As World War 1 ended and the British people were slowly returning to their regular lives,
the European powers signed an armistice sealing the conditions of the renewed peace.
Under the agreed terms, Germany had to surrender its fleet to the victors by early 1919.
Soon, France got hold of the colossal U-118 submarine, one of the largest of the time. And
within a couple of months, the vessel was traveling to her new home. However, a severe storm
ripped the submarine from her convoy and dragged her far away to the Southern England coast.
The people of Hastings woke up the next morning to
an uncanny sight - a souvenir from the war beached on their own shore…
U-118
During World War 1, the Imperial German Navy had nine submarines in its
UE 2 class of ocean minelayers among its entire fleet of 329 submarines.
One of them was SM U-118, which would make a name for herself after the conflict.
The model was 81.5 meters long and reached a speed of 11.5 knots when surfaced and seven
knots while submerged. Her test depth was 75 meters, and her entire crew consisted of 36 men.
The U-boat was built at the AG Vulcan Stettin shipyard in Hamburg and was
launched on February 23, 1918 - just months before the war came to an end.
Commissioned on May 8, she was under the command of Herbert Stohwasser.
U-118 joined the I Flotilla operating in the Eastern Atlantic and served in
the naval encounters of the First Battle of the Atlantic.
However, it was until after four months of operation that U-118 scored her first hit.
On September 16, the British cargo steamer Wellington was sailing from
Newport in the United States to Naples, Italy,
loaded with a cargo of coal and escorted by the US Coast Guard cutter Seneca.
Suddenly, 175 miles northwest of Cape Vilano, she crossed paths with the German submarine.
U-118 immediately launched a torpedo attack that crippled the steamer, which managed to
stay afloat as her escort struggled to save her. Eleven sailors from Wellington’s crew
and another 20 from Seneca volunteered to try to get the sinking vessel to Brest in France.
But as Seneca departed to join the rest of the convoy,
Wellington filled with water at the bow and her pumps worked full-stop to fight the leakage.
Still, her engines could only manage seven knots, and then a storm struck.
The sizable storm battered the entire company, and the men swiftly took to the rafts and abandoned
the sinking ship. The cold and heavy seas ultimately claimed 11 lives from Seneca and five
from Wellington, including her captain, while the survivors were rescued by USS Warrington.
Happy Anniversary
U-118’s next prey would not be so lucky.
Two weeks after her first victory, the U-boat came across a highly armed
British merchant ship called Arca. It was October 2 when the submarine
spotted the vulnerable vessel about 40 miles from Tory Island in Ireland.
Arca was on a voyage from Philadelphia to Portishead, carrying a payload of benzine.
Without warning, the German ship torpedoed the unaware British sailors,
and the vessel sank quickly, dragging 52 hands with her, including the Master.
During her first and only patrol, U-118 sank two British ships.
Strohwasser claimed 5,600 tons of the collier Wellington and 4,839 tons of
Arca before the Armistice of November 11, 1918, brought the war to an end.
With the ending of hostilities, the Imperial German Navy capitulated,
and her vessels were surrendered to the victors.
Then, on February 23, 1919, the anniversary of her launch,
U-118 was surrendered and lined up for transfer to France, where she would be broken up for scrap.
However, in the early hours of April 15,
U-118 and another German submarine were on tow through the English Channel,
off Beachy Head, when a heavy storm bashed the vessels and broke their dragging hawsers.
While one of the submarines was driven ashore near Cuckmere,
U-118 drifted away eastwards towards Sussex in the middle of the night.
Mayor’s Welcome
At 12:45am on April 15, the immense underwater craft beached in front of Harold Place,
right at the foot of the Queens Hotel in the town of Hastings.
In the morning, the locals awoke to an unusual sight on the shore:
a colossal ship marooned on the sand.
The nearby Coast Guard station in Marine Parade immediately took control of the situation. Indeed,
seeing one of the Kaiser’s U-boats aground on their island caused some
shock among the inhabitants, but they couldn’t help but be amused.
Thousands gathered on the beach and flocked to take a glimpse of the gigantic submarine,
which was, in fact, among the largest of her time.
The impressive vessel became an unusual Easter attraction,
and for a fortnight, the Admiralty allowed the town clerk to charge a
fee of six pennies for visitors who wanted to climb on her deck.
In addition, for a more exclusive and in-depth tour, two members of the Coast Guard,
Chief Boatman William Heard and chief officer W. Moore, were assigned to show important visitors
the inside of the submarine while the multitude of sightseers congregated all around her.
The submarine became a huge attraction right away, and the Hastings Council collected
about 300 pounds, or about 15,500 in today’s currency, for the Mayor’s Welcome Home Fund.
This organization gave a proper welcome to soldiers returning home from the war.
After a couple of weeks and only a handful of incursions leading the tours below deck,
Heard and Moore fell gravely ill with severe internal pains.
The cause was unclear at first, with suspicions that the stench of rotting
vegetables and meat lying in water in the after-chamber could be behind it.
But as the illness worsened, its actual cause proved more gruesome.
An Uncomfortable Nuisance
By the end of April, the tour guides were too sick to continue with their task.
As the sickness not only persisted but grew worse, all attempts to save the guards were
futile. Moore perished that December, and Heard followed two months later.
The visits were thus curtailed until the mystery was solved, but it was later
determined that the culprit was a chlorine gas leak escaping from the ship’s batteries.
The toxic fumes inflicted severe abscesses on the lungs and even
the brains of the unfortunate Coast Guards. Their illnesses first resembled pneumonia,
but it then became clear that they were caused by inhaling the noxious gas.
After the visits stopped, there were attempts to displace the stricken ship.
Three tractors tried to refloat the submarine,
and a destroyer even tried to dismantle U-118 with cannon fire. But they all failed.
Moreover, the proximity of the wreck site to the public beach and the
hotel dissuaded further attempts and the use of explosive forces.
The stranded vessel then remained at that exact location for six months.
Even though trips inside the submarine were banned, tourists still came to be photographed
alongside or on top of the U-118’s deck. However, residents eventually grew tired of
children pelting the ship with rocks and the endless racket noises throughout the night.
Soon after, an order was given to scrap the submarine, and the British Admiralty sold
the wreck to James Dredging Corporation on May 21, 1919, for a total of 2,200 pounds.
Scrapped For Parts
Between 1919 and 1921, many ships were lost on transfer while being towed,
and most surrendered U-boats were scrapped.
However, scrap steel prices were so low in the postwar that the Royal Navy was not able
to sell all of its surrendered U-boats. As such, many were simply taken out to sea and scuttled.
Between October and December of 1919, U-118 was broken up into pieces and sold in bits.
Parts of the vessel were removed and sold for scrap,
while others were snatched and dispersed all over town.
Hastings was presented with the submarine’s gun in memory of the occurrence, but it was
left behind on the sand, and it did not take long before it was buried in the shingle by the waves.
Nevertheless, it was dug up and disposed of in 1921 despite petitions to mount it on a
plinth and keep it permanently in commemoration of the event.
While U-118 was mostly lost, the keel is believed to remain under the beach to this day.
Thank you for watching our video! If you enjoy military stories and would like to
learn more about the World Wars, don’t hesitate to subscribe to Dark Seas and
all our Dark Documentaries channels. And make sure to leave us a like and
hit the bell icon to be notified of our newest content. Stay tuned!