Shelling of Ponta Delgada

Before dawn on 4 July 1917, American Independence Day, the German submarine U-155 surfaced off the port of Ponta Delgada, the largest town of the Azores, and opened fire on the town with her deck guns. Sources give the time differently: American ones speak of three in the morning, Portuguese ones of four, or of the alarm raised in the town at about five. Half a year earlier a German submarine had shelled Funchal on Madeira. Now it was the turn of Portugal’s second archipelago in the Atlantic.

A former merchant vessel

U-155 was a well-known boat under another name. She was the merchant submarine Deutschland, which in 1916 had twice crossed to America with cargo for American buyers. After the break in relations with the United States, the navy took her over in February 1917 and converted her into a so-called submarine cruiser, armed with two 150 mm guns. Under the command of Kapitänleutnant Karl Meusel the boat left Germany on 24 May on a long-range cruise. According to the British official history she reached the area of the Azores on 13 June and for the rest of the month hunted ships on the routes north and north-east of the archipelago. Portugal had been at war with Germany since March 1916, and its islands lay at the crossroads of the routes from America to Europe and to the Mediterranean.

The duel with Orion

The shells fell on the town and its surroundings. According to Portuguese sources the boat fired about eight rounds. One shell hit a house in Rua do Pilar where sixteen-year-old Tomásia Pacheco was asleep. The girl was killed, and several people, according to some accounts four, were wounded. Several houses were damaged. Some English-language accounts speak of four killed, but Portuguese historians and the local anniversary commemorations name only one fatality.

The Germans were in for a surprise. In the port lay the American navy collier Orion, which had been operating around the Azores since June and was just having her propeller repaired. According to Portuguese accounts the ship had her stern raised, so that her 76 mm gun stood somewhat higher than usual, which made it easier for her to fire. Orion’s crew returned fire and, according to American accounts, fought an artillery duel with U-155 for about twelve minutes. Neither side hit the other. The Portuguese batteries on Mãe de Deus hill above the town also fired, but their obsolete 19th-century guns had no chance of scoring a hit. The submarine dived and made off. The Portuguese government later decorated Orion’s crew with the Order of the Tower and Sword.

Consequences

The damage was slight, but the attack showed that the Azores were practically defenceless, and the local authorities felt abandoned by Lisbon. Meusel moved to the area between the Azores and Madeira and during July sank more ships there. He returned to Germany only on 4 September, after more than a hundred days at sea, according to the British official history with nineteen ships sunk to his credit. One of the British responses to his cruise was to extend the convoy system to the South Atlantic at the beginning of August.

The most lasting consequence of the shelling was the American presence. In July Orion’s crew helped to close the harbour entrance with a chain barrier, and according to the Portuguese historian Sérgio Resendes, within about two weeks of the attack the Americans began informally using Ponta Delgada as a base. In the following months an American naval base was established there. In the autumn submarines arrived, and at the beginning of 1918 a squadron of Marine Corps seaplanes.