The Hunters and the Hunted

by Bryan Perrett

  On 13 March Mowe captured and sank the Demeterton and the following day ran down the Governor which, while approximately half the size of the Otaki, would not give in without a fight. Perhaps luckily for the seriously damaged raider this did not last long before her victim was also sent to the bottom. A week later Mowe reached Kiel, having safely passed through the blockade and turned south along the Norwegian coast. During her career as a raider she had captured, sunk or mined forty-four Allied ships, a total of 205,296 tons. Count Donha-Schlodien was honoured by being appointed Naval Aide to the Kaiser. Patched up, Mowe ended the war as a minelayer in the Baltic.

  When details of the engagement between the Mowe and the Otaki became known in the United Kingdom there was a widespread demand that Captain Smith should be awarded the Victoria Cross, the country’s highest award for bravery. The problem was that he was a civilian and members of the Mercantile Marine did not become eligible for the award until the rules of eligibility were changed by the Royal Warrant of 22 May 1920. To circumvent the difficulty Smith was granted a backdated commission as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Reserve.

  Something of a mystery surrounds the brief career of the Imperial Navy’s third raider, the Greif (Griffin). Originally built with two funnels, she was disguised by removing one of them, painting Norwegian flags on her hull as well as the name NORGE (Norway) in large white letters. When she put to sea in February 1916 British naval intelligence was aware of the fact, possibly alerted by a visit paid to the ship before she set off by Prince Heinrich von Preussen, an unlikely honour to be conferred on an apparently nondescript tramp by a member of the Imperial Family. Three different groups were therefore despatched to hunt her down. On 29 February she was spotted steering north-east some 100 miles off the Norwegian coat by the armed merchant cruiser Andes. A second armed merchant cruiser, Alcantara, was ordered to investigate and instructed Greif to stop. As the raider complied her captain, a Commander Tietz, quietly ordered his gun crews to their action stations and continued to signal that he was a neutral heading for his home port. He was well aware that his four 150mm guns and one 105mm gun were no match for Alcantara’s eight 6-inch and two 6-pounder guns and that with a maximum speed of 13 knots he could not hope to escape from the bigger ship. As Alcantara was hoisting out her boarding party’s boat, Tietz gave the order to fire. His first salvo wrecked Alcantara’s radio room and temporarily disabled her steering, but the armed merchant cruiser responded quickly and the two ships began hammering each other to destruction. In addition, Greif fired a torpedo from one of her submerged tubes and this inflicted fatal damage on her opponent, although she did not sink for some time. Meanwhile, Andes had joined the fray and the combined fire of both British ships turned Greif into a blazing wreck. Tietz ordered his men into their boats, after which Andes gave the raider her coup de grâce.

  The fourth raider to be despatched was the Wolf, whose activities made her as famous as the Mowe. One of the remarkable things about her was her coal bunker capacity of 8,000 tons which, given an average speed of 8 knots, would give her a range of 32,000 miles. She also possessed the ability to change her appearance with a number of disguises. Her armament consisted of six 150mm guns, several smaller calibre guns and four submerged 500mm torpedo tubes. In addition, she carried 465 mines to be laid outside Allied harbours and a two-man Friedrichshafen FF.33 spotter plane named Wolfchen (Little Wolf) that gave her a much wider horizon.

  After false starts caused by a bunker fire and fog, Wolf finally left Kiel on 30 November 1916 under Commander Karl Nerger. Her designated operation area was not the Atlantic but the Indian and Pacific Oceans. She evaded the blockade and passed through the Denmark Strait before turning south to pass down the middle of the Atlantic and round the Cape of Good Hope, where she laid some of her mines. Heading east then north, she laid more mines off Colombo and Bombay. Two British ships, Worcestershire and Perseus, fell victim to these with loss of life among the women and children aboard, provoking an angry response to the fact that no warning had been given of the presence of minefields.

  Having left the area of Bombay, Nerger sailed south to a sort of maritime crossroads where the routes from South Africa to India crossed those from the East Indies to the Red Sea. On 27 February he made his first capture which, by a remarkable coincidence had, like Wolf, had once been owned by the Hansa Shipping Company. As Gutenfels she had been caught at Port Said on the outbreak of war and converted for British use as a tanker. Now she was called Turritella and sailed under the flag of the Anglo Saxon Petroleum Company Ltd. Nerger decided that she could be converted to the role of raider and armed her with a single 5.2mm gun and twenty-five mines. He changed her name again, this time to Iltis (Polecat) and now manned by a German crew, sent her to operate in the area around Aden. Her career as a raider lasted just a few days, for on 5 March, having disposed of her mines, she was intercepted by the British sloop Odin. As there could be no question of making a fight of it, her new commander scuttled her.

  Meanwhile, on 1 March Wolfchen discovered the freighter Jumna and led Wolf to her. A shot across the bows brought her to a standstill but before the loaded port after gun could be traversed outboard there was a premature explosion in the breech. The result was that fourteen seamen on the raider’s deck were either killed outright or sustained fatal wounds. Wolfchen was flying regularly about this time and on 11 March spotted another cargo vessel, the Wordsworth, east of the Seychelles and led Wolf to her. She was laden with rice and after Wolf had taken what she needed she was sunk with scuttling charges.

  With the exception of a small barque sunk at the end of March, months were to pass before a worthwhile victim was to cross the raider’s path. By then, Wolf had reached a point to the north-east of New Zealand. On 2 June Wolfchen spotted the New Zealand steamer Wairuna which was quickly intercepted. Her cargo included cheese, milk and meat among other items, which were welcomed by Nerger’s crew. These items and 1,200 tons of coal were transferred to the Wolf and on 16 June her larder was further filled when Wolfchen brought in the schooner Winslow. Next day, having been thoroughly stripped, Wairuna was scuttled and Winslow was set adrift, a burning hulk.

  Nerger now turned his attention to laying many of his mines along the coast of New Zealand, in the Cook Strait, separating the North and South Islands, and off the south-east coast of Australia, including a field off Gabo Island. These accounted for the 9,000-ton freighter Cumberland on 6 July.

  In other respects, July was not productive. Two small vessels were captured and subsequently disposed of but by the end of the month Wolf was dangerously short of coal and provisions for her crew and the 200 prisoners she had aboard. Then, on 28 July Nerger’s radio operators picked up a transmission in clear from the Burns Philp Company, which had extensive shipping interests throughout the Pacific and the Far East. The recipient remained unknown but was almost certainly in Rabaul on the island of New Britain. The message indicated that the Company’s ship Matanga was on her way from Sydney and would arrive off Rabaul on 6 August with, among other things, 500 tons of good quality coal. Wolfchen was launched and spotted Matanga at 19.45 that evening, returning to the raider after signalling her position. At 07.00 next morning the seaplane was off again and, having located Matanga, ordered her to stop. As soon as Wolf caught up a boarding party was sent across, astonishing the freighter’s captain with the request that he should confirm that he had 500 tons of coal aboard. Also aboard, and much appreciated by Wolf’s officers, was the Rabaul business community’s monthly order for hard liquor.

  For the next week the two ships sailed in company to a sheltered harbour on Waigeo Island to the north of New Guinea and just south of the Equator. It was beautiful but unbearably hot, humid, airless and unhealthy, swarming with malaria-carrying mosquitoes after dark. For twelve days Wolf’s crew worked on their ship, carrying out maintenance on the boilers and engines and scraping her bottom as well as transferring provisions and coal from the Matanga. At the end of this time both ships headed thank
fully out into the clear air of the open sea, where Matanga was scuttled.

  Wolf was now on her way home. Her route took her into the Coral Sea then, on the night of 2/3 September, through the Lombok Strait, where the last of her mines were laid, and on into the Indian Ocean. On 23 September Wolfchen took off on a scouting mission, returning within the hour to report a large merchant ship in the area of the Maldive Islands. Before long, the funnel smoke of the 7,000-ton Japanese cargo/passenger liner Hitachi Maru came into view. Closing the gap steadily, Nerger broke out his colours, signalled her to stop and then fired warning shots across her bows when she failed to respond. Simultaneously, he noted that men were working round a gun mounted on her stern. There was no response to his order and he opened fire before the Japanese could bring their own gun into action, slamming four salvos into the other ship, killing fourteen of her crew and wounding a further six. This brought the required response and a boarding party was sent across. It discovered a cargo that included silk, copper and brass, all commodities that were essential to the German war effort. The liner’s passengers and crew were added to the already crowded conditions aboard the Wolf. Her commander, a Captain Tominaga, while not a member of either of Japan’s armed services, nevertheless seemed to consider himself bound by the ethics of bushido in which the very concept of surrender was so alien that those who did were regarded as being beyond the limits of decent Japanese society. Deeply depressed by what had happened, he jumped overboard to his death shortly after.

  For the moment both ships sailed together on a south-westerly course until 6 November when the Hitachi Maru was scuttled. For the moment Wolfchen, which had performed such valuable service throughout the voyage, was unable to fly because her wing fabric was worn out. Various materials were tried in its place, with generally unsatisfactory results, until a solution was found with Japanese silk coated with a mixture of deck paint and lacquer. On 10 November a Spanish freighter, the Igoz Mendi, was stopped. While technically neutral she was carrying 5,000 tons of coal destined for the Royal Navy, which was, of course, contraband. Nerger decided to keep her with him to replenish his own bunkers as required. Both ships were painted grey in preparation for the passage north up the Atlantic.

  One three-masted barque, the John H. Kirby, was sunk as the raider rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and another, the Marechal Davout, in the South Atlantic. Steady northwards progress was made with two halts for coaling. For the last of these Wolfchen was flown ahead to ensure that the Islhas de Trinidade anchorage was clear of Allied warships. On 4 January 1918 the Norwegian barque Storebror, sailing in ballast from Beira in Portuguese East Africa to Montevideo, was intercepted and sunk, an act of dubious legality as, while she had recently called at the territory of a combatant, she was a neutral sailing empty with no contraband aboard.

  By 21 February 1918 Wolf and Igotz Mendi had reached the Norwegian coast and were running south along it. Unfortunately, a dense fog descended the following day and Igotz Mendi ran hard aground on the Danish coast. Her crew and prisoners were taken off by a Danish gunboat, the former to be interned and the latter to have their freedom restored. Wolf’s luck held and she entered Kiel to cheering crowds lining the quayside. Nerger, whose use of Wolfchen had opened a new chapter in naval warfare, received the Pour le Merite, promotion to Captain and an appointment as Officer Commanding Armed Trawlers North Sea Division, a job for which there was unlikely to be fierce competition. His crew received the Iron Cross Second Class and were dispersed to other duties after the ship’s company had marched through Berlin.

  On 21 December 1916 a very different sort of raider had slipped down the River Weser and out into open water. She was the fully rigged, three-masted barque Seeadler (Sea Eagle), originally the American-owned Pass of Balmaha which had been intercepted by a British cruiser off the Norwegian coast. The cruiser’s captain had his suspicions about the ship and ordered her to head for Kirkwall in the Orkneys for a detailed search with an officer and six marines left aboard. Contrary to the wishes of the American skipper, the British officer insisted that she should fly the Union Flag. On the way she was captured by U-36. The marines were locked up and the American captain was told to take his ship into Cuxhaven. On arrival, the Americans were permitted to leave for a neutral country and the barque became the property of the Imperial Navy. The German Admiralty’s thinking at this time was that as providing coal for raiders at sea was becoming increasingly difficult, the use of a sailing ship equipped with an auxiliary diesel engine would not only reduce the problem but also attract little attention as so much of the world’s maritime traffic still employed vessels of this type. It was decided, therefore, that the Pass of Balmaha would assume the identity of a neutral Norwegian ship and a great deal of effort into ensuring that even the smallest details would seem accurate to a boarding party. For example, the ship’s navigational instruments all bore the name of a well-known Norwegian maker and the captain’s cabin contained portraits of the Norwegian King and Queen and King Edward VII of Great Britain. In addition she carried false papers made out in the name of Hero and her German crew were all fluent in Norwegian or Swedish. Initially, her disguise was supplemented by a deck cargo of Norwegian timber, apparently bound for Australia. Her armament consisted of two carefully concealed 105mm guns, plus machine guns and rifles.

  The Imperial Navy contained very few officers with experience in sail, but Seeadler was commanded by one of the most remarkable officers in the service. Lieutenant Commander Count Felix von Luckner was born in 1881 and had run away to sea when he was twelve. Since then he had gained a wide experience in sail and obtained his Mate’s ticket, changing to steam in 1908. He had obtained a reserve commission in the Imperial Navy and since being called up in 1914 he had seen active service at the Battles of Heligoland Bight and Jutland. Luckner’s principal characteristics were an engaging personality that made him a favourite of the Kaiser’s, and a fertile – some would say cunning – mind that would enable him to outwit his opponents time and again, resulting in his being nicknamed The Sea Devil.

  Seeadler did not break through the British blockade. On Christmas Day 1916 she was stopped by the Armed Merchant Cruiser Avenger. The ‘Norwegian’ seamen were, of course, dressed in civilian seagoing rig and to add a touch of authenticity Luckner provided female attire and a blonde wig for a young sailor, who played the part of his wife. Satisfied, the two British officers in the boarding party returned to their own ship and Seeadler went on her way, ditching her timber deck cargo as soon as she was alone.

  The raider’s career took her from the Atlantic into the Pacific and lasted until 2 August 1917. She did not cause the Allies too much damage, capturing just sixteen ships with a total displacement of only 30,099 tons. Just three ships displaced over 3,000 tons and most of the remainder were sailing ships displacing between 364 and 2,199 tons, including three American schooners. This was not unduly impressive and its interest lies in the manner of their capture and Luckner’s ability to avoid his pursuers, which latterly included the United States Navy. Sometimes, when approaching a steamer, he would request a time check as a navigational aid, a common enough request made by sailing ships. The steamer would slow down to oblige. Then Seeadler would send up the Imperial Navy’s ensign, fire a shot across her victim’s bows, and that would be that. On another occasion he impertinently took his capture into Rio de Janeiro himself and acquired supplies on her owner’s account. Sometimes flotsam bearing Seeadler’s name would be thrown overboard to give the impression that she had sunk. A further ruse was to set off a smoke discharger on his deck and request assistance in extinguishing the ‘fire’ from his potential victim, which was then snapped up. By March 1917 he had over 200 prisoners aboard and they were eating their way through the ship’s food supplies at an unacceptable rate. On 21 March he took the large French barque Cambronne and decided to send them off in her. She would be manned by her own crew, which he knew would immediately disclose his presence as soon as they reached port, so he removed her
topgallant masts and destroyed spars and sails that could be employed as a replacements. This meant that the Cambronne could only sail slowly and that by the time she reached port Seeadler would be far away. His method of stopping sailing ships that were faster than his own was simple. His machine guns would fire continuously into her sails until they were full of holes and no longer able to hold the wind. Then, inevitably, she would slow down and be overhauled and threatened with heavier weapons unless she surrendered. There seemed to be no end to Luckner’s ingenuity yet, throughout Seeadler’s career, only one life was lost, and that because of an accident.

  By summer it was becoming clear that Seeadler was in dire need of careening so Luckner took her to Mopelia Island, some 280 miles from Tahiti, hoping that she could be heeled over and scraped in the shelter of its large lagoon. Unfortunately, the entrance to the lagoon was too shallow and Seeadler was forced to anchor outside the coral reef. According to Luckner, on 2 August she was driven onto the reef, wrecked and dismasted by what today we would call a tsunami. There is no official record of this kind of activity in the region in August 1917, and some American prisoners later stated that most of the crew were ashore enjoying themselves and that the ship had simply run herself aground, possibly as a result of dragging her anchor. Quite possibly Luckner, a notable teller of tall tales, was doing his best to save face. The subsequent story of his own and his crew’s adventures was one of escapes and recaptures that would do justice to any Hollywood script but one which shortage of space prevents the telling here.

  It will be recalled that when the British freighter Yarrowdale was captured by the Mowe she was sent to Germany for conversion to the role of commerce raider and renamed Leopard. The work was carried out at the Kaiserliche Werft yard in Kiel, from which she emerged with the comparatively heavy armament of five 150mm and four 88mm guns and two torpedo tubes. At the beginning of March 1917 she sailed on her first and only mission under the command of Lieutenant Commander Hans von Laffert, disguised as the Norwegian freighter Rena, the words RENA and NORGE being painted on either side of her hull, together with the Norwegian flag. She did not get very far and on 16 March ran into the armoured cruiser Achilles and the armed boarding vessel Dundee under the command, respectively, of Captain F.M. Leake and Commander Selwyn M. Day, in the area of the Faroe Islands.