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Escape from the Desert : October 1915
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This article could almost be taken from a 'Boy's Own' story of Great War adventures. It features a daring raid by one of the world’s richest men to rescue a group of sailors whose ship had been torpedoed and who had been handed over to a group of North African tribesmen, by whom they were held in deplorable conditions for over four months. At the …
HM Submarine H5: The Submarine Cover-Up in Caernarfon Bay 2 March 1918.
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HMS H5 was a Royal Navy H-class submarine built by Canadian Vickers, Montreal and launched in June 1915. She was soon in action sinking the German U-boat 51 in July 1916 but was herself sunk after being rammed by the by the British merchantman S.S. Rutherglen when mistaken for a German U-boat on 2 March 1918. Sadly, all on board perished but are co…
The Safe Passage of BEF Troopships August 1914
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Comparatively little outside of the Official History has been written about the defensive measures established to cover the initial transport of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to the continent in August 1914 and that may well be because of their success. The Royal Navy, with its traditional global perspective, had held little enthusiasm for…
The Baralong Incident 29 January 1917
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The Baralong was a 'three island' tramp steamer built in 1901 by Armstrong & Whitworth. She was requisitioned by the Navy in 1914 intended as a supply ship but in early 1915 was identified as a potential decoy ship. Modification works to equip her for this role, including the installation of three concealed twelve pounder guns, were carried out…
Drowned close to shore: the loss of two American Troopships in 1918
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In 1918 the small island of Islay off the west coast of Scotland would witness the full brunt of the sea war on not one but two occasions. Above: Islay is the most southern of the islands in the Inner Hebrides, known as ‘The Queen of the Hebrides’. The first of these was on 5 February 1918 when the Troopship Tuscania was torpedoed by UB-77 at 7…
In the Centennial Footsteps of the Great War from Sarajevo to Versailles VOL I by Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy
It is an ambitious author and photographer who states that the aim of his book is to ‘help prevent the Third World War’, but from someone who is now Hungary’s Ambassador to France, I applaud his ambition that if we ‘understand the reasons and the consequences of the First World War’, we can understand the reasons and consequences of all war, let al…
The First World War story of Captain A.D. Blair, Harley Couper's great-grandfather.
At the back of my parents' wardrobe sat a pirate's chest. It would grumble and sigh camphor when opened, hinting at distant lands and adventures. The pirate was Captain A.D. Blair, my great-grandfather. His adventures, my mother hinted, included smuggling guns in the Middle East, sailing the seas with a pet lion aboard, and earning a medal from the…