A Short History of the Great WarPollard, A. F. (Albert Frederick)
History
A Short History of the Great War
Pollard, A. F. (Albert Frederick)
World War, 1914-1918
Other incidents of naval warfare than the German submarine campaign
added to the public discomposure. On 17 October two German cruisers
sank two British destroyers and nine convoyed Norwegian merchant ships
between the Shetlands and the Norwegian coast; on 12 December
somewhere in the North Sea four German destroyers sank five neutral
vessels, four British armed trawlers, and also one of the two British
destroyers accompanying them, the other being disabled, while two
British trawlers and two neutral vessels were also sunk off the Tyne;
and on the 23rd, three British destroyers were mined or torpedoed off
the Dutch coast. On the 26th it was announced that Sir Rosslyn Wemyss
had succeeded Jellicoe as First Sea Lord, and other changes were made
at the Admiralty. But the unpleasant incidents continued. On 14
January 1918 Yarmouth was, after a long immunity from such attacks,
once more bombarded by enemy destroyers; on 15 February a British
trawler and seven drifters were sunk by similar means in the Straits
of Dover; and on the 24th the safe return was announced of the German
raider Wolf after a cruise in which she had sunk eleven vessels in the
Indian and Pacific Oceans. The extension of submarine warfare to the
sinking of hospital ships was more shocking as an exhibition of
barbarity than alarming as a proof of naval efficiency, and may even
have been designed as a desperate measure to commit Germany beyond
recall to the alternative of victory or irredeemable ruin. As an
outrage against international morality it was only exceeded by the
torpedoing on 6 June of a Dutch vessel on which British delegates were
to have gone to The Hague to discuss with Germans the mutual
amelioration of the lot of prisoners of war.
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