The Fatal Chance Encounter

The history of armed merchantman ships goes back to the days of sail when ships carrying valuable cargo frequently were equipped with a limited number of cannons as a defense against pirates.  Since most pirate ships could only successfully attack defenseless ships, even a few cannons on a private vessel would frequently be all that was needed to convince pirates that it was more profitable to attack a different, defenseless ship.

For hundreds of years, if a ship captain could seize a merchant vessel from a belligerent nation and manage to take the captured ship to a friendly port, it was a quick path to unbelievable wealth.  Even if you were not a citizen of one of two countries at war, it was possible to obtain a ‘Letter of Marque’—more or less a license to be a pirate—and engage in warfare for profit against your newfound enemy’s merchant ships.  

Europe finally realized that legally sanctioned piracy was disrupting profitable free trade and outlawed it in 1856 under the Declaration of Paris.  However, the United States refused to be a signatory until the Civil War began and the Confederacy began issuing Letters of Marque against Northern shipping—then the North set a speed record for signing the agreement.  Still, several European countries built lightly armed, high-speed cargo ships that were designed specifically to run the Northern blockade of Southern ports.  (If you’ve watched Gone With the Wind, this is how Rhett Butler amassed his fortune.)

By the end of the 19th century, the idea of armed merchant vessels changed.  While it was no longer conceivable that a merchant vessel—no matter how many guns were added to its decks—could fight off a conventional steel-hulled warship, civilian merchant ships and passenger liners were designed so they could be converted into auxiliary cruisers in times of war.  This concept actually met with some success:  the civilian ships lacked the heavy armor plating of warships, so they were much faster.  Used to protect shipping during times of war, these ships could outrun anything they couldn’t outgun.

World War I changed everything, including bringing the end of the “cruiser rules”.  According to several international conventions dating back to the 17th century, armed vessels could not attack unarmed merchant vessels without warning.  Generally, this meant that the armed vessel would approach and fire a round or two across the bow of the civilian ship, at which point the civilian ship would stop and haul down its flag, symbolizing surrender.  After the surrender, the warship’s crew could board it to search for contraband, or could possibly even sink the vessel, after giving the passengers and crew time to board lifeboats.  Even after the vessel was sunk, it was the responsibility of the attacking ship to ensure that the lifeboats had sufficient supplies and equipment to reach safety.

In the early days of World War I, the first British ship to be sunk by a German submarine was the SS Glitra.   The German sub, U-17, surfaced, fired a warning shot from her deck gun across the bow of the ship, which promptly surrendered.  The U-17 gave the crew of the Glitra time to board lifeboats, sank the steamship with its deck gun, then towed the lifeboats to shore.  

Armed merchant class ships accompanying cargo ships prevented submarines from being able to use their deck guns, which were far more reliable than those early torpedoes.  Unable to surface and force the surrender of unarmed merchant vessels, German subs were forced to attack with torpedoes while submerged.  Torpedoes were expensive and a submarine was limited in the number it could carry, while the ammunition for deck guns was cheap, accurate, and in plentiful supply since the submarine could carry a large number of rounds.

England, responded to the threat by developing the Q-ships.  These were merchant vessels with concealed cannons, such as deck guns hidden behind wooden panels designed to look like large crates.  Typically, a submarine would spot what was believed to be an unarmed cargo ship and surface, then fire a round from the deck gun across the bow of the merchant vessel.  The Q-ship would stop its engines and sailors disguised as civilians would begin to lower their lifeboats.  As the submarine drew closer, suddenly the wooden panels and nets hiding numerous deck guns would drop and begin to fire at the submarine and its single deck gun while sailors raised the Royal Navy Flag.  Since even a single hit on the submarine was enough to prevent the sub from being able to dive to safety, the fight was usually over quickly.

Q-ships ranged in size from large cargo ships down to the tiny HM Inverlyon, an unpowered fishing trawler that sank the UB-4 so rapidly that all of the sub’s crew was lost.

The success of the Q-ships forced both sides to abandon the cruiser rules and it also forced Germany to try something different.

One of those British merchant vessels designed to be converted into auxiliary cruisers was the RMS Carmania, launched in 1905.  She was a two-stacked Cunard passenger liner about 80% the length and half the size of the Titanic.  Chiefly used on the New York/Liverpool run, she was converted into an armed merchant ship, the HMS Carmania with the start of World War I and sent to protect British merchant ships in the South Atlantic.

Since Great Britain depended on imports of beef, grain, and leather from Australia and Argentina, interrupting British commercial shipping was a vital war goal for Germany, who sent submarines to the South Atlantic to attack Allied shipping without warning.  And this brings us to the strangest encounter between any two ships of the war.

In 1913, The Hamburg Süd Line launched the SS Cap Trafalgar, a luxurious passenger liner equal in size, tonnage, and speed to the Carmania.  Also—like the British ship—she was designed to be converted into an armed merchant liner during wartime.  When war broke out, the Cap Trafalgar was in Buenos Aires.  Requisitioned by the German Imperial Navy, she was sent to Montevideo, which was a more or less neutral port used by the German Navy, and then sailed to the remote island of Trindade, which was technically a possession of Brazil, but was being used clandestinely as a coaling station for Germany.  Along the way, the crew was replaced with Imperial Navy officers and sailors while the ship underwent a transformation to disguise her.  

The ship’s third funnel was a dummy, so it was removed and the ship was repainted to resemble the Carmania.  The plan was for the Cap Trafalgar, disguised as the Carmania, to approach British shipping, then open fire on the unsuspecting British ships without warning.  The plan was almost foolproof since the two ships were almost identical.  Really, there was only one ship that could correctly identify the disguised German ship.

Since the only German territory in the South Atlantic was in German-occupied Africa, the British suspected that German ships were being secretly resupplied by colliers operating in a protected harbor somewhere along the coast of South America, so they sent the Carmania to investigate some of the islands off the coast of Brazil.  Rounding the edge of the harbor at Trindade, lookouts quickly located the Cap Trafalgar and the German collier Eber.  Somehow the crew of the Carmania just instantly realized the other ship was not the real Carmania.  The odds of the real Carmania discovering the ersatz Carmania beggar my poor math skills!  

The captains of both ships realized that they needed room for the impending battle, so both ships sailed a few miles from the island, lined up abreast of each other and began firing, with the Carmania firing first at too great a range, allowing the Cap Trafalgar to land the first hits while the British ship reloaded.

This battle was something out of the history books and was not at all dissimilar to the famous sea battles of the Napoleonic era.  (The Cap Trafalgar was even named for the cape near the site of Admiral Nelson’s defeat of the combined navies of France and Spain.).  While both ships had an equal number of modern guns, neither had a mechanized reloading system, meaning that sailors had to manhandle shells from below decks up to the guns.  Neither ship had armor plating and neither had a modern fire control system, so that gunners had to “fire as she bore”.  

The battle was horrific, lasting over two hours while each ship pounded the other, causing both ships to catch fire.  Early on, the Carmania suffered the worst, being hit 79 times, including destroying the bridge and holing the ship below the waterline.  At this point, the two ships had drifted so close together that crews on both ships lined the rails and fired machine guns at their enemies.  Just as it seemed the Carmania was lost, the Cap Trafalgar lowered lifeboats as the ship listed hard over to port.  A British shell had exploded below decks and the ship rapidly rolled over and sank.  Survivors were rescued by the German collier which put them ashore at Buenos Aires where the men were interned for the duration of the war.

The crew members of neither ship were sufficiently prescient to use their cellphones to video the battle but the painting at right by Charles Dixon gives you a good idea of how the two ships looked engaged in what is known as the Battle of Trindade.  The closest ship is the Carmania…. Or is it the Cap Trafalgar?

The exact casualty list is still debated.  The Germans lost somewhere between 16 and 51 killed, (including the captain of the Cap Trafalgar), with 279 captured.  The British claimed 9 dead.  Neither side reported the number of wounded sailors.

Fearing German reinforcements would soon arrive—both sides had announced the battle by radio—the Carmania limped away to make repairs.  Even as the badly damaged ship struggled away, a second German merchant cruiser came within view, but the captain of the German ship feared a trap and left without firing a shot.  The Carmania undoubtedly would have sunk had not a British ship rendezvoused and helped make repairs while they pumped water from the injured ship.  

The Carmania was towed to Gibraltar, was repaired and was active for the rest of the war, participating in the failed Gallipoli campaign.  After the war, she returned to passenger service until the Great Depression ended the need for a luxury liner.

If all this sounds like ancient history, I would remind you that armed merchant vessels were used again, not only in World War II, but also by both Great Britain and Argentina during the brief Falklands War.  And we may yet see them again.  Recently, U.S. Congressman Ron Paul introduced a bill called the "Marque and Reprisal Act of 2008" that aimed to issue letters of marque and reprisal to private individuals or entities, allowing them to capture or neutralize pirates in international waters.  

The bill failed, but I’m still hoping that Greenpeace would be issued a letter of marque to be used against Japanese whaling boats.… Something along the lines of a surplus Russian attack submarine flying a green Jolly Roger flag.  I’d donate to that cause.