The following is from a extract of a letter from Kate Tildesley the Curatorial Officer at the Ministry of Defence,Naval Historical Branch:
Kate said that there were no original records at the MOD on the UB 14 but she did come across a couple of secondary references:
Arno Spindler thought the incident was important enough to include in the German official history of the war, although he merely notes the approximate tonnage of the vessel and the speed with which she sank. His glossary of the U-Boats in service during WW1 also states that UB 14 was commanded by Oberleutnant zur See von Heimberg, and that her first patrol was out of Orak in the Aegean.
Spindler also makes reference to the British Oficial history, Sir Julian Corbett's History of the Great War:Naval Operations:Vol.11(Longmans Green & Co.:London 1940) Corbett's account reads as follows:
"Hitherto the anti-submarine organisation in the AEgean had seemed to be all that was required, but on August 13th the Royal Edward, a transport of 11,000 tons, carrying drafts from Egypt for the XX1Xth Division and other details to the number of nearly 1,400 officers and men, was torpedoed just as she was approaching Kandeliusa island, off the Gulf of Kos. It was a landfall on the direct route into the AEgean from Alexandria which the transports for Mudros were still taking, and was in the patrol area assigned to the french. It would appear that the German submarine UB 14, one of the new small class that had been brough overland to the Adriatic in sections, had put into the Gulf of Kos on her way from Cattero to the Bosporus in order to operate against the transport line. Her lurking place was in a lonely little cove called Orak bay,ten miles east of Rudrum, in the vicinity of which we had long suspected that a submarine base had been established, but whether or not it had existed it had never been discovered. As soon as the loss was known two french destroyers were ordered to the spot; the hospital ship Soudan was also there and a trawler or two, but between them they saved less than 500 souls."
Kate said that there were no original records at the MOD on the UB 14 but she did come across a couple of secondary references:
Arno Spindler thought the incident was important enough to include in the German official history of the war, although he merely notes the approximate tonnage of the vessel and the speed with which she sank. His glossary of the U-Boats in service during WW1 also states that UB 14 was commanded by Oberleutnant zur See von Heimberg, and that her first patrol was out of Orak in the Aegean.
Spindler also makes reference to the British Oficial history, Sir Julian Corbett's History of the Great War:Naval Operations:Vol.11(Longmans Green & Co.:London 1940) Corbett's account reads as follows:
"Hitherto the anti-submarine organisation in the AEgean had seemed to be all that was required, but on August 13th the Royal Edward, a transport of 11,000 tons, carrying drafts from Egypt for the XX1Xth Division and other details to the number of nearly 1,400 officers and men, was torpedoed just as she was approaching Kandeliusa island, off the Gulf of Kos. It was a landfall on the direct route into the AEgean from Alexandria which the transports for Mudros were still taking, and was in the patrol area assigned to the french. It would appear that the German submarine UB 14, one of the new small class that had been brough overland to the Adriatic in sections, had put into the Gulf of Kos on her way from Cattero to the Bosporus in order to operate against the transport line. Her lurking place was in a lonely little cove called Orak bay,ten miles east of Rudrum, in the vicinity of which we had long suspected that a submarine base had been established, but whether or not it had existed it had never been discovered. As soon as the loss was known two french destroyers were ordered to the spot; the hospital ship Soudan was also there and a trawler or two, but between them they saved less than 500 souls."
