The Douglas-Morris Collection of Naval Medals (Part 2)

Six: Distinguished Service Medal, G.V.R. (181987 W. Gawler, Act. C.P.O. H.M. Sub. “K-15” 1 July-11 Nov. 1918); China 1900, no clasp (181987 W. Gawler, A.B., H.M.S. Wallaroo); 1914-15 Star Trio (181987 W. Gawler, C.P.O./Act. C.P.O., R.N.); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., Admiral’s bust (181987 William Gawler, P.O., H.M.S. Dreadnought) good very fine (6)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Douglas-Morris Collection of Naval Medals.

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D.S.M. London Gazette 29 February 1919 ‘The following awards have been approved for services in submarines between 1 July and 11 November 1918.’

In 1915 the Admiralty secretly laid down a class of Submarines of revolutionary design. These submersible destroyers, as they were called, were to be the largest, heaviest and fastest submarines built anywhere in the world at that time; indeed, they proved to be so fast that no British submarines of the 1939-45 war could have out-stripped them. They were driven on the surface by steam-engines; aft of their conning-towers they carried two retractable funnels. Between August 1916 and May 1918 the Navy commissioned seventeen of these vessels, designating them the ‘K’ class.

No class of modern warship in the Royal Navy, or any other Navy, has ever suffered so much calamity at the ‘K’ boats. They were involved in sixteen major accidents and countless smaller mishaps. One sank on her trials; three were lost after collisions, a fifth disappeared, whilst another sank in harbour. The loss of life was appalling; the escapes from death were among the most remarkable in the history of submarines.

The ‘K’ boats became the object of much superstition, hatred and contention. They were frequently described as the ‘suicide club’. Many men went to extreme lengths to avoid serving in them, yet there were others who regarded them with affection and pride. Naval judgement on the design and purpose of the ‘K’ boats has always remained sharply divided. They were intended to form a new and powerful spearhead for the Fleet, but in their two years of war service only one of them engaged the enemy, hitting a U-boat amidships with a torpedo which failed to explode. Some experts declared that the ‘K’ class submarines became obsolete before they were launched, that they were the products of bad design and bad strategy and that their continued use in the face of the many accidents typified the bigotry of many naval minds of that era. Other experts have regarded the ‘K’s as brilliant in conception and performance, years ahead of their time, but unhappily pursued by ill-luck.

All but one of the ‘K’ disasters escaped public attention because of war time censorship. The courts of inquiry and courts martial were held in secret. After the armistice, the Admiralty released no more information about them than the bare statistics it was obliged to give in the Official Return of Navy Losses. In forty years only a few brief accounts, fragmentary and often largely hearsay, have appeared in naval literature, technical journals and obituary columns. Yet in the history of the ‘K’ class lies much of the chequered history of the submarine, the warship which today dominates the high seas.

The K.15 was built by Scotts of Clydeside, launched on 30 October 1917 and commissioned in May 1918. Her first Commanding Officer was Lieutenant Commander H. Vaughan Jones, an experienced submariner, who had witnessed the Battle of May Island aboard K.22 where he had been assigned to gain seagoing experience. Prior to taking over K.15 he was undeterred by the chaos he had seen and was so impressed with K.15 that he had a brass plate specially engraved and mounted in the wardroom. Literally translated it read: ‘Though I descend to the depths I arise more beautiful’. It was a thrilling occasion for him in April 1918 when he gave the order ‘slow astern both’ to take K.15 from Scott’s fitting-out berth at Greenock into the Clyde estuary on her trials. Admittedly he had an anxious moment or two wondering whether he could work her stern up against the strong ebb tide before her bows cleared the dock, but she behaved magnificently and was soon steaming towards the measured mile off Skelmorelie where, without fuss or vibration, she exceeded her contract speed.

The Navy officially took delivery of K.15 in May 1918. Seventeen K boats had been commissioned since August 1916. K.1, K.4 and K.17 had been lost, two were undergoing repairs and several of the remainder were due for modification. Both ‘K’ Flotillas were now used exclusively in the North Sea on what was called the K.K. patrol, the object of which was to give warning by radio of the movements of enemy vessels so that surface ships could lie in wait for them and press home an attack. No longer were the ‘K’ boats themselves allowed to fire shots in anger. Each submarine patrolled for a week at a time, diving by day, surfacing and radioing at night. With never a promise of action, it was a boring job. The only excitements were produced by the boats themselves.

On the first night that Lieutenant Commander Vaughan-Jones took the new K.15 out to the K.K. patrol line a north easterly gale blew up. The boat was steaming along a course nearly beam on to the wind and in the short, steep seas she was rolling and labouring when several waves washed clean over the after part of the funnel superstructure. Water filled the casing, and the air intake fans sucked a solid stream into the boiler-room. In seconds it put out the furnace fires. Vaughn-Jones shut off the submarine for diving, but not before the water had flooded the boiler room, overflowed into the engine-room and created a negative buoyancy in the after end. Slowly she began to sink by the stern. All this happened in under four minutes. Nothing Vaughan-Jones could do would stop the submarine from going down. He glanced at the chart to check the depth of the water, stopped the engines and waited. Eighty feet down her tail came gently to rest on the sea-bed.

Through the raised periscope Vaughan Jones could see the swan bows floating on the surface like a giant balloon. There should have been no difficulty in ejecting the water with the electric bilge pumps, but when they were switched on the level did not drop. A stoker volunteered to dive into the seven feet of oily water, and reported that cotton waste was embedded in the strainers on the suction pipes in the bilges. Several men stripped and went down in relays with knives to clear the obstruction. Eventually they go the pumps to work, but not for long. So much cotton waste was floating in the water that the strainers had to be cleared several times before all the water was pumped out. Eight hours after it had gone down K.15's stern floated to the surface.

Seven days later Vaughan-Jones returned from the patrol to learn the galling fact that the defect which had helped to cause the trouble was well-known, and had been remedied on all boats but his. Much of the water had entered the funnel superstructure through the freeing ports which, idiotically, opened both ways. The new modification ensured that the ports allowed water only to pass out of the superstructure.

Though this was the first recorded time that a ‘K’ boat had dived stern first out of control, the flotillas had lost count of all the accidental and erratic submergences. It was fortunate, that the ‘K’ boats operated only in the North Sea, where for the most part the water was not deep enough for a sinking submarine to come to harm from excessive pressure. K.15 finally sank in Portsmouth harbour on 25 June 1921 and was scrapped two years later.