The Hunters and the Hunted

by Bryan Perrett

  After this, his actions became so erratic that the expedition’s medical officer recommended that he should be sent home on the grounds of nervous debility, which covered a multitude of sins. Following his treatment, he returned to his desk at the Admiralty, still sporting the ring he had taken from the dead German captain. In due course he received prize money for the capture of the Kingani and some smaller craft, as well as head money, based on the number of enemy casualties inflicted. Yet more money resulted from press interviews and lectures in which a very different gloss was put on the Graf von Gotzen and Bismarcksburg episodes. Finally, he had his portrait painted in naval full dress, including a cocked hat. Despite his unfortunate personality, these rewards should not be begrudged him as he had successfully executed a mission many of his peers thought impossible, without losing a man. Yet John Lee, the architect of the mission, received nothing.

  The story inspired the author C.S. Forester to write his novel The African Queen, which became a film of the same name. Two of the original story’s participants survived the war. Toutou was despatched by rail to Cape Town where she was installed at Victoria Docks having received a wash and brush up and a polished plate inscribed as follows: ‘This launch served in the East African Campaign as an armed cruiser. Captured and sank two German gunboats with the assistance of sister launch Mimi.’ Before the Germans scuttled Graf von Gotzen outside Kigoma harbour they applied a thick coating of grease to her machinery, clearly intending that one day she should be raised and taken back into service. That day came in 1924 when she was raised by a Royal Navy salvage team. Disarmed, restored, renamed Liemba and given a slightly more modern appearance, she plied the lake until 2010 when she was finally withdrawn after a century of service.

  CHAPTER 10

  The End of the Greyhounds

  It was Kaiser Wilhelm II’s ambition that Imperial Germany should not only be a major naval power but also project her greatness in maritime affairs at sea with a range of fast, luxurious liners that would rival those of Great Britain for speed and comfort and even wrest from her the coveted Blue Ribands, awarded for the fastest eastbound and westbound crossings of the Atlantic Ocean.

  The first of the new liners, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, was launched in 1897. She had beautiful lines and was the first ocean liner to carry four funnels, arranged in two pairs of two. In addition, she was the first to be fitted with watertight bulkhead doors linked to an indicator board on the bridge, the first to be equipped with a Marconi radio transceiver, and the first to win the Blue Riband for the fastest trans-Atlantic run for forty years, completed at a sustained speed 22.3 knots. All in all, it was no surprise that she was known as the Wundershiff (Wonder Ship)

  Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, usually referred to simply as KWdG, was built at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin, as were her sister ships Kronprinz Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Kronprinzessin Cecilie. Passengers aboard them would have noticed a number of unusual metal fittings along the deck which were the mountings for the guns that would be installed in time of war, thereby converting the ships to armed merchant cruisers. Along the New York waterfront they were known collectively as the Hohenzollerns of Hoboken, references to the name of Germany’s Imperial family and the location of Norddeutscher Lloyd’s berth at New Jersey. In 1900 she managed to escape a serious fire on the pier that claimed numerous lives on nearby ships. Her luck continued until 1906, when a gash over 80 feet long was ripped in her hull following a high speed collision with the steamer Orinoco’s bow, killing five of her sleeping passengers. By 1913 the number of First and Second Class passengers was declining while the number of emigrants was rising. The ship was also beginning to show signs of wear and she was therefore modified to provide accommodation for Third and Steerage Class passengers only.

  The Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was in Bremen when war broke out the following year. She received her guns and naval crew on 4 August and, under the command of Captain Max Reymann, broke out into the Atlantic, keeping as far north as possible to avoid the British blockade. On 7 August, to the south of Iceland, she stopped and sank an insignificant fishing vessel, the Tubal Cain, displacing only 227 tons. Her orders then required her to head south and prey on the busy shipping lane off the west coast of Africa. On 15 August she stopped the liner Galician, belonging to the Union Castle Line, south of Tenerife. A boarding party carried out the customary search but nothing happened for several hours, during which it seems Reymann was thinking over what to do with his prize. At the end of this he signalled Galician: ‘I will not destroy you as you have women and children aboard – Good Bye.’ The following day she sank two ships, the Kaipara of 7,392 tons, and the smaller Nyanga of 3,066 tons. By now the folly of using ocean greyhounds as armed merchant cruisers was becoming apparent, for the level of coal in KWdG’s bunkers was dropping at an alarming rate. Arrangements were made for her to rendezvous with two colliers, Arucas and Duala, at Rio de Oro on the coast of West Africa. The problem was that Rio de Oro was a Spanish colony and the proposed coaling would take place in Spanish territorial waters.

  The disappearance of the Kaipara and Nyanga had caused some concern in shipping circles. The Royal Navy had detailed two cruisers, the Vindictive and the Highflyer, to patrol the sea lanes around the Canary Islands, another Spanish colony. On 26 August Highflyer, under the command of Captain Henry Buller, was approaching Rio de Oro. Launched in 1900, she was still a handsome ship, her two two tall masts crossed with not one but two yards and numerous ventilators along her deck combining to give her a distinctive appearance. While she was rapidly becoming obsolescent, her armament, consisting of eleven 6-inch and nine 12-pounder guns, was quite adequate enough to deal with the Kaiser Wilhelm der Gross, which mounted only six 4.1-inch guns.

  While still some miles from the German raider, Buller could see that she was coaling and clearly in no position to fight. He sent her a signal asking if she surrendered. Reymann answered, somewhat pompously, ‘Germans never surrender and you must respect the neutrality of Spain.’ The last was a piece of cheek as he had been present for far longer than the twenty-four hours permitted to a ship of war. Unperturbed, Buller replied that he would be back in thirty minutes and that Reymann should use that time to remove the civilian colliers out of the danger area and get his ship ready to fight. Reymann was well aware which way the fight would go and transferred most of those aboard to the two colliers, including the crews of the sunken merchant vessels and those of his crew who were not required to fight and sail the ship.

  When a half hour had passed Buller again signalled his opponent to enquire whether he now wished to surrender. Reymann’s response was that there was nothing more to discuss. At a little under 10,000 yards Buller ordered one of his 6-pounders to fire a ranging shot. The resulting splash showed that it had fallen short. Reymann replied at once and although his guns threw a lesser weight of metal they were more modern and had a longer range. The result was that Highflyer was quickly straddled and began to absorb hits. One exploded against the bridge shortly after Buller had left it for the conning tower. A searchlight was then blasted overboard. An explosion against the superstructure sent a shower of shell splinters into the back of a nearby seaman, the position of the strike clearly indicating that the round had passed between his legs.

  Once Highflyer was within range the situation changed dramatically. A 4.1-inch gun was shot off the poop and a second round exploded below, starting a major fire. A third round, striking amidships, blew a huge hole in the ship’s waterline. Thereafter, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse received a constant blizzard of 6-pounder shells. In less than thirty minutes the liner’s guns had been silenced. As she slowed to a standstill and began list to port three boats were seen pulling for the shore.

  Buller ordered Highflyer to cease firing and sent his surgeon and sick berth attendants across to the stricken ship with medical supplies to treat those wounded who had remained aboard. From them it was estimated that the enemy’s loss amounted to 200 killed and wounded. This was a
lmost certainly too high, but more accurate figures could not be obtained as the ship was listing ever more heavily and the medical party were lucky to get off before she rolled over and sank in 50 feet of water. For her part, Highflyer had been hit fifteen times without being seriously damaged and her casualties amounted to one man killed and five slightly wounded.

  Reymann’s account of his ship’s end differs and is somewhat grudging. She ceased firing, he claimed, because she had run out of ammunition. This is a little difficult to believe as she was at the start of her cruise and the action itself barely lasted half an hour. He also suggested that she sank because of demolition charges that he had rigged with a view to scuttling. Again, that seems unlikely as no further explosions were heard aboard her once she had ceased firing and her fatal list was to port, where a gap 60 feet across had been blown in her waterline. Reymann himself reached the shore with the surviving members of his crew that had fought the ship. He then achieved the remarkable feat of returning to Germany on a neutral ship, working his passage as a stoker under an assumed name. Those who escaped the action aboard the colliers were either captured or released, according to their personal circumstances, two weeks later when the Hamburg-Amerika liner Bethania was intercepted while trying to run the British blockade.

  This action was the first naval duel of the war. It was not a good beginning, for two more of Germany’s ocean greyhounds had already been removed from the board. Kronprinzessin Cecilie had left New York bound for Bremen when war broke out. Her master, unwilling to take the risks involved in trying to run the British blockade, decided to return to American waters and entered Bar Harbor, Maine, on 4 August. She was ultimately interned and taken into American service as a troop transport when the United States declared war on Germany in 1917. Kaiser Wilhelm II had left Bremerhaven for New York on 3 August and, using her speed to evade British cruisers, arrived at her destination three days later. She, too, was subsequently interned and later entered American service.

  The fourth, and most successful, of Germany’s ocean greyhound sisterhood was the Kronprinz Wilhelm, another winner of the Blue Riband. In the palmy days of peace she had been a favourite of those Trans-Atlantic travellers who were involved in the international world of musical entertainment, notably the theatrical and opera producer Oscar Hammerstein, and on one occasion she had conveyed the Kaiser’s brother, Crown Prince Albert von Preussen, on a state visit to New York, where he was met by President Theodore Roosevelt. We last came across her in an earlier chapter receiving her armament and naval personnel from the cruiser Karlsruhe, from whom she was forced to separate when they were surprised by Admiral Cradock’s flagship Suffolk. Following this meeting, Kronprinz Wilhelm was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Paul Thierfelder, the Karlsruhe’s navigation officer, with the liner’s original skipper as his First Lieutenant.

  Having separated from Karlsruhe, Thierfelder took Kronprinz Wilhelm on an unpredictable course towards the Azores, where he met the collier Walhalla and replenished his bunkers. He then headed south-east to the Canary Islands where the German representative informed him that there was no prospect of his being able to obtain further supplies of coal in the area. Thierfelder therefore decided to head for the South American Coast, where there was considerable support for Germany. In addition, he could also top up his supplies from captured ships and seek internment in a neutral port if he found himself unable to proceed further. At this stage, he was unaware that around the entire coast of South America, German naval officers, diplomatic representatives and consular officials were setting up the Etappendienst, buying up local coal supplies and chartering ships to convey it to secret rendezvous points at sea, thereby keeping their commerce raiders supplied and active.

  Many of the liner’s crew were discharged reservists or civilian volunteers and the voyage west was used to get them used to modern Navy ways and train them in various aspects of their duties. In addition, the guns had to be securely mounted and a gunnery practice programme begun. On 3 September a rendezvous was made with the Karlsruhe’s tender, the collier Assuncion, off Rocas Reef. At 20.30 on 4 September a British liner, the Indian Prince, hove into view and, having spotted the Kronprinz Wilhelm’s guns and naval ensign, stopped without the need to have a shot fired across her bows. As a heavy sea was running, Thierfelder’s boarding party was unable to scramble aboard her until early the following morning. They found that most of her cargo was of value to the British war effort and that being the case, she would, therefore, have to be sunk. In the meantime, provisions, coal and much else would be of use to the raider, although the transfer of these took a over a period of several days because of the sea conditions. The Indian Prince’s crew and passengers were brought across during the afternoon of 8 September. The following morning the bottom was blown out of the ship with scuttling charges and Thierfelder, having been informed that the Etappendienst was now operating, headed south to a rendezvous with several of its supply ships.

  On 14 September Thierfelder made the most serious mistake of his career. As Kronprinz Wilhelm was approaching Trinidade Island, off which she was to meet several German ships including another armed merchant cruiser, the Cap Trafalgar, the sound of heavy gunfire came rolling across the water. The source of this was, of course, Cap Trafalgar’s fight to the death with Carmania, but Thierfelder was not to know that. Nor could he have known that, when the gunfire ceased, Carmania had emerged the victor but was so badly damaged that she could not have survived another such fiercely fought contest with his own ship. Suspecting some sort of trap he turned away and began a successful search for the supply ships he had been promised.

  Kronprinz Wilhelm had no further contact with Allied shipping until 7 October when the halted the British steamer La Correntina, loaded with frozen meat, off the Brazilian coast. Because of poor weather, it took 14 October to complete the transfer of provisions, coal, passengers and crew from the prize. Also taken from La Correntina were two 4.7-inch guns and their shields. They lacked ammunition but were mounted on the Kronprinz Wilhelm’s poop and used for gun drill, although some of her own ammunition was modified to fire blank cartridges as warning shots. La Correntina was then scuttled, although Thierfelder decided to remain in the area because a radio message informed him that her sister ship had left Monte Video on 12 October and entered the same shipping lane. In the event his wait was in vain and he moved off in search of other victims.

  Thierfelder had his own thought on how a raider’s war should be conducted. He avoided areas where he might run into trouble and preferred to use guile rather than force. He would, for example, assume the same course as an unsuspecting merchantman. Neither freighters nor sailing ships could hope to equal the liner’s speed and would expect to be overhauled without attracting suspicion. During this period those aboard the Kronprinz Wilhelm did nothing to attract suspicion. Only when she was running parallel would Thierfelder break out his colours and instruct his victim to stop. No one argued and his guns remained a silent but potent threat. Alternatively, he would remain stationary and transmit distress signals so that his intended prey came to him. The boarding party would examine the cargo for commodities that would be of military use to the Allies and if there were none the ship would be released; if not, she would be scuttled after her coal, provisions, crew, passengers and their luggage had been transferred. Operating off the coast of Brazil or Argentina, the Kaiser Wilhelm II made a total of sixteen captures during her career as a raider and did so, moreover, without the loss of a single life. Ten of these were British, four were French, one was Norwegian and one was Russian. The Norwegian, a barque named Semantha, was, of course, neutral, but she was carrying contraband cargo bound for an Allied port and that ensured her destruction. The Russian schooner Pittan obviously belonged to a combatant nation and was fair game but she was apparently of no interest and Thierfelder released her. Altogether, no less than five of the captures were sailing vessels, which illustrates how much of the world’s cargo still travelled in this way. />
  After a while, the Kaiser Wilhelm II earned herself such a reputation along the eastern seaboard of South America that fictional accounts of her adventures appeared in the Allied press. These were read with great interest by her crew who learned that she had been sunk in a variety of ways as well as being interned. Other aspects of life aboard were less amusing. Overcrowding had become so bad that Thierfelder sent his reluctant passengers into a neutral port aboard his last capture. A monotonous diet lacking fruit and fresh vegetables was undermining the crew’s health to the extent that symptoms of scurvy had begun to appear.

  Regular contact was made with German supply ships in rendezvous points in the vastness of the southern Atlantic, although these became less frequent as the voyage progressed. This ultimately brought the raider’s career to an end. During the morning of 28 March 1915 she arrived at the rendezvous point to find herself alone. She remained there all day and during the evening her lookouts spotted the distant shapes of two British cruisers escorting a cargo vessel. They passed out of sight without anyone suspecting that the freighter was their supply ship, the Macedonia, which had just been captured. Thierfelder waited in vain for several days and finally reached the reluctant conclusion that his supplies of coal and provisions had sunk so low that he could no longer remain operational. He sailed for the east coast of the United States and on 11 April took on a somewhat surprised pilot off Cape Henry. She was directed to a point off Newport News where, with great sadness, Thierfelder rang down Finished With Engines. They had driven Kronprinz Wilhelm over 37,600 miles during her cruise, in which she had sunk 56,000 tons of Allied shipping. She remained laid up at Norfolk Navy Yard and her crew were held in an internment camp nearby. When the United States declared war on Germany in 1917 she was taken over by the US Navy, renamed Von Steuben and served for the rest of the war as a troop transport.