One particularly dramatic engagement happened on 8th August 1917 120 miles west of Ouessant. UC-71 (Oblt.z.S. Reinhold Saltzwedel) was en clenched in a fight with the Q-Ship HMS Dunraven (Captain Gordon Campbell RN VC*). After an eight hour relentless fight with the repeated mutual exchange of gunfire and torpedoes, the unharmed UC-71 left the Q-Ship ablaze and in a sinking condition. This duel can be considered as a remarkable example of bravery on the British side (two members of the crew were awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest British decoration for valor) and coolness and skill of the German commander. Captain Campbell later wrote: “It had been a fair and honest fight, and I lost it. Referring to my crew, words cannot express what I am feeling. No one let me down. No one could have done better.” * Captain Campbell was awarded the Victoria Cross in February 1917 for the sinking of SM U-83. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10222242
After the War Admiral Campbell wrote My Mystery Ships, an account of the Q-ship campaign, It's worth reading - I picked up a 1937 edition in a second-hand shop a few years ago. Gareth
Double Book Review I've been waiting for a cue to post the following! Its a piece that I wrote for the newsletter of a Model Shipwrights club to which I belong. The Deborah Lake book gives a good account of the Baralong incident: DOUBLE BOOK REVIEW My Mystery Ships Rear Admiral Gordon Campbell VC DSO** (Originally) Hodder and Stoughton 1928 (Reprinted) Periscope Publishing 2002, ISBN 978-1904381075 £14.99 Smoke and Mirrors: Q-Ships against the U-boats in the First World War Deborah Lake Sutton Publishing, 2006. ISBN 0-7509-4605-9 £19.99 h/b There is little doubt that the men of the Q-ships, merchant or fishing vessels with hidden guns, fought some of the most courageous Naval actions of the Great War, and were awarded more medals than any other branch of the Royal Navy, including eight Victoria Crosses. The original concept was that because submarines normally surfaced before attacking a merchant ship and used their guns rather than expensive torpedoes, the Q-ship would expose its hidden guns when a submarine appeared and overwhelm it with superior firepower. However, once the submarine commanders got wise to this, they used torpedoes against anything larger than a fishing boat. This meant that on some later occasions a Q-ship crew had to wait hidden for several hours on a torpedoed, slowly sinking ship, hoping the attacking submarine surfaced, before they could open fire. Therefore, although over 200 vessels served as Q-ships, no more than eleven submarines were sunk by them. Later in the war an action almost always resulted in the loss of the Q-ship as well as the U-boat - in fact all too often the Q-ship alone was lost. The war against the U-boats was eventually turned in the allies’ favour primarily by the use of convoys. I have read two very different books on this subject. “My Mystery Ships” is a first hand account by the most successful Q-ship commander, Captain (eventually Vice-Admiral) Gordon Campbell, who being awarded the Victoria Cross and two bars to his DSO was the most decorated Naval Officer of the war. My copy of the book is an original 1928 edition that I found in a second-hand bookshop, but I have found various reprints available on Amazon. His account is limited to his own experiences of those of his crew, but he does include an honest discussion of the results of the Q-ship war at the end. There is plenty of fascinating detail of Naval life in WW1, such as the commissioning of the adapted vessels. Anyone racing through these parts looking for the accounts of action is missing a treat. The fact that there are large chunks of the book with no action reflects the fact that so much of Naval warfare in WW1 consisted of months of tedious patrolling, and then a brief terrifying encounter with the enemy. “Smoke and Mirrors” is a recent account that attempts to tell the entire story. Straight away there is a glaring error in the title, though admittedly I didn’t realise this myself until later. The term “U-boat” is of course short for the German Unterseebooten. But the British did not use the term until the early part of the Second World War! Campbell’s book never once uses the term “U-boat” - it is always “submarine” or “German submarine” (at least in the 1928 edition). Unfortunately the book includes considerable amounts of padding. Perhaps this is unavoidable: because the actual number of actions was so small, it must have been difficult to fill a whole book on the subject. But it is Ms Lake’s choice of padding that I question. The first chapter is a very superficial account of the history of submarines in the nineteenth-century. It takes a least a third of the book to get to the subject of Q-ships, and there continues to be numerous deviations. The account of the Kaiser’s arrival in The Netherlands at the end of the war is interesting, but if I am looking for it in the future will I remember that I read it in a book on Q-ships? It is not clear if the publishers have interfered too much or not edited enough. This is a pity, because Ms Lake has virtually written a book on the entire history of antisubmarine warfare in WW1, and maybe the subtitle should have reflected that. She explains the political struggles between Lloyd George and Jellicoe. The Admiralty took too long to introduce convoys, and one issue Deborah Lake’s book explores is to what extent their reservations were understandable without hindsight. She could not have written such an account without a very firm grasp of the subject, though I wonder if she relies on secondary rather than primary sources. She explains at the beginning that she is attempting to write about “Valiant men…the human story of this aspect of the war..” This she does very well, but she then says that “those who require excruciating detail or long lists of Q-ships should look elsewhere”. I would suggest she could have achieved both objectives in a book of this length and lost some other material. Most readers will concur with her view that has a high regard for the courage and fortitude of the seamen while being critical of the ambitions of politicians: Lloyd George is a “Prime Minister who breathed fire from the safety of Westminster, like others before and since”. As to accuracy, the book seems to generally tally with “My Mystery Ships”. According to the Foreword the book has been vetted by respected historians such as Michael Lowrey, but I am worried that she says he has “steered her away from glaring errors” - does this mean other errors remain? I did notice one glaring contradiction. Possibly due to wishful thinking, she ascribes a Hollywood ending to the fate of the ship’s cat that was on HMS Farnborough during her action with U83. She implies that the creature survived. Sadly, Campbell gives no such assurance. (He spent frantic minutes looking for a black cat in the coal bunker of the sinking vessel, having gone to check that all his men were out and heard the cat mewing). As to which book to read if you only have time for one: if you don’t want an overview of the whole story but value authentic first hand accounts, I would certainly go for Campbell’s book. If you do want an overview, Lake’s book will suffice if your patience can cope with its idiosyncrasies, but I wouldn’t rely on it or quote it if you are writing a Ph.D thesis. Adrian Roberts 5/9/08
