Deutschland returns to Germany

On the afternoon of 23 August 1916 the German merchant submarine Deutschland dropped anchor by the Hohenweg lighthouse in the estuary of the Weser. From Heligoland it had been escorted by ships and aircraft of the Kaiserliche Marine. Captain Paul König and his twenty-odd men were returning from Baltimore, where in July they had become the first to carry a cargo across the Atlantic by submarine, evading the British blockade. The news spread by telegraph throughout Germany and caused rejoicing such as had not been seen for a long time.

Escape from Chesapeake Bay

The hardest part was the beginning of the voyage. The British and French regarded Deutschland as a warship and made no secret that their cruisers would do everything to track it down and sink it as soon as it left American territorial waters. In Baltimore it was said that several Allied warships were waiting for it off the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. Deutschland cast off from the quay on 1 August at five in the afternoon, seen off by crowds on the banks of the Patapsco river and the hooting of ships’ sirens in the harbour. The British chronology of the war gives 2 August as the date of departure, because on that day the vessel was still sailing down the bay, testing its diving and waiting for dark. On the evening of 2 August, near Cape Henry, it submerged and crossed the limit of territorial waters under water. According to König’s account, British warships cruising there were sweeping the sea with searchlights but did not spot it. At about midnight Deutschland surfaced, already on the open sea, and set off east at full power.

The rest of the voyage passed quietly. The vessel sailed mostly on the surface, through the Gulf Stream and then through several days of stormy weather. It submerged only when a suspicious ship appeared on the horizon. On the whole voyage there and back it covered about 8,450 nautical miles, of which only about 190 under water.

The cargo

In its holds and in the spaces between its hulls Deutschland brought the goods German war industry needed most: about 350 tonnes of rubber, about 340 tonnes of nickel, essential for making armour steel, and between 80 and over 90 tonnes of tin. According to the American customs declaration the cargo was worth just over a million dollars, but in Germany, cut off from the world, its value was many times higher. Some accounts estimate it at more than ten million dollars, several times what the vessel had cost to build.

Triumph in Bremen

On the morning of 25 August Deutschland set off up the Weser to Bremen, decorated with garlands of roses. Despite a downpour, thousands of people stood on the dykes and by the factories and shipyards, bands played, bells rang and guns fired salutes. At noon the vessel entered the harbour. On the pontoon the crew was welcomed by the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, representatives of the Bremen senate and of the military and naval authorities, among them Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Alfred Lohmann, founder of the Deutsche Ozean-Reederei company to which the vessel belonged, spoke of a feat worthy of their Hanseatic forebears. In the evening the city gave a banquet in honour of the crew in the town hall and announced that it would strike a commemorative medal.

For German propaganda this was proof that the blockade could be broken and that Germany was conducting peaceful trade with neutrals, while the British threatened to sink an unarmed vessel. In reality a few hundred tonnes of goods per voyage meant little against the needs of the German economy. Its sister vessel Bremen was already preparing for the next voyage to America, but it disappeared without trace in the Atlantic that autumn. Deutschland made one more voyage, to New London, in November 1916, and in 1917 it was taken over by the navy and converted into a submarine cruiser.