U-24 shells Lowca and Harrington

At dawn on 16 August 1915 the German submarine U-24, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Rudolf Schneider, surfaced off the coast of Cumberland in north-west England. At about 5 a.m. her crew opened fire with the 88 mm deck gun on the coke ovens and benzol works of the Harrington Coke Oven Company in the village of Lowca, between the towns of Harrington and Whitehaven. By various accounts the shelling lasted from about 25 minutes to just under an hour. A British chronology of the war recorded the event as the shelling of Lowca and Harrington, although the target was a single works.

A carefully chosen target

The Lowca coking plant produced benzol from coke-oven gas, from which toluene, among other things, was extracted, a raw material for the production of TNT. It was therefore a works important to the British munitions industry. According to the British official history of the war at sea, the installations had been built before the war by two German firms, whose representatives had taken away complete plans of the works and even photographs taken from the sea. Schneider knew exactly where to fire. He had left Germany in the first days of August with orders to enter the Irish Sea first and attack this very works. It was the same boat and the same commander that on New Year’s Day had sunk the battleship Formidable.

Fifty rounds

The coast here had no defences at all and the submarine could fire unhindered. Even so, the damage turned out to be slight. Early in the shelling a tank or drum of benzol exploded and thick smoke hid the works. According to local tradition one of the workers opened a safety valve and released burning gas so that the Germans would think they had scored a hit. Schneider fired about 50 rounds, according to some sources 55, and sailed away convinced that he had destroyed the works. In reality the damage was estimated at about £800, and after four days the coking plant was working again. A few shells fell on the railway embankment near the village of Parton and on houses in the area. No one was killed. The only victim was a dog killed by a shell splinter.

Berlin announced that a submarine had destroyed by gunfire a benzol factory near Harrington together with its storehouse and ovens. The British press wrote of “pirates”. Rumours quickly spread along the coast that someone on land had been signalling to the submarine with lights. Suspicion fell on the Prussian-born wife of the local Member of Parliament, Hildegard Burnyeat. The authorities interned her under the Defence of the Realm Act.

Not the first such attack

Some works describe the shelling of Lowca as the first bombardment of Britain by a submarine. This is not accurate: as early as January 1915 U-21 had shelled Walney Island near Barrow-in-Furness, only a few dozen kilometres further south. Schneider’s raid did show, however, that undefended industrial works on the west coast were within range of U-boat guns. After the attack U-24 sailed south, to the entrance of St George’s Channel and the waters off the south coast of Ireland, where U-27 and U-38 were also hunting ships. Three days later Schneider torpedoed the British liner Arabic there without warning, which meant that the shelling of Lowca was soon forgotten.