Forbidden History - The Dutch Titanic

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

During the height of WW1, a ship once nicknamed ‘The Dutch Titanic’ became embroiled in a 24-hour long battle with a pack of German U-Boats. In this episode, we follow a group of underwater explorers as they discover a new wreck in the North Atlantic that could shed a whole new light on the events that took place that fateful day. Cast List: Guy Walters: Author & Historian  Michael Barnette: Marine Biologist & Underwater Explorer Dr. Tamas Balogh: Maritime Historian Michael McVeigh: Dive Boat Skipper James Sherwood: Author & Broadcaster Tom McCluskie: Archive Manager at Harland & Wolff Shipping Company Axel Niestle: WW2 Historian Jean Kelly: Daughter of Clifford Young  Barry McGill: Diver Gareth O’Neill: Diver Eric Meyers: Narrator  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. In 1918, the SS Justicia, a former cruise liner turned troop ship during World War I, was attacked off the coast of Western Scotland. But how did this wreck's final resting place end up 40 miles away off the coast of Ireland? Here is the logbook of the SS Justiciere.

Ship struck. This is clearly horrific. Will new information and the latest underwater technology solve the mystery surrounding its sinking? And what is the connection between the one-time passenger steamer and the Titanic? 1918, World War I was at its deadly peak, and Germany's submarines were wreaking havoc on Allied. shipping. Nearly 30 miles off the most northerly point of Ireland, near Mallon Head,

lies one such victim. The British ship SS Justicia. Justicia was a troop transport ship responsible for crossing the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic to pick up crucial supplies from America and Canada before transporting them back to Britain. You've got to remember what a violent and dangerous environment the North Atlantic is at this stage. And this is where the SS Justicea is supposed to apply its trade. It's not exactly the best place for it to do so. Germany became increasingly still-mated on land. So instead, the Germans calculated that

if they could sink 600,000 tons of shipping every month for six months, then England would certainly have to surrender. On July 19, 19, 1918, SS Justicia came under attack. Its sinking was considered a great loss for Britain and a triumph for Germany. But it is also one of the war's great unsolved mysteries. Why is the wreck nearly 40 miles from the spot where the first torpedo hit? Dr. Tamas Balog is one of the world's foremost experts on the SS Justicia, and he believes that the answer to this question may lie on the wreck itself.

But in order to prove his theories, a specialist dive team needs to be dispatched. The location of the Justicia's remains has never been fully mapped or recorded. So using a remotely operated underwater vehicle, the team will plan their dive. I try to summarize what we are knowing about the wreck site of the Justici. There is two separate sections of the ship, mainly the bow section, and the same. and the stir section. And between the two, there is the remaining of the boiler room with all of the boilers with six meter highs. And between them, there is some kind of a no man's land.

It is in this no man's land that the team hoped they can find clues that will reveal how the Justicia traveled 40 miles before sinking. It takes two hours for experienced skipper Michael McVeigh to navigate to the spot where the Justicia is presumed to be lying. While the conditions above the water look perfect, below the water are treacherous currents, less than ideal for the team's underwater drone. Michael has anchored the boat at his best guess of the location of the Justicia. The team launched the underwater drone and begin the 250-foot descent to the ocean bed.

Only time will tell if Skipper Michael has hit his mark. Justicia's life began in the early 1900s, before the First World War, in the prosperous pre-war era of transatlantic cruise liners. Shipyards around the world were competing to build the most luxurious passenger ships. The great cruise liners of the early 20th century were sort of microcosms of what was going on. If you were a wealthy American heiress, you can meet a Russian Grand Ducom, You could meet a British aristocrat on board, and it was, I think it was that social mix. Of course, top of the list was to have a first-class ticket aboard a first-class ship, like Titanic. Nearly a year after the Titanic's launch, the Holland America Line decided they wanted a luxury transatlantic ocean liner of their own.

And at the Belfast Shipyard, where the world's most famous ship had been built, construction began on another ship. the long-since-forgotten, SS Statendam, the Dutch Titanic. This fusion of luxury and shipbuilding was setting the tone for a golden age in cruise liners. But just nine days after Statendam was put in the water in 1914, one event brought the whole era to a standstill. With the outbreak of the First World War, carrying wealthy passengers across the Atlantic in style was clearly not a priority. But other people did need to be transported. Allied troops. The British government recognized we need troop transports, we need hospital ships, and state and down would have been ideal for that.

So the ship was acquired by the United Kingdom. Its grey hole was repainted in dazzle camouflage, and it was renamed Justicia. By the time the Justicia entered military service in 1917, Britain's economy had been stretched to breaking point by the burden of war. The prospect of an Allied victory had become increasingly dependent on importing men, materials, and ammunition from the United States and Canada. All these supplies had to be transported across the Atlantic Ocean by ship, a difficult journey made even more treacherous by the frightening new German weapon prowling beneath the seas. The U-boat.

It was this deadly new weapon that played a central part in the mystery surrounding the sinking of the Justicia. We can put the small pieces together and reconstruct what happened exactly 100 years ago. How the deterioration of such a big ship like Justicia happened? Not is this the single and the most important question. In 1917, the same year that Justiciya

entered service. Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare on allied shipping. They had more than 100 U-boats capable of devastating attacks. It was essentially a battle of attrition. Those parties of the war who could produce more weapons, more material, more soldiers, they were eventually successful in that conflict. So transport and even supplies were more of the military. were more important than ever before in this modern conflict. Historian Guy Walters has insight into just how treacherous these waters were.

He's visiting the National Archives in London to examine some of the Justice's records. So what I've got here are the casualties to shipping through enemy causes 1914 to 1918. And it shows what a complete menace German submarines were to Allied shipping. and you're looking at well over 120 boats sunk by submarines in mines in just one month alone. In February, March, 1917, German submarines sank 500,000 tons of shipping. In April, that rose to 800,000 tons of shipping. All those goods, all those useful munitions coming across the Atlantic, from the States, from Canada, the U-boats could have sunk all of them, and Britain could have lost the war.

This is elemental. And then here in very nice handwriting, July the 20th, 1918, we see the U-Boats, entry for Justice Year, British flag, gross tonnage 32,234, House S-submarine, end's position 58-38 north, 739 West. So, you know, it's all there in black and white, and it's just one of many, many boats. At this stage of the Great War, the Allies were using every ship they had, regardless of what it had originally been built for. The Justicia had a crew of 600, from experienced officers to boys as young as 15, for whom this

was their first time at sea. One such crew member was Gene Kelly's father, Clifford Young, who was just 16 when he signed up. While going through her father's old possessions, Jean came across a letter he had written to his parents during the war, giving us a first-hand glimpse of the life of a young soldier. I asked him about it and he explained that he had joined the merchant navy at the age of 16 and he'd been assigned to SS Justiciah. I remember my father telling me that he made a friend on board

and his friend also stayed at the same boarding house that he stayed at in Liverpool. His name was Samuel. I managed to dig out the full crew list of the Justiciah and I've managed to dig out the full crew list of the Justiciah, And I've managed to find Clifford Young's name. If you turn a few more pages, you can also find the name of his friend, S. Turner. That of course is Sam Turner, and it reveals that he's just 15 years old. What you've also got to remember about these guys is that before the war, they just have ordinary jobs. Clifford works down a coal mine, but of course they're all called up, and this for them is going to be a great adventure.

They have no idea what's in store for them. Clifford, like many others of his age, didn't understand the dangers he was to face. He was in good spirits, often sending cheerful letters home whenever he reached the United States. He starts, Dear Mother and Father and the rest, glad to tell you we have arrived safely in New York. I went on board last Friday night, March 21st, about 6 o'clock. The ship that I am on is the SS Justicea. The work that I do is called trimming. It's filling the barrels with coal, wheeling them to the boiler fires.

The first two, three days I felt a bit seasick, but you get used to it. There's tons of grub here, white bread, meat, porridge every morning if you want it, sausage goes galore, plenty of butter, jam, marmalade, and plumbed over Sunday. I expect to be coming home for three or four days when I get back to Liverpool. So, goodbye for present, your loving son, Clifford. But that summer, Clifford and Sam would experience the horrors of war for the first time when on July 19, 1918, Justiceia steamed out a port and on to a collision course with a German U-boat. The story continues when forbidden history returns.

In the vast Atlantic Ocean north of the Irish coast, a dive team is hoping to bring closure to the SS Justicias story, a story that begins on July 19, 18th, 1918. With its 600 crew on board, SS Justiciah set sail once again from Liverpool to America, but this time there was extra cover. Due to a large number of ships that the Allies were losing to U-boats, they decided to employ a new tactic.

That was the convoy system. Convoys were the Allied answer to the U-boat. threat. They were groups of ships escorted by deadly destroyers. Initially, convoys weren't a popular idea. The British amorty thought that captains didn't have the necessary skills to maneuver in close quarters together and avoid collisions. Also, they thought that this large concentration of vessels would prove an easy target for German submarines. That changed when the USA joined the war in 1917. Once America entered the war, there was a new supply of naval escorts to help

with convoy duties. As the convoy systems became more widespread, the number of vessels claimed by German U-boats fell. But convoys were not only effective defensively, they were effective offensively. Convoy escorts no longer had to participate in long searches for U-boats. The U-boats would come to them. So successful were the convoys at destroying U-boats that a 29-year-old German named Otto von Schrader ended up becoming one of the youngest U-boat commanders.

And on the afternoon of July 19th, he was on patrol in the North Atlantic in UB 64. What I've got here is the logbook of the SS Justiciar. And, you know, when you look at it, initially everything looks pretty normal, pretty straightforward, summary of entries, docking people two days pay. Around 2pm, On Trader spotted an Allied convoy. He couldn't believe his luck. It was steaming straight towards him. You've just got all the normal sort of entries of a ship on a voyage.

Bon Schrader targeted the largest ship in the group. And then suddenly you turn the page and here you've got that moment. Ship struck by enemy torpedo in engine room which at once filled. Ship stopped. Electric engine room flooded. This is clearly horrific. And this page in just black and white reveals those who are missing, presumed dead. And as you work your way down the list, all these names, and then suddenly there you go,

S. Turner, Sam Turner, that's Clifford's best mate, and he's gone. There was no time for mourning. This was only the beginning. But despite receiving a direct hit, Justicia refused to sink. That allowed many of the crew enough time to escape to another ship. Preparations were made to tow Justicia to a repair base, but on the U-boat, von Schrader was determined to sink the ship. He fired four more torpedoes. His torpedoes missed their mark,

but the British escort destroyers countered with depth charges. Bombs dropped into the water. Von Schrader survived, but the damage to his enemy, U-boat forced him to retreat. He desperately wanted the Justicia sunk. So he sent a radio signal which was picked up by two other U-boat commanders, Hans Oscar Wutzdorff and Helmutschel. As dawn broke, Wutztorff and von Rookdeschell caught up with the On Toe Justiciya. They opened fire. Two torpedoes hit their mark, and at 1230 p.m., 22 hours after to the first torpedo hit, Justicia sank.

Von Schrader returned to Germany as a hero. But it was only later that he would discover his enthusiastic welcome home was not completely deserved. Today, the wreck is situated nearly 40 miles from where von Schrader's torpedo hit, showing that the attempt to tow the ship had been successful, despite it rapidly flooding with water. Michael McVeigh and the crew have saved out to the location of the wreck.

They've deployed an underwater drone, hoping that by exploring the uncharted area of the wreck, they can discover how Justicia was able to stay afloat for so long. From their search with the underwater drone, the team discover the deck of the uncharted area of the wreck has been badly damaged after a century at the mercy of the Atlantic. The team then move on to the bow in search of clues. Surprisingly, they discover that the bow and the hull are in remarkably good shape. What was it in the construction that made the hull so strong? Might that be one of the reasons that the ship didn't sink after the first hit?

Justicia was originally built as the cruise liner SS Statendam by the Harland and Wolf Shipping Company in Belfast. Tom McCluskey was the company's archive manager, and he believes the reason for Justici The Justice's resilience actually lies in the infamous sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The fact that hit the iceberg and sank is the only thing that makes the famous. It wasn't anything unique, it wasn't special, it was one of three ships. However, what it did do was the disaster changed the law radically in shipbuilding. It was these changes in the law that meant that Justicia was fought.

far more unsinkable than the Titanic ever was. One of the many fallacies surrounding the Titanic is that the iceberg it struck made a huge gash down the ship's side. It was actually a series of small punctures that pushed rivets out of the steel plates, allowing the water to flood one apartment after the next. So, with tragic hindsight, the shipbuilding regulatory bodies decided that ships in the future

must be made completely watertight. The watertight subdivisions on the Titanic barely extended above the water line, so when water came through a breach in the hull, the bulkheads couldn't contain it, and the Titanic was doomed. On Justicia, the bulkheads went all the way up to the deck, meaning that floodwater was contained in sealed compartments. And so it was only by penetrating three of these compartments, with three torpedoes that the weight of the water finally caused Justicia to sink. It had been built to the same standard of the Titanic. She wouldn't have survived as long as she did.

It was Justicea's past life as the cruisliner Statendam that saved it from sinking for so long. The German U-boats had claimed their victim. But it would later be revealed that Justicia was just a victim of mistaken identity. When Otto von Schrader, the German commander of the U.B. 64, spotted the Justicia, he believed he was looking at the USS Leviathan, a German ship that had been seized by the Americans. For Germany, the loss of the ship was humiliating. To sink it would have meant glory for the successful U-boat commander. Von Schrader had seen what he wanted to see.

Back at the National Archives, Guy Walters' design. discovers that a German U-boat was actually lost in the attack, and that the incident caused something of a stir within the British government. What I've got here are the minutes of the Imperial War Cabinet from 1918. It's Mark's secret, and it shows that there's a discussion going on at the very highest levels. Here, the Deputy First Sea Lord, talking to the Prime Minister, and telling him that actually, as well as the Justici are being sunk, there was a German submarine went down as well, but that wasn't reported in the press.

and it shows here that the Prime Minister is really quite angry about that. You know, it reveals that the press reporting is almost one-sided. Why aren't they reporting the good news as well as the bad news about the Justicea? The U-boat that was sunk was Wutztorff's UB-124. Hit by death charges. It's believed that the German crew scuttled the vessel to avoid capture. Two German crewmen went to their deaths, believing that they'd attacked the ship taken by the Americans.

But the wreck of UB124 has been missing for more than a century. Barry, Stewie and Gareth have been diving the wrecks off Mallinhead for more than 15 years. But recently they received a tip about a previously undiscovered wreck. On the sonar, we could see that it was in and around the right size to be a U-boat. And two, then, we do have a list of various U-Bote that are lost in the area, and one being the wreck of the UB1212. So what we're trying to do is narrow down what it could be. So we're going to look at the configuration of the torpedo tubes that matches the wreck of UB124.

We're going to look maybe for some of the ammunition or the armaments, especially from the deck gun, and maybe we can get a date from that. But if this is the wreck of UB124, more than 100 years have passed since it's sinking. So the key to identifying it will be gathering information for analysis. for analysis back on dry land. The dive to the U-boat is no small undertaking. The divers only have a short window in the dangerous currents. It's known as slackwater, and while they're able to reach the wreck in minutes,

they'll need more than two hours to resurface to avoid lethal decompression sickness. There's a much, much smaller wreck. On the sea bed, it's probably about 40 meters long, whereas the gestia was 225 meters. 125 meters long. So when I put the boats my own anchor out up here and drift back, we're going to have to try to be within 30 meters, 40 meters of the wreck. If we don't get within that, we'll get one go and hopefully that'll do it. The boat pulls up to the coordinates, drops anchor and the divers have no time to lose. With the limited time available to them, the divers work fast to gather data.

But all too soon their time is up, and they can only hope they've collected enough evidence to establish if this is the U-boat-124 that sank SS Justicia. What did you think there, Rick? Yeah, very nice, Rick. She's broken kind of just forward of the where the counting tower would have been. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the stern section is fairly intact, I suppose, you want to call it that. The outer hull is gone in places.

But you can see inside the wreck in towards the engine. You can see the engine bays and stuff. So whatever happened, whatever catastrophic failure it had in the bow section. The damage on the wreck doesn't look like it was caused by the depth charges. That gives the team another mystery to solve. I wonder about the Conantor, did you have a look inside that or around that or... Yeah, you could... Obviously you could see in from both sides of it.

Oh, right, yeah. I suppose the thing that stood out to me was how small of us. Right? It's very small. Very small. The Conning Tower is from where the commander controls the U-boat. Its small size is consistent with UB-124. Many meters off the wreck is at land, the Conantor? Probably about 2030.

Oh, it's a good... It's a bit off of it, yeah, definitely, yeah. The tower's position so far from the wreck has thrown the team yet another curveball. With all crew now on deck and the dive complete, the team sends the footage and the measurements of the wreck to German U-boat expert Axel Nistel to get his verdict. A team investigating the sinking of the Justicia in 1918

may have made an extraordinary discovery. The wreck of German U-boat, 124 that fired the two final and fatal torpedoes that sent the British ship to the bottom of the ocean. In his office in Berlin, U-boat expert Axel Nistel is reviewing the footage and data gathered by the dive team as they try to identify the wreck on the ocean floor. What we see from the gun itself, the appearance of the gun, it clearly supports that it is a 105mm gun. By comparison with guns still,

still on exhibition today and this gun being found here on the ground. I'm absolutely certain it's a 105 millimeter deck gun and lying next to the wreck at least points us into the right direction. Axel looks for shots of the stern to confirm the number of torpedo tubes. So with one stern torpedo tube hidden here clearly visible on the wreck, This excludes high seas fleet boat, because most of these fleet boats were equipped with two stern torpedo tubes. So from all what we can see in here, having seen all the details on the rack side, that they all fit in with a UB3 type. And combining this with a historical position of UB124 being sunk in that area, and this position being very close to the actual wreck side, in my eyes, This confirms that this boat is UB 1224.

Axel is convinced the wreckage is UB124, but its damaged condition poses another question. I can only speculate what happened to the rest of the outer plating. From the circumstances we know how the boat was lost. We know it was scuttled by the crew being under fire from nearby destroyers, And so scuttling usually means that a boat is being filled with water and then it goes straight to the ground without any structural damage. But if the U-boat was scuttled,

what accounts for the catastrophic damage on the wreck? One explanation could be that with seawater, seawater entering the inner part of the U-boat and getting into contact with electric batteries, it will explode, it will explode, therefore the force of the explosion will rip apart the boat. So the most likely reason for the damage is a huge explosion caused by short-circuited batteries. As the end of the war approached,

the U-boats were no longer the deadly menace they once were. As German U-boats had to service to attack, American and British escorts quickly began sinking these U-boats as they used the convoys as a sort of bait. By late 1918, because of the convoy system, The Allies forced the U-boats from the seas. In fact, the U-boats may have turned the tide of the war, but not in Germany's favor.

Convoys denied the U-boats the ability for Germany to win the war, but it also had another effect. By bringing in a neutral country, America, it largely sealed Germany's fate. Eventually, the brutal war at sea came to an end. The positive identification of UB-124 brings closure Not only to the remarkable story of the SS Justicia, but to Jean Kelly. Jean, whose father Clifford was aboard the ship and survived,

is especially eager to see footage of the wreck. Clifford was rescued, but he lost his friend Sam that fateful day of the attack. It's sort of hard to believe that there it is, the ship itself, at the bottom of the ocean. He did his duty. It was part to help the war, and he was so young, so very young. Now, more than a century later, we can feel far removed from that patriotic fervor that brought out the best and the worst in people. But dramatic stories from World War I remain, so many of them surrounded by mysteries that may never be solved. But the Justicia mystery isn't one of them.

Thanks to a determined crew and the latest technology, we now know how a stricken ship managed to defy torpedoes and the Atlantic Ocean for as long as it did. We also now know that a second U-boat was involved in the ship's final demise, and that U-boat was under the impression that it was attacking an entirely different ship. And finally, we also now know the resting place of that U-boat, bringing full closure to the remarkable Justicius story. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment below,

and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. And for more from the Like a Shot Network, check out Where Did Everyone Go, Histories of the Abandoned, a deep dive into the incredible stories behind forgotten places. Available now on your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for listening.