We All Live in a Haunted Submarine

by Patrick Bernauw in History, May 31, 2009

In Germany a submarine was called an U-boat, or “Unterseeboot”. At the outbreak of World War One, Germany had 33 of them. With the possibility of rich prizes off the British and Irish coasts and in the Channel, in early 1916 an entire flotilla of 24 U-boats was launched in the North Sea. One of them was the U-65, and from the very beginning there was talk about “jinxes” and “hoodoos”.

Der Schwarze

While the boat was in the dock, the men were given leave. When they were coming up with their kit-bags again for the delayed patrol, an officer counted them all: 31, including the new men, that was correct. And then number 32 appeared, also known as der Schwarze. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the officer from those dark eyes of his, which got the poor man white-faced and trembling like an old lady. The captain believed some joker from ashore had played the dangerous trick. Two days later however, and just before the U-65 was due to sail, the officer deserted what he called a “death boat”.

On her first patrols down-Channel nothing unusual happened with the U-65. She sank some ships, she eluded pursuit… and the morale of the crew slowly improved. In January 1918, the U-boat was heading for a dock-side in Flanders again, and nothing happened there either. The captain of the U-65 got orders to seek out shipping off Portland and one evening, when the weather was stormy, the U-boat surfaced to recharge the batteries. As they were near an enemy naval base, the captain had three men on the bridge keeping a lookout.

The Death Boat

Some weeks later, when the U-65 was tied up again at the port of Bruges, the captain went ashore to visit an officers club. There was an air-raid and a splinter from a shell neatly sliced his head from his body.

The new captain found the crew in a state of shock. High-ranking officers came on board and listened carefully to what each man had to say. Those most demoralized were drafted to other duties and the gap was filled with a fresh draft. A priest was called in to exorcise the U-65 and drive out all evil spirits in the name of God. To decommission the submarine on the grounds of diabolic possession would have created a dangerous precedent, so in May 1918 the Death Boat set out for another patrol, this time in the Bay of Biscay.

It was a terrible trip. The seas were high and the success against enemy shipping was poor. A torpedoman went mad and had to be given morphia. When he came round he was sent to the upper deck to get some air, accompanied by another man. The torpedoman went berserk again and took a running jump overboard. He made no attempt to swim.

Off Ushant, when the U-65 was rolling heavily, the chief engineer slipped and was washed overboard. Twenty-nine of the men were left now. Everyone felt that a malevolent fate had the U-65 in its grip. And it had yet to pass through the Straits of Dover on the way home… Three U-boats had recently been destroyed there.

On 31 July 1918, German naval headquarters reported that the U-65 was missing, presumed lost… and that would have been the end of the story. But three weeks previously an American submarine on the west coast of Ireland had spotted from periscope depth a surfaced U-boat and read the number on the cunning tower: “U-65″. The captain already was manoeuvring for attack, when right in front of his eyes the U-boat just blew up, “sky high, with a roar you could have heard in Arizona”.

Had a warhead exploded by accident? Was it sabotage by an unhinged crewman? Had another U-boat attacked the U-65 in error and then made off undetected? This one thing can be said for sure: once belief in the haunting had established itself among the crew, panic was inevitable, and from that much else may have flowed.

And you can leave a haunted house, but you can’t leave a steel cigar, fathoms beneath the sea, amid the perils of a Great War…

We All Live in a Haunted Submarine

Der Schwarze

The Death Boat

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