The crew of a merchantman abandon ship amid rough seas under the watchful gaze of a German U-boat commander during the early months of the Great War. The Linda Blanche was one of forty victims of the SMU-21, which included four Allied warships, a feat that earned her commander Otto Hersing the monicker ‘Zerstörer der Schlachtschiffe’; the ‘Destroyer of Battleships’.
Constructed at the Imperial Shipyard at Danzig, SMU-21 was one of the Kaiserliche Marine’s first ocean-going U-boats and one of the first to be powered by diesel engines. Diesel offered several advantages over the German navy’s previous gasoline-powered submarines, being more fuel-efficient, more reliable in damp conditions, and less hazardous. U-21 had a top speed of 15.4 knots and a range of more than 7,500 miles on the surface, but her performance submerged was still extremely limited (9.5 knots, 80 miles endurance). As with previous U-boat designs, she was equipped with six torpedoes that could be fired from tubes in the bow or stern, and from 1914 onwards, a 3.5inch deck gun. U-21 was commissioned into the 3rd U-boat Half-Flotilla based at Heligoland in October 1913.
U-21’s first notable wartime achievement occurred on 5th September 1914, when she became the first submarine ever to sink a warship with a self-propelled torpedo. Her victim was the 3,000t scout cruiser HMS Pathfinder, which Hersing ambushed near the Isle of May at the mouth of the Firth of Forth while the British vessel on patrol with the 8th Destroyer Flotilla. Although the wake of Hersing’s single torpedo was spotted by the Officer of the Watch, there was insufficient time to take evasive action. The weapon detonated under the bridge causing a massive secondary explosion that destroyed the ship’s foremast and number one funnel. Most of Pathfinder’s crew were trapped below decks as the vessel broke in two and rapidly foundered. Among an estimated complement of 268, only a handful including the captain are known to have survived. Her destruction was witnessed on land by Aldous Huxley, who recorded its grisly aftermath:
The St. Abbs’ lifeboat came in with the most appalling accounts of the scene. There was not a piece of wood, they said, big enough to float a man—and over acres the sea was covered with fragments—human and otherwise. They brought back a sailor’s cap with half a man’s head inside it.
U-21 was among the first U-boats to specifically target British commerce, sinking the steamers Primo and Malachite in the English Channel in late November, having safely negotiated the vast minefield of the Dover Barrage. From there, Hersing moved into the Irish Sea, where, on 30th January 1915, he encountered and sank three more British merchant ships, including Linda Blanche. Operated by the Wales-based Anglesey Shipping Company, and on route to Belfast from Manchester, she was sunk by explosives just 18 miles off the mouth of the Mersey. All of these merchant vessels were destroyed according to the Prize Rules, which stipulated that crews be given sufficient time to abandon ship and directed to ‘a place of safety’. Hersing was reportedly ashamed at having to force captains and crewmen off their ships and take their papers; in at least one instance he chivalrously hailed a passing trawler to facilitate the crew’s rescue.[1]
After U-21’s safe return to Wilhelmshaven, she received orders to make for the eastern Mediterranean, where Allied operations had begun to force the Dardanelles using a squadron of old British and French battleships. Since Hersing’s previous patrol, the British had strengthened the Dover Barrage with steel netting, an initiative that had resulted in the capture in March 1916 of the U-8. Reluctant to risk another passage through the Channel on his departure from Kiel on 25th April, Hersing took his submarine around Scotland and into the Mediterranean, U-21 becoming the first German U-boat to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar. The journey was not without its drama. A planned refuelling off Cape Finistere had to be aborted as the supply ship was carrying the wrong type. Forced to conserve his remaining fuel through slow surface cruising, Hersing managed to evade British sea patrols, but his movements were spotted by aerial reconnaissance. The submarine eventually reached the Adriatic port of Cattaro on 13th May, where she joined a flotilla of U-boats that had been shipped in pieces overland from Germany to support the Austro-Hungarian war effort against Italy.
By the time U-21 arrived off the beaches of Gallipoli on 25th May, the Royal Navy had taken measures to bolster protection of its bombardment force. In addition to anti-torpedo netting and extra lookouts, stationary battleships were surrounded by escorts and picket boats while engaged in artillery support. Nevertheless, U-21 wasted no time in breaching these ineffectual defences. That same day, HMS Triumph, and two days later, HMS Majestic both fell victim to single torpedoes fired at close range that managed to breach the curtain of torpedo netting. ‘Seconds were like water drops slowly falling on the ground’, recorded Hersing as he stalked his targets at a depth safely below the British patrol vessels, which at the time had no means of destroying a submarine except through propitious ramming. In both cases, casualties were relatively light. Nevertheless, although these pre-dreadnought battleships were of little individual fighting value, their sinking coupled with earlier losses during the Gallipoli campaign had a significant impact on British morale, and led the Royal Navy to withdraw its support ships from the area when not in action; an act that no doubt hastened the abandonment of the entire campaign.
Following these unprecedented successes, U-21 retreated up the Dardanelles to Constantinople where her commander and his crew were feted by the head of the Turkish armed forces, Enver Pasha. Hersing’s actions in the eastern Mediterranean, which also included the sinking of the French munitions ship Carthage, would be recognized by the Kaiser in June of that year when he became only the second naval officer to be awarded Prussia’s highest military honour, the Blue Max.[2] From the grateful Turks, he would also receive the ‘Iron Half Moon’.
In September, U-21 returned to Cattaro, where she was commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy. This was a subterfuge that would enable Hersing to wage a commerce war on neighbouring Italy, which was not yet officially at war with Germany. Renamed U-36, she despatched yet another large Allied warship; the 5,000-ton French cruiser Amiral Charner was on blockade duty off the coast of Syria when she was torpedoed on 8th February 1916. The rapidity of her sinking and her lack of escorts resulted in the deaths of all but one of her 420 crew.[3] U-36 narrowly escaped destruction shortly afterwards when she was ambushed by a British Q-ship. The U-boat crew briefly exchanged gunfire with the armed decoy before Hersing was able to dive to safety. Reverting to her former designation in August, U-21 then sank several Italian merchant vessels before her recall to the Fatherland.
By the time Germany declared unrestricted warfare at the beginning of February 1917, U-21 was back with the Heligoland Flotilla, targeting allied shipping in the Western Approaches. It was in this theatre, west of the Scilly Isles on 22nd February, that Hersing had his most profitable day against merchant shipping, sinking one Norwegian and seven Dutch vessels totalling approximately 40,000GRT. In spite of the increasing effectiveness of anti-submarine warfare, especially the adoption of the depth charge, U-21 continued to be a lucky ship with a lucky commander. Both survived the war. The submarine was accidentally lost on route from Kiel to Harwich three months after the German surrender. Hersing retired from the Navy in 1924 with the rank of korvetten-kapitan (lieutenant-commander) and evidently devoted the rest of his working life to potato farming.
Willy Stöwer (1864-1931) was a popular painter and illustrator. The son of a sea captain, Stöwer was a prominent member of the German Navy League, an organisation set up by Tirpitz to pressure for a larger navy. He was on good terms with Kaiser Wilhelm II and is said to have accompanied him on several voyages. Much of Stöwer’s work was done for magazines and posters. One of his most famous illustrations was that published in the popular magazine ‘Die Gartenlaube’ shortly after the sinking of the Titanic. His image of the doomed passenger liner has since been criticised for its inaccuracies, not least the incongruously steep incline of the sinking vessel, which had in fact broken her back. Stöwer’s depiction of the sinking of the Linda Blanche is equally spurious, suggesting a much larger vessel than the 530t coaster she was in reality. In fact, at 64 metres, the U-21’s hull was slightly longer than her victim’s. The U-boat is also missing her deck gun. Nevertheless, Stöwer does an exceptional job of rendering the gelid, viscous quality of the Irish Sea in mid-winter.
[1] During this period, Hersing’s crew also shelled airship sheds on Walney Island near the port of Barrow-in-Furness, though without much effect.
[2] His award of the ‘Orden pour le Merite’ followed that of another multiple destroyer of British warships, Otto Weddigen.
[3] Leading seaman gunner Josef Marie Cariou was the only known survivor, found drifting on a raft among a dozen corpses 5 days after the sinking.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 