PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES YOU’D probably think the idea of building warships in gigantic segments around the country, then assembling them with millimetre precision in one yard like some enormous jigsaw was a modern concept. And it largely is. But 100 years ago wartime necessity and engineering ingenuity combined to create the unique destroyer seen here ploughing through calm Channel waters. This is HMS Zubian, possibly the RN’s first hybrid warship – the bow of one war-damaged destroyer (HMS Zulu) melded with the midships and stern of another (HMS Nubian). Our dip into the Imperial War Museum’s photographic archive takes us to February 1918 and a story of engineering innovation. Zulu and Nubian were pre-war Tribal-class destroyers assigned to the Dover Command to prevent U-boats slipping through the eponymous strait and German surface ships harassing shipping between Britain and France. Nubian was damaged in a rather disastrous encounter with the High Seas Fleet on the night of October 26-
27, when the patrol came under attack from a swarm of German fast torpedo boats. By the action’s end, one destroyer, six drifters and a troopship had been sunk by the attackers, who also damaged three destroyers, among them Nubian. A torpedo hit almost severed her bow and left her crippled. Whilst being towed back to Dover, she broke free and was driven ashore. The lifeless vessel withstood two storms before a salvage operation succeeded in recovering the midships and stern sections, leaving the mangled bow behind; it gradually disappeared over the years as the elements took their toll. Around the same time as Nubian was partially salvaged, HMS Zulu too was being towed to port – Calais in her case, having struck a freshly-laid German mine which shredded much of the destroyer’s central and aft sections. Both Zulu and Nubian could have ended up at the breaker’s yard, but instead the decision was taken to move them to Chatham.
It took shipwrights and engineers a good six months to create the new destroyer Zubian (the name was apparently picked by Admiral Reginald Bacon, in command of the Dover Patrol... and supposedly bamboozled the Germans). Despite being sister ships built to the same specifications, Zulu was 3½in wider when it came to joining the two ships; both vessels became a little shorter and a section of the hull rebuilt so the two could be joined to form what Bacon called “a sound destroyerâ€?. Come June 1917, the ‘13th’ Tribalclass destroyer was ready to take her place with other vessels of the Dover Patrol. The pace of duty safeguarding the strait was relentless, yet the jigsaw warship survived the countless nighttime sorties in company with other vessels of the 6th Flotilla. During one such regular patrol early in the morning of February 4 1918, Zubian’s crew sighted a U-boat on the surface attempting to force the formidable defences between Dover and Calais to return to its base in
Flanders. Some facts of the ensuing action are indisputable: that Zubian saw and attacked a U-boat and dropped depth charges before a second patrol craft joined in the hunt and added to the barrels of explosives raining down on the submerged craft. Most histories credit Zubian with the destruction of the boat, the minelayer UC-50; an oil slick and wreckage was sighted floated on the surface of the Channel after the attacks. Except this doesn’t tally with German records, which lists the U-boat missing since January 7 when it set out to attack shipping in the Bay of Biscay. Submarine historians today lean towards UC-79 as the victim of the attack, though she was not sunk (and perhaps not even harmed, for she sailed on her final patrol just 24 hours after returning to base; she would fall foul of the Dover mine barrage in early April, going down with all hands). As with most vessels assigned to Bacon’s command, Zubian was called upon to take part in the RN’s most famous raid of the Great War:
Zeebrugge. In fact, the attack to bottle U-boats up in their Flanders bases was aimed at two ports: Zeebrugge and Ostend (hence the codename Operation ZO). The former has passed into history. The latter less so, for it was a total failure as the attack went in at the wrong spot – thanks to a ruse by the German defenders. Zubian joined a force of monitors as an escort while they bombarded enemy positions ashore. The hybrid destroyer came through the raid unscathed, but was not required when the RN returned to Ostend the following month for a more successful attempt at blocking the harbour. Six months of more regular duties in the strait followed before the unique ship was quickly laid up, then disposed of. Zubian was broken up on Wearside in 1919. n This photograph (Q 61101) is one of more than ten million held by the Imperial War Museum. They can be viewed or purchased at www.iwm. org.uk/collections/photographs, or by calling 0207 416 5309.
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12 : FEBRUARY 2018
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