Baralong sinks U-27

On the afternoon of 19 August 1915, in the Atlantic west of the Isles of Scilly, the British Q-ship Baralong sank the German submarine U-27. It was not the sinking itself, however, that made the day memorable. The British shot the survivors of U-27, including those who had climbed aboard the abandoned steamer Nicosian. The “Baralong incident” became one of the most notorious disputes over the law of naval warfare in 1915, and its course is still told in differing versions today.

The decoy

Baralong was an ordinary-looking freighter of about 4,200 tons, armed with three concealed 12-pounder guns. She had a detachment of Royal Marines on board. Q-ships posed as defenceless merchant vessels in order to lure a submarine to the surface and destroy it with gunfire at close range. Baralong’s commander, Lieutenant-Commander Godfrey Herbert, had been cruising without success in the English Channel and the Western Approaches since the spring. On the morning of 19 August news came that several dozen miles away, off the south coast of Ireland, U-24 had torpedoed the liner Arabic. According to accounts from aboard Baralong, the crew were incensed.

At about 3 p.m. Herbert picked up a distress signal from the Leyland Line steamer Nicosian, which was carrying some 350 mules for the British Army from New Orleans. She had been stopped by U-27 under Kapitänleutnant Bernd Wegener, who in October 1914 had sunk HMS Hermes. Wegener acted in accordance with the rules of prize law: he fired a warning shot, let the crew take to the boats and began shelling the ship with his deck gun to sink her.

Thirty-four shells

Baralong approached under the flag of the neutral United States and signalled that she wished to pick up the survivors. The submarine ceased firing and moved along Nicosian’s other side to intercept the newcomer. When the steamer’s hull briefly hid her, Herbert had the American flag lowered, the Royal Navy ensign raised and the guns unmasked. Flying a false flag was an accepted ruse of war, provided that the ship showed her own colours before opening fire. When U-27 emerged from behind Nicosian’s bow, Baralong opened fire at a range of about 550 metres, and the marines fired with their rifles. After 34 shells the submarine rolled over onto her side and sank.

The survivors

About twelve Germans, the gun crew and men from the conning tower, got out of the water. They swam to Nicosian and began climbing the ropes and ladder hanging from her side. Herbert ordered his men to fire at them. According to his report he feared that the Germans would scuttle or set fire to the ship with her valuable cargo, and weapons had been left in Nicosian’s chart room. A few of the survivors, four to six according to various accounts, managed to get on board. Herbert came alongside the steamer and sent the marines aboard with orders to shoot first. The Germans were found in the engine room and shot. The entire crew of U-27 was killed, 37 men according to uboat.net. According to some accounts Wegener died in the water while swimming towards Baralong, according to others on Nicosian’s deck or just over her side while trying to surrender.

The British official history, published in 1923, presents the killing of the survivors as an act committed in the heat of battle by marines convinced that they were facing the men who had sunk Arabic that morning, and dismisses the accounts of German witnesses as unreliable. Later memoirs of participants, among them Baralong’s gunnery officer, Sub-Lieutenant Gordon Steele, and historians’ research nevertheless confirmed that defenceless men were killed, and that some of them were trying to surrender. Many historians today regard the Baralong incident as a war crime.

The dispute

The Admiralty immediately suppressed Herbert’s report. The affair came to light when the American muleteers from Nicosian returned home and told journalists about it. In November the German government passed on, through the United States ambassador, a memorandum based on their sworn statements. It demanded that the commander and crew of Baralong be tried for murder and threatened reprisals. In December the British Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, replied that London was prepared to submit the case to an impartial tribunal, for instance one composed of United States naval officers, but only together with three German acts from the same 48 hours, among them the sinking of Arabic. The Germans rejected this proposal.

To protect her crew from reprisals, Baralong was renamed Wyandra and transferred to the Mediterranean, and Nicosian was given a new name. Herbert, who appears in German documents as “Captain William McBride”, was put on the German list of persons accused of violating the laws of war.