Did the SMS Gneisenau sink?
SMS Gneisenau (1879)
The crew attempted to drop the starboard anchor, but it did not catch in the stony ground. "Gneisenau" was driven into the mole repeatedly, striking it with her stern twice before being turned and pushed bow-first on the starboard side, forcing her aground. A merchant ship attempted to come to the crew's aid, but they were unable to connect a line between the two ships before "Gneisenau" began to list 35 degrees. A boat from shore also attempted to rescue the crew, but it too was forced ashore in the heavy seas. Wave action quickly smashed "Gneisenau"s hull against the mole, and part of her crew attempted to find safety by climbing the rigging. The ship rolled over onto her side, and the surviving crewmen reached shore with a line. Forty-one men were killed in the accident, including Kretschmann and the ship's first officer. "Charlotte" and the British ironclad were sent to aid the wounded. Those killed in the sinking were buried in Málaga's cemetery, and the survivors returned to Germany aboard the HAPAG steamship on 2 January 1901.
Scharnhorst-class battleship
"Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau", with "Admiral Hipper" and four destroyers, departed again on 4 June. After operations in the North Sea that resulted in the sinking of several British transports, "Admiral Hipper" and the destroyers were detached to refuel in occupied Norway. At 16:45 on 8 June, "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" spotted the British aircraft carrier , which was escorted by the destroyers and , at a range of around . The destroyers laid a smoke screen in an attempt to hide the carrier, but the Germans quickly closed the distance. At 17:26, the range had decreased by half, to around , and both German ships opened fire. "Scharnhorst" struck "Glorious" at a range of approximately , one of the longest recorded hits in the history of naval gunfire. "Glorious" was hit by at least three shells and reduced to a burning hulk, and at 19:00 the carrier capsized and sank. "Scharnhorst" shifted fire to "Ardent" while "Gneisenau" engaged "Acasta"; both ships sank their targets. Before she sank, "Acasta" launched four torpedoes at "Scharnhorst"; the ship evaded three, though the fourth struck the starboard side near the rear gun turret. During the engagement, "Scharnhorst" fired 212 main battery shells. The torpedo hit caused significant damage to "Scharnhorst"; several watertight compartments, including parts of the starboard engine room, were flooded, she took on a list of 3°, and she was down by the stern.
Erich Raeder during World War II
In April 1941, Raeder planned to follow up the success of Operation Berlin with Operation Rheinübung, where the , the , the and the would be sent out on an extended raid into the North Atlantic under the command of Admiral Günther Lütjens. On the night of 10/11 April 1941 the "Gneisenau" was badly damaged by a British bombing attack that put her out of commission for months. At that point, Admiral Lütjens advised cancelling the operation as having one battleship with only one heavy cruiser in support operating alone in the Atlantic was too risky, but was overruled by Raeder, who insisted on going ahead. Raeder's principal reason for going ahead with "Rheinübung" was his knowledge of the upcoming Operation Barbarossa, where the "Kriegsmarine" could only play a very small part, and his desire to score a major success before Barbarossa that might impress upon Hitler the need not to cut the budget for capital ships. Lütjens wanted Rheinübung put off until the "Scharnhorst" was finished refitting in July 1941, but since Barbarossa was due to start on 22 June 1941, Raeder insisted that the operation go ahead in May 1941. Though Rheinübung saw the "Bismarck" sink the battlecruiser , it ended with the sinking of the "Bismarck". The loss of a modern battleship more than outweighed the loss of an old battlecruiser, and that debacle almost put an end to Raeder's strategy of using capital ships to destroy the British Merchant Marine. Murray and Millet wrote that after the loss of the "Bismarck" that "Raeder's strategy of surface raiders had largely failed". After the "Bismarck" was disabled by a British torpedo hit on the rudder on 26 May 1941, Raeder sent a series of radio messages to Lütjens reminding him of his "fight to the last round" order of December 1939, an order that Lütjens faithfully obeyed. The German historian Werner Rahn argued in "Germany and the Second World War", the official history of the Wehrmacht that Raeder's orders to "fight to the finish" doomed most of the crew of the "Bismarck" to a watery grave; had Lütjens being given the option of scuttling or surrendering the "Bismarck" rather engaging in a hopeless battle, the lives of 2,200 German officers and sailors could have been saved instead of the 110 who were saved. Raeder himself was personally pleased by the sinking of the "Bismarck", feeling this had won the "Kriegsmarine" some much needed glory on the high seas and was consistent with his goal of "full engagement" where the "Kriegsmarine" capital ships were sent into action until they all were sunk to win his service glory, but Hitler was more than annoyed at the loss of the "Bismarck". The deaths of most of the crew of the "Bismarck" did not trouble Hitler, but he complained to Raeder that building the "Bismarck" had cost millions of "Reichmarks", and it seemed like a poor investment given that the ship was lost on its first voyage. Moreover, Hitler told Raeder that he believed that once the Soviet Union was defeated later in the summer of 1941, that it was quite possible that Britain would simply "collapse" as a result of that German triumph, and he wanted the German fleet to be ready to take advantage of the expected "collapse", not at the bottom of the Atlantic. After the loss of the "Bismarck", Hitler started to curtail Raeder's freedom to plan and launch operations on the high seas involving capital ships. Raeder's last attempt at using a capital ship as a raider occurred in June 1941, when he ordered the pocket battleship into the North Atlantic; she was badly damaged by an attack from British torpedo planes on 13 June 1941 that put her out of commission for six months.
SMS Gneisenau (1879)
"Gneisenau" departed Lamu on 6 September and went to Kismayu, before proceeding on to Zanzibar four days later. In the meantime, Paschen had been instructed to form a second cruiser squadron, which was to consist of his flagship "Stosch", along with "Gneisenau" and "Prinz Adalbert". The squadron was to proceed to the Caroline Islands, which were at the center of a dispute between Germany and Spain. "Gneisenau" first went to Cape Town, arriving on 11 October. While there, she received new orders to proceed instead to what was now German East Africa; on 9 November she was formally reassigned back to Knorr's squadron. "Gneisenau" patrolled the coast of East Africa until 6 March 1886, when Knorr's squadron, at that time consisting of "Gneisenau", "Bismarck", and the corvette , departed for Australia. After reaching the south Pacific, the ships toured Australian ports, New Zealand, Tonga, and Samoa before "Gneisenau" was detached first to the Gazelle Peninsula on the island of New Pomerania to suppress an uprising against German colonial rule. She then went to the Palau Islands, part of the Caroline group, to retrieve a German monument, as Germany had dropped its claim to the islands in favor of Spain. On 25 July, "Gneisenau" began the journey back to Germany, reaching Kiel on 27 September. She was decommissioned there on 14 October.
German battleship Gneisenau
Admiral Günther Lütjens replaced Marschall as the commander of the squadron permanently, and on 20 June he sortied with "Gneisenau", "Admiral Hipper", and four destroyers in the direction of Iceland. His intention was to give the impression he was attempting to break out into the Atlantic, to draw British attention away from "Scharnhorst" as she made the return voyage to Germany. About northwest of Halten, however, the submarine torpedoed "Gneisenau". The torpedo hit the ship in the bow, just forward of the splinter belt, and caused serious damage. The ship took on a significant amount of water in the two forward watertight compartments, and she was forced to return to Trondheim at reduced speed. In Trondheim, the repair ship "Huascaran" effected temporary repairs that permitted the ship to return to Kiel on 25–27 July, escorted by "Admiral Hipper","Nürnberg", four destroyers, and six torpedo boats. A strong force from the British Home Fleet attempted to intercept the flotilla, but it failed to find it. Upon arrival, "Gneisenau" went into drydock at the Howaldtswerke dockyard for five months of repair work. In August, the ship's commander was replaced by "KzS" Otto Fein, who would captain the ship for the majority of her active wartime career.
History of wireless telegraphy and broadcasting in Nauru
In April 1941, following the release of a New Zealand report into merchant shipping losses made allegations against the Nauran wireless officers, but shortly thereafter greatly moderated the charges:
HUGHES' SPY CHARGE. From Our Special Representative. CANBERRA, Wednesday. "The suggestion that spies are not at Nauru is one which, in view of all that has come and gone, I cannot entertain," said the Minister for the Navy (Mr. W. M. Hughes) to-day. The Minister's statement was inspired by the report of the Royal Commission which inquired in New Zealand into the sinking of the Holmwood, Rangitane, Komata and the Vinni, and the Commission's criticism of the "inexplicable failure of the Nauru Island authorities to issue a warning." Earlier today Mr. Hughes had said that when the wholesale sinkings of merchant ships occurred off Nauru last December, there were on the island some spies, traitors, or paid agents of Germany or of whatever Power was responsible for the sinkings. This, he said, was the only explanation for the failure of the Nauru Island authorities to give warning of the approach of a ship using the Japanese flag as a disguise. "We have made inquiries, and that is the only explanation," he declared. Later this afternoon Mr. Hughes made the following statement:— "Sound And Loyal" "The inquiry which I mentioned this morning was made by an officer of the Navy Department who was sent to Nauru for the purpose. He interrogated various people concerned. "The result was that he could discover nothing to suggest that anything was wrong with the wireless people at Nauru. "But it was conceivable, according to the report, that a leakage of information arose out of messages sent by Bentley's code on behalf of the Phosphate Commission. This would be enough to indicate what shipping movements were going on. "Then, again, the issue of meteorological reports to the effect that westerly winds were blowing would indicate that ships were lying off the island. "Our inquiries go to show that the personnel of the wireless station was competent, sound and loyal. "Message Delayed" "Further, as to whether the people were negligent in not keeping watch for signals, the report of the Triadic's distress signal was actually heard at Ocean island. The operator on watch at the time seems to have been incompetent, since he took no steps to broadcast this message immediately. "It was not until an hour later that he attempted to pass on a garbled version of the message to Suva radio. This is confirmed by the New Zealand officer who investigated the matter." Mr. Hughes said he thought it right to supplement this report by repeating what the captain of the Rangitane had said to him during his recent visit to Australia. When the captain on the raider intimated to the captain of the Rangitane that he was going to Nauru again, the captain of the Rangitane expressed the opinion that the cruisers would have been warned, and that the raider would be running into trouble. The captain of the raider said, "Oh, that is all right. Everything has been fixed." "The captain of the Rangitane took that to mean that effective warnings of the former visit of the raider had not been broadcast," Mr. Hughes said. "Greatly Impressed" "I know nothing of the thing myself, but I was greatly impressed with what the captain of the Rangitane said. "He was a man of excellent reputation in command of a ship of 17,000 tons, and I could not but believe that he was repeating what he had heard the captain of the raider say." Asked how this information affected his statement made earlier today in which he referred to spies, traitors and paid agents at Nauru, Mr. Hughes said: "I expressed my opinion. It would appear that the suspicions I entertained in regard to the negligence or incompetence of the wireless operators at Nauru are not confirmed. I spoke at the time as I felt, but that there has been negligence — although in another quarter, at Ocean Island — has been abundantly proved." "But what about the spies you mentioned?" he was asked. "If you ask me that," said Mr. Hughes, "I will ask you, 'Where is there a country where spies are not to be found working tirelessly in the interests of our great enemy?' " "The suggestion that spies are not at Nauru is one which, in view of all that has come and gone, I cannot entertain."
SS Gneisenau (1935)
SS "Gneisenau" was a Norddeutscher Lloyd ocean liner that was launched and completed in 1935. Like several other German ships of the same name, she was named after the Prussian Generalfeldmarschall and military reformer August Neidhardt von Gneisenau (1760–1831).
Channel Dash
On 11 February 1942, the "Kriegsmarine" ships left Brest at and escaped detection for more than twelve hours, approaching the Strait of Dover without discovery. The "Luftwaffe" conducted "Unternehmen Donnerkeil" (Operation Thunderbolt) to provide air cover and as the ships neared Dover, the British belatedly began operations against the German ships. The RAF, the Fleet Air Arm, Navy and coastal artillery operations were costly failures but "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" hit mines in the North Sea and were damaged ("Scharnhorst" being put out of action for a year). By 13 February, the ships had reached German ports, Winston Churchill ordered an inquiry into the debacle and "The Times" denounced the British fiasco. The "Kriegsmarine" judged the operation to have been a tactical success and a strategic failure, by exchanging a threat to Atlantic convoys by German surface ships for a hypothetical threat to Norway. On 23 February, "Prinz Eugen" was torpedoed off Norway, repaired and spent the rest of the war in the Baltic. "Gneisenau" went into a dry dock and was bombed on the night of never to sail again; "Scharnhorst" was sunk at the Battle of the North Cape on 26 December 1943.
SMS Scharnhorst
By this stage of the battle, "Scharnhorst" had a slight list to port and was about a meter lower in the water. Her third funnel had been shot away. "Gneisenau" was briefly obscured by smoke, which led both battlecruisers to target "Scharnhorst". By 16:00, Spee ordered "Gneisenau" to attempt to escape while he reversed course and attempted to launch torpedoes at his pursuers. The port list had increased significantly by this point and she was well down by the bow, with only of freeboard. At 16:17, the ship finally capsized to port and sank; the British, their attention now focused on "Gneisenau", made no attempt to rescue the crew. All 860 officers and men on board, including Spee, went down with the ship. "Gneisenau", "Leipzig", and "Nürnberg" were also sunk. Only "Dresden" managed to escape, but she was eventually tracked to the Juan Fernandez Islands and sunk. The complete destruction of the squadron killed about 2,200 German sailors and officers, including two of Spee's sons.
List of battleships of Germany
In late 1942, "Gneisenau" was heavily damaged in an Allied air raid against Kiel. In early 1943, "Scharnhorst" joined the "Bismarck"-class battleship "Tirpitz" in Norway to interdict Allied convoys to the Soviet Union. "Scharnhorst" and several destroyers sortied from Norway to attack a convoy; the Germans were instead intercepted by British naval patrols. During the Battle of North Cape, the Royal Navy battleship sank "Scharnhorst". In the meantime, repair work on "Gneisenau" had begun, and the ship was in the process of being rearmed. However, when "Scharnhorst" was sunk, work on her sister was abandoned. Instead, she was sunk as a blockship in Gdynia in 1945; the wreck was broken up for scrap in the 1950s.
German battleship Gneisenau
"Scharnhorst" fired first, followed by "Gneisenau" eight minutes later. The ship was quickly reduced to a burning wreck; Marschall ordered "Scharnhorst" to pick up survivors while he stood by in "Gneisenau". The cruiser arrived on the scene, which prompted Marschall to halt rescue operations and flee. Four allied capital ships, the British , , , and the French followed in pursuit. The Germans reached Wilhelmshaven on 27 November, and on the trip both battleships incurred significant damage from heavy seas and winds. After returning to Kiel, "Gneisenau" went into drydock for repairs for the storm damage. During the repairs, the bow was remodeled a second time to incorporate additional flare and sheer, in an attempt to improve her seaworthiness. "Gneisenau" went into the Baltic for trials on 15 January 1940, after the completion of the refit. Her voyage back to the North Sea was blocked by ice in the Kiel Canal until 4 February.
SMS König Albert
The fleet remained in captivity during the negotiations that ultimately produced the Treaty of Versailles. Von Reuter believed that the British intended to seize the German ships on 21 June 1919, which was the deadline for Germany to have signed the peace treaty. Unaware that the deadline had been extended to the 23rd, Reuter ordered the ships to be sunk at the next opportunity. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers, and at 11:20 Reuter transmitted the order to his ships. "König Albert" capsized and sank at 12:54. On 31 July 1935, the ship was raised and broken up for scrap over the following year in Rosyth.
German battleship Gneisenau
On 12 January 1942, the German Naval Command, in a conference with Hitler, made the decision to return "Gneisenau", "Scharnhorst", and the heavy cruiser to Germany. The intention was to deploy the vessels to Norway to interdict Allied convoys to the Soviet Union. The so-called "Channel Dash", codenamed Operation "Cerberus", would avoid the increasingly effective Allied radar and patrol aircraft in the Atlantic. Vice Admiral Otto Ciliax was given command of the operation. In early February, minesweepers swept a route through the English Channel, though the British failed to detect the activity.
SMS Leipzig (1875)
On arriving in Wilhelmshaven, "Leipzig" was decommissioned to be examined thoroughly in the "Kaiserliche Werft" there. The inspection determined that the ship's hull was still in good condition, but it would not be economical to repair her machinery for another overseas deployment. The "RMA" therefore decided to convert the vessel into both a hulk for engine-room training and a barracks ship. In these capacities, she would replace the old frigate . Allocating the funds for the work proved to be controversial in the "Reichstag", and so they were not approved until the 1895–1896 budget. "Leipzig" continued to serve for another twenty-five years in this capacity. The first wireless telegraphy school for the German navy was set up aboard the ship, and during World War I she was used for initial training for U-boat crews. On 5 November 1919, the ship suddenly sank in port for unknown reasons. She was later raised in 1921, sold to Hattinger Co., and broken up in Wilhelmshaven.
German battleship Gneisenau
The extensive damage convinced the Naval Staff to rebuild "Gneisenau" to mount the six 38 cm guns originally planned, rather than repair the ship. The damaged bow section was removed in order to attach a lengthened bow, which would correct the decrease in freeboard that would have been caused by the heavier 38 cm guns. On 4 April, the ship went to Gotenhafen, escorted by the training ship and the icebreaker "Castor". She was formally decommissioned on 1 July. Her crew were paid off and redeployed to the U-boat arm.
Lågskär
On 11 April 1918, the German Nassau-class battleship ran aground in heavy fog during World War I. In 1934 or 1935, the German vessel "Frida" sprang a leak and sank off Lågskär, but the crew survived. On the evening of 21 October 1942, Finnish submarine "Vesihiisi" torpedoed and sank the Soviet S-class submarine "S-7" near Lågskär.
HMS Express (H61)
"Express" returned home in early 1943 to begin conversion into an escort destroyer. Upon its completion in June, the ship was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and renamed "Gatineau". She was assigned to convoy escort duties with the Mid-Ocean Escort Force and participated in sinking a German submarine in March 1944. "Gatineau" was transferred to Northern Ireland in preparation in May for the Invasion of Normandy and was sent to Canada in July to begin a lengthy refit. The ship was only operational for a few months before the war ended in May 1945 and she returned to Canada shortly afterwards. "Gatineau" was paid off in early 1946 and was sold the following year. The ship became part of a breakwater on the coast of British Columbia in 1948.
SMS Don Juan d'Austria (1862)
By this time, "Re d'Italia" had been rammed and sunk and the coastal defense ship was burning badly, soon to be destroyed by a magazine explosion. Persano broke off the engagement, and though his ships still outnumbered the Austrians, he refused to counter-attack with his badly demoralized forces. In addition, the fleet was low on coal and ammunition. The Italian fleet began to withdraw, followed by the Austrians; Tegetthoff, having gotten the better of the action, kept his distance so as not to risk his success. As night began to fall, the opposing fleets disengaged completely, heading for Ancona and Pola, respectively.
SMS Gneisenau (1879)
"Gneisenau" went abroad on two major foreign deployments in the first decade of her career. The first, in 1882, was to protect German nationals in Egypt during the 'Urabi revolt, though by the time she arrived, British forces had largely defeated the rebels, allowing "Gneisenau" to return home. The second, lengthier deployment came two years later and lasted from 1884 to 1886, and primarily focused on German colonial designs on eastern Africa. She was involved in the seizure of the colony of German East Africa in 1885, and she briefly toured German interests in the Pacific Ocean in 1886.
Jade-class aircraft carrier
"Gneisenau" was returned to troopship duties after the project was abandoned, but at 12:02 on 2 May 1943, she was sunk by a mine off Gedser. "Potsdam" was converted into a barracks ship in Gotenhafen, where she spent the remainder of the war. Following the German defeat, the ship was seized by the British on 20 June 1946 as a war prize, who commissioned her as a troop transport under the name "Empire Fowey". She was sold to Pakistan, who operated her under the name "Safina-E-Hujjaj" until she was broken up for scrap in 1976.
SMS Seeadler (1888)
SMS "Seeadler" (Ger: sea eagle) was a three-master windjammer. She was one of the last fighting sailing ships to be used in war when she served as a merchant raider with Imperial Germany in World War I. 
Built as the US-flagged "Pass of Balmaha", she was captured by the German submarine , and in 1916 converted to a commerce raider. As "Seeadler" she had a successful raiding career, capturing and sinking 15 ships in 225 days until she was wrecked, in September 1917, in French Polynesia.
SMS Nassau
After World War I, the bulk of the High Seas Fleet was interned in Scapa Flow. As they were the oldest German dreadnoughts, the "Nassau"-class ships were for the time permitted to remain in German ports. After the German fleet was scuttled, "Nassau" and her three sisters were surrendered to the victorious Allied powers as replacements for the sunken ships. "Nassau" was ceded to Japan in April 1920. With no use for the ship, Japan sold her to a British wrecking firm which then scrapped her in Dordrecht, Netherlands.
John Grigson
Grigson was serving aboard the armed merchant cruiser HMS India in the 10th Cruiser Squadron when the ship was sunk on 8 August 1915 and although he survived the loss news had not reached England before an announcement of his death appeared in "The Times". She had stopped off at Helligvær, near Bodø, Norway to investigate a suspected blockade runner and was torpedoed by a u-boat SM "U-22". "India"'s sinking caused the deaths of 160 of her crew, the surviving 22 officers and 119 men were taken to Narvik.
SMS Prinz Adalbert (1901)
Repairs were finally completed by September 1915. On 21 September, "Prinz Adalbert" joined a sortie to the Gulf of Finland with the battleships , , , , and and the light cruiser . They encountered no Russian forces and returned to port on the 23rd. Another operation followed on 5 October; this was in company with "Prinz Heinrich" and "Bremen", and was to cover a minelayer as it laid a field to the northwest of Östergarn. The ships completed their mission the next day and returned to port without incident. On 19 October, Hopman transferred his flag to "Roon" and ordered "Prinz Adalbert" to take up a patrol between Fårö and Dagerort. The ship was steaming some 20 miles west of Libau, en route to her patrol area, in company with a pair of destroyers on 23 October when she was intercepted by the submarine . "E8" fired a spread of torpedoes at a range of approximately 1,200 m (1,300 yd), detonating the ship's ammunition magazine. The massive explosion destroyed the ship, which sank immediately with the loss of 672 crew. There were only three survivors. The sinking was the greatest single loss of life for the German Baltic forces during the war.
SMS Nassau
Following the German collapse in November 1918, a significant portion of the High Seas Fleet was interned in Scapa Flow. "Nassau" and her three sisters were not among the ships listed for internment, so they remained at German ports. During this period, from November to December, Hermann Bauer served as the ship's commander. On 21 June 1919, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, under the mistaken impression that the Armistice would expire at noon that day, ordered his ships be scuttled to prevent their seizure by the British. As a result, the four "Nassau"-class ships were ceded to the various Allied powers as replacements for the ships that had been sunk. "Nassau" was awarded to Japan on 7 April 1920, though the Japanese had no need for the ship. They, therefore, sold her in June 1920 to British shipbreakers, who scrapped the ship in Dordrecht.
B-Dienst
In 1941, two investigations of Naval Enigma cypher security were undertaken. By March and April 1941, when Naval Code was broken, B-Dienst again started deciphering British convoy messages, and generally knew convoy locations. However, when several U-boats failed to locate an expected convoy, Dönitz suspected that the Allies had discovered the range of at least one U-boat patrol area. In April 1941, he ordered the need-to-know list to be made as small as possible. He also restricted the number of radio relay and sending stations transmitting U-boat messages. In addition, he asked the Marine Command for a special, separate U-boat Enigma key, which according to official Kriegsmarine history was the TRITON key, but according to the Historian Ralph Erskine, was an upgraded key.
The sinking of the battleship "Bismarck" on 27 May 1941 caused great consternation in the Kriegsmarine. Around the end of May, British Admiralty was reading Enigma messages with a delay of two to three days and was actively searching for "Bismarck" support shipping, and they found and sunk them. By 21 June 1941, they had sunk the tanker "Belchen", the tanker "Esso Hamburg" scuttled by her crew after taking fire from HMS London and HMS Brilliant on 4 June, the supply ship "Egerland" Although the British Admiralty had intelligence on the location of the tanker "Gedania" and the ex-Norwegian scout Gonzenheim, they had ensured they were not sunk, to ensure that Kriegsmarine suspicions were not raised. However, the Royal Navy accidentally came across the "Gonzenheim" and "Gedania" and immediately sank them on 21 June 1941.
SMS Scharnhorst
After arriving in Tsingtao, "Scharnhorst" went into dock for her annual repair; Krosigk accordingly shifted his flag to "Gneisenau" temporarily. On 10 October, the Xinhai Revolution against the Qing Dynasty broke out, which caused a great deal of tension amongst the Europeans, who recalled the attacks on foreigners during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900–01. The rest of the East Asia Squadron was placed on alert to protect German interests and additional troops were sent to protect the German consulate. But the feared attacks on Europeans did not materialize and so the East Asia Squadron was not needed. By late November, "Scharnhorst" was back in service and Krosigk returned to the ship. She cruised to Shanghai by way of Tientsin and Yantai, arriving on 12 December. From 14 to 24 January 1912, "Scharnhorst" toured the ports of the central China coast and returned to Tsingtao on 9 March, where the rest of the squadron had assembled. On 13 April, the ships went on a month-long cruise to Japanese waters, returning to Tsingtao on 13 May. From 17 July to 4 September, "Scharnhorst" went on another tour of Japanese ports and during this period she also visited Vladivostok in Russia and several ports in the Yellow Sea.
On 30 July, the Meiji Emperor died; "Scharnhorst" escorted "Leipzig", which carried Prince Heinrich, Wilhelm II's brother, to the Meiji Emperor's funeral and the coronation ceremony for the Taishō Emperor. The ships remained in Japan from 5 to 26 September. After returning to Tsingtao, Prince Heinrich conducted an inspection of the entire East Asia Squadron. On 4 December, Krosigk handed over command of the squadron to "Konteradmiral" Maximilian von Spee. On 27 December, Spee took "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" on a tour of the southwest Pacific, including stops in Amoy, Singapore, and Batavia. The two cruisers reached Tsingtao on 2 March 1913. From 1 April to 7 May, "Scharnhorst" took Spee to Japan to meet the Taishō Emperor. Starting on 22 June, Spee began a tour of Germany's Pacific colonies aboard his flagship. The ship stopped in the Marianas, the Admiralty Islands, the Hermit Islands, Rabaul in Neupommern, and Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen in German New Guinea.
Norman Catlin
On the outbreak of World War II, Catlin enlisted in the Royal Navy. He was a member of the crew of HMS "Gloucester" when she was attacked by German Stuka dive bombers off the northern coast of Crete and sank on 22 May 1941. Catlin was posted missing on 29 May, but is now confirmed to have died during the sinking. Of the 807 men aboard at the time of her sinking, only 85 survived.
SMS Breslau
On 3 April, the Ottoman fleet sortied to attack Russian transports off Odessa. "Midilli" and "Yavûz Sultân Selîm" provided the covering force for the attack, which failed after the cruiser struck a mine and sank off Odessa. The Russian fleet attempted to intercept the Turkish force, but "Midilli" and "Yavûz Sultân Selîm" were able to escape undamaged. The two ships, joined by "Hamidiye", conducted a sweep to attack Russian transports on 6 May, but found no targets. Later that month, detachments of naval infantry from "Midilli" and "Yavûz Sultân Selîm" were landed to assist in the defense against the Allied landings at Gallipoli. On the night of 10/11 June, "Midilli" encountered the Russian destroyers and off Zonguldak. In a brief firefight, the cruiser crippled "Gnevny" with a hit in her starboard engine compartment that broke the main steam line to the engines, but was forced to turn away when "Gnevny" fired five torpedoes at her. "Midilli" was hit seven times herself with only slight damage and "Gnevny" was towed back to Sevastopol the following day by "Derzki".
"Midilli" struck a mine on 18 July as she sailed from Constantinople to escort a merchant ship through the minefields defending the capital. The explosion under No. 4 boiler room killed eight crewmen and she was flooded with over of water. The ship made it to port at İstinye and an inspection revealed that she was not badly damaged. Hampered by a shortage of trained personnel and material, however, the ship's repairs took quite a long time. The ship did not return to service until February 1916, and the opportunity was taken to replace two of her 10.5 cm guns with 15 cm pieces. On 27 February, she was used to quickly transport 71 officers and men of a machine-gun company and a significant stock of supplies and munitions to Trebizond, which was then under heavy pressure from the Russian army. While en route on the night of the 28th, she encountered the Russian destroyers and . "Midilli" evaded the Russians and reached Trebizond. On 2 March, she attempted to attack a pair of destroyers north of Zonguldak, but she was unable to catch them. The ship then returned to the Bosporus. On 11 March, "Midilli" made another run, this time carrying 211 soldiers and twelve barrels of fuel and lubricating oil, which were successfully landed on the 13th. She then stopped in Samsun, where she picked up of flour, one ton of maize, and 30 tons of coal, before returning to the Bosporus.
SMS Nassau
SMS "Nassau" was the first dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial German Navy, a response to the launching of the British battleship . "Nassau" was laid down on 22 July 1907 at the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven, and launched less than a year later on 7 March 1908, approximately 25 months after "Dreadnought". She was the lead ship of her class of four battleships, which included , , and .
SMS Gneisenau (1879)
The next set of training exercises began on 6 May, and were conducted in the North Sea and concluded with ceremonies marking the opening of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. On 21 June, "Gneisenau" joined the newly formed IV Division in the Kieler Förde, at the Baltic entrance to the canal, where the ships' bands played the national anthems of each countries' warships as they arrived for the celebration. "Gneisenau" cruised alone in the North Sea in July, and on 14 August joined III Division for the fleet maneuvers, which concluded on 17 September. During the exercises, "Gneisenau" collided with the Danish schooner "Delphin" off Horns Rev on 24 August, and could save only three men from her crew before the latter sank. On 28 September she embarked on the annual winter cruise, which again went to the West Indies. While in Charlotte Amalie, "Gneisenau" and the Danish gunboat helped to suppress a major fire in the port. She visited Havana, Cuba on 21 January 1896, where she, "Stosch", and "Stein" monitored the civil unrest on the island. On 7 February, "Gneisenau" left Cuban waters and arrived back in Kiel on 18 March. "Gneisenau" departed Kiel on 15 May, bound for Bergen for a training cruise. While in Norway, "Gneisenau" was visited by the German imperial family on 19 June and by King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway on 14 July. She returned to Kiel on 18 July, where she prepared for the annual fleet maneuvers in August and September.
SMS G7
At about 06:00 on 28 August, the torpedo boat , one of the ships of the outer screen sighted the periscope of the British submarine , one of three submarines deployed as bait to lure the German torpedo boats away from Heligoland. "G194" reported by radio her encounter with the British submarine to Rear Admiral Leberecht Maass, the commander of the German torpedo boat forces, aboard the cruiser back at Wilhelmshaven. As a result of this report, the 5th Torpedo Boat Flotilla was ordered out to hunt the hostile submarine. At 07:57 "G194" was fired on by British warships, and the outer screen was soon retreating towards Heligoland. The torpedo boats of V Flotilla were unaware of the approaching British surface force, and the leading ship of the flotilla, came under fire by British light cruisers and destroyers. The flotilla turned south and headed for the cover of Heligoland's guns, but lagged behind and was damaged by British shells before the arrival of the German light cruiser allowed the Flotilla to escape. The torpedo boat of the outer screen did not manage to evade the Britisj force and was sunk. The intervention of the supporting British forces resulted in the sinking of the German cruisers , and . The British light cruiser and destroyers , and were badly damaged but safely returned to base. "G7" was undamaged.
SMS Bayern
The operation began on 12 October, when "Bayern", along with "Moltke" and the four "König"s, began firing on the Russian shore batteries at Tagga Bay. Simultaneously, the five "Kaiser"s engaged the batteries on the Sworbe peninsula; the objective was to secure the channel between Moon and Dagö islands, thus blocking the only escape route of the Russian ships in the gulf. "Bayern" role in the operation was cut short when she struck a naval mine at 5:07 while moving into her bombardment position at Pamerort. The mine explosion killed one "Unteroffizier" and six sailors, allowed of water into the ship and caused the forecastle to sink by . Despite the damage inflicted by the mine, "Bayern" engaged the naval battery at Cape Toffri on the southern tip of Hiiumaa. "Bayern" was released from her position at 14:00. Preliminary repairs were made on 13 October in Tagga Bay. The temporary repairs proved ineffective, and "Bayern" had to be withdrawn to Kiel for repairs; the return trip took 19 days. Repairs lasted from 3 November to 27 December, during which the forward torpedo tube room was stripped of its equipment and the torpedo ports were sealed. The room was then turned into an additional watertight compartment. Four SK L/30 anti-aircraft guns were also installed during the repairs.
Anti-nuclear protests
In 1985 the Greenpeace ship "Rainbow Warrior" was bombed and sunk by the French DGSE in Auckland, New Zealand, as it prepared for another protest of nuclear testing in French military zones. One crew member, Fernando Pereira of Portugal, photographer, drowned on the sinking ship while attempting to recover his photographic equipment. Two members of DGSE were captured and sentenced, but eventually repatriated to France in a controversial affair.
SMS Olga
There, she joined the gunboats "Eber" and . After German-run plantations at Vailele were attacked by forces commanded by Tupua Tamasese Titimaea, a rival to Laupepa, "Olga" and the gunboats sent landing parties ashore to defend the plantations. Four days later, they were attacked by Tamasese's forces; in the ensuing First Battle of Vailele, two officers and thirteen men from "Olga" were killed. The three ships remained in the area until the night of 15–16 March 1889, when a major cyclone struck the island. "Olga"s captain ran the ship aground to prevent her from being sunk, but "Eber" and "Adler" were destroyed in the storm. On 29 March, the Norddeutscher Lloyd steamer , with the help of Samoans, pulled "Olga" from the beach. Since "Olga" had lost all of her anchors, "Lübeck" escorted her to Sydney with the survivors from "Eber" and "Adler" aboard. Repair work lasted for two months, and on 20 June, she left for Germany. While on the way, she was accidentally rammed and lightly damaged by a British steamship in the Suez Canal. "Olga" reached Kiel on 9 September and proceeded on to the "Kaiserliche Werft" (Imperial Shipyard) in Danzig for further repairs.
SMS Gneisenau
"Gneisenau" was long overall, and had a beam of , a draft of . The ship displaced standard, and at full load. "Gneisenau"s crew consisted of 38 officers and 726 enlisted men. The ship was powered by coal-fired triple expansion engines that provided a top speed of
German battleship Gneisenau
Five British destroyers mounted an attack on the German squadron at 16:17. The ships attempted to close to torpedo range, though heavy seas and overcast conditions hampered their attack. "Gneisenau" and "Prinz Eugen" inflicted serious damage to the destroyer . At 19:55, "Gneisenau" detonated a magnetic mine off Terschelling. The mine exploded just forward of the rear gun turret but caused only minor damage. Slight flooding was quickly stopped, though the shock disabled the center turbine. The ship stopped for less than 30 minutes before resuming the voyage; by 03:50, "Gneisenau" and two destroyers reached Helgoland. After being joined there by "Prinz Eugen", the ships left for Kiel, but thick ice in the canal forced the ships to stop in Brunsbüttel. While maneuvering in port, "Gneisenau" struck a submerged wreck. The collision tore a hole in the hull and caused some minor flooding. "Gneisenau" reached Kiel the following day, where she went into a floating dry dock at the "Deutsche Werke" dockyard.
SMS Leipzig (1905)
"Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" quickly wrecked their British counterparts, while "Leipzig" fired at "Glasgow" without success. At 18:49, "Glasgow" hit "Leipzig", but the shell was a dud and did not explode. "Leipzig" and hit "Glasgow" five times before von Spee ordered "Leipzig" to close with the stricken "Good Hope" and torpedo it. A rain squall obscured the ship, and by the time "Leipzig" reached "Good Hope"s position, the latter had sunk. Unaware of the sinking of "Good Hope", no rescue operations were mounted by "Leipzig"s crew. By 20:00, "Leipzig" encountered "Dresden" in the gathering darkness, and the two initially mistook each other for hostile warships, though they quickly established their identity. "Leipzig" emerged from the battle essentially unscathed, and with no wounded crewmen.
SMS Gneisenau (1879)
SMS "Gneisenau" was a built for the German Imperial Navy ("Kaiserliche Marine") in the late 1870s. The ship was named after the Prussian Field Marshal August von Gneisenau. She was the fifth member of the class, which included five other vessels. The "Bismarck"-class corvettes were ordered as part of a major naval construction program in the early 1870s, and she was designed to serve as a fleet scout and on extended tours in Germany's colonial empire. "Gneisenau" was laid down in June 1877, launched in September 1879, and was commissioned into the fleet in October 1880. She was armed with a battery of fourteen guns and had a full ship rig to supplement her steam engine on long cruises abroad.
SMS Posen
On 16 August 1915, "Posen" and "Nassau" led a second attempt to breach the defenses of the gulf, with "Posen" as Admiral Schmidt's flagship. The two dreadnoughts were accompanied by 4 light cruisers and 31 torpedo boats. On the first day of the assault the Germans broke through the Russian forces, but two German light craft—the minesweeper and the destroyer —were sunk. "Posen" and "Nassau" engaged a pair of Russian gunboats, and . "Sivuch" was sunk that day and "Korietz" was severely damaged; the ship managed to limp away but had to be scuttled the following day. On the 17th, "Posen" and "Nassau" engaged "Slava" at long range; they scored three hits on the Russian ship and forced her to return to port. By 19 August, the Russian minefields had been cleared and the flotilla entered the Gulf. Reports of Allied submarines in the area prompted the Germans to call off the operation the following day. Admiral Hipper later remarked, "To keep valuable ships for a considerable time in a limited area in which enemy submarines were increasingly active, with the corresponding risk of damage and loss, was to indulge in a gamble out of all proportion to the advantage to be derived from the occupation of the Gulf "before" the capture of Riga from the land side." In fact, the battlecruiser "Moltke" had been torpedoed that morning. On 21 August, Schmidt had his flag hauled down from "Posen" and disbanded the special unit.
List of shipwrecks of England
Ship Flag Sunk date Notes Coordinates RMS Alaunia United Kingdom 19 October 1916 Struck a mine off Hastings. Amsterdam 26 January 1749 A Dutch East India Company ship that ran aground near Hastings. The wreck site is protected. 52°22′21.00″N 4°54′51.48″E HMS Ariadne Royal Navy 26 July 1917 A Diadem-class cruiser torpedoed off Beachy Head by German submarine UC-65. 50.655°N 0.291°E HMS Holland 5 Royal Navy 8 August 1912 A Holland-class submarine that foundered off Beachy Head while under tow to be scrapped. 50.729°N 0.248°E RMS Moldavia United Kingdom 23 May 1918 An armed merchantman torpedoed off Beachy Head by UB-57. 50°23.13′N 0°28.72′W MV Nyon Switzerland 15 June 1962 A Swiss cargo ship that ran aground at Berwickshire in 1958, but was salvaged and repaired. It sank for the final time off Beachy Head, following a collision. MT Sitakund Norway 20 October 1968 A Norwegian motor tanker that exploded off the coast of Eastbourne. 50.719°N 0.240°E SS Storaa United Kingdom 3 November 1943 A British coaster sunk by a German torpedo near Hastings. U-40 Kriegsmarine 13 October 1939 A German submarine sunk by a mine off Eastbourne. 50°42′N 0°15′E U-413 Kriegsmarine 20 August 1944 A German submarine sunk by a mine 15 nautical miles (28 km) south of Brighton. 50°21′N 00°01′W UC-65 Kaiserliche Marine 3 November 1917 A German minelaying submarine torpedoed by HMS C15 off Eastbourne. 50°31′N 00°27′E MV Wittering United Kingdom 25 February 1976 A British Cargo Ship sunk after a collision, 11.5 nautical miles (21.3 km) off Beachy Head. Attended by Hastings Lifeboat. 50°43′N 00°37′W
Adriatic Campaign of World War I
By August 1917, Lt. Von Trapp and had sunk more than of enemy shipping, including the Italian steamer "Milazzo" (). "U-4" torpedoed the French steamer "Italia" near Taranto on 30 May, and on 16 November severely damaged the Italian steamer "Oriona" between Brindisi and Valona. On the night of 9–10 December, while SMS "Wien" and "Budapest" were at anchor in Trieste, two Italian MAS (motor torpedo boats) managed to penetrate the harbor defenses undetected and fired several torpedoes at the two ships. "Wien" was struck by two torpedoes and sank in less than five minutes with the loss of 46 of her crew.
SMS Adler
SMS "Adler" was a gunboat of the Imperial German Navy. She was launched 3 November 1883 in the Imperial shipyard in Kiel. On 5 September 1888, she shelled Manono Island and Apolima, Samoa, which were strongholds of Malietoa’s forces. She was wrecked together with the German gunboat , the German corvette , the United States Navy gunboat , the U.S. Navy screw steamer , and the U.S. Navy sloop-of-war on 16 March 1889 in a hurricane at Apia, Samoa, during the Samoan crisis. Twenty crew members lost their lives.
SMS Gneisenau
"Gneisenau"s primary armament consisted of eight 21 cm (8.2 inch) SK L/40 guns, four in twin gun turrets, one fore and one aft of the main superstructure, and the remaining four were mounted in single wing turrets. Secondary armament included six 15 cm (5.9 inch) SK L/40 guns in MPL casemates, and eighteen 8.8 cm (3.45 inch) guns mounted in casemates. She was also equipped with four submerged torpedo tubes. One was mounted in the bow, one on each broadside, and the fourth was placed in the stern.
Operation Donnerkeil
However, for the "Kriegsmarine", Operation "Cerberus" had been operational success, but a strategic reverse. The present situation had forced them into an operation which was in effect, a strategic withdrawal from the Atlantic. From that point onwards, the German campaign in the Atlantic was to be carried by the U-Boats, unsupported by a surface fleet. With the German ships removed from the French Atlantic ports, the British fleets could contain them much more effectively in Norway and the North Sea. Moreover, "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" had been damaged by mines and required extensive repairs. "Prinz Eugen" was torpedoed and her stern collapsed just weeks after Cerberus. All three ships were out of action for extended periods. More bad luck followed, with "Gneisenau" being knocked out for good in February 1942 and the sinking of the "Scharnhorst" in December 1943. None of the ships sailed in the Atlantic again in the intervening period, leaving the Battle of the Atlantic to be carried on by U-Boat forces.
Maximilian von Spee
The British gunfire became increasingly accurate, and by 16:00, "Scharnhorst" had begun to list badly, while fires raged aboard the ship. Spee ordered "Gneisenau" to try to disengage while he turned "Scharnhorst" toward his attackers in an attempt to launch torpedoes at them. At 16:17, "Scharnhorst" capsized and sank, taking her entire crew with her, including Spee. The British, still focused on "Gneisenau", made no effort to rescue survivors. "Gneisenau", "Leipzig", and "Nürnberg" were also sunk. Only "Dresden" managed to escape, but she was eventually tracked to the Juan Fernández Islands and sunk. The complete destruction of the squadron killed about 2,200 German sailors and officers, including both of Spee's sons; Heinrich died aboard "Gneisenau", and Otto was killed aboard "Nürnberg".
SMS Gneisenau
The flotilla was reinforced with the arrival of "Emden" and "Nürnberg"; the ships then departed the central Pacific, bound for Chile. On 13 August the captain of "Emden", Commodore Karl von Müller, persuaded von Spee to detach his ship for commerce raiding. On 14 August, the East Asia Squadron departed Pagan for Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The ships again coaled after their arrival on 20 August. In order to keep the German high command informed, von Spee detached "Nürnberg" on 8 September to Honolulu to send word through neutral countries. "Nürnberg" brought back news of the Allied capture of the German colony at Samoa on 29 August. "Gneisenau" and "Scharnhorst" sailed to Apia to investigate the situation, but on 14 September found no suitable targets.
Military history of Canada during World War II
Axis U-boats operated in Canadian and Newfoundland waters throughout the war, sinking many naval and merchant vessels. Two significant attacks took place in 1942 when German U-boats attacked four allied ore carriers at Bell Island, Newfoundland. The carriers SS "Saganaga" and SS "Lord Strathcona" were sunk by "U-513" on 5 September 1942, while SS "Rosecastle" and "P.L.M 27" were sunk by "U-518" on 2 November with the loss of 69 lives. When the submarine fired a torpedo at the loading pier, Bell Island became the only location in North America to be subject to direct attack by German forces in the Second World War. U-boats were also found in the St. Lawrence River; during the night of 14 October 1942, the Newfoundland Railway ferry, SS "Caribou" was torpedoed by German U-boat "U-69" and sunk in the Cabot Strait with the loss of 137 lives. Both sides fought to outsmart each other and decide the fate of the merchant vessels in the Atlantic Ocean. Several U-boat wrecks have been found in Canadian waters, a few as far in as the Labrador River. 
The Canadian mainland was also attacked when the Japanese submarine "I-26" shelled the Estevan Point lighthouse on Vancouver Island on 20 June 1942. Japanese fire balloons were also launched at Canada, some reaching British Columbia and the other western provinces.
List of hospital ships sunk in World War I
The high command of Imperial German viewed Allied hospital ships as violating the Hague Convention and ordered its submarine forces to target them as part of their Unrestricted submarine warfare on Allied shipping. Even with the inspections from neutral countries the German High command alleged that hospital ships were violating Article Four by transporting able-bodied soldiers to the battleground. The biggest hospital ship sunk by either mine or torpedo in the First World War was "Britannic", the sister of "Olympic" and the ill-fated "Titanic". "Britannic" hit a mine on November 21, 1916; 30 people were killed, but the rest of the crew and passengers were able to escape. The largest loss of life caused by the sinking of a hospital ship would be "Llandovery Castle". The ship was hit by a torpedo from the German U-boat on June 27, 1918. Shortly thereafter, the submarine surfaced and gunned down most of the survivors; only 24 were rescued. After the war, the captain of "U-86", Lieutenant Helmut Patzig, and two of his lieutenants were charged with war crimes and arraigned for trial, but Patzig disappeared, and the two lieutenants both escaped after being convicted and sentenced to prison. The Allies weren't the only ones who had their ships attacked at the beginning of the war, the German hospital ship "Ophelia" was seized by British naval forces as a spy ship and near the close of the war the Austrian hospital ship "Baron Call" was unsuccessfully attacked by torpedo on October 29, 1918.
German battleship Gneisenau
"Admiral Hipper" rejoined the two battleships off Trondheim on the morning of 11 April, and the three ships returned to Wilhelmshaven, arriving the following day. There, the damage incurred during the engagement with "Renown" was repaired. She was then drydocked in Bremerhaven for periodic maintenance on 26–29 April. The ship was to go to the Baltic following the completion of repairs, but on the morning of 5 May, while steaming at off the Elbe estuary, "Gneisenau" detonated a magnetic mine about off the port rear quarter and below the hull. The explosion caused significant damage to the hull and flooded several compartments, which caused the ship to take on a half-degree list to port. The concussive shock from the blast damaged many internal and topside components, including the starboard low-pressure turbine and the rear rangefinders. Repairs were effected in a floating drydock in Kiel from 6 to 21 May. A brief shakedown cruise followed in the Baltic, and by the 27th, she was back in Kiel at full combat readiness.
Cultural legacy of RMS Titanic
The "Titanic" has gone down in history as the ship that was called unsinkable. However, even though countless news stories after the sinking called "Titanic" unsinkable, prior to the sinking the White Star Line had used the term "designed to be unsinkable", and other pre-sinking publications described the ship as "virtually unsinkable". Another well-known story is that of the ship's band, led by Wallace Hartley, who heroically played on while the great steamer was sinking. This seems to be true but there has been conflicting information about which song was the last to be heard. The most reported is "Nearer, My God, to Thee", though "Autumn" has been mentioned. Finally, a widespread myth is that the internationally recognised Morse code distress signal "SOS" was first put to use when the "Titanic" sank. While it is true that British wireless operators rarely used the "SOS" signal at the time, preferring the older "CQD" code, "SOS" had been used internationally since 1908. The first wireless operator on "Titanic", Jack Phillips, sent both "SOS" and "CQD" as distress calls.
Sturzkampfgeschwader 77
StG 77 began operations against Dunkirk after the fall of Calais. In the Battle of Dunkirk, Ju 87s bombed the port and attacked Allied shipping evacuating the encircled British and French armies. With StG 1 and 2 the Ju 87s inflicted significant losses on the Royal Navy and French Navy. Côte d'Azur, a 3,047-ton cross-channel steamer was sunk on 27 May followed by the paddle steamer "Crested Eagle" on 28 May. On 29 May the Royal Navy destroyer H.M.S."Grenade" was severely damaged by a Ju 87 attack within Dunkirk's harbour, and subsequently sank. The French destroyer "Mistral" was crippled by bomb damage the same day. "Jaguar" and "Verity" were badly damaged while the trawlers "Calvi" and "Polly Johnson" (363 and 290 tons) disintegrated under bombardment. The merchant ship "Fenella" (2,376 tons) was sunk having taken on 600 soldiers. The attacks brought the evacuation to a halt for a time. The rail ships "Lorina" and "Normannia" (1,564 and 1,567 tons) were sunk also.
SMS Wiesbaden
Shortly after 20:00, the III Flotilla of torpedo boats attempted to rescue "Wiesbaden"s crew, but heavy fire from the British battle line drove them off. Another attempt to reach the ship was made, but the torpedo boat crews lost sight of the cruiser and were unable to locate her. The ship finally sank sometime between 01:45 and 02:45. Only one crew member survived the sinking; he was picked up by a Norwegian steamer the following day. Among the 589 killed was the well-known writer of poetry and fiction dealing with the life of fishermen and sailors, Johann Kinau, known under his pseudonym of Gorch Fock, who has since then been honored by having two training windjammers of the Kriegsmarine and the German Navy, respectively, named after him. The wreck of "Wiesbaden" was found in 1983 by divers of the German Navy, who removed both of the ship's screws. The ship lies on the sea floor upside down, and was the last German cruiser sunk at Jutland to be located.
SMS Eber (1887)
SMS "Eber", a 735-ton iron-hulled gunboat, was built at Kiel, Germany for gunboat diplomacy in the Pacific. It was a barque-rigged auxiliary steamer. After commissioning in September 1887 she was sent to the Pacific to serve in the German colonial empire. She disarmed the inhabitants of Nauru in 1888, ending their civil war and annexing the island to the German Empire. "Eber" was anchored in Apia Harbor, Samoa, during the 1889 Apia cyclone of 15–16 March 1889. Though she was the most modern of the seven warships present, damage to her propeller made it impossible for her to survive the violent wind and seas. After a long struggle, "Eber" was forced against the edge of the harbor reef and sank quickly, with the loss of 73 of her crewmen.
SMS Nassau
"Nassau" and her three sisters were to have taken part in a final fleet action at the end of October 1918, days before the Armistice was to take effect. The bulk of the High Seas Fleet was to have sortied from their base in Wilhelmshaven to engage the British Grand Fleet; Scheer—by now the Grand Admiral ("Großadmiral") of the fleet—intended to inflict as much damage as possible on the British navy, to improve Germany's bargaining position, despite the expected casualties. Many of the war-weary sailors felt that the operation would disrupt the peace process and prolong the war. On the morning of 29 October 1918, the order was given to sail from Wilhelmshaven the following day. Starting on the night of 29 October, sailors on "Thüringen" and then on several other battleships mutinied. The unrest ultimately forced Hipper and Scheer to cancel the operation.
SMS Breslau
In May 1917, "Midilli" laid a minefield off the mouth of the Danube; while there, she destroyed the wireless station on Fidonisi Island and captured 11 prisoners. The minefield she laid later sank the destroyer on 30 June. While "Midilli" was at sea, a Russian force including "Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya", which had by then been renamed , raided the Bosporus. Returning to port, "Midilli" was spotted by the Russian fleet, which attempted to cut her off from the safety of the Bosporus. "Midilli" raced toward port, while salvos from "Svobodnaya Rossiya" fell around her. The destroyer "Gnevny" closed to attack, but "Midilli"s 15 cm guns drove her off. The cruiser managed to reach port without damage; this was the last engagement of the war between the former German warships and the Russian fleet. On 1 November, "Midilli" left the Bosporus to conduct a sweep for Russian warships. The Russians observed the departure and attempted to attack the cruiser with "Svobodnaya Rossiya" and the new battleship , but mutiny aboard "Svobodnaya Rossiya" prevented the force from intercepting "Midilli" before she slipped back into port that night.
SMS Gneisenau (1879)
The equipment director from the "Kaiserliche Werft" of Wilhelmshaven, "KK" Otto Mandt, surveyed the wreck to determine if it could be salvaged, but he determined that it was too badly damaged. Instead, the guns and other valuable equipment were removed and the wreck was blown up to test the strength of the hull's construction. The remains of the ship were then sold for scrap, to be broken up in situ.
SMS Stein
After "Gneisenau" was wrecked in bad weather off Málaga on 16 December 1900, "Stein" was reactivated to take her place. She embarked on her first training cruise of this commissioning on 28 January 1901, bound for Lisbon, Portugal and Gibraltar. She returned to Kiel on 1 April and, over the course of 30 May to 1 August, she took part in training exercises, made a visit to Riga to participate in celebrations marking the 700th anniversary of the city's founding, and toured ports in the North Sea. She then began a cruise to the West Indies; while stopped in San Sebastián, she was visited by the Spanish king, Alfonso XIII. "Stein" reached Port of Spain on 18 October and joined the East American Cruiser Division, though she returned to Germany on 6 January 1902. She moved to Kiel on 17 March to begin preparing for the year's training routine, which began in mid-May with exercises in the Baltic and North Seas.
German cruiser Admiral Hipper
Ten minutes later, "Berwick" reappeared off "Admiral Hipper"s port bow; the German cruiser fired several salvos from her forward turrets and scored hits on the British cruiser's rear turrets, waterline, and forward superstructure. "Admiral Hipper" then disengaged, to prevent the British destroyers from closing to launch a torpedo attack. By now, the ship was running low on fuel, and so she put into Brest in occupied France on 27 December. While en route, "Admiral Hipper" encountered and sank the isolated cargo ship "Jumna". Another round of routine maintenance work was effected while the ship was in Brest, readying her for another sortie into the Atlantic shipping lanes.
On 1 February 1941, "Admiral Hipper" embarked on her second Atlantic sortie. The "Kriegsmarine" had initially sought to send the battleships "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" to operate in concert with "Admiral Hipper", but "Gneisenau" suffered storm damage in December that prevented the participation of the two ships. Repairs were effected quickly, however, and the two battleships broke out into the Atlantic in early February. "Admiral Hipper" rendezvoused with a tanker off the Azores to top up her fuel tanks. On 11 February, the ship encountered and sank an isolated transport from convoy HG 53, which had been dispersed by U-boat and Luftwaffe attacks. That evening, she picked up the unescorted convoy SLS 64, which contained nineteen merchant ships. The following morning, "Admiral Hipper" closed in and sank several of the ships. The British reported only seven ships were lost, totaling , along with damage to two more. The Germans claimed "Admiral Hipper" had sunk thirteen of the nineteen freighters, while some survivors reported fourteen ships of the convoy were sunk.
SMS Nassau
Another sortie into the North Sea followed on 19–20 October. On 21 December, "Nassau" ran aground in the mouth of the Elbe. She was able to free herself, and repairs were effected in Hamburg at the Reihersteig Dockyard until 1 February 1917. The ship was part of the force that steamed to Norway to intercept a heavily escorted British convoy on 23–25 April, though the operation was canceled when the battlecruiser "Moltke" suffered mechanical damage and had to be towed back to port. "Nassau", "Ostfriesland", and "Thüringen" were formed into a special unit for Operation "Schlußstein", a planned occupation of Saint Petersburg. On 8 August, "Nassau" took on 250 soldiers in Wilhelmshaven and then departed for the Baltic. The three ships reached the Baltic on 10 August, but the operation was postponed and eventually canceled. The special unit was dissolved on 21 August, and the battleships were back in Wilhelmshaven on the 23rd.
SMS Kaiserin
The fleet remained in captivity during the negotiations that ultimately produced the Treaty of Versailles. Reuter believed that the British intended to seize the German ships on 21 June 1919, which was the deadline for Germany to have signed the peace treaty. Unaware that the deadline had been extended to the 23rd, Reuter ordered the ships to be sunk at the next opportunity. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers, and at 11:20 Reuter transmitted the order to his ships. "Kaiserin" sank at 14:00; she was subsequently raised on 14 May 1936 and broken up later that year in Rosyth.
Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
The sinking of the "Rainbow Warrior", codenamed Opération Satanique, was a bombing operation by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence services, the "Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure" (DGSE), carried out on 10 July 1985. During the operation, two operatives sank the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, the "Rainbow Warrior", at the Port of Auckland in New Zealand on its way to a protest against a planned French nuclear test in Moruroa. Fernando Pereira, a photographer, drowned on the sinking ship.
German battleship Gneisenau
On 6 February, the two ships refueled from the tanker "Schlettstadt" south of Cape Farewell. Shortly after 08:30 on 8 February, lookouts spotted convoy HX 106, though it was escorted by the battleship . Lütjens' orders prohibited him from engaging Allied capital ships, and so the attack was called off. "Scharnhorst"s commander, "KzS" Hoffmann, however, closed to in an attempt to lure "Ramillies" away from the convoy so that "Gneisenau" could attack the convoy. Lütjens ordered Hoffmann to rejoin the flagship immediately. The two battleships steamed off to the northwest to search for more shipping. On 22 February, the pair spotted an empty convoy sailing west, though it dispersed at the appearance of the battleships. "Gneisenau" sank three ships, and along with a fourth destroyed by "Scharnhorst", the pair accounted for 25,784 GRT of Allied shipping.
SMS Karlsruhe (1916)
Following the capitulation of Germany in November 1918, most of the High Seas Fleet's ships, under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, were interned in the British naval base in Scapa Flow. "Karlsruhe" was among the ships interned, and the II Scouting Group commander, "KzS" Victor Harder, came aboard "Karlsruhe" for the voyage to internment since his normal flagship, "Königsberg", was not included on the list of ships to be interned. The fleet remained in captivity during the negotiations that ultimately produced the Versailles Treaty. Von Reuter believed that the British intended to seize the German ships on 21 June 1919, which was the deadline for Germany to have signed the peace treaty. Unaware that the deadline had been extended to the 23rd, Reuter ordered the ships to be sunk at the next opportunity. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers, and at 11:20 Reuter transmitted the order to his ships; "Karlsruhe" sank at 15:50, one of the last ships of the fleet to sink. She was never raised for scrapping, as she had sunk in a greater depth than many of the other ships. The rights to her wreck were sold in 1962, and some non-ferrous metals were removed from the wreck. In 2017, marine archaeologists from the Orkney Research Center for Archaeology conducted extensive surveys of "Karlsruhe" and nine other wrecks in the area, including six other German and three British warships. The archaeologists mapped the wrecks with sonar and examined them with remotely operated underwater vehicles as part of an effort to determine how the wrecks are deteriorating.
SMS Gneisenau (1879)
She remained out of service for the next year, before being recommissioned on 9 April 1899, thereafter embarking on a training cruise to Bergen on 5 July. On 24 July, she began another training voyage that went first to Iceland and then Queenstown, Ireland before continuing on to the Mediterranean. Foreign ports that were visited included Jaffa from 16 to 20 December and Beirut from 20 December to 2 January 1900. She began the journey back to Germany on 5 January, departing Port Said and sailing to La Spezia, Italy, where she was visited by "Kaiserin" Friedrich and her daughter Princess Viktoria. "Gneisenau" arrived in Kiel on 23 March, and after minor repairs began a training cruise in the Baltic on 26 May. Another short visit to Bergen followed on 10 September.
French corvette La Bastiaise
On 22 June 1940, the day of France's capitulation, "La Bastiase" was undergoing sea trials in the North Sea when she struck a mine off Hartlepool and sank. The night before Luftwaffe planes had been dropping magnetic mines into the shallow coastal waters. Forty-three French sailors died, along with at least 18 British shipyard workers. "La Bastiase" was not part of FFL Navy as she was serving under the "Marine nationale" flag but France surrendered on the day of her loss. Her commander, Lieutenant de Vaisseau Georges Albert Lacombe, died in the sinking.
SMS Scharnhorst
"Gneisenau" rendezvoused with "Scharnhorst" in Nagasaki, Japan, where they received a full supply of coal. They then sailed south, arriving in Truk in early July where they would restock their coal supplies. While en route, they received news of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. On 17 July, the East Asia Squadron arrived in Ponape in the Caroline Islands. Spee now had access to the German radio network and he learned of the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia and the Russian mobilization against Austria-Hungary and possibly Germany. On 31 July, word came that the German ultimatum that Russia demobilize its armies was set to expire. Spee ordered his ships be stripped for war. On 2 August, Wilhelm II ordered German mobilization against Russia and its ally, France.
SMS Gneisenau
At 19:00, the German ships closed to attack. In the span of five minutes, the German cruisers' guns had seriously damaged "Good Hope", which was destroyed by a magazine explosion. "Monmouth" attempted to escape to the south; she was burning furiously and her guns had fallen silent. "Nürnberg" closed to point-blank range of "Monmouth" and poured shells into her. "Glasgow" was forced to abandon "Monmouth" after 20:20, before fleeing south and meeting with "Canopus". "Monmouth" eventually capsized and sank at 21:18. Over 1,600 men were killed in the sinking of the two armored cruisers, including Admiral Craddock; German losses were negligible. However, the German ships had expended over 40% of their ammunition supply.
SMS Gneisenau
"Gneisenau" was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen, Germany in 1904, under construction number 144. She was launched on 14 June 1906, and commissioned into the fleet nearly two years later on 6 March 1908. The ship cost the German government 19,243,000 goldmarks. The ship had been designed for service with the High Seas Fleet, though it was found to be too weak for service with the battle fleet; instead it was deployed overseas, a role in which it performed well.
SMS Nassau
"Nassau" and the rest of the I Squadron were again engaged by British light forces shortly after 22:00, including the light cruisers , , and . "Nassau" followed her sister "Westfalen" in a 68° turn to starboard in order to evade any torpedoes that might have been fired. The two ships fired on "Caroline" and "Royalist" at a range of around . The British ships turned away briefly, before turning about to launch torpedoes. "Caroline" fired two at "Nassau"; the first passed close to her bows and the second passed under the ship without exploding.
At around midnight on 1 June, the German fleet was attempting to pass behind the British Grand Fleet when it encountered a line of British destroyers. "Nassau" came upon the destroyer , and in the confusion, attempted to ram her. "Spitfire" tried to evade, but could not maneuver away fast enough, and the two ships collided. "Nassau" fired her forward 11-inch guns at the destroyer. They could not depress low enough for "Nassau" to be able to score a hit; nonetheless, the blast from the guns destroyed "Spitfire"s bridge. At that point, "Spitfire" was able to disengage from "Nassau", and took with her a 6 m (20 ft) portion of "Nassau"s side plating. The collision disabled one of "Nassau"s 15 cm (5.9 in) guns, and left a 3.5 m (11.5 ft) gash above the waterline; this slowed the ship to until it could be repaired. During the confused action, "Nassau" was hit by two shells from the British destroyers, which damaged her searchlights and inflicted minor casualties.
German East Africa
The SMS "Königsberg", a German light cruiser, also fought off the coast of the African Great Lakes region. She was eventually scuttled in the Rufiji delta in July 1915 after running low on coal and spare parts, and was subsequently blockaded and bombarded by the British. The surviving crew stripped out the remaining ship's guns and mounted them on gun carriages, before joining the land forces, adding considerably to their effectiveness.
Scuttling of SMS Cormoran
SMS "Cormoran" rests 110 feet (34 m) below the water of Apra harbor on her port side. A Japanese cargo ship, the "Tokai Maru", which was sunk during World War II leans up against her screw. Together the ships are one of the few places where a diver can visit a sunken vessel of World War I next to a sunken vessel of World War II. The shipwreck was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 due to its association with the First World War.
SM UB-47
"UB-47"s next success came a week later, on 11 October, when the 5,002-ton British steamer "Crosshill" was sunk west of Malta with the loss of four men. A German military announcement of 20 October proclaiming Steinbauer's sinking of the ship reported that "Crosshill"s cargo included horses and Serbian grooms. The following day, "Sebek", a British ship headed to Alexandria, was torpedoed southeast of Gozo. Although the German Admiralty reported her sunk, "Sebek"s captain was able to ground his ship and prevent it from sinking. On 14 October, "UB-47" sank five small Italian sailing vessels—ranging in size from 32 to 80 tons—near Syracuse, Sicily. The next day, "UB-47" closed out the month of October with the sinking of the Greek steamer "Avis". "UB-47"s tally of sunken ships for the month of October came to 24,776 gross register tons, which accounted for nearly 20% of the total sunk by all German U-boats in the Mediterranean.
Greek destroyer Adrias (L67)
On 27 January 1943, while positioned NW off Cape Finisterre "Adrias" was believed to have sunk the (British Admiralty's signal presumed her possibly sunk). When the war ended the loss of the German submarine was officially confirmed to have occurred on 27 January. However, the name of the ship that caused the sinking was not mentioned. During that same operation on 13 February 1943, "Adrias" sunk or seriously damaged (the last report from that submarine was dated 9 February 1943).
Sinking of the Lusitania: Terror at Sea
Documentary filmmaker Christopher Spencer uncovers the truth about the sinking of the RMS "Lusitania" in this film that gets to the heart of the mystery by leaving no theory unexplored. 7 May 1915: The RMS "Lusitania", a luxury Atlantic liner, is carrying approximately 1900 passengers and crew when a German torpedo suddenly strikes just beneath the ship's bridge. In the eighteen minutes that it took the "Lusitania" to sink, 1200 passengers and crewmembers perished at sea. In the aftermath of the sinking, numerous conspiracy theories began to emerge: Was the British government secretly using a passenger ship to transport explosives? Had Winston Churchill sacrificed the ship to draw the United States into a war she had been reluctant to join? Now, nearly a century later, the facts are separated from the fiction as Spencer and his researchers sort through the details on a painstaking quest to finally raise the truth up from the depths. Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide.
German destroyer Z31
From 22 March, "Z31", working with "Z34" and "Lützow", shelled advancing Soviet troops near Gotenhafen in West Prussia (now Gdynia in Poland), while on 23 March she towed the hulk of the battleship to the entrance of Gotenhafen harbour, ready to be sunk as a blockship. ("Gneisenau" was scuttled on 27 March). On 27 March, a 15 cm shell accidentally exploded in one of "Z31"s guns, killing four and wounding 18. Nevertheless, "Z31" continued to support evacuation of German troops and civilians from Gotenhafen and Hela, until the ship was damaged by Soviet bombs, and withdrew westwards with and "Lützow" on 8 April. "Z31" was docked at Swinemünde (now Świnoujście) for repair on 10 April, and was damaged again by Soviet air attack when on passage to Kiel on 27 April. She reached Brunsbüttel on 30 April, and remained there until the end of the war on 8 May.
SMS König Albert
After Germany's defeat in the war and the signing of the Armistice in November 1918, "König Albert" and most of the capital ships of the High Seas Fleet were interned by the Royal Navy in Scapa Flow. The ships were disarmed and reduced to skeleton crews while the Allied powers negotiated the final version of the Treaty of Versailles. On 21 June 1919, days before the treaty was signed, the commander of the interned fleet, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, ordered the fleet to be scuttled to ensure that the British would not be able to seize the ships. "König Albert" was raised in July 1935 and subsequently broken up for scrap in 1936.
SMS Gneisenau (1879)
"Gneisenau" returned to service on 13 April 1887 under the command of "KzS" August von Thomsen, now in the role of a training ship for naval cadets and four-year enlisted volunteers. In late May, she joined the Training Squadron, which was present at the ceremony marking the beginning on construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal on 3 June. The squadron took part in the annual fleet training exercises that began on 6 August; during the maneuvers, the squadron filled the role of the II Division of the main fleet. After the exercises concluded the following month, the Training Squadron embarked on a winter cruise to the Mediterranean. During this voyage, the squadron flagship, , caught fire and had to be docked for repairs, during which time "Gneisenau" served as the flagship from 19 November 1887 to 8 January 1888. On the way back to Germany in 1888, the ships stopped at Cape St. Vincent and in Funchal, before arriving back in Wilhelmshaven on 10 April. "Gneisenau" proceeded on to Kiel, where she underwent an overhaul. The ship embarked on individual training exercises after returning to service before rejoining the Training Squadron on 25 June. The following month, the squadron escorted Kaiser Wilhelm II on a tour of Scandinavian ports aboard the ironclad .
SMS Gneisenau (1879)
By the early 1880s, French and British controls in Egypt and particularly the Suez Canal produced the 'Urabi revolt, led by Ahmed ‘Urabi. In June 1882, the revolutionaries, angered by foreign influence in the country, murdered fifty Europeans, prompting the British Royal Navy to bombard Alexandria and then land forces to pursue the rebels. In the wake of the conflict, the German government determined that warships should be sent to protect Germans in the country. Initially hoping to avoid mobilizing any vessels in Germany to keep the cost of the operation to a minimum, the "Admiralität" ordered a pair of gunboats, and , that had been returning from overseas deployments to proceed to Egypt. There, they sent sailors ashore to protect Germans in Alexandria and Port Said, respectively.
SS Hansa (1899)
On 24 November 1944, the "Hansa" was torpedoed and sunk between Nynäshamn and Visby by a Soviet submarine. At 05:57 a torpedo caused a large explosion, and the ship sank within a few minutes. 84 people died and two survived, including the then Swedish Army captain Arne Mohlin. The two survivors were rescued by the Swedish minesweepers "Landsort" and "Arholma". Investigations after the war pointed to the Soviet submarine "L21" as being responsible for the sinking.
German battleship Gneisenau
At 17:45, the German battleships spotted the British aircraft carrier and two escorting destroyers, and , at a range of some . "Scharnhorst" was closer and therefore fired first. "Scharnhorst" had some boiler difficulty, which reduced her speed to . This allowed "Gneisenau" to overtake her sister during the action. Although the destroyers attempted to cover "Glorious" with smoke screens, the German battleships used their Seetakt radar to assist the gunlaying. In less than an hour's shooting, "Glorious" was reduced to a burning hulk. "Gneisenau" then turned her fire on "Acasta", while "Scharnhorst" dispatched "Ardent". Before "Acasta" was sunk, she fired a spread of torpedoes at "Gneisenau", which the latter successfully evaded. One of them struck "Scharnhorst", however, and caused serious damage. After all three British ships had been sunk, Marschall withdrew his force to Trondheim to conduct emergency repairs to "Scharnhorst". In the meantime, Marschall sortied with "Gneisenau", "Admiral Hipper", and four destroyers, though after two days he returned to Trondheim when it became clear that the British convoys were too heavily guarded.
SMS V107
On the night of 30 April/1 May 1915, "V107" and sister ship made a sortie into the Gulf of Riga, reconnoitring the island of Ruhnu and shelling lighthouses. The German Army had begun an offensive in the Baltic as a diversion for the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive, and after a bombardment of Russian defences of the port of Libau by German cruisers on 7 May, the Russians evacuated the city later that day. When German naval forces entered Libau harbour on the morning of 8 May "V107" struck a mine on entering the port. The explosion blew off the ship's bow and "V107" sunk as a result, with one crewmember killed.
Concordia (ship)
The "Concordia" sank at 1423 hrs local time Wednesday. At 1425 Concordia's Bosun Geoffrey Byers swam to retrieve the EPIRB and brought it aboard the rafts. The Captain directed that someone hold the EPIRB upright at all times and keep it safe from damage. The EPIRB signal was received at 1505 hrs by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite GOES 12. The position of the sinking, , was resolved at 1525 local time. The TSB report noted the EPIRB database only listed one telephone number for the "Concordia" and that number had not been in service since 2004.
SMS Scharnhorst
To keep the German high command informed, on 8 September von Spee detached "Nürnberg" to Honolulu to send word through neutral countries. "Nürnberg" returned with news of the Allied capture of German Samoa, which had taken place on 29 August. "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" sailed to Apia to investigate the situation. Spee had hoped to catch a British or Australian warship by surprise, but upon his arrival on 14 September, he found no warships in the harbor. On 22 September, "Scharnhorst" and the rest of the East Asia Squadron arrived at the French colony of Papeete. The Germans attacked the colony, and in the ensuing Battle of Papeete, they sank the French gunboat "Zélée". The ships came under fire from French shore batteries but were undamaged. Fear of mines in the harbor prevented von Spee from seizing the coal in the harbor.
SS Antilles (1907)
On 17 October 1917, three days out of Saint Nazaire, France and two days out of Quiberon Bay where another ship had joined the convoy for the return voyage, "Antilles" was torpedoed by German U-boat reportedly sinking in four and a half minutes after being hit. The ship was in a small convoy composed of "Antilles", "Henderson" and "Willehad" escorted by the patrol yachts , , and . Both "Aphrodite" and "Corsair" had been among the escort on that first convoy to France in June. In rough weather "Kanawha" had been forced to turn back due to the weather with the convoy slowed by the same weather. At about 6:45 a.m., during a course change, "Antilles" was astern of "Corsair" and seen to suddenly sheer out of formation and began settling by the stern. "Alcedo" turned back to where "Antilles" had sunk and began picking up survivors while "Corsair" circled in a search for the submarine until about 8:30 with no sign of a submarine found and the search for survivors and the submarine discontinued at 10:30. 
The majority, 118 survivors, were rescued by "Alcedo" with 50 rescued by "Corsair". Among the fifty persons rescued by "Corsair" was then Brigadier General William Sharp McNair who had been ordered to return to take command of 151st Field Artillery Brigade. A total of 67 lives were lost in the sinking. The loss of life was the first case in the war involving a large number of American casualties.
SS Glenartney (1915)
SS "Glenartney" was a British cargo ship that was sunk in the Mediterranean Sea on 6 February 1918 (5 February, British time), 30 nautical miles (56 km) north east of Cape Bon, French Tunisia, by a torpedo fired by the Imperial German Navy submarine SM "UC-54". The ship was owned by Glen Line, Ltd. of Glasgow, Scotland, and was en route from Singapore to London at the time of her loss.
German battleship Gneisenau
In early 1942, the two ships made a daylight dash up the English Channel from occupied France to Germany. After reaching Kiel in early February, the ship went into drydock. On the night of 26 February, the British launched an air attack on the ship; one bomb penetrated her armored deck and exploded in the forward ammunition magazine, causing serious damage and a large number of casualties. The repairs necessitated by the damage were so time-consuming that it was determined to rebuild the ship to accommodate the 38 cm guns as originally intended. The 28 cm guns were removed and used as shore batteries. In 1943, Hitler ordered the cessation of conversion work, and on 27 March 1945, she was sunk as a blockship in Gotenhafen (Gdynia) in German-occupied Poland. She was eventually broken up for scrap in 1951.
German submarine U-257
The submarine had moved to St. Nazaire; she departed from this French Atlantic port on 2 January 1944. On 24 February, she was attacked and sunk in mid-Atlantic by the Canadian frigate , assisted by . (A former crew member from "Waskesiu" has stated that "Nene" merely picked survivors up). Thirty men died in the sinking, there were nineteen survivors.
German submarine U-46 (1938)
Endrass left Kiel on 1 June to patrol the North Sea and into the Atlantic. He was immediately successful, on 6 June "U-46" scored her first kill, the armed merchant cruiser . Endrass followed this up with the Finnish merchant ship SS "Margareta" on 9 June. On 11 June he damaged MV "Athelprince"; the following day he sank SS "Barbara Marie" and SS "Willowbank". His final kill was the Greek SS "Elpis" on 17 June. "U-46" returned to Kiel on 1 July after 31 days at sea, during which five ships had been sunk for 35,347 tons and another for 8,782 tons, had been damaged.
"U-46" relocated to Bergen in August. On 3 August she was spotted by the British submarine . "Triad" surfaced and attacked "U-46" with her 102mm gun at 2230 hours. Endrass dived, pursued by "Triad" but the two submarines subsequently lost contact. "U-46" sailed again on 8 August. It was another highly successful patrol. On 16 August she damaged the Dutch ship SS "Alcinous" and on 20 August torpedoed the Greek vessel . The ship was declared a total loss.
On 27 August "U-46" sank the armed merchant cruiser , followed by SS "Ville de Hasselt" on 31 August, SS "Thornlea" on 2 September and SS "Luimneach", an Irish steamship sailing under a neutral flag, on 4 September. There are differences in the accounts given by the captains. Endrass claimed that Captain Eric Jones and his crew "lost their heads completely" at the shot across the bows from his U-boat. Jones was an experienced captain. The "Luimneach" had survived twelve aerial attacks during the Spanish Civil War. Following an inquiry on 4 March 1941, Dönitz concluded that the U-boat acted correctly in sinking an abandoned ship. "U-46" returned to Lorient on the French Atlantic coast on 6 September, having sunk five ships for 29,883 tons and damaged another for 6,189 tons.
Gas Light and Coke Company
SS "Universal was a 1,274 GRT collier built in 1878 by Short Brothers for the Taylor and Sanderson Steam Ship Co of Sunderland. The GLCC bought her in 1916 and renamed her Ardens". On 18 August 1917 the German submarine torpedoed and sank her in the North Sea off Filey. One of "Ardens" crew was killed.
SS "Magnus Mail was a 2,299 GRT cargo ship built in 1889 by Short Brothers for J. Westoll of Sunderland. The GLCC bought her in 1916 and renamed her ". On 21 May 1917 the German submarine shelled and boarded her in the North Sea off Whitby. The boarding party tried to scuttle her with explosives but she did not immediately sink. Vessels from Whitby rescued her crew and took "Lanthorn" in tow, but she sank before she could be beached.
Odyssey Marine Exploration
Between 1998 and 2001, Odyssey Marine Exploration searched for HMS "Sussex" and stated that it had located the shipwreck off Gibraltar at a depth of 821 metres. The English ship sank in a storm in 1694 during the War of the Grand Alliance as it was transporting 10 tons of gold coins to buy the allegiance of the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, against France.
SMS Gneisenau
Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, the former Chief of the General staff, christened the ship at her commissioning on 6 March 1908. Captain Franz von Hipper was the ship's first commanding officer; he took command of the ship the day she was commissioned. He was tasked with conducting the ship's shakedown cruise, which lasted from 26 March to the middle of July. She officially joined the fleet on 12 July. The ship then departed for Asia, though Hipper left the ship and went on to command the I Torpedo-boat Division in Kiel. "Gneisenau" was assigned to the "Ostasiengeschwader" (East Asia Squadron), where in 1910 she joined "Scharnhorst", which had been assigned to the unit the previous year. The two ships formed the core of the squadron, with "Scharnhorst" serving as the flagship. The pair were crack gunnery ships; "Gneisenau" won the Kaiser's Cup four times during her career: twice while in German waters in 1908 and 1909 and twice in Asia in 1910 and 1911, and "Scharnhorst"s finished in second place in 1913 and 1914.
Sinking of the RMS Lusitania
On 27 March, Room 40 had intercepted a message which clearly demonstrated that the Germans had broken the code used to pass messages to British merchant ships. Cruisers protecting merchant ships were warned not to use the code to give directions to shipping because it could just as easily attract enemy submarines as steer ships away from them. However, Queenstown (now Cobh) was not given this warning and continued to give directions in the compromised code, which was not changed until after "Lusitania"s sinking. At this time, the Royal Navy was significantly involved with operations leading up to the landings at Gallipoli, and the intelligence department had been undertaking a program of misinformation to convince Germany to expect an attack on her northern coast. As part of this, ordinary cross-channel traffic to the Netherlands was halted from 19 April and false reports were leaked about troop ship movements from ports on Britain's western and southern coasts. This led to a demand from the German army for offensive action against the expected troop movements and consequently, a surge in German submarine activity on the British west coast. The fleet was warned to expect additional submarines, but this warning was not passed on to those sections of the navy dealing with merchant vessels. The return of the battleship "Orion" from Devonport to Scotland was delayed until 4 May and she was given orders to stay from the Irish coast.
On 5 May, "U-20" stopped a merchant schooner, "Earl of Lathom", off the Old Head of Kinsale, examined her papers, then ordered her crew to leave before sinking the schooner with gunfire. On 6 May, "U-20" fired a torpedo at "Cayo Romano" from Cuba, a British steamer flying a neutral flag, off Fastnet Rock narrowly missing by a few feet. At 22:30 on 5 May, the Royal Navy sent an uncoded warning to all ships – "Submarines active off the south coast of Ireland" – and at midnight an addition was made to the regular nightly warnings, "submarine off Fastnet". On 6 May "U-20" sank the 6,000 ton steamer "Candidate". It then failed to get off a shot at the 16,000 ton liner "Arabic", because although she kept a straight course the liner was too fast, but then sank another 6,000 ton British cargo ship flying no flag, "Centurion", all in the region of the Coningbeg light ship. The specific mention of a submarine was dropped from the midnight broadcast on 6–7 May as news of the new sinkings had not yet reached the navy at Queenstown, and it was correctly assumed that there was no longer a submarine at Fastnet.
SMS Medusa (1864)
"Medusa" was recommissioned on 20 August and was transferred to Danzig, though on 25 September she moved back to Kiel. She was sent to assist the Russian frigate , which had run aground off Aarhus, but she was recalled before arriving when it became clear that the ship was beyond salvaging. On 20 October, she left Germany for an extended cruise abroad. She reached Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 15 December, where she was visited by Emperor Pedro II. "Medusa" continued the voyage on 3 January 1869, crossing the Indian Ocean and stopping at the island of Île Saint-Paul on 14 February. She sailed on to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, where she met the Bremen-flagged full-rigged ship "Adele", which had caught fire and burned badly. "Medusa" towed "Adele" to Singapore, where the crew could return to Germany.
On "Medusa"s arrival in Singapore, the East Asia Station, which the Navy Department had ordered established in 1867, could finally be created. "Medusa" initially served as the flagship of the squadron until her long-time consort "Hertha" arrived on 12 February 1870 to take over that function. In the meantime, "Medusa" was first tasked with searching for an appropriate location for a coaling station that could be used to support the German squadron; she examined Blair's Harbour on the Malay Peninsula, the Ryukyu Islands, and the Gotō Islands. After returning to Singapore, "Medusa" received news from the German ambassador to Japan, Max von Brandt, that the Japanese had begun persecuting Europeans in the country, and that her presence was necessary to protect them. She left Singapore on 16 May 1869 and stopped briefly in Hong Kong, where she was present for the official renaming of the Prussian embassy there to the North German embassy, before continuing on to Japan. She reached Hakodate in early June, where her crew observed the destruction of the former Prussian corvette , which had been sold to the Tokugawa Shogunate and renamed "Kaiten".
Italian battleship Giulio Cesare
The cause of the explosion is still unclear. The official cause, regarded as the most probable, was a magnetic RMH or LMB bottom mine, laid by the Germans during World War II and triggered by the dragging of the battleship's anchor chain before mooring for the last time. Subsequent searches located 32 mines of these types, some of them within of the explosion. The damage was consistent with an explosion of of TNT, and more than one mine may have detonated. Nonetheless, other explanations for the ship's loss have been proposed, and the most popular of these is that she was sunk by Italian frogmen of the wartime special operations unit "Decima Flottiglia MAS" who – more than ten years after the cessation of hostilities – were either avenging the transfer of the former Italian battleship to the USSR or sinking it on behalf of NATO. "Novorossiysk" was stricken from the naval register on 24 February 1956, salvaged on 4 May 1957, and subsequently scrapped.
Operation Donnerkeil
The German flotilla had reached home ports on the evening of the 12 February. However, while the threat from RAF bombers in daylight had now gone, Bomber Command was soon making night bombing attacks on Kiel’s port. "Gneisenau" was moved into an inner basin alongside her depot ship, "Monte Olivia". The hatches were left open and her tanks, still containing a large amount of fuel, were left unattended. RAF Bomber Command made its first attack on the night of the 25/26 February, when 61 bombers flew over Kiel. "Monte Olivia" was destroyed but "Gneisenau" escaped. On 26/27 February another 61 RAF bombers returned. A bomb penetrated "Gneisenau"s foredeck and exploded. The oil fumes from the tanks ignited and the ship was engulfed in fire from her bow to the Anton turret. The entire forward part of the bow needed to be replaced. She steamed to Gdynia, in Poland on 4 April where she was decommissioned out of range of RAF bombers. "Gneisenau" did not put to sea again. The raid cost three aircraft, one Hampton and two Wellingtons. German casualties amounted to 16 civilians and 116 sailors dead.
SMS Nassau
"Nassau" saw service in the North Sea at the beginning of World War I, in the II Division of the I Battle Squadron of the German High Seas Fleet. In August 1915, she entered the Baltic Sea and participated in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga, where she engaged the Russian battleship . Following her return to the North Sea, "Nassau" and her sister ships took part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916. During the battle, "Nassau" collided with the British destroyer . "Nassau" suffered a total of 11 killed and 16 injured during the engagement.
SMS Charlotte
In addition to periodic maintenance, additional modernization work was carried out beginning in early 1903, including the installation of new boilers, the removal of the rest of the 15 cm guns, and the reduction of her sailing rig. "Charlotte" returned to service on 1 April 1905, and she began an overseas cruise on 18 July, first visiting Scotland and then cruising in the Atlantic and stopping in Mogador, before entering the Mediterranean. The cruise ended on 30 March 1906 in Kiel, and the cruise of 1906 followed a similar to the 1905 voyage. During this trip, she took part in a memorial service in Málaga in remembrance of those killed in the sinking of "Gneisenau". "Charlotte" arrived back in Kiel on 23 March 1907; the rest of the year was filled with a long cruise in the Baltic and another major voyage to the West Indies that lasted until 16 March 1908. The 1908–1909 cruise also went to the West Indies, during which her crew helped suppress a fire in Santiago de Cuba. "Charlotte", the last sailing ship of the "Kaiserliche Marine" was decommissioned on 31 March 1909 in Kiel.
Werner Töniges
On 5 July Töniges commanded "S-19" on a patrol in the Portland and Isle of Wight area. He claimed a 3,000-ton ship sunk 30 nautical miles south of the Isle of Wight. No British loss matches the claim. On 24 July 1940, Töniges, aboard "S-19", sortied with "S-1" and "S-27" into the English Channel. The mission made headlines over the world. They intercepted and sank a French steamer, "SS Meknes", and sank the ship, killing 416 men, which was carrying repatriated French soldiers to Vichy France. The survivors were rescued by the British. The British said it was flying French national colours, a charge the Germans denied. The British condemned the attack in the House of Commons as an example of Nazi callousness. On 25 July 1940 Töniges left port aboard "S-19" on another patrol. The group claimed three ships sunk—"S-19" torpedoed "SS London Trader" (646t). The German crew reported it as a 10,000t steamer and all of the ships were reported to have been much larger and heavier than they were.
SS Gneisenau (1935)
On 2 May 1943, "Gneisenau" struck a mine in the Baltic Sea, capsized, and sank. The wreck was raised on 12 July 1950 and scrapped in Denmark.
SMS Gneisenau
SMS "Gneisenau" was an armored cruiser of the German navy, part of the two-ship . She was named after August von Gneisenau, a Prussian general of the Napoleonic Wars. The ship was laid down in 1904 at the AG Weser dockyard in Bremen, launched in June 1906, and completed in March 1908, at a cost of over 19 million goldmarks. She was armed with a main battery of eight guns, had a top speed of , and displaced at full combat load.