General Discussions
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII.
Re: British Atrocities - WW1 and 2 - some more.
Posted by:
John Griffiths
()
Date: January 20, 2002 05:46PM
<HTML>Hi all,
Some more on atrocities - British again - and whilst it concerns an airship it happened at sea. Seems the further I dig, the more I get up...
>>A tangle of rusty metal, on public display today for the first time, has dredged up memories of a British first world war atrocity, when the crew of an English vessel abandoned 16 German airmen to drown in the icy waters of the North Sea.
The Germans had lost contact with their base at Tondern, and the truth of their deaths might have sunk with them, except for the extraordinary chance that a bottle containing their last messages was washed up on the Swedish coast six months later.
The wreckage has been in government and museum stores for most of a century, since the German Zeppelin L19 crashed into the sea with her crew in February 1916, on her maiden flight. There were two notes in the bottle. One, from the captain, Oto Lowe, gave a bleak technical report on their situation, ending: "February 2, towards 1 pm, will apparently be our last hour".
The other, from an unnamed crew member, told a dramatic story: "My greetings to my wife and child. An English trawler was here and refused to take us on board. She was the King Stephen and hailed from Grimsby."
By the time the bottle was found, a German U-boat had sunk the King Stephen. All the crew were rescued, interned in Germany, and returned safely to England in 1918.
The tragedy became a German propaganda sensation, and was taken up in turn by the British media, which applied a radically different spin to the story.
It was reported that the unamed English captain feared that since there were more German airmen than he had sailors, his vessel might be hijacked.
The bishop of London fanned the flames, by commenting that leaving "the German baby-killers" in the water was understandable. A German newspaper said he had "acted less as an apostle of Christian charity than as a jingoistic hate monger."
German sources insist the captain and crew of the English vessel were blacklisted and found it hard to get work for the rest of their lives.
At the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where the salvaged wreckage will go on display today in the new London gallery, curator John Graves explained the L19 took off with an experienced crew of 16 in a convoy of 10 airships, on February 1, 1916.
It was one of two which lost its bearings, and bombed civilian targets in Wednesbury, in the west Midlands, believing that they were over Liverpool. <<
Aye,
John</HTML>
Some more on atrocities - British again - and whilst it concerns an airship it happened at sea. Seems the further I dig, the more I get up...
>>A tangle of rusty metal, on public display today for the first time, has dredged up memories of a British first world war atrocity, when the crew of an English vessel abandoned 16 German airmen to drown in the icy waters of the North Sea.
The Germans had lost contact with their base at Tondern, and the truth of their deaths might have sunk with them, except for the extraordinary chance that a bottle containing their last messages was washed up on the Swedish coast six months later.
The wreckage has been in government and museum stores for most of a century, since the German Zeppelin L19 crashed into the sea with her crew in February 1916, on her maiden flight. There were two notes in the bottle. One, from the captain, Oto Lowe, gave a bleak technical report on their situation, ending: "February 2, towards 1 pm, will apparently be our last hour".
The other, from an unnamed crew member, told a dramatic story: "My greetings to my wife and child. An English trawler was here and refused to take us on board. She was the King Stephen and hailed from Grimsby."
By the time the bottle was found, a German U-boat had sunk the King Stephen. All the crew were rescued, interned in Germany, and returned safely to England in 1918.
The tragedy became a German propaganda sensation, and was taken up in turn by the British media, which applied a radically different spin to the story.
It was reported that the unamed English captain feared that since there were more German airmen than he had sailors, his vessel might be hijacked.
The bishop of London fanned the flames, by commenting that leaving "the German baby-killers" in the water was understandable. A German newspaper said he had "acted less as an apostle of Christian charity than as a jingoistic hate monger."
German sources insist the captain and crew of the English vessel were blacklisted and found it hard to get work for the rest of their lives.
At the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where the salvaged wreckage will go on display today in the new London gallery, curator John Graves explained the L19 took off with an experienced crew of 16 in a convoy of 10 airships, on February 1, 1916.
It was one of two which lost its bearings, and bombed civilian targets in Wednesbury, in the west Midlands, believing that they were over Liverpool. <<
Aye,
John</HTML>
