Qualla: Action of 16 March 1917

Action of 16 March 1917: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. On 16 March 1917, under a grey sky spitting snow, Captain Selwyn Day of the armed boarding steamer HMS Dundee noticed something wrong with the Norwegian freighter his men were rowing toward. The name painted on her hull read Rena, but a large "N" on the side was upside down. The vessel looked too big for the 3,000-ton ship listed in Lloyd's Register. And woodwork had been stripped away in places where no honest merchant captain would bother. Day voiced his suspicions to Lieutenant Frederick Lawson, an Australian volunteer, who climbed into a boat with five ratings and rowed across. They would never return. The ship was SMS Leopard, a German commerce raider flying false colors, and within the hour she would be at the bottom of the Norwegian Sea along with every soul aboard.

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Action of 16 March 1917: A Captured Ship Reborn

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Leopard began life as SS Yarrowdale, a British cargo steamer of 4,652 gross register tons, operated by Robert Mackill & Co of Glasgow. On 11 December 1916, the German commerce raider Mowe captured her in the Atlantic. Mowe's commander, Nikolaus zu Dohna-Schlodien, recognized Yarr...

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Action of 16 March 1917: Long Live the Emperor

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Disguised as the Norwegian freighter Rena Norge, Leopard sailed on 7 March 1917 under Korvettenkapitan Hans von Laffert, tasked with relieving Mowe on the Atlantic shipping lanes. The genuine Rena was off South Africa at the time. German intelligence had been reading intercepted ...

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Action of 16 March 1917: The Norwegian Flag Falls Away

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The British armoured cruiser HMS Achilles and boarding steamer Dundee were on patrol north of the Shetlands on 16 March, the day appointed for their relief. Near noon, a ship appeared to the east. Achilles chased for hours before overhauling her and ordering Dundee to send a boar...

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Action of 16 March 1917: Forty Hits Before the First Reply

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Day gave the order to fire. At point-blank range, every shell from Dundee's 4-inch guns found its mark, raking Leopard's stern while the 3-pounder hammered the bridge. Twenty hits on the bridge may have killed the command crew early. Two torpedoes streaked past Dundee's stern, mi...

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Action of 16 March 1917: The Last Surface Raider

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Leopard was the final commerce raider Germany sent to sea during the First World War. After her loss, only days into her first patrol, the Imperial Navy abandoned surface raiding entirely and relied on unrestricted submarine warfare, which had resumed on 1 February 1917. A bottle...

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