The War at Sea

T H E WA R AT S E A

Q-SHIP CREW DRESSING DOWN

Fig 1. Merchant vessel

dazzle-painted as seen

through a submarine

periscope.

Fig 2. The same

vessel on identical

course painted grey.

THIS WOULD

BECOME KNOWN

THE

KILLING

TIME

SINKING

850,000 tons,with 516 ships

lost to U-boats

part 11 - below the waves

In 1917,artist Norman Wilkinson had a brainwave.

As it was impossible to paint a ship in camouflage

to hide it from the sights of a submarine,he proposed

the “extreme opposite” – using bold shapes and

violent contrasts of colour like a zebra: to confuse

rather than

conceal.He

called these“Dazzle Ships”.

NOTE OF INTEREST

DAZZLE SHIPS

Disguised in dressing gowns,

smoking pipes

more dastardly British form of

warfare was the Q-ship. This was

a class of vessel designed to look like an unarmed cargo ship to trick U-boats to the

surface where a Royal Navy crew would be lying in wait.

The ratings would disguise themselves as a merchant ship’s crew, shedding any idea

of naval discipline: they would be unshaven and untidy, they might even have some

people disguised as women to pretend to be the Captain’s wife and family,walking about

the deck as well, and they would look as shambolic as possible, and nothing at all like a

naval crew. There are stories that some of them would wear dressing gowns and smoke

pipes on board deck and carry budgerigars around in cages.

On sighting the periscope of a U-boat, the ship’s crew behaved in a rehearsed panic

and took to the lifeboats so as to convince the Germans that the ship was perfectly

harmless.

As the U-boat approached, a hidden

crew remained waiting on board the Q-ship.

At the last moment the crew hoisted the

white ensign of the Royal Navy and guns

that had been hidden behind barricades

or tarpaulins were revealed and opened

fire on the U-boat. The war that had

begun with the gentlemanly prize rules had

– within a year – descended into the horrors

of the Lusitania and the deceit of the Q-ships.

Once again – unrestricted warfare

he next year – 1916 – the Kaiser once again ordered unrestricted submarine

warfare. The ferry Sussex was torpedoed, killing 59 passengers, and again there

was international outrage. And on 4th June the Secretary of State for War and a

national icon, Lord Kitchener, was a victim, along with most of the 700 crew of

HMS Hampshire, of a mine laid by a U-boat off the west coast of Orkney, supposedly a

safe route.Only12 survived.

On 31st January 1917, Germany announced a third

campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. Now she

had about 100 long-range U-boats, but only a third of

these could be on station

at one time.

From the very next day all ships suspected of

carrying goods bound to Britain were to be sunk on

sight,without warning and without mercy. For the men

of Britain’s merchant navy the next few months would

be the most terrifying yet. For Germany, unrestricted

U-boat warfare was the only chance to take Britain out

of the war. Her surface fleet had missed its opportunity

at the inconclusive Battle of Jutland the year before.

The German war effort and the German people were

both being starved by the British naval blockade.

The German naval command promised that they

would sink about 600,000 tons a month of Allied

shipping. In April 1917 they exceeded that by some

margin, sinking nearly 850,000 tons, with a staggering

516 ships lost to U-boats. Henning von Holtzendorff,

the German Chief of Naval Staff, declared that

if the Germans could sink 600,000 tons of Allied

shipping this would exceed Britain’s capacity to rebuild ships. He reckoned that

within six months he would have sunk about 39% of British shipping and

that would be the point when the British would simply not be able to carry on the war.

In April 1917, in a letter to the war cabinet, Britain’s First Sea Lord – Jellicoe –

stated:

“We are carrying on this war as if we had the absolute command of the

sea.We

have not and have not had for several months. Our present policy is heading straight for

disaster.”

In June 1917, he told the war policy committee that owing to the shortage of

shipping it would be impossible for Britain to carry on the war into 1918.