Sinking of HMS Niger

At about noon on 11 November 1914 the German submarine U-12 torpedoed the British warship Niger, lying at anchor about two miles off the pier at Deal in Kent. Niger sank close to the shore, in full view of the townspeople.

Niger was an old Alarm-class torpedo gunboat, launched in 1892. Ships of this class were meant to fight torpedo boats, but they quickly became obsolete. In 1909 Niger was converted into a minesweeper. At the time of the attack she was lying in the Downs, a sheltered anchorage off the Kent coast, right by the Strait of Dover, through which the transports to France passed.

U-12 was commanded by Kapitänleutnant Walther Forstmann. Niger was the first ship he sank. Forstmann later became one of the most successful German U-boat commanders, mainly in the Mediterranean. According to some accounts this was also the first Allied warship sunk by a U-boat operating from the ports in Belgium, which the Germans had taken in October.

Despite a strong wind and a heavy sea, boats put out from the shore and picked up the survivors. The ship’s commanding officer, Lieutenant-Commander Arthur Muir, was the last to leave the bridge and was badly injured. All the officers and most of the ratings were saved. Figures for the dead vary. The Royal Navy’s casualty lists by name record 15 killed, most of them stokers, although some accounts give much lower numbers.

It was another loss inflicted on the Royal Navy by U-boats in the narrow waters between England and France, after the sinking of the Hermes off Calais on 31 October. The British increasingly had to reckon with the fact that submarines threatened not only the open sea but also the very route linking Britain with its army in France.