When a Hong Kong-based submarine hunting pirates fired on a ferry carrying 200 and it sank
- Submarines proved their worth in World War I. Afterwards Britain’s Royal Navy deployed its newest ones to Hong Kong to eradicate piracy
In the 1920s, the pirates of the South China coast faced a new threat to their livelihood of smuggling, kidnapping and hijacking, one that gave them significant pause for thought – anti-piracy submarines.
Britain’s Royal Navy, overstuffed with ships, crews and submarines after World War I, wondered what it might do with its new sleek, silent, torpedo-laden vessels.
The ships had been battling German U-boats in the North Sea and the English Channel for four long years. In London the Admiralty asked, what peacetime role was there for submarines?
The Great War was the conflict that first saw large-scale submarine warfare.
Subs had appeared as early as the American Civil War, in the 1860s, where both the Union and the Confederacy built submarines. But it was the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905) that really made navies around the world sit up and take notice.
