DUBIOUS DISTINCTION

[Jeff Thorpe]

DUBIOUS DISTINCTION

© Jeffrey Thorpe October 2025

In this ever-competing world, there’s prestige in coming first
for athletes, mountain climbers and the like, victory slakes their thirst.
However, being first not necessarily means success
in fact, the following tale is unequivocally one of stress.

On fifth September 1914, HMS Pathfinder patrolled the Firth of Forth
which loosely separates Scotland’s south from north
near the dockyard at Rosyth, a major naval base,
a month after war’s declaration, no doubt a vital place.

T’was a calm sunlit day but, danger lurked beneath the swell
German U Boat U-21 saw opportunity and did not dwell
to attack the British cruiser, low on coal, travelling slow,
fired a torpedo and sunk Pathfinder, a massive enemy blow.

This the first warship sinking by a self-propelled torpedo
fired from a submerged submarine, well wide of status-quo,
proving submarines as a viable weapon of war
no longer theoretical but validated, not folklore.

Of Pathfinder’s sailors, only eighteen survived
terrible carnage demonstrating war to Scotland had arrived,
a new method of battle previously untested
a deadly asset which soon those on surface ships detested.

Pathfinder’s and U-21’s places in history are assured,
the former’s place there doubtless one to be endured
while U-21’s war service saw sinking of forty ships
a grading overall difficult to eclipse.