The old schooner sat at the pier forlorn and tired with two soldiers holding M1 rifles at the ready, guarding her. The town of Newport, Rhode Island was all abuzz with rumors, “What’s going on down at the dock? Did you see the soldiers? What do they want with that old ship?” No one could find out what secrets she held. A curious bystander tried to take a closer look. “Sorry sir,” said a soldier. “This end of the pier is off limits.”
In 1905 the Charles Whittemore was launched into the Mystic River with banners flying. The Whittemore was a typical four masted lumber schooner, the tractor trailers of their day carrying goods up and down the East Coast. The Whittemore sailed under the command of Captain S. H. Perry for thirteen years carrying lumber from the Carolinas to Nova Scotia. Her dimensions were 204’ x 38’ x 15’, 693 tons displacement. In 1910 she made the run from New York to Georgetown, South Carolina and back in nineteen days and was considered a fast sailor.
Her humdrum career would have continued uninterrupted except for two unrelated events. The first was the United States entry into World War I and the second a fierce spring storm in March 1918. The Whittemore was returning from Georgetown, South Carolina bound for Nova Scotia with a cargo of hard pine when she encountered the storm. Battered by the waves, she lost her rudder off Block Island. Captain Perry sent out a distress signal and she was towed into Newport, Rhode Island by the revenue cutter Tuscarora.
Captain Perry was busy arranging repairs for Charlie, his nickname for his ship, when he heard noises on the pier. To his surprise two Naval officers were inspecting the Whittemore. After a quick inspection, with no explanation, the Navy commandeered the ship buying it on the spot for $81,000. The captain and his wife packed their belongings wondering about their change of fortune.
What the captain and the citizens of Newport didn’t know was the Navy wanted the schooner because she looked like the type of vessel that was popular with German U-boat commanders. 1918 was the start of the U.S. entry into World War I and the Navy was trying to plan a defense against the threat German U-boats posed to U.S. shipping. The Navy studied how the British successfully developed what they called Q- ships, named after the port of Queenstown in Ireland where many were converted from older merchant vessels to armed raiders. They were designed to look like sitting ducks which could lure U-boats into attacking them. After the U-boat attacked the trap would be sprung and its hidden weaponry would be unleashed.
The Navy towed the Whittemore to New London, Connecticut and immediately started to outfit her as an American version of a British Q-ship. Below deck, where lumber used to be stored, the space was filled with a lethal cargo of machine guns, rifles, cutlasses, pistols, and even hickory sticks for hand-to-hand combat. The ship’s forecastle was packed with listening devices and radios. Her biggest secret was the submarine USS N-5 that the Whittemore towed submerged behind her. The N-5 was built in Bridgeport, Connecticut by the Lake Torpedo Boat Company in 1915. She was 155 feet long, displaced 415 tons and carried a crew of twenty-nine. Her armament consisted of four 18-inch torpedo tubes.
The unorthodox and dangerous plan was the brainchild of Admiral W. S. Benson. The standard operating procedure for U-boats was to board a vessel to see if there was anything of value to be had before sinking her. The well-armed crew hidden below deck would then swarm up from the hold and attack. While the Germans were distracted by the attack the hidden submarine would launch torpedoes and destroy the U-boat.
The secret ship was commissioned on August 9, 1918 as the USS Charles Whittemore ID#3232 under the command of veteran square rig captain Joseph Lyons USNRF. Lyons had a specially trained crew of fifty-two enlisted men dressed as ordinary seamen sporting beards, long hair, and work clothes. Real lumber schooners carried small crews so most of the off-duty sailors had to stay below out of sight.
On August 15 the Whittemore left on her first war patrol towing the N-5 on a 600-foot-long manila rope at a depth of 40 feet. Even though the towing went surprisingly well other issues arose. First, because the N-5 had to stay submerged 14 hours a day, coming up only after dark, it was incredibly hard on the sub’s crew. Submarine technology was primitive in 1918 with little in the way of comfort. The air onboard the sub was foul and conditions cramped. In addition, the sub’s radio would not work underwater so the N-5 had to surface frequently to learn what was going on. Prowling the U-boat infested waters kept the Schooner’s crew on high alert and they were under orders not to answer any signals, even from friendly vessels. Struggling against fatigue, weather, and primitive equipment the heroism of these men is admirable.
On September 5, 1918, during a storm the hawser towing the N-5 broke and the sub drifted off. The Whittemore was able to limp into Block Island, but the N-5 ran into a US armed transport. She was mistaken for a U-boat, fired on, with all fifteen shells falling short and able to return to her base in New London.
Despite all the work to make the Whittemore look like an enticing target and the bravery of her crew, the secret ship never fired a shot. They had not even been able to detect a U-boat let alone succeed in destroying one. Admiral Benson’s extraordinary plan had failed and the whole episode was soon a forgotten footnote of the war. Q-boats were considered a failure with only fourteen U-boats destroyed during the First World War and none in the Second.
Continuing her service with the Submarine Force U.S. Atlantic Fleet, the Whittemore carried submarine stores, spare parts, and other cargo between New York, Newport, New London, Bermuda, and Charleston, S.C. On May 14, 1919 she returned to New York to be sold. The Whittemore was decommissioned in May 1919, but her career was not finished and went back to work in the lumber trade. The record shows she was in Nova Scotia in 1926 carrying pilings under the command of Captain G. M. Willkie.
The following year on January 11, 1927, the Whittemore was bound for New York carrying 2000 logs when her crew had to be taken off in a storm. The old ship drifted helplessly until she was finally towed into Boston Harbor where she was left on a mud bank to rot, her gallant search for U-boats over, her secret long forgotten.