Sinking of the Koningin Regentes

On 6 June 1918 the Dutch hospital ship Koningin Regentes (“Queen Regent”) sank in the North Sea. She was returning from Boston in Lincolnshire, England, to Rotterdam together with two other Dutch hospital ships, Sindoro and Zeeland. About 21 miles east of the Leman lightship a violent explosion occurred abaft the bridge. The ship sank quickly, and the vessels accompanying her picked up the survivors. Seven members of the crew were killed and eight were injured. The British chronicle of the war of 1920 gives four victims, but the owners and the Dutch inquiry speak of seven killed.

Koningin Regentes was a paddle steamer of about 1,970 GRT, built in 1895 at the Fairfield yard in Scotland for the Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland of Vlissingen. For years she carried passengers and mail between the Netherlands and England. In November 1916 German submarines stopped her on her way to London and escorted her to Zeebrugge, but after a few weeks the Germans released the ship. The company suffered badly in the war: in 1916–1917 it lost three other ships. Koningin Regentes’s master, Captain W. Reedeker, was losing a ship under his feet for the third time.

From the turn of 1917 and 1918 Koningin Regentes, Zeeland and the Rotterdamsche Lloyd’s Sindoro sailed in convoy as hospital ships. They carried British and German prisoners, soldiers and civilians, for exchange or for internment in the Netherlands, under the Hague agreement of July 1917. Both governments had guaranteed them safe passage. After the disaster the Dutch maritime authorities questioned witnesses. The ship’s carpenter and two other seamen testified that just before the explosion they had seen a white streak rapidly approaching the side, and the quartermaster had clearly seen a trail of bubbles. A lookout on Zeeland claimed that earlier he had spotted a cylindrical object in the distance, which disappeared under the water.

On 11 June the German government declared that, after safe passage had been agreed with the Netherlands and the appropriate orders issued to the submarines, it was “entirely out of the question” that Koningin Regentes had been attacked by a German vessel. The German navy also rejected speculation in part of the Dutch press that the target of the attack had been a British commission on board. The Dutch navy sent a tug with divers and British and German officers to the scene, but the wreck was not found. Even so, in the summer of 1918 the Dutch Shipping Council (Raad voor de Scheepvaart) ruled that the ship had been torpedoed. In September a German deserter claimed in Copenhagen that U-86 had done it, but the Germans denied this. Only later was it established that Koningin Regentes had been sunk by the German submarine UB-107, commanded by Eberhard von Prittwitz und Gaffron.

The sinking interrupted the transport of prisoners across the North Sea, which had been set up with such difficulty a few months earlier. Sindoro and Zeeland returned to the Boston route only in August, and then only to carry the prisoners who had been stranded on both sides. For the neutral Netherlands it was further proof that even ships under the Red Cross, sailing with the guarantees of both belligerents, were not safe at sea.