16. Lightoller expressed contempt for submarine officers and crews in his memoirs
Lightoller, and many surface naval officers of the time, were contemptuous of those who went to sea in submarines and considered the practice of submarine warfare cowardly and barbaric. In the early days of the First World War, the U-Boats (and surface raiders) warned commercial ships before attacking them. The warning allowed the civilian crews of the ships to abandon them prior to their being sunk by gunfire or torpedo. The British responded by arming merchant’s vessels, often in ways which were camouflaged, allowing them to respond to surrender demands with gunfire. The Germans responded with unrestricted submarine warfare, attacking without first demanding surrender.
British officers considered the practice uncivilized (as if war could be civilized in the first place) and beneath the honor of officers and gentlemen. In his memoirs, Lightoller offhandedly commented that he “refused to accept the hands-up business”. “In fact,” he wrote of the U-Boat crews in general, “it was simply amazing that they should have had the infernal audacity to offer to surrender, in view of their ferocious and pitiless attacks on our merchant ships”. Lightoller went on to say that warship against warship was fair game but that the submarines, “were nothing but an abomination, polluting the clean sea”.