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
Stadt Zürich (ship, 1855) Stadt Zürich (ship, 1855) The Stadt Zürich was a Swiss steamship, built in 1855, that plied Lake Constance. She was given the nickname "Teufelsschiff" ("Devil's Ship") because she was involved in three serious collisions with other craft and was said to have sunk more German ships than the Danish navy during the Second Schleswig War. The "Stadt Zürich", like her sister ship, the "Thurgau", was one of the largest and most powerful flush deck steamers on Lake Constance; these ships beginning their service in the mid-1850s. In 1870, the "Stadt Zürich" underwent her first conversion. In 1884, the ship was