The Hunters and the Hunted

by Bryan Perrett

  Next along was another Italian ship, the Lorendano. In a deal negotiated by one of Müller’s officers, Lieutenant Prince Franz Josef von Hohenzollern, her captain undertook to relieve Emden of her civilian passengers and convey them to Calcutta, promising faithfully not to reveal the raider’s position. On the night of 14 September, however, a clear transmission from the Calcutta lightship gave all shipping in the area Emden’s precise position as recorded by the Lorendano, together with details of the ships already sunk by the raider. It seemed, therefore, that the Italian captain’s word of honour was completely worthless. The immediate consequence was that marine insurers raised their war rates for the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean to prohibitive levels, while masters and ship owners preferred to pay harbour dues rather than risk putting to sea. The Allied authorities, furious that a single cruiser was capable of causing such chaos, demanded action from their respective navies. The result was that British, Australian, French, Japanese and Russian warships began converging on the area.

  For the next few days the Emden’s lookouts scoured the horizon in vain. On 18 September, however, she stopped the neutral Norwegian steamer Dovre and transferred the remaining civilian prisoners to her, paying her master 100 Mexican dollars to take them to a safe port, this being the currency in common use at Tsingtao. During their conversation the Norwegian captain mentioned that he had recently left Penang in Malaya, remarking on the presence of two French cruisers, Montcalm and Dupleix, in the harbour. Müller immediately reached a decision; if the enemy would not come to him, he would go to the enemy. For the moment, Penang could wait as his mind was set on bombarding Madras on the south-east coast of India, which was much closer.

  The lack of recent sinkings had generated an entirely false sense of optimism among the Allies, some of whose newspapers reported that the Emden herself had been sunk, although no verifiable details were available. Nevertheless, this wishful thinking generated a festive atmosphere in Madras. On the evening of 22 September the lights blazed along the waterfront as they had in peacetime and the only place to be was at a large dinner held at the Madras Club to celebrate the destruction of the raider. Because of this, most of the coast defence artillery batteries were unmanned. At 19.45 Müller brought Emden to a standstill some 2,500 yards off the shoreline and ordered her searchlights to be snapped on. They illuminated the Burma Oil Company’s storage tanks, at which the guns promptly opened fire. They quickly erupted into smoke and flame and more fires were started in the city beyond by shells that had passed over their target. Ashore, startled coast defence gunners ran to man their weapons but their hasty response was wild and not a shell burst within 100 yards of the cruiser. Then, having fired 125 rounds, Emden was gone, disappearing towards the northern horizon. In the Madras Club, there was an outraged rush to the doors when servants politely informed the diners that their city and harbour were ablaze. The fires burned all night and their glow remained visible to Emden’s crew, now 90 miles out to sea. Naturally, her destructive foray into what were regarded as being British waters created uproar at the highest government levels in London and Delhi. It was not just a question of the damage done, for British prestige had taken so serious a mauling that the frightened Indian population continued to leave Madras for several days after the bombardment. Allied naval commanders were instructed to make every effort to locate and destroy Emden but, once again, she had vanished.

  Müller had turned south, intending to sink ships in the harbour of the French colony of Pondicherry, only to find it empty. He then decided to prey on the sea lanes off Colombo in the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). During the afternoon of 25 September the steamer King Lud, sailing in ballast from Suez to Calcutta, was overtaken and sunk. During the evening Emden was lying some miles to the west of Colombo, which had apparently taken the lessons of Madras to heart as the coast defence batteries’ searchlights were sweeping the surface of the sea outside the naval base. In the event, they proved to be a two-edged sword as at 20.00 a ship was seen to leave the harbour, silhouetted by the roving beams.

  Müller put the cruiser on a parallel course and when the two ships were out of the sight of land he ordered the newcomer to heave to. Lieutenant Lauterbach, commanding the boarding party, signalled that she was the Tymaric, British, laden with sugar and bound for England. Her skipper, a Captain Tulloch, was incoherent with rage, having been informed by the port captain at Colombo that the Emden was nowhere in the area and no danger existed between Colombo and Aden. Müller had intended to sail the ship some distance along her intended course before sinking her, but Tulloch and his chief engineer belligerently refused to sail her and when brought aboard the Emden showed a pointed disregard for naval etiquette. Lauterbach caught some of their muttered conversation, which suggested that they intended some sort of coup. Müller was not prepared to take a risk and decided to sink the Tymaric with scuttling charges. Her crew were taken off at once, furious at having to leave their belongings behind because of Tulloch’s attitude. They came close to lynching him and his chief engineer and were only prevented from doing so by the intervention of their German guards.

  Another British freighter, the Gryfvale, was taken the following day. After she had been stripped of everything useful the majority of the captured crews were transferred to her and she was released and directed to Cochin. Twenty-seventh of September was one of the busiest in the Emden’s history. Four ships were intercepted, one of which, the Dutch Djocja, was released. Two British ships sailing in ballast, the Riberra and the Foyle, were sunk, but the collier Buresk, loaded with good quality Welsh coal, remained with Emden for most of her remaining career. The Markomannia and Pontoporros were sent off with mail for home and were ordered to procure further supplies of coal, if possible, and rendezvous with Emden at a later date. Unknown to Müller they were intercepted by the cruiser Yarmouth on 15 October, the former being sunk and the latter sent in to Singapore with a prize crew aboard.

  Meanwhile, Müller had decided that Emden needed careening to restore her speed and that her hard-worked crew needed rest. He headed south to the lonely Chagos Archipelago which he reached on 5 October. At Diego Garcia, the island group’s principal village, the inhabitants were completely unaware that a global war was in progress. For the next ten days essential repairs were carried out to the ship’s machinery and the ship was healed first one way and then the other for the barnacles to be scraped off her bottom. During the evening the ship’s band got out its instruments and held impromptu concerts.

  On 15 October Emden headed north to continue her tour of destruction to the west of Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of India. On the same day the steamer Clan Grant was stopped, plundered of her tobacco and liquor stores, then sunk. During 16 October a small dredger, the Pornrabbel, was intercepted and sunk, the impression being given by her crew being that they were far from sorry to leave their ugly, sluggish, clattering home. Shortly before midnight Emden encountered the Ben Mohr, laden with machinery and, having taken off the crew, despatched her at once.

  The next day passed without incident but on 18 October Emden took her greatest prize yet, the 7,500-ton Blue Funnel liner Troilus, homeward bound with a full cargo of rubber and metals that would be of immense value to the British war industry. Her captain was extremely angry, having also been informed that the route from Colombo was open, although those using it were advised to proceed thirty miles north of the usual shipping lane. That was exactly what Troilus had been doing when Emden appeared out of the blue. Her capture actually placed Müller in something of a difficulty. Buresk was already crowded with prisoners and for obvious reasons he could not transfer them to Troilus and release her as she would waste no time in reporting his position. He needed to capture another cargo/passenger liner quickly and transfer all the prisoners to that before sending Troilus and her priceless cargo to the bottom. Some hours later it seemed as though Müller’s wish had been granted when a smaller steamer was stopped. Unfortunately, she proved to be a neutral, the Spanish Fer
nando Po and, disinclined to repeat his earlier experience with the talkative Italian captain, Müller sent her on her way. Nevertheless, his luck held and shortly after a British freighter, the St Egbert, was run down and captured. Even better was the discovery that she was carrying a neutral cargo bound for New York. He decided that the prisoners would be transferred aboard her but before arrangements could be made for this two more prizes were taken the following day. The first was the collier Exford, which Müller decided would accompany the Emden, and the second was the British India Steam Navigation Company’s steamer Chilkana, a brand new ship carrying luxury goods and a fine selection of rations. All the ships’ boats now began transferring prisoner and supplies to the St Egbert and provisioning the Emden, Buresk and Exford. The Chilkana and the Troilus were then sunk, the former by means of demolition charges and the latter by gunfire, which took far longer than had been expected. The St Egbert was then released with 600 civilian prisoners aboard and instructed to make for an Indian port.

  Whenever possible, newspapers were brought aboard the Emden from captured ships. They gave the crew some idea of how the war was going elsewhere, but even more interesting were highly coloured accounts of their own doings. To their surprise they found references to themselves in the British press that were far from hostile. It was not just because Müller had chosen to fight a chivalrous war, treating his captives with consideration and releasing them whenever possible; rather it was something in the British psyche that they did not quite understand, namely admiration for a buccaneering spirit that went far back to the days of Drake, Hawkins and a score more. The tone of reporting had changed somewhat recently, the reason being that too many merchant vessels and their cargos were being lost and the insurance war rates for the rest were, for the time being, too high for comfort. What seemed to annoy the British public most was that the combined Allied navies seemed incapable of doing something about the Emden. The Admiralty came in for sharp criticism from The Times newspaper, an event almost unheard of, and in response issued a plaintive statement to the effect that at this stage of the war there were possibly as many as eight German surface raiders loose in the world’s major oceans and that they were being hunted by no less than seventy Allied warships. In response to a request for greater Allied cooperation in the Indian Ocean, more French, Russian and Japanese warships were assisting in the search for the elusive Emden. In fact, while those aboard the cruiser were justifiably proud of their achievements they were fully aware that, sooner or later, a more powerful Allied warship would catch up with them and the result would be that many of their lives would be lost.

  In the meantime, Müller was aware of the danger of outstaying his welcome in his present area of operations. The earlier mention of Allied warships in Penang had remained with him and he decided to attack the harbour and do as much damage as possible before disappearing again. Penang lay several days’ sailing to the east, but this would give the crew a chance to catch up on their rest and put the ship into fighting trim. The voyage passed without incident but on 27 October Müller briefed his officers and men and final preparations for the attack were made, including hoisting the dummy funnel. By 02.00 next morning the lights of Penang were in view. It was Müller’s intention to enter the harbour at first light and until then Emden cruised slowly up and down. At 04.50 the crew were sent to their action stations. Slowly Emden slid into the harbour, her lookouts’ eyes probing the grey half light in search of the enemy. Müller had expected the French cruisers Montcalm and Dupleix to appear be present but there was no sign of them, although a number of destroyers seemed to be present. There was also a larger warship with three squat funnels, which Lauterbach recognised as the Russian light cruiser Zhemchug. During his merchant career he had visited her home station, Vladivostok, and been a guest of her captain. He was able to inform Müller that she had the potential to be a dangerous opponent, being armed with eight 4.7-inch guns and three 18-inch torpedo tubes, plus a smaller secondary armament. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 she had been present at the Battle of Tsushima where the Russian fleet had been all but destroyed by the Japanese, although she had managed to escape to internment at Manila in the Philippine Islands and subsequently been returned to the Imperial Russian Navy. It was unfortunate that many Russian senior officers of the period took a less than exacting view of their duties. Her present captain, a Baron Cherkassov, conformed to this image and had a mistress in Penang with whom he spent his nights ashore. Zhemchug, therefore, was far from being prepared for any sort of action and was running a comfortable peacetime routine. As the light strengthened the ship’s steam pinnace left her side and chugged towards the town, taking the cooks to make their purchases as the early morning market. They were the luckiest men in her crew.

  Slowly the distance between Emden and Zhemchug closed to 300 yards, the former now with her battle ensigns flying. At 05.18 Emden launched a torpedo from her port-side tube. Suddenly there was a stirring on Zhemchug’s deck and bridge. Figures were shouting and pointing at the white track of bubbles streaking towards their ship. Within seconds there was an underwater explosion and a huge upsurge of water beside her second funnel. The cruiser seemed to heave herself upwards then settle back, down by the stern.

  The Russian officers could be heard yelling at their men to man the guns. The few rounds fired failed to find a target and then Zhemchug was blasted and set ablaze by the combined fire of Emden’s port broadside. Müller was now swinging his ship round to port so that his starboard torpedo tube could bear. Seven seconds after it was launched, her second torpedo exploded against the enemy’s hull below the bridge, causing a further explosion in the neighbouring torpedo storage compartment. Once again the cruiser seemed to lift herself clear of the water. Then, broken into two sections she sank immediately, leaving smoking wreckage, jutting masts and the heads of swimming survivors to mark her positions. Of her 350-strong crew, eighty-nine had been killed and 143 wounded during the brief engagement.

  In terms of the Allied effort in the Pacific theatre of war, the loss of Zhemchug was not a disaster. Only a tiny fraction of Russia’s immense population lived near the sea, which was a source of fear to those conscripts who did not. Nor was the relationship between them and their officers a good one, added to which discipline aboard Zhemchug was bad. Jacques Mordal relates in his book 25 Centuries of Sea Warfare that on one occasion she had been accused of firing on the Japanese cruiser Chikuma, presumably for old times’ sake. Again, gunfire had been heard in Penang harbour during the early hours of the morning of Emden’s attack and this had been traced to the drunken antics of Zhemchug’s shore-leave party whose high spirits had led them to bang off a few rounds for fun. In overall terms, the man responsible for this state of affairs was Baron Cherkassov, who was court-martialled for negligence and spent the next three-and-a-half years in prison.

  Hardly had Zhemchug gone down than machine gun bullets began passing over Emden like a swarm of enraged bees. Their source was recognised as being the French destroyer d’Iberville, which had served alongside Emden at Shanghai. She was partially shielded by a merchant ship and Müller would have been tempted to deal with her had not his attention been distracted by a vessel entering the harbour. He took it to be a torpedo boat and headed towards her at speed, opening fire at 6,000 yards. By the time he recognised that she was simply a pilot boat a hole had been punched through her funnel. He ceased firing at once and headed out to sea.

  Aboard Emden there was general satisfaction at the outcome of the raid, although the day’s fighting was far from over. At 07.00 smoke was sighted to port and the crew returned to action stations. The newcomer turned out to be a merchant ship, the Glanturret, flying flags indicating that her cargo was explosives. Müller was on the point of having her sunk by scuttling but was forced to let her go when a small warship unexpectedly began closing in from astern at high speed. Once again, Emden’s crew went to action stations.

  The stranger was the French destroyer Mousquet commande
d by Lieutenant Theroine. She was returning from a patrol in the Malacca Straits and while she was unaware of what had happened inside Penang harbour, she had had a distant sighting of Emden approaching it, the latter’s fourth ‘funnel’ having convinced Theroine that she was British. The same was true when the cruiser left the harbour. Only when he entered the harbour himself did Theroine realised the enormity of his mistake. While the remaining two French destroyers were raising steam he set off in a wild pursuit of Emden, convinced that he was on the brink of professional ruin.

  It was a hopeless situation. Mousquet stood no chance at all against the Emden. The latter hoisted her battle ensign anew and opened rapid and destructive fire against her smaller opponent. Mousquet bravely replied as best she could, but Emden’s third salvo knocked out her forward gun, smashed the wireless room in which the operator was broadcasting the news of the cruiser’s presence and wrecked the after boiler room. The fourth salvo destroyed the forward boiler room. The little ship’s way fell off and, a mere quarter of an hour after the engagement had begun, Mousquet put her bows under and sank, still firing. Both of Theroine’s legs had been shot off but he had insisted on being strapped into his bridge chair and went down with her. Müller hoisted out his two cutters, which picked up thirty-six survivors, five of whom were so badly wounded that they died shortly after and were accorded the honours of a full naval funeral.