The Forgotten Casualties of the Bombardment of Scarborough in 1914
By David Pendleton
The ships and men lost to sea mines off Scarborough 1914-15
The bombardment of Scarborough by German battle cruisers on 16 December 1914 was one of the iconic moments of the Great War. A day when modern warfare crashed into the streets and houses of a peaceful seaside town.
‘Remember Scarborough’ the recruiting posters implored the men of Britain in the wake of the attack. A century on that powerful message lingers in the cultural memory, but who now remembers the ships and sailors lost to a sea mining operation that ran concurrently with the bombardment? Whilst nineteen people were killed in the streets of Scarborough, over six times that number lost their lives at sea, as twenty merchant ships struck mines and sank, often little more than a mile from the coastline.
As the German battlecruisers bombarded the streets of Scarborough, the light cruiser Kolberg was laying a minefield in the waters between Cayton Bay and Gristhorpe. Over three months, between 16 December 1914 and 13 March 1915, the mines would sink twenty ships and cause the deaths of 113 sailors; six times more than were killed on land during the bombardment.
Via a series of events Scarborough will remember those lost at sea to the deadly minefield laid on that infamous day in December 1914. Between December 2024 and March 2025 an exhibition will be held at the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre which will chart the losses, retell the stories of the ships and sailors and place into context the dramatic events that took place in the waters off Scarborough during the winter of 1914/15. Plans are also in place to hold open days at the wonderful club house of the Scarborough Sub Aqua Club.
Researching the losses
But first we had to work out exactly what ships were lost to the mines, surprisingly there was no comprehensive list, and from there we could estimate the number of sailors lost onboard the ships. Perhaps even more surprisingly, there is nowhere that lists the men killed, their names are scattered across the globe on various memorials and some have not been commemorated at all.
In the autumn of 2023 charts were laid out on a table in the club house of Scarborough Sub Aqua Club. Lists of possible victims of the Kolberg’s mines were compared to the location of the minefield and known wrecks. A small number of ship wrecks, previously suggested as being sunk by the Kolberg’s minefield, were ruled out due to their location and date of sinking. A couple of others, whose fate had been linked to U Boats, were brought into the conversation. Memories of diving expeditions from decades ago were revived, snippets were consulted from weather-beaten notes books and eventually a list of twenty ships was agreed upon. It can never be a comprehensive list, but as the last map was rolled up, it was felt that we had come as close as is possible to finally identifying the ships, and thereby the men, lost to the deadly minefield laid during the bombardment of Scarborough.
The wrecks are quite literally hidden history. Although they lie just off beaches that teem with holidaymakers in the summer months, presenting their stories in an accessible and compelling manner was the cause of a lot of thought. The cluster of wrecks are the physical reminders of the Great War at sea, they represent geographies of trade, manufacturing and manning. But each wreck also has its own story and indeed its own tragedy. Bringing together all those narratives, whilst paying homage to the people whose lives were lost, is the ultimate and challenging goal of this project.
The project itself is growing into what will likely become a multi-year research programme. There is a huge scope to explore aspects such as the wrecks as artificial reefs, quantifying their impact on marine life, as the wrecks have become havens for schools of fish and corals grow on the hard surfaces of the wrecks. Multi-beam sonar scans of the wrecks offer an opportunity to present the wrecks to a wider-public and could be an inspiration to artists.
It is an active project, but as we shifted through the evidence in order to quantify exactly what we were dealing with, we managed to rule out of a small number of ships which had previously been identified as being victims of the Scarborough minefield. Even though they will not now form part of our project, I thought it was important to retell their stories, as they are very human stories, shipwrecks are not just dramatic rusting hulks beneath the waves, every single wreck has stories of heartbreak and loss; the latter made even more poignant when the ship simply disappears, leaving those left behind not knowing what became of their loved ones.
The Context
The Although sea mines had been used with varying levels of success in conflicts as diverse as the American War of Independence, the Crimea War and the Russo-Japanese War, in 1914 large-scale offensive mining was a relatively new concept. Additionally, it has been claimed that there was a ‘lamentable lack of understanding of the realities of mines’ within that the Royal Navy. Mines were dismissed as ‘the weapon of the weak’. The Royal Navy’s official historian of mining wrote that mines were considered ‘a weapon that no chivalrous nation should use’. A Hague Convention of 1907 restricted the laying of mines in an enemy’s territorial waters. Given that this was merely three miles, it was considered that minelaying ships would be easy prey for coastal patrols.
However, the Royal Navy was not completely unprepared for the task ahead. In 1907 Lord Charles Beresford, then commander of the Channel Fleet, visited Grimsby and recommended the use of steam trawlers for minesweeping. The following year two Grimsby trawlers took part in successful mine sweeping trails off Portland. As a result by the outbreak of war there was a substantial Trawler Reserve. The fishermen had been trained in minesweeping and largely manned their own vessels during the conflict. Throughout the Great War the standard practice of mine-sweeping was known as the ‘A’ sweep. Two trawlers steamed abreast of one another, each towed a kite wire, at the end of which was a ‘kite’ that regulated the depth of the sweep. The two kites were joined by a sweep wire, this would snag and then cut the wire that held the mine to its anchor. This would either cause the mine to explode, or float to the surface where it would be detonated by rifle fire. It was highly dangerous work. The German’s laid 25,000 mines around the British Isles, with the vast majority being laid in the North Sea. By the war’s end 726 minesweepers were employed to meet the threat. It was an endless task, the commanding officer of the Dover Patrol worked out that his minesweepers had swept a distance that equated to twelve circumnavigations of the earth. Despite this ceaseless work, over the course of the Great War, German mines sank 214 minesweepers, 46 warships, 225 auxiliaries, 259 merchant ships and 63 fishing vessels. The toll taken of the minesweepers equated to one sinking a week and in most sinkings at least half of the crew were killed.
The East Coast War Channels were defined routes that were swept of mines between the Thames and the Northern Isles. The East Coast War Channels were developed because it was realised that it was impossible to keep every area of the sea free from mines. Therefore, minesweeping was focussed on specific routes up and down the East Coast. The channels were marked with buoys and often protected by defensive minefields. The channels were constantly swept by minesweepers, while an array of other minor warships were employed to escort shipping and undertake anti-submarine patrols. A great number of the minesweepers and minor warships were requisitioned fishing boats, often manned by their peacetime crews. Of course, concentrating shipping made the East Coast War Channels a target for enemy action, hence the mine laying undertaken by the German light cruiser the SMS Kolberg. It is worth noting that the channels were open to individual ships, it wasn’t until April 1917 that a convoy system was introduced along the East Coast to counter the growing threat from U-boats.
Of course, the East Coast War Channels were more than strips of sea on a map. There was a littoral fringe of land-based infrastructure ranging from ports, naval bases, air stations, wireless and radio stations and, of course, lifeboat stations. Similarly, it is important to think of the wrecks from the two world wars as not individual ships, but as part of the movement of thousands of vessels and millions of tons of cargo. It is estimated that for every ship wrecked, 600 safely delivered their vital cargoes to the ports and naval bases of the East Coast. It is unfortunate that today the East Coast War Channels are ‘all but forgotten about’.
The Kolberg sows her deadly field
The bombardment of Scarborough was part of a series of raids on east coast town’s of Britain by the German High Seas Fleet, designed to tempt the portion of the British Grand Fleet based at Rosyth into an engagement, where they would be cut off and destroyed before the bulk of the Grand Fleet cold intervene from their northerly base at Scapa Flow. The German’s were aware of the threat from lighter units of the Royal Navy based on the River Humber and at Harwich, thus a minefield, laid to the south of the bombarding force, was an integral part of the bombardment strategy. The mines were also planned to disrupt coastal shipping that was a vital element of Britain’s war effort. The effectiveness of the minefield is testament to the thorough planning that went into the raid. The German’s had discovered the existence of shipping lanes from captains of neutral Danish and Dutch steamers. In order to gain further intelligence the submarine U27 was dispatched on 21 November 1914 with orders to steer the route planned to be used by the attacking German battlecruisers, chart positions of any navigational buoys marking defensive minefields and shipping lanes. The nature of the mission was kept a secret even from the crew of the U Boat. The detail garnered was impressive, they were even aware of a ‘flight shed’ at Flat Cliff in Filey Bay and the possible danger that might pose.
On the morning of 16 December 1914 a light haze shrouded the Yorkshire coast, limiting visibility to a few miles. According to the Naval Staff Monograph ‘the presence of German ships was neither seen nor suspected until fire was opened’. Around 08.05 two German battlecruisers, Derfflinger and Von der Tann, began the bombardment of Scarborough. At Cayton Bay the men of the Yorkshire Hussars were guarding Scarborough Waterworks Pumping Station. At the sound of the bombardment ‘stand to’ was ordered. As the men watched from their trenches and machine gun nests in the cliffs above the pumping works, the two battlecruisers fired a salvo of around twenty rounds towards the pumping station, most of which overshot and landed in farmland beyond Cayton village.
A third ship, described as ‘having three funnels’ continued south and it was feared that a landing was to be made in Cayton Bay. Lookouts onshore at Filey also reported a three-funnelled cruiser steering south and then changing course to the east at 08.30. This was the German light cruiser SMS Kolberg laying a field of one hundred mines. The Kolberg’s orders were to ‘seal a gap’ between the British defensive minefields and the coast. At 08.14am she began to lay her mines, it was difficult work due to a heavy sea and, as the ship began taking on water, thought was given to abandoning the operation. However, the crew persevered and twenty-seven minutes later the mines had been laid. The torpedo officer of the Kolberg, Lieutenant Kurt Bocking, wrote that the mines were ‘laid in a large bow, a new barrier of mines that now closed the gap completely’. The chart of the Kolberg shows part of the minefield was sown as close in as 300 yards of the shoreline between Cayton Bay and Filey. The mines were laid parallel to the shore until Gristhorpe Bay, where the Kolberg altered course heading eastward towards the northern most point of the defensive British minefield that ended off Filey Brigg.
The mines laid by the Kolberg were the type C.12, the standard German sea mine of World War One. Designed to donate on contact. They were launched from the ship while mounted on a carriage. They sank to the seabed, where the carriage remained as the anchor. The mine rose on a cable of a predetermined length and awaited its prey just beneath the surface. Several lead ‘striking rods’ protruded from the mine. When a ship struck one of the rods, the lead of the rod distorted, causing a glass tube within the rod to fracture, releasing sulphuric acid-based electrolyte. This seeped into inactive battery plates, thus activating the battery. The battery was wired into the firing mechanism. The fuse was activated by the surge of electricity which donated the explosive within the mine. There was a time lag between striking and detonation. Thus the point of explosion depended on the length and speed of a ship. Smaller vessels could be hit as far back as the stern, whereas a large ship might experience an explosion midships.
Vessels Lost:
16 December 1914 - Elterwater, Princess Olga, Vaaren
20 December 1914 - Garmo, Valiant
25 December 1914 - Night Hawl, Eli, Gem, Therese Haymann
26 December 1914 - Gelnmorven, Linaria, Leersum
The aftermath
After the Scarborough raid the SMS Kolberg was heavily damaged during the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915. She also saw action in the Baltic, but at the war’s end, instead of being interred at Scapa Flow along with the rest of the German fleet, she was transferred to the French navy. She was renamed Colmar and took part in a minor action at Shanghai. The Kolberg/Colmar was retired in 1927 and was broken up for scrap at Brest in 1929.
Some wrecks were rediscovered when the nets of fishing boats snagged on them. Commercial divers were occasionally employed to release the nets and they would try to identify the wreck in question. As diving equipment became more readily accessible, sport diving lead to further discoveries.
In the summer 1971 the wreck of the Eli was discovered in seventy-five feet of water off Red Cliff, Cayton Bay. The bow section was almost intact, aside from a huge hole in her port side which was probably where the mine detonated. In 1973 an inshore trawler working out of Scarborough caught in her nets part of a bow section of a steam trawler. It was discerned that the wreckage was from the Night Hawk, sank on Christmas Day 1914, the section of bow was placed on display in a small museum at Scalby Mills.
Acknowledgements
John Adams, Diver, Filey
Per Gisle Galåen, Spesialbibliotekar/senior-librarian, Norsk Maritimt Museum/Norwegian Maritime Museum
Filey Museum
Scarborough Library
The ghost Ship of the North Sea Researching the lost ships of the Bombardment of Scarborough 1914
The bombardment of Scarborough by German battlecruisers on 16 December 1914 is one of the iconic moments of the Great War. A day when modern warfare crashed into the streets and houses of a peaceful seaside town. ‘Remember Scarborough’ the recruiting posters implored the people of Britain in the wake of the attack. A century on, that powerful message lingers in the cultural memory, but who now remembers the ships and sailors lost to a sea mining operation that ran concurrently with the bombardment? Whilst nineteen people were killed in the streets of Scarborough, over six times that number lost their lives at sea, as twenty merchant ships struck mines and sank, often little more than a mile from the coastline. Via a series of events Scarborough will remember those lost at sea to the minefield laid on that infamous day in December 1914. Thanks to the interest and enthusiasm of the volunteers at Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre, led by Mark Vesey, between December 2024 and March 2025 an exhibition will be held at the centre which will chart the losses, retell the stories of the ships and sailors and place into context the dramatic events that took place in the waters off Scarborough during the winter of 1914/15. Plans are also in place to hold open days at the wonderful club house of the Scarborough Sub Aqua Club. As the German battlecruisers bombarded the streets of Scarborough, the light cruiser Kolberg was laying a minefield in the waters between Cayton Bay and Gristhorpe. Over three months, between 16 December 1914 and 13 March 1915, the mines would sink twenty ships and cause the deaths of 113 sailors; six times more than were killed on land during the bombardment. But first we had to work out exactly what ships were lost to the mines, surprisingly there was no comprehensive list, and from there we could estimate the number of sailors lost onboard the ships. Perhaps even more surprisingly, there is nowhere that lists the men killed, their names are scattered across the globe on various memorials and some have not been commemorated at all. In the autumn of 2023 charts were laid out on a table in the club house of Scarborough Sub Aqua Club. Matthew Newsome, and a small group of club members, worked through a list of possible victims of the Kolberg’s mines and compared them to the location of the minefield and known wrecks. A small number of ship wrecks, previously suggested as being sunk by the Kolberg’s minefield, were ruled out due to their location and date of sinking. A couple of others, whose fate had been linked to U Boats, were brought into the conversation. Memories of diving expeditions from decades ago were revived, snippets were consulted from weather-beaten notes books and eventually a list of twenty ships was agreed upon. It can never be a comprehensive list, but as the last map was rolled up, it was felt that we had come as close as is possible to finally identifying the ships, and thereby the men, lost to the deadly minefield laid during the bombardment of Scarborough. The wrecks are quite literally hidden history. Although they lie just off beaches that teem with holidaymakers in the summer months, presenting their stories in an accessible and compelling manner was the cause of a lot of thought. The cluster of wrecks are the physical reminders of the Great War at sea, they represent geographies of trade, manufacturing and manning. But each wreck also has its own story and indeed its own tragedy. Bringing together all those narratives, whilst paying homage to the people whose lives were lost, is the ultimate and challenging goal of this project. The project itself is growing into what will likely become a multi-year research programme. There is a huge scope to explore aspects such as the wrecks as artificial reefs, quantifying their impact on marine life, as the wrecks have become havens for schools of fish and corals grow on the hard surfaces of the wrecks. Multi-beam sonar scans of the wrecks offer an opportunity to present the wrecks to a wider-public and could be an inspiration to artists. It is an active project, but as we shifted through the evidence in order to quantify exactly what we were dealing with, we managed to rule out of a small number of ships which had previously been identified as being victims of the Scarborough minefield. Even though they will not now form part of our project, I thought it was important to retell their stories, as they are very human stories, shipwrecks are not just dramatic rusting hulks beneath the waves, every single wreck has stories of heartbreak and loss; the latter made even more poignant when the ship simply disappears, leaving those left behind not knowing what became of their loved ones.
Acknowledgements:
Organisations:
Het Scheepvaart, National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
M/S Museet for Søfart, Maritime Museum of Denmark, Elsinore, Denmark
Crimlisk Fisher Archive, Filey
Deutscher Marinebund, German Marine Association, Laboe, Germany
Norsk Maritimt Museum/Norwegian Maritime Museum, Oslo, Norway
Maritiem Museum Rotterdam, Netherlands
RNLI Archive and Library, Poole
Scarborough Library
Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre
Scarborough Museums Trust
Scarborough Sub-Aqua Club
Sjöhistoriska Museet, National Maritime Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Wrecksite.EU
Individuals:
Andrew Clay
Erwin van Delden
Antony Firth
Per Gisle Galåen
Marja Goud
Jannik Hartrup
Els Jacobs
Pete Lassey
Jim Middleton
Matthew Newsome
Dick Pels
Carl Racey
Emma Rosenström
Mark Vesey
Hayley Whiting
Dr. Jann M. Witt
