The first shot from the German U-boat didn't wake Reuben Hopkins on the morning of July 21, 1918; the sound of the man in the top bunk leaping to the floor did. Once awake, the coast guardsman scrambled up the tower of the coast guard station in Orleans, Massachusetts, to see what the commotion was. He reached the rail just in time to see a shot explode over a tug about a mile offshore. Hopkins' companion grabbed the radio and called the naval air station in nearby Chatham to report a vessel at sea was firing rounds into a tug and her four barges off Nauset. Enemy shells were striking American mainland for the first time since the War of 1812.

The attacking vessel was the U-156, a German submarine sent across the Atlantic Ocean to bring World War I to the United States. Until only recently, the concept of fighting from beneath the sea had been considered the stuff of Jules Verne fantasies. True, during the Civil War the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley had sunk a Union vessel, but the sub itself was destroyed in the attack. Nonetheless, submarine development continued. English engineer Robert Whitehead developed a torpedo in 1866, and further improvements refined it as a weapon. Rudolph Diesel's "heavy oil" engine, introduced in 1895, proved an effective power plant for submarines on the surface (electric motors took over underwater). In the United States, John P. Holland and Simon Lake competed to advance submarine technology. By the outset of the war, Great Britain, France, Russia, the United States, and Germany had constructed submarines.

When Germany unleashed its submarine force in 1914, it sent so many mercantile ships to the bottom that Great Britain was threatened with starvation. By January 1917, with the Western Front a stalemate, Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm announced that on February 1 Germany would return to a policy it had earlier implemented and then abandoned: unrestricted submarine warfare. Any merchant ships found in British territorial waters, even those from neutral countries such as the United States, would be considered fair game.

Germany knew the policy change would draw the United States into the conflict, but Berlin planned to use the full weight of its submarine force to win the war.

Germany had already sent the United States subtle messages of its submarines' capabilities. In July1916 the mercantile submarine Deutschland, capable of carrying some 350 tons of cargo, had created headlines by crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Baltimore, returning to Germany, and later making a second trip to the United States. While ostensibly commercial voyages, the trips were meant to show Washington that U.S. waters would not be safe from German U-boats.

On August 29, 1916, Congress passed the Naval Appropriations Bill. It provided for the creation of a Naval Coast Defense Reserve that would establish extensive anti-submarine patrols and contained a provision that allowed the Reserve to commandeer civilian vessels for use as patrol boats.

When the German submarine U-53 visited Newport, Rhode Island, on October 7, 1916, it provided the U.S. Navy with added incentive to protect American waters. The submarine's captain, Hans Rose, told officials he had come merely to pay a courtesy call on the commandant of the Narragansett Bay Naval Station. Shortly after bidding farewell to the neutral American port, the U-53 sank five ships, one Dutch and four British. The United States responded by creating defensive zones along the East Coast, deploying steel nets across the entrances of major harbors, and building naval air stations to provide aerial support for the detection and destruction of hostile submarines.

Germany was correct that its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare would bring the United States into the conflict, and on April 6, 1917, America joined the Western Allies and declared war on Germany. For the next year the East Coast remained free of German submarines. Germany's seven cruiser submarines had transatlantic abilities, but they had orders to head south to the Mediterranean. In a letter he wrote to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels in April 1918, however, Admiral William S. Sims (who had been dispatched to Britain as naval force commander) stated his confidence in the U.S. Navy's ability to account for all seven. "I have the positions of all these cruiser submarines checked regularly, with the idea of anticipating a cruise of any of these vessels to America," Sims wrote. "At the moment the only one that might cross the ocean is the one now coming out of the North Sea."

That one sub was the U-151, which left her base in Kiel on the North Atlantic on April 18, 1918, and headed for U.S. waters. There she traveled unmolested off the coasts of Virginia and Maryland, where she planted mines and attacked 13 American ships. Germany planned to have at least one U-boat stalking the Western Atlantic at all times, so following the U-151's cruise, it dispatched the U-156 across the ocean, under the command of Captain Richard Feldt. The submarine left Kiel on June 14, 1918, with a crew of 78. The U-boat sank one British and two Norwegian ships as she made her way toward her first assignment, New York Harbor, to lay mines in the shipping lanes.

On July 19 the USS San Diego, a 503-foot, 13,680-ton armored cruiser, hit one of the U-156's mines 11 miles off Fire Island, Long Island. Three men died instantly in the blast. Captain Harley Christy headed towards Long Island in an attempt to beach his ship, but the explosion had caused it to list rapidly, and the San Diego sank within 20 minutes. Crew members slid life rafts off the canted deck and tossed overboard anything that would keep men afloat, and out of a crew of 1,189, only six died. The vessel was the only capital ship the United States lost during the Great War.

By the time the San Diego had settled on the ocean floor, the U-156 was well on the way to her next destination, the Massachusetts coast. There her crew planned to wreak havoc on the American and Canadian North Atlantic fishing fleet.

In 1918 Orleans, Massachusetts, was a small village of about 1,000 residents on Cape Cod's elbow. Since its incorporation in 1797, the town had depended on the ocean for its livelihood, harvesting salt and fish from its waters. In December 1814, the town experienced a taste of war when local militia repelled an attack by marines from the British ship Newcastle. Now, just over a century later, Orleans was facing another attack from the sea.

As the U-156 continued shelling the vessels offshore, Reuben Hopkins remained behind to man the coast guard station while the rest of the crew ran to the beach to assist those who had escaped ashore in lifeboats. Hopkins watched from the tower as the U-156 continued to lay a steady, if somewhat erratic, fire from twin 150-mm deck guns. The submarine made short work of the tug Perth Amboy, and then, one by one, attacked each of the four barges along the tug's towline, but it did not send any shells ashore. Soon HS-2 and R-9 seaplanes from Chatham Naval Air Base arrived to attack the German submarine. Their fire was ineffective, and the few bombs they dropped failed to explode. The U-156 slipped away before the naval aviators could muster a more organized attack.

The U-boat succeeded to some degree in its goal of frightening the American public. People on land and sea alike reported hearing gun battles off the coast. Rumors abounded that deep in the Atlantic a "mother ship" tended to the U-156 and other German submarines that were to follow. Newspapers offered rewards for information leading to the discovery of alleged German submarine supply bases along Canada's Bay of Fundy. Secretary of the Navy Daniels ordered the media not to report on American ship movements, and the government barred aliens from all coastal areas and required passes and official identification cards for both individuals and their ships. Seacoast towns banned bright lights out of fear spies could use them to signal German submarines.

The day after the Orleans attack, the U-156 found its next victim, the Gloucester fishing schooner Robert and Richard. The submarine sank her 100 miles off the Maine coast. During the next 20 days the U-156 ran amok among the fishing fleets, sinking more than 25 American and Canadian schooners. To preserve her limited number of torpedoes, the U-boat usually approached schooners on the surface and halted them with a shot or two across the bow. The Germans then boarded the boats, ransacked them for anything of value---provisions, maps, and other bits of intelligence---and placed the crews in small boats so they could head for land. Sailors from the submarine then placed bombs in the ships' hulls or set them on fire.

Sometimes the U-156's crew chatted with their captives. One German who spoke perfect English identified himself as the submarine's second officer. He said he had lived in the United States for quite some time and had owned a summer home in Maine since 1896.

On August 2, the U-156 stopped the Canadian motor schooner Bornfonstein and held the crew onboard the submarine for five hours. The captives were surprised to learn that several members of the German crew were fluent in English. The Germans admitted that the U-156 had deployed the mines that sank the San Diego weeks before. After ordering the Bornfonstein set on fire, Captain Feldt allowed the captured crew to row ashore to Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick.

In an effort to further preserve fuel and torpedoes and keep the element of surprise, the U-156 set upon an ingenious plan. On August 20 the submarine seized the Canadian steam trawler Triumph off Canso, Nova Scotia, removed the crew, and transferred 16 men, two machine guns, a small wireless radio, and a number of bombs to the captured vessel. The Germans planned to use her as a surface raider.

The ruse worked perfectly, since most of the captains in the area knew the Triumph and had no reason to fear her. One of them, Captain Joseph Mesquita of the Gloucester fishing vessel Francis J. O'Hara, later said he thought it was a joke when a voice from the steam trawler ordered his ship to heave to. Four rifle shots across his bow and the sight of the German naval ensign on the Triumph's masthead quickly changed his attitude. Three Germans sailors carried a bomb aboard the O'Hara and blew up the fishing boat after her crew had abandoned ship.

The U-156 dispatched no less than six fishing boats in this fashion. The crews landed on Nova Scotia's shores or were picked up by other ships, and they quickly spread word about Triumph and her escort, the U-156, which lurked not far behind. Ship owners and fishermen alike became reluctant to put to sea and risk falling prey to the Germans, so they kept their ships in port. Thus the U-156 successfully shut down the Western Atlantic Bank to fishing. Infuriated, U.S. and Canadian naval forces began an intense search for the commandeered trawler. Sensing that the Triumph had outlived her usefulness, Feldt had her fitted with bombs and sent to the ocean bottom.

The U-156 now returned to marauding alone. On August 25 she came across the unarmed British steamer Eric and fired five shots into her side. The shelling destroyed all but one of the Eric's lifeboats, so Captain Feldt had the entire crew taken aboard his vessel. When the submarine crossed paths with the Newfoundland schooner Willie G., Feldt stopped her and handed over the British crew. He then let the Willie G. leave the area unharmed.

After being at sea for nearly two and a half months the U-156 had almost reached the point of no return---the batteries were weak, munitions were low, and the crew was feeling the effects of living for so long in the cramped submarine. The time had come to return to Germany. But first the U-156 made her farewell to the Western Atlantic by sinking the fishing schooners E.B. Walters, C.M. Walters, Verna B. Adams and J.J. Flaherty, all on August 25. The submarine sent her last quarry, the Canadian fishing boat Gloaming, to the ocean bottom on August 26.

After sinking 34 vessels for a total of 33,582 gross tons, frightening the North Atlantic fishing fleet into port, and bringing the war to Americas shores, the U-156 made for home. She never made it. On September25, 1918, the sub ran afoul of the recently completed Allied minefield known as the Northern Barrage, which ran across the North Sea from Scotland to Norway. The submarine sank with all hands 130 miles off Bergen.

Other submarines followed the U-156 across the Atlantic, and during the six months of Germany's 1918 U-boat campaign, its undersea craft sank 91 vessels between Newfoundland and North Carolina. In fact, Admiral Sims observed: "Could Germany have kept fifty submarines constantly at work on the great shipping routes.., nothing could have prevented her from winning the war." But an Allied antisubmarine campaign that used radio intelligence to track the submarines, minefields to sink them, and seaplanes and destroyers to escort convoys finally ended the menace of the German U-boats.

Not much of the Orleans incident survives today. Rusting beneath the surface off Nauset Beach are the remnants of the sunken barges, which occasionally rob fisherman of their ensnarled nets, and the errant shells fired by the U-156's deck guns lie buried in the marshes of Nauset Harbor. Curiously, a display containing telegrams sent between a local resident and the Boston Globe, along with some other records of the attack, hangs in the men's washroom at the Orleans Yacht Club. Forgotten history indeed.

Michael Westaway Mc Cue's article, "The Spy Who Wasn't There," appeared in the October2001 issue of American History. His great-grandfather, who attended the wounded, and grandfather were both on hand for the events at Nauset Beach, Orleans, Massachusetts.