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Raiders of the Deep
This 1928 best seller offers a sympathetic, behind-the-scenes look at the men who prowled the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and English Channel in U-boats.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1928
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About the author
Lowell Thomas
169 books18 followersLowell Jackson Thomas was an American writer, actor, broadcaster, and traveler, best remembered for publicising T. E. Lawrence. He was also involved in promoting the Cinerama widescreen system.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 3, 2015
Raiders of the Deep (Just not too Deep)
In the mid-nineteen twenties, Lowell Thomas, an American journalist, went to Germany to talk with some of the men who’d skippered and served on German U-Boats in the First World War. The men had been vilified both during and after the war, as cruel brutes, the Hun, and while the results of their mode of warfare were undoubtedly ghastly, could it have been the realities of submarine warfare, not the disposition of the men, that was responsible for the horrors?
Thomas doesn’t really try to answer the question, to defend or redeem the men. He simply asks them to tell their stories and he gets out of the way of the telling and what stories they are! This is not a history, although it’s certainly historical, and it’s not analysis. It’s adventure piled on top of adventure, and is more gripping than anything Lowell Thomas or anyone else could have invented.
In 1914, when World War One began, Great Britain was an empire that ruled the world and had so for centuries while Germany had been a unified country for less than fifty years. How does a small island rule the waves? By maintaining a very large, very capable navy. And how does a nearly landlocked, relatively new country challenge the big dog? Not by contesting for supremacy of the waves but by going beneath them.
The First World War began with a series of fast movements and with an optimism – I’ll be home for Christmas, but thanks in great part to the machine gun, the war evolved into the grinding attrition of trench warfare. As the war dragged on and with the armies stalemated, each side looked to destroy the other side’s ability to fight. The way to do it was to attack the home front, not directly (that would come with the next big war,) but by crippling the other side’s ability to feed and equip large armies.
Both sides were vulnerable to blockade, England because she was an island, Germany because she was a central European power with limited access to the seas.
At the beginning, though, and as the first U-boats set out, no one was quite sure what the subs would mean to warfare. They quickly found out. On September 14, 1914, little more than a month into the war, a single U-boat, the U-9, sank three British cruisers. More than a thousand sailors went down with the ships and the Brits’ bigger warships retreated to the safety of their harbors.
The U-boats racked up thousands of tons of enemy merchant shipping but it was no easy time for the U-boats. The prospect of suffocation in an iron coffin at the bottom of the sea was with the men constantly. Of the 360 U-boats launched by Germany in World War One, 178 would be lost, many just simply not ever returning home or being heard from again.
The earliest boats were crude and there was danger everywhere.
They ran on kerosene on the surface, electricity below, and couldn’t dive too deep for fear of getting crushed by the pressure of the water. Surface ships rammed the subs when the subs were on the surface, which, as it turned out, was often. The U-boats had limited storage for their electricity (and for anything else.) Another way to sink them was to trick them. Disguise a naval vessel as a merchant vessel and as the sub came closer, quickly unveil the guns and have at it. There were mines and nets, too.
As the war progressed, depth charges were developed and airplanes began appearing suddenly in the sky (usually with the sun behind them.) The most effective tactic used against the subs was convoys. Send the ships in groups and if the sub went after one ship, the others could go after the sub.
Sometimes, when circumstances permitted, and to save torpedoes (that storage problem again) the U-boats would approach an enemy ship while on the surface and allow the crew to get into lifeboats, then sink the ship with surface guns or explosives, usually after taking a look at what the ship carried. One ship carried zoo animals and a sub got itself a mascot, a monkey, another sub departed with thousands of eggs.
Sometimes, and this is what earned the U-boats the enmity of most of the rest of the world, the U-boats did their jobs stealthily and with little regard for survivors.
Surface vessels watched for the subs’ periscopes (the Germans called it the asparagus.) In one incident, related by a bemused captain years afterward, his sub couldn’t shake a pursuing destroyer and the submariners weren’t sure why. When darkness finally allowed the sub to elude pursuit and come to the surface, they found their answer - they’d busted through some netting and had snagged a buoy, which they’d been dragging along behind them the entire time they were fleeing.
And what was a sub commander to do when his boat was struggling to remain buoyant underwater? Why, send every man he could spare on a dash to the front or the back, depending on where weight was needed, to steady things.
By 1917 and with both sides nearing exhaustion and with the United States still not in the war, the Germans made the decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. That meant sinking every merchant ship encountered, including American, which would bring America into the war. It was a calculated gamble, break the stalemate and beat Britain before America got full in. It almost worked.
This book has it all, the first tentative raids, the first long voyages, one to the eastern Mediterranean, one to the shores of America, and it has the look on the face of Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger of the U-20 when he sank a ship and read its name on its side as it was going down – Lusitania.
Were these men the murderers they were portrayed to be in the propaganda, or were they Old World soldiers adjusting to the reality of twentieth-century warfare, men doing their duty as it was given to them and under conditions they may have regretted but were powerless to alter?
Thomas doesn’t really address this question directly. He doesn’t need to. He allows the U-boat men to speak for themselves. Read the book and decide. And did I say it wasn’t a history? Well, it wasn’t written as a history, but it’s a pretty thorough accounting of what life was like for these men, and that’s history of the liveliest kind.
In the mid-nineteen twenties, Lowell Thomas, an American journalist, went to Germany to talk with some of the men who’d skippered and served on German U-Boats in the First World War. The men had been vilified both during and after the war, as cruel brutes, the Hun, and while the results of their mode of warfare were undoubtedly ghastly, could it have been the realities of submarine warfare, not the disposition of the men, that was responsible for the horrors?
Thomas doesn’t really try to answer the question, to defend or redeem the men. He simply asks them to tell their stories and he gets out of the way of the telling and what stories they are! This is not a history, although it’s certainly historical, and it’s not analysis. It’s adventure piled on top of adventure, and is more gripping than anything Lowell Thomas or anyone else could have invented.
In 1914, when World War One began, Great Britain was an empire that ruled the world and had so for centuries while Germany had been a unified country for less than fifty years. How does a small island rule the waves? By maintaining a very large, very capable navy. And how does a nearly landlocked, relatively new country challenge the big dog? Not by contesting for supremacy of the waves but by going beneath them.
The First World War began with a series of fast movements and with an optimism – I’ll be home for Christmas, but thanks in great part to the machine gun, the war evolved into the grinding attrition of trench warfare. As the war dragged on and with the armies stalemated, each side looked to destroy the other side’s ability to fight. The way to do it was to attack the home front, not directly (that would come with the next big war,) but by crippling the other side’s ability to feed and equip large armies.
Both sides were vulnerable to blockade, England because she was an island, Germany because she was a central European power with limited access to the seas.
At the beginning, though, and as the first U-boats set out, no one was quite sure what the subs would mean to warfare. They quickly found out. On September 14, 1914, little more than a month into the war, a single U-boat, the U-9, sank three British cruisers. More than a thousand sailors went down with the ships and the Brits’ bigger warships retreated to the safety of their harbors.
The U-boats racked up thousands of tons of enemy merchant shipping but it was no easy time for the U-boats. The prospect of suffocation in an iron coffin at the bottom of the sea was with the men constantly. Of the 360 U-boats launched by Germany in World War One, 178 would be lost, many just simply not ever returning home or being heard from again.
The earliest boats were crude and there was danger everywhere.
They ran on kerosene on the surface, electricity below, and couldn’t dive too deep for fear of getting crushed by the pressure of the water. Surface ships rammed the subs when the subs were on the surface, which, as it turned out, was often. The U-boats had limited storage for their electricity (and for anything else.) Another way to sink them was to trick them. Disguise a naval vessel as a merchant vessel and as the sub came closer, quickly unveil the guns and have at it. There were mines and nets, too.
As the war progressed, depth charges were developed and airplanes began appearing suddenly in the sky (usually with the sun behind them.) The most effective tactic used against the subs was convoys. Send the ships in groups and if the sub went after one ship, the others could go after the sub.
Sometimes, when circumstances permitted, and to save torpedoes (that storage problem again) the U-boats would approach an enemy ship while on the surface and allow the crew to get into lifeboats, then sink the ship with surface guns or explosives, usually after taking a look at what the ship carried. One ship carried zoo animals and a sub got itself a mascot, a monkey, another sub departed with thousands of eggs.
Sometimes, and this is what earned the U-boats the enmity of most of the rest of the world, the U-boats did their jobs stealthily and with little regard for survivors.
Surface vessels watched for the subs’ periscopes (the Germans called it the asparagus.) In one incident, related by a bemused captain years afterward, his sub couldn’t shake a pursuing destroyer and the submariners weren’t sure why. When darkness finally allowed the sub to elude pursuit and come to the surface, they found their answer - they’d busted through some netting and had snagged a buoy, which they’d been dragging along behind them the entire time they were fleeing.
And what was a sub commander to do when his boat was struggling to remain buoyant underwater? Why, send every man he could spare on a dash to the front or the back, depending on where weight was needed, to steady things.
By 1917 and with both sides nearing exhaustion and with the United States still not in the war, the Germans made the decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. That meant sinking every merchant ship encountered, including American, which would bring America into the war. It was a calculated gamble, break the stalemate and beat Britain before America got full in. It almost worked.
This book has it all, the first tentative raids, the first long voyages, one to the eastern Mediterranean, one to the shores of America, and it has the look on the face of Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger of the U-20 when he sank a ship and read its name on its side as it was going down – Lusitania.
Were these men the murderers they were portrayed to be in the propaganda, or were they Old World soldiers adjusting to the reality of twentieth-century warfare, men doing their duty as it was given to them and under conditions they may have regretted but were powerless to alter?
Thomas doesn’t really address this question directly. He doesn’t need to. He allows the U-boat men to speak for themselves. Read the book and decide. And did I say it wasn’t a history? Well, it wasn’t written as a history, but it’s a pretty thorough accounting of what life was like for these men, and that’s history of the liveliest kind.
November 9, 2021
Lowell Thomas, most famous for his exploits with Lawrence of Arabia, put together a marvelous compilation of interviews on the infancy of undersea warfare. My WWI reading has been focused largely on the more tabloid type - the Christmas peace, the Arab question, the brutality of trench warfare, Russian rebellion, and ignominious punishment of Germany from a WWII perspective - so I found the book's research absolutely stunning.
Although it's been suggested by Aristotle that Alexander the Great's military used a diving bell, and submarines certainly made their appearance throughout history, it wasn't until the 20th century and the development of the diesel engine and the standardized periscope that underwater warfare became viable. The German military established superiority using a combination of diesel and electric power systems, aggressive military tactics, and greater numbers.
So it makes sense that Thomas interviewed the German commanders, who provide riveting stories of battles, conflicts and equipment difficulties.
And it was understood to be the actions of one German commander that brought the U.S. into WWI - the torpedoing of the Lusitania. Highly controversial - considered on one side as the firing on a non-combatant luxury liner, and by the other side to be a predictable attack in a declared war zone - the sinking resulted in hundreds of civilian dead. Undeclared at time the book was written, today we know the Lusitania was carrying 760 tons of rifle munitions, among other armaments; we know passengers were warned from traveling in the area, and the Lusitania's accompanying destroyers had not been properly engaged - none of which makes the destruction any less tragic. The interview with the submarine crew member is equally revelatory.
We also learn of German efforts to mine, and torpedo, critical U.S. shipping areas, a world away from their home base; of battles in congested Ireland and Gibraltar, and of the constant challenges to maintain health away from port with limited fresh protein. There is, too, a brief chapter on the post-war mutiny, fomented by communists, that swept through the German Navy, which the U-boat commanders were asked to assist in stabilizing.
Brilliant and insightful interviews.
Although it's been suggested by Aristotle that Alexander the Great's military used a diving bell, and submarines certainly made their appearance throughout history, it wasn't until the 20th century and the development of the diesel engine and the standardized periscope that underwater warfare became viable. The German military established superiority using a combination of diesel and electric power systems, aggressive military tactics, and greater numbers.
So it makes sense that Thomas interviewed the German commanders, who provide riveting stories of battles, conflicts and equipment difficulties.
And it was understood to be the actions of one German commander that brought the U.S. into WWI - the torpedoing of the Lusitania. Highly controversial - considered on one side as the firing on a non-combatant luxury liner, and by the other side to be a predictable attack in a declared war zone - the sinking resulted in hundreds of civilian dead. Undeclared at time the book was written, today we know the Lusitania was carrying 760 tons of rifle munitions, among other armaments; we know passengers were warned from traveling in the area, and the Lusitania's accompanying destroyers had not been properly engaged - none of which makes the destruction any less tragic. The interview with the submarine crew member is equally revelatory.
We also learn of German efforts to mine, and torpedo, critical U.S. shipping areas, a world away from their home base; of battles in congested Ireland and Gibraltar, and of the constant challenges to maintain health away from port with limited fresh protein. There is, too, a brief chapter on the post-war mutiny, fomented by communists, that swept through the German Navy, which the U-boat commanders were asked to assist in stabilizing.
Brilliant and insightful interviews.
April 3, 2021
My brother loaned me his 1928 edition. This is a book on German submarine warfare in the First World War, written by an American journalist based on interviews after the war.
Apparently it was compulsory reading for German submarine officers in the Second World War, which is ironic on a way, as the tactics and systems were quite different, but also understandable, as it presents the officers as gentleman corsairs, an elite breed of technological aristocrats.
I can only assume that either they did not describe the drudgery and claustrophobic stress of a submarine, or he preferred to gloss it over and focus on the courage of crewing a ship that might not surface each time it submerged and where you really were alone against the world.
Interesting but flawed, in my opinion, based mostly on reading later submarine accounts, but also showing the kind of book that influenced the following generation of submariners.
Apparently it was compulsory reading for German submarine officers in the Second World War, which is ironic on a way, as the tactics and systems were quite different, but also understandable, as it presents the officers as gentleman corsairs, an elite breed of technological aristocrats.
I can only assume that either they did not describe the drudgery and claustrophobic stress of a submarine, or he preferred to gloss it over and focus on the courage of crewing a ship that might not surface each time it submerged and where you really were alone against the world.
Interesting but flawed, in my opinion, based mostly on reading later submarine accounts, but also showing the kind of book that influenced the following generation of submariners.
December 11, 2019
Raiders of the Deep is an excellent read about the activities, and use of German submarines during World War I. Thomas has a captivating way of letting the interviewees tell their stories in their own words. It’s a great look into life aboard early submarines and the effects they had on the way Britain and America had to adjust their war plans.
July 6, 2018
Excellent read
July 28, 2018
Very interesting record of first hand accounts of Germany submarine officers in WW1.
January 18, 2020
Interesting tales from the officers of the German U-boats in WWI. The prose was good (slightly dated since it's almost 100 years old) and the tales are just not that talked about currently.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews