The Story of the Great War, Volume 3: History of the European War from Official Sources
History
The Story of the Great War, Volume 3: History of the European War from Official Sources
World War, 1914-1918
On that date Mr. Balfour, Secretary of the British admiralty,
announced that a German submarine had been sunk, though he did not
state what had been the scene of the action. At the same time he
announced that Great Britain would henceforth treat the captured crew
of submarines in the same manner as were treated other war prisoners,
and that the policy of separating these men from the others and of
giving them harsher treatment would be abandoned.
On the 20th of June, 1915, the day's reports of losses due to the
operations of German submarines, issued by the British Government,
contained the news of the sinking of the two British torpedo boats,
the _No. 10_ and the _No. 20_. No details were made public concerning
just how they went down.
On the same day the Italian admiralty announced that a cache
maintained to supply submarines belonging to the Teutonic Powers and
operating in the Mediterranean, had been discovered on a lonely part
of the coast near Kalimno, an island off the southwest coast of Asia
Minor. Ninety-six barrels of benzine and fifteen hundred barrels of
other fuel were found and destroyed. It was believed that this supply
had been shipped as kerosene from Saloniki to Piraeus. How submarines
belonging to Germany had reached the southern theatre of naval warfare
had been a matter of speculation for the outside world. But on the 6th
of June, 1915, Captain Otto Hersing made public the manner in which he
took the _U-51_ on a 3,000 mile trip from Wilhelmshaven on the North
Sea to Constantinople. He was the commander who managed to torpedo the
British battleships _Triumph_ and _Majestic_.
He received his orders to sail on the 25th of April, 1915, and
immediately began to stock his ship with extra amounts of fuel and
provisions, allowing only his first officer and chief engineer to know
the destination of their craft. He traveled on the surface of the
water as soon as he had passed the guard of British warships near the
German coast; traveling "light" allowed him to make six or seven knots
more in speed. As he passed through the "war zone" he kept watch for
merchantmen which might be made victims of his torpedo tubes. His
craft was sighted by a British destroyer, however, off the English
coast and he had to submerge to escape the fire of the destroyer's
guns. He then proceeded cautiously down the coast of France,
encountering no hostile ships. When within one hundred miles of
Gibraltar he was again discovered by British destroyers, but again
managed to escape by submerging his craft.
Passage through the Strait of Gibraltar was made in the early morning
hours, while a mist hung near the surface of the water and permitted
no one at the fort to see the wake of the _U-51's_ periscope. Once
inside the Mediterranean he headed for the south of Greece, escaping
attack from a French destroyer and proceeding through the AEgean Sea to
the Dardanelles. The journey ended on the 25th of May, just one month
after leaving Wilhelmshaven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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