Action of 16 March 1917

Action of 16 March 1917
Part of The First World War
Achilles
Date 16 March 1917 Location 200 mi (320 km) north-east of the Faroe Islands, in the Norwegian Sea 64°54′N 00°22′E / 64.900°N 0.367°E / 64.900; 0.367 Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom	Germany
Commanders and leaders
Francis Martin-Leake	Hans von Laffert †
Strength
1 armoured cruiser 1 armed boarding steamer	1 auxiliary cruiser
Casualties and losses
6 killed	319 killed auxiliary cruiser sunk
class=notpageimage| The battle location in the Norwegian Sea

The Action of 16 March 1917 was a naval engagement in which the British armed boarding steamer SS Dundee and HMS Achilles, a Warrior-class armoured cruiser, fought the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Leopard, which sank with the loss of all 319 hands and six men of a British boarding party.

Leopard was the former British steamer Yarrowdale which had been captured by the German commerce raider Möwe in 1916 and brought back to Germany. The German Imperial Admiralty converted Yarrowdale into a commerce raider, arming it with guns taken from decommissioned ships and fitted two torpedo tubes. The ship was put into service as SMS Leopard and the new captain, Korvettenkapitän Hans von Laffert, sailed in early March 1917 to relieve Möwe.

The British Northern Patrol examined neutral ships entering and leaving the North Sea for contraband cargoes and kept watch for German commerce raiders trying to slip around the north of Scotland into the Atlantic. The German Admiralty warned Laffert that the British had changed their wireless cipher, which stopped them reading of British wireless transmissions to and from the Northern Patrol. Laffert pressed on but on 16 March, Leopard was sunk; Laffert was killed along with his crew and a British boarding party, after a determined attempt to engage the British ships, when caught at a serious disadvantage.