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Description

New York Times article relating to Captain Thomas Ensor's statement about the sinking of his ship, the Housatonic, by German U-boat commander, Lieutenant Hans Rose on 3 Feb 1917.

Article Text

   Captain Thomas A. Ensor, the commander of the steamship Housatonic, the first American vessel to be destroyed after the publication of the German note on Jan. 31, arrived here yesterday from Liverpool on the Cunarder Orduna with the firm conviction that it was the U-53 which sank his ship in the Bay of Biscay.
   In support of his assertion, the captain brought back a life preserver marked U-53 on the inside and also on the canvas straps. He got the life preserver from one of the crew of the submarine.
   Captain Ensor said the commander of the U-Boat was a tall, thin Lieutenant with a pointed beard and a fluent command of the English language, which fits the pictures and description of Lieutenant Hans Rose, who was in charge of the U-53 when the craft visited Newport on Oct. 7, 1916, and sunk five steamships the following day off Nantucket Lightship.
   "On the afternoon of Feb. 3," Captain Ensor said, "the Housatonic was twenty miles southwest of the Bishop Rock, bound from Galveston for Liverpool with a cargo of grain and flour. Suddenly I saw a submarine emerge a little on the port bow and signal our ship to stock. I obeyed the order, and when the Housatonic got closer up a boat was lowered from the submarine, containing an officer and two seamen, who pulled over to our vessel and came on board.

   "While the officer was examining the papers I noticed that the men had life preservers bearing U-53 stamped in black letters on the brown canvas. When the men were ordered to go below and examine the hold they laid their life belts on deck, and I dropped an oilskin coat over one of them and picked it up later when I went to get my things together before leaving ship.
   "After reading the ship's papers the officer ordered me to go on board the submarine and show them to the commander, while he remained on the Housatonic with his two men. By this time the crew had three of the lifeboats down in the water, which was ample accommodation for all, as there were only twenty-six on our ship all told.
   "When I boarded the U-53, as I assumed the craft to be, I was met by the commander, who answered the description of Lieut. Hans Rose. In perfectly good English he asked me where I was bound and what car go I had in the hold. After he had examined the papers, the German officer turned to me and said that I must return to my ship immediately and order the crew to take to the boats, because he was going to sink the Housatonic.
   "'I regret to have to do this, Captain,' he explained, 'but it is necessary because you are carrying food supplies to the enemies of my country.'
   "When I reached the Housatonic I told I told the crew to prepare to leave the ship at once and take a small bundle of their clothing with them that they could collect easily, as the time was short. We left in two of the lifeboats, with the chief officer in command of one and myself in charge of the other.

   "Meantime the officer and the two sailors who had come off in the boat from the submarine had been occupied in placing bombs in various parts of the Housatonic below decks, and they left her shortly after we got away. Within a few minutes there was a big explosion, followed by a second one further aft, and we saw the last of the Housatonic and her cargo of wheat and flour.
   "At first the commander of the submarine was going to submerge and leave us to our fate on the open sea, but I prevailed on him to tow us toward the shore, which he did at a speed of fifteen or more knots. After about two hours' towing a British patrol boat was sighted on the horizon, and the U-boat stopped and sheared to starboard. The commander shouted out to me, 'I am going to leave you now, as that fellow will pick you up soon.'
   "I looked through my glasses, which were slung round my neck, and saw that the patrol boat was steaming along comfortably and apparently had not noticed the submarine or the lifeboats. I called the attention of the commander to this fact and asked him not to go away. He replied:  'That fellow is asleep, but I will wake him up for you.'  Then he ordered the portal gun to be fired. He submerged a few moments later as the patrol boat was seen coming toward us at full speed with the thick black smoke belching out of her tall funnel. It proved to be the trailer Salvator, which picked up the crew of the two lifeboats and landed us on the east coast of Cornwall, England.
   Captain Ensor added that the officers, engineers and men of the Housatonic would arrive here tomorrow on the American liner Philadelphia from Liverpool.
   Another passenger on the Orduna was Mark Alexander, 30 years old, an American of Roanoke, Va., who has been serving with the British army at the Dardanelles and Saloniki. He lost both his hands and his left eye when they grenade he was holding exploded by a rifle bullet from the enemy's lines. He spent several weeks in the hospital recovering from his wounds, and is now returning to Roanoke.

   A first cabin passenger on the Orduna, who wished to have his name withheld, told of a narrow escape of a transport in the Solent and the ramming of a submarine. He was crossing to Portsmouth in one of the Isle of Wright boats, and was standing on the deck amidships watching a transport which had just passed them at a speed of eighteen to twenty knots.
   "Her decks were crowded with troops," the passenger said, "and to my horror I saw a submarine emerge on her starboard beam. Before the under-sea fighter had a chance to fire a torpedo or the bow guns, the transport swung around and ran her down, passing clean over the submarine and lashing the sea with her two big propellers. When she had proceeded on her way toward France I looked through my glasses but could not see any traces of the submarine. 
   The Orduna brought thirty-seven passengers and about 3,000 sacks of mail

Source

New York Times, 21 Feb 1917.

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