16 September 1917

HMS G9 was rammed and sunk by HMS Pasley in poor weather off Norway on 16 September 1917, with just one submariner surviving. G9 was an 840-ton G-class boat, launched on 15 June 1916 by Vickers at Barrow in-Furness, and designed for long-range patrols in the North Sea and the German Bight to counter the growing threat of German U-boats. G9’s loss was the result of a mutual friendly-fire incident. The submarine had sailed from Scapa Flow to patrol the seas between Shetland and the Norwegian coast, and on 15 September she was ordered to move north to avoid fleet exercises. Destroyer HMS Pasley had been escorting a convoy from Russia to Lerwick via the Norwegian Aspo Fjord, and was attempting to round up straggling merchantmen, displaying a white light halfway up her mast to guide them. In heavy seas and poor visibility, G9 spotted the light and, having been warned a U-boat was in the area, launched her attack. Two torpedoes were fired; the first struck a glancing blow but failed to detonate, while the second missed all together. G9’s Commanding Officer realised his boat was attacking friendly forces and attempted to signal with an arc light, and although the signal was recognised it was too late – Pasley had been swung round and driven towards the submarine, and rammed her before she could be slowed. G9 was struck close to midships, almost cutting the boat in half. G9 began to sink rapidly, but there was still time for her crew of 34 to muster at the foot of the conning tower in an attempt to escape. Stoker William Drake was second up the ladder, struggling onto the casing of the submarine before being swept into the water by the wild waves. Five men got off the boat before it sank, but four were swept away, and Drake was only saved by an able seaman from Pasley going over the side of his ship to secure a rope to the exhausted, numbed submariner. No blame was attached to the crew of Pasley at the inquiry four days later. Drake went on to serve in World War 2 as well, and died in 1974 at the age of 80.

17 September 1879

Battleship HMS Agamemnon was launched at Chatham on 17 September 1879, though she and her Pembroke built sister HMS Ajax were plagued by erratic steering throughout their careers. Agamemnon displaced 8,500 tons and was markedly broad, with a length of just over 90 metres and a beam of 20 metres. It was hoped this ratio would make her economical in terms of fuel, but that did not happen, and in addition her ship’s company had to contend with the fact that she needed a large degree of helm, both to port and starboard, to keep her on a straight course – it was reported on one occasion that with her helm firmly amidships the ironclad turret battleship turned a complete circle in under ten minutes. Agamemnon’s first tasking was on the China Station in 1884, and true to form, she managed to hold up traffic in the Suez Canal for a few days by grounding several times. She also served on the East Indies Station, and carried out anti-slave trade patrols off Zanzibar, suffering a bad outbreak of Dengue fever – 80 per cent of her ship’s company of 400 caught it, but all recovered. She then joined the Mediterranean Fleet in 1890, going into reserve two years later. She was taken off the Navy’s books in 1901 and sold for scrap in 1903, just one year before her sister.

18 September 1942

A Wren senior rate was the sole victim of an air raid on Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth on the night of 18 September 1942. PO Telegraphist Ellen Whittall, who is believed to have been married and in her 40s, was the only casualty at BRNC throughout the entire war, though it could have been very different. It is thought that the raid, carried out by six Focke-Wulf aircraft which approached from the east, along the river, to avoid anti-aircraft fire, was timed to coincide with the return of officer cadets to the college for the start of the new term. However, every six years the summer leave was extended by a week to even up the terms, and this was one such year, meaning there were much fewer people at Dartmouth than would normally be the case. The buildings were badly damaged, as was the Quarterdeck, in the raid, and plans were put into action to evacuate staff and students, with officer training resuming at Eaton Hall in Cheshire for the remainder of the war, not returning to Devon until the autumn of 1946. Dartmouth was still put to good use; after a period training Combined operations personnel in amphibious warfare, the college was temporarily taken over by American forces in preparation for D-Day.

19 September 1944

HM Ships Terpsichore, Troubridge and Polish ship ORP Garland sank U-407 off Crete on 19 September 1944 – the last enemy submarine to be sunk in the Mediterranean in World War 2. Terpsichore and Troubridge were T-class destroyers, with the former being commissioned on 20 January 1944 at William Denny’s in Dumbarton and the latter on 8 March the same year at John Brown’s in Clydebank. These two utility warships, displacing 2,550 tons, were joined on 19 September by the smaller Polish G-class destroyer ORP Garland, built for the Royal Navy at Fairfield in Govan, completed on 3 March 1936 and loaned to the Polish Navy in May 1940. The three destroyers were operating south of the Greek island of Milos when they carried out the depth-charge attack on the German submarine, supported by destroyers HM Ships Brecon and Zetland. U-407, which had sunk three merchantmen and damaged two warships in her 1 war patrols, sank with the loss of five of her crew of 53. She was reportedly the 62nd and last U-boat lost to enemy action in the Mediterranean during World War 2. Garland was returned from her loan in 1946 and went into reserve before being sold to the Netherlands as a training ship, though she was refurbished as an operational frigate in 1952, by which time she had been renamed HNLMS Marnix. She was finally decommissioned in early 1964 and subsequently scrapped. Both Terpsichore and Troubridge also survived the war and were converted in later life; Terpsichore spent seven years from 1946-53 in reserve before being converted to a much-needed but cheaper Type 16 fast anti-submarine frigate, while after six years in reserve Troubridge was uprated to a more effective Type 15 frigate in 1955-7. Terpsichore spent a further six years in reserve until she was sold for scrap in 1966 while Troubridge left front-line service in March 1969 and was scrapped the following year.

20 September 1914

Veteran cruiser HMS Pegasus, while repairing her engines in Zanzibar, was sunk by German cruiser SMS Konigsberg on 20 September 1914. The protected cruiser had been built by Palmers at Jarrow and launched in March 1897, and in her early years saw service around the world, including South America, the Mediterranean, Australia, China and South Africa. Like her ten Pelorus class sisters, Pegasus suffered throughout her career from boilers which were not really up to the job, and only seven of the class remained in service on the outbreak of war in 1914, when Pegasus was on the Cape of Good Hope Station. The ships on that station were ordered to keep a watch for the more powerful 3,800-ton German light cruiser Konigsberg, and the theory was that the Royal Navy ships should support each other, but on 12 August 1914 the second-class cruiser HMS Astraea – a contemporary of Pegasus – was ordered south to help station flagship HMS Hyacinth protect troop convoys, leaving Pegasus to operate alone our of Zanzibar. On 18 September, having patrolled the coast for several days, Pegasus sailed into Zanzibar Harbour to carry out repairs on her engines, and early in the morning two days later, while alongside with engines shut down, she was attacked by Konigsberg from a range of around 7,000 metres. The outclassed 2,800-ton British cruiser was incapacitated within ten minutes and set ablaze soon after – an attempt to strike her colours to prevent further bloodshed was unsuccessful as the flag was obscured by thick smoke. Pegasus capsized and sank at her berth some 50 minutes into the so-called Battle of Zanzibar, having lost more than 30 sailors killed in the action with a further 55 wounded. Bizarrely, this was not the last time the guns of Pegasus and Konigsberg were ranged against each other. The German cruiser was sunk in the Battle of the Rufiji Delta on 11 July 1915 when, having been blockaded on the river and initially attacked and damaged on 6 July, the Konigsberg was pounded into submission by monitors HM Ships Mersey and Severn, and scuttled her ship’s company. The guns from both Pegasus and Konigsberg were salvaged by their respective navies and used in the East Africa land campaign as artillery pieces, facing each other once more in 1915.

21 September 1744

HMS Colchester (50 guns) was lost off the Kentish Knock on 21 September 1744, very much in the unhappy tradition of her predecessors. The fourth rate ship was built at the Harwich yard of John Barnard and launched on 13 August 1744, but was barely out of harbour when she cam to grief. She sailed from The Nore anchorage on 21 September 1744 (some reports put the date exactly one month later) and ran aground on the notorious Kentish Knock shoal off the Essex coast, in reasonable weather. A boat was sent back to seek help, while the remaining crew cut the two smaller masts away to reduce the strain on the hull. With the weather deteriorating the main mast was also cut away, but the ship began to flood and the remaining crew were forced to gather on the uppermost decks, unable to reach ships that had come to Colchester’s aid because of the rising wind. Lots were drawn to see who could take the ship’s longboat to safety, but reportedly as the lots were being drawn, a group of sailors – including the ship’s surgeon – seized the boat and pulled away, though it sank shortly after, drowning 13 of the 31 aboard. Four more sailors drowned attempting to jump into it from the stricken warship. A group of six fishing vessels, alerted by Colchester’s first boat away, returned on 23 September but could not approach until the 24th, when the weather grew calmer again; more than 360 men were saved, while more than 40 died. A subsequent court martial pointed the finger of blame at the pilot, who was sentenced to 12 months in Marshalsea Prison. The name Colchester was not a particularly lucky one for Royal Navy ships. The first, a 24-gun warship built in 1654, sank in action 12 years later, while the eight-gun ketch of 1664 was captured by the French in 1667. The third was 48-gun fourth rate launched in 1694 which foundered ten years later, and it was only the fourth of the name, a 54-gun fourth rate of 1707, that stayed the course, being rebuilt in 1721 and broken up in 1742.

22 September 1914

Ships Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue were sunk by U-9 off the Maas Light Vessel on 22 September 1914 in a huge blow to British morale so early in the war. The 12,000-ton armoured cruiser Aboukir, built by Fairfield at Govan and launched in May 1900, spent much of the pre-war period in the Mediterranean, and ta the start of World War 1 she was part of the 7trh Cruiser Squadron, patrolling the Dogger Bank and Broad Fourteens supported by destroyers, to protect the sea lanes between England and France. These ships were already showing signs of wear and tear, with their original top speed of 21 knots now reduced to around 15, and their vulnerability, allied to the relative inexperience of their ships’ companies, had caused concern among top-ranking Naval officers. So much so that the squadron (nicknamed the Live Bait Squadron in typical sardonic Naval fashion) had come to the attention of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. He and senior officers decided that the cruisers should be withdrawn from the asking, but a counter argument – that there were no other suitable vessels to carry out this vital tasking – swung the argument, and it was decided that these cruisers should continue until newer vessel, then in build, would be available. Tragically, the doubts expressed about the obsolete ships were to prove well-founded. Around 0600 in the morning of 22 September 1914 the three Cressy-class sisters Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue were pottering along at ten knots without any cover – their sister and flagship HMS Euryalus had returned to port with the destroyer and light cruiser screen. Sailing line astern with lookouts posted, the three ships were spotted by U-9 which submerged and approached them. The Commanding Officer of U-9, Lt Otto Weddigen, fired a single torpedo at Aboukir at close range, which shattered the cruiser’s keel and sank her in 20 minutes, killing almost 530 men and boys. The commanding officers of Cressy and Hogue, assuming the ship had struck a mine, moved in to pick up survivors, and Weddigen was presented with a second easy target. Two torpedoes were loosed at Hogue, which was badly damaged, but at least the British now knew what they were up against, as U-9 surfaced and was fired on. Being so early in the war, and with little experience of submarine warfare and tactics, the commanding officer of Cressy did not consider escape, and instead moved in to pick up survivors of the two sunken warships, but became the third victim as two further torpedoes sent her to the sea bed. Distress signals had alerted a couple of Dutch coasters and a British trawler, which managed to rescue almost 840 sailors between them, but almost 1,460 died in the action – almost three times the number of Royal Navy sailors lost at Trafalgar. Amongst those who died were a large number of one term of Dartmouth cadets. Weddigen was feted in Germany, and awarded the Iron Cross First Class while all his crew were awarded the Second Class version of the medal. Less than a month later Weddigen sank another cruiser, HMS Hawke, with the loss of a further 524 lives. But the first U-boat ace of the war did not live long to enjoy his successes; in March 1915, in command of U-29, Weddigen came up against HMS Dreadnought in the Pentland Firth, and the battleship rammed the U-boat, killing her crew of 35. It is believed to be the only example of a submarine being sunk on purpose by a battleship alone. The shocking loss of the three cruisers on 22 September was a pivotal moment; from then on the tactic of zig-zagging when a submarine attack was possible, and the principle established that major units of the Fleet should not stop to pick up survivors of vessels sunk by mine of submarine, but should escape the situation and leave rescue to the smaller escorting vessels.