Submarine attack on Sollum

On 6 November 1915 the German submarine U-35 entered the bay at Sollum, the last Egyptian post before the border with Italian Cyrenaica. Two armed vessels of the Egyptian Coastguard, Abbas and Nur al-Bahr, lay at anchor there. The submarine opened fire on them. The Egyptian crews, too weakly armed to put up a fight, went ashore. Abbas sank at her moorings, and Nur al-Bahr was damaged. The date of 6 November is given by the British official history of operations in Egypt and by the British chronology of the war. German lists of sinkings, used among others by the uboat.net website, record both vessels under 5 November.

The voyage from Bodrum

The attack on Sollum was only a by-product of a far more important mission. U-35, under Kapitänleutnant Waldemar Kophamel, had been operating in the Mediterranean since the autumn, and on 23 October in the Gulf of Salonika had sunk the British transport Marquette. She was then ordered to take on board at Bodrum, on the coast of Asia Minor, a Turkish mission and a cargo of arms for the Senussi order, which from camps on the Egyptian border had for years been waging war on the Italians. According to the British official naval history, the submarine took on board ten Turkish and German officers and stores and on 1 November left Bodrum towing two sailing vessels with a similar cargo. On the way she sank the British steamer Woolwich and unsuccessfully attacked the transport Japanese Prince, carrying troops from Alexandria to Salonika. After three days she reached Bardia, a small bay on the coast of Cyrenaica, formally Italian but in reality controlled by the Senussi.

The sinking of the Tara

On the morning of 5 November, before the attack on the harbour, U-35 torpedoed the British armed steamer Tara, which was on her way to Sollum, about an hour’s steaming from the port. She was the former ferry Hibernia of the London and North Western Railway, which before the war had sailed between Holyhead and Dublin, armed with three light guns. The ship was still commanded by her former master, Lieutenant Tanner of the reserve, but on board was Commander R. S. Gwatkin-Williams, commander of the western section of the Egyptian coastal patrol. Tara had orders to call at Sollum daily so that, in the event of an attack, she could evacuate Lieutenant-Colonel C. L. Snow’s Egyptian garrison of about a hundred soldiers. The torpedo struck the engine room at about 10.10 a.m., and according to Gwatkin-Williams’s account the ship sank in eight minutes. Twelve men died, mostly from the engine-room crew. Gwatkin-Williams counted ninety-two survivors; the British official naval history speaks of about seventy out of a crew of a hundred. The submarine took the boats in tow and led them to Bardia. Before entering the bay she lowered the German ensign and hoisted the Turkish one, and handed the survivors over to the Turks of the entourage of Nuri Bey, who commanded the Senussi forces. The sailors of the Tara became prisoners deep in the desert. Gwatkin-Williams later believed that the submarine’s commander was the famous Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, but according to German lists he took over U-35 only on 13 November.

Why it mattered

The damage to two Egyptian cutters was no great loss, but the events of 5 and 6 November opened the eyes of the British. A puzzle they had been racking their brains over for months was solved: by what route arms, ammunition and Turkish officers were reaching the Senussi camps. It turned out that German submarines had made Bardia their transhipment port. Communications with Sollum, several hundred kilometres from Alexandria and linked to it only by a chain of weak coastguard posts, went mainly by sea. The command in Egypt, however, did not have enough ships to protect them, as most of the anti-submarine vessels were busy on the routes to the Dardanelles and Salonika. The sloop Jonquil and eleven trawlers were sent to the area, but U-35 eluded them. In the following days she sank several more vessels, and on 7 November the transport Moorina, whose crew were also put ashore and handed over to the Senussi.

The attacks emboldened the camp near Sollum. The Grand Sheikh of the order, Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif, replied to British protests that he knew nothing of any prisoners, but according to the British official history it was precisely the activity of the German submarines that confirmed him in his intransigent attitude. The British made a last attempt to settle the matter peacefully and offered money in return for sending away the Turkish advisers. The talks came to nothing, and in the second half of November open war began on Egypt’s western frontier.