Name U-49 Commissioned 31 May 1916 Launched 26 November 1915 | Ordered 4 August 1914 Draft 3.74 m | |
Displacement 725 t (714 long tons) surfaced940 t (930 long tons) submerged | ||
SM U-49 was the seventh U-boat of the U-43 class. She was ordered on 4 August 1914 and was put into the III Flotilla 7 August 1916. Over the course of her career she had sunk 38 ships for a total of over 86,000 gross register tons (GRT), of those, none were naval ships. Her only commander was Kapitänleutnant Richard Hartmann who led the boat throughout its entire life until the day she was sunk on 11 September 1917 while operating in the Bay of Biscay. While surfaced, U-49 attacked the merchant ship SS British Transport, which had sailed Brest bound for Archangel, Russia, laden with munitions and other explosives. After a gun battle lasting five hours, she fired two torpedoes at British Transport; both missed, and the merchantman then rammed and sank her at 46°17′N 14°42′W; all hands were lost. It was the first instance in the war when a merchant ship had sunk a U-boat. The skipper of British Transport, Captain A. T. Pope, was subsequently awarded the DSO.