Weddigen’s Wonder Feat
The Dramatic Sinking of Three British Cruisers by U-boat in the Early Days of the War
Early on the morning of September 22, 1914, three 12,000-ton armored cruisers of the British Navy—the Aboukir, the Cressy, and the Hogue—were torpedoed in the North Sea and sunk by a German submarine, with a loss of 1,433 men. The news startled the whole world. It was as if three Goliaths, imposing, formidable, on parade in panoply, challenging the stoutest, had succumbed impotently to the assault of the diminutive David—for it was a solitary submarine that sank the naval giants in less than an hour. So adroit, rapid and precise had been the maneuvers of the submarine that the officers of the attacked warships were of the belief that there were several of the invisible devil-boats, and that the guns of the Cressy sank one of them. Nor did they become the wiser until Captain Lieutenant Otto Weddigen, commander of U-9, made report of his exploit on his return to Wilhelmshaven, whence he had set forth for the enterprise. Conditions, be it said, were entirely favorable to him, for the sea was calm, and the weather clear. The three cruisers, unsuspicious, were steaming along in close formation, patrolling the silent sea, and they gave him a famous victory—the destruction of the first warships by the U-boat.
There follow three separate accounts of the event as related by three different sources, the first being that of an officer of the Cressy, published in the Manchester Guardian.