Historian Alan Roberts writes about Raikeswood Camp prisoner, Herbert Breyer, a U-boat commander, who was captured in the North Sea.

 

IT was a cold winter’s night, as he floundered about in the cold North Sea waters off the coast at Sunderland. His hands were numb with cold, and his limbs were starting to become stiff.

He was swallowing mouthfuls of the thick oil which lay on the surface. Somehow or other he had taken off his shoes and removed his black leather trousers to free his legs. Perversely he could not undo his braces from under his thick navy-issue sweater. His trousers trailed behind him in the gloom as he swam towards the light of an English patrol boat. He cried out for help, and miraculously a lifebelt appeared.

On board the lifeboat a familiar voice spoke, ‘Hello, Schirm, you here too?’ It was his U-boat commander and Skipton prisoner Herbert Breyer. Just three men survived from the submarine’s crew of 25.

British Naval Intelligence was impressed with Breyer. He was an average naval type, they said. They considered Reini Schirm to be obstinate, ignorant, ‘of a low type’ and had spent a considerable time in hospital receiving treatment for venereal disease. Schirm did however have beautiful handwriting and wrote a very clear account of his experiences in a letter addressed to his mother.

U.C.32 was one of a class of mine-laying submarines and carried a complement of just 18 mines. The U-boat was on its third voyage and was attached to a submarine fleet based on the German island of Heligoland which had strangely once belonged to Britain. The first voyage had laid mines at Sunderland; the second had targeted Hartlepool. In late February 1917, U.C.32 was 300 metres away from the breakwater at Sunderland. Lieutenant Breyer had just given the order to release the first mine when the U-boat heeled over and the rear end broke away from the rest of the vessel.

Reini Schirm takes up the story: ‘Fortunately we were proceeding on the surface at the time. I was in the control room. The explosion extinguished the lights immediately, and I was hurled forward. Owing to the pressure of the water flowing in, I was driven upwards… The instinct for self-preservation made me gather up all my strength and hold my breath. At the same moment the bottles containing compressed air burst and I was thrown into the conning tower. As for the moment the pressure was greater inside than outside, I could breathe again. The boat in the meantime had sunk to the bottom. I let go, and was at last thrown out of the boat. I was swimming on the surface…’

Schirm was given a check-up in hospital before being taken by train to London: ‘We were taken in a motor to a prison outside London [Wandsworth], where we met some of our comrades… The food is very good, but scanty. We are treated like criminals, but the soldiers are very friendly.’

And this is the heart of the problem when writing about the Skipton prisoners of war and particularly the U-boat officers, because we now know exactly what they did. Six British, Allied and neutral vessels were sunk by U.C.32 either by torpedo or else sunk by mines. Twenty-nine merchant seamen were killed: one on board S.S. Burhope carrying coal from Hartlepool to London, 22 on S.S. Hildawell carrying iron ore from Bilbao to Middlesbrough and all six crewmen on the tugboat ‘Ida Duncan’ which was proceeding from Middlesbrough to the Tees estuary. The fatalities included the ship’s master Lionel Duncan, his brother and ship’s engineer Charles Duncan and 16-year-old deck boy James Gibson. All six crewmen had lived in Middlesbrough.

Skipton prisoner Herbert Breyer was involved in the death of 51 people. It is almost certain that U.C.32 had sunk after colliding with one of its own mines. It is not known if the mine was faulty or if it had been incorrectly released. Its premature explosion at least prevented any further loss of life. The remaining 29 men were in the Mercantile Marine, civilian members of what we would now call the Merchant Navy charged with the transportation of goods to and from Britain. Lieutenant Breyer was following Germany’s rules of engagement for submarine warfare where later all shipping in a wide area including the North Sea was to be sunk without warning.

Once Breyer was captured he became a prisoner of war and had rights under the recently signed Hague Convention. He was not to be treated as a criminal. That’s why Schirm was so indignant. Prisoners of war from both sides were detained not as punishment for what they might have done, but simply to stop them rejoining the fighting. Eventually the British authorities relented. The German book ‘Kriegsgefangen in Skipton’ relates how several U-boat officers were released from prison and arrived at Raikeswood Camp in March 1918 together with a naval airman.

And Schirm’s letter? Prisoners were not supposed to meet. They could not talk to the guards. An immediate high-level enquiry was held into the goings-on at Wandsworth Prison. His mother never received her letter which is still in London a hundred and six years later.