Baralong incidents The Baralong incidents were naval engagements of the First World War in August and September 1915 , involving the Royal Navy Q - ship , later renamed HMS " Wyandra " , and two German U - boat s . " Baralong " sank " U - 27 " , which had been preparing to sink a nearby merchant ship , the " Nicosian " . About a dozen of the crewmen managed to escape the sinking submarine , and Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert , commanding officer of " Baralong " , ordered the surviving sailors to be summarily executed after they boarded the " Nicosian " . All the survivors of " U - 27 " s sinking , including several who had reached the " Nicosian " , were shot by " Baralong " s crew . Later , " Baralong " sank " U - 41 " in an incident which has also been described as a war crime . First incident . Action of 19 August 1915 . After the sinking of the RMS " Lusitania " 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 " Baralong " s crew were arrested after destroying a local saloon . Herbert paid their bail , then left port with the indicted crewmen aboard . Beginning in April 1915 , Herbert ordered his subordinates 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 led to a diplomatic incident between Germany and the U . S . " Baralong " had been about from the scene , and had received a distress call from the ship . " Baralong " s crew was infuriated by the attack and by their inability to locate survivors . Meanwhile , about 100 miles ( 160 kilometers ) south of Queenstown , " U - 27 " , commanded by " Kapitänleutnant " Bernard Wegener , stopped the British steamer " Nicosian " in accordance with the rules laid down by the London Declaration . A boarding party of six men from " U - 27 " discovered that " Nicosian " was carrying munitions and 250 American mules earmarked for the British Army in France . The Germans allowed the freighter ' s crew and passengers to board lifeboats , and prepared to sink the freighter with the U - boat ' s deck gun . " U - 27 " was lying off " Nicosian " s port quarter and firing into it when " Baralong " appeared on the scene , flying the ensign of the United States as a false flag . When she was half a mile away , " Baralong " ran up a signal flag indicating that she was going to rescue " Nicosian " s crew . Wegener acknowledged the signal , then ordered his men to cease firing , and took " U - 27 " along the port side of " Nicosian " to intercept " Baralong " . As the submarine disappeared behind the steamship , Herbert steered " Baralong " on a parallel course along " Nicosian " s starboard side . Before " U - 27 " came round " Nicosian " s bow , " Baralong " hauled down the American flag , hoisted the Royal Navy ' s White Ensign , and unmasked her guns . As " U - 27 " came into view from behind " Nicosian " , " Baralong " opened fire with her three 12 - pounder gun s at a range of , firing 34 rounds for only a single shot from the submarine . " U - 27 " rolled over and began to sink . According to Tony Bridgland , " Herbert screamed , ' Cease fire ! ' But his men ' s blood was up . They were avenging the " Arabic " and the " Lusitania " . For them this was no time to cease firing , even as the survivors of the crew appeared on the outer casing , struggling out of their clothes to swim away from her . There was a mighty hiss of compressed air from her tanks and the " U - 27 " vanished from sight in a vortex of giant rumbling bubbles , leaving a pall of smoke over the spot where she had been . It had taken only a few minutes to fire the thirty - four shells into her . " Meanwhile , " Nicosian " s crew were cheering wildly from the lifeboats . Captain Manning was heard to yell , " If any of those bastard Huns come up , lads , hit ' em with an oar ! " Twelve men survived the sinking of the submarine : the crews of her two deck guns and those who had been on the conning tower . They swam to " Nicosian " and attempted to join the six - man boarding party by climbing up her hanging lifeboat falls and pilot ladder . Herbert , worried that they might try to scuttle the steamer , ordered his men to open fire with small arms , killing all in the water . Wegener is described by some accounts as being shot while trying to swim to the " Baralong " . Herbert sent " Baralong " s twelve Royal Marines , under the command of a Corporal Collins , to find the surviving German sailors aboard " Nicosian " . As they departed , Herbert told Collins , " Take no prisoners . " The Germans were discovered in the engine room and shot on sight . According to Sub - Lieutenant Gordon Steele : " Wegener ran to a cabin on the upper deck - - I later found out it was Manning ' s bathroom . The marines broke down the door with the butts of their rifles , but Wegener squeezes through a scuttle and dropped into the sea . He still had his life - jacket on and put up his arms in surrender . Corporal Collins , however , took aim and shot him through the head . " Corporal Collins later recalled that , after Wegener ' s death , Herbert threw a revolver in the German captain ' s face and screamed , " What about the " Lusitania " , you bastard ! " An alternative account says that the Germans who boarded " Nicosian " were killed by the freighter ' s engine room staff ; this report apparently came from the officer in command of the muleteers . Aftermath . In Herbert ' s report to the Admiralty , he stated he feared the survivors from the U - boat ' s crew would board the freighter and scuttle her , so he ordered the Royal Marines on his ship to shoot the survivors . If they had scuttled the freighter , it could have been counted as negligence on the part of Herbert . Moments before " Baralong " began her attack , the submarine was firing on the freighter . It is not known if the escaping sailors actually intended to scuttle the freighter . The Admiralty , upon receiving Herbert ' s report , immediately ordered its suppression , but the strict censorship imposed on the event failed when Americans who had witnessed the incident from " Nicosian " s lifeboats spoke to newspaper reporters after their return to the United States . German memorandum . The German government delivered a memorandum on the incident via the American ambassador in Berlin , who received it on 6 December 1915 . In it , they cited six US citizens as witnesses , stating they had made sworn depositions regarding the incident before public notaries in the US . The statements said that five survivors from " U - 27 " managed to board " Nicosian " , while the rest were shot and killed on Herbert ' s orders while clinging to the merchant vessel ' s lifeboat falls . It was further stated that when Herbert ordered his Marines to board " Nicosian " , he gave the order " take no prisoners " . Four German sailors were found in " Nicosian " s engine room and propeller shaft tunnel , and were killed . According to the witness statements , " U - 27 " s commander was shot while swimming towards " Baralong " . The memorandum demanded that the captain and crew of " Baralong " be tried for the murder of unarmed German sailors , threatening to " take the serious decision of retribution for an unpunished crime " . Sir Edward Grey replied through the American ambassador that the incident could be grouped together with the Germans ' sinking of the SS " Arabic " , their attack on a stranded British submarine on the neutral Dutch coast , and their attack on the steamship " Ruel " , and suggested that they be placed before a tribunal composed of US Navy officers . German reaction . A debate took place in the Reichstag on 15 January 1916 , where the incident was described as a " cowardly murder " and Grey ' s note as being " full of insolence and arrogance " . It was announced that reprisals had been decided , but not what form they would take . The outrage aroused in Germany by " Baralong " s actions was used by the " Kaiserliche Marine " to justify attacking and sinking ships without warning at sea during the First World War , and was used again in the Second World War as a reason for the " Kriegsmarine " to do the same . A German medal was issued commemorating the event . " Baralong " and her crew were also placed on the " Kaiserliche Marine " s " Black List " : any member of her crew was to be shot on sight if captured . As a precaution to protect the ships against any reprisals against their crews , HMS " Wyandra " was transferred to the Mediterranean , and took the name of sister ship " Manica " , while " Baralong " s name was deleted from " Lloyd ' s Register " . " Nicosian " was renamed " Nevisian " , and the crew was issued new Discharge Books , with the voyage omitted . " Baralong " s crew were later awarded £185 prize bounty for sinking " U - 27 " . A Kriegsmarine submarine flotilla formed on 25 June 1938 was named " Wegener " in memory of " U - 27 " s commander Second incident . Action of 24 September 1915 . On 24 September 1915 , " Baralong " sank the U - boat , for which her commanding officer at the time , Lieutenant - Commander A . Wilmot - Smith , was later awarded £170 prize bounty . " U - 41 " was in the process of sinking SS " Urbino " with gunfire when " Baralong " arrived on the scene , flying an American flag . When " U - 41 " surfaced near " Baralong " , the latter opened fire while continuing to fly the American flag , and sank the U - boat . Aftermath of the second incident . Unlike the neutral Americans in the first incident , the only witnesses to the second attack were the German and British sailors present . " Oberleutnant zur See " Iwan Crompton , after returning to Germany from a prisoner - of - war camp , reported that " Baralong " had run down the lifeboat he was in ; he leapt clear and was shortly after taken aboard " Baralong " . The British crew denied that they had run down the lifeboat . Crompton later published an account of " U - 41 " s exploits in 1917 , " U - 41 : der zweite Baralong - Fall " , which called the sinking of " U - 41 " a " second Baralong case " . The event was also commemorated in a propaganda medal designed by the German engraver Karl Goetz . This was one of many medals that were popular in Germany from around 1910 to 1940 .