| More information : Prior History:
SM UB-110 was a German Type UB III submarine built by Blohm & Voss, Hamburg, for the Imperial German Navy in 1917. The U-boat was ordered 6 / 8 February 1917 (source 9), launched on 1 September 1917 (10), and was commissioned on 23 March 1918 (10) under the command of Kptlt. Werner Fürbringer (11). With a complement of 3 officers and 31 men, the boat was armed with 5 x 50 cm torpedo tubes, ten torpedoes, and a 8.8 cm deck gun. She was part of Flandern II Flotilla and took part in two patrols, sinking the SOUTHBOROUGH, a merchant ship (3,709 GRT), on one of them.
Wreck Site and Archaeological Remains:
Vertical Datum: LAT (1)(2)
UB 110 rammed and sunk by HMS GARRY and ML 263, 1918.
19-JUL-1918: Position 54 39.20N 000 54.30W.
19-JUN-1969: Position approximate 54 39.00N 000 55.00W.
26-FEB-1976: It is reported that this submarine was salvaged and
drydocked in Newcastle within weeks of her sinking for intelligence purposes ("U-boats Sunk" by Robert Grant). This report has not been substantiated.
25-AUG-1983: Computed Decca coords for submarine given as Green J 37.72 Purple F 78.60, [North Brit]. (Kingfisher No W61 Whitby area-Baymans Hole, APR 1983 edn).
17-JAN-1989: Not found. No indication of wreckage. Position disproved. (1)(2)(3)
2016: Not located in multi-beam survey. (1)
Charted as a lift. (2)
Seen to be located approximately 4.4 nautical miles NNE of Hunt Cliff, or 4.6 nautical miles NE of Saltburn-by-the-Sea. (3)
Bottom texture: mud (1)
'There is nothing recorded in British records about the UB-110 being towed back out to sea and sunk. The vessel was towed to Whitby before she was broken up.
Ron Young confirms:- Cdr. Wheeler located her on 29th July 1918, lying on the seabed in 26-fathoms, northeast of Saltburn pier. She was eventually raised to the surface and towed to Swan Hunter’s Shipyard on the Tyne.
On arrival at Swan's on 4 October 1918, the Admiralty wasted no time in opening her up. A valuable haul of codebooks, ciphers, documents and radio logs was recovered on October 9th. However one of the most important finds, was the General Message/Radio Book, or Allgemeines Funkspruchbuch, the substitution tables for Gamma Alpha (conversion tables for the ciphers, etc. After full examination, Swan’s scrapped her.
The full ADM's from Kew about the sinking and scrapping were obtained.' (19)(20)
'The wreck of UB-110 was not difficult to locate as oil was constantly leaking to the surface. Commander Wheeler managed to find the wreck on 19 July 1918 in position 54° 39' N 00° 55' W, at about 4.5 miles to the northeast of Salburn pier. Divers descended on the wreck and it was then decided to completely recover the wreck. This titanic job was completed on 4 October when she was lifted using the lifting pontoon YC-10 and brought into dry dock and studied. On 9 October, important codebooks, documents and radio logbooks were found. The wreck was later towed to the Tyne for demolition, but beached on 18 May 1919.' (21)
Wreck Event and Documentary Evidence:
Primary Sources:
In these cases prize bounty was claimed by the officers and crews of HMS GARRY, HM submarines H4, G13, and L12, and HMS P57 for the destruction of five German submarines.
Mr Wilfred Lewis, for the claimants, said that on July 19, 1918, HMS GARRY (Lieutenant-Commander C H Lightoller, DSC) was cruising in the North Sea and was in lat. 54 39N and long. 0.55W, when an enemy submarine, which proved to be the UB.110, was observed. The GARRY, having manoeuvred for offensive action, came up with UB.110, when her helm was put over and she rammed the submarine amidships, ripped her open, and sank her. There were no survivors of the crew of the UB.110, who numbered 36 all told.
. . . The President awarded prize bounty as follows:- HMS GARRY, £180 . . . ' (6)
Fürbringer writes in his postwar memoirs of the sinking of UB 110, stating that after the sinking, HMS Garry hove to and opened fire with revolvers and machine guns on the unarmed crew in the water.The shooting ceased only when the convoy that the destroyer had been escorting, and that contained many neutral-flagged ships, arrived on the scene, at which point "as if by magic the British now let down some life boats into the water." (15)
The attack took place under the command of Charles Lightoller, senior surviving officer of the Titanic, who, a few months earlier, had also been rescued from a collision between his ship HMS FALCON (1456911) and the armed trawler JOHN FITZGERALD on another patrol in the North Sea.
Lightoller does not go into detail about the sinking in his memoir but admits that he "refused to accept the hands up air" business. "In fact it was simply amazing that they should have had the infernal audacity to offer to surrender, in view of their ferocious and pitiless attacks on our merchant ships. Destroyer versus Destroyer, as in the Dover Patrol, was fair game and no favour. One could meet them and take them on as a decent antagonist. But towards the submarine men, one felt an utter disgust and loathing; they were nothing but an abomination, polluting the clean sea." (16)
Secondary Sources:
Type UB III submarine. UB-110 was approaching an east coast convoy when a motor launch spotted her periscope and most of the convoy's escorts gathered together to drop depth charges. The U-boat was damaged with her hydroplanes jammed, a motor short-circuited, and a fuel leak. She surfaced, but she was rammed twice before she could surrender by HMS GARRY. Divers went down almost immediately to her and she was raised 4.10.1918 and broken up. (4)
19 July 1918: Damaged by depth-charges, she surfaced and was rammed and sunk by HMS GARRY at 54 39N 000 55E (sic). 13 men died: an unknown number of survivors. (5)
Source (5) crew information updated: 19 dead and 13 survivors. (8)
UB 110 had 13 casualties and 21 survivors. Salvaged: 'Divers were sent down almost immediately; wreck raised on 4 October 1918 and subsequently broken up.' (4)
'On 19 July 1918, while under the command of Kapitänleutnant Werner Fürbringer, UB-110 was depth charged, rammed, and sunk near the Tyne by HMS GARRY, commanded by Charles Lightoller. This was possibly the last U-boat sinking during the Great War.' (13)
'HMTBD BONETTA arrived late on the scene and picked up five survivors, including the Captain, but one of them, the Engineer Officer, died on deck immediately after being taken out of the water. --- The Bonetta's duties around that time had included picking up many, badly wounded, survivors, and dead, from fishing boats, which had been shelled by a German submarine, off the entrance to the Tyne. Perhaps unsurprisingly the crew of the BONETTA were not made aware of any massacre.' (12) Information sourced from Boyd, Captain Robert Storrar. "A Dundee Master Mariner - His Own Story, serving as a First Lieutenant on the Bonetta". (17)
'On July 26th 1918 Maurer of UB-77 reached Germany; his log revealed that he had exchanged recognition signals with UB-110 in the war channel at 1005 on July 19th. Three days later Dodderstein of UC-70 gave more details at Bruges. He had met Fürbringer on the 18th and had learned that UB-110 was to return to port within two or three days.
Information of the loss of a U-boat came from a neutral ship captain. He added detail to the sinking of UB-110 by a convoy escort off the East Coast on July 19th. The UB-110 was submerged and making an approach to the convey when her periscope was sighted, only 50 yards away, by a motor launch. Sevaral ships immediately dropped depth charges.
The U-boats forward diving rudders jammed in the up position; her port motor short-circuited; and fuel tank was damaged. When she came to the surface, exuding oil, the destroyer GARRY rammed her twice and hit her with several bursts of gunfire. With the upper works torn open, the U-boat rolled over and sank. Thirteen survivors, including Fürbinger, were picked up.
On August 2nd the Red Cross reported that Fürringer [sic], his watch officer, and part of his crew were prisoners.
Divers were soon sent down to the new UB-110 to recover documents, among them the log book of the submarine. She had left Zeebrugge at 2250 on July 4th for the East coast, the log gave her noon position for each day until July 15th. On October 4th the wreck was finally raised from the bottom and towed to Newcastle.
On October 7th photographs taken in the dry dock showed how extensively she had been damaged.' (19 - comment by Carl Racey)
Images and information on UB 110 compiled by P Armstrong, 6 May 2022: ‘An Abomination Polluting the Clean Sea’ – Atrocity off Redcar? Merchant Navy, Personal Stories, U-Boat Encounters, World War 1. 'The destruction of UB-110'.
‘Lt. Chick RNR on ML 263, one of the convoy escorts, … sighted a periscope fifty yards on the starboard bow. ML 263 dropped two depth charges .. ML49 dropped one depth-charge. Fifteen seconds later the submarine surfaced, her forward hydroplanes were possibly jammed. ML 49 opened fire with machine gun and three pounder, scoring hits on the conning tower and on the waterline, forward.’
ML 49 picked up two officers and eight men from the submarine and transferred them to HMS Stour, HMS Bionetta rescuing the remaining survivors, the commanding officer and five men, one of whom died of wounds 20 minutes after having been picked up. HMS Bionetta, a torpedo boat destroyer, returned to the Tyne and handed over prisoners.
There were serious disciplinary and training issues throughout the Auxiliary Patrol. The reservist crews of the East Coast convoy escorts were badly trained, badly equipped, described as ‘rugged, independently minded ex-fishermen who did not take kindly to either orders or authority’. ‘The three pounder guns fitted to their vessels could not always be depressed or elevated. This did not prevent them from enthusiastically attacking the submarines of the Tees and Blyth flotillas even though correct recognition signals had been exchanged. The chances are that none of the reservists had ever seen a U-boat apart from a fleeting glimpse as a trimmed-down submarine dived to safety but they knew only too well the names of Reaper, Strathrannoch and Border Lads, Auxiliary Patrol vessels recently sunk with all hands. And they would have been aware of the fate of the Humber based Ethel & Millie crew, captured in by UC-63 in the Summer of 1917 then left on deck while the submarine submerged, allegedly. But this was not the full story, there is evidence that other U-boat crews attempting to surrender were the victims of atrocity at the hands of the Auxiliary Patrol. - - - ...consider the difficulties in ascertaining whether the enemy is actually evacuating the boat to surrender or rushing to man the deck gun? We now know that the crew of ML 49 sprayed the conning tower and forward casing with machine gun bullets before Garry entered the scene to ram the submarine. It seems likely that many of the Germans died in this most dangerous phase, before the officer on the Launch had ascertained that all resistance was over and issued the ‘cease fire’ order.’ ADM 137/4150 ‘Assessments of results of attacks on German submarines’ significantly enhances the role played by Lightoller and Garry over that of the two motor launches. If we believe Fürbringer, UB-110 was already hors de combat by the time Garry steamed in to ram.’ (18)
''Fürbringer decided to head for the the British east coast once more to attack the numerous convoys. Off Scarborough he managed to torpedo one steamship out of a convoy and on 19 July he attacked a second convoy, but was stalked and bombed by ML 49 and ML 263 with depth charges. UB-110 suffered damage to her stern and water started to pour into the engine room. After this, one of the hydroplanes jammed, making UB-110 shoot to the surface. In the port electric engine there was a short circuit and a fuel tank was badly damaged. In the meantime, the destroyer HMS GARRY had come to the scene, opened fire and rammed UB-110 near her tower. HMS GARRY slid off the damaged UB-110, but the captain let his vessel ram her again full speed for a second time. UB-110 was mortally damaged and Fürbringer ordered everyone on deck. The entire crew, other than the two radio operators, had managed to exit the U-boat. Despite UB-110 being in a sinking condition, with a crew jumping overboard, the escorts kept up their fire. The survivors had a hard time at the hands of the British. Nearly the entire crew had managed to exit the sinking UB-110. They drifted helplessly in the sea and had no means to defend themselves. Forster, a Maschinistenmaat, was brutually beaten by a British petty officer when he tried crawling up the side of a torpedo boat. Some crewmen on the torpedo boat opened fire on the survivors whilst others threw lumps of coat at the heads of the floating Germans. Smaller vessels approached and opened fire with their machine guns.' [See source 21 for further details on the treatment by the British].
'Some consequences of the sinking of the UB-110 of the Yorkshire coast were described by Hector Bywater in a newspaper article:- A chart recovered from the wreck led to the destruction of five other submarines within two or three months’ time.
Later in a book he wrote on Naval Intelligence he states:- UB-110 was investigated by divers fairly soon after July 19th, and that her mines were laid over a period of several days, and it was eight days after the last laying that the U-boat was sunk. A chart recovered contained routes favoured by Fürbringer and other commanders. An interesting feature was a description noted on the chart of ‘safe resting places on the bed of the sea’.
If this statement is correct it may be significant that UC-70, UB-103 and UB-115 were found when they were lying on the bottom. It may be significant that a good deal of mine-laying was undertaken early in August.
On the 8th August mines were laid off Zeebrugge and a new minefield was begun off the Yorkshire coast. So it may well be the case that some some information concerning the Zeebrugge approaches and the U-boat operations off the East coast was acquired. UB-57 and UB-109 were sunk while passing through minefields along routes which their commanders regarded as safe. It is a fact that U-boat losses off the East coast began to increase.' (Carl Racey, based on source 22)
Class & type: German Type UB III submarine
Ordered: 6 / 8 February 1917 (9)
Launched: 1 September 1917 (4)(5)(10)
Commissioned: 23 March 1918 (4)(5)
Builder: Blohm & Voss, Yard 316 (5)(10)
Where Built: Hamburg (5)
Displacement: 519 t (511 long tons) surfaced, 649 t (639 long tons) submerged (10)
Measurements: length 55.30 m (181 ft 5 in), beam 5.80 m (19 ft), draught 3.70 m (12 ft 2 in) (10)
Propulsion: 2 × propeller shaft, 2 ×MAN-Vulcan four-stroke 6-cylinder diesel engines, 1,085 bhp (809 kW), 2 × Maffei electric motors, 780 shp (580 kW) (10)
Armament: 5 × 50 cm (19.7 in) torpedo tubes (4 bow, 1 stern), 10 torpedoes, 1 × 8.8 cm (3.46 in) deck gun (10)
Unit: Flandern II Flotilla (5)
Commanding Officer: Kapitanleutnant W Fuerbringer (4); Werner Fürbringer (5)
Crew: 21 (4); 36 (6); 34 (23)
Crew Lost: 13 (4)(5)(24); 36 (6); 23 (12); 21 (23)
Survivors: 15 (24)
Owner: Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy) [all sources]
Date of Loss Qualifier: Actual date of loss
Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums: photograph album of UB 110 being scrapped on the dry docks of Swan Hunter Wigham Richardson Ltd, Wallsend. Reference: DS.SWH/5/3/2/14/1/84. Online image included in Wikipedia entry of SM UB 110 (12)(14)
|