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6 Housatonic and Lyman M. Law By one of the mysterious coincidences so often encountered in tales of the sea, the first American ship sunk by the Germans under their unrestricted submarine warfare policy had the same name as the first ship ever sunk by a submarine in warfare. Almost exactly fifty-three years before the sinking of the merchant ship Housatonic on February 3, 1917, the Confederate submarine Hunley sank the USS Housatonic off Charleston, South Carolina (February 17, 1864). However, “Housatonic” was a common ship name, derived from the Housatonic River and Housatonic Valley in Connecticut. The name was truly coincidence, not the mysterious working of Fate.1 Unlike the Union navy’s Housatonic sunk by Hunley, the World War I Housatonic was a commercial merchant ship, not a warship. it had originally been built in 1890 by Barclay, Curle & Company of Glasgow for the German Hansa Line, based in Hamburg. First named the Pickhuben, it was a 3,143-gross-ton ship, 331 feet long with a 41-foot, 1-inch beam. It was straight-stemmed, with one funnel and two masts. The ship could achieve a speed of 11 knots, and boasted accommodation for ten first-class passengers and over two hundred in steerage. It sailed on its maiden voyage to Quebec and Montreal on April 15, 1891, and then began Hamburg–New York runs and Hamburg-Montreal runs in 1892. It was renamed Georgia and began service in 1895 from Stettin via Helsingborg and Gothenburg to New York. It was switched to the Odessa–New York route in 1904.2 In 1914 as the Great War began in Europe, the German ship took refuge in the United States, and in 1915, it was granted American registry as Housatonic under the provisions of the U.S. maritime code enacted August 28, 1914, that allowed ships of foreign registry to be transferred to the American flag. It was then employed as a freighter, operated in early 1917 by a specially formed Housatonic Company carrying grain and flour to Britain. Among those who had incorporated the firm was Edward Sandford, who had served as an attorney representing the Hamburg-American Line and who had defended Karl Buenz, head of that line. Buenz had been accused of sending ships out from American harbors to resupply German warships at sea, in 76 / Sovereignty at Sea defiance of American neutrality law. Two other ships of the Hamburg Line that had been sold to American firms had been treated as belligerent ships by the Allies. The Dacia had carried a shipment of cotton to Germany before Britain declared cotton as contraband, and then was captured by a French cruiser and interned in a French port as a lawful prize of war. The Hamburg Line Alexandria was renamed the Sacramento, and its cargo of coal was taken over by German warships in the Pacific, some thought through collusion of the officers of the merchant ship. There was no evidence, however, that the manager of the Housatonic Steamship Company, Edward F. Geer, planned any trips to Germany.3 Under the command of Captain Thomas A. Ensor, Housatonic sailed from Galveston for Britain on January 6, 1917, more than three weeks before the announced submarine policy.4 The ship put in at Newport News, Virginia, and began its crossing of the Atlantic on January 16, still more than two weeks before the German unrestricted submarine warfare policy was announced.5 About sixty miles off the Isles of Scilly at the southwest tip of Britain, it was hailed by the commander of U-boat U-53, under the command of Hans Rose.6 The U-53 and Lieutenant Rose were well known to the American public because he had made a dramatic entry with the same U-boat into the Newport harbor on October 7, 1916, and had visited for a few hours before slipping out again. Rose, as a handsome and intelligent German naval officer , had impressed reporters and shipboard visitors with his command of English and his altogether proper manners. Described by journalists as about thirty-three years old, with dark hair, a clipped mustache, and blue eyes, and “of more than medium height,” Rose had exchanged “felicitations” with American naval officers in the port, and asked that a letter be posted to Ambassador von Bernstorff in Washington. A newspaperman took the mail to the Newport post office for Rose. Despite the newsworthy sensation Rose caused, he was careful not to disclose any hint...

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