Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy are sunk

On the morning of 22 September 1914, in the North Sea off the coast of the Netherlands, the German submarine U-9 sank three British armoured cruisers one after another: Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy. The whole action lasted little more than an hour. 1,459 sailors were killed, more than at the Battle of Trafalgar. It was one of the heaviest defeats suffered by the Royal Navy in this war and the first great victory of the German U-boats.

The “live bait squadron”

Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy belonged to the 7th Cruiser Squadron, in which their sister ship Euryalus also served. They were Cressy-class ships, built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, slow and obsolete. Their crews consisted largely of reservists, often older men with families, and of very young sailors. The squadron was to patrol the southern part of the North Sea, known as the Broad Fourteens, and cover the routes taken by troop transports from England to France.

From the start this caused unease among naval officers. Old cruisers regularly patrolling the same waters close to German bases were an easy target. They were called the “live bait squadron”. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, learned of these concerns a few days before the disaster and recommended withdrawing the ships, but the decision was put off. Meanwhile a storm forced the destroyers escorting the cruisers to return to port, and the flagship Euryalus left to coal. On 22 September the three ships were patrolling alone, sailing slowly and without zigzagging.

Three cruisers in an hour

U-9 was an old, paraffin-engined submarine. She was commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen. At about 6.20 a.m. Weddigen fired a torpedo at Aboukir. The cruiser’s captain, John Drummond, at first thought the ship had struck a mine and called the other cruisers to help. Aboukir capsized and sank after about half an hour. Only one boat could be lowered.

Hogue and Cressy stopped to rescue the survivors from the water. They became easy targets. Hogue was hit by two torpedoes at close range and sank within a quarter of an hour or so. At about 7.20 a.m. U-9 attacked Cressy. The cruiser tried to fire on the submarine but was hit by two torpedoes, capsized and went to the bottom before 8 a.m. The times of the attacks differ slightly between sources.

Hundreds of men fought for their lives in the cold water. Survivors were rescued by the Dutch steamer Flora, which took about 280 of them to IJmuiden, the British steamer Titan and fishing trawlers from Lowestoft. Destroyers from Harwich arrived only before noon. 837 men survived.

The dead

1,459 officers and men were killed, including Cressy’s captain, Robert Johnson. Many of the dead came from Chatham, where the ships were based. Among the victims were coastguard reservists and also young cadets and midshipmen straight from the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, sent to the ships in the first weeks of the war. According to researchers at Dartmouth, 28 such boys and young men served on the three cruisers, of whom 13 were killed, many of them under 16. The deaths of children caused outrage in Britain, and questions were asked in Parliament as to why they had been sent to sea. Soon afterwards the Admiralty withdrew the youngest cadets from the ships.

Shock and lessons

News of the disaster shook Britain. Only two weeks earlier U-21 had sunk the cruiser Pathfinder, but now a single small submarine had destroyed three large cruisers within an hour. The press and the public criticised the Admiralty, and Churchill was accused of needlessly risking the ships. A court of inquiry put part of the blame on the squadron’s commanders. In Germany Weddigen became a national hero. He received the Iron Cross First Class, and the whole crew of U-9 the Iron Cross Second Class. As early as 15 October U-9 sank another British cruiser, HMS Hawke.

The disaster changed the way the war at sea was fought. The Admiralty withdrew the old cruisers from patrols in the southern North Sea. From then on ships were to sail fast and zigzag, and large vessels were not allowed to stop to rescue survivors from ships torpedoed in an area where a submarine was operating. Both sides realised that the submarine, until recently regarded as an auxiliary weapon, could threaten even large warships. As one British officer, Dudley Pound, noted, the navy had already been starting to think that German submarines were no good.