HMS Bergamot (1917)

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HMS Bergamot was an Anchusa class sloop of the Royal Navy sunk on 13 August 1917^[1], in the Atlantic Ocean west of the harbour of Killybegs, by the German submarine U-84, commanded by Walter Rohr.

His war diary describes how he sighted a lone merchant ship, with no defensive armament (an unusual sight by 1917). Bergamot evidently sighted the sub's periscope, as she began to zig-zag at high speed. U-84 fired one torpedo, which hit, and Bergamot sank in 4 minutes. Surfacing, U-84 sighted an unusually large number of crew (70) and pieces of wood floating. The sub's log identifies the possibility of Bergamot being a 'trap ship'.

After a brief search of the area, in which no officers could be identified, the light diminished too much, and U-84 left the area to continue her patrol.

An interesting postnote is that the week before, Bergamot had experimented with towing a submerged submarine (HMS E48), thus resurrecting a 1915 method of trapping submarines.