WWI Diary of HM Submarine E9
 

As some of you may remember from a Facebook post a year or so ago, a friend of mine loaned me a diary that they'd found when clearing out the house of a relative who'd passed away. It turned out to be a diary of the first 2~3 months of WWI (Aug - Oct 1914) and was kept by an officer onboard HMS E9.

Commanded by Max Horton, E9 was famous for the sinking of SMS Hela on 13th Sep 1914, the first German ship sunk by a British submarine in the war, and this event is recounted in the diary.

I've transcribed the diary and scanned in the photos that came with it and here's a link to the finished result (6Mb PDF file): https://goo.gl/pvy4ew

I hope you enjoy it and find it as interesting as I did. If you want a copy of the original diary pages (I worked from photographs as the original diary is rather frail) then contact me at les@lesrae.co.uk to get access to the files (100Mb ZIP file).

Les

Added to my list to read thanks Les

:Kaleun_Salute:
That's totally cool Les, thanks for doing this. You had me at Max Horton. I have a book that talks about some of his exploits. (Submarine Warriors, by Edwyn Gray)

McBee

Gold, pure gold. Thanks mate, this is excellent.

Anyone familiar with the Battle of Atlantic is familiar with Horton of course. An exceptionally successful career. The details in this transcription are really quite interesting. Like how he notes that air ships might get the 'short shrift' from airplane guns, or how seeing a sub towing a seaplane was 'modern'. :)

Great stuff.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.:salute:

Thanks guys, it's an odd read but I think it gives a good flavour of that era.

The original diary and photos are being donated to the RN Submarine Museum in Gosport.

Bookmarked :cool:

Superb
 

Thanks very much. My interest in WW1 subs is intense. These guys were real pioneers, in a totally new tech war. They had so little to work with. Brave fellows indeed.:Kaleun_Salute: