Poseidon: China’s Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost Submarine

7. “A Damned Lie”

In a time without television or the Internet, news of Poseidon’s sinking, and commensurate media coverage, was exceptionally swift and comprehensive. Most surprising is not the British public’s reaction to the event or the media’s interest in covering it. Instead, the surprise comes from the speed with which the story reached smaller communities in places such as the US. Just as the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk did almost seventy years later, the loss of Poseidon and the drama of men trapped within captured the world’s attention, if only for a short time. To understand the speed at which the news was published overseas, consider not just the distance but also the time involved. The accident occurred just after noon local time in Weihaiwei on June 9. That would be about 4 a.m., June 9, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In New York, this would have been just after midnight on June 9. Shanghai and Hong Kong are in the same time zone as Weihaiwei. In the official style that it used for all such accidents, Royal Navy headquarters told the world what happened: The Admiralty regrets to announce that information has been received from the commander-in-chief of the China Station, that the Poseidon has been sunk in a collision with a merchant ship, 21 miles [33 kilometers] to the north of Weihaiwei at 12:45 p.m. to-day (Tuesday) [the accident actually took place about 30 minutes earlier]. HMS Berwick and HMS Hermes are on the scene of the disaster.1 Along with publishing the official statement, the Hong Kong Telegraph speculated that “Poseidon was cruising on the surface in a fog and that the presence of the former Jardine steamer [SS Yuta] was not noticed until it was too late.”2 Chapter 7 “A Damned Lie” 64 Poseidon Because of Weihaiwei’s position, especially post-handover in 1931, as not just a colonial backwater but a former colonial backwater, no journalists from major news agencies were present there at the time of the accident. The nearest foreign correspondents were likely in Shanghai. However, as much of the information about the accident came from the Admiralty, many of the reports were datelined London. The closest major newspaper was the Shanghai-based North-China Daily News, at the time the largest-circulation English language newspaper in China. In Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Telegraph and South China Morning Post competed for readers, the former in the lead until after World War II. Wire stories from Shanghai and London were the first to begin reaching readers. In general, the initial reports jumbled the facts and gave rise to the accident’s most persistent and untrue rumor: that contact had been made with eight men still alive inside the submarine. In one of the first reports to reach media outside China, New London, Connecticut’s The Day, on June 9, ran a three-column banner headline, “British Sub Sunk; 2 Die, 18 Missing.” Using Associated Press (AP) material, it correctly accounted for all on board: two dead, eighteen missing, five officers, and twenty-six men saved. However, it cut thirty feet (nine meters) off the boat’s length, citing it as 260 feet long (86.6 meters) rather than the correct 290 feet (96.6 meters). Errors and Epistemology The coverage of Poseidon’s sinking could serve as a case study for epistemology, the discipline of how knowledge is acquired and accepted. Given the small number of sources but large number of outlets involved, incorrect accounts of aspects of the sinking became part of its official record from the earliest reports. On June 10, The New York Times ran the story on its front page, continuing on page three, where a photo of the submarine appeared along with AP’s account of the sinking and a Canadian Press-authored list of the dead and missing.3 The Detroit Free Press also ran AP copy on June 10, generated mostly from London. AP’s version of events was the most accurate and comprehensive of the early reports, giving the correct number of rescued and dead, and background on the history of the Parthianclass submarines, including a mention of the collision near Gibraltar of Proteus and Pandora during the initial sail from the UK to China.4 “A Damned Lie” 65 A front-page photo of Poseidon underway greeted readers of The Day in...