Sinking of the Dutch steamer Medea

Before noon on 25 March 1915 the German submarine U-28 stopped the Dutch steamer Medea in the English Channel, south-east of Beachy Head. The Germans checked the ship’s papers, ordered the crew into the boats and sank her by gunfire. No one was killed. The British chronology of the war records Medea as the first neutral ship sunk after being stopped and searched. She was also the first ship under a neutral flag that was without doubt sunk by a German submarine. It is not known whether the Swedish steamer Hanna, two weeks earlier, had been torpedoed or had struck a mine.

Oranges for London

Medea was a small steamer, built in 1913, of 1,235 gross register tons. She belonged to the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij (KNSM) of Amsterdam and was commanded by Captain A. F. van Balkom. According to the owners’ report she was sailing from Valencia to London with a cargo of oranges. The ship’s name and nationality were painted on her sides in large letters, and the Dutch flag flew from her mast. Less than two weeks earlier the Netherlands had warned foreign ships against masquerading under its flag, so that the Dutch colours would not lose their credibility. Those colours did not save Medea.

Kapitänleutnant Georg-Günther von Forstner’s U-28 had left Ostend on 21 March. On 18 March, on her previous patrol, the same boat had stopped two Dutch passenger ships in the North Sea, Batavier V and Zaanstroom, and ordered them to sail to German-occupied Zeebrugge, where both were detained.

Five minutes to abandon ship

According to the Dutch press and the British naval staff monograph, U-28 was running on the surface and ordered Medea to stop. The German commander examined the ship’s papers and, as Captain van Balkom later related, gave the crew only five minutes to get into the boats. The submarine then shelled the steamer with her gun until she sank. According to various accounts this happened anywhere from a few to fifteen or so miles from the shore. The Germans towed the boats for a few minutes and then cast them off, saying that another submarine would tow the survivors to Beachy Head. A second U-boat, U-37, was indeed operating nearby; she did not return from that patrol and disappeared without trace. The Dutchmen were, however, rescued by the British destroyer Teviot, which landed them at Dover.

The German commander handed the captain a written explanation: the ship had been sunk because she was carrying food to London, an enemy port. Under the London Declaration of 1909, however, food was only conditional contraband. It could be seized if it was destined for the enemy’s armed forces or authorities, but not for the civilian population. The declaration permitted the sinking of a neutral ship, instead of taking her into port before a prize court, only in exceptional circumstances.

The Dutch protest

In the Netherlands the sinking of Medea caused outrage, all the greater because it came a week after the detention of Batavier V and Zaanstroom. The Dutch government first demanded an explanation from Berlin, and on 3 April prepared a note of protest, which was delivered in Berlin on 6 April. In it the Dutch argued that existing international law did not recognise the destruction of neutral prizes at all, and that even if the London Declaration were regarded as binding, the sinking of Medea was unlawful. They also asked whether the harsher conduct of the German navy meant a change of policy towards the Netherlands. Berlin replied that it had acted in accordance with the London Declaration, that a prize court would decide whether the detentions were justified, and that its policy towards the Netherlands had not changed.

Rumours circulated in the press, including the German press, that contraband such as pyrites or sulphur had been hidden under the oranges. KNSM firmly denied this, stressing that the ship had been carrying nothing but oranges and a few crates of tangerines. In August 1915 the German prize court in Hamburg in principle found for the shipowner and the owners of the cargo, holding it proven that the cargo had not been destined for the British authorities. The German Imperial Commissioner, however, appealed against the judgment to the Supreme Prize Court in Berlin.

U-28 herself sailed on westwards. Over the following days she sank several British ships off Cornwall and Wales, among them, on 28 March, the passenger ship Falaba, with the loss of more than a hundred lives.