Hello, everybody, This is Megan and welcome to Teatime Crimes, the True Crime podcast that explores women's stories under the lens of murder and mayhem. Each week, my co-host Alana and I delve into the psychology of killers, the strength of survivors, and everywhere in between. Wait, what about This is the T podcast? yeah. And Alana is left completely in the dark for each episode.
So join us every week for a fascinating case with Alana's fresh perspective and a comprehensive yet accidentally comedic TV review. I bring the T and she brings the crimes. Find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Ten crimes out. It is said that we have only explored about 5% of the oceans.
New creatures in the sea are discovered yearly, and many were once thought of as myths the first live recording of a giant squid wasn't made until 2006, and legends of monstrous sea creatures are as old as human existence. So who's to say there isn't something else in the depths that might be a large, dangerous and scary? towards the end of the First World War, something very strange happened. A German U-boat was captured off the shores of Northern Ireland.
the sub was found on the surface with its crew on the deck and willingly surrendering. The story they told was that of an attack by a giant sea monster. Their vessel damaged beyond repair and the crew desperate to be saved. This is a study of strange. Welcome back to the show where we dive into the depths of history's mysteries. And today we travel down or actually should say we set sail the dark waters to uncover the chilling tale of Esim you be a5 live.
a German U-boat and its encounter with the Sea Monster during World War One. I'm Michael May. And today this is a this is a mini soad meaning it's just little old me by myself hanging out, sharing this tale with you. So let's get right into it. The ocean is vast and honestly, even to the modern mind, its size is unfathomable. It's no surprising that the ocean has been the source of fears and fantasies for millennia.
There are tale tonight merges the grim realities of a world war with that timeless fear of what lurks beneath the waves. On April 30th, 1918, off the coast of Belfast, Northern Ireland, the British patrol ship HMS Collapses stumbled upon a stranded German submarine. Esim you be a5 The U-boats surrendered without resistance, which was very unusual during the war. The crew of the 85 were found scared and taken aboard the patrol boat.
Now, a few weeks before the sub had started patrolling the waters off the coast of Ireland, carrying ten torpedoes which were to target ships carrying supplies between the Americas in the UK. It was captained by Günther Crick. The captured crew told a harrowing tale. Their U-boat, they say, had been attacked by a monstrous sea creature. Crack was in the tower while the sub was surfaced, scanning the horizon for potential targets.
When he felt something hit the boat, he looked down and saw the creature with large eyes as small had a massive jaws, and it clung on to the vessel, causing it to list dangerously. In desperation, the crew fired upon the beast with their sidearms. The creature grabbed the deck gun and it wouldn't let go. eventually they succeeded in driving it away with their guns. But it left the US 85 damaged and unable to submerge.
After the crew was off the vessel and in the hands of the British, the sub was purposefully sunk. The story, while fascinating, was met with skepticism, as you can imagine. Was it a concocted tale to cover a technical malfunction or a strategic mistake? Like the captain felt embarrassed that he hadn't succeeded in his mission, so he created the story. Or perhaps the stress from the terror of the war affected the minds of the crew. In the early 20th century. Sea monster stories were still common.
I mean, even today, legends about the seas are believed in small circles. But in 1918, there was still a lot of ocean rarely explored. This is only one year after one of Ernest Shackleton's expeditions sailing to Antarctica. Long story short, belief in Sea Monsters was much more prevalent at this time at least. I'd venture to guess that in a way, the understanding of the ocean was closer to the age of Discovery a few hundred years before World War One than it is today.
The story of SMU 85 and its sea monster encounter resonates with our modern fascination with Cryptids. Creatures like the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot, whose existence is rumored but unproven. These tales reflect the enduring curiosity about the unknown and the unexplained realms of our planet. The wreckage of SMU 85 has been discovered today, and people have been trying to study the sonar images and information to see if there's evidence of an actual sea monster attack specifically.
Looking at the deck gun, which was supposedly damaged by the creature, Crick's alleged story about the sea monster could not be followed up with because he passed away a year after the war ended. However, an American naval historian, Dwight Mesmer, has gone through countless records from the Royal Navy and the files he found contained at least four interviews. According to the Daily Mail, with crew members from the setup, including Crick himself.
And this wasn't discovered until the last few decades, I believe. So what did Crick say? What did these interviews say? Well, crack appeared to never have mentioned the monster in any of these official accounts. His account mentioned crash diving the U-boat after he spotted the Royal Navy patrol boats. A crash dive is essentially diving as fast as possible under the water. Now you can watch the great German film Dust Boat to see an example of that. quoting Crick.
The navigator reported the coning tower hatch closed. But as we went under heavy flooding occurred through the hatch. End quote. I don't think it takes a scientist to know that water rushing into a submarine is a bad thing. All that water caused massive failures to electronics the engine and obviously could cause the ship to sink as well. And the air was filling with chlorine gas.
The crew had no choice but to surface and the blame was put on Crick himself, not just because he was in command, but he had installed a heater. And the way they apparently installed this device caused issues with a perfect seal in the coning tower because of the way they ran cables. So if that's the case, where did the story of the sea creature come from? That I have not been able to trace specifically.
Most articles today reference crack telling the story of the monster, but there's actually no record to corroborate that. The story originally came from him, especially when the only official accounts don't include a sea monster. There was, however, a bit of an interest in Sea Monster Tales in the 1930s, and it's likely that the story caught on during that time in periodicals. Sort of like the penny dreadful equivalent of the time or pulp comics. Things of that nature.
Though, before we write this off as entirely fake and just a rumor that has spread, there are still people that believe the waters in that area are home to sea creatures, sea creatures that science hasn't yet discovered. Gary Campbell, who runs the Official Sightings record for Loch Ness Monster, is one of those believers. And there are a lot of strange things in the oceans that we have yet to discover or understand. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening to this mini episode.
If you listen to our episode last week with Mark Ellen Miller, you'll know that I am back from a long hiatus. However, I have to take another short one here during the holiday season, and I'll be back in January much more consistently just like I was when a study of Strange first started about a year ago. You can find out more about our podcast on our website, a Study of Strange tor.com.
You can follow us on Instagram and if you want to support the show, please click that follow and leave us a rating and review that goes a very long way. And you can also see our new SUBSTACK, which we're using instead of Patreon, where you can support the show further and get not only exclusive audio content, but now blogs and articles written by primarily by myself. There will be some other writers as well coming in 2024. Thank you again for listening. Goodnight.