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Originally Posted by Bluegrassplayer
How does a submarine capture a ship? Just threaten to sink the ship if they dont comply?
yeah, that was standard. Originally they would surface and signal the ship to stop. Then a boarding party would go over and search the ship. If no war materiel was found they let the ship go on its way. If war materiel was found they loaded everyone into lifeboats and sunk the ship.
The British were losing a ton of ships this way so they decided to arm merchant ships, which would pretend to surrender but then fire on the sub during this search phase.