Thomas William Crisp, VC, DSC, RNR
Thomas Crisp
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Crisp's self-sacrifice in the face of this "unequal
struggle" was used by the government to bolster morale during some of the
toughest days of the First World War for
Britain, in late 1917, during which Britain was suffering heavy losses at
the Battle of Passchendaele. His exploit
was read aloud by David Lloyd George in the Houses of Parliament and made headline
news for nearly a week.
Early
life
Thomas Crisp was born into a family of shipwrights and
fishermen in Lowestoft, one of ten children to William and Mary Anne Crisp.
Although his father was the owner of a successful boatbuilding firm and thus
could afford an education for his children, Thomas did not enjoy school,
instead showing a "marked preference for quayside adventure to school
routine". Leaving school, Thomas took to the sea, spending several
years as a herring fisherman
before joining a fishing trawler out of Lowestoft. He was a
natural to the work, being a remarkably good sailor, but tired of it quickly
and joined the Atlantic steamship SS Mobile, becoming her quartermaster
and making several trans-Atlantic voyages.
Crisp with his family in about 1907
In 1895, aged 19, he met and married Harriet Elizabeth
Alp and settled with her at 48 Staithe Road in Burgh St. Peter near
Lowestoft, where they had two sons and a daughter, including Thomas Crisp Jr,
who would be with his father on the day he won the Victoria Cross. Establishing
himself as a fisherman, Thomas Sr achieved his mate and then skipper
qualifications, entitling him to captain a fishing vessel sailing from the
port. In 1902 he was taken on by Chambers, one of the largest boat owning
families in Lowestoft, to crew and then captain their ketch George
Borrow, in which he remained for thirteen years. In 1907 the family moved
to Lowestoft while Crisp continued his work at sea, proving one of the most
popular fishing captains in Lowestoft and joined on his ketch by his son in
1913.
When the First World War began
in July 1914, Crisp was at sea. Unaware of the outbreak of war, he remained in
the North Sea for several days, and was surprised on his return to learn that
enemy submarines were expected off the port at any moment. When this threat
failed to materialize, Thomas Crisp returned to fishing, considered too old for
military service and in an occupation vital to Britain's food supplies. In late
September, George Borrow passed HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy shortly
before they were all sunk, with over a thousand lives lost, by German U-boat U-9.
Tom Crisp Jr. later wrote of finding bodies in their fishing nets for weeks
afterwards.
Introduction
of the Q-ship
In 1915, during the First Battle of the Atlantic, Britain
was in desperate need of a countermeasure against the U-boats that were
strangling its sea-lanes. Convoys, which had proved effective in earlier times
(and would again prove effective during the Second World War), were rejected by
the resource-strapped Admiralty and the independent captains. Depth charges of
the time were relatively primitive, and almost the only chance of sinking a
submarine was by gunfire or by ramming while on the surface. The problem was
how to lure the U-boat to the surface.
A solution to this was the creation of the Q-ship, one of
the most closely guarded secrets of the war. Their codename referred to the
vessels' home port, Queenstown, in Ireland. These became known by the Germans
as a U-Boot-Falle ("U-boat trap"). A Q-ship would appear to be an
easy target, but in fact carried hidden armaments. A typical Q-ship might
resemble a tramp steamer sailing alone in an area where a U-boat was reported
to be operating.
Torpedoes are expensive, and a submarine only carries a
limited number of them, ideally employed when the vessel is submerged and invisible
to her target. Ammunition for a deck gun, oppositely, is inexpensive and
plentiful in comparison. As a result, submarine captains prefer to surface and
use their deck gun on easy or already weakened targets.
By seeming to be a suitable target for the U-boat's deck
gun, a Q-ship was intended to lure a submarine into surfacing. Once the U-boat
was vulnerable, perhaps even gulled further by pretense of some crew dressed as
civilian mariners "abandoning ship" and taking to a boat, the Q-ship
would drop its panels and immediately open fire with its deck guns. At the same
time, the vessel would reveal her true colours by raising the White Ensign
(Royal Navy flag). When successfully fooled a U-boat could quickly be
overwhelmed by several guns to its one, or defer from firing and try to
submerge before mortally wounded.
The first Q-ship victory was on 23 June 1915, when the
submarine HMS C24, cooperating with the decoy vessel Taranaki,
sank U-40 off Eyemouth. The first victory by an unassisted Q-ship came
on 24 July 1915 when Prince Charles sank U-36. The civilian crew
of Prince Charles received a cash award. The following month an even
smaller converted fishing trawler renamed HM Armed Smack Inverlyon
successfully destroyed UB-4 near Great Yarmouth. Inverlyon was an
unpowered sailing ship fitted with a small 3-pounder (47 mm) gun. The British
crew fired nine rounds from their 3-pounder into UB-4 at close range, sinking
her with the loss of all hands despite the attempt of Inverlyon's
commander to rescue one surviving German submariner.
On 19 August 1915, HMS Baralong sank U-27,
which was preparing to attack the nearby merchant ship Nicosian. About a
dozen of the U-boat sailors survived and swam towards the merchant ship. The
commanding officer, allegedly fearing that they might scuttle her, ordered the
survivors to be shot in the water and sent a boarding party to kill all who had
made it aboard. This became known as the "Baralong incident". [For
more information on the Baralong incident, see the story at the end.]
War
service
In early 1915, Tom Crisp Jr left the vessel to join
the Royal Navy.
A few weeks later the U-boat threat expected so many months before arrived, as
submarines surfaced among the undefended fishing fleets and used dynamite to
destroy dozens of them after releasing the crews in small boats. This offensive
was part of a wider German strategy to denude Britain of food supplies and took
a heavy toll on the fishing fleets of the North Sea. George Borrow was
among the victims, sunk in August, although it is not known if Tom Crisp
(father) was aboard at the time. While temporarily working in a net
factory following the loss of his vessel, he was scouted by a Navy officer
recruiting experienced local fishing captains to command a flotilla of tiny
fishing vessels, which were to be secretly armed. The boats were intended to be
working fishing vessels fitted with a small artillery piece with which to sink
enemy submarines as they surfaced alongside. In this manner it was hoped they
would protect the fishing fleets without the diversion of major resources from
the regular fleet, in the same manner as Q-ships deployed
in the commercial sea lanes.
Agreeing to this proposal, Crisp became first a Seaman
and by mid-1916 a Skipper in the Royal Naval Reserve, arranging for his son to
join the crew of his boat, the HM Armed Smack I'll Try, armed with a 3-pounder gun. On 1
February 1917 in the North Sea, I'll Try had its first
confrontation with the enemy when two submarines surfaced close to the smack
and her companion the larger Boy Alfred. Despite near misses from enemy
torpedoes, both smacks scored hits on their larger opponents and reported them
as probable sinkings, although post-war German records show that no submarines
were lost on that date. Both skippers were awarded the Distinguished
Service Cross and a present of £200 for this action, and Crisp was offered a
promotion and transfer to an ocean-going Q-ship. He was forced to turn
down this offer due to his wife's sudden and terminal illness. She died on June
12, 1917.
On 1 February 1917, in company with another armed smack, Boy
Alfred, commanded by skipper Wharton, the boats were approached by two
U-boats closing in on the surface. One of the U-boats, which were not
identified, closed in on Boy Alfred and ordered her crew to abandon
ship. As it was in range Wharton opened fire and the U-boat sank from view --"and
that was the end of that sub". The other submerged and for the next two
hours played a cat and mouse game with I'll Try. The U-boat closed in at
periscope depth and sought a favourable firing position for a torpedo attack,
but I'll Try was able to manoeuvre to avoid this by turning towards the
periscope and forcing the U-boat to go deep. After two hours Crisp turned away,
attempting to draw the U-boat to the surface; there was no sign of it, so he
turned back to search. Then the U-boat surfaced 150 yards (140 m) from I'll
Try and turned to close, firing a single torpedo which just missed I'll
Try's stern. Crisp opened fire, and scored hits on the U-boats conning
tower, which was awash. She went down head first, showing her stern out of
water and leaving the sea covered in oil. On the basis of this it was judged
that both U-boats had been destroyed, and skippers Wharton and Crisp were
awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and an Admiralty bounty of £200 for
this action, but post war examination of records showed no U-boats sunk that
day. Crisp was offered a promotion and transfer to an ocean-going Q-ship. He
was forced to turn down this offer due to his wife's sudden and terminal
illness. She died on June 12, 1917.
Victoria
Cross action
A UC-class coastal U-boat similar
to the one that may have sunk Nelson
In July, I'll Try was renamed Nelson and Boy Alfred became Ethel & Millie, in an effort to
maintain their cover. The boats continued to operate together and Crisp's crew
was augmented with two regular seamen and a Royal Marine rifleman,
providing Nelson with a crew of ten, including Crisp and his
son. The smacks set out as usual on 15 August and pulled in a catch during the
morning before making a sweep near the Jim Howe Bank in
search of cruising enemies. At 2.30 pm, Crisp spotted a German U-boat on the
surface 6,000 yards (5,500 m) away. The U-boat also sighted the smack and
both vessels began firing at once, the U-boat's weapon scoring several hits
before Nelson's could be brought to bear. By this stage in the war,
German submarine captains were aware of the decoy ship tactics and no longer
stopped British merchant shipping, preferring to sink them from a distance with
gunfire.
With such a heavy disparity in armament between the
smack's 3-pounder and the submarine's 88 mm deck gun the engagement was
short lived, the submarine firing eight shots before the Nelson could
get within range of her opponent. The fourth shot fired by the U-boat
holed the smack, and the seventh tore off both of Crisp's legs from underneath
him. Calling for the confidential papers to be thrown overboard, Crisp dictated
a message to be sent by the boat's four carrier pigeons:
like many small ships of the era, Nelson did not possess a radio set.
Nelson being attacked by submarine.
Skipper killed. Jim Howe Bank. Send assistance at once.
The sinking smack was abandoned by the nine unwounded
crew, who attempted to remove their captain, who ordered that he should be
thrown overboard rather than slow them down. The crew refused to do so, but
found they were unable to move him and left him where he lay. He died in his
son's arms a few minutes later. It is said that he was smiling as he died
and remained so as the ship sank underneath him. Ethel & Millie had
just arrived on the scene as Nelson sank, and her captain
Skipper Charles Manning called for Nelson's lifeboat to come
alongside. Realising that this would greatly overcrowd the second boat,
the survivors refused and Manning sailed onwards towards the submarine, coming
under lethal fire as he did so. His vessel was soon badly damaged and began to
sink.
The cenotaph memorial for Thomas Crisp
VC in Lowestoft Cemetery
The crew of Ethel & Millie then abandoned
their battered boat and were hauled aboard the German submarine, where
the Nelson survivors last saw them standing in line being
addressed by a German officer. The seven British sailors of Ethel &
Millie were never seen again, and much controversy exists surrounding
their disappearance. Prevailing opinion at the time was that they were killed
and dumped overboard by the German crew or abandoned at sea without supplies,
as the German government had made it clear they regarded the crews of merchant ships
who fought back against U-boat attacks as “francs-tireurs”
or guerrilla fighters who operate outside the laws of war and thus liable to
execution. These scenarios cannot be substantiated. Another theory is that
they were taken prisoner and killed when the submarine was sunk. UC-63 has
been named as the submarine that sank both vessels.
The survivors of Nelson drifted for nearly two
days until they arrived at the Jim Howe Buoy, where they
were rescued by the fishery protection vessel Dryad. A pigeon named
"Red Cock" had reached the authorities in Lowestoft with news of the
fate of the boats and caused the Dryad to be despatched to search for
survivors.
A court of enquiry praised the surviving crew and their
dead captain and authorised the award of the Victoria Cross posthumously to
Thomas Crisp and Distinguished Service Medals to
his son and another member of the crew. On 29 October 1917, David Lloyd George
made an emotional speech in the House of Commons citing Crisp's
sacrifice as representative of the Royal Navy's commitment "from the icy
waters of the Arctic Ocean to the stormy floods of Magellan", which
promoted Crisp into an overnight celebrity whose story ran in all the major
London papers for nearly a week, containing as it did a story of personal
sacrifice, filial devotion and perceived German barbarity. The medal
presentation was made to Tom Crisp Jr at Buckingham
Palace on 19 December 1917.
Thomas Crisp, VC, DSC, is memorialised on his wife's
gravestone in Lowestoft Cemetery.
Citations
Admiralty, 2nd November, 1917
HONOURS FOR SERVICES IN ACTION WITH ENEMY SUBMARINES
The KING has been graciously pleased to approve of the
award of the following honours, decorations and medals to officer and men for
services in action with enemy submarines: —
Posthumous
Award of the Victoria Cross.
Skipper Thomas Crisp, R.N.R., 10055D.A.
(Killed in action).
The London Gazette, 30 October 1917
Action of H.M. Armed Smack
"Nelson" on the 15th August, 1917.
On the 15th August, 1917, the
Smack "Nelson" was engaged in fishing when she was attacked with
gunfire from an enemy submarine. The gear was let go and the submarine's fire
was returned. The submarine's fourth shot went through the port bow just below
the water line and the seventh shell struck the skipper, partially
disembowelling him, and passed through the deck and out through the side of the
ship. In spite of the terrible nature of his wound Skipper Crisp retained
consciousness, and his first thought was to send off a message that he was
being attacked and giving his position. He continued to command his ship until
the ammunition was almost exhausted and the smack was sinking. He refused to be
moved into the small boat when the rest of the crew were obliged to abandon the
vessel as she sank, his last request being that he might be thrown overboard.
(The posthumous award of the Victoria Cross to Skipper
Thomas Crisp, D.S.C., R.N.R., 10055 D.A., was announced in London Gazette No.
30363, dated 2 November 1917).
Post-war
remembrance
Memorial Plaque to Crisp displayed
at Lowestoft Maritime Museum
After the war, a small display in memory of Crisp was set
up in Lowestoft Free Library and another in Lowestoft Maritime Museum. The former
contained a specially commissioned painting and parts of the sunken Nelson,
which were dredged up years later. This display was destroyed during the Second World War when
the building was gutted in the Blitz.
A new display featuring a replica of the Victoria Cross awarded to Crisp
currently stands in Lowestoft Town Hall. The original is held
securely by the local council after Crisp's family
felt his interests would not be served if the medal were held privately. It can
be viewed on request.
Crisp's name is inscribed on the Chatham Naval Memorial for those lost at
sea during the First World War, as well as two church memorials in
Lowestoft to the town's war dead, St. John's and St. Margaret's. The latter church
also contains a "VC Bell" dedicated to his memory. Tom Crisp
Way, a street in his native Lowestoft, is named in his honour.
In a footnote to the action, the pigeon "Red
Cock", which brought news of the engagement to the authorities, was
stuffed upon his death and was mounted in the Thomas Crisp display at Lowestoft
Town Hall for many years before being reportedly relocated to a museum in South Kensington.
The Baralong Incidents
The Baralong incidents were
two incidents during the First World War in
August and September 1915, involving the Royal Navy Q-ship HMS Baralong and two
German U-boats. Baralong sank U-27,
which had been preparing to attack a nearby merchant ship, the Nicosian.
About a dozen of the crewmen managed to escape from the sinking submarine and
Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert, commanding officer of Baralong,
ordered the survivors to be executed after they boarded the Nicosian.
All the survivors of U-27's sinking, including several who had
reached the Nicosian, were shot by Baralong's crew.
Later, Baralong sank U-41 in
an incident which has also been described as a British war crime.
First incident
Action
of 19 August 1915
After the sinking
of RMS Lusitania by a German submarine
in May 1915, Lieutenant-Commander Godfrey Herbert,
commanding officer of Baralong, was visited by two officers of
the Admiralty's Secret Service branch at
the naval base at Queenstown,
Ireland. He was told, "This Lusitania business
is shocking. Unofficially, we are telling you... take no prisoners from
U-boats."
Interviews with his
subordinate officers have established Herbert's undisciplined manner of
commanding his ship. Herbert allowed his men to engage in drunken binges during
shore leave. During one such incident, at Dartmouth,
several members of Baralong's crew were arrested after destroying a
local pub. Herbert paid their bail, then left port with the bailed crewmen
aboard. Beginning in April 1915, Herbert ordered his subordinates to cease
calling him "Sir", and to address him only by the pseudonym "Captain
William McBride".
Throughout the summer of
1915, Baralong continued routine patrol duties in the Irish Sea without
encountering the enemy.
On 19 August 1915, U-24 sank
the White Star Liner SS Arabic with
the loss of 44 lives – this included three Americans and resulted in a
diplomatic incident between Germany and the United States. HMS Baralong had
been about 20 mi (32 km) from the scene, and had received a distress
call from the ship. Baralong's crew was infuriated by the attack
and by their inability to locate survivors.
Meanwhile, about
70 nautical miles (130 km;
81 mi)
south of Queenstown, U-27,
commanded by Kapitänleutnant Bernd Wegener, stopped the
British steamer Nicosian in accordance with the cruiser rules specified
by the London
Declaration. A boarding party of six men from U-27 discovered
that Nicosian was carrying munitions and 250 American mules
earmarked for the British Army in France. The Germans
allowed the freighter's crew and passengers to board lifeboats, and prepared to
sink the freighter with the U-boat's deck gun.
U-27 was lying off Nicosian's port quarter and firing into it when Baralong appeared on the scene, flying the ensign of the United States as a false flag. When she was half a mile away, Baralong ran up a signal flag indicating that she was going to rescue Nicosian's crew. Wegener acknowledged the signal, then ordered his men to cease firing, and took U-27 along the port side of Nicosian to intercept Baralong. As the submarine disappeared behind the steamship, Herbert steered Baralong on a parallel course along Nicosian's starboard side.
Before U-27 came
round Nicosian's bow, Baralong hauled down the
American flag, hoisted the Royal Navy's White Ensign,
and unmasked her guns. As U-27 came into view from
behind Nicosian, Baralong began shooting with its
three 12-pounder guns at a range of
600 yd (550 m), firing 34 rounds for only a single shot from the
submarine. U-27 rolled over and began to sink.
According to Tony Bridgland;
Herbert
screamed, "Cease fire!" But his men's blood was up. They were
avenging the Arabic and the Lusitania. For them
this was no time to cease firing, even as the survivors of the crew appeared on
the outer casing, struggling out of their clothes to swim away from her. There
was a mighty hiss of compressed air from her tanks and the U-27 vanished
from sight in a vortex of giant rumbling bubbles, leaving a pall of smoke over
the spot where she had been. It had taken only a few minutes to fire the
thirty-four shells into her.
Meanwhile, Nicosian's
crew were cheering from the lifeboats. Captain Manning was heard to yell,
"If any of those bastard Huns come up, lads, hit 'em with an
oar!"
Twelve men survived the
sinking of the submarine: the crews of her two deck guns and those who had been
on the conning tower. They swam to Nicosian and attempted to
join the six-man boarding party by climbing up its hanging lifeboat falls and
pilot ladder. Despite his recent orders to take no prisoners from U-boats,
Herbert claimed in his report to the Admiralty to have been worried that the
German survivors might try to scuttle the steamer as an explanation for why he
ordered his men to open fire with small arms, killing all in the water. Wegener
is described by some accounts as being shot while trying to swim to the Baralong.
Herbert then sent Baralong's
12 Royal Marines, commanded by a Corporal Collins,
to find the surviving German sailors aboard Nicosian. As they
departed, Herbert ordered Collins, "Take no prisoners." The
Germans were discovered in the engine room and shot on sight. According to
Sub-Lieutenant Gordon Charles Steele: "Wegener ran to a
cabin on the upper deck – I later found out it was Manning's bathroom. The
marines broke down the door with the butts of their rifles, but Wegener
squeezed through a scuttle and dropped into the sea. He still had his
life-jacket on and put up his arms in surrender. Corporal Collins, however,
took aim and shot him through the head." Corporal Collins later recalled
that, after Wegener's death, Herbert threw a revolver in the dead German
captain's face and screamed, "What about the Lusitania, you
bastard!"] An alternative
allegation by the Admiralty is that the Germans who boarded Nicosian were
killed by the freighter's engine room staff; this report apparently came from
the officer commanding the muleteers.
Aftermath
In Herbert's report to
the Admiralty, he stated he feared the survivors from the U-boat's crew would
board the freighter and scuttle it, so he ordered the Royal Marines on his ship
to shoot the survivors. If they had scuttled the freighter, it could have been
considered as negligence on the part of Herbert. Moments before Baralong began
its attack, the submarine was firing on the freighter. It is not known if the
escaping sailors actually intended to scuttle the freighter.
The Admiralty, upon
receiving Herbert's report, immediately ordered its suppression, but the strict
censorship imposed on the event failed when Americans who had witnessed the
incident from Nicosian's lifeboats spoke to newspaper reporters
after their return to the United States.
German
memorandum
The German government
delivered a memorandum on the incident via the American ambassador in Berlin,
who received it on 6 December 1915. In it, they cited six US citizens as
witnesses, stating they had made sworn depositions regarding the incident
before notaries public in the USA.
The statements said that
five survivors from U-27 managed to board Nicosian,
while the rest were shot and killed on Herbert's orders while clinging to the
merchant vessel's lifeboat falls. It was further stated that when Herbert
ordered his Marines to board Nicosian, he gave the order "take
no prisoners". Four German sailors were found in Nicosian's
engine room and propeller shaft tunnel, and were killed. According to the
witness statements, U-27's commander was shot while swimming
towards Baralong.
The memorandum demanded
that the captain and crew of Baralong be tried for the murder
of unarmed German sailors, threatening to "take the serious decision of
retribution for an unpunished crime" Sir Edward Grey replied
through the American ambassador that the incident could be grouped together
with the Germans' sinking of SS Arabic, their attack on a stranded
British submarine on the neutral Danish coast, and their attack on the
steamship Ruel, and suggested that they be placed before a tribunal
composed of US Navy officers.
German
reaction
A debate took place in
the Reichstag on 15 January 1916, where the
incident was described as a "cowardly murder" and Grey's note as
being "full of insolence and arrogance” It was announced that
reprisals had been decided, but not what they would be.
Meanwhile, the Military
Bureau for the Investigation of Violations of the Laws of War (German: Militäruntersuchungstelle für Verletzungen des
Kriegsrechts) added Baralong's commanding officer, whose name was known only
as "Captain William McBride", to the Prussian Ministry of War's
"Black List of Englishmen who are Guilty of Violations of the Laws of War
vis-à-vis Members of the German Armed Forces".
HMS Baralong's
actions caused the Kaiserliche Marine to cease conforming to
the Prize Rules and
to practise unrestricted submarine warfare. During
the Second World War, it was cited as a reason for the Kriegsmarine to
do the same. A German medal was issued commemorating the event.
As a precaution to
protect the ships against any reprisals against their crews, HMS Baralong was
renamed HMS Wyandra and transferred to the
Mediterranean. Baralong's name was deleted from Lloyd's Register.
In 1916 Wyandra returned to the Ellerman & Bucknall Line
under the name Manica. Nicosian was renamed Nevisian,
and the crew was issued new Discharge Books, with the voyage omitted.
Baralong's
crew were later awarded £185 prize bounty for sinking U-27.
Second incident
Action
of 24 September 1915
On 24 September
1915, Baralong sank the U-boat U-41,
for which its commanding officer at the time, Lieutenant-Commander A.
Wilmot-Smith, was later awarded £170 prize bounty.
U-41 was
in the process of sinking SS Urbino with gunfire when Baralong arrived
on the scene, flying an American flag. When U-41 surfaced
near Baralong, the latter opened fire while continuing to fly the
American flag, and sank the U-boat.
Aftermath
of the second incident
Unlike the neutral
Americans in the first incident, the only witnesses to the second attack were
the German and British sailors present. Oberleutnant zur See Iwan Crompton, after
returning to Germany from a prisoner-of-war camp, reported that Baralong had
run down the lifeboat he was in; he leapt clear and was soon afterward taken
aboard Baralong. The British crew denied that they had run down the
lifeboat. Crompton later published an account of U-41's
exploits in 1917, U-41: der zweite Baralong-Fall, which termed the
sinking of U-41 a "second Baralong case".
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