“Feuer!” The firing order rang out abruptly from Kapitan-Leutnant Schwieger atop the submarine’s conning tower. The gun on the foredeck below him obeyed with a loud report, blasting out steel and smoke into the pale sea mists surrounding the U-20.
From the direction the gun pointed, there rose no column of spray. Instead drifted back a faint crash and a fainter human outcry, proof that the shot had struck home on the ship that they chased through the drifting fog.
Herr Kapitan adjusted his binoculars. After a moment, he judged that the unidentified steamship was not slowing or coming about. To his gun crew, who had already reloaded, he called again “Feuer!” and the 3.5-incher barked. No answering crash; a miss this time.
The single-stacked vessel was trying to lose them in the mists of the Irish Channel. At times the ship faded from sight, but by cruising forward and watching, Schwieger could always find her bulky outline. At fifteen knots maximum surface speed, he knew he could keep up with most cargo steamers.
The ship was unknown, flying no flag. And the name on her stern was painted over, which made her more likely British than neutral. No great need for concern about being overtaken and rammed, since his own low-lying vessel was much harder to see in the drifting mist. In this game of cat-and-mouse, his U-20 was the cat.
“Feuer!” Another hit low astern on the target, but still no white flag or letup in his quarry’s speed. And now the ship vanished entirely in a rolling fogbank.
Well, she wouldn’t hide for long. Schwieger ordered a reduction to half diesel power. The fog should force the freighter to slow, too, for fear of collision or running aground.
After long moments of chugging through the mist, the electrician Voegele emerged into the cramped well of the conning tower.
“Radio message, Herr Kapitan.” He handed Schwieger a folded piece of paper. “Pilot Lanz has decoded it for you, since we are in action.”
Voegele was the Alsatian…a good electrician, but a conscript, drafted at the outbreak of war. And too, he came from the contested Alsace-Lorraine region bordering France, where German loyalties were diluted, so he required special attention. Schwieger opened the message, read it, and handed it back.
“This is nothing secret,” he said casually. “It is public information, that the British liner Lusitania is expected to arrive in Liverpool on April 8th. The naval command tells us routinely of her comings and goings.”
Not yet dismissing the man, Schwieger waited, plying his binoculars. Voegele spoke again, perhaps deciding that his captain expected an answer. “That puts us on her likely course, does it not, Herr Kapitan?”
“Perhaps,” Schwieger carelessly replied.
Scanning the misty sea ahead, he decided to test the fellow further. “That is, if the hunting is poor, and we are kept so long in these waters…and if she does not detour north around Ireland. Or else if she does, and we both choose that same route…why then, we might encounter her.” Lowering his binoculars, he gave the man a sly wink. “What do you think, Voegele, should I save a torpedo for the Lusitania?”
The electrician looked suddenly evasive, with a searching roll of his eyes and a nervous shrug. “I do not know, Herr Kapitan, if a single torpedo would be enough for such a giant ship, full of coal and baggage and…passengers.”
“And other things too, Voegele,” Schwieger solemnly said. “Other things besides passengers and baggage.”
He ended their chat with a brusque wave of dismissal, sending the man below. He had no time now, with his quarry on the run, to deal with the faint-hearted draftee. There was danger, as always—at any moment a British warship or armed trawler could appear, drawn by the sound of gunfire so near the English coast.
While scanning for such a peril, he saw the familiar mast appear again above the fog. Lucky he hadn’t shot it away as yet! Beside the bare pole, a gray smudge of smoke and steam rose from the funnel, indicating his target’s direction. Schwieger raised the speaking tube to his lips. “Helmsman, two points starboard,” he instructed the officer below. “Gunners, alert!”
As the boat turned and the gun crew wound their weapon around to bear, the mists drifted clear of their target, still stern-to, steaming away. A broad space of open water lay ahead. The fog seemed to be lifting for good, enough to expose his position clearly.
“Ready, Kapitan!” the chief gunner eagerly called out.
“Feuer frei!”
This time, as glass and timbers flew upward from a superstructure hit, the target must have decided that it was hopeless. A white flag ran hastily up the halyard to the mainmast, and the free-fire ended. Crewmen soon appeared at the rail with arms waving in surrender. The ship’s engine was reversed, spreading a wake of white sea-foam under the stern as the vessel slowed.
As they drew abreast on the port side, Schwieger could finally make out, using his binoculars, the painted-over raised lettering on the stern. It read “Candidate” and in smaller characters below, “Liverpool.” A steamer of the British Harrison Line, as he recalled.
He ordered his boarding party to make ready, and raising his megaphone, shouted in English, “Ahoy, SS Candidate! Abandon ship!”
The crew needed no command. They were already swinging out the lifeboats, two on a side, and scrambling into them. The sailors, Schwieger saw, were clumsy with fear or inexperience and lowered the falls hastily. The forward portside boat, fully-laden with crew, hit the water before the vessel had even slowed to a halt, and was immediately swamped by the bow wave as the ropes dragged the craft forward.
The occupants of the flooded boat were left to paddle and splash, trying feebly to push away from the big ship as they drifted back along the hull. But the other lifeboat handlers learned from their crewmates’ mistake. They paused, hanging onto the ropes until the flooded boat had passed beneath them, and the water barely flowed alongside. Then they dropped the boat into the sea with a splash.
Though obviously afraid, with some calling out “nicht schiessen” in bad German, the refugees turned and rowed back to take on some of the crew from the swamped lifeboat. Both boats from the starboard side appeared astern, rowing over to do the same and finally empty the derelict boat. Fortunately the big ship’s engines were now at a dead stop, so there was no danger from churning propellers. Meanwhile the U-boat’s boarding party rowed across to the prize.
Sometime later they returned, having planted scuttling charges. The explosives went off, sending up small plumes at the waterline, but did no apparent damage. Lowering his binoculars, the captain saw the Leutnant of the boarding party salute him from the submarine’s deck just astern of his tower.
“Herr Kapitan, I must report,” the man said urgently. “The steamer is armed. Amidships are two machine guns in sandbag emplacements to port and starboard. Also, one small cannon astern, a 57 millimeter Hotchkiss. The cowards did not use it, but the ammunition was ready.”
Schwieger swore below his breath. In a gun battle, his 3.5-incher and machine pistols could have obliterated the ship and its crew. But a single hit could gravely damage or even sink his U-boat. So that is the way Herr Churchill wishes to play.
Aloud, he told his officer, “Very good, Leutnant. Dismissed.”
While waiting for the crews to get clear, Schwieger ordered an old-style bronze torpedo loaded into one of the forward tubes, and he kept the U-20’s bow pointed toward the drifting Candidate. Now, as the three overloaded lifeboats rowed frantically out of the way, he gave the command through the tube, “Torpedo los!”
In a moment he saw the wake streaming behind the “eel,” pointing straight to the target. It headed astern toward the engine room. Since the ship wasn’t moving forward, it was possible to aim at the vulnerable stern without risking a miss.
When it hit, there came the muffled crack of a submerged TNT explosion. From the sea, a massive column of white rose straight up the ship’s side, even as a concentric wave surged out from the underwater impact.
The big vessel lurched slightly and seemed to settle in the sea…but as Schwieger watched, he saw no torrent of inrushing water, or jets of spray from shattered portholes. The ship did not appear to list or sink at the stern. After long moments of waiting, the Kapitan-Leutnant shouted, “Gunners, aim at the waterline. Feuer frei!” Free-fire should do the job. He would not waste another torpedo on this hulk, not even another one of the old bronze ones, which apparently were useless.
As the gun crew demonstrated their skill at free-fire and swift reloading, Schwieger’s mind roved to the recent past. Under the old rules of engagement, it would have been proper to board the ship, inspect it for contraband, and only then, if weapons or munitions were found, order off the crew and plant scuttling charges. For a merchant ship even to flee implied guilt, and was unwise. But now for obvious reasons, the Cruiser Rules had gone by the board. With Churchill’s armed merchant Q-ships, radio distress calls and signal flares, and with fast destroyers ever at the ready, it was dangerous for a submarine to show itself, much less stop and board. If Candidate’s crew had tried any more tricks before surrender, Schwieger would have been tempted, like other U-boat captains he knew, to fire on the lifeboats and inflict casualties as punishment.
At long last, the enemy ship responded to his continued attack, listing steeply to port. Schwieger ordered his gun to cease firing, and his engine crew to turn and run clear.
A few moments later the great hulk capsized. With a sigh of escaping air and a debris-laden convulsion of water, the Candidate rolled over to port. No need to stand by and watch her sink.
During the steamer’s death throes the fog had cleared considerably. Across a gallery of sunlight and blue sea to the northeast, a fringe of English coast was visible…and before it, the funnels and smoke plumes of another steamship. A double-stacker this time, a richer prize. No flag, but then it scarcely mattered which country. By Der Kaiser’s latest decree, all merchant ships in these waters were fair game.
“Alarm! Tauchen!” Schwieger gave the crash-dive order to avoid being seen by the enemy. He ducked below, following the gun crew, and gave the orders for pursuit. Electric underwater power would be slower to intercept this target, but if they hadn’t already been sighted, the steamer might not put on extra speed. Luckily the hulk of the Candidate had already sunk out of sight well astern. The crew had been picked up by a trawler that made only a brief appearance.
Without fog, Schwieger couldn’t risk hunting on the surface. But no matter; now that he knew the game, it would be quicker and safer to strike from below. He set a course to intercept the steamer and pin her against the English coastline. As the battery engines spun in the underwater silence, he wrote in his battle log, reporting the successful earlier attack and their current course. His shipping expert Lanz went to the periscope and reported back, “Looks like the Arabic, British White Star Lines, 16,000 tons. Appears to be making full speed, about twenty knots.”
Bad news. At that speed, U-20 could not hope to intercept. Schwieger went to the periscope and saw how much the ship had dwindled already. A stern torpedo hit would be impossible now, much less a clean bow shot. He watched, hoping that she would change course, and instead saw her disappear into a lingering fogbank.
“Fog above,” Schwieger announced. “Increase depth to 72 feet, then go to half speed.” As the steering crew ran to adjust the dive planes, Schwieger returned to his log book. If they could not hunt, at least they would be safe from being run over by a big liner with a deep draft, such as the Lusitania.
* * *
In the afternoon, U-20 again rose to periscope depth, and Schwieger found that the fog had lifted. He gave the periscope watch to the faithful Lanz, who almost immediately reported another liner approaching.
“A single-stacker, about six thousand tons. Of the British Harrison Line, though she flies no flag, Herr Kapitan.”
“What, that sounds like the one we just sunk, their Candidate!” As he stood almost upright in his cramped cabin, the Kapitan-Leutnant laughed aloud, half-suspecting a joke. “What is it, a ghost ship?”
“Could be the Centurion, Candidate’s sister-ship,” Lanz said earnestly.
“Well, then, let’s tumble both sisters,” Schwieger said, striding toward the periscope. “But this time we’ll use one of our good gyro-torpedoes!”
“No surfacing, Herr Kapitan?” The question came from Voegele, sitting beside the wireless operator.
An impertinence, this questioning of one’s captain, and the other crew in earshot waited to see what would happen. But for morale’s sake, Schwieger merely chose to reply. “Nein, most certainly not.”
To knowingly expose the frail U-boat to another armed merchant would be suicidal. The rest of the crew knew it by now anyway, and would undoubtedly feel relieved at his answer. No further question was raised.
The torpedo shot was easy, straight in amidships from 300 meters. A satisfying explosion was visible in the periscope, with an immediate settling at the bows. As the ship slowed its progress and the crew scrambled for the lifeboats, Schwieger ordered another torpedo loaded, an old bronze one to finish the job. This time he held back until the crew was off.
After the second fish struck home, with Centurion’s portholes blowing out spray and steam spouting from the hatchways, he didn’t surface or stay to witness the ship’s final moments. Still four torpedoes left, and more hunting to be done.