It looks like an illustration to an alternative history showing a German wartime occupation of Britain. In reality, the U-155 was one of several U-boats exhibited along the Thames after the German surrender in 1918. [1] Visitors to St. Katherine’s Dock, where she was temporarily berthed, were reportedly charged a shilling to walk the decks of this submarine, one of the largest ever built, and admire her two cruiser-sized 6-inch deck cannon. However, visitors may not have been aware that the U-155 had a unique service history. She had in fact begun her career as the world’s first ‘submersible freighter’.
The Deutschland, as she had been first christened, was the first of a class of submarines designed to conduct transoceanic commerce with the United States. She’d been ordered on 27th October 1915 by the Deutsche Ozean-Reederei, a subsidiary of the Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping line. By this time, most of the parent-company’s surface fleet, which included the venerable Kaiser Class passenger liners, had been either requisitioned for war service by the Imperial German Navy or interned in foreign ports. The Deutschland and her proposed sisters were intended to reopen trade with the US in the face of an increasingly effective Allied blockade of German ports.
Cultural and commercial ties between the two nations ran deep. The previous century had seen an estimated six million German immigrants settle in the US. Almost half a million of these were recent arrivals, after 1900. There were large German-American communities in the Midwestern cities of Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee, and also the New Jersey port of Hoboken, where immigrant-packed German passenger vessels had habitually docked. There also existed significant trade links between the countries, with Germany importing sizable amounts of American farm products. The Germans in turn had left their mark on the American diet with the introduction of hamburgers and frankfurters.
Nevertheless, at the time of Deutschland’s construction, diplomatic relations between Germany and US were increasingly frayed. US neutrality had been severely tested by the deaths of Americans aboard passenger ships sunk without warning by German U-boats. After the sinking of the Lusitania on 7th May 1915, which left 128 American citizens dead, the government of Woodrow Wilson had warned Germany against committing any more what it termed ‘deliberately unfriendly’ acts. However, less than three months later several more American citizens had been killed during the sinking of the White Star liner SS Arabic by the SMU-24 off the southern coast of Ireland. This incident had forced the German government to privately assure its American counterpart that its submarines would no longer target passenger ships without warning, making the so-called ‘Arabic Pledge’. This the Administration accepted as Wilson was at the time seeking re-election on a platform of ‘Keeping America out of the War’.
There was in fact no history of military conflict between the two young nations. Americans still commemorated the bitter War of 1812 against Britain, and neither had they entirely forgotten British political equivocation during its Civil War. In contrast, the closest the US had come to blows with Germany had been during the naval standoffs in Samoa in 1889 and during the Venezuelan crisis of 1902-03, both of which had been resolved peacefully.
However, relations were strained further by the loss of more American lives in the sinking of two passenger liners in the Mediterranean in November and December of 1915. Both had been torpedoed without warning by the SMU-38, aggressively commanded by Kapitänleutnant Max Valentier. The first, the SS Ancona, had been sunk while the U-boat was operating under a false Austro-Hungarian flag. Among the 343 dead in the torpedoing of the second ship, SS Persia, had been many women as well as the former US senator and newly appointed American Consul to Aden, Robert McNeely. It wasn’t until April 1916 that Germany officially announced a cessation of its ‘unrestricted submarine warfare’, following the American outcry over the torpedoing of the cross-channel ferry Sussex.
With an overall length of 215ft, Deutschland’s hull was only slightly longer than that of the SMU-38 and Germany’s other ocean-going U-boats, but her beam of 29ft, which allowed space for a cargo of over 700 tons, made her the largest submarine in the world in displacement terms at the time of her completion in the spring of 1916. The ship was powered by two 800hp diesel engines, giving her a surface endurance of up to 25,000 kilometres at a low cruising speed of 5 knots.
On 23rd June of that year, she embarked on her maiden voyage to America under the command of NDL company skipper Paul Konig. Packed in her holds were 750 tons of cargo, including highly sought after chemical dyes, medicines, gemstones and diplomatic mail. Her 6,000km transatlantic passage required a lengthy detour round the north coast of Scotland to evade the British blockade. After a 16-day voyage, mostly undertaken on the surface, she was piloted into Baltimore docks by the local tug Thomas Timmins, an event captured on newsreel.
There, a city with a 90,000 strong German-American community, the crew were feted by local officials for their unprecedented voyage, the longest ever made by a submarine up to that point. The Baltimore Sun hailed it as a ‘powerful demonstration of German maritime resourcefulness and daring’. While in port, the Deutschland was inspected favourably by the American submarine pioneer Simon Lake. Swapping her cargo for large consignments of nickel, tin, and crude rubber – materials much needed by the German armaments industry – the Deutschland left Baltimore on 2nd August, arriving safely in Bremerhaven three weeks later.
The maiden voyage of the Deutschland was a propaganda victory for Germany, and a humiliation for Britain. The British government protested strongly, citing the ‘capacity for harm inherent in the nature of such vessels’ even when used for commercial purposes, and urging the Americans to ‘to take efficacious measures tending to prevent belligerent submarines, regardless of their use, to avail themselves of neutral waters, roadsteads, and harbours.’ However, the US government dismissed the British protests, wishing to ‘reserve its liberty of action in all respects’. The New York Times benignly described the Deutschland as a ‘submersible freighter’.
Buoyed by this commercial and propaganda success, NDL sent the Deutschland to sea again in early November of that year, transporting another $10 million of goods, this time to New London, Connecticut. This second voyage was not without mishap. While making her way out of harbour on her return leg, the Deutschland collided with her escorting tug, which sank so quickly her five crewmen could not be saved. Repairs to the submarine’s damaged bow took several days to complete.
The Deutschland’s second transatlantic voyage had been preceded by another a month earlier when the U-53 had briefly put into Newport, Rhode Island. There, its commander Hans Rose and his officers had been courteously received by high-ranking US navy officials stationed in the port. This goodwill had seemingly continued when the U-boat left port and began attacking and sinking Allied shipping just of the American coast in the area of the Nantucket lightship. The only response from the US Navy to this provocative act was to despatch a flotilla of destroyers to help rescue those unfortunate seamen Rose had forced into lifeboats. The British press were incensed by such a passive American response to German aggression, even though their actions were publicly condoned by the foreign secretary Edward Grey.
The U-53 had been despatched to America’s East Coast primarily to cover the arrival of the Bremen, Deutschland’s sister-ship, which the British blockade forces were keen to intercept. The submarine had left Bremerhaven in September 1916 but never reached her destination. There are a number of conflicting reports as to her fate, and the cause of her disappearance remains a mystery.
Undaunted by this setback, NDL commenced the construction of a third commercial submarine towards the end of 1916, to be named the Oldenburg. However, early in 1917 the German navy high command decided on a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, including against America-flagged shipping. Although it was recognised that this action would inevitably bring the United States into the War, the assumption was that heavy merchant ship losses could force Britain to sue for peace before mobilised American troops could reach the Western Front in any significant numbers. This proved to be a fateful misjudgement. Pershing’s ‘doughboys’ were expedited to France by ironically utilising several of NDL’s interned passenger liners, the first regiments arriving towards the end of that year.
In consequence of this decision, the Oldenburg was completed as a U-boat and rechristened U-151, the name eventually assigned to the class as a whole. The Deutschland was similarly refitted and commissioned as U-155 on 19th February 1917. A further five of the type were launched between April and September of that year. Their size meant the Deutschland and her sisters were able to mount two 6-inch deck guns on their fore and aft decks and store almost 1,700 rounds of ammunition for them. In addition, they each carried 18 torpedoes, fired from two bow tubes [2]. At least some were fitted out to lay mines. Their extended range meant that Type U-151 submarines could theoretically operate anywhere in the Atlantic from America’s East Coast to the west coast of Africa. To reflect this transoceanic cruising and fighting potential, the class were officially designated ‘U-Kreuzers’.
[1] The others exhibited were reportedly the U-152 at Greenwich, and the UB-6 and UC-95 at Westminster.
[2] The Deutschland’s guns had been taken from the secondary armament of the old battleship SMS Zahringen. Unlike her sisters, she was fitted with external torpedo tubes.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 