Southern Thunder by Steve Dunn

Author:Steve Dunn [Dunn, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I, Europe, Scandinavia, Naval
ISBN: 9781526726643
Google: w04IEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2019-07-30T00:45:10+00:00

The Sinking of HMS G-9

The waters of the North Sea were dangerous in so many different ways. The weather and U-boats were the major threats, but sometimes the danger came from simple human error.

The British submarine HMS G-9 was launched in 1916. Armed with five torpedo tubes and both 3in and 12pdr guns, she had sailed on 9 September on patrol duty in the North Sea, but on the 15th she was ordered north, to between latitudes 60.30 N and 61.30 N, to keep clear of units of the Grand Fleet which were exercising while on passage from Rosyth to Scapa Flow. A day later she was to the east of the Shetland Islands, patrolling in heavy seas and rain squalls, conditions which made observation difficult. The submarine’s commander was thirty-year-old Lieutenant Commander The Honourable Byron Plantagenet Cary, second son of another Byron Plantagenet Cary, 12th Viscount Falkland. As a younger son of the nobility he had, almost by definition, to join the Royal Navy, and had been a submarine captain since 1909, commissioning his current vessel. He had been advised that a U-boat was in the vicinity of Muckle Flugga and was on the look-out for it.

Unknown to Cary, a Lerwick-bound convoy* was slowly steaming towards his position. They had set out from Aspö Fjord, around 60 miles north of Bergen, but the convoy and its destroyer escort, the ‘M’-class HMS Pasley, had become separated in the atrocious conditions. Her captain, Commander Charles Gordon Ramsey, had been reduced to displaying a white light halfway up the mast in an attempt to find his missing flock.

Just after midnight Cary spotted what he took to be a surfaced U-boat and fired two torpedoes at his target. On Pasley, the officer of the watch, Midshipman Frank Arthur George Wallis RNR, suddenly saw the wash of torpedoes in the water; the first one hit a glancing blow on the starboard quarter but failed to detonate, and the second passed astern. Wallis ordered a hard starboard turn and went to full speed. He could now see a submarine in the sea ahead of him and, sounding the collision siren, set course to ram.

On board G-9 the terrible realisation that they had just attacked one of their own ships now set in. Moreover, their intended victim was set on revenge. Cary ordered the connection of the cruiser arc lamp to signal the destroyer, but the process of so doing was cumbersome and time-consuming. By the time the signal was made it was already too late. On Pasley, Commander Ramsey saw the recognition signal. A signalman shouted ‘She’s one of ours!’. ‘Hard to port, stop both!’, yelled Ramsey. It made no difference; his ship ploughed into the submarine and nearly cut it into two pieces.

In the stricken sub, Cary ordered his crew to assemble beneath the conning tower. Stoker William Drake saw one man climb the ladder above him, and followed. Of robust build, he nearly became trapped by the stomach at the lower conning tower door, which had been ordered shut in the hope of keeping the boat afloat.

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