Qualla: SM UC-47

SM UC-47: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Twenty-six Germans died here. On 18 November 1917, off Flamborough Head, the British patrol boat P-57 - under the command of Lieutenant Harry Charles Birnie - rammed the surfaced German submarine UC-47, then dropped depth charges on her as she dived. She did not come back up. Her entire crew, twenty-six men, went down with her into the cold North Sea. Modern surveys have located the wreck almost a century later, sitting on the seabed where the ramming and charging finished her. Before she died she had sunk fifty-eight Allied ships across thirteen patrols. The two casualty lists - hers and theirs - are why this waypoint matters.

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SM UC-47: A Coastal Killer

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

UC-47 was a German Type UC II minelaying submarine - 420 tons surfaced, 502 tons submerged, 51.85 metres long. She was ordered on 20 November 1915, laid down on 1 February 1916, launched on 30 August of that year, and commissioned into the German Imperial Navy on 13 October 1916....

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SM UC-47: Thirteen Patrols, Fifty-Eight Ships

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Through her thirteen war patrols UC-47 was credited with sinking fifty-eight Allied vessels. Her preferred method was the silent one: cross a British coastal lane on the surface at night, dive, lay her mines in a pattern across the shipping channel, and slip away. Days or weeks l...

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SM UC-47: Birnie, P-57, and the Ramming

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the autumn of 1917 the Royal Navy was running a fleet of small fast patrol boats - the P-class - explicitly designed to hunt and kill coastal U-boats. They were light, sharp-bowed, and armed with deck guns and depth charges. On 18 November 1917, off Flamborough Head, HMS P-57 ...

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SM UC-47: The Wreck Off Flamborough

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

UC-47's wreck has been located and identified, lying at approximately 54.05 degrees north, 0.38 degrees east, off Flamborough Head. Modern multibeam sonar surveys have produced detailed images of the hull on the seabed - and helped document, as one news article phrased it, the ho...

Read more: SM UC-47 on Qualla