Adventures of the Blackgang

steamer torpedoed by a German submarine

Picturing the First World War

U-118 Korvettenkapitän Werner Czygan in the forward hatch

“Tomorrow belongs…  TOMORROW belongs…”

German submarine Commander Leutnant Falke on the bridge of U-118
shakedown trials at Kiel; 7 to 14 December 1941

The Portugal (5,335 grt, 459 ft. long) was built in 1886 and initially placed on the route to La Plata.

From 1899 she sailed on the Mediterranean and later to the Black Sea area. She was trapped in the Black Sea at the outbreak of WW1, became a Russian hospital ship and was sunk at Batum in 1916 by a German submarine. She is seen above at La Joliette harbour basin in Marseilles. The building to the right is La Major cathedral built in the late 19th century.

Messageries Maritimes (Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes) France

Sonar image of HMS Royal Oak (a Revenge Class Battleship)sunk at anchor in Scapa Flow in 1939 – More images at http://www.hmsroyaloak.co.uk/survey.html

In this scan you can see that the bows were blown off by torpedo hits. Other scans show massive damage to the starboard side also caused by torpedos.

posted by Incredible Sulk on pistonheads.com

Revenge-class battleship of the British Royal Navy. Launched in 1914 and completed in 1916, Royal Oak first saw action at the Battle of Jutland. In peacetime, she served in the Atlantic, Home and Mediterranean fleets, more than once coming under accidental attack.

The ship drew worldwide attention in 1928 when her senior officers were controversially court-martialled. Attempts to modernise Royal Oak throughout her 25-year career could not fix her fundamental lack of speed, and by the start of the Second World War, she was no longer suited to front-line duty.

On 14 October 1939, Royal Oak was anchored at Scapa Flow in Orkney, Scotland when she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-47. Of Royal Oak’s complement of 1,234 men and boys, 833 were killed that night or died later of their wounds.

S.S. Persia (image)

During the First World War Germany and Britain had this in mind. Britain with its large war fleets and merchant marine had a distinct advantage. Germany faced with this reality and the dwindling of her sea trade adopted the art of underwater attacks.

Submarines, according to the morality of the time had to surface and give the captains time to abandon ship. This lost the primary surprise so vital in war and exposed the Submarine to extra dangers. By 1915 the gloves were off and Germany abandoned International Agreements and unleashed unrestricted submarine warfare…

dive, dive, dive…

Medal commemorating the sinking of the SS Lusitania, 1915

Obverse: A crowd of men, one reading a newspaper, inscribed (left) standing clamouring for tickets from Death at the window of a ticket office. Legend: ‘GESCHÄFT ÜBER ALLES.’ (Business before everything).

On office: (above) 'CUNARD LINIE’, 'FARHKARTEN AUSGABE’; (side) 'CUNARD.’ Reverse: The SS Lusitania sinking by the stern, an aeroplane and armoured cars on forecastle, inscription below.

Legend: 'KEINE BANNWARE.’ (No contraband.) Exergue: 'DER GROSSDAMPFER = LUSITANIA = DURCH EIN DEUTSCHES TAUCHBOOT VERSENKT 5 MAI 1915.’ (The liner Lusitania sunk by a German submarine. An example of the first issue wrongly dated 5 May, subsequently withdrawn.) Unofficial.

Artist/Maker: Karl Goetz; Germany, bronze: 5 x 57 mm
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
*click image to see obverse

Panama c 1930’s

Seen at Pier 18 is the Canadian Pacific Line’s Empress of Britain. The Empress was the largest vessel ever built for a Canadian line, in 1931. In 1939 she became a troop transport and in October 1940 she was bombed and heavily damaged by Luftwaffe patrol aircraft. While under tow she was sunk by a German submarine, the largest noncombatant to be lost in the war.

Alongside the Empress of Britain is the USS Pennsylvania (BB-38). She was commissioned in 1916, the first of her class. She survived the war and both of the Bikini Atoll atomic tests and was scuttled in 1948. The Pennsylvania earned 8 battle stars for her service during WWII.

Allied tanker sinking in the Atlantic Ocean after being torpedoed by a German submarine, 1942

• Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration

Boat Compass

This boat compass was used by merchant seamen aboard one of the lifeboats from the SS Alcoa Guide, an American freighter sunk by the German submarine U-123 three hundred miles east of Cape Hatteras on April 16, 1942. The donor, Waldemar Semenov, was a Junior Engineer aboard the vessel and one of twenty-seven men who survived the attack. After drifting for three days, crowded into two lifeboats, they were spotted by a search plane and rescued a day later by the USS Broome, a navy destroyer. A life raft carrying another four members of the freighter’s crew was not found until three weeks had passed, at which point only one man was still alive. Seven lives were lost in the attack.

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Arriving in Boston, Thu., April 10th, 1919, Troopship Mongolia with boys of the 26th (“Yankee”) Division, the first ship to sink a German submarine

1 photographic panorama print : gelatin silver ; 10 x 42.5 in.