Baralong incidents
naval engagements of the First World War, involving the Royal Navy Q-ship HMS Baralong and two German U-boats
The Baralong incidents were two incidents during the First World War in August and September 1915, involving the Royal Navy Q-ship HMS Baralong and two German U-boats. Baralong sank U-27, which had been attacking a nearby merchant ship, the Nicosian. About a dozen of the crewmen managed to escape from the sinking submarine and Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert, commanding officer of Baralong, ordered the survivors to be fired on. All the survivors of U-27's sinking, including several who had reached the Nicosian, were shot by Baralong's crew and attached marines.
Later, Baralong under command of Andrew Wilmot-Smith sank U-41 in an incident which has also been described as a British war crime.
First incident
Action of 19 August 1915
After the sinking of RMS Lusitania by a German submarine in May 1915, Lieutenant-Commander Godfrey Herbert, commanding officer of Baralong, was visited by two officers of the Admiralty's Secret Service branch at the naval base at Queenstown, Ireland. He was told, "This Lusitania business is shocking. Unofficially, we are telling you... take no prisoners from U-boats."
Interviews with his subordinate officers have established Herbert's manner of commanding his ship.
Throughout the summer of 1915, Baralong continued routine patrol duties in the Irish Sea without encountering the enemy.
The public source identifies “Baralong incidents” as naval engagements of the First World War, involving the Royal Navy Q-ship HMS Baralong and two German U-boats. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Baralong, incidents and naval.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q807244. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1915.
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This entry incorporates text from “Baralong incidents” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.