skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Oberleutnant Bieber - scourge of South Devon shipping
Anyone strolling Maidencombe beach on the evening of September 16th 1918 would have witnessed the sinking of the Lord Stewart - a 1445 ton armed merchantman (converted collier) - en route from Cherbourg to Barry. At 8 pm in the evening, she had just passed Hope's Nose, some 11 kilometres offshore when a torpedo hit her on the port side. The merchantman sank in just four minutes but with only one fatality. The author of her destruction was the infamous Kaiserliche Marine U-boat commander Oberleutnant Thomas Bieber who prowled the South Devon coast and was responsible for 35 ships being sent to the bottom of the sea in the First World war.
Any lesser U-boat commander would not have attacked the Lord Stewart on sighting no less than three Royal Navy warships escorting her across Lyme Bay. When you consider that there were 134 U-boats operational in WWl and a total of 192 ships sunk by them, it is nothing short of remarkable that Bieber notched up 35 'kills'.
The Lord Stewart was, however, the last ship to fall foul of Bieber as he and all of his crew were lost just two days later when UB 104 struck a mine in the North Sea and the scourge of the South Devon coast joined his victims in Davy Jones' Locker. Bieber was just 28 years old.
No comments:
Post a Comment