2 shafts
Speed 32 knots
Range: 1,680 miles @21 knots
Complement: 150 (8 officers, 6 michman, 136 ratings)
Armament:
(1917)
4 x 4″/60 Vickers-Obukhovski Pattern 1911 guns in single unprotected mounts
1 x 40/39 Vickers AAA pom-pom anti-balloon gun
2 x Maxim machine guns (7.62×54)
9 x 18-inch torpedo tubes (3×3)
80 M1908 style sea anchor mines
10 depth charges

(1934)
1 x 12-inch recoilless rifle (experimental)
2 x 4″/60 Vickers-Obukhovski Pattern 1911 guns in single unprotected mounts
1 x 3″/28 Lender AAA
4 x 1 12.7mm/79 DK Heavy machine gun (drum fed)
9 x 18-inch torpedo tubes (3×3) with more modern 45-36Н torpedoes
2 x depth charge racks
58 mines

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A look at the ‘Mad Minute’

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A typical Tommy of the BEF’s original 1914, “The Old Contemptibles.” Not to be trifled with.

While slow, aimed, and deliberate fire was preferred– early SMLEs had magazine cut-off switches to leave the 10-rounds in the magazine as a sort of emergency reserve, forcing users to hand-feed single cartridges into the chamber as they went– the average “Tommy” was trained to deliver rapid-fire when needed, topped off by 5-shot charging clips.

As described in the British musketry regulations of the day, a trained rifleman should be able to lay down between 12 and 15 rounds in a minute, accurately.

In practice, the “Mad Minute” drill on the range became a standard of Commonwealth infantry for almost a half-century, with Australian troops still documented as carrying it out in the 1950s just before the Enfield was replaced with inch-pattern semi-auto FN FALs. Surpassing the 12-15 round minimum mark, some were able to squeeze in over 20 rounds in the same allotted time. One riflery instructor, Sergeant Alfred Snoxall, was credited with being able to deliver an amazing 38 hits on target with his Enfield in a one-minute period.

You see the Sergeant on the left, with an eye peeled for cockups? He will make sure your musketry is correct and by the book.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Gentleman Wormwood

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Here we see a bespoke U.S. Army cavalry officer, leaning on his French-style soldier’s cane, somewhere in Europe during the Great War. He is sporting the latest in chemical warfare fashion to include a British Small Box Respirator, M1917 “Brodie” helmet, and a gun belt with an M1911 pistol in a Model 1912 Mounted (Cavalry) holster with the tie cord wrapped around the bottom. He completes the ensemble with 1908 Pattern breeches (Jodhpurs) and officer’s riding boots while a Model 1918 Mackinaw coat keeps him as warm as German artillery fire.

He seems strangely relevant today.

Are YOU in the War?

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I thought this 6~ minute overview of the importance of British First World War recruitment posters from Richard Slocombe, formerly IWM’s Senior Curator of Art, was interesting, especially for anyone who admires military art or Great War period history.

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