Zeppelin L . 19 ( LZ 54 ) The airship L . 19 ( also known as the LZ 54 ) was a World War I Zeppelin of the German " Kaiserliche Marine " ( Imperial Navy ) . While returning from her first bombing raid on the United Kingdom in early 1916 , she came down in the North Sea . Her crew survived the crash , but drowned after the crew of a British fishing vessel refused to rescue them ; at the time , this was a widely reported and notorious incident . Description . The L . 19 was one of twenty – two P - class military Zeppelins built by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin for the German Army and Navy . They were improved versions of the pre – war , M – class aircraft . They had a larger gas volume and more power , having four instead of three engines . These were initially Maybach C - X engines ; later replaced with the , Maybach HSLu . The Zeppelin had two gondolas , the forward one housing the control cabin and a single engine , the rear containing the other three engines . The P - class Zeppelins were around faster than the earlier craft ; they had a higher service – ceiling , over double the range and double the payload . A bomb - load of could be carried and a number of MG 08 machine guns were mounted for aircraft defence . The number of guns varied – army Zeppelins carried more as they operated over land and enemy aircraft were a greater threat , navy Zeppelins carried fewer to save weight . The guns were mounted in the two gondolas under the airship , in a tail gun position , and on a dorsal gun platform on the top of the envelope . This upper platform could accommodate three guns and their gunners . The airship ' s normal complement was 18 , but it could be flown with a reduced crew . History . The L . 19 first flew on 27 November 1915 . Her constructor ' s number was LZ 54 . L . 19 was a tactical number allocated by the German Navy . She completed 14 flights during her nine weeks of service . Several of these flights were patrols over the North Sea , searching for Allied merchant and naval ships . Naval scouting was the main role of the navy ' s Zeppelin fleet and a total of 220 such flights were carried out during the war . The lack of aggressive activity by the German Navy meant the tactical need for such scouting was reduced . During the 1915 – 1916 winter the L . 19 became well - known to neutral merchant ships in the North Sea due to her frequent patrols . On one occasion she touched down close to a Swedish ship to inspect her . The ship was allowed to proceed when her neutral status was established . On another occasion , she and two other Zeppelins forestalled a British air raid by discovering , to the north of Terschelling , an approaching flotilla of three Royal Navy Seaplane tender s , an apparent British attempt to repeat their successful Cuxhaven Raid . The British were surprised when lowering the seaplanes into the sea . L . 19 hit one of the ships with a bomb and radioed nearby German naval ships . The British abandoned the raid and retreated . 31 January / 1 February air raid . Commanded by " Kapitänleutnant " Odo Loewe , the L . 19 left her base at Tondern ( now Tønder in Denmark ) at noon on 31 January 1916 , one of nine navy Zeppelins to raid England that night . This was part of a new , more aggressive strategy that had been brought to the German navy with the recent appointment of Reinhard Scheer as its commander - in - chief . The head of German naval airships , " Fregattenkapitän " Peter Strasser , was on board the L . 11 , leading the attack personally . He had orders to bomb targets of opportunity in central and southern England , reaching Liverpool if possible . The Zeppelins encountered thick fog in the North Sea , followed by rain clouds and snow off the English coast and the attacking force became dispersed ; the nine airships crossed the English coast between 5 : 50pm and 7 . 20pm . The L . 19 was the very last , crossing the coast near Sheringham . At 10 : 45pm , she reached Burton on Trent , becoming the third raider to attack the town that night . She then proceeded south , dropping the remainder of her bomb load on several towns on the outskirts of Birmingham . At 12 . 20am , a pub in Tipton was destroyed ; buildings were also damaged in nearby Walsall and Birchills . She caused no casualties aside from some farm animals , although bombs dropped three hours earlier by her sister - ship , the L . 21 , killed 35 people in the area , including the wife of the Mayor of Walsall ; a total of 61 people were reported killed and 101 injured by the raid . Due to the extreme difficulties of navigating with primitive equipment , at night over a darkened countryside , the captain of the L . 21 believed he had bombed Liverpool , in fact around away . The L . 19 made a slow , erratic return journey , doubling back several times ; this was almost certainly due to engine trouble . The Zeppelin force had been newly fitted with Maybach HSLu engines . While lighter and more powerful than those they replaced , the new engines were proving unreliable – five of the nine airships had suffered engine failures during the raid . The L . 19 sent several signals , asking for a position fix by radio - triangulation and reporting the results of her bombing . The last signal was heard from her at 4pm on the day after the raid when she was north of the Dutch island of Ameland . She reported three out of four engines had failed and her Telefunken radio equipment was malfunctioning . Around an hour later , the Zeppelin drifted low over the island and Dutch units on the ground opened fire on her . The Netherlands was a neutral country and Dutch forces had standing orders to fire on overflying , foreign aircraft . A south wind blew the L . 19 offshore and , some time during the night of 1 – 2 February , the Zeppelin came down in the North Sea . Loewe dropped a bottle into the sea , with a report on his situation and with letters to his family ; this was found a few weeks later by a yacht near Gothenburg , Sweden . The German Navy put ships to sea that night to search for the L . 19 , but they only discovered one of her fuel - tanks , still containing fuel . This was likely dropped as a desperate measure to save weight and remain aloft . The " King Stephen " Incident . The next morning , the floating wreck of the airship was discovered by a British steam fishing trawler , the " King Stephen " of 162 tons , commanded by William Martin ( 1869 – 1917 ) . The vessel had sighted distress signals during the night and had spent several hours steaming towards them . Clinging to the wreck were the airship ' s 16 crew The normal complement of a P - class Zeppelin was 18 , but Zeppelins flying on air - raids often flew short - handed , with two or three of the least needed crew - members left behind in order to save weight . The fishing - vessel approached and " Kapitänleutnant " Loewe , who spoke English well , asked for rescue . Martin refused . In a later newspaper interview he stated that the nine crew of the " King Stephen " were unarmed and badly outnumbered , and would have had little chance of resisting the German airmen if , after being rescued , they had hijacked his vessel to sail it to Germany An alternative explanation for his action , suggested by a 2005 BBC documentary on the incident , is that the " King Stephen " was in a zone in which fishing was prohibited by the British authorities , and that Martin feared that if he returned to a British port with a large number of German prisoners , attention might have been drawn to this and he would have been banned from fishing . Ignoring the Germans ' pleas for help , promises of good conduct and even offers of money , Martin sailed " King Stephen " away . He later said he intended to search for a Royal Navy ship to report his discovery to . However , he met none and the encounter with the L . 19 was only reported to the British authorities on his return to the " King Stephen ' s " home - port of Grimsby . The weather was worsening as the " King Stephen " departed and the Zeppelin remained afloat for only a few hours . During this time , the L . 19 ' s crew threw a bottle with messages into the sea . Discovered six months later by Swedish fishermen at Marstrand , the bottle contained personal last messages from the airmen to their families and a final report from Loewe . Royal Navy ships made a search of the area but they found no trace of the Zeppelin or her crew . The body of one of the Germans washed ashore four months later at Løkken in Denmark . In 1964 , a journalist researching the incident checked Admiralty archives and interviewed two surviving members of the " King Stephen ' s " crew . This revealed that Martin had indeed been fishing in a forbidden zone and had initially given the naval authorities a false position for the Zeppelin in order to conceal this , making the Royal Navy search for the airship futile . The incident received world - wide publicity and divided British public opinion . Captain Martin was condemned by many for leaving the German airmen to die . Martin was vilified by the German press , as was the Bishop of London for supporting him . The encounter between the L . 19 and the " King Stephen " also featured in German propaganda . The scene was recreated for a German propaganda film and illustrated by an anti - British medal , designed by The " King Stephen " never again sailed as a fishing vessel . After her return , she was taken over by the Royal Navy for use as a Q - ship , under the command of Lieutenant Tom Phillips RNR . She was sunk 12 weeks later , on the 25 April 1916 . An official German communiqué , reported by the New York Times , stated she had been sunk by one of the German vessels taking part in the Bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft . The " King Stephen " , now fitted with a 3 pounder Hotchkiss gun , had fired on and pursued a surfaced U - boat , but then inadvertently steamed directly into the path of the returning German fleet . She was sunk by the torpedo boat SMS " G41 " and her crew taken prisoner . The " King Stephen ' s " name was notorious to the Germans and Lt . Phillips was charged with war crimes upon reaching Germany . However , the charges were dropped and he and his crew were treated as normal prisoners - of - war after a photograph of William Martin was published in a British newspaper and the Germans realized they held another man . William Martin himself died of heart - failure in Grimsby , slightly over a year after encountering the L . 19 , on the 24 February 1917 . He had received a large numbers of letters , including both letters of support and , reportedly , hate - mail and death - threats . In July 1939 , an unexploded munition ( described by a press report as an " " Aerial Torpedo " " ) was discovered near Kidderminster during renovation work on a bridge . At the time , it was believed to have been dropped by the L . 19 . Surviving relics . One of the L . 19 crew ' s bottles , together with its messages , are surviving relics of the incident ; they were displayed as part of an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in London in 2001 . The Aeronauticum , the German naval aviation museum in Nordholz , displays one of the " King Stephen ' s " lifebelts , as well as her Red Ensign flag , taken from the vessel before she was sunk . Both the National Maritime Museum and the National Air and Space Museum in the United States own rare examples of Karl Goetz ' s medal .