U-boat UC-44 

Prologue

In the summer of 1917, the Great War at sea reached the mouth of Waterford Harbour. German mines threatened ships entering and leaving the Suir, while the people of Dunmore East carried on with the familiar work of a fishing village, never knowing what danger might be waiting just offshore.

Then, on a calm August night, an explosion shattered the darkness. The villagers hurried to the Lookout Wall, and three local men set out in a small punt to search the water. They did not know what had blown up, or who they might find. They only knew that someone could be in danger.

What followed was a story of a submarine trapped beneath the waves, a desperate swim through the night, and an encounter between enemies that took an unexpected turn. At its heart were the courage of Dunmore’s rescuers and the humanity shown to a stranger pulled from the sea.

This piece is based on an article from the Irish Examiner that was published in 1939. Some details differ in later accounts, but this version makes a good story.

One of the strangest happenings on the Irish coast during the First World War was the wrecking of a German submarine by one of its own mines in Waterford Harbour on the night of the 4th of August 1917. Only a brief announcement of the disaster was made at the time. Britain’s strict censorship of the newspapers deprived the Irish people of the full facts of the grim tragedy, but the commander of the wrecked U-boat lived to tell his strange tale, and he published his log in Berlin some years ago.

He had a thrilling story to recall. Kapitänleutnant Kurt Tebbenjohannes was his name. In the summer of 1917, he was ordered to bring U-boat UC-44 to the south coast of Ireland to take part in the German attempt to blockade all the Irish harbours by laying mines across their mouths. 

Commander Tebbenjohannes’ boat was one of many engaged in the deadly and dangerous bid to cripple the enemy’s shipping. At most of the Irish river mouths, they did their work successfully, as the many disasters up to 1918 proved. In Waterford Harbour, however, some kind of blunder was made that brought trouble and loss to the Germans themselves.

The UC-44 was one of two U-boats assigned to cover Waterford Harbour. Their job was to put down a line of mines right across the mouth of the Suir. If the orders had been properly executed, it would have been impossible for a British boat either to enter or leave the harbour from then on without running the risk of being blown to smithereens.

It’s impossible now to decide which submarine was responsible for the hitch that caused the failure of this scheme.

It seems the two submarines were taking turns to relieve each other, making it possible for one submarine at a time to return to base for the necessary fuel and other supplies. But this arrangement also provided an opportunity for mistakes.

On the night of the 4th of August 1917, when the minelaying operations were all but finished, the UC-44 was cruising around the harbour entrance. The men were anxiously looking forward to the arrival of their sister ship, already overdue, so that they could go back to Germany. There had been a few days’ extra duty, and that may have made them tired or a little less careful. At all events, the submarine struck a German mine. It was wrecked by its own scheme!

The explosion as the UC-44 turned over on its side must have been terrific: it was heard for miles around. A large part of the submarine was blown into the air, but the section in which the unfortunate crew of 30 happened to be at the time sank to the bottom of the River Suir. Entombed like that on the bed of the river, escape was impossible, and the only thing for the brave men to do was to await with courage the slow, torturing death that is the nightmare of all whose duty it is to work in undersea vessels.

One by one, the Germans died a terrible death. When only three remained alive, the commander, the senior petty officer and a young engineering apprentice, an effort was made to escape from the trap. By some fluke or other, they met with success. Up the iron ladder of the conning tower they crept with what little strength was left to them. Their heads struck the solid hatch, which they unscrewed, and the sudden pressure caused by opening it flung the three men right out of the wreck.

But they were not by any means saved yet! Floating around on the surface of the wide river, they were miles away from a landing place. Away in the distance, out towards the open sea, they could see the flashes from Hook Lighthouse. They started to swim towards it in the hope of capturing a small boat that would take them away from the coast. The journey was a long one and, strangely for an August night, the swimmers found the water icy cold. There was also a strong current against them, and they were hampered by their heavy clothing. Two of the trio soon went to join their comrades.

The only survivor of the 30 Germans was Tebbenjohannes. The commander was determined to get the first news of the disaster to Berlin. It was equally important that he should conceal the same news from the English. Thanks to his perfect knowledge of the English language, he hoped to pass himself off as a shipwrecked sailor. Once he reached Waterford, he hoped to find it easy to slip across to America. He threw off his uniform and his heavy boots, but he retained his Iron Cross in his trouser pocket. All he had left now were his stockings, his shirt, his trousers and his medal. Soon he heard the sound of oars, then saw a small punt heading in his direction. Now for a chance to use his perfect English.

“Help!” he cried. “This way, please. I am drowning.”

They saw him all right. He was hauled out of the water, safe after a dreadful experience. And then he fainted!

A Prisoner of War

The night that the German submarine met with the fate it had planned for some other ship will long be remembered in Dunmore. This little fishing village in Waterford Harbour is not far from the scene of the accident. The Dunmore men recall that the night of the tragedy was beautiful and calm, with a clear moon shining.

Sometime before midnight, the villagers heard the terrific explosion that signalled a disaster in the harbour. Several houses were actually shaken by its force. Naturally, the whole population jumped out of bed and headed for the shore. Everyone was of the opinion that a British ship or naval patrol boat had been blown up by the Germans, and three brave fishermen, Patrick Power, Tom Power and Jack McGrath, launched a small punt in a bid to save somebody from the wreck.

The Powers were brothers. Thomas was twenty-five and Patrick twenty-three. Both were fishermen. Jack, aged twenty, worked in the postal service and also fished part-time. The 1911 census had recorded him as a fourteen-year-old telegraph messenger boy. Thomas appeared in the same census as a nineteen-year-old fisherman, while Patrick, then seventeen, was listed as a labourer. They were three young working men from a maritime community, familiar with boats and the waters outside their harbour.

Their knowledge would have been valuable that night. The scene of the explosion lay roughly three miles away, a considerable distance to cover at the oars. Although the night was remembered as calm and moonlit, locating a swimmer remained difficult. The possibility of encountering a mine added a danger that none of the boats’ crews could dismiss.

The rescuers had no way of knowing which vessel had been lost, but they went out because there might be survivors.

They rowed for miles along the river’s mouth looking for any sign of life, but it seemed as if no one had escaped. They could find neither floating bodies nor wreckage, which led them to surmise that the ship had plunged to the bottom so quickly that the passengers had had no time to jump clear. It never dawned on them that it might have been a German U-boat that had gone down.

It was only while they were on their way back to Dunmore that they heard the cry for help. In the village, the rescued sailor was welcomed as one fortunate enough to escape from the Germans! Four men carried him to a house, where he was dried with towels and given whiskey and mugs of hot milk to drink. He answered questions in English, but in the midst of all the excitement, his Iron Cross fell out of his pocket! Before he had time to pick it up and hide it, a curious crowd had examined it. Someone recognised the German medal for what it was, and very soon Tebbenjohannes was informed that he was now a prisoner of war.

He admits that he was treated very kindly by the people of Dunmore. After a short convalescence, he was taken by two detectives to Cork and, from there, transferred to an internment camp in England, where he remained a prisoner for the duration of the war, in spite of plucky bids to escape.

It has been related that, as Commander Tebbenjohannes was walking along the quay in Waterford on his way to the railway station with his two guards, he betrayed his knowledge of the district by exclaiming: “So, you have got a new bridge!” This remark revealed that the English-speaking German had been in southern Ireland in pre-war days.

As a captive, Commander Tebbenjohannes did one “good deed”. During his recuperation in Dunmore, someone mentioned to him that the area where his submarine had been laying mines was much frequented by local fishermen and yachtsmen. As a gesture of gratitude for all the kindness he had received from his Irish rescuers, he gave his host a plan showing the positions of the mines. The information was passed on to the naval authorities, and a minesweeper soon had the death traps safely removed from Waterford Harbour. Potentially, many Irish lives were thereby saved.

Sadly though, on the 7th day of August, the paddle minesweeper HMS Haldon was damaged while sweeping mines laid by the submarine. Deckhand J. Gowans lost his life and was later buried in the Old Church Cemetery at Cobh.

Another indication of Tebbenjohannes’ humanity is this: the British experts who removed his mines found that they had been placed in the river according to the rules laid down by international maritime law. All had been laid in such a manner that, should one break loose from the spot where it had originally been placed, it would become harmless.

End of a Fighting Ship

Commander Tebbenjohannes remained a prisoner of war at Colsterdale Camp, in Yorkshire, until the Great War was over.

The bodies of the two sailors who had managed to get out of the submarine with him were recovered a few days after the accident. One of the men wore a pair of socks bearing a name. In this way, he was identified as Walter Richter, a young Leipzig lad of only 18 years. His body was found 15 miles from where the U-boat was blown up. At the time he was buried at Duncannon, but his remains were later transferred to the German Military Cemetery at Glencree, County Wicklow.

Meanwhile, the wreck itself had become a matter of considerable interest to the Admiralty. A German minelayer lying in relatively shallow water offered an opportunity to examine its equipment, recover documents and learn more about its operations.

Clarence Simpson, whose recollections were preserved by the Royal New Zealand Navy’s oral-history service, described searching after the explosion and finding oil rising from the seabed at daylight. The position was marked, and the information was brought back to Dunmore. A diving tender subsequently arrived from Queenstown, and a diver followed the cable down to the wreck.

By the 9th of August, the salvage vessel RFA Racer and lifting craft LC1 and LC2 had arrived.

Recovering UC-44 demanded patience, engineering skill and considerable courage. Between the 11th and 27th of August, the salvage team worked to pass four heavy wires beneath the submarine. Bad weather repeatedly interrupted their efforts. Using the lifting craft and the tides, they raised and shifted the wreck in stages.

After approximately twenty lifts, UC-44 reached Dunmore East harbour around September 25th.

There, at low water, the submarine lay exposed on the harbour bed. She was placed under guard while the examination continued. For a village whose daily life revolved around fishing boats and visiting vessels, the presence of a German submarine in the harbour must have been an extraordinary sight. It was also a dangerous one, as nine mines remained aboard. 

Commander Heaton had overall responsibility for the mine-removal operation, with the task delegated to Lieutenant G. Davis. Davis’s reports described the difficulties of dealing with a vessel weighing roughly 400 tons that still contained such a destructive cargo. The team eventually removed the remaining mines and made the submarine available for examination, providing the Admiralty with valuable intelligence.

Alongside that work came the recovery of the dead.

In all, nineteen bodies were recovered and on the 26th and 27th of September were taken out for burial at sea, with the Reverend Blogg officiating. The bodies were identified by their tags and placed in weighted hammock covers before being carried offshore. 

After experts had examined the UC-44 to gather information, it was taken out towards the harbour mouth to be sunk. For some unknown reason, this job was started when a small gale was blowing, and it was bungled. It proved impossible to take the wreck right out to sea to be sunk as originally planned. There, it would have been well out of the way of passing ships and would have posed no danger. However, while still inside the harbour, the U-boat broke free of its lashings and sank. It went to the bottom a mile from Dunmore.

In that position, it constituted a menace to all ships coming up the river, and the Admiralty experts were often requested to remove it. This they failed to do, as it would have been a very expensive undertaking. So the UC-44 remained in the estuary of the River Suir until the end of 1930, when the harbour authorities sent a diver down to the wreck to place a powerful time bomb inside it. Most of the submerged craft was blown to bits in the resulting explosion. Thus, two explosions ended the career of terror of U-boat UC-44.

The story of UC-44 brought together men whose lives had been shaped by very different shores. For Tebbenjohanns and his crew, Waterford Harbour was part of a wartime operation. For the Power brothers and Jack McGrath, it was home and a place of work.

When the explosion came, the three Dunmore men joined others in rowing towards danger. They couldn’t save everyone, but they did save one man, and the fact that he was an enemy officer did not lessen the care he received.

Long after the submarine’s military significance had faded, the courage of her commander’s rescuers and the kindness of the people of Dunmore remained at the heart of the story.

Letters from a Prisoner of War.

Translation of a letter in German from Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant-Commander) KURT TEBBENJOHANNS, P/W from “U.C.44”, to A. TEBBENJOHANNS, Friedrich Wilhelm Platz 1, Braunschweig, Germany.

London,

7 August 1917

My dear parents,

Safe and well, but with a heavy heart, I am a prisoner here in London, where I have been brought for the present, condemned to inactivity for the remainder of the war. When will it end, I wonder? Martin had better luck in getting off as he did. My star was with me for three whole years of war; in the fourth, it was ordered otherwise. All too quickly and suddenly my activity was brought to an end; I entered upon it full of enthusiasm, and had hoped to serve my beloved Fatherland for a long time yet. I trust that you will have heard in the meantime from the Red Cross that I am alive, and that you did not worry too much about me. I must really regard my rescue as a miracle. With God’s help I found my way to the surface out of the sunken boat after the explosion; the thought of you gave me strength to swim for an hour and a half with all my clothes on, and good people from Dunmore, who sent out boats directly after the explosion, picked me up and treated me with the greatest kindness. I owe them eternal gratitude. I deeply regret that I am apparently the sole survivor. At first I saw a few men swimming about near me, but afterwards I lost sight of them.

I do not yet know to which camp I shall be sent. Until I can give you my address, please write to “Prisoners of War Information Bureau, London”.

Needless to say, I lost all my kit when the boat went down, and I am at present wearing borrowed civilian clothes. Please therefore send me as soon as possible a uniform coat (without Iron Cross 1st Class) and trousers, and also a cap, six under shirts, 6 pairs of pants, 3 night shirts, 6 shirts (the best quality sports shirts) uniform collar, turn-down collar, soft collars, uniform tie, handkerchiefs and a pair of boots and slippers. If possible, send several parcels, so that everything will not be lost if one of the parcels goes astray. Perhaps Frau Fürbringer can help you, as she has some experience by this time.

Will you also, if possible, collect my property which I left at Brunsbüttel, after making a written request to the Flotilla. In Box B you will find a letter. The trunks which are there will probably not suffice. You will see from the letter what clothing I left at Wiegel’s Hotel in Hamburg.

I will keep on my residence in Kiel for the present; talk it over with Sommer. You will find what my balance at the bank is from my books, only please see what taxes I have to pay, as I have not done anything about it so far.

Please find out about the circumstances of Frau Düsing and the other poor widows of my brave men, and make such provision for them as is necessary, out of the sum which I allotted for this purpose in my will.

Goodbye for the present. Give my greetings to all relations and friends and my superior officers, and ask them all to write to me whenever they can, even if I do not always reply, as we may only write comparatively little.

Don’t worry about me, but be thankful that your son is still alive.

Always your affectionate son,    

(Signed) Kurt.

Translation of a letter in German from Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant-Commander) K. TEBBENJOHANNS, P/W from “U.C.44”, to Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant-Commander) PASQUAY, Brunsbüttel.

London.

8 August 1917.

Dear Lieutenant-Commander,

It is with deep regret that I write to inform you of the loss of my fine boat, together with probably her entire gallant crew, who all did their duty up to the last moment in the most exemplary manner.

After the boat went down, I tried to bring her to the surface again, but in vain, so with two or three of the men, who had joined me in the conning tower, I left her, as the water was already up to our knees. As far as I know, these men were by that time the only survivors. I saw them swimming about for some little time afterwards, not far from me, but lost sight of them in the darkness, and did not get any reply to my repeated shouts.

About an hour and a half later I was picked up and brought ashore by a boat which had been sent out from Dunmore after the explosion. Another boat heard two men shouting, but was unfortunately not able to find them.

I have been brought here for the time being, until it is settled to which camp I am to be sent. My chief regret is the inactivity to which I shall be condemned. How sad to think of all my wonderful plans and hopes being thus shattered!

I trust that everything is going well over here. Please remember me to all friends, and wish them all continued success from me.

I have requested my parents to arrange to fetch personally, if possible, the things which I left at Brunsbüttel. May I ask you to see that great care is taken in unpacking the box, so that there is no accident, as there are some eggs at the top.

I have not yet thanked Messrs. Goedhard for the gift of books. Can this perhaps be done from your end?

Trusting that I may hear from you some time,

I remain

Yours faithfully,

(Signed) K. Tebbenjohanns.