WWI forum
World War One discussions.
Re: U 86 - Trawler G.Y. 568
Posted by:
Michael Lowrey
()
Date: July 27, 2009 02:53AM
Debbie,
I see zero evidence that Queenborough was being used as a minesweeper. Certainly literally hundreds of trawlers were taken into Royal Navy service but hundreds of others weren't. Queenborough doesn't show up as a Royal Navy lose in the official loss list of RN vessels. The crew is commemorated on the Tower Hill Memorial, which is a memorial to merchant navy war dead with no known grave. If Queenborough had been in naval service, her crew would have been mainly if not entirely Royal Navy Reserve on active duty and commemorated on one of the service memorial, which isn't the case.
Well, we know Queenborough was sunk by gunnery. What that doesn't tell us is the exact nature of the engagement. The odds that Queenborough was armed are approximately zero. The defensive arming of British ships hadn't gotten as far as trawlers yet.
So presumably U 86 sighted Queenborough, and fired across her bow to get her to stop. If Queenborough ran, she would have been shelled. If she stopped, the crew would have taken to the lifeboat(s) and the trawler sunk (in this case by gunnery, in other cases by scuttling charges).
One of the common ways you get a missing ship is when the lifeboats from a ship that was stopped and sunk aren't recovered. That very likely was the case wih Queenborough.
Note that the document describes is an appendix to U 86's KTB listing the ships sunk on that patrol. The KTB proper would contain a more detailed description of the action. "More detailed" is a relative term -- the enrty could very easily only be two or three sentences long.
Best wishes,
Michael
I see zero evidence that Queenborough was being used as a minesweeper. Certainly literally hundreds of trawlers were taken into Royal Navy service but hundreds of others weren't. Queenborough doesn't show up as a Royal Navy lose in the official loss list of RN vessels. The crew is commemorated on the Tower Hill Memorial, which is a memorial to merchant navy war dead with no known grave. If Queenborough had been in naval service, her crew would have been mainly if not entirely Royal Navy Reserve on active duty and commemorated on one of the service memorial, which isn't the case.
Well, we know Queenborough was sunk by gunnery. What that doesn't tell us is the exact nature of the engagement. The odds that Queenborough was armed are approximately zero. The defensive arming of British ships hadn't gotten as far as trawlers yet.
So presumably U 86 sighted Queenborough, and fired across her bow to get her to stop. If Queenborough ran, she would have been shelled. If she stopped, the crew would have taken to the lifeboat(s) and the trawler sunk (in this case by gunnery, in other cases by scuttling charges).
One of the common ways you get a missing ship is when the lifeboats from a ship that was stopped and sunk aren't recovered. That very likely was the case wih Queenborough.
Note that the document describes is an appendix to U 86's KTB listing the ships sunk on that patrol. The KTB proper would contain a more detailed description of the action. "More detailed" is a relative term -- the enrty could very easily only be two or three sentences long.
Best wishes,
Michael
