Torpedoing of the tanker Gulflight

On 1 May 1915 at about 12.50 p.m., some tens of kilometres west of the Isles of Scilly off the south-western tip of England, the German submarine U-30 torpedoed the American tanker Gulflight. The ship did not sink, but the attack cost three lives. She was the first ship under the flag of the United States to be torpedoed by a German submarine in this war.

Petrol for France

Gulflight was a new tanker of 5,189 gross register tons, built in 1914 at Camden, New Jersey. She belonged to the Gulf Refining Company, the predecessor of the Gulf Oil concern. On 10 April she sailed from Port Arthur in Texas for Rouen in France with a cargo of petrol in her tanks and barrels of lubricating oil. Her crew numbered 38. No additional national markings had been painted on the hull. The tanker’s American origin was betrayed above all by her flag.

On the approach to the English Channel the tanker was accompanied by two British armed patrol vessels, Iago and Filey, which were searching for a submarine that had been sinking ships in the area. U-30 under Kapitänleutnant Erich von Rosenberg-Gruszczynski fired a single torpedo. Gulflight was badly damaged but stayed afloat. The submarine did not renew the attack.

Three victims

In the confusion after the explosion two members of the crew jumped overboard and drowned. According to some sources they were the wireless operator and a Spanish seaman. The Iago took the remaining seamen on board and headed with them for the island of St Mary’s. During the night the master of Gulflight, Gunter, felt unwell, and early on 2 May he died of a heart attack. The first officer and the chief engineer returned to the tanker, which the British vessels towed to an anchorage in the Scillies. The ship was repaired and sailed for almost three more decades. She was sunk only in January 1942, by then under another name, torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Newfoundland.

The first, but not the only one

Describing Gulflight as the first American ship attacked in this war requires qualification. As early as 28 January 1915 the German auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich had sunk the American sailing ship William P. Frye. In February the American steamers Evelyn and Carib sank on mines in the North Sea, and on 28 April a German aircraft dropped bombs on the American ship Cushing. Gulflight was, however, the first United States ship torpedoed by a U-boat. Earlier, in March, one American had died aboard the British ship Falaba, sunk by U-28.

The Germans later explained that the submarine’s commander had taken the tanker for a ship escorted by British vessels and had noticed the American flag only after giving the order to fire the torpedo. The government in Berlin expressed regret and offered compensation. In Washington the Counselor of the State Department, Robert Lansing, called for a firm response, but President Woodrow Wilson preferred to gather information first. Before the Germans had answered the questions about Gulflight, the matter was overshadowed by the sinking of the Lusitania six days later. The attack on the tanker was mentioned, alongside the attack on Cushing and the sinking of Falaba, in the first American note of protest of 13 May 1915.