When Fritz-Julius Lemp sank the Athenia without warning, intentionally or not, he was setting the pattern for future German submarine warfare against Britain and her allies. However, at the same time, there were others of his breed out there in the North Atlantic who still believed that the war at sea should be conducted in accordance with the Prize Rules of 1936. These rules emphatically required that the safety of passengers and crew be ensured before a merchant ship was sunk, however impractical that might be in reality. One such believer was 30-year-old Kapitänleutnant Herbert Schultze, who commanded U-48.
U-48, a Type VIIB boat commissioned by Schultze in his hometown of Kiel in the previous April, had sailed from that port on 19 August l939, fifteen days before war was declared. Rounding the north of Scotland undetected by British guardships, she had initially patrolled off the Bay of Biscay, moving north to take up station off the Western Approaches on the outbreak of hostilities.
After forty-eight hours diligently sweeping back and forth across what should have been the throbbing artery of Britain’s maritime trade without sighting a single ship, Schultze was beginning to conclude that he was on a fool’s errand. Then, at long last, at about 9 o’clock on the morning of 5 September, the masts and funnel of an inbound ship came over the horizon. The boredom of the past few days forgotten, Schultze submerged to periscope depth and waited for the unsuspecting ship to come into his sights.
The Newcastle tramp Royal Sceptre was nearing the end of a long and arduous voyage, which had begun in Cardiff three months earlier, when she sailed with a full cargo of coal for Buenos Aires. Owned by Hall Brothers of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, one of the numerous small shipping companies based on Britain’s north-east coast, and commanded by 41-year-old Captain James Gair, she was a 4,853-ton steamer built on the River Tyne in 1937. Basic in every respect, she was a typical ‘go anywhere, carry anything’ ship of her day, having five cavernous cargo holds, on which sat two blocks of accommodation, two masts and a tall funnel.
When U-48 sighted the Royal Sceptre, she was homeward bound from the River Plate with a bulk cargo of grain and maize for Belfast. Having left the UK some three months before the declaration of war, she was unarmed and still in her company colours: grey hull, white upperworks and black funnel with the Hall Brothers’ insignia. On that clear morning in September 1939 the Royal Sceptre presented a very conspicuous target.
Captain Gair and his 32-man crew were all aware that Britain was at war with Germany and conscious that every hour brought them closer to danger, but so far they had not been affected in any way. Normality reigned, with the Royal Sceptre being spruced up in preparation for arrival, ‘going ashore clothes’ being brought out to air and thoughts very much of home. Old habits died hard, but relaxed though the atmosphere might have been, the threat of war was not being entirely ignored. Both lifeboats were swung out ready for lowering should the need arise, extra lookouts had been posted and watches had been doubled on the bridge.
Shortly before noon, the Royal Sceptre was 450 miles southwest of Land’s End and within three days steaming of Belfast. She was running before a strong southerly wind, with a heavy sea and swell on her port quarter. While this called for extra effort on the part of the helmsman to hold her on course, wind and sea were also giving her a helping hand on this last leg of the voyage.
Chief Officer Norman Hartley had the watch on the bridge with the Third Officer. Both men, having also kept the 12–4 watch during the night, were feeling the effects of lack of sleep. Hartley, sipping his fourth or fifth mug of strong coffee – he had lost count of how many – was reflecting on the morning which, like every other morning since leaving the River Plate, appeared to be passing without incident. The usual string of messages had been coming through on the radio from the Admiralty, but nothing had been said about the sinking of the Athenia. All seemed well with the world.
Hartley, contemplating a quick lunch followed by a few hours of blessed sleep, stifled a yawn. His eyelids drooped. Then, suddenly, a commotion 500yds out on the port beam became more than just another breaking wave. As Hartley reached for his binoculars, the conning tower of a submarine broke the surface.
Captain Gair, called from his cabin by the Third Officer, reached the bridge in seconds. He quickly grasped the situation and ordered the helm hard to starboard, at the same time instructing Hartley to pass the word to the engine room for maximum revolutions. The Royal Sceptre heeled as she came round under full helm to present her stern to the emerging submarine. Gair, who had been through all this in the Great War of 1914–18, recognized his old enemy, but having no means of fighting back, was going to make a run for it.
The Captain’s assessment of the situation was correct. Chief Officer Hartley later gave a very detailed description of the U-boat:
The colour of the submarine was greenish-grey uniform, and I distinctly noticed below the water line as she sat in the water with her whaleback some 4 feet above the water line, grass at least ½ inch in length, regular along the hull, almost like a streak of paint which was some 2 feet above the water line. The paint was distinctly old, I should say 6 months, but there were patches of newer paint of the same tint which seemed to me to be perhaps put over the old paint perhaps about a month before.
I saw on the conning tower of the submarine, on the side, the figures 48 showing through the paint. It seemed to me that these figures had originally been painted on with a white lead paint which had then been painted over with the greenish grey paint, but had worked through the paint, and these figures were quite plainly read by me… In addition to these figures I noticed on the port side of the conning tower, low down and forward, two small plaques or designs; one, the forward of the two, was circular and with a red rim and inside it had a red St George’s Cross. The other side was square and red, marked with a red St George’s Cross also.
The U-boat had by now manned her deck gun, with obvious intent. And while this was happening, the Royal Sceptre, barely two years old and with a relatively clean bottom, was surging ahead as her engineers fed more steam to her powerful 1,450 h.p. engine. In the Dante’s Inferno that was her stokehold, firemen, stripped to the waist, hurled coal into the roaring boiler furnaces, and black smoke rolled back from her tall funnel. Unaccustomed to such urgency, the Newcastle tramp, which had the lines of a Thames barge, began to rattle and shake in an alarming way as she worked up to a speed she had never before reached, even on her sea trials.
U-48’s first two shells were ranging shots, falling well ahead of the fleeing ship. The German gunners were well trained in their art, however, and even though the U-boat, rolling and pitching in the swell, made a poor gun platform, their 88mm, firing at the rate of a shell every 20 seconds, soon found the range. The defenceless Royal Sceptre was quickly bracketed, shells landing in the water all around her as Gair, facing aft and trying to judge the fall of the shot, threw her from side to side under full helm. For those on the bridge of the British ship, so inured to the halcyon days of peace, time stood still as they faced the terrible reality of war.
In his ‘shack’ below the bridge the Royal Sceptre’s radio officer was crouched over his keys tapping out the three-letter emergency signal SSS, code for ‘I am being attacked by an enemy submarine’. His frantic calls for help were intercepted by U-48’s wireless operator, and Schultze ordered his gunners to concentrate their fire on the fleeing ship’s wireless aerials, which were slung between her two masts. The main aerial was quickly shot away, but ‘Sparks’ immediately switched over to his emergency aerial and doggedly continued to send out his cry for help.
Inevitably, U-48’s shells began find their target. The Royal Sceptre was soon holed on the waterline, her accommodation was on fire and her decks were littered with wounded men. Although the British ship was doing her utmost to escape, her attacker, with a top speed of l8 knots on the surface, was rapidly overtaking her, shortening the range minute by minute. Captain Gair could no longer ignore the hopelessness of the situation, and as the punishment inflicted on his ship continued unabated and the acrid stench of cordite filled the air, he decided the time had come to save the lives of his crew. As yet another shell slammed into the accommodation below the bridge, Gair rang the engine room telegraph to ‘Stop’ and ordered Chief Officer Hartley to sound the ‘Abandon Ship’ signal. The beat of the Royal Sceptre’s engine slowed as her throaty steam whistle signalled her surrender.
On his way aft to the boat deck, Hartley made a brief stop at his cabin to pick up his life jacket and a heavy coat. Then, as he neared the boats, there was an explosion close behind him and shards of red hot shrapnel ricocheted all around him. The navigation bridge had been hit by a shell. Hartley was not then aware of it, but the shell, apart from demolishing the wheelhouse, had killed Captain James Gair as he stood alone on the bridge. From that moment, Norman Hartley was in command of the Royal Sceptre.
When Hartley reached the boat deck, he found that both the ship’s lifeboats had been lowered to the water and were ready to cast off. The U-boat’s gunners were now systematically demolishing the ship, every shell they fired landing with devastating effect. It was time to go.
By now, the starboard lifeboat had left the ship’s side, but the port boat was still alongside. Taking one last look around at the doomed, and now deserted, ship, Hartley jumped for the boat’s falls and slid down them to join the others in the boat. As soon as he was aboard, the painter was cast off and, as the Royal Sceptre still carried some way on her, the boat drifted astern.
It was only when the lifeboat was well clear of the ship that Hartley became aware that he had not been, after all, the last man to leave. A lone figure had appeared on the Royal Sceptre’s boat deck waving frantically. It was the ship’s radio officer who, true to tradition, had remained at his post until the last minute sending out a distress call. Unfortunately for him, he had stayed too long.
The Chief Officer’s boat had no engine, and being the usual heavy wooden ship’s boat, was almost impossible to handle under oars, except in a flat calm. Hartley made an attempt to take the boat back alongside, but the rough sea and heavy swell running were too much. Furthermore, the Royal Sceptre was still under fire, with shells falling all around her. It had become far too dangerous to approach her. Reluctantly, Hartley allowed the boat to drop astern. He wrote in his report:
I remained close to the ship, because I thought that the operator would have had the sense to put a ladder over the side and jump into the water, so that we could pick him up. The Wireless Operator, however, waved to the submarine to cease fire, which it did. The submarine then came close to me and told me to go back to the ship and pick up the two men who were still on board. This I did immediately. I rescued the W/T operator, and I asked him if there was anybody else on board. He said, ‘No, only me’. I would have liked to have boarded the ship, the crew, however, were naturally scared of getting the boat smashed up against the ship’s side. I did not know that the Captain was missing.
Having rescued the Radio Officer at considerable risk to his boat and its crew, Chief Officer Hartley pulled clear of the ship again. When questioned, the R/O assured him that the SSS signal, along with the ship’s position, had gone out, although as he had been using the emergency aerial he had some doubts as to whether the signal had been received. Assuming that this was the case, Hartley decided the best course of action was to remain near the ship and wait for help to come. The Royal Sceptre was still afloat, although by now she was little more than a burning hulk.
As his crew lay back on their oars, Hartley saw the enemy submarine approaching his lifeboat again. His report reads:
The submarine then approached my boat and asked me if I was the Captain. I said, ‘No, the Captain is in the other boat’, thinking of course that he was. After looking at us for quite a while, he asked me if I had any food. I said, ‘Yes, plenty, thank you’. Then he said, ‘Have you any water?’ I again replied, ‘Yes, thank you’. Then he went away from us again. He was away some time, then returned again and said, ‘Have you any wounded?’ I said, ‘We are all quite well here, thank you’, and then again he asked if I had any cigarettes, and on my replying, ‘No’, he said that I could go back to the ship to get some. I said, ‘No, thank you. I am safer where I am.’
Having done all he could for those in the lifeboats, Schultze turned his attention to their ship. The Royal Sceptre, although on fire and noticeably lower in the water, was showing no immediate signs of sinking, and as there was a strong possibility that British warships were on their way in answer to her distress calls, Schultze was anxious to quit the scene as soon as possible. He had already used up more than half his stock of shells for the 88mm, and he decided he must now sacrifice one of his precious torpedoes to deliver a quick coup de grâce. Closing to within 500yds of the Royal Sceptre, he fired a single torpedo from his bow tubes. This went home in the crippled ship’s engine room, and three and a half minutes later she disappeared beneath the waves, taking the body of Captain James Gair with her. Schultze returned to the waiting lifeboats and assured the survivors that he would send help. U-48 then motored away to continue her patrol.
Riding to sea anchors, the Royal Sceptre’s lifeboats remained in position for the next five hours; then, with darkness approaching and Chief Officer Hartley debating whether or not the time had come to set sail for the land, smoke was seen on the horizon to the north-east. An hour later, the British ship Browning found them and took them aboard.
The 5,332-ton Lampert & Holt steamer Browning, commanded by Captain Thomas Sweeny, bound for South America, had been surprised by U-48 a few hours earlier and stopped with a shot across her bows. Being, like the Royal Sceptre, completely unarmed, Sweeny at first considered running away, but knowing all too well that his 20-year-old ship would be hard pressed to make more than 9½ knots, even with her boiler safety valves screwed down, he thought better of it. Lowering his ensign in surrender, he ordered his crew to abandon ship.
Schultze, however, had other plans for the Browning. Ordering his gunners to hold their fire, he approached her lifeboats and instructed Captain Sweeny to re-board his ship and go to the rescue of the Royal Sceptre’s boats. Sweeny and his crew were immediately suspicious of the German’s motives and were reluctant to comply, but when Schultze threatened to blow the as yet undamaged Browning out of the water, they agreed to go back. Before they left, Schultze insisted that, after picking up the Royal Sceptre’s survivors, Sweeny maintain complete radio silence on his voyage to South America, thereby allowing U-48 to continue her patrol undisturbed. Reluctantly, Sweeny gave his word to keep quiet. It was as though the two captains, Schultze and Sweeny, were engaged in a gentlemanly game of cricket; viewed in the light of the later conduct of the war at sea, this was a bizarre exchange.
Early next morning, Royal Navy destroyers came searching for the Royal Sceptre but could find no trace of her or her crew. It was assumed, not without good cause, that she had gone down with all hands, and the Admiralty was informed. This news, following close on the heels of the apparently heartless sinking of the Athenia, caused uproar in Britain. Three weeks later, when there was still no news of the fate of the Royal Sceptre, the Ministry of Information issued the following statement to the press:
It is feared that all hope has now to be given up for the officers and crew of the steamship Royal Sceptre, sunk by a U-boat on September 6 in a position about 300 miles to the west of Ushant. The crew of the ship were cast adrift in their boats without possible hope of reaching land, a foul act of piracy on the high seas on the part of the German Navy.
On the same day that the press announcement appeared, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, addressed the House of Commons, saying, ‘Many cruel and ruthless acts have been done. There was the Athenia, then later the Royal Sceptre, whose crew of 32 were left in open boats hundreds of miles from land and are assumed to have perished.’
Coincidentally, even as Churchill was speaking to Parliament, Chief Officer Norman Hartley and the crew of the Royal Sceptre, all thirty-two of them, were being landed from the Browning in Bahia Blanca, Brazil, after a voyage in which Captain Sweeny, true to his promise to Herbert Schultze, had kept strict radio silence. Hartley later stated:
During our voyage back to Bahia, I myself listened in to the broadcast from Germany which purported to be a broadcast interview by Capitaine Schultze, commander of a U-boat, and he stated that he had sunk the s/s Royal Sceptre having been compelled to do so because she disobeyed his order to stop, and that he regretted the fact that some men were wounded. I say with regard to this, that we received no order to stop other than the two shells fired ahead of the ship, and I further say that the voice which spoke in the broadcast was not the voice of the Commander of the U-boat which sunk us, for he spoke to me in broken English, in a clear tone, but using only phrases which I describe as ‘Tourist Guide Book’, and his F’s were sounded like V’s, e.g. He said, ‘Have you vood?’, and also said, ‘Have you vater?’, and also he asked ‘Have you cigarettes?’ In the broadcast it was also stated that the U-boat had provided assistance for the survivors of the s/s Royal Sceptre by intercepting the s/s Browning and directing her to our position, and the broadcaster stated that when he arrived the crew of the Browning were in their boats and that he said to them, ‘Why behave like this. Do you think we are barbarians?’ but I have been told by the Master of the s/s Browning that no such remark was in fact made to his crew.
After leaving the Browning, Schultze continued to cruise in the area, and early on the morning of 8 September met with the British steamer Winkleigh. The Winkleigh, a 5,055-ton Cardiff tramp owned by W. J. Tatem and commanded by Captain Thomas Georgeson, was inbound from Vancouver with a cargo of grain and lumber. Unarmed, and still in her peacetime colours, she was only 450 miles from Land’s End when Schultze brought her up with a shot across her bows. Under the threat of U-48’s guns, Captain Georgeson and his crew were ordered to abandon their ship. This they did, but not before an SSS signal had been transmitted.
Once the boats were clear of the ship, Georgeson was ordered to come alongside U-48 and was taken on board for questioning. He later reported that Schultze had greeted him ‘very cordially and said he was sorry he would have to sink my ship. He gave me four loaves of bread; then he brought a bottle of schnapps up, taking out a packet of cigarettes, offered me one and put the remainder in my hand.’ An astonished Georgeson, who at the very least had expected to end up in a German prisoner of war camp, was then allowed to return to his boat.
Schultze had good reasons for terminating the interrogation of the British captain. Georgeson had revealed nothing of any import, and furthermore Schultze was anxious to be clear of the scene of his conquests before the Royal Navy came hunting for him. In any case, U-48 having been stored for a maximum voyage of thirty days, was now running low on fuel and torpedoes. It was time to go home.
Before leaving, Schultze approached to within 500yds of the abandoned Winkleigh and put one of his remaining torpedoes into her engine room. It was a sad sight for those in the lifeboats to see their ship and the cargo they had carried for more than 8,000 miles disappear below the waves. When she had gone, and U-48 had motored away, they were left to contemplate their fate. Fortunately, before nightfall they were found and rescued by the Holland-America liner Statendam, and landed in New York a few days later. Meanwhile, Herbert Schultze, well satisfied with his early contribution to Germany’s war effort, had set course to the north-east to retrace his steps around the north of Scotland and into the North Sea.
Shortly before noon on the 11th, U-48 had reached a position 150 miles north of Rockall, and was about to come round on an easterly course, when a tall column of smoke was seen on the horizon. This materialized into the 4,869-ton steamer Firby, owned by Sir Robert Ropner of West Hartlepool. Commanded by Captain Thomas Prince, the Firby was twenty-four hours out of Newcastle, bound for Port Churchill, Hudson Bay in ballast. Anxious to reach the Hudson Strait before the winter ice set in, Prince was taking the Great Circle route and making all possible speed.
Schultze was also intent on reaching his destination without delay, but the meeting with an unarmed and unescorted British tramp was an opportunity not to be missed. When U-48 was within range, he put a warning shot across her bows. Captain Prince’s reaction to the threat was instinctive and predictable. Showing his stern to the submarine, he zigzagged away at full speed.
The Firby, being in ballast, was high out of the water, and she presented an unmissable target to U-48’s gunners. Almost at once their shells began to land, creating havoc on the Firby’s decks. She was soon on fire, and with four of his crew already wounded, Prince realized he had no hope of evading his attacker. With a heavy heart, he stopped his ship, lowered his lifeboats and abandoned her.
Approaching the Firby’s lifeboats, Schultze called for the ship’s captain to identify himself. Prince was still wearing his uniform with four gold bands, so he was unable to hide. He was ordered aboard the submarine, where he was taken below, given a drink, and questioned by Schultze. Like Captain Georgeson before him, Prince had little to reveal. When the U-boat had been first sighted, he had dumped his code books overboard, and other than giving his ship’s name and destination, he gave nothing away. Schultze did not press the matter, then gave Prince some bandages and six loaves of bread, before returning him to his lifeboat. In his absence, Prince found that some of the U-boat’s crew had dressed the wounds of his injured men, a gesture of compassion he had not expected to see.
Schultze now sank the Firby by torpedo, leaving Captain Prince and his men to spend a cold and uncomfortable night in their boats. They were picked up in the early hours of the 12th by the destroyer HMS Fearless and landed at Scapa Flow later that day.
There was an interesting sequel to the sinking of the Firby. After the war, Captain Thomas Georgeson, late of the Winkleigh, was in correspondence with Herbert Schultze, who had sent him some documents he had taken from Captain Prince of the Firby. In May 1947 Georgeson received the following letter from the ex-U-boat commander:
Very esteemed Mr Georgeson,
I was very sincerely pleased to have your letter of 8th May, for I learned from it that you and your boy have indeed come safely through this very wicked war. The papers which I send back to you herewith are the only spoil and souvenirs of my U-boat voyages. I send to you willingly for when you stood defenceless on the tower of my boat and had to suffer the cruellest blow that fate can deal to a sailor, it pained me inwardly to act so. Your pain at the war between our two peoples was at that hour also my pain. The torpedo which I shot at the Winkleigh was fired with a sad heart. Perhaps you felt then that as men, we were not against each other. Afterwards I sank many more fine ships, but have never been happy about this. No sailor can be glad about sinking a ship.
The German people are now in a state of fearful necessity which seems to us almost hopeless, unless the differences between East and West can be bridged over in a reasonable and peaceful manner.
The hopes of many Germans in this respect are directed to the far seeing political ability of the English Government administration which has stood the test of centuries, and they hope your Government will succeed in giving Europe a reasonable and humane peace.
I close this letter with best wishes for your own well being and for the well being of your family.
I should be glad if you remember our meeting at that time in the Atlantic in its human aspect, and I remain with a handshake,
Yours respectfully,
Herbert Schultze, who was known in the U-boats as ‘Vati’ (Daddy) Schultze because he took very good care of his crew, was indeed a ‘gentleman pirate’. Others who came after him were not cast in the same mould.