The Rainbow. A World War One on Canada's West Coast Timeline

[YYJ]

Aug 13. SMS Leipzig, Off Cape Mendocino California.

Haun took Leipzig north at a casual pace. He knew that Rainbow had been in these same waters recently, but he did not think he would be so fortunate as to meet her. He knew from intelligence reports provided by the Counsel General that the Canadian ship had at least a 24 hour head start. He held the old Apollo class cruiser in low regard, and expected her to fly before him. But one always had to be careful of British bloodymindedness. The British were prone to throwing their lives away if honour was on the line. Perhaps Canadians were the same. He hoped not.

Haun’s real priority at this point was not sinking a third rate cruiser from the early 1890s that would have been paid off as a depot ship were it still in England. It was coal. He hoped to capture a prize, and coal up. A collier would be ideal, but he would take any kind of ship at the moment and transfer their bunkers to his. But the only ships he encountered were American: coastal steamers, transpacific windjammers, tugs pulling barges and log booms, yachts with owners of modest or immense wealth, whalers, pelagic sealing fleets. All flew the stars and stripes. Haun did encounter one Japanese freight liner, the Murakami Maru, and a Portuguese barque, working its way down the coast towards San Francisco. Both neutrals and untouchable. He contemplated asking the Japanese if he could buy coal but, he reasoned, that would only become intelligence reported to the Royal Navy–his position and that he was short of coal.

As darkness fell Leipzig lay off Cape Mendocino. Haun ordered her put about at the Blunt's Reef lightship and headed south. He was going have to see what coal San Francisco would sell him.

 

[YYJ]

Aug 13, SMS Nürnberg, Pacific Ocean near Dixon Entrance

Captain Von Schönberg waited all day yesterday afternoon and evening for a westbound ship to take. After the prize Nürnberg had taken at noon, the shipping lane dried up. Today looked like more of the same. There was a trickle of eastbound traffic that he avoided, but nothing westbound, that is, outbound from North America. The visibility was poor at times and rain intermittent, but Von Schönberg felt that there was more going on than just that. Either it was time to move on, or time to behave more aggressively.

Around 1700 the lookout spotted a sail eastbound. He decided that a sailing ship with no wireless would be harder to determine as overdue than a steamer, so he decided to board.

Nürnberg stopped the 2000 ton 4 masted square-rigged ship Aberystwyth–Victoria BC, sailing from Yokohama. She was laden with tea, cloth, porcelain, rice, and sorghum.

“Hardly strategic war materials,” remarked Von Schönberg, although any food item was Conditional Contraband. In any case Aberystwyt was a ship of a belligerent nation. She was sunk with demolition charges. The boarding party returned with 23 crew, a monkey, 60 bags of rice and 20 cases of tea.

Von Schönberg decided that if more westbound traffic did not show by tomorrow, he was going to move closer inshore.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...ibQld_1_126159_Carradale_(ship),_ca._1914.jpg

 

[Somedevil]

Aug 13, SMS Nürnberg, Pacific Ocean near Dixon Entrance

Captain Von Schönberg waited all day yesterday afternoon and evening for a westbound ship to take. After the prize Nürnberg had taken at noon, the shipping lane dried up. Today looked like more of the same. There was a trickle of eastbound traffic that he avoided, but nothing westbound, that is, outbound from North America. The visibility was poor at times and rain intermittent, but Von Schönberg felt that there was more going on than just that. Either it was time to move on, or time to behave more aggressively.

Around 1700 the lookout spotted a sail eastbound. He decided that a sailing ship with no wireless would be harder to determine as overdue than a steamer, so he decided to board.

Nürnberg stopped the 2000 ton 4 masted square-rigged ship Aberystwyth–Victoria BC, sailing from Yokohama. She was laden with tea, cloth, porcelain, rice, and sorghum.

“Hardly strategic war materials,” remarked Von Schönberg, although any food item was Conditional Contraband. In any case Aberystwyt was a ship of a belligerent nation. She was sunk with demolition charges. The boarding party returned with 23 crew, a monkey, 60 bags of rice and 20 cases of tea.

Von Schönberg decided that if more westbound traffic did not show by tomorrow, he was going to move closer inshore.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/StateLibQld_1_126159_Carradale_(ship),_ca._1914.jpg

There going need to off load people real soon..

 

[YYJ]

Aug 14. 1500 hours HMS Rainbow off Caroll Islands, Washington State.

The weather was overcast and rainy as Rainbow tracked south along the coast. The shoreline was heavily treed, and showed no signs of civilization. To the east, the coastal mountains disappeared into the grey cloud layer, giving the effect of a perfectly flat-topped continent. Ahead, Hose could see the lines of surf breaking on the Caroll Islands, or Sea Lion Rocks, or Jagged Islands, their names varying on the author of the chart. These features were just more uninhabited hazards to navigation that gave this area the name the Graveyard of the Pacific. Although there were many points along this coast that vied for the title Graveyard of the Pacific. All had valid claim. Hose could see the skeleton of a sailing ship hard aground on Carol Island, being slowly reduced to flinders by the waves. He knew this ship had been resting there for several years, but also he knew that new victims of the coast appeared on a regular basis.

Something was happening just south of what the chart called Caroll Island proper. There was a vessel hove to outside the three mile limit, at the extreme edge of his visibility. The silhouette was strange. Hose struggled to make sense, and called on the watch officers and lookouts for their opinions.

“Two funnels, different sizes and shapes, and four masts,” said the First Lieutenant, who was younger and better eyes.

“Looks to me like two ships in close company, sir,” said one lookout. “Possibly rafted together.”

Was this a rescue in progress? Was this a boarding action that they had interrupted? Hose looked closely. The lookout was right, there was too much in the way of masts and funnels for a single ship. But none of those belonged to a cruiser. Could the Germans have taken an auxiliary and be using it to capture prizes?

“Action Stations!” called Hose. “Just a precaution, but let’s be careful. Helm, set a course for those ships. Three quarters speed ahead.”

There were some tense moments, but as Rainbow closed, it became clear that the two ships were the HMS Algerine, and a merchant steamer. And as they further closed, He could see boats in the water and figures on deck of both ships, performing what could only be a coaling operation. Hose ordered a signal to be sent by Morse light.

HMCS RAINBOW COME TO TAKE YOU HOME

I AM DAMN GLAD TO SEE YOU, the Algerine responded.

Rainbow slowed and fell in with the two other ships. Algerine had been painted a war grey, and very irregularly close to the water line. The merchant read SS Figueira da Foz–Lisboa on her stern. A neutral, taking an opportunity to make a bit of covert profit from the war economy. Now that the coaling was in progress, Rainbow waited for Algerine to complete the transaction, closely watching the southern horizon. After an hour they cast off and the two Esquimalt bound ships turned north. Hose could not shake the feeling that someone was looking over his shoulder, and ordered double lookout watch aft as they headed north at Algerine’s maximum cruising speed of 10 knots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Algerine_(1895)

 

[weasel_airlift]

I believe tea counts as a vital item for the UK to wage war.

 

[YYJ]

Aug 15. Esquimalt Naval Dockyard.

NSHQ TO HMC DOCKYARD ESQUIMALT JAPAN HAS DELIVERED ULTIMATUM TO GERMANY DEMANDS REMOVAL OF ALL GERMAN SHIPS FROM JAPANESE AND CHINESE WATERS AND SURRENDER CONTROL OF TSINGTAO DEADLINE NOON LOCAL AUGUST 23 STOP

VANCOUVER NAVAL RESERVE HQ TO HMC DOCKYARD ESQUIMALT TWO 4 INCH NAVAL GUNS MOUNTED SIWASH POINT STANLEY PARK STOP NAVAL RESERVE PERSONNEL CONDUCTING DRILL INCLUDING LIVE FIRE DEMONSTRATION STOP

NSHQ TO HMC DOCKYARD ESQUIMALT HMS NEWCASTLE EN ROUTE TO COAL AT YOKOHAMA THEN TO SAIL TO ESQUIMALT STOP

At last, after what seemed like an eternity for the submariners, 22 torpedoes were unloaded at the Esquimalt dockyard A-jetty from the chartered Canadian Pacific steamer Princess May. It was decided to bring the munitions into the main dockyard area rather than the safer but more isolated Cole Island magazine because of proximity to the dockyard machine shops.

Chief Artificer Wood had spent some of the intervening days devising an adapter and procedure that allowed the torpedoes, designed for the tubes of the British-built Canadian Diadem class cruiser HMCS Niobe, to be launched from an American-built Chilean submarine. He had consulted with the Niobe’s Chief Engineer, engineers at the Seattle Drydock and Construction Company, and the Royal Navy Torpedo Factory in Greenock Scotland. He had on his workbench manuals for the Niobe’s torpedo tubes, for the torpedoes themselves, and for the submarines, although unfortunately these were in Spanish. The crated torpedoes were lined up in a row on timbers dockside, and Lieutenant Wood had one inside the shop on a heavy cradle, so he could use it as his prototype and at present, his instructional prop for the artificers and trainees who would be maintaining the torpedoes. The weapon was 16 feet long, its front and rear with the tail fins and propeller were greenish brass, the central part of its tubular body was dull steel. Wood gave the assembled sailors his orientation primer, and his voice took on a droning note. He spread his arms in a behold motion.

“The locomotive torpedo, often called the Whitehead torpedo, was developed by Robert Whitehead for the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1866 in Fiume, Croatia. The first generations of Whitehead torpedoes were called the Fiume torpedo. The reason this matters is that all torpedoes today have this common ancestor, and we are going to use this close family similarity to make these ones do what we want them to do. These examples came to us from HMCS Niobe. We are going to fit them into our submarines.

“This 18 inch Mark IV torpedo was built at the Royal Gun Factory, with production commencing in 1895. That’s what this stamping R.G.F. here stands for.” Wood placed his finger on the letters. “It has a warhead of 200lb of guncotton. The warhead is detonated by the firing pistol,” Wood tapped on the nose of the torpedo, “which happily, is not installed.” The sailors managed some chuckles.

“The Mark IV is a cold torpedo, meaning it runs on compressed air. Range for this model is specified in the manual to be 1500 yards at 22 knots, when charged to 1350 pounds pressure. The limitation of the cold torpedo propulsion system is that as the compressed air expands it draws in heat and becomes cold, to the point where the engine can ice up and malfunction. This design uses sea water to warm the expanding air and the engine to prevent icing. Consequently, the torpedo will perform much better in warm water like the Mediterranean than we can expect it to here. Actual range in our ocean will have to be determined by sea trials. The torpedo is charged by an air compressor onboard the submarine which connects at this fitting… here.”

Wood worked the fitting with a wrench, to demonstrate the action. There was a loud roaring whistle of escaping air. His hat flew off his head and spun through the air. Wood staggered backwards, stunned. The trainees let out a hue and cry, which was completely drowned out by the noise. Wood rushed back to the torpedo and closed the valve.

“Stone the crows!” he shouted, more in disbelief than injury, his hair standing askew. He seemed to forget he was leading a class for trainees. He was livid. “Blast this Canadian Navy! All pensioners and amateurs! Do you know what that was? This torpedo was shipped with its air flask charged, by train, all the way across the country!”

He grabbed a pressure gauge from his workbench and fitted it on the torpedo. There was a brief hissing as the gauge fitted in place.

“Fifteen hundred pounds! It is overcharged!” Woods considered the torpedo. “Lucky thing for us there was no accident en route. If that tank ruptured the train would have been blown to pieces!”

As Wood and the artificer trainees imagined this disaster for a moment, two steam whistles sounded in the harbour. There was cheering and the sound of merriment from the docks.

“Let’s take a break, shall we,” said Wood. He walked out onto the dock, followed by his class. HMCS Rainbow and the sloop HMS Algerine were rounding the point.

http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/18-in_Mark_IV_Torpedo_(UK)

https://www.warmuseum.ca/collection...=1&item_num=0&media_irn=5197230&mode=artifact

 

[Driftless]

You have to wonder how many munitions were shipped in the early days of the war, without those basic safety considerations implemented. People un-accustomed to handling potentially lethal equipment may not have understood those precautions.

 

[Somedevil]

You have to wonder how many munitions were shipped in the early days of the war, without those basic safety considerations implemented. People un-accustomed to handling potentially lethal equipment may not have understood those precautions.

Yes which caused some bad accidents in OTL looking at you Halifax

 

[Tonrich]

You have to wonder how many munitions were shipped in the early days of the war, without those basic safety considerations implemented. People un-accustomed to handling potentially lethal equipment may not have understood those precautions.

It was interesting because as I read the chapter the first thing that went through my mind was 'I wonder if they depressurized them before they shipped them'. Yeah 22 torps blowing in a chain reaction would be pretty catastrophic.

That could have effectively shut down the railroad connection between East and West Canada for some time. Imagine if it happened in a tunnel. You just know things like this would pick the absolute worst place to occur.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Here is an early film of a Whitehead Torpedo warhead exploding filmed by one Thomas Edison

 

[YYJ]

Aug 15, SMS Nürnberg, Dixon Entrance

Nürnberg had been moving slowly to the east since the previous morning. Von Schönberg was now certain that the flow of merchants westward had suddenly stopped for a reason, although he did not know what. He did not believe that Nürnberg had been spotted and reported, but he supposed anything was possible. The weather was wet, visibility poor, and the seas high. Wind was force 8, and Von Schönberg could taste salt on his lips from when he stepped onto the bridge wing. There was little chance of meeting a vessel in this visibility, but Von Schönberg had double lookout watches posted to look for signs of reefs and hazards. He did not intend to end his foray by ignominiously putting one of His Majesty’s warships on the rocks of British Columbia.

At last the lookouts spotted a coastline through a break in the clouds. That was close enough for Von Schönberg. By dead reckoning he should be off Zayas or Dundas Island, in British Columbia very near the Alaska border. But it had been six days since he had seen the sun to fix his position and his charts were very large scale. Many rocks and reefs would not show. Nürnberg hove to in the storm and waited it out. He would have to take better charts of the coast from his next prize, and kicked himself for not thinking of this sooner. He had sent six good sets of charts to the bottom of the Pacific this week.

Finding an alternate arrangement for the captured crews was urgent They and Nürberg's crew both were cheek to jowl. The crowding had become intolerable, especially in this heavy weather. Even higher priority was coal. Despite the ample deck cargo of coal Nürnberg has taken on in Honolulu, she had been steaming for 17 days now, and was nearing a critical point. Von Schönberg could have taken coal from any of the steamers he had captured, All had only been two or three days out of port and bound for a transpacific voyage. But coaling was such a slow and labourious job, and without a sheltered anchorage needed near calm to accomplish. So he had put it off. Now the need was becoming urgent. Soon he might have to burn the piano.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/1910_GTP.jpg

 

[Somedevil]

I feel action is happening real soon

 

[YYJ]

Aug 15, Esquimalt Naval Dockyard.

“Should they (Leipzig and Nürnberg) continue directly up the coast, they will get all the fighting they want. The Rainbow and the two smaller vessels will be ready for them.” Victoria Times, Aug 14, 1914.

Now that the missing ships were accounted for, some overdue housekeeping was able to happen at the dockyard.

The two sloops were tied up, and the Admiralty, in its wisdom, donated the ships to the Canadian Navy, landed the crews, and took the men away that evening on a Canadian Pacific steamer to crew the Niobe on the east coast. Lieutenant Keyes had to scramble to take his pick of the Shearwater and Algerine crewmen he wanted for the submarine flotilla. His choices drew heavily on technicians and engine-room machinists.

Commander Hose also requisitioned crewmen from the sloops to fill out the Rainbow’s crew, and accepted recruits from the reserves, to bring his cruiser up to its full complement of 271 officers and men.

Captain Trousdale of the Shearwater was installed as Dockyard Commander, which sensibly freed up Lieutenant-Commander Jones to dedicate his full attention to captaining CC-1 and helping train the submariners. And Commander Hose was finally, gratefully, able to receive the fuses for Rainbow’s high explosive shells.

Dockyard workers began work removing one pair of 4 inch guns apiece from Shearwater and Algerine, and several hundred rounds of ammunition, as a contingency for using the landed guns as shore batteries wherever they were most needed. The two sloops each retained their forward pair of 4 inch guns for the time being.

The submariners had spent the day at the YMCA pool in downtown Victoria with Lieutenant Keyes, practicing with the submarine escape apparatus. The trainees put on their gear, heavy rubber suits with bizarre cyclopean helmets and weight belts. The men jumped into the shallow end of the pool and walked to the deep end. Then they released the weights, inflated their life vests with a cylinder of compressed air, and after breaking surface, opened the helmet port hole. Swimmers attended in the event that these tasks were performed in the wrong order, as some did. Two successful trials and a submariner was certified to have passed his escape training.

The pool was closed to the public, as the training was a military secret. But a gang of school children found a place to peer over the fence and observe. They shrieked in glee and terror every time an escapee broke surface.

http://www.therebreathersite.nl/12_Atmospheric Diving Suits/1908_Hall_Rees/1908_HallandRees.htm

 

[YYJ]

Aug 16. Grand Trunk Pacific Steamer SS Prince Rupert, Chatham Sound, off Prince Rupert.

Hiram Karlsson was glad to be headed home to Anyox. He had accompanied the Mayor of Prince Rupert and his delegation from the North Coast to Victoria, in order to communicate the urgency of their need for protection against the German cruiser menace. As Town Site Manager, Karlsson was as close to a mayor as the company town could produce. He went along with the Northern delegation to represent his neighbours, the citizens of Anyox, and his employer, the Granby Mining and Smelting Company. “Any-ox”, he had carefully articulated countless times to officials and politicians. “It is pronounced Any-ox.”

Despite the SS Prince Rupert being a comfortable ship, the trip had been the most unpleasant he had ever endured on this coast, and that included his previous experiences with two groundings and one boiler explosion. On the way down to Victoria, the Prince Rupert had steamed overnight at full speed down the Inside Passage blacked out, expecting to meet a German cruiser at every turn. No one aboard had slept a wink. The way back had been the same, pausing only at coastal towns to land their respective mayors at their home constituencies. The Mayor of Prince Rupert had been let off at the Grand Trunk Pacific wharf just after 10AM, accompanied by a detachment of Militia officers from the 6th Regiment Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles.

The officers were proof in flesh that the mayors’ mission had been a success. The northern contingent had shown Victoria that the North needed to be taken seriously, and have protection. The officers had all disembarked at Prince Rupert to locate and prepare sites in the town for a company of infantry that would arrive later in the week by train.

The city fathers of Prince Rupert had marketed their city to the world as a seaport of choice by emphasizing the fact the most efficient shipping lanes follow the Great Circle Route, so Prince Rupert is much closer to Asian ports than Vancouver or San Francisco. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was banking on this fact. But the corollary was that in a time of war also, Prince Rupert was closer to Asian ports. In particular, the enemy port of Tsingtao was feeling far too close to the Northern coast of British Columbia for Karlsson’s liking.

Hopefully, the arrival of a company of the Duke of Connaught’s 6th Regiment infantry would be a harbinger of more defences for the coast. Coastal artillery would be a welcome addition. Warships patrolling the north coast would be another.

Karlsson was happy for the city of Prince Rupert and therefore the region, but at the moment his own town was still dangerously exposed. Some wag had described Anyox as a copper mill with a town attached. Although he was fiercely proud of his town, the description was not far from the truth. The extremely rich copper deposits of the Hidden Creek and Bonanza Mines were the sole purpose for the town, and were so remote that it was easier to bring a smelter to the ore than the other way round. This accident of geography placed one of the main strategic war metal producers in Canada, nay, in the Empire, tantalizingly close to the main Eastern port of the enemy.

For a town of only 2500 people, Karlsson did not imagine that Anyox would rate a garrison or coastal artillery. The town’s main defence was that it lay 50 miles from the open ocean up what Karlsson’s native tongue would call a fjord. That, and because, like a great many places in the Canadian West, Anyox was so new it would not appear on any map printed before 1910.

Karlsson was looking forward to sleeping in his own bed. Around midnight last night, he had almost dozed off in a lounge chair, when a frightful row woke him and ruined all chance of sleep. The Militia officers and some businessmen were sitting with the off-watch Second Officer of the Prince Rupert, and talk turned, as it would, to the war. The Second Officer, a Hungarian, had made what Karlsson thought was an innocuous statement that a nation will do what it needed to do to protect its citizens. One of the businessmen, a Brit, and visibly drunk, would have nothing of this. According to him, the Hapsberg Empire was responsible for the war, and so bore all moral responsibility, and any comparison between them and decent nations was an outrage. This escalated quickly, as each man strove to demonstrate that he was more proud and stubborn than the other. The Brit threw the first blow, in the finest English boxing tradition. The answering slap from the Hungarian knocked the businessman off his feet. The table fell over, and a donnybrook ensued until the infantry officers pulled the men apart.

The Captain of the Prince Rupert was summoned, and just as Karlsson expected order to be restored, the exchange took an unexpected turn. Rather than reprimanding the Second Officer for conduct unbecoming, the Captain, at the urging of the angry Englishman and the Militia officers, treated his subordinate as an enemy alien. The Englishman was released, and the Second Officer, on orders of the Captain, was frogmarched out of the lounge to be locked up. Karlsson watched the man’s face, as he realized what was happening. Disbelief, then shock, then a pause that looked like the deepest pain, before he was taken with a rage that eclipsed that of the previous altercation. He demonstrated well the language of a sailor, as he cursed the captain, the militiamen, the Englishman, all captains, all militiamen, all Englishmen, all businessmen, and the British Empire, his voice fading in volume but clearly audible long after he had been dragged from the cabin and down the passage. It was the last look on the Hungarian’s face, his realization of betrayal by his commanding officer, that kept Karlsson awake the rest of the night. Ah, the evils of war.

Karlsson had travelled this stretch of coast dozens of times, and this morning was neither the best nor the worst weather he had encountered. The wind of the previous day had died right down, and the rain was now intermittent, sometimes fading into a light mist. Visibility was improving. Karlsson sat in the forward lounge, drinking tea and watching for what landmarks could be seen. Prince Rupert had cleared the north end of Chatham Sound, and had just turned east towards Portland Inlet, on the way to Anyox, when a ship appeared out of the mist.

At first, Karlsson took her for the SS Prince George, Prince Rupert’s identical sister ship, with her three distinctive funnels. As the ship closed, her lines became clearer, and presented what could only be a warship. He was pleasantly surprised. The meeting with the Premier had not lead him to believe that any warships could be spared for northern patrol just yet. The cruiser flashed a Morse light at Prince Rupert. Karlsson rose to his feet to get a better view, looking to see if the mystery ship flew a British White Ensign, or the Tricolore, or possibly the Japanese rising sun. A flash came from the one of the cruiser’s forward guns, and a waterspout rose up off Prince Rupert’s bow. The boom echoed off the nearby but invisible slopes of Portland Inlet. Now he could see that the ship flew the black cross of the German War Ensign.

https://searcharchives.vancouver.ca...9f1ef6-4796-436a-bf4c-2dd5e1f1401d-A20554.jpg

 

[Tonrich]

Very cool....

 

[Somedevil]

oh wow

 

[sloreck]

I expect the Germans will unload all the prisoners to the Prince Rupert but the military officers on board will be PoWs and I expect not released, although they might be released on parole at this point in the conflict. I have a hunch that second officer will be giving a lot of information to the Germans, and they now have a "local" pilot...

 

[YYJ]

I expect the Germans will unload all the prisoners to the Prince Rupert but the military officers on board will be PoWs and I expect not released, although they might be released on parole at this point in the conflict.

The Mayor of Prince Rupert had been let off at the Grand Trunk Pacific wharf just after 10AM, accompanied by a detachment of officers from the 6th Regiment Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles.

There are currently no military officers on the Prince Rupert, and none were taken from the prize ships. I probably should say "THE detachment of officers" to make that clear.

 

[YYJ]

I have a hunch that second officer will be giving a lot of information to the Germans, and they now have a "local" pilot...

We shall see very soon...

 

[sloreck]

Thank you for the clarification, I assumed there were still some aboard. I expect the Germans will decide to go up the fjord, as the second officer will tell them all they want to know. The procedure would be to anchor off the town, send a part ashore under a white flag and tell the leaders they would only destroy the installations of military value, ie: smelter, mines and resistance means they shell the town.