Terror on the High Seas

 

At first glance it doesn't look like a boat. Two men stand in a small tower structure teetering just a few feet above turbulent waves of a rough sea. In the dark background a large ship bears down upon the men. But a closer look reveals they are sailors and on the short mast behind them flies the flag of the Imperial German Navy. It is a German U-boat, an Unterseeboot or submarine. But it is not a photograph. It's a postcard print of a painting.

On the back is an explanation in German. This was a Wohlfahrts-Karte, a welfare card of the "Reich Association for the support of German veterans". The painting's title was "Auf der Wacht" or "On Guard". The postmark date is 8 March 1916 sent from Zerbst, a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.

 

 

Also printed is the artist's name, Willy Stöwer. Born in 1864 at Wolgast, Germany on the Baltic coast, Stöwer was the son of a ship captain, and initially trained as a shipyard metalworker. While employed as an engineering draftsman he started a sideline making maritime illustrations and paintings on commission. After his marriage in 1892 to a young woman from a wealthy family he was able to devote his life exclusively to art. He was also fortunate to find an enthusiastic patron in Kaiser Wilhelm II who commissioned several paintings and invited Stöwer to accompany him on several voyages on the Imperial yacht.  

 

 

Willy Stöwer (1864–1931)
Source: Wikipedia

Despite the honorific of Prof., i.e. Professor, Willy Stöwer (sometimes spelt as Stoewer in English to replace the pesky umlaut) had no art school degree and was entirely a self-taught artist. During his long career he created over 1,200 illustrations for 57 books, as well as numerous posters, postcards, trading-cards, labels, brochures and calendars. His principal form was in maritime subjects, particularly navy ships. Stöwer's works became very popular during the prewar years, partly due to the patronage of the Kaiser, but more because he had a real talent for capturing the excitement of seafaring.

 

 

His next postcard is more dramatic as it depicts a U-boat next to a sail-rigged ship. The three masted ship is sinking at the bow and flies a French flag. Its crew are on a lifeboat, perhaps rowing toward the German submarine.

 

The back has a printed description, "U-BOOT-SPENDE 1917" ~ "U-boat donation 1917". Another caption identifies the artist as Prof. Willy Stöwer, and the painting's title: "Französische Bark wird durch deutsches U-boot im Atlantik versenkt." ~ "French bark is sunk by a German U-boat in the Atlantic." The message is dated 18 June 1917.

 

 

By June of 1917 every nation at war in Europe was struggling to gain some advantage over their adversaries. Just after the start of the war in 1914 Britain imposed a tight naval blockade on Germany which was so restrictive on food imports that Germany felt its people risked starvation. Responding to this cruel provocation the German Imperial Navy unleashed its submarine fleet to encircle the British Isles and destroy all navy and commercial shipping, no matter whether it was British or neutral.   

In this painting a U-boat has disabled a merchant ship that sharply lists to port. The captain has brought his submarine quite close to the sinking ship and he seems to be directing the ship's crew in their lifeboats towards a safe direction.

This postcard was sent by free military post and the writer dated it 20 April 1916. The captions are printed in Fraktur, an old German typeface that can be quite challenging to decipher. The first word is "Kolonialkriegerdank" ~ "Colonial warrior thanks", which makes this a postcard sold for a veteran's charity. The lower caption identifies Willy Stöwer as the artist and the painting is described as "Notice is given to an English commercial steamer by a German submarine."

At the beginning of the 20th century most navies considered a submarine as an experimental vessel which might be useful only for harbor defense in shallow waters. But with the introduction of diesel engines, double-hull construction, and self-propelled torpedoes a submarine became a much more seaworthy and dangerous naval warship. When war was declared in 1914 Germany had 48 submarines of 13 classes in service or under construction. Eventually as the terrible conflict continued the Imperial Navy counted 373 U-boats in its fleet.

 

 

In this next painting Willy Stöwer moves the perspective to the deck of a U-boat looking toward a seaside town situated on a snow-capped mountainous coast. Sailors stand next to a smoking gun as the town burns. The back has Stöwer's printed title: "Deutsches U-Boot im Eismeer Beschießung von Alexandrowsk." ~ "German submarine shelling of Alexandrovsk in the Arctic Ocean." Alexandrovsk is now called Polyarny and is located in the Murmansk Oblast of Russia on the northeast side of the Scandinavian Peninsula.  

The card was probably never intended for mailing as there is no place for an address. Instead there is a large notice that translates as: "This submarine donation is for our heroes on submarines, minesweepers and other security vessels from 1 to 7 June 1917."

 

 

Early in the war the U-boats in the German navy and the Austro-Hungarian Navy, too*, which took on older German class submarines, made several successful attacks on British and French warships. This fame came at a great cost as the U-boat fleets suffered many losses too. These early submarines could stay underwater only for a small amount of time and were then unable to observe what was happening above on the surface. They were also much slower than regular warships and had limited firepower. Their real threat was to commercial shipping and during the war years this became the target of the German U-boat fleet. 

 

*Musically minded readers may remember a bit of trivia from the film, The Sound of Music. The father of the Trapp Family Singers was Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp (1880– 1947) who was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. During World War I, Trapp was the most successful Austro-Hungarian submarine commander sinking 11 Allied merchant ships totaling 47,653 tons (GRT) and two Allied warships of 12,641 tons total. 

 

On this next U-boat postcard Stöwer moves the perspective forward showing officers and sailors on the submarine's distinctive sail or conning tower. Waves splash over the deck as the helmsman steers the vessel through choppy water. The artist instantly conveys the great bravery and extreme endurance that set U-boat sailors apart from other navy servicemen. Though it's difficult to see enough of the submarine's design to identify its class, I suspect Willy Stöwer with his draftsman's eye always painted his submarines and ships very carefully to include accurate details. The next image shows him in his studio working on a huge painting. Around the room are examples of ship designs and sail rigging that he used to as models. 

 

 

Willy Stöwer in his studio, 1903
Source: Wikipedia

 

 

What made a U-boat such a serious menace was, of course, it's ability to submerge. This power to hide beneath the ocean surface and lie in wait for enemy ships was a stealthy quality that no warship had ever possessed. Many people thought this was unfair and contrary to the so-called "rules of war". So before attacking a merchant ship a U-boat captain supposedly had to stop it and allow its crew to safely abandon the ship before sinking it. But when Germany announced unrestricted submarine attacks without warnings or any protection for ships from neutral countries, the "rules" were discarded with terrible consequences. Eventually as the war dragged on, the Allied navies developed defensive tactics of dazzle paint to disguise ship movement; zig-zag maneuvers for convoys; aerial reconnaissance with blimps and dirigibles; and ultimately explosive depth charges.     

 

 

Here a U-boat moves along a calmer sea as its crew watches a very large passenger steamship slowly sink. Surrounding it are several lifeboats and dots of people floating in the water. The black lines in the sky are not seagulls but marks left by the postal service.

This Stöwer postcard was another in the series for the U-Boot-Spende 1917 veteran's charity. Presumably the money collected was turned into a benefit paid to wives and children of sailors killed in the war. The postmark is 18 June 1917. The caption gives the picture's title: "Versenkung eines feindlichen bewaffneten Truppentransport Dampfers durch deutsches U-Boot in Mittlemeer" ~ "Sinking of an enemy armed troop transport steamer by a German U-boat in the Mediterranean."

 

 

 

On 7 May 1915, the passenger liner RMS Lusitania, out of New York and bound for Liverpool, was torpedoed by U-20, off the southern coast of Ireland. It took only 18 minutes to sink, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard, including 128 American citizens. The outrage in America came close to forcing the United States to declare war on Germany, but President Wilson knew that America was not yet ready to fully engage in this kind of conflict. The world would have to suffer through two more years before the US joined the Allied powers in France.

 

 

Once again in this next painting, Stöwer devises an unexpected angle for the viewer, something that at the time a photographer could not achieve. A cargo ship steams toward us as puffs of explosive shells hit the water ahead of it. In the distance a U-boat is firing its gun while receiving a barrage too. Though torpedoes were a powerful weapon, they were not reliable and had uncertain accuracy. And a submarine could only carry a limited number of them. For merchant shipping it was more effective for a U-boat to surface and fire its gun.

This  card was another in that same veteran's charity series. The writer has covered the caption but it translates as: "German U-boat fires on an armed commercial steamer". The postmark is dated 4 June 1917 from Charlottenburg, a locality in Berlin famous for its grand royal palace.

 

 

The various classes of German U-boats in service during WW1 were less sophisticated that the submarines of WW2 and, of course, nothing like the modern versions which are now nuclear powered. For an example SM U-20 that sank the RMS Lusitania was 64m (210 ft) long with a beam of 6.10m (20 ft), a height or 7.30 m (23 ft 11 in),  and draught when at the surface of 3.58 m (11 ft 9 in). It was powered by two 8-cylinder diesel engines when surfaced and by two electric motors when submerged which gave it a speed of 15.4 knots (28.5 km/h; 17.7 mph) and 9.5 knots (17.6 km/h; 10.9 mph) respectively. It carried a ship's complement of 4 officers and 25 enlisted men.

The U-20 was armed with just six torpedoes, two small guns and, after 1916, sometimes carried 12 mines. Surprisingly it had a very long range of 9,700 nautical miles (18,000 km; 11,200 mi) using the diesel engines, but only 80 nautical miles (150 km; 92 mi) when submerged. This submarine was capable of descending to 50m (164 ft) which was the limit for most submarines then, though a few could reach 75 m (246 ft).  But all the U-boats lacked any technology for sonar, radar, quiet running, and long range radio which would come in later decades.

 

 

 

This final postcard of Willy Stöwer depicts the heroic welcome given to the crew of the SM U-9 on its return to Wilhelmshaven on 23 September 1914. On the day before, while on patrol in the southern North Sea, the U-9 encountered a squadron of three British armored cruisers, the HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue, and HMS Cressy which were guarding the eastern end of the English Channel against German warships and shipping. The U-9 fired four torpedoes, reloading while submerged, and sank all three warships in less than an hour, killing 1,459 British sailors. It is considered the first major submarine action of the war and it demonstrated how deadly this new warship could be.

The postcard was sent using military post from the SMS Berlin, a Bremen class light cruiser. The sailor or officer wrote a date of 7/3 15, 7 March 1915.

 

 

In November 1918 Willy Stöwer lost his principal patron when Kaiser Wilhelm was forced to abdicate and move to Holland as a condition for ending the war. I doubt Kaiser Bill ever went yachting after that. Stöwer continued working in commercial art, and I've started a collection of his postcard paintings of ocean liners, but his fortune changed as the public's taste for maritime paintings drastically declined. Willy Stöwer died at his home in Berlin on 31 May 1931, nine days after his 67th birthday. 

 

 

This last image is not a postcard by Stöwer but it is probably one that he knew. It has a forbidding title: "Englands Not." ~ "England's distress" over a map of the British Isles and the Atlantic coast of France shaded mustard yellow. The caption reads: "12 Monate uneingeschränkten U-Bootskrieges auf dem nördlichen Seekriegsschauplatz" ~ "12 months of unrestricted U-boat boat warfare in the northern naval theater". Scattered across the blue ocean  are hundreds of small symbols that the map's legend identifies as "a ship sunk by the activity of our submarines, regardless of its size." 

 

Undeneath is a list of 12 months from February 1917 to January 1918 giving an estimate of ship tonnage lost to German submarines. This overt propaganda is frighteningly impressive for its statistics and hideously appalling in its casual disregard for the lives lost, both of the enemy and of Germany. 

The death toll caused by four years of submarine warfare was horrendous. The U-Boat entry on Wikipedia describes it best.

Of the 373 German submarines that had been built, 178 were lost by enemy action. Of these, 40 were sunk by mines, 30 by depth charges, and 13 by Q-ships; 512 officers and 4894 enlisted men were killed. They sank 10 battleships, 18 cruisers, and several smaller naval vessels. They further destroyed 5,708 merchant and fishing vessels for a total of 11,108,865 tons and the loss of about 15,000 sailors. The Pour le Mérite, the highest decoration for gallantry for officers, was awarded to 29 U-boat commanders. Twelve U-boat crewmen were decorated with the Goldene Militär-Verdienst-Kreuz, the highest bravery award for non-commissioned officers and enlisted men. The most successful U-boat commanders of World War I were Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière (189 merchant vessels and two gunboats with 446,708 tons), followed by Walter Forstmann (149 ships with 391,607 tons), and Max Valentiner (144 ships with 299,482 tons). Their records have not been surpassed in any subsequent conflict.

 

 

As I wrote in last week's post, The Sky Watchers, about early aviators, I'm fascinated by the way humankind's collective imagination was suddenly inspired by the sight of airplanes and zeppelins carrying people through the sky. The invention of flying machines added a new direction to the human perspective of UP. 

 

Similarly beginning in 1914, but with less public spectacle, the submarine, especially the Unterseeboot, turned our perspective in the opposite direction—DOWN. Unlike the airplane which was initially developed by civilian inventors, the evolution of the submarine began as a naval warship. Yet what the U-boat demonstrated by submerging was that sea level was only the midpoint for our human experience. Not only could we go up into a sky seemingly without limit, but we could now descend down into ocean depths unmeasured, though that would require decades more science and engineering to achieve. Even a century later there is less known about our ocean world than is understood about our atmosphere, but what is known comes from the invention of the submarine.

 

The appeal of Willy Stöwer's artwork is also about the power of imagination. In his time photography and cinematography had made great advances but were still very constrained and could not show real colors and genuine action. But an artist like Stöwer could do that and more, like capture the sense of adventure on a U-boat. I can easily believe that many a young German boy was inspired by Stöwer's postcard art to enlist in the German Navy of 1939-1945.

 

Putting aside the global politics and gross misjudgements that led to World War One, Stöwer was trying to depict the heroism and bravery of U-boat sailors. I think he presented their courageous efforts in an honorable manner because as navy servicemen they had pledged their life to protect their nation and fellow countrymen. The great tragedy is that so had their adversaries and they became the victors. 

   

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where no one is ever down when they're up.