First US Shot of WWI
6 APRIL 1917
FIRST US SHOT OF WWI
The US stood by in the summer of 1914 when Serbia, Austro-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, and Britain were plunged into WWI. For nearly the next three years we held ourselves neutral, and as such, were bound by the Hague Convention of 1906. Under this agreement, ships of combatant nations are permitted to call on neutral seaports but only for non-military purposes and only for visits of less than 24 hours. Vessels and their crews violating these guidelines were to be interned by the neutral nation until the end of hostilities. During the first years of WWI, several German ships tarried in US ports long enough to become interned. When America did eventually enter the war against Germany, most of these were commandeered by the US Navy.
Such might have been the fate of the German steamer, SMS CORMORAN, who spent the Fall of 1914 avoiding internment in the south Pacific waters between the Marshalls, Carolines and other islands then held by Germany. But by 14 December 1914 empty coal bunkers forced CORMORAN into Apra Harbor, Guam. Unable to clear the port in 24 hours, her captain accepted internment. She remained anchored in the harbor with her crew on board for two and a half years, until this morning of 7 April 1917 (April 6th in CONUS), the day the US declared war on Germany.
The Navy stores ship USS SUPPLY happened to be standing at Apra this morning, and following the American war declaration, her skipper, CDR William A. Hall, was dispatched with a 32-man prize crew to seize CORMORAN. Hall had been instructed to follow behind the governor’s aide, who had boarded CORMORAN earlier under a flag of truce. But unbeknownst to Hall, the German captain was refusing to surrender his ship and had disembarked his crew in a launch to escape. Hall’s boatmen spotted the German crew rowing across the harbor, and USMC CPL Michael B. Chickie was ordered to fire a shot across their bows, the first American shot of WWI. This was ignored, more shots were fired, and finally the launch hove to.
As Hall was thus occupied, explosions could be heard echoing across the water. Rather than surrender CORMORAN to American hands, crewman still aboard had used the diversion to detonate pre-positioned scuttling charges. The steamer settled to the bottom taking with her seven crewmen who preferred death. The surviving Germans spent the war in a POW camp in Utah.
CORMORAN remains today where she settled in 1917, having become a popular destination for local scuba divers. By curious circumstance, she now rests directly beneath a second wreck, the Japanese freighter, Tokai Maru, the victim of the US submarine SNAPPER (SS-185) in August 1943.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 12 APR 22
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Cooney, David M. A Chronology of the U.S. Navy: 1775-1965. New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965, p. 224.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Visitors to Naval Station Guam today will notice a large jetty providing seaward protection for Apra Harbor. This breakwater is a post-WWII addition, and prior to its construction Apra Bay was much more open to the sea. In August 1943, while Guam was in Japanese hands, the coal freighter Tokai Maru arrived in Apra and anchored at a spot judged by her captain to be convenient. Local Guamanian men were formed into forced labor parties to begin relieving her cargo. Meanwhile, unseen to seaward, the US submarine Snapper arrived to scout the Japanese anchorage. In carrying out her observations, SAPPER recognized a clear shot could be made against the anchored freighter. She sent a torpedo into Tokai Maru then turned back to sea. The Chamorran laborers (one of whom this writer had the pleasure of meeting in 1992) dove for safety and swam ashore. Tokai Maru settled where she was anchored, ironically the same spot a German captain had selected 30 years earlier to anchor his steamer to take on coal. The two ships now lie one atop the other.
Another well-known example of a successful internment, in WWII, was that of the famous French luxury passenger liner Normandie, interned in New York harbor in 1940 and later seized by the US Navy. She was commissioned d our Navy as USS Lafayette (APV-53) on 12 December 1941, but caught fire and sank at the dock prior to entering actual service