Early Career
The submarine was commissioned into the German Imperial Navy as SM UB-17 on 4 May 1915 under the command of Kapitänleutnant (Kapt.) Ralph Wenninger, a 25-year-old former skipper of UB-11. On 10 May, UB-17 joined the Flanders Flotilla (German: U-boote des Marinekorps U-Flotille Flandern), which had been organized on 29 March. When UB-17 joined the flotilla, Germany was in the midst of its first submarine offensive, begun in February. During this campaign, enemy vessels in the German-defined war zone (German: Kriegsgebiet), which encompassed all waters around the United Kingdom, were to be sunk. Vessels of neutral countries were not to be attacked unless they definitively could be identified as enemy vessels operating under a false flag.
On 18 July, Wenninger torpedoed the British tanker Batoum just off the Southwold lighthouse. Despite the loss of six men, Batoum's crew was able to beach the ship, listed as 4,054 gross register tons (GRT). Early the next month, on 6 August, Wenninger and UB-17 sank four British fishing vessels while patrolling in the Yarmouth–Lowestoft area. All four of the sunken ships were smacks—sailing vessels traditionally rigged with red ochre sails—which were stopped, boarded by crewmen from UB-17, and sunk with explosives.
On 18 August, the chief of the Admiralstab, Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, issued orders suspending the first offensive in response to American demands after German submarines had sunk the Cunard Line steamer Lusitania in May 1915 and other high profile sinkings in August and September. Holtzendorff's directive ordered all U-boats out of the English Channel and the South-Western Approaches and required that all submarine activity in the North Sea be conducted strictly along prize regulations. Six days later, UB-17 seized the Belgian sailing vessel Leon Mathilde as a prize off Ostende.
Enemy naval targets were not subject to the prize regulations, so on 23 September, Wenninger torpedoed and sank the Saint Pierre I, a trawler of the French Navy off the Dyck lightship. There was only one survivor from the 303-ton ship's eighteen-man crew. Three months later, Wenninger misidentified the 74-ton French fishing ship Jesus Maria as a destroyer. UB-17 launched a torpedo which struck the ship and killed all six men of Jesus Maria's crew.
On 31 January 1916, in the Lowestoft–Aldeburgh area, UB-17 sank an additional four fishing ships: three British, and one Belgian. The next day, UB-17's war journal (German: Kriegstagebücher or KTB'') records the torpedoing of the 957-ton British steamer Franz Fischer off the Kentish Knock. British records list the cargo ship as being sunk by bombs from a zeppelin. Franz Fischer was the last ship sunk with Wenninger in command. On 7 February, he was relieved by Oberleutnant zur See (Oblt.) Arthur Metz for a month, Kapt. Werner Fürbringer for a week, and Oblt. Friedrich Moecke for another month. Wenninger resumed command on 16 April.
In the meantime, Germany had begun its second submarine offensive against merchant shipping at the end of February in reaction to the British blockade of Germany. By early 1916, the British blockade was having an effect on Germany and her imports. The Royal Navy had stopped and seized more cargo destined for Germany than the quantity of cargo sunk by German U-boats in the first submarine offensive. UB-17 sank no ships during this offensive, which was called off near the end of April by Admiral Reinhardt Scheer, the commander-in-chief of the High Seas Fleet.
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