Nevertheless, the Q-ship concept itself survived and flourished. The idea that camouflage could lure a deadly, but fragile, submarine within range of a well-aimed 4-inch gun had a continuing, seductive attraction for the navy. The crews of the Q-ships, all volunteers, were naval officers and seamen who disguised themselves as civilians and learned to mimic the appearance and crisis behavior of a freighter’s crew. In the presence of a submarine, a “panic party”—some members of the Q-ship’s crew—would hurriedly abandon the ship, tumbling into lifeboats and rowing away. Those still on board would remain concealed, waiting for the submarine to surface and come within range of their hidden guns.
The concept was simple, but staging this deadly nautical theater required much delicate nuance. Q-ships were crowded, since half the men on board had to depart as the panic party when the ship was attacked. Thus, a merchant ship designed for six officers and twenty-six men now might carry eleven officers and sixty men. To deceive the captain of a surfaced U-boat staring intently through his binoculars across the water, or surveying his prey through his periscope, the Q-ship crew had to become actors. Stripped of their uniforms and clothed in rags picked up in dingy waterfront shops, they let their hair and beards grow long and their mustaches sprout and droop. One Royal Navy captain paced his Q-ship bridge wearing a long blond wig, which he thought made him look like a Dutch pilot. The regular navy’s scrupulous deference to rank was laid aside: no salutes were given or returned; seamen slouched and shuffled, kept their hands in their pockets and their pipes in their mouths. Garbage was dumped carelessly over the side—anathema in a man-of-war. Yet, despite their slovenly appearance, the discipline and readiness for action of a Q-ship crew was greater than that on the flagship of the Grand Fleet.
Most important, of course, was the concealment of the guns. Some were placed behind wooden bulwarks, which, at the pull of a lever, would instantly collapse, nakedly exposing the gun to the submarine and the submarine to the gun. Later, when U-boats became more cautious, they would sail submerged around the halted “merchant ship,” minutely scrutinizing its decks and sides, looking for signs such as seams or hinges in deck house bulwarks that might betray its true identity. In response, the guns were concealed in hatchways and covered by tarpaulins as if they were cargo. Sometimes guns were placed inside false lifeboats, which would suddenly fall away, giving the gun its freedom. Eventually, Q-ships carried hidden depth charges that could be rolled off the stern, and some were even equipped with submerged torpedo tubes.
The British could continue this kind of masquerade warfare only as long as the Germans delivered themselves into British hands; success, therefore, depended upon secrecy as to the existence, whereabouts, and tactics of mystery ships. Best for the British would be for the Germans to know only that some submarines did not return from sea—perhaps they had hit mines. But it was inevitable that eventually a Q-ship attack would fail and a surprised U-boat would survive to creep home and report what had happened. Once the secret was out, German newspapers described Q-ship warfare as “barbarous” and “contrary to the rules of civilized warfare.” Now, to the U-boats, every British or Allied merchant vessel became a possible Q-ship. Submarines could no longer board and place bombs on ships; they were forced to stay beyond the range of a freighter’s guns and sink by long-range gunfire, or remain beneath the surface and fire precious torpedoes. This was not what the U-boats wanted. And so the Q-ships improved their acting to convince their nervous prey that all was well, suspicions were groundless, and no peril lay in coming closer.
Q-ship duty was a unique blend of extreme danger and the dullest monotony. Back and forth through dangerous waters steamed the ships, hoping to meet a submarine. Success in this strange service could mean seeing the white bubbles of a torpedo approaching from the port or starboard beam. Sometimes when a torpedo struck, Q-ship men would be killed, but the ship itself was unlikely to sink quickly. This was the result of further guile: Q-ship cargo holds were crammed with wood or empty oil drums to provide the vessel with additional buoyancy.
Everything that happened from the moment a U-boat announced itself was designed to deceive the watching submarine captain. The panic party ran up and down the deck in apparent dismay and then scrambled into a lifeboat. Sometimes on lowering a boat, one end would deliberately be lowered too fast, spilling the men into the water. A seaman pretending to be the captain would be the last to board, carrying a bundle of “the ship’s papers.” The submarine might surface and make for these boats to collect the papers or take prisoners. Once U-boat captains became aware that they might be dealing with a Q-ship, the procedure changed. To satisfy himself, the captain would surface two or three miles away and shell the apparently abandoned merchant ship, calculating that if men had been left aboard, his shells would kill them. The Q-ship gun crews, stretched out on deck beside their guns, had to endure this bombardment without moving. Meanwhile, the Q-ship captain lay on his bridge, peeking through a hole in the canvas wall, waiting to use his voice tube to command his gunners. If the submarine was persuaded that the merchantman was abandoned, it would approach submerged to within a few hundred yards. The submarine captain would steer completely around the stricken vessel, using his periscope to study every detail. If something provoked doubt, the U-boat captain faced a decision. To surface so near a Q-ship meant the loss of his submarine. On the other hand, to leave a merchantman still afloat meant that it might be saved. If the U-boat captain decided to come up, the Q-ship captain would see the swirling water that signified a submarine was surfacing not far from the muzzles of his hidden guns. “Stand by,” he would whisper through the voice tube—then, at the top of his lungs, “Let go!” The White Ensign would soar up the halyard, the false bulwarks and lifeboats would collapse, and the guns would open fire. The submarine’s only chance was to submerge rapidly. Submariners were always ready to dive, even at the cost of losing those comrades on deck or in the conning tower who were unable to get below before the hatches closed. Often, however, before the boat could submerge, trained Q-boat gun crews could blow a dozen holes in its hull. When this happened, it was only minutes before the U-boat took its final plunge, leaving behind a heaving mixture of black oil, pieces of floating wood, and, sometimes, a few survivors.
From the beginning, the primary sphere of Q-ship operations was off the southwest coast of Ireland, where the U-boats concentrated their attacks on merchant shipping headed for the British Isles. In this region, early in the history of Q-ship operations, a dark stain was smeared across the otherwise bright pages of Allied mystery ship exploits. On August 19, 1915, 100 miles south of Queenstown, U-27 stopped the British steamer Nicosian with her cargo of munitions and 250 American mules destined for the British army in France. The freighter’s crew and passengers, including American mule drivers, had taken to the lifeboats and the submarine was about to sink the vessel when, from a distance, the British Q-ship Baralong, disguised as an American cargo vessel and flying the American flag, observed what was happening and hurried forward. The submarine at this early stage of the war accepted the Stars and Stripes as neutral and remained on the surface, permitting Baralong to approach. Steering carefully, Baralong’s captain managed to keep Nicosian between his ship and the U-boat so that the German captain never had a serious, long look at the oncoming Q-ship. When Baralong finally emerged from behind the deserted Nicosian, the range was only 600 yards. Thirty-five British shells quickly sank U-27, which left a dozen German survivors in the water swimming for the nearby Nicosian. Whereupon, Baralong’s captain, fearful—he said later—that if the swimmers were allowed to board the freighter, they would attempt to scuttle it, ordered the twelve Royal Marines on board his ship to open fire. Some of the swimmers, including the U-boat captain, were killed in the water; others were shot as they struggled up a rope ladder hanging from Nicosian’s side. Four German sailors managed to reach the deserted freighter’s deck and vanished. A party of marines followed them on board, hunted them down, and killed them. Wh
ether this shooting was done in cold blood or whether the Germans were, in fact, caught trying to scuttle the ship was never known; the Admiralty immediately embargoed all news of the affair. Nevertheless, the appalled American mule drivers, who had watched from their lifeboats, eventually reached home and told the American press that the Germans had been murdered and that the false American colors, supposed to have been set aside before the Q-ship went into action, had never been replaced. Outraged, the German government demanded that Baralong’s crew be tried for murder. The Admiralty dismissed the demand, explaining that perhaps the Q-ship’s captain and crew had been on edge because eight British steamers were sunk that day on the Western Approaches, one of these being the 15,000-ton White Star liner Arabic, which Baralong had heard crying for help. The London press came up with the additional excuse that on that same day, two German destroyers had fired on the crew of a British submarine grounded on a Baltic sandbar, killing fourteen British sailors—although how this news might have reached and inflamed Baralong’s crew 700 miles away was left untold. The Baralong marine corporal who put a bullet into the head of the swimming German captain explained simply that, in his view, all Germans were “vermin.”
During the war, Q-ships sank twelve U-boats. A quarter of these were destroyed by Gordon Campbell. When the war began, this stocky, phlegmatic Englishman was a thirty-year-old lieutenant commander in charge of an old destroyer; no one would have picked him out as a future hero. But Campbell went to Q-ships, where his icy nerves and determination to sink submarines resulted, in the words of Rear Admiral William Sims, the senior American naval officer in Europe, in “some of the most admirable achievements in the whole history of naval warfare.” Jellicoe, normally laconic, went further: Campbell and his Q-ships, he said, had “a record of gallantry, endurance and discipline which has never been surpassed afloat or ashore.”
Gordon Campbell sailed on his first Q-ship for nine months before sighting a U-boat. He persevered, using the time to add inventive touches to his ship. Because some merchant ship masters took their wives to sea, Campbell dressed one of his men as a woman and positioned this figure in a chair on the bridge cradling a bundle to represent a baby. His first opponent was U-68, which he sank on March 22, 1916. The submarine signaled its presence by firing a torpedo, which missed. Campbell’s reaction was to take no apparent notice and continue his course and speed. “A tramp steamer,” he explained, describing his ship as he hoped the submarine captain had seen it, “could not be expected to know what a torpedo track looked like.” On deck, his crew continued to lounge about, smoking their pipes. Suddenly, the submarine surfaced astern and moved up the port side. Whereupon Campbell sank it.
After that, he had to wait almost another year. On February 17, 1917, Campbell’s Q-ship, Farnborough, steaming 100 miles southwest of Queens-town, was struck by a torpedo. Campbell was delighted; he had instructed his ship’s officers that “should the Officer of the Watch see a torpedo coming, he is to increase or decrease speed as necessary to ensure it hitting.” The panic party immediately abandoned ship. Campbell’s adversary, Captain Bruno Hoppe, in U-83, was an experienced commander; taking no chances, he remained submerged and conducted a lengthy periscope examination of his target. He first inspected the panic party in its lifeboat; his periscope came so close that one of the men in the lifeboat said to another, “Don’t speak so loud. He’ll hear you.” Then Hoppe circled Farnborough, coming so near that Campbell could see the submarine’s hull under the water. Apparently satisfied that the ship was harmless, Hoppe surfaced only 100 yards away. The moment he popped up in his conning tower, the first British shell arrived, decapitating him and dropping his headless body back down into the control room. U-83, punctured by forty-five shells, sank quickly, leaving two survivors. Fifteen members of Farnborough’s crew were decorated, including Campbell, who was awarded the Victoria Cross. The citation explaining the circumstances could not be made public and it became known as the mystery VC.
Campbell’s third and final triumph occurred on the morning of June 7, 1917, when his Q-ship Pargust was struck by a torpedo off the south coast of Ireland. By then, because U-boats were wary and less willing to rise to the surface, some decoy vessels had been fitted with torpedo tubes to use against submerged submarines. Pargust was one of these. By now, too, the panic party had further enhanced its dramatic performance: one of Campbell’s officers, playing the part of the ship’s captain, went over the side wearing a bowler hat and carrying a “pet parrot” (stuffed) in a green cage. For thirty minutes, the submarine minelayer UC-29 circled the ship, conducting a periscope reconnaissance. Campbell waited. When the submarine surfaced, it was fifty yards away. Campbell opened fire with his guns and fired his torpedo, which missed. The U-boat’s engine-room hatch opened and several men came on deck as if to surrender. Pargust ceased fire but when the U-boat started to move again, apparently attempting to escape, the Q-ship resumed firing. The German sailors on the submarine’s deck were swept off by a wave. More shots were fired and suddenly, the U-boat blew up—her own mines had exploded. After the action, when Campbell was asked to recommend honors for his men, he replied that he could not single out individuals; the crew’s bravery had been collective. Accordingly, the king bestowed two Victoria Crosses on the ship to be awarded to one officer and one seaman, chosen by a secret ballot of their peers.
The summer of 1917 marked the end of this dangerous game. In August 1917, six Q-ships were lost, and thereafter no German submarine was destroyed by a mystery ship. U-boat commanders were too suspicious to come close enough for Q-ship guns to reach them. The U-boats were now equipped with fourteen to sixteen torpedoes, so it was safer for U-boat captains to torpedo merchant ships without coming to the surface.
Before the end came, however, the most extraordinary of all Q-ship battles was fought. Not surprisingly, the captain of the British ship in this action was Gordon Campbell. On the morning of August 8, 1917, his 3,000-ton Q-ship Dunraven, disguised as an armed merchant vessel, was quietly plowing the Bay of Biscay, offering herself to submarine attack. Besides the small gun visible on her stern—appropriate to an armed merchantman—Dunraven also concealed four heavier guns, two underwater torpedo tubes, and four depth charges. About eleven o’clock, a surfaced U-boat appeared on the distant horizon, saw Dunraven, turned in her direction, and submerged. Campbell, playing the victim, began doing an occasional indifferent zigzag and ordered heavy funnel smoke as if he were attempting to escape; at the same time, he actually reduced speed to allow his enemy to close. Forty-five minutes later, U-61 rose from the sea less than two miles away and opened fire with her deck gun. When one of the shells landed in the water near the engine room, Campbell released a huge cloud of steam to suggest a boiler hit; this was a trick achieved with specially installed perforated pipes designed to release bursts of steam on the captain’s command. Dunraven, playing a distressed armed merchantman, returned the U-boat’s fire with her unconcealed stern gun, making certain that all shots missed. Meanwhile, on an open frequency the submarine could hear, the “merchant ship” radioed loudly for help.
At 12:25 p.m., when the U-boat was scarcely half a mile away, Campbell ordered, “Abandon ship.” Dunraven slowly turned broadside to the submarine so that the German captain could witness the theatrical pandemonium. The panic crew tumbled into the lifeboats, one of which was purposely mishandled in lowering and left behind hanging vertically from one of its davits. Encouraged, the captain of U-61 closed warily and continued firing. Suddenly, a shell hit Dunraven’s stern, landing amid a concentration of hidden guns, ammunition, depth charges, and men. A depth charge exploded, tossing the small after gun into the air. Two more German shells crashed into the stern, producing flames and clouds of black smoke. The magazine and the remaining depth charges all being in the stern, it was obvious to Campbell that a larger explosion was coming. The crew of the secret 4-inch gun placed immediately above the magazine also knew the danger but remained motionless. U-61 passed around the stern
from port to starboard less than 500 yards away, but the black smoke pouring from the Q-ship’s burning stern made it impossible for the British gunners to aim. In two minutes, the U-boat would be absolutely clear, presenting a perfect target. Campbell had to choose between opening fire under difficult conditions or leaving his men immobile in grave danger until the submarine was in the clear. As Campbell saw it, it was his duty and that of his crew to wait. He waited. They waited.
As U-61 was passing close astern of Dunraven, two depth charges blew up in what even the stolid Campbell described as “a terrific explosion.” The concealed 4-inch gun and its gun crew were hurled along the deck, along with many unexploded shells. Remarkably, the men all lived. The U-boat, warned by the size of the explosion that it was confronting a Q-ship, performed a crash-dive and disappeared. Campbell now knew that soon he would be torpedoed. Still, with his ship crippled and stationary, the after deck a mass of flames, the magazine not yet exploded, and a torpedo certain, Campbell, intent on sinking his enemy, radioed all potential assistance to keep away.