The long journey of the U4 dive bell
In our series of articles written by members of philatelic societies, David Bravery of the Austrian Philatelic Society describes how his interest in a corner of Europe, and his subsequent search for U-boat postal history, led to an intriguing discovery
While being a fairly keen collector of Austro-hungarian Empire stamps for almost fifty years I have also dabbled in several more specialist areas including Austrian stamps used in Hungary, the Salzkammergut, the first four issues of Hungary and almost all ‘back of the book’ material up to 1921. However for the past 5 years – since visiting Dubrovnik and Kotor (formerly Cattaro) – I have become quite fixated with almost any material to do with the Bay of Cattaro prior to 1919, whether it be stamps, postcards, general covers, ship’s letters, maps, etc.
Whilst this remote southernmost area of the old Austria province of Dalmatia (now part of Montenegro) is almost unknown in the UK, it was of course a major base for the Austro-hungarian navy right up to the end of the first world war. The ‘Bocche di Cattarro’, as it was known to the Austrians at that time, comprises three distinct bays with interlinking narrow passage and as such was practically impregnable to enemy forces. From the bay’s entrance off the Adriatic Sea it extends some 28km to the town of Cattaro (Kotor) and has a coastline of over 100km. Geologically it is a Ria rather than a Fjord and was defined as ‘Kriegshafen Castelnuovo’ (‘War Harbour Castelnuovo’) as early as 1850 when the Austrian navy was in its infancy. During the First World War it became a vital harbour for the Austrian navy, particularly so for both Austrian and German submarines, the bay providing not only a secure base but easy access to the southern Adriatic and the Mediterranean (via the Strait of Otranto) where they were able to successfully attack enemy shipping throughout the war.
The Austrian submarines at the beginning of the First World War were quite primitive and deemed even hazardous to operate, as fumes generated by their engines intoxicated the crew to the point of dementia. The crews of German U-boats arriving in Cattaro in 1915 marvelled that they were even put to sea! Be that as it may, their commanders and sailors were well trained and seemingly fearless and succeeded in sinking or severely damaging significant numbers of Italian, French and British vessels, both warships and merchant ships alike. By far the most famous and successful Austrian submarine was the U5 commanded By Georg von Trapp (later of Sound of Music fame) albeit not very far behind, success-wise, was the U4 commanded by Rudolf (von) Singule.
Having become ‘hooked’ on the role of the submarines operating out of the Bay of Cattaro I started looking for any correspondence from their officers and crews blithely thinking that ‘there must be plenty around!’ However while postcards and letters from the huge dreadnoughts and other large warships with crews upwards of 900 sailors is still relatively easy to find – as they were confined to port for most of the war as part of the very effective Austrian strategy of maintaining ‘a fleet in being’ – mail from smaller craft, such as torpedo boats and especially submarines, with very small crews and almost continuous active service, are far more difficult to find. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the Austrian submarines also operated from their northern Adriatic base at Pola and letters and cards emanating from the Pola / Trieste / Fiume area generally seem to appear more frequently than from
their southern Dalmatian bases at Cattaro. From my experience to date I would think that the ratio is at least seven to one in favour of Pola. This is not a good statistic for Bay of Cattaro collectors. Interestingly there is currently a move for collectors to now be far more interested in the more remote areas of the old Austro-hungarian Empire. Southern Dalmatia which comprised the southern-most extent of the Empire is but one such area.
Correspondence from Austrian submarines seems to have been mostly written whilst the subs were undergoing repairs and refitting at their base, in the Bay of Cattaro at the small harbour of Gjenovic on the north shore near the town of Zelenika. In addition, and importantly for collectors of ‘limited means’, letters, picture postcards and Feldpost from submarines are relatively expensive – in the UK at least. However foolishly undaunted by this, and with some considerable luck, I have, over several years, managed to obtain some interesting U-boot correspondence emanating from or related to the Bay of Cattaro. Truth be known, it has become a bit of an obsession.
So can you imagine how happy and excited I was when in 2014 I managed to get my hands on the original brass dive-bell from the Austrian submarine U4 (SMU4). What is more, the beautiful little bell was given to me as a gift and it came with a good provenance. How this bell ended up in a Surrey village is a wonderful story.
The U4 survived the war and after the Treaty of St. Germain (the Austrian version of the Versailles Treaty whereby Austria became landlocked) it was awarded to France together with other warships as part of the war reparations. However, by this time it was totally obsolete and it was sold to the Italians in 1920, towed to Trieste and scrapped. This is where an English intelligence officer, one William J. Brunell, appears to have ‘liberated’ the U4’s dive bell as a souvenir and brought it back to England.
Brunell later became well known by winning the Monte Carlo motor rally in 1926, the first in a British car (he completed the rally seven times) and had a long and successful career as a freelance photographer, including working for postcard and calendar publishers – his comprehensive collection of motor car photographs is still housed at the Beaulieu National Motor Museum. Some time after the Second World War he and his wife came to live in the Surrey village of Brockham and the bell was used as a door bell. Brunell died in 1969 and his widow, knowing how much the local children loved the bell, passed it to her neighbours Mr and Mrs John Burden who mounted it alongside their house door and continued to use it not only as a door bell but also for summoning their children home from the cricket pitch some distance from their home.
I had seen this bell many times over the past ten years when visiting my good friend John as we were both committee members of the local Bookham Stamp Club. His wife Hilda had always told me that it came from the German submarine U4. However one day while talking about the bay of Cattaro and my interest in the correspondence from the Austro-hungarian U-boats which operated there she mentioned that ‘her’ U-boat had been responsible for the sinking of the Italian armoured cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi. She also produced a substantial newspaper article and photograph with the title ‘Bell from a German U-boat’ published by the
Paignton Observer on 30 November 1943. The article showed Brunell with the U4 dive bell and went on to mention the U4’s sinking of the Giuseppe Garibaldi.
This provided an excellent provenance and it was at this moment that I realised the dive-bell was in fact from the Austrian-hungarian U-boat U4 (SMU4) and not the German U4. When John died in June 2014 his widow, knowing my great interest in the U4 and its history generously gave me the bell to add to my collection.
However in December 2014, while in Vienna for the NUMIPHIL stamp fair, I briefly visited the Army Museum (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum) at the Arsenal specifically to view their Austrohungarian navy section. The Museum is first class in every respect and is well worth a visit by anyone visiting this wonderful city. Staff were most friendly and knowledgeable and the exhibits, which included the conning tower from the Austrian U-boat U20 salvaged in 1962, were of great interest. Back in England I thought about the museum and how my recently acquired dive-bell would have fitted in so well with the museum’s other artefacts.
An old Austrian refugee friend had recently donated a wonderful Hans Canon oil painting to the Wien Museum as she thought that the picture would not be properly appreciated in England and that it should ‘go home’. This led me to think about what a truly generous gesture this was and after just a little deliberation I wrote to the Army Museum offering them the U4 dive-bell as a further exhibit for their collection.
As a consequence on the 3 December 2015 Director Christian Ortner and Major Hans Broedl, together with their staff, met me and my wife at the museum and the bell was officially and ceremoniously handed over and placed in a specially prepared cabinet for display to the public. An oil painting of the U4’s commander, Rudolf (von) Singule, was brought specially for the occasion from the Vienna Art museum. Champagne flowed and I was presented with a special personal plaque to commemorate the occasion with the promise of a comprehensive book on the torpedo boats of the Austrohungarian Kriegsmarine to follow when this became available.
It would appear that this little dive-bell is the only example from an Austro-hungarian U-3 class submarine in existence! After a space of 97 years the U4 dive-bell is ‘back home in
Austria’ and I am sure it is now in its rightful place.
In the meantime my search for additional correspondence or ephemera from the U4’s time in the Bay of Cattaro continues. But although the general Cattaro collection now fills four albums, there being many little towns around the bay that provide huge opportunities to collect postcards, postmarks and First World War army/ navy military unit cachets, it is only the scarce photopostcard of U4’s Commander Rudolf Singule that has been obtained. Commander Singule survived the war and the fall of the Monarchy, only to be murdered by Russian soldiers together with his whole family in Brno, May 1945, aged 62.