Sinking of HMS Partridge

On 12 December 1917, less than two months after the raid by the cruisers Brummer and Bremse, the Germans for the second time destroyed a British convoy bound for Norway. Just before noon four modern German destroyers caught it some 25 nautical miles south-west of the entrance to the fjord leading to Bergen. In less than an hour they sank the escorting destroyer Partridge, all six merchant ships and four armed trawlers. Only the badly damaged destroyer Pellew escaped. That same night a second group of German destroyers raided shipping off the coast of northern England.

Two strikes

The commander of the High Seas Fleet, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, wanted to strike in two places this time. He assigned the task to the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla, made up of the largest and fastest German ships of the type. On 11 December the flotilla put to sea accompanied by the light cruiser Emden. In the afternoon, near the Dogger Bank, it split up. The 4th Half-Flotilla headed for the Northumberland coast to attack coastal convoys sailing along Britain’s east coast. The 3rd Half-Flotilla of Korvettenkapitän Hans Kolbe, the destroyers G101, G103, G104 and V100, went north, to the route between Lerwick in the Shetland Islands and Norway.

On the night of 11–12 December the 4th Half-Flotilla torpedoed the Danish steamer Peter Willemoes, which had become separated from its convoy and strayed far from the swept channel, and towards morning near Blyth also the Swedish ship Nike, which nevertheless stayed afloat. It then shelled a group of trawlers and sank one of them. It did not find the actual convoy, which had passed that way a few hours earlier. For a long time the British did not know what had happened, because the trawler crews reported a submarine attack.

Massacre off Bergen

On 11 December the daily convoy to Norway left Lerwick: two Norwegian ships, two Swedish, one Danish and one British. It was escorted by the destroyers Pellew (Lieutenant-Commander J. R. C. Cavendish) and Partridge (Lieutenant-Commander R. H. Ransome) and four armed trawlers. The 3rd Half-Flotilla fought a gale all night and in the morning had to reduce speed. Kolbe had already turned back south when at about 11.45 British time he came upon the convoy. Partridge tried to challenge the unknown ships with the recognition signal, but the signal searchlight was broken and ten minutes passed before the reply proved false. Pellew ordered the ships to scatter, and Partridge managed to send the commander of the Grand Fleet a report that the convoy was in contact with the enemy. Neither escort commander knew that a British covering force was nearby.

Three German destroyers engaged the two British ones, while the fourth dealt with the convoy. The British had wind and spray in their faces, and in the troughs of the waves could see only the enemy’s masts and funnels. One of the first shells cut Partridge’s main steam pipe. Everyone in the engine room was scalded to death, and the ship stopped. Then a torpedo hit her and Ransome ordered her abandoned. Two lieutenants, A. A. D. Grey and L. J. B. Walters, manned a torpedo tube by themselves and hit V100, but the torpedo failed to explode. The wounded Grey gave the last place on a raft to an exhausted comrade and swam for almost half an hour in icy water to a German destroyer, which picked him up. Partridge sank after being hit by another torpedo. Pellew took a shell in the engine room, but hid in a squall and limped into Norwegian territorial waters. Meanwhile the Germans sank all the ships and trawlers. According to the British official history, after an hour all that remained of the convoy and escort was Pellew and a few boats of survivors.

According to Steve Dunn, a British naval historian, 97 men of Partridge’s crew were killed, including her captain, and four on Pellew. Scheer wrote that his destroyers took 52 sailors from Partridge and the trawlers prisoner, as well as 23 civilians from the ships, and themselves had only three wounded. Danish survivors refused to go aboard the German ships. The Germans returned home by a roundabout route through the Skagerrak and the Baltic, and according to the British official history most probably slipped unseen astern of the British light cruisers searching for them. The armoured cruisers of the covering force, Shannon and Minotaur, were then about 60 miles to the west, and their destroyers could do no more than pick up survivors.

Consequences

The second destruction of a convoy in two months caused a storm in London. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Eric Geddes, ordered an inquiry over the heads of the First Sea Lord, Admiral John Jellicoe, and the commander of the Grand Fleet, Admiral David Beatty. Even before the raid it had been decided that the Scandinavian convoys would sail not from Lerwick but from Methil in the Firth of Forth. Three days after the loss of the convoy the Admiralty approved the new system. From the beginning of 1918 the convoys to Norway were to sail every three days, covered by Grand Fleet forces. Beatty regularly added a whole battle squadron to the cover, which according to the British official history was a great departure from the principle of concentration that the fleet had held to since the beginning of the war.