[Sailor Steve]

February 3, 1917

Air War:
French pilot Henri Languedoc, flying a Nieuport, shoots down an "Enemy Aircraft" for victory number 4.

German ace Walter Göttsch is wounded, putting him out of the war for the next two months.



Celtic Sea:
Hellmuth Jürst, commanding U-43, sinks three Allied ships southwest of Fastnet:
British freighter SS Hollinside, 2,862 tons, bound from Sunderland for Marseille with a load of coal.
Norwegian barque Songelv, 2,064 tons, inbound from Buenos Aires to Falmouth with a load of maize.
Norwegian sailing ship Wasdale, 1,856 tons, travelling from Buenos Aires to Dublin with a load of maize.
Jürst's score is now 21 ships and 46,332 tons.

Erich Sittenfeld, in U-45, sinks two British ships in the same area:
Sailing ship Belford, 1,905 tons, carrying a load of barley from San Francisco to Queenstown.
Freighter SS Eavestone, 1,858 tons, en route from Barry to Gibraltar with a load of coal.
Sittenfeld's score is now 13 ships and 18,091 tons.

Hans Rose, in U-53, sinks American freighter SS Housatonic, 3,143 tons, bound from Galveston for London with a load of wheat. His score is now 13 ships and 35,642 tons.
USS Housatonic was also the name of the very first ship ever sunk by a submarine, CSS H.L. Hunley, back on February 17, 1864.

Vokhard von Bothmer, in U-54, sinks Norwegian sailing ship Tamara, 453 tons, travelling from Black River, Jamaica to Fleetwood with a load of logwood. This is his first sinking.

Raimund Weisbach, in U-81, sinks British freighter SS Port Adelaide, 8,181 tons, en route from London to Sydney with an unnamed cargo. His score is now 10 ships and 32,125 tons.



English Channel:
Claus Lafrenz, in UB-18, sinks four Allied vessels north of Brittany:
French dandy Confiante, 85 tons, carrying coal from Cardiff to Saint Brieuc.
French schooner Goeland, 305 tons.
Danish freighter SS Lars Kruse, 1,460 tons, en route from Buenos Aires to Rotterdam.
French sailboat Sainte Marie, 60 tons.
Lafrenz's score is now 32 vessels and 30,062 tons.



Durban, South Africa:
HMFM Trent's troubles continue. While docked for coaling five men desert the ship. In the afternoon seven men and one boy are returned to the ship by the police, and thirteen new crewmembers join the ship.



Australia:
American schooner Kona, 670 tons carrying a load of lumber from San Francisco to Port Adelaide, is wrecked on Scraper Shoal, near Cape St. Albans on Kangaroo Island.



Atlantic Ocean:
German raider SMS Seeadler captures and sinks French barque Antonin, 3,071 tons, bringing her score to 5 ships and 11,997 tons.



German Raider SMS Geier captures and sinks Norwegian barque Staut, 1,227 tons, bound from South Georgia Island for Queenstown, Ireland with a load of 7,172 barrels of whale oil and 1,570 bags of guano totalling 1,600 tons. Geier now has 2 ships and 1,442 tons. This is her last sinking.
Note: There were two SMS Geiers in the First World War. The first was a Bussard-class unprotected cruiser commissioned in October 1895. She served until captured by the U.S. Navy on April 6, 1917. This second was originally the British freighter SS Saint Theodore, captured by SMS Möwe on December 24, 1916 and converted to a raider. After sinking two ships Geier was considered to be of no more use and scuttled on February 14, 1917.