Back to issue
Previous article
Next article
Image
Text
Research info
Print
Article image
Article image
Article image
This article displays in one automatically-generated column. View the full page to see article in its original form.

THE UNDAUNTED'S' FINE FEAT.

Writing to his father, William Penn, wireless telegraphist on H.M.S. Undaunted, thus described the sinking of four German destroyers: "We engaged tho enemy's four dostroyers, and finished them off nicely in about an hour and twenty minutes—pretty smart work, eh? I was on watch in the wireless telegraphy office, but went up on deck to watch the firing. It looked pretty awful to see their ships go down, especially one, whose magazine blew up in one big flare. A lot of German sailors were swimming, but, as you can guess, we had no time to pick them up; we were too busy. You know it would have been quite possible to have got torpedoed through stopping. As it was they tried hard to torpedo us, but our skipper was there every time, and simply altered our course as we steamed past them. They fired 10 torpedoes at our ship alone. The last to go took a lot of sinking, so we ordered one of our destroyers—tho Legion, I think, it was—to take off her survivors. She sent a boat to her, but when tha boat was being rowed alongside the dirty cads opened fire, and blew off a lieutenant's foot, and a seaman, had his lez blown off. The latter has since died. Tlien we gave her a couple of additional shots to go on with, and she finished. Wo captured 30 Germans, including one officer. Wo had all our boats smashed by concussion from our guns, and missed a cloud of shrapnel by a few yards. One thing has been amply demonstrated: our captain is 0.K., 'and everybody on board knows it. Tho way he manoeuvred our ship around those, torpedoes was marvellons."

Tha same action is thus described by an officer of the ship:— "Directly we sighted the four German destroyers wo and our destroyed flotilla gave 'chase. The German destroyers quickly turned and fled, but we soon got the range with our 6in bow gun and Ain semi-automatics. The Germans opened fire mainly on the destroyers. Lusty cheers rang from our ships as the first German destroyer disappeared. A 6in lyddite shell struck her below the bridge; she toppled over on her beam ends like a wounded bird, righted herself level with tho surface, and finally plunged bow first. It only took about two minutes for her to disappear. The enemy now commenced to fire torpedoes, and they must have discharged at least eight; One missed cur stern by a few yards. At 2.55 p.m., about an hour after we had sighted the Germans, the second destroyer of tho enemy was out of action. She was ablaze fore arid aft, and as our shells, found their marks her funnels, bridge, torpedo-tubes, and all deck fittings disappeared like magic. Denso fumes from the explosive, tha deadliest of its kind, covered the ships fora and aft. She sank quite level with the water, and we soon had tho remaining two literally holed and maimed. _ Their firing was very poor and inaccurate."'

This article text was automatically generated and may include errors. View the full page to see article in its original form.
Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD19141207.2.54.8

Bibliographic details

THE UNDAUNTED'S' FINE FEAT., Issue 15669, 7 December 1914

Word Count
506

THE UNDAUNTED'S' FINE FEAT. Issue 15669, 7 December 1914

Using This Item

Allied Press Ltd is the copyright owner for the Evening Star. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons New Zealand BY-NC-SA licence. This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Allied Press Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.

  1. New formats

    Papers Past now contains more than just newspapers. Use these links to navigate to other kinds of materials.

  2. Hierarchy

    These links will always show you how deep you are in the collection. Click them to get a broader view of the items you're currently viewing.

  3. Search

    Enter names, places, or other keywords that you're curious about here. We'll look for them in the fulltext of millions of articles.

  4. Search

    Browsed to an interesting page? Click here to search within the item you're currently viewing, or start a new search.

  5. Search facets

    Use these buttons to limit your searches to particular dates, titles, and more.

  6. View selection

    Switch between images of the original document and text transcriptions and outlines you can cut and paste.

  7. Tools

    Print, save, zoom in and more.

  8. Explore

    If you'd rather just browse through documents, click here to find titles and issues from particular dates and geographic regions.

  9. Need more help?

    The "Help" link will show you different tips for each page on the site, so click here often as you explore the site.