The Hunters and the Hunted

by Bryan Perrett

  In the internment camp the new arrivals met the crew of the Prinz Eitel Friedrich, which, if not quite in the ocean greyhound class, was still a respectable liner of 8,797 tons displacement, originally belonging to the Norddeutscher Lloyd Steamship Company. It will be recalled that she had been converted to the role of armed merchant cruiser at Tsingtao, being provided with the crews and armament of the gunboats of Luchs and Tiger, a total of four 4.1-inch guns and six 88mm guns. Under Lieutenant Commander Thierichens she had crossed the Pacific with Admiral Graf von Spee’s East Asia Squadron, but had neither taken part in the Battle of Coronel nor accompanied Spee’s squadron in its disastrous attempt to attack the Falkland Islands. Instead, when Spee departed, she had remained off the west coast of South America, taking her first prize on 5 December 1914.

  It was naturally a severe shock to learn some days later that, with the exception of Dresden, the East Asia Squadron had been destroyed. Although Dresden was known to have escaped to the east coast, it was believed that she was being hunted by several British cruisers. In the circumstances, therefore, any attempt to contact or cooperate with her could be counter-productive for both ships. Sensibly, Thierichens decided to avoid the coast altogether and head west to Easter Island. On 11 December he picked up the French barque Jean which, usefully, was loaded with coal, followed by the smaller Kidalton next day.

  After that, six weeks were to pass before he saw another Allied vessel. He used his time at Easter Island to decide on the best course of action. Little support could be expected if he remained in the Pacific, which was now dominated by the ships of four Allied navies. On the other hand, he was commanding a ship of war and was expected to make the best contribution possible to his country’s war effort. By rounding the Horn far to its south and so avoiding any contact with British ships operating from the Falkland Islands he could enter the Atlantic, raid his way northwards and attempt to reach Germany by breaking through the British blockade of the North Sea.

  It was after New Year when Prinz Eitel Friedrich set off to round the Horn, a dangerous passage that she completed without incident. During the next two months she captured and sank eight more prizes as she headed north. As usual, coal and anything useful as well as crews and passengers were transferred before they were sunk. Thierichens does not seem to have used any of his captures to land civilians in a neutral port, but this did not produce excessive over crowding aboard as the average displacement of the prizes was about 3,000 tons, the largest being the 6,629-ton Floride. The crews of ships of this size were usually small and relatively few of them carried passengers.

  Thierichens received support from the Etappendienst’s supply ships while running off the Argentine and Brazilian coasts, but north of the Equator there were very few friends to be found, as Thierfelder was also to discover. With fuel running critically low it was apparent that the ship was not going to reach the North Sea, let alone Germany. On 15 March Thierichens took her into Newport News, where the authorities promptly enforced their obligations as neutrals. These limited not only the time that a warship could remain in the harbour, but also the extent that she could replenish her supplies. What settled Eitel Friedrich’s fate once and for all was the arrival of two British cruisers, Cumberland and Niobe, which began prowling the approaches to the harbour just beyond the limit of American territorial waters. Thierichens was well aware that long usage had reduced the builder’s stated maximum speed of 17 knots and that he was very seriously outgunned. He could neither flee nor fight and in the circumstances he had no alternative other than to request internment, which was granted. There the Eitel Friedrich’s career might have ended had not the United States declared war on Germany in 1917 and taken her back into service as the troop transport De Kalb.

  CHAPTER 11

  Following On

  The loss of the entire overseas cruiser fleet by the spring of 1915 was a serious blow to German naval morale, even if it was predictable. Nevertheless, lessons had been learned and these were put into effect. It was appreciated that in the long term U – boats had the capacity to sink a greater tonnage of Allied shipping than had surface raiders, but their activities were restricted to the North Sea, the English Channel and the Western Approaches to the British Isles. There was a strong desire to sink Allied, and particularly British, shipping around the world which, apart from the physical damage inflicted on the enemy’s war effort, would reduce confidence in the Royal Navy’s ability to protect trade. This could only be done with surface raiders, but the idea of converting fast passenger liners to the role had proved to be a waste of resources in the early days of the war as they consumed huge quantities of coal and could not be supplied for long while they were at sea. The Admiralty was, in fact, proposing a guerre de course, which would require adopting the methods of the old privateers. Large vessels bristling with guns would simply scare off any potential victim. What was needed was a number of small, harmless looking vessels with just sufficient speed to overtake the average cargo ship and an armament consisting of concealed guns and torpedo tubes below the water line. In addition, the ability to conceal the raider’s true identity with easily erected dummy funnels and masts, different paintwork and foreign flags could be put to good use, although it was not universally applied.

  The first of the new raiders was the Meteor, displacing only 1,912 tons and resembling any one of thousands of small cargo steamers plying the world’s oceans with her raised forecastle, poop and midships superstructure, single funnel and masts with cargo derricks over the fore and aft holds. She had originally been a British packet steamer, the Vienna, but had been caught in Hamburg on the outbreak of war. She was taken over by the German Navy and fitted out as a minelayer as well as being armed with two 88mm guns, one 52mm gun and two torpedo tubes. Towards the end of May 1915 she set out on her first voyage under Lieutenant Commander von Knorr. This took her into the White Sea and the approaches to Archangel, where she laid a minefield. On 7 June this accounted for three Russian ships with a total displacement of 10,800 tons. On the way home she sank one Swedish and one Norwegian freighter carrying contraband and made a prize of a second Swedish ship.

  Her second voyage was to the Moray Firth on the Scottish coast, where she laid another minefield. The destroyer HMS Lynx struck one of the mines while two minesweepers, Lilac and Dahlia, sustained serious damage while sweeping it.

  On her way back to Germany Meteor encountered and sank a Norwegian schooner, the Jason, on 8 August. Shortly after, she was ordered to stop by a British armed boarding vessel, The Ramsey, which closed in so that her boarding party could cross. Prior to being taken up by the Royal Navy The Ramsey had ferried holiday crowds in their striped blazers, boaters and parasols from Liverpool to the Isle of Man during the last golden summers before the outbreak of war. Now, understandably, her captain felt that he had nothing to fear from the small, nondescript freighter flying the Russian flag and the atmosphere aboard his ship was relaxed. Suddenly, the Russian flag came down and up went the German naval ensign. Shells from unmasked guns began to smash into the boarding vessel and a torpedo blew off her stern. Within four minutes of the Meteor opening fire, The Ramsey had gone down, leaving only a pall of smoke hanging over her wreckage. Her captain and fifty of her crew were killed.

  Knorr rescued forty-three survivors and treated them well, holding a funeral service for their dead shipmates and handing out cigarettes and cigars. Later in the day he sank a small Danish steamer carrying pit props, which were contraband. His luck, however, was about to run out. Meteor had been observed laying her mines and in London the Admiralty reacted quickly. Two light cruiser squadrons were ordered after her from Rosyth while a third, which had been carrying out a sweep off Norway, was ordered to cut off her escape. Luckily, at 08.30 on 9 August Knorr was warned by a vigilant Zeppelin airship that British cruisers were closing in on him. When the enemy’s smoke appeared on the horizon he commandeered a Swedish fishing boat and scuttled the Meteor. He generously allowed his British prisoners to
transfer to another neutral vessel from which they were rescued by the cruisers, and even gave their senior surviving officer seven pounds in British currency so that his men could replace any necessary items that had been lost aboard The Ramsey. After living on a diet of raw fish and potatoes he and his crew reached Germany safely.

  The next raider to leave was the Mowe (Seagull), formerly a banana boat named Pungo. Twice the size of the Meteor, she was armed with four 5.9-inch guns, one 4.1-inch gun and four torpedo tubes, all cunningly concealed, and was also equipped to lay 500 mines. Under the command of Lieutenant Commander Count Nikolaus zu Dohna-Schlodien, formerly navigating officer aboard the battleship Posen, she left the Elbe on 29 December 1915 and, flying Swedish colours, headed north along the Norwegian coast, the traditional route taken by German ships seeking to avoid the British blockade. She passed through the British patrol line without incident and turned west to lay a minefield off the western entrance to the Pentland Firth. It was some time before Dohna was informed that his mines had claimed the pre-dreadnought battleship King Edward VII, on her way to Belfast for a refit, or that two merchant ships, the Bayo and the Belgica, had fallen victim to a second minefield he laid off La Rochelle.

  During this, her first cruise, Mowe captured and sank another fifteen ships. Here it is only possible to relate the more remarkable of her adventures. Her first capture, on 11 January 1916, was the Ellerman liner Farringford, a remarkable coincidence as Mowe was herself disguised in the Ellerman colours. On the same day the collier Corbridge was taken and employed as a tender to replenish the raider’s supply at pre-arranged rendezvous points. On 15 January it was the turn of the Elder Dempster liner Appam. She was carrying a cargo of rubber and copra, while among her passengers was the Governor of Sierra Cameroon. An unexpected surprise was a consignment of bullion with estimated contemporary value of £50,000. As Mowe was becoming over-crowded, Dohna decided to keep her with him for the moment and transfer his prisoners to her accommodation.

  On 16 January, south of Madeira, the defensively armed merchant ship Clan Mactavish refused either to heave to or cease transmitting with her radio. Instead, her Scottish master decided to make a fight of it with his single 6-pounder gun. It was a very one-sided duel in which he only surrendered when nineteen of his crew had been killed and his engines were wrecked. Dohna shook the Scotsman’s hand, criticised his reckless behaviour and told him that had their positions been reversed he would have done the same. But for a most unusual oversight, Dohna’s own career might have ended shortly afterwards. The Clan Mactavish’s raider signal had been picked up aboard the British cruiser Essex yet, incredibly, the signal was not passed to the decoding officer. Thus, as there were several British cruisers in the area, a golden opportunity to destroy a very dangerous raider was missed. Shortly after this the Appam was despatched to the United States with the crews of the captured merchantmen aboard, under the guard of a German prize crew. Seven more ships were captured after the Clan Mactavish, one of them, the Westburn, being despatched to Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands with the remainder of the raider’s civilian captives aboard. Her presence was detected by the British armed merchant cruiser Sutlej, which pointedly remained outside the harbour. As there was no escape for Westburn she was scuttled and her prize crew were interned by the Spanish authorities.

  The last capture of the cruise was the Saxon Prince, taken on 25 February 1916. Mowe then headed for home, bad weather and poor visibility enabling her to slip through the blockade and enter Wilhelmshaven on 5 March, triumphantly flying the house flags of her victims. Excluding the mine casualties, she had sunk fifteen ships with a total displacement exceeding 60,000 tons. She received a hero’s welcome, including a parade by the entire ship’s company past cheering crowds in the streets of Berlin. Dohna was rewarded by the Kaiser with the Pour le Merite while his officers and men received the Iron Cross Second Class.

  In July, renamed Vineta, she undertook a brief cruise on the Baltic but only took one prize. After refitting and reverting to her original name she left for her second long range cruise on late November. This lasted until March 1917 and was equally successful, capturing twenty-five Allied or neutral ships of various nationalities carrying contraband. Of these twenty-three were sunk, the largest being the White Star liner Georgic of 10,077 tons. One of the cruellest aspects of the war at sea was the fate of horses in transit to the Allied armies. A large number had formed part of the Georgic’s cargo and as there was no way of saving them they shared the fate of the ship. On 10 and 14 March 1917 two defensively armed merchantmen, respectively the Otaki and the Governor, fought back but were seriously out-gunned and sunk. Two more, the Yarrowdale and Saint Theodore, were considered suitable for conversion to raiders. The former’s cargo consisted of 100 motor vehicles and several thousand tons of steel, too useful to be sent to the bottom, and she was sent off to Germany where she became the raider Leopard. The latter was subsequently armed at sea with two of the Mowe’s guns and a radio, becoming the raider Geier (Vulture).

  A captured Japanese freighter, the Hudson Maru, accompanied Mowe during the early days of 1917 as an accommodation ship and on 10 January was sent into Pernambuco with 250 prisoners aboard. A week later Mowe met the Geier, whose conversion had not been a success. Her only sinking was a 215-ton schooner and she was almost out of coal. A heavy sea was running, making it almost impossible to coal her from the Mowe and Dohna ordered her to be scuttled.

  On 10 March there took place one of the most remarkable single ship duels of the entire war. The New Zealand Shipping Company’s refrigerated meat ship Otaki was sailing in ballast from London to New York under the command of Captain Archibald Bisset Smith, a native of Aberdeen. Some 350 miles east of the Azores Mowe appeared over the horizon and for a while seemed content to keep Otaki under observation but at 14.30 signalled her to stop. Smith had no intention of doing anything of the kind and ordered his defensive armament, a single 4.7-inch gun, mounted on the stern, to open fire. It did so, hitting the raider, and kept hitting her hard. For once, Dohna and his crew had been caught on the hop. In spite of the serious damage being inflicted on their ship they quickly recovered and replied with the considerable armoury at their disposal – four 5.9-inch, one 4.1-inch and two 22-pounder guns. Otaki withstood this sort of punishment for two long hours at the end of which she was ablaze from stem to stern. Having lost six of his crew killed, Captain Smith ordered the boats to be lowered. Shortly after, the ship rolled over and sank rapidly by the stern, still flying her Merchant Marine red ensign. Captain Smith had refused to leave her.

  The survivors were picked up from their boats by the raider, which had herself taken tremendous punishment as well as losing six men killed and ten wounded. The situation aboard her is described by her gunnery officer, Lieutenant Commander Jung.

  Now the reports came chasing in from out battle stations. Water was pouring in forward, there was an extensive fire in the engine room bunker, and a revolt on the part of the prisoners – we had 338 white prisoners in the after hold that had been fitted out as prison quarters and 104 Indian lascars in the engine room bunkers – had already been suppressed during the engagement. But our position down by the head and our strong list were a source of anxiety, and thick smoke and glowing flames were bursting out from the engine room. After trying the collision mats – which were as good as useless – we managed to force heavy wedges of wood into the holes (in the hull) and stuff the gaps with sailcloth, so making her watertight in a rough and ready fashion. By flooding other compartments we corrected the list and brought her to an even keel. Midships the situation was even more serious. The burning coal bunkers could not extinguished. The bulkheads towards the bows was already heating and the planking began to smoulder. The midships section was sealed off and kept under live steam. Ammunition, explosives and the warheads of torpedoes were manhandled onto the deck, ready to be heaved overboard if necessary. Throughout the night we remained stopped, waiting to see whether our smouldering volcano would eru
pt. The deck under my feet became hotter and hotter. By dawn the bulkheads were glowing and the paint began to peel off the hull. When flames appeared through melted caulking on the boat deck our situation had become desperate. Sea water was our only hope. Oxy-acetylene cutters bored holes in the hull at eleven suitable points. All available fire hydrants poured a flood of water into the mass of burning coal. Slowly, this became effective but because of the quantity of water we had poured into the ship she had settled even deeper. On top of everything, the pump valves became clogged with floating coal dust so that we wallowed helplessly in heavy seas. This dreadful state of affairs continued for two days until we got the better of the fire and flooding. Then, once again fit for action and in good heart, we turned north to face the risks of running the blockade on our passage to Germany.