From Imperial Spender to Internment: The German Navy in the First World War by Nicolas

Author:Nicolas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS027090; HISTORY / Military / World War I
ISBN: 9781848323353
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
Published: 2015-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

Normally at a known distance apart they would call upon the merchant ship to stop by flag signal or a warning shot, have the ship’s papers brought over and before sinking the ship give the crew time to get into the boats and then often tow them some of the way towards the coast. Because the very limited space aboard the U-boat permitted only a couple of the victim’s crew members to be taken aboard, this towing procedure was the only way to provide the crews of ships sunk with at least a degree of safety.5

This form of naval warfare failed to cause the British serious problems at any stage. The number of British ports and the daily tally of freighters unloading in them was too large, and the number of German U-boats available to stop it all too small. All the same, the U-boat war was uncommonly popular in Germany in this first phase of the war, because it helped soften the feelings of helplessness against Great Britain. ‘Our good German people,’ the then fleet commander Admiral Pohl wrote to his wife, ‘want to read every morning in their newspapers that once more X enemy ships have been sunk’.6

In the end it was one ship too many: on 7 May 1915, as already mentioned, U-20, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger, sank the British passenger ship Lusitania near the Old Head of Kinsale, south of Ireland. The ship was on the way from New York to Liverpool and, as was later discovered, was carrying munitions for the British Army. Amongst the approximately 1200 fatal casualties were seventy-nine children and 127 American citizens. The argument continues to this day as to whether Schwieger acted correctly in pursuance of his orders, of which he was personally in no doubt, or as the Allies thought, he was guilty of a war crime. He watched the liner sink through the periscope of U-20:

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