Germans were ready to bring the war to Newfoundland
Jack Fitzgerald’s Treasury of Newfoundland Stories, Volume III: Classic Spy Tales and Epic Sea Adventures, coming this December from Breakwater Books.
By 1918, German plans relating to Newfoundland were in full progress. According to the report of the District Commanding Officer (DCO) Home Defence, German submarines were operating in the Atlantic and near Newfoundland shores. In response, guards were stationed at all cable stations, wireless stations, and other vital points. All coastal steamers were armed and fitted with wireless apparatus in order to quickly render reports. The British Admiralty was supervising general patrol and mine-sweeping operations off the coast of Newfoundland.
Newfoundland was already preparing for an expected German offensive on North America. Just days before Governor Davidson received the Spring Rice Document (a clandestine German file obtained by Allied forces and named after the British ambassador to the US), he had been advised by British Intelligence on how the enemy could mount such an offensive. Captain G. Abraham had explained to Davidson that the captured German document indicated the area of concentration for the German plan in Newfoundland was in the Strait of Belle Isle and Harbour Deep area of the Great Northern Peninsula. A week after learning of the plan, the government’s response strategy went into action. Two armed patrol boats with each carrying armed members of the Newfoundland Regiment were on their way to set up military stations in coves identified in the document.
A Lieutenant Norris and Lieutenant O’grady, each in command of forty non-commissioned officers of the Newfoundland Regiment, left St. John’s by train for Lewisporte where they boarded the SS Home to begin their secret mission. Their assignment was to guard the places referenced in the spy document which were in the areas of White Bay, Pigeonnier Arm, Harbour Deep, and Duggan’s Cove. Also included were Fourchette Bay and Robinson Cove, which are situated near the entrance to Harbour Deep. The soldiers were armed with rifles only and were ordered to capture any supply ships which reached these rendezvous points and to keep the governor informed daily by telegraph. Governor Davidson felt Lieutenant Norris was ideal for the assignment because his father was the leading merchant in Green Bay and White Bay, and his brother was manager of an agency at Conche. Intelligence Officer Abraham gave an outline of how German strategy would unfold:
If it is the enemy’s intention to send submarines across the Atlantic to attack British ships, arrangements have doubtless been made to secure means of communicating with many agents both here and on the coast of the Dominion and the United States. Their plans would understandably be completed, not only for the arrangement of bases of supply, but also for information as to the movement of British ships of war and merchant vessels.
It may pay the Germans to send one or two large and modern submarines to intercept the summer traffic through the Bell Isle Straits, but I am convinced they will only be sent in company with supply ships fitted out in Europe and disguised as foreign trawlers. Assuming that a harbour has been selected suitable for the purpose, it will not, I think, be on the Newfoundland coast. The submarine must come by a very northerly route, via the Norwegian and Iceland coasts, and would therefore seek a northerly base for receiving supplies.
Their plan therefore would be to wait until the Belle Isle Straits are open to traffic and base their plans for attacking the line of traffic debouching from the Straits at some point out of sight of shore but no more than one hundred or two hundred miles from their base on Labrador.
The captured Spring Rice Document had a profound effect on Newfoundland wartime policy, and when the spy document surfaced to the public one hundred years later, it dramatically changed the way we view the history of WWI in Newfoundland and Labrador.