Naval mine ship, HMHS "Britannic", which was the sister ship of the RMS "Titanic." During World War II, the U-boat fleet, which dominated much of the battle of the Atlantic, was small at the beginning of the war and much of the early action by German forces involved mining convoy routes and ports around Britain. German submarines also operated in the Mediterranean Sea, in the Caribbean Sea, and along the U.S. coast. Initially, contact mines (requiring a ship to physically strike a mine to detonate it) were employed, usually tethered at the end of a cable just below the surface of the
Russian hospital ship Vpered Russian hospital ship Vpered HS "Vpered" () was a Russian hospital ship that was torpedoed by the Imperial German Navy submarine SM "U-38" on 8 July 1916. SS "Vpered" was built at the Stabilimento Tecnico shipyard in Trieste, Italy, in 1898 for Azov Black Sea Steamship Company. She was launched and completed in the same year. The ship was assessed at . "Vpered" was converted into a hospital ship when World War I broke out and operated in the Black Sea to evacuate wounded Russian soldiers from the Eastern Front. On 8 July 1916, "Vpered" was torpedoed by the Imperial