In Titanic's Shadow E-Book

David L. Williams

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

While the near 1,500 victims of Titanic accounted for a huge loss of life, each of the ships here had a greater number of casualties, in some cases more than five times as many. In total, these 27 merchant ship sinkings resulted in a staggering loss of life at sea – more than 96,000 in total, 3,840 per ship. While the circumstances were different to Titanic, the outcome in each case was no less tragic. Yet, despite the fact that Titanic ranks behind so many other losses, so powerful has her name become that it was the inevitable choice to describe some of these other events, 'Germany's Titanic' and 'The Titanic of Japan' being two examples. Ships include the Lancastria, Britain's worst maritime disaster with 3,000 lost; the Ryusei Maru, a Japanese 'Hellship' loaded with 6,000 Allied POWs, torpedoed by a US submarine; and the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German liner packed with 7,800 civilians, sunk by a Russian submarine. There were no survivors and this tragedy was the worst maritime disaster of all time.

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation for the help received from the following individuals, organisations and associations, without whom this book could not have been realised. I trust that I have not in error missed anyone who assisted me and would offer my sincere apologies, should that be the case.

Lindsay Bridge, Nereo Castelli, Eugen Chirva, Mario Cicogna, Amos Conti, Frank Heine, Richard de Kerbrech, Rei Kimura, Knut Klippenberg, Arnold Kludas, Enoki Koichi, Siri Holm Lawson, Boris Lemachko, Michael Lynch, Rolf Meinecke, Dr Piotr Mierzejewski, Mervyn Pearson, Björn Pedersen, Luca Ruffato, James Shaw, Yan Shuheng, Erling Skjold, Peter Tschursch, Kihachiro Ueda and Ray Woodmore.

Bundesarchiv (Martina Caspers)

Deep Image Co. (Leigh Bishop)

Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum (Klaus Fuest)

French Line Archives (Pauline Maillard and Nancy Chauvet)

Glasgow University Archives (William Bill and Gemma Tougher)

Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, London (Valerie Hart)

Hapag-Lloyd (Peter Maass)

Imperial War Museum

JAMSTEC (Noriko Kunugiyama)

John Swire & Sons (Rob Jennings)

Lancastria Survivors Association

Maritime Photo Library (Adrian Vicary)

Mitsui-OSK (Yasushi Kikuchi)

Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Captain Masaharu Akamine)

Ostsee Archiv (Heinz Schön)

PoW Research, Japan (Toru Fukubayashi and Yuji Miwa)

Press Association (Jane Speed and Laura Wagg)

Royal Navy Submarine Museum (Debbie Corner)

The National Archives, Kew

United States Navy

University of Bristol (Professor Robert Beckers and Jamie Carstairs)

University of Liverpool, Cunard Archives (Dr Maureen Watry)

World Ship Society Photo Library (Jim McFaul & Tony Smith)

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1

First to Surpass the Titanic

2

Disaster in the Midst of a Miracle

3

Safe Passage Guaranteed? (Part One)

4

Those in Peril on the Sea

5

The Price of Capitulation

6

Slaughter on the Hell-Ships

7

They Were Expendable

8

Suffer Little Children

9

Safe Passage Guaranteed? (Part Two)

10

No Roses on Their Graves

11

Coffin Ships

12

Not Always at Sea

13

Ferries in Peril

14

A Close Call

Bibliography & Research Sources

Plates

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

Four days after leaving Southampton on her maiden voyage on 10 April 1912, the White Star Line’s new flagship, RMS Titanic, struck an iceberg near the Grand Banks, off Newfoundland, and foundered with the loss of 1,507 lives. The disaster sent shock waves around the world and brought about many important yet long overdue improvements to the rules governing maritime safety. Since that time, there has been an enduring fascination with the tragedy, not least because it was claimed the ship was ‘virtually unsinkable’ and, having been perhaps influenced by such thinking, because there was an inadequate number of lifeboats to rescue all the people she was carrying. The sinking of the Titanic rapidly became a metaphor for extreme calamity, especially of a maritime nature, and, ironically, her name has been used as a means of conveying the gravity of far more serious events. Hence, we have ‘Asia’s Titanic’, ‘The Titanic of Germany’, and so on.

The Titanic story has been told and retold countless times in books and films, so that to each new generation it has become a familiar fable; warning of the consequences of human arrogance and of taking lightly the ever-present dangers of the seas. From this emerged the misconception that the sinking of the Titanic was the worst shipping disaster ever, a belief still widely held today, overshadowing many other equally or more serious maritime losses. Indeed, a comparable tragedy that occurred barely two years later, when the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Ireland was run down and sunk in the St Lawrence Seaway, is nowhere near as well known, certainly outside shipping circles, even though 1,098 lives were lost. Although the approaching First World War in part deflected attention away from this second great catastrophe, the impact of the Titanic’s loss on the public consciousness had somehow made it easier to accept this equally grave event.

During the First World War, the relentless migration to ‘total war’, with seemingly diminishing regard for casualties and in which, for the first time, civilians became legitimate targets, heralded the potential for even greater slaughter on the oceans. While the Titanic disaster remained, briefly, the most serious deep-sea maritime accident, the destruction by torpedo of ships like the Lusitania and Gallia, with extremely high casualties, was a clear indication of things to come. It was in this conflict that the Titanic’s horrendous death toll would be surpassed, while in the Second World War that followed only twenty years later, the margin by which it was to be exceeded would grow alarmingly.

While it is not the intention of this book to diminish the gravity of the Titanic disaster, it is nevertheless fitting at the time when the 100th anniversary of that loss is being commemorated, once more giving it a singularly disproportionate focus, that the losses of those ships that subsequently suffered higher casualties should receive greater recognition. The disparity of attention between these events can be best demonstrated by an experience I had while researching for this very book. A search in a well-known, specialist maritime reference library for any literature on any of the ships described in this volume drew an almost complete blank, whereas there was an entire rack of books devoted to the Titanic alone.

By raising the profile of these other losses, it sets the Titanic disaster in a broader context. This approach, while perhaps relegating Titanic and giving it a less extraordinary status, highlights how in peacetime, despite international conventions, the regard for passenger safety has been increasingly compromised for the sake of commercial competition and operational economics, and, in wartime, how human life has been callously cheapened.

As already alluded to, the ships described in these pages, more than forty in total, all suffered significantly worse human casualties when they were sunk than had the Titanic. In some cases, the number of victims was three or four times greater. In total, they account for a death toll of 140,000; a staggering loss of life at sea and an average of 3,250 people killed with each sinking. Thus, while it is not the intention to suggest that the Titanic case should not receive the attention it does, these far less well-known tragedies do give the so-called ‘worst disaster at sea’ a sobering perspective.

Despite the fact that the Titanic disaster now ranks far behind many other merchant ship casualties in terms of lost life, these other ships remain, in comparison, largely inconspicuous and unknown, hidden from the media spotlight. There are many reasons for this. If we consider first, by way of contrast, the greater public awareness of the Titanic tragedy and, for the purposes of the exercise, disregard its appalling consequences, it can be seen that it had an almost theatrical dimension with all the drama and human interest of a well-plotted novel. It could almost have been conceived as a screenplay or bestseller, with its vivid characters and a gripping storyline advancing relentlessly to its awful climax. Oblivious to the impending danger, each facet of the ship’s vulnerability is sinisterly revealed; also, there is the contrast between the prospects for survival of rich and poor as they confronted eternity; a contrast with underlying themes of morality and social injustice.

On the other hand, this is not so for the majority of the ships and incidents described herein. Sunk mainly in wartime while carrying troops, prisoners or evacuees, they lacked the glamorous image that was an integral part of the Titanic’s story. Grey ships on grey oceans, sparsely reported due to the restrictions of news embargoes imposed at the time – in many cases little more than the barest of facts was ever recorded about these major shipping disasters. Moreover, if we take into consideration the fact that around 85 per cent of these losses involved ‘enemy’ ships, although not in all cases enemy personnel, it becomes clear there was far less concern about the severity of the loss of life. It was a case of: we were fighting a war; in wartime people get killed; and these victims were invariably enemy people and not our concern.

Similarly, the details of those disasters that befell Allied ships were also suppressed, though for different reasons. Maintaining public morale was regarded as critical during wartime; the authorities, therefore, rightly or wrongly, controlled when and to what extent ‘bad’ news, especially of the magnitude of these cases, should be leaked to the media. In some instances, it never was fully released and, protected by 100-year security exclusions, more than another thirty years must still pass before the full, official facts will be publicly known.

These ships also lacked the media appeal of the new flagship of one of the most famous shipping companies of all time – an elegant, floating city working the prestigious ‘Atlantic ferry’ service – and they were rarely the subjects of press photographers’ cameras. Being a mix of small passenger vessels and pure cargo ships, they were generally the unsung workhorses of the merchant service, and few photographs exist to record their physical form, other than the odd launching image or trials view. For some ships, it has been impossible to find any photographs at all so that, in those cases, visual anonymity has proved unavoidable.

The ships described in these pages find themselves listed on that roster of the worst ever disasters at sea principally because they were seriously overloaded – it is, in fact, their common denominator. And, for the most part, they were not engaged at the time of their demise on duties for which they had been designed or built. Indeed, many of them were never intended to carry passengers of any description. It may be thought, therefore, that it is stretching things to draw comparisons between the Titanic and the ships in this book, which, for the most part, were sunk during wartime by enemy action. After all, the Titanic was going about her normal, intended business with a complement that was well within the maximum number permitted by her passenger certificate.

When considering major accidents at sea, as well as the matter of overloading, it is important to bear in mind how close Cunard’s great Queen Mary came to being one of the ships listed in this book – indeed, how close did she come to being the deadliest shipping disaster of all time? It would have completely overshadowed the loss of the Titanic. During the time her construction was suspended and her future was in doubt – to quote Damned by Destiny (see Bibliography), while she was ‘balanced on the Horns of Destiny’ – she had come close to being a failed ship project; no more than a ‘might-have-been’ in the annals of the sea. But in October 1942, barely six years after her delayed career had begun, in a second more sinister trial with fate, she was involved in a wartime collision that could have brought about her end and, of far greater consequence, cost the lives of the huge complement of servicemen she was carrying. The actual number on board on that occasion is believed to have been around 11,250, but around that time she was routinely transporting some 15,000 or more troops besides her crew on each voyage. In fact, on her previous transatlantic crossing her complement had been a record 15,988, of whom just 863 were crew.

Had she gone down, her only means of rescue – her escort, the cruiser HMS Curacoa – had already foundered, cut in two by the impact of the collision. Moreover, operating independently of convoys, there were few ships in the vicinity that could have rendered assistance. Fortuitously (for the Queen Mary), she had hit the Curacoa bow first and her collision bulkhead held, but it could have been so very different.

Naval architects hold the view that, had the Titanic hit the iceberg head on, she too would probably have survived, albeit seriously damaged. Other ships certainly endured after such encounters, such as the Guion liner Arizona on 7 November 1879. It was to be the Titanic’s destiny, though, that an attempt was made to steer her around the iceberg and in so doing she grazed along it, receiving a glancing blow that opened up her side, exposing what may be considered as the Achilles heel of her design: susceptibly inadequate watertight subdivision. It spelt certain mortality as well as the birth of a legend.

Recognising that perhaps the most vital safety provision aboard a ship, whatever its type or function, is adequate means of escape in an emergency, then, while disregarding the absence of actual discomfort from not being physically crowded, the lack of such provision amounts to a form of overloading. If she had been occupied to capacity – and fortunately she was not – the Titanic’s lifeboats would only have had enough space for a third of her passengers and crew (1,178 people out of a total of 3,547), although the actual number of boats exceeded the minimum requirement stipulated by the Board of Trade regulations of the time.

As another common factor for the majority of the ships in these pages, it was the exigencies of war that dictated their operation in such an inappropriate fashion, filled to overflowing, in whatever role or application their controlling authorities dictated. To quote a correspondent, Björn Pedersen, who was referring to the madness of such practices: ‘It is only during war [that] you place more than 4,000 people on board an old three-island steamer as [troops, prisoners] refugees or whatever.’

We may well question the extreme overloading of prisoners of war aboard the Japanese ‘hell-ships’ (see Chapter 6), in respect of the appalling conditions in which they were accommodated, as well as for the fact that the practice of using them as slave labour breached international conventions. But as to the prisoners’ vulnerability through inadequate means of survival, in the event that the ships were sunk, we cannot so fairly criticise. Much the same was the case aboard Allied troopships, such as the Queen Mary already referred to, as well as aboard British ships transporting Axis prisoners.

With reference to the Queen Mary during her wartime collision, the urgent need to man up in readiness for the imminent invasion of Europe had necessitated that risks such as overloading and inadequate provision of life-saving equipment should be taken.

As far as British ships carrying prisoners were concerned, the conveyance of enemy captives to holding camps overseas was a matter of practicality rather than one of securing a forced-labour resource. Living conditions aboard them may also have been significantly better than on the hell-ships, but interpretation of the rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war would suggest that transporting them by sea where there was significant risk of exposure to violence could altogether have been an illegal practice, no matter which country was responsible. Realistically, none of these ships was entitled to registration for safe conduct clearance under the auspices of the International Red Cross, to be painted appropriately and with their function and intended route declared. Even if they had been, there is evidence, including for at least two of the cases described in these pages, that protected status and the adoption of internationally recognised protective livery were no guarantee of safety. Wantonly disregarded, vessels were attacked with impunity.

There is another factor that deserves reflection in this Introduction, being germane to the various circumstances that conspire to turn maritime accidents and incidents into tragedies. As already stated, the vast majority of the ship losses described in this book occurred during wartime. Of that total, a significant percentage fell as the victims of what, in modern parlance, could be called friendly fire – in that the human casualties of the attacks on these ships were either the national or allied compatriots of those who had carried out the attacks, all having been prisoners of one sort or another on board. It was not only Allied citizens or personnel who were regrettably killed in this way in the Second World War, for Axis prisoners of war similarly became the mistaken target. The Empress of Canada and, as related herein, the Laconia, for example, were both torpedoed by German U-boats. The loss of life which unfortunately resulted from these attacks was the unintended consequence of naval or air force crews doing no more than carrying out their military orders as part of the overall endeavour to win the war. As the ships concerned carried no markings whatsoever to reveal their true purpose, such friendly fire incidents were completely unavoidable.

However, continuing research in the post-Second World War period has revealed that this may not have been quite true in all cases. It is not the purpose of that statement to suggest that servicemen who launched fatal attacks on ships heavily loaded with humankind had either prior knowledge or information about the nature of their targets that should have aroused concern or countenanced caution as to whether or not to proceed. But, there is evidence that such intelligence was at the disposal of higher authorities who carried the wider responsibility for the conduct of military operations and that it was not, in all instances, passed on to the relevant personnel. It has been concluded that the dangers to captured service personnel through the sinking of unmarked ships, whose existence and function were often known about, were well understood.

Of course, these are all matters for speculation, no less so than are many other aspects of the circumstances surrounding these, the worst ever maritime disasters. If there is one thing above all else that the Titanic tragedy has taught us, it is that the passage of time does little to diminish the almost obsessive debate about every minute dimension of that appalling event. It is no different where the more controversial aspects of some of these other major shipping losses are concerned.

Just as we can speculate on the past, sometimes with reasonable confidence if the evidence seems to support our conjectures, so too we can wonder what the future may hold. Have we, through the aid of ever-more sophisticated technology, moved to the point where maritime disasters of this magnitude can no longer occur? Alternatively, are we, through over-dependence on such technology, allowing our vigilance to slip and unwittingly creating the circumstances in which there will be more catastrophic reminders of our continuing vulnerability on the sea lanes?

We can only hope that these horrors are a thing of the past and that in a hundred or so years time, around the beginning of the next century, mankind will not be paying its respects on the 100th anniversary of the loss of another passenger-carrying ship whose name has succeeded that of the Titanic as the acknowledged metaphor for maritime tragedy.

David L. Williams

2012

Author’s Note

The reader will be aware that the casualty numbers quoted in many instances have been rounded to a whole, and that in other instances there are conflicting casualty numbers given by different sources. This simply reflects the circumstances in which these disasters occurred: when precise numbers of occupants were uncertain and when it was difficult, if not impossible, to make an accurate or reliable head count of the survivors. Governments and certain shipping authorities have typically preferred to give lower casualty figures, in an attempt to reduce the gravity of certain disasters. It should be noted, though, that even by the most optimistic calculations the toll of lost life in each of the cases described in the following pages exceeded that of White Star’s Titanic.

The reader should also be aware that reports of incidents often did not declare whether the times given were in local time, GMT, BST or of any other time zone. This may have resulted in discrepancies. However, the timings between key events in the individual accounts related herein are correct.

1

FIRST TO SURPASS THETITANIC

PRINCIPE UMBERTO (4/1909)

Navigazione Generale Italiana, Genoa, Italy

Italy’s entry into the First World War against the Central Powers was opportunistic, driven neither as a defence against a direct hostile threat, nor as a response to a long-standing treaty obligation. The country’s political leaders hoped that it would provide an expedient for the pursuit of its nationalistic, irredentist and imperialistic ambitions. Whatever the motivation, though, the Allies benefitted from a strengthening of their forces with around 1 million trained fighting men and a small but substantial modern navy.

War was declared on Austro-Hungary in May 1915 and on Germany and the Ottoman Empire that August. Over the next three to four years, the Italian war effort was to be dominated by the twelve battles fought along the line of the Isonzo (Soca) River near her north-east border, north of Monfalcone. The Italian navy and merchant marine also played an important role in support of the Allied effort, patrolling in the Mediterranean and transporting troops and supplies. A heavy price was paid in lost ships, not least those of the Navigazione Generale Italiana (NGI) company, four of whose vessels, among them two front-line passenger liners, did not survive.

The NGI was the longest-standing and principal shipping concern among the Italian-flag companies operating passenger services on the routes from Europe to North and South America. The company faced stiff competition in the early part of the twentieth century and to reinforce its dominance, the NGI ordered six new, broadly similar, modern liners in 1905 – three each for the two transatlantic routes. Built for the North Atlantic were three so-called ‘Ducale’ ships: Duca degli Abruzzi (1908), Duca di Genova (1908) and Duca d’Aosta (1909). For the Genoa–La Plata ports service there was a ‘Regale’ trio comprising Regina Elena (1908), Re Vittorio (1908) and the Principe Umberto (1909). They elevated the standard of accommodation in all categories and, with more powerful engines giving higher speeds, they reduced passage times on both routes. The run to Buenos Aires was cut to less than seventeen days. With comparable amenities, the ships were interchanged, as required, between the southern and northern services.

Though of modest size and dimensions compared with their counterparts operated by the likes of Cunard, White Star and Norddeutscher Lloyd, they were sleek-looking ships nevertheless, an impression emphasised by their long, low-profile superstructures surmounted by two black-and-white banded funnels. Each ship could carry in excess of 1,300 passengers in three classes, the majority as emigrants in steerage. While they may have been relatively insignificant when ranked against the likes of the illustrious Mauretania, Olympic, Aquitania and Imperator, one of their number, the Principe Umberto, was to gain a different kind of notoriety, when, as the victim of an Austrian U-boat, she was sunk with record loss of life. For more than twenty years it remained the worst ever maritime disaster.

For the Principe Umberto and her sisters, six largely uneventful years were to pass after they entered service, steadily maintaining a schedule of regular sailings, until Italy’s involvement in the First World War brought all civil operations to an abrupt halt. Three of the six liners were taken up from early 1916 for employment by the Italian government as combined auxiliary cruisers and transports, carrying out patrols and ferrying troops to and from Thessaloniki and Libya. Up to April 1915, the Mediterranean Sea had been a relatively quiet area, but the Anglo-French Gallipoli campaign changed things dramatically with the arrival of Allied warships to bombard the Turkish coast and attempt to force through the Dardanelles Channel. Simultaneously, troopships began to ferry in fighting men, while hospital ships commenced the removal of casualties. It offered rich pickings for the Central Powers’ submarines that began to infest the lower Adriatic and seas of the Aegean around the Greek islands.

Apart from its stalemate with the Austro-Hungarians at Isonzo, Italy also had been obliged to send an expeditionary corps, comprising three divisions, to Albania. This was in part to prevent enemy occupation of the ports along the Adriatic coast, which would have compromised the evacuation of the remnants of the Serbian army defeated in Montenegro. Italian ships first took these units to Brindisi and from there they were transferred to Corfu. After the rescue operation was completed in February 1916, Italian forces remained in Albania fighting a rearguard action in a bid to prevent a complete conquest by Austria and Bulgaria, and to support anti-Austrian partisans. Within months, though, it became necessary to withdraw these forces.

Following the inconclusive Fifth Battle of Isonzo in February 1915, the Austro-Hungarians had triggered a counter-offensive in the Asiago Highlands, in the province of Vicenza, and all available manpower was required to support the defence of the Italian positions. Variously known as the Battle of Asiago, the Trentino Offensive or the Strafexpedition (‘Punitive’ expedition), it began with an unexpected attack against the Italian front on 15 May 1916, preceded by an artillery barrage by 2,000 heavy guns. The objective was to advance to the plateaus of Lavarone, Folgaria and Asiago, beyond the valleys of Sugana and Lagarina, by isolating and dislodging the Italian 2nd and 3rd Armies on the western Isonzo, and the 4th Army defending the region of the eastern Trentino.

As with the five earlier battles of the Isonzo, the engagement secured only minor gains of ground, achieved at an enormous cost of combined casualties – 27,000 dead, 155,000 wounded and 65,000 either missing or taken prisoner – incurred over a period of less than one month.

The Principe Umberto photographed at an unknown port prior to the First World War. (World Ship Society)

Another view of the Principe Umberto in a pre-First World War publicity card. (Mario Cicogna)

While the Austro-Hungarian expedition had been checked, conveniently aided by a Russian offensive at Galicia, which created a diversion and forced the enemy to withdraw troops to strengthen resistance on that front, the fact that the Italians had been caught off guard had political repercussions. It also led to a demand for the troops in the Isonzo region to be increased by 400,000 to deter any future Austro-Hungarian incursions.

Thus, the scene was set for the return to Otranto of the 55th and 56th Infantry Regiments and other units still in Albania. Already, by May 1916, after valiantly holding the enemy at Monte Piana and at Sabotino – essential for the protection of the ports of Durazzo (Durrës) and Alessio (Shëngjin) – the Italians had been forced to abandon these positions. Although Otranto was only some 60 miles away across the Adriatic from Durazzo, the sea in this area was known to be very dangerous, both because of minefields and because Austro-Hungarian submarines based nearby at Kotor could easily attack convoys. Therefore, having decided against conveying the returning troops from Durazzo, the Italian forces withdrew from the port, destroying everything they could not take with them, and made for Valona (Vlorë), further south, from where the return to Italy was to be made.

A troop convoy was organised to sail from Valona on 8 June 1916. The convoy consisted of the former NGI ships Principe Umberto and Re Vittorio, the similar-sized Stampalia of La Veloce and the small passenger-cargo steamer Jonio. They were escorted by the Regia Marina destroyers Insidioso (Captain Amici Grossi), Espero (Lieutenant Fossati), Impavido (Captain Ruggiero) and Pontiere (Lieutenant Commander Mancini).

The Compagnie Sud-Atlantique passenger ship Gallia was the second worst U-boat victim in the First World War. When she was sunk on 4 October 1916 with 1,428 casualties, it was a loss of life almost as severe as on the Titanic. (World Ship Society)

The situation became increasingly critical in the hours approaching the convoy’s imminent departure. Late on 7 June 1916, the Italian troops had encamped at Drasciovizza where they were attacked by Austrian aircraft. There were no injuries and the next day they entered the port where boarding commenced onto the ships moored at piers 1 and 2. The Principe Umberto, under the joint command of naval officer Lieutenant Nardulli and her mercantile master, Captain Sartorio, embarked 2,605 servicemen besides her crew. Included among them were the 55th Regiment’s 1st and 2nd Battalions, along with companies 11a and 12a of the 3rd Battalion. Fully loaded, the convoy finally left Valona at 19.00 hours on 8 June.

Meanwhile, patrolling the area of the southern Adriatic, at the very point where the convoy was to cross, were two Austro-Hungarian submarines, one of which, under the command of Lieutenant Friedrich Schlosser, was the U-5, a Holland-designed vessel that had been constructed by the Whitehead Co. at Fiume.

Without realising it, the Principe Umberto bore down upon the U-5, forcing it to reduce speed and retract its periscope. Schlosser ordered the U-5 to flank speed before turning his boat into a bow firing position. At a distance of 1,000m, two torpedoes were fired, aimed at the larger ships. In fact, the visibility was bad and the U-5’s attack was launched as much in hope as by calculation. One of the torpedoes narrowly missed the Jonio but, as the submarine made an emergency dive, a single loud explosion was heard.

The Principe Umberto had been mortally damaged, her stern almost destroyed, and she began to sink rapidly. The attack had taken place approximately 15 miles south-west of Cape Linguetta, the convoy’s destination at Otranto barely 40 miles away. Although time was against them, as many as possible of the sinking ship’s lifeboats were launched while the other troop transports rushed to the scene to try to render assistance. Even so, only a fraction of those aboard the Principe Umberto could be rescued, reportedly as few as 779 people. Besides the crew casualties, 1,826 servicemen had died. In the meantime, the destroyers, assisted by the small cruiser Libia, endeavoured to repel the submarines for fear of further attacks on the ships that were now dead in the water – but the U-boats had already escaped.

Despite the efforts of the other convoy ships, it was a desperate struggle for survival for those soldiers and crew members who, when so many others had been trapped inside the Principe Umberto’s hull, had somehow made it to the surface. Colonel Meneghetti, a 3rd Battalion officer and one of the survivors, described the scene:

On the sea, dimly lit by the moon, the black shadows of those men fighting with death could not be seen; the silence of the calm sea was broken only by the desperate cries for help as they begged for their mothers or called the names of their wives and children.

Slowly, one by one, the voices were quelled until nothing more could be heard.

The figures for the people who perished vary considerably from report to report. The number of people that boarded the Principe Umberto and the number of casualties stated above, are taken from an article entitled ‘L’Affondamento de Principe Umberto’ by Alfio Moratti and Amos Conti, which appeared in Ricerche Storico (No.106, October 2008). Another report states that 1,750 were killed, while yet another account gives the number as 1,948. Crew casualties may be included in this latter figure, but the preceding Ricerche Storico numbers relate only to army personnel and refer to forty-eight officer victims, with the remainder soldiers of lower rank.

In an instant, the Principe Umberto’s disappearance beneath the surface with approaching 2,000 souls had relegated the Titanic disaster to second place in the list of the worst ever maritime calamities. But the aftermath of the tragedy at least appeared to offer some hope for the future.

A year earlier, when the Lusitania had been torpedoed south of Ireland, killing 1,198 civilian passengers and crew, medals depicting Death selling the voyage tickets had been struck in both Germany and Great Britain, both cynically exploiting the terrible incident for propaganda purposes. Clearly, the German action implied a celebration of the torpedo attack – certainly that had been the case where some newspapers were concerned – but the medal’s designer, one Karl Goetz of Munich, argued that it had been intended only as a satirical comment on the German government’s allegations that the Lusitania had been carrying contraband, thereby rendering her a legitimate target. Those claims were subsequently proved to be correct, although there had been only relatively trivial quantities of materials aboard the Lusitania, and they were for manufacturing purposes rather than direct, hostile use as weapons or ammunition. The fact that the attack had been launched without warning, a breach of international law relating to maritime warfare, and that a vast number of innocent people had unjustifiably lost their lives, does not seem to have been considered. In the event, it was revealed that only forty-four examples of the German medal had been struck, whereas 300,000 of the almost identical British medal had been cast, financed by Mr Gordon Selfridge, the department store owner, to whip up hatred against Germany. The British response can only be viewed as a shallow deed in the extreme to seek to take advantage of mass slaughter in this fashion.

The Lusitania of Cunard Line was both U-boat victim and propaganda victim. (Author’s collection)

Such unsavoury practices, expressing self-congratulation for callous deeds with cruel disregard for the appalling consequences, were, it seems, a further indication of the downward direction of attitudes to the plunder of life during wartime. But not so with the Principe Umberto, even though she had been, without question, a valid military target. Even so, Austro-Hungary, also a signatory of the convention that stipulated ‘Restricted’ submarine warfare, had failed to ensure that its submarines acted accordingly by ordering the enemy ship to stop in order to search it prior to sinking it. That was, perhaps, an unrealistic expectation if all it achieved was a depth charge attack from escorting warships.

Whether or not it was in recognition of the horrifying loss of life caused by the U-5’s torpedo attack, or for some other benevolent reason, is not known, but shortly afterwards the Austro-Hungarian military authorities published an official postcard, widely purchased and mailed, that depicted the moment when the Principe Umberto was struck by the torpedo. Though inaccurate in its detail – the fatal torpedo in fact struck the ship at her aft end – its purpose appeared to be to raise money, possibly for a relief fund. Responsible for the publication of the card in this seemingly conciliatory, even apologetic gesture was the Österreischen Flottenvereines zu Gunster des Kriegsfürsorgeamtes along with the Kriegshilfsburos and the Roten Kreuzes (Red Cross). It is not known, however, whether any of the proceeds of the sales ever reached the families of the victims.

The reverse side of the Principe Umberto postcard (see image 5 of the plate section for the front side). (Mario Cicogna)

The 55th Regiment was based near Treviso and drew from towns in the surrounding region, notably Reggio Emilia. A little-known dossier, ‘In Memoriam’, listing all the missing people from the Principe Umberto attack, was compiled and published by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia in 1919. In addition, the Civic Museum at Treviso is jointly named after the Risorgimento and the 55th Infantry Regiment – in the latter case as a tribute to the victims of the Principe Umberto tragedy. Nearby, the ‘Serena’ army barracks at Dosson has a monument that likewise commemorates those who lost their lives when the ship was sunk.

The First World War came to an end on 11 November 1918. More than 9 million people had been killed over the four years and four months since it had started, many of them casualties of the war at sea. For the next twenty or so years there would be some respite, and there would not be another shipping disaster to rival the Titanic until after the second great war of the twentieth century had begun.

2

DISASTER IN THE MIDST OF A MIRACLE

LANCASTRIA (6/1922)

Cunard White Star Line, Liverpool, UK

Winston Churchill, the wartime prime minister, described the evacuation of Dunkirk and the associated operations that rescued British servicemen from France in the summer of 1940 as a ‘Miracle of Deliverance’. Operation Dynamo alone, the Dunkirk evacuation, secured the recovery of some 338,226 soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) along with 27,935 Belgian and French troops, taking them to the safety of the United Kingdom.

In truth, Britain and France had been caught on the hop, lulled into a state of inertia by the so-called ‘phoney war’ and an unrealistic sense of confidence in the defensive protection afforded by the Maginot Line. In the event, they were overwhelmed by the onslaught of the German blitzkrieg (‘lightning war’), from which they never recovered. The greatest miracle was the fact that any at all of the routed armies was able to get away and reach England’s shores.

From August 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany following the invasion of Poland, a combination of BEF and French army units had taken up positions along the line of the French border with Belgium and Germany. But they made no move to engage what was then, very briefly, an inferior Wehrmacht (German armed forces). Even had they done so, there is little doubt that the tactics adopted would have led to a resumption of the trench warfare of twenty years earlier: the defence of a static frontline interspersed with set piece battles to try to secure more ground, a slow and costly process of attrition of both men and munitions. There was little appreciation at the time of the now modern concept of mobile warfare, typified by quantities of fast-moving mechanised divisions spearheading an assault, a form of land warfare that the Germans had fine-tuned as blitzkrieg.

When Hitler ordered his forces to launch their attack on the Western Front on 10 May 1940, the British and French were taken completely by surprise – not just by the nature and speed of the unexpected onslaught, but by the complete divergence of its direction from what had been anticipated and planned for. The Schlieffen Plan, upon which the French defensive strategy had been based, anticipated a southwards thrust towards and around the eastern side of the Maginot Line. The offensive launched by the Germans in 1940 took a quite different route and comprised two main elements: an attack on the Netherlands and invasion into Belgium, north of Liège, to draw the British and French forces west and northwards; and simultaneously an attack through the Ardennes to cross the River Meuse at Sedan before sweeping into northern France and advancing west to Amiens and the Channel. The Maginot Line, simply outflanked, was instantaneously reduced to an irrelevant anachronism as the opposing forces were trapped in a pincer movement. All that the ensnared Allied forces could do was fight a rearguard action as they retreated towards the coast; a heroic effort designed to buy time to permit a rescue operation to be organised. Launched on 26 May 1940, Operation Dynamo began the desperate task of removing the exhausted troops from the beaches of Dunkirk, utilising the hundreds of ‘little ships’ that had been mustered or volunteered to assist the rescue campaign by ferrying men through the shallows to the bigger vessels lying offshore.

After the cessation of the evacuation operation at Dunkirk on 5 June 1940, Prime Minister Churchill falsely gave the British public the impression that the BEF had been saved when, in fact, over 150,000 British troops remained trapped in France along with thousands of Belgian and French soldiers, besides countless civilians and other displaced people.

Those troops who had not been caught in the trap at the North Sea coast on the Belgian–French border were in full retreat, heading west. Some made for the ports along the central and western Channel, at Dieppe, Le Havre, Saint-Valery and Cherbourg, from where they were rescued in Operation Cycle, the second phase of the relief exercise, between 10 and 13 June.

Another 130,000 trudged on or made their way by whatever means of transport they could find to the French Atlantic coast, to the naval port of Brest and the docks of the great shipbuilding city of Saint-Nazaire. For them, the final, great emergency evacuation, Operation Aerial, masterminded by General Alan Brooke, got underway on 15 June. It continued for ten days until the mission’s abandonment became unavoidable, as German forces completed their rout of France and the threat posed by the Luftwaffe to any shipping caught in the open near the coast became intolerable.

Just as the ‘little ships’ had performed shore-to-ship ferry duties at Dunkirk, taking men from the beaches out to the destroyers and cross-Channel ferries lying off shore, so in turn those larger craft were employed to transfer personnel to the many big transports, mainly former liners, which had been mustered and lay at anchor 5 miles out in Quiberon Bay. A sizeable fleet of troopships was commandeered for Operation Aerial, among them the three Orient Line ships Ormonde, Oronsay and Otranto; Canadian Pacific’s Duchess of York; P&O Line’s Strathaird; the Arandora Star; Cunard White Star’s Georgic, Franconia and Lancastria; and two Polish ships, the Batory and Sobieski, along with three MoT transports.

The Lancastria, commanded by Captain Rudolph Sharp, had been on a cruise to the Bahamas when war broke out and, after disembarking her passengers, she was instructed to sail from Nassau to New York where she was immediately converted into a troopship. She was kept busy from the outset and was one of the vessels of a twenty-ship convoy engaged in the evacuation of troops and civilians from Narvik in Norway that May. Her next task saw her taking fresh reinforcements to Iceland to bolster the garrison there, after which she returned to Glasgow and then Liverpool, where it was anticipated her crew would get a well-deserved rest while the ship underwent a refit.

She arrived in the Mersey port on 14 June and was hastily disembarked, but there was to be no break, no matter how badly needed. Before the day had ended, the crew was recalled to the ship. The Lancastria had received orders to sail at midnight, first to Plymouth and then on to an unspecified destination. En route to Plymouth, Captain Sharp, on the bridge with Chief Officer Harry Grattidge, soon became aware that there were many other vessels of various sizes bound at speed in the same direction, heading south in the Irish Sea or emerging from the Bristol Channel. They deduced that something major was unfolding, although they had no idea then what it was. During that day, the order was given for the evacuation of Brest and Saint-Nazaire to commence by a single signal: ‘PIP’. Ultimately, it was to be a successful operation, rescuing another 186,700 people, mainly troops but also civilian men, women and children, besides nurses and other auxiliary personnel. But it was achieved at a terrible cost.

From Plymouth, the Lancastria was ordered to Brest along with fleet-mate Franconia. They were to join HMS Wolverine, their escort, off the French coast. On reaching Brest, it was discovered that the Germans had already partially mined the entrance to the port and the two big ships had to rely on a French trawler to guide them through the Channel where it narrowed by the Roscanvel peninsula. During these manoeuvres, they came under attack from German aircraft and, though the bombs missed, the explosions severely damaged the Franconia, which was forced to retire. She limped back alone to Liverpool for repairs.