The elegant form of the White Ensign was a rather uncommon sight up and down the coast of British Columbia throughout the month of August, even more so as
Rainbow had met a watery demise and
Shearwater sat derelict in Esquimalt harbor. It did not take particularly long for the news of that mornings attack to spread like wildfire across the nearby coastal towns, any remaining doubters were quickly put to in their place by the periodic din of naval guns off in not-so-distant waters. The Militia and Navy had been taken completely off guard by the Germans incursion through the Strait of Juan de Fuca during the night and had been incredibly slow to react initially however, the preparation plans which were already in place had begun to finally be acted upon. Now that at least one German raider had been confirmed to be actively attacking the coast, measures had to be enacted to do as much as humanly possible to obstruct the mission of their enemy. The main concern of the local authorities was under the Hague Convention in relation of the Bombardment of Undefended Ports, it was completely legal for any hostile warship to enter a harbor and demand provisions or supplies necessary in fulfilling their mission. Refusal to comply would result in the legal protections bestowed upon such a town being removed, leaving the enemy vessel to freely bombard the area in question with little legal consequence. This was especially troublesome for British Columbia as the local vicinity to major coal deposits meant that many towns such as Nanaimo, Victoria, Ladysmith, etc could easily be used as resupply points due to their large-scale refueling infrastructure. Such things had been taken into consideration before hand with contingency plans as local stationed militia units were instructed to sabotage coal bunkers, barges, colliers, trains, and any other infrastructure required to successfully refuel a vessel. If a port were simply unable to supply an enemy vessel with fuel, they were not declining but physically unable to render assistance and therefore would still be protected legally.
Actually undertaking such actions in practice though was another matter entirely. Sabotaging vital infrastructure such as the coal loading facilities would seriously hamper both merchant and military efforts alike after the fact for a sizable period but such sacrifices were required in war. Little would the Canadians realize at the time that such self-destructive efforts would be more damaging in the end than the Germans, themselves being fully fueled with an entire collier waiting up the coast in support. The citizens of these coal port towns and militiamen alike had become relatively close as of the past few years, perhaps not in the most amicable of ways either. Strikes had broken out across largely all of British Columbia’s coal mining workers through 1912 due to issues with working conditions and largely the demand want to become unionized. In typical fashion befitting the period, companies fervently rejected unions, resorting to many different unsavory tactics in order to ensure proper operation of the mines. The situation had devolved quickly into a melee of violence between the police, strikers, strikebreakers and the companies themselves. This all came to a head in Ladysmith at least in mid August, 1913 when over 400 striking miners vandalized the local Temperance Hotel which had been renting rooms to recently arrived replacement workers. A pair of bombings on the hotel and a strike-breakers house resulted in the towns mayor admitting their 6-man strong police force was not up to the task and therefore called in assistance from the Militia. Victoria’s 5th Regiment would arrive in Ladysmith on August 15 in order to restore law to the town, being partially commanded by the later famous Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Currie.
Militiamen providing armed escort for strikebreakers and replacement workers as they walk to work amidst the Coal Strikes.
Currie assembled his men in front of the Abbotsford Hotel and made an address to the citizens who had gathered.
“We are very sorry to come here. We are volunteer soldiers who have had to leave our homes and offices, and it is putting us to much inconvenience, as we do not know when we shall be able to go back to our homes. However, we have been sent here to keep order. We hope for the least possible trouble. We shall not trouble you if we can help it. But, we are here to keep order, and we intend to do it.”
Currie would soon after order his men to load their rifles with live ammunition in front of the citizens as a show of force. Such things came off as potentially a bit too forceful as one militiaman accidently discharged their rifle into the air and send the crowd scurrying away. The Militia actively look sides in the conflict which would last into August of 1914, executing numerous arrest warrants throughout the various towns targeted at strikers in order to hopefully break the siege. They also actively escorted workers through picket lines and directly fought the strikers. This violent and turbulent state of affairs was finally ceased officially on August 15, 1914 when an agreement was reached with the strikers for them to return to work. With Canada now at war and the looming threat of the Germans, the Militia could not be further tied up with such trivial matters and the coal had to start rolling once again to feed hungry merchants. Therefore, the strike was ended with no unions formed but strikers supposedly allowed to return to work. Some did however, others would find themselves ostracized, destitute and jobless as many parts of the former bustling coal towns had come to resemble more of slums or warzones.
With that all being said, nervous Militiamen and terrified citizen alike in Ladysmith that faithful morning must have let out a sigh of relief as the familiar White Ensign flying visage of a sloop entered their harbor. Being one of only two ‘real warships’ assigned to the Esquimalt navy base; the friendly silhouette of the HMS
Algerine was a reassuring sight as the last real hope to drive off the Germans from their coastline. The feelings of relief seeing a savior essentially descend down from on high masked some of the rather obvious warning signs that something was amiss with the entire situation, Ladysmith had not been informed of
Algerine’s arrival in advance and the fact was that Royal Navy ships very rarely refueled outside of Esquimalt as the base was where the Admiralty stored its highest quality steaming coal. Cheering erupted from the various militiamen, entente flagged vessels and concerned citizens all around the town however as the sloop moved forward at its top speed, attempts to communicate with her were seemingly futile. The ship was not equipped with a wireless set but even so, semaphore signals ashore were promptly ignored even though it was quite evident that men were running about her decks with worrying resolve. As 0923 ticked around and to the total horror of all who watched, the White Ensign was hauled down from the mainmast and was swiftly replaced by a huge white German Imperial Ensign which unfurled itself out into the wind. To describe the ensuring events as anything besides pandemonium would not properly be doing them justice as
Algerine fired a three-gun salvo from her port side, the splashes jumping skywards around the major points of importance in the harbor. She quickly went about signaling by semaphore to all of the nearby vessels to abandon ship while also in classic German fashion at this point, hauling down on their collision siren with all their strength.
As the screaming banshee circled around the harbor in order to give the civilians at least sometime to escape, Militiamen ashore somewhat apprehensively went about their work. Ladysmith itself possessed two major wharves on its waterfront, the humongous Wellington Colliery loading wharf and the much smaller railcar transfer wharf nearby which was used to move railcars by sea between Esquimalt, Nanaimo, and Ladysmith. The transport wharf itself was not required to be sabotaged so the majority of the effort was put towards the huge coal loading wharf and its accompanying coal bunkers. Measuring in at over 1000ft overall length and being able to simultaneously refuel four vessels at once using three top mounted railway tracks, this immense structure was fed by equally huge coal bunkers which themselves were 400ft long and able to hold 8,000t of coal each which was discharged using chutes into railcars for transfer into ships. It had been initially planned to remove the large safety buffers at the end of the dock and simply push all of the coal inside its carts off into the harbor however, this idea had previously been rejected by the company who owned the wharf was it would make day to day operation dangerous alongside The militia would be forced to dump each coal cart one by one off the side of the wharf however given the crowded nature of the wharf that day with all four berths filled, such things proved time consuming and rather difficult. Three coal scows were in various states of loading around the dock alongside the 6,000t British cargo ship
SS Crown of Toledo, this forced the Canadians to dump approximately 12 waiting railcars of differing capacity down and over two of the scows on the left side of the loading wharf, eventually causing them to become overloaded and sink to the bottom of the harbor. The massive coal bunkers themselves back from the wharves were torched as quick as humanly possible and soon, billowing plumes of black smoke began drifting upwards and out across the wind over Ladysmith.
Ladysmith coal loading wharf in winter.
While this was ongoing,
Algerine had decided on some prey in the meantime. Ladysmith possessed a shingle mill and copper smelter but neither would prove to be particularly valid targets. As was previously explained to the officer commanding the vessel, shingle mills by themselves were not particularly valuable wartime targets and the Tyee Copper Smelter had been left derelict since 1911 when the copper vein nearby had dried up. Much of the machinery had apparently been left to rot or was scavenged, even in a wartime craze for increased production, it was very unlikely such a plant would be brought back into service. With those things in mind,
Algerine would first turn her attention to the only other oceangoing ship in the harbor besides the British merchant, the four masted 2,000t Russian cargo sailing vessel
SS Lucipara which had anchored itself in the bay. The Russian vessel was awaiting its turn at the coaling dock to pick up a shipment of coal but as
Algerine saw her crew evacuate by lifeboat towards the shore, the proverbial ‘open season’ was quickly declared.
Algerine had utilized her maneuverability and small stature to effectively wheel around within the limitations of the otherwise somewhat limited harbor area and brought her 4” gun battery against the vessel at less than 300 yards. The crew picked for
Algerine had largely been some of the more inexperienced gunners or men who lacked any gunnery experience but even with these unfamiliar weapons, the engagement was rather one sided in the end. One shell knocked the ships bowsprit down into the waters below as her humanoid figurehead was left disfigured beyond identification, deck cargo being blown about by the explosions aboard. The remainder of the shells were all aimed towards her waterline and would soon inflict mortal damage on the nearly 30-year-old vessel as within 5 minutes, she would heel to port in a death roll which she would never recover from.
As
Algerine would turn about again and plunge deeper into the harbor, this time she closed with the shoreline and started taking individual train cars alongside their various infrastructure under fire with both her 4” main battery and her secondary 3 pdr Hotchkiss guns. With these cars and associated structures being so close to the town of Ladysmith itself, Korvettenkapitän Kretschmar had either grown tired of the town which had largely begun self destructing when he arrived or truly believed in the competency of his gunners. Regardless as they systematically went about stripping the city of its surrounding rail system, Militiamen onshore had begun to bear down on the vessel as she passed, opening fire from various positions ashore with their rifles. Many of the soldiers ashore seemed to be following
Algerine up and down the shorelines as she passed and repeatedly wheeled around, although their fire was generally ineffective and bursts from the sloop’s maxim guns barked out frequently in defiance of the brave but futile attempts at retribution. Targets eventually dwindled as many sections of rail were bent and warped with the cars on them being largely riddled with shrapnel or destroyed. Even as the Canadians continued to sabotage their own loading facilities, it would seem that
Algerine wished to rejoin the action and show the Canadians how to do a proper job. 4” high explosive shells began to strike the waters around the one of the coal scows and the British merchant at the dock, the Germans rather quickly showing what short-range gunnery could do to stationary targets once again. The scow was rendered sinking in only a handful of hits to her rather paltry excuse for a hull however, the
SS Crown of Toledo proved to be a much more dangerous beast. Several shell hits to her superstructure eventually caused a small fire to erupt which quickly accelerated across the vessel itself in a hellish torrent of flames as the coal dust and residue from the incomplete loading procedure mixed with her deck and forward hold cargo of various timber products. The fire would burn through the vessels mooring lines and cause it to be pushed inwards against the coal loading wharf itself by the tides, exposing the creosote treated structure to a heavy set of direct flames.
Coal scow being loaded by train cars and chutes.
Algerine put her rudder had over once again and placed her stern towards the remains of the towns burning infrastructure. The Canadians dumping the railcars were eventually forced to abandon their endeavors as the flames begun to spread upwards and across the wharf itself, further adding to the dark clouds radiating out from the small town. With her objective complete alongside minimal ammunition expend and zero casualties,
Algerine nosed out of Ladysmith harbor and started her march north towards Nanaimo. Seemingly as a parting gift on her way out the door, the sloop made one single pass on the E&R railcar transfer dock. The structure did not have any barges, tugs or other transport vessels moored alongside however, a shipment of various boxcars and locomotives awaited future pickup out on the dock itself.
Algerine pounded the wharf into a pile of unrecognizable warped metal and wooden shrapnel as she went, one eyewitness claiming that a boxcar was flung completely off the rails almost landed as far back as the shoreline itself.
I'm hoping to get the next post out by Monday but I'll get back to everybody regarding that!
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