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Concept
Baralong incidents
Summary
The Baralong incidents were two incidents during the First World War in August and September 1915, involving the Royal Navy Q-ship and two German U-boats. Baralong sank , which had been preparing to attack a nearby merchant ship, the Nicosian. About a dozen of the crewmen managed to escape from the sinking submarine and Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert, commanding officer of Baralong, ordered the survivors to be executed after they boarded the Nicosian. All the survivors of U-27s sinking, including several who had reached the Nicosian, were shot by Baralongs crew. Later, Baralong sank in an incident which has also been described as a British war crime.
After the sinking of by a German submarine in May 1915, Lieutenant-Commander Godfrey Herbert, commanding officer of Baralong, was visited by two officers of the Admiralty's Secret Service branch at the naval base at Queenstown, Ireland. He was told, "This Lusitania business is shocking. Unofficially, we are telling you... take no prisoners from U-boats."
Interviews with his subordinate officers have established Herbert's undisciplined manner of commanding his ship. Herbert allowed his men to engage in drunken binges during shore leave. During one such incident, at Dartmouth, several members of Baralongs crew were arrested after destroying a local pub. Herbert paid their bail, then left port with the bailed crewmen aboard. Beginning in April 1915, Herbert ordered his subordinates to cease calling him "Sir", and to address him only by the pseudonym "Captain William McBride".
Throughout the summer of 1915, Baralong continued routine patrol duties in the Irish Sea without encountering the enemy.
On 19 August 1915, sank the White Star Liner with the loss of 44 lives – this included three Americans and resulted in a diplomatic incident between Germany and the United States. HMS Baralong had been about from the scene, and had received a distress call from the ship. Baralongs crew was infuriated by the attack and by their inability to locate survivors.
Official source
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