Twenty Vessels, Mostly in the Coastwise Trade, Sunk
Off the New Jersey and Virginia Coasts
One or more German submarines--the number was not definitely
established--appeared off the coast of the United States on May 25,
1918, and began sinking merchant ships on a large scale. Up to June
20 more than twenty steamers and sailing vessels, mostly of American
register, had been sent to the bottom.
This was the second visit of an armed German submarine to the American
side of the Atlantic for hostile action. In October, 1916, before the
United States entered the war, the U-53 held up coastwise traffic off
Nantucket and sank four British, one Dutch, and one Norwegian ship.
The U-53 had been preceded by the merchant submarine Deutschland,
which arrived at Baltimore on July 9, 1916, from Bremen and returned
with a cargo of nickel and rubber. The Deutschland made a second trip,
arriving at New London, Conn., in October.
The appearance off the American coast of the unidentified submarine,
or submarines, which made the raid on American and neutral shipping in
May and June, 1918, was not altogether unexpected. For several weeks
the American naval authorities had been searching for U-boats in home
waters in consequence of a dispatch from the British Admiralty stating
that two German submarines of the latest type, with a cruising capacity
of 10,000 miles, had left the North Sea and were observed proceeding
westward, probably in an attempt to cross the Atlantic.
The first information that German U-boats were conducting a
transatlantic campaign was brought to New York City on June 4 by
Captain Humphrey G. Newcombe and the ten members of the crew of the
American four-masted schooner Edward H. Cole, which was sunk with bombs
on the afternoon of June 2, fifty miles southeast of Barnegat, N. J.
All were agreed that the U-boat was about 200 feet long, of more than
20 feet beam, and with 5 feet freeboard, that it carried a three-inch
gun fore and aft, and a one-pounder quick-firer amidships, and that
it had a speed of 17 knots. The mate of the Edward H. Cole told how
he had noticed a submarine moving around the vessel at a high speed
and believed that it was an American craft with Naval Reserve cadets
on board, who were trying to have some fun with the sailors of the
merchant ship.
"I thought," the mate continued, "that it would be a good idea to
have a little fun with our skipper, who had turned in for a nap in
his cabin, and I yelled down the skylight, 'Tumble up on deck lively,
Cap! There's a big German submarine close astern, getting ready to
attack us.' Then I took the marine glasses and looked through them at
the stern of the U-boat, where her ensign was flapping limply against
the short flagstaff. For a moment or two I could not make out her
nationality, and then a gust of wind came and blew the ensign straight
so that I could see that it was the German flag, and then I shouted in
earnest to Captain Newcombe, 'It's no joke this time. By gosh, she is a
German submarine!'"
The schooners Hattie Dunn and Edna were the first vessels sunk--on May
25. Their crews, as well as that of the schooner Hauppauge, which was
sunk three days later, numbering twenty-three men, were taken on board
the submarine and kept prisoner there for eight days. When the tank
steamer Isabel Wiley was sunk, on June 2, the twenty-three prisoners
were placed, with the crew of the Isabel Wiley, in the tanker's four
boats and left to find their way to the shore. They were picked up by a
coastwise steamer and brought safely back to land.
Captain Charles E. Holbrook of the Hattie Dunn, the first skipper to
encounter the U-boat, thus described his experience:
We left New York for Charleston in ballast on May 23, and when,
two days later, we were about fifteen miles south of Winter
Quarter Lightship bowling along under an eight-knot breeze, I
heard a shell pass near the vessel. Then another shell, which fell
perhaps a quarter of a mile away. I was not taking much notice,
because I believed the vessel which I saw about two miles away was
an American submarine at target practice.
A third shell exploded close by us on the weather quarter, and
I knew that, whoever it was, wanted us to stop. I brought the
vessel up into the wind. The submarine, with her superstructure
and conning tower showing plainly above the water, came within two
hundred yards, and I saw that she was flying the two code letters
"A B," meaning "stop immediately."
From a small staff at the rear end of the superstructure fluttered
a small flag of the Imperial German Navy. An officer and three men
came over in a small boat, not over twelve feet long. In perfect
English the officer told us to get into our boats and that we
had but ten minutes allotted to us to get clear of our vessel.
They placed bombs along the sides of our vessel and blew her up
immediately, in the meantime putting an armed German sailor on
board the small boat in which were seven men and myself. This
did not give me time to rescue my personal effects and nautical
instruments. My men only saved what they stood in.
Perhaps I would have been given more time if the commander of
the submarine had not seen the Hauppauge under full sail about
four or five miles away. Like us the Hauppauge was light, and, I
understand, was bound from Portland to Newport News. He destroyed
Captain Sweeney's fine new schooner after ordering him and his
crew to take to their boats, and within a half hour both crews
were on board the submarine and both the small boats had been
placed on the submarine's deck and lashed down.