Shelling of Southwold

Late in the evening of 25 January 1917 German torpedo boats, in practice modern destroyers, approached the east coast of England and shelled the small seaside town of Southwold in the county of Suffolk. The British chronology of the war names alongside it the village of Wangford, a few kilometres inland. The bombardment was brief and did little damage, and according to historians no one was killed.

The attack was carried out by the Flanders forces, which had just been reinforced. Two nights earlier the German 6th Flotilla had broken through to Zeebrugge, although the Harwich Force had tried to intercept it. According to Mark Karau, historian of the German navy in Flanders, it was this flotilla that put to sea on 25 January. A German Admiralty communiqué of 26 January stated that on the night of 25/26 January light forces had entered English coastal waters south of Lowestoft to attack British patrol vessels reported there earlier. No enemy was found, however. The torpedo boats then lit up Southwold at close range with star shells and opened fire on it.

According to the Southwold museum, the German ships fired two star shells and 68 high-explosive shells. Many of them fell on the marshes around the town, and only three hit buildings: the police station, the house Iona Cottage on Constitution Hill, which was badly damaged, and a house called Balmore. Local tradition recalls that a submarine was also among the attackers, but the German communiqué mentions only torpedo boats. The Germans returned to base without meeting a single British ship.

The communiqué called Southwold a “fortified place”. This mattered, because the Hague Convention of 1907 forbade navies to bombard undefended towns. The coast of Suffolk and neighbouring Norfolk was a frequent target of the German navy. In April 1916 battlecruisers shelled Lowestoft and Yarmouth, and in November torpedo boats from Flanders sank the trawler Narval in these waters. In the very first days of the war the Germans had laid mines east of Southwold.

The military significance of the bombardment was negligible, but it showed the inhabitants of the coast that German torpedo boats from Flanders could approach English towns at night unhindered. For the Royal Navy it was another sign that it was hard to guard a long coastline against fast night raids.