The Wartime Memories Project

- HMS Tartar during the Great War -


Great War>Ships
skip to content


This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.


If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation.



    Site Home

    Great War Home

    Search

    Add Stories & Photos

    Library

    Help & FAQs

 Features

    Allied Army

    Day by Day

    RFC & RAF

    Prisoners of War

    War at Sea

    Training for War

    The Battles

    Those Who Served

    Hospitals

    Civilian Service

    Women at War

    The War Effort

    Central Powers Army

    Central Powers Navy

    Imperial Air Service

    Library

    World War Two

 Submissions

    Add Stories & Photos

    Time Capsule

 Information

    Help & FAQs



    Glossary

    Our Facebook Page

    Volunteering

    News

    Events

    Contact us

    Great War Books

    About


Advertisements

World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment

HMS Tartar



26th October 1916 Naval Action in Dover Strait 1916  The First Battle of Dover Strait occurred on 26,27 October 1916. Two and a half flotillas of German torpedo boats launched a raid into the Dover Strait in an attempt to destroy Allied shipping. Upon approaching the barrage, the German torpedo boats were challenged by the British destroyer HMS Flirt. The Germans were able to destroy Flirt and successfully assault the barrage's drifters, but a flotilla of British destroyers was sent to repel them. The Germans were able to fight off the additional British units before successfully withdrawing. The British had lost one destroyer, a transport, and several drifters while the Germans themselves suffered only minor damage to a single torpedo boat.

Background

In October 1916, the Flanders Flotilla was reinforced by two full torpedo boat flotillas. The transfer of the 3rd and 9th Torpedo Boat Flotillas altered the balance of power in the Dover Strait. The Flanders Flotilla had not attacked the Dover Patrol in several months and as a result British defences were quite lax in the area. With his newly acquired flotillas, the Flanders Flotilla's commander — Ludwig von Schroeder — decided to launch a raid in the Dover Strait. Although the British had prohibited transports from being in the Channel at night in anticipation of a German raid, the Dover Barrage was not prepared to meet such an attack. Facing Schroeder's 23 boats, the Dover Barrage was only guarded by the old destroyer HMS Flirt, the yacht Ombra, and the naval trawler H. E. Straud. The four divisions of drifters manning the barrage's anti-submarine nets were only armed with a single rifle each for defence. In addition to the forces guarding the Barrage, there were six Tribal-class destroyers at Dover that could be called upon in the event of a raid.

Battle

The German boats split into five groups with each group attacking a different section of the shipping in the channel. The German 5th Half Flotilla sailed into the Dover Barrage. They came into contact with five drifters of the 10th Drifter Division tending the anti-submarine nets and began attacking them. Hearing gunfire, Flirt — the drifters' escort — approached and challenged the vessels. The German boats responded to the British signal with a similar signal. Confused, Flirt's commander thought they were Allied destroyers and that the drifters had been attacked by a submarine. An open boat was launched from Flirt to help rescue survivors from the sinking drifters. The German boats then turned their attention to the destroyer and attacked taking her completely by surprise. Flirt unsuccessfully attempted to ram one of the German boats and was sunk by gunfire and torpedoes. The Germans continued to attack the barrage, sinking two drifters each from the 8th and 16th Drifter Divisions. In all, a total of six drifters were sunk and three others were damaged, as well as the trawler H. E. Straud, before the Fifth Half-Flotilla withdrew. When the British received news of the German raid, they sent six Tribal-class destroyers — HMS Amazon, Mohawk, Viking, Tartar, Cossack and Nubian — to attempt to repel the German raiders. The British Commander Henry Oliphant of the Viking failed to keep his force compact as a single unit. He deployed his destroyers in two loose groups, one consisting of Viking, Mohawk, and Tartar and the other Nubian, Amazon and Cossack. The destroyer Nubian soon steamed far ahead of her group, and was the first of the dispatched vessels to reach the scene of Flirt's sinking. Meanwhile another half flotilla of German boats had caught the empty British transport Queen off Goodwin Sands as it returned from the French coast. The Germans boarded Queen and removed her crew before sinking her.

Nubian made the same mistake as Flirt and mistook the German boats for Allied vessels. Surprised with a hail of gunfire, Nubian attempted to ram the last boat in the German line of battle, but was struck by a torpedo that blew off her bow reducing her to a drifting hulk. Amazon and Cossack soon arrived to aid Nubian and began engaging the German boats. The Germans scored several hits on Amazon before withdrawing. The German 18th Half Flotilla was heading back to Zeebrugge when it met with Oliphant's group of destroyers, engaging them as they passed. Although Viking escaped unscathed, Mohawk suffered several hits before the Germans were able to break away. Near the end of the action, Reginald Bacon — the commander of the Dover Patrol — dispatched the Dunkirk Division to intercept the German torpedo boats, but the Germans were able to successfully withdraw before these further reinforcements arrived.

Aftermath

The British had failed to stop the raiders from destroying the drifters and six of them were sunk in addition to Flirt and the transport Queen. Besides those vessels that were sunk, several British vessels were damaged, including three destroyers, three drifters, and a naval trawler. The loss of life was also heavy with the British suffering 45 men killed, four wounded, and 10 taken prisoner. Of the German torpedo boats, only SMS G91 suffered any damage and no German vessel suffered any casualties. The success of the raid would spur further German sorties into the English Channel and raids continued until the Flanders Flotilla's 3rd and 9th Torpedo Boat Flotillas were redeployed to the High Seas Fleet in November 1916.

John Doran


If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.



Want to know more about HMS Tartar?


There are:1 articles tagged HMS Tartar available in our Library

  These include information on officers service records, letters, diaries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Great War.


Those known to have served in

HMS Tartar

during the Great War 1914-1918.

    The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List

    Records of HMS Tartar from other sources.


    • The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.

    • 1st of September 2023 marks 24 years since the launch of the Wartime Memories Project. Thanks to everyone who has supported us over this time.

    Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the Great War? Our Library contains many many diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text.



    Looking for help with Family History Research?   

    Please see Family History FAQ's

    Please note: We are unable to provide individual research.

    Can you help?

    The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors.

    If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web.

    If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation.


    Announcements

    • 12th March 2024

          Please note we currently have a massive backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 263705 your submission is still in the queue, please do not resubmit.

        Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to the Great War. If you have any unwanted photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them. The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted.





        We are now on Facebook. Like this page to receive our updates, add a comment or ask a question.

        If you have a general question please post it on our Facebook page.


        World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great battalion regiment artillery
        Did you know? We also have a section on World War Two. and a Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations.






    Want to know more about HMS Tartar?


    There are:0 items tagged HMS Tartar available in our Library

      These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Great War.






    Recomended Reading.

    Available at discounted prices.







    Links


      Suggest a link
















      The free section of The Wartime Memories Project is run by volunteers.

      This website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.

      If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.


      Hosted by:

      The Wartime Memories Project Website

      is archived for preservation by the British Library





      Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
      - All Rights Reserved -

      We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.