CHAPTER III THE RAIDERS AT SEA
The outbreak of war—Mobilization of reservists—The Hamburg-American contract—The Berwind—The Marina Quezada—The Sacramento—Naval battles.
A fanatic student in the streets of Sarajevo, Bosnia, threw a bomb at a visiting dignitary, and the world went to war. That occurred on the sunny forenoon of June 28, 1914. The assassin was chased by the police, the newspaper men, and the photographers, who reached him almost simultaneously, and presently the world knew that the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, of Austria, was the victim, and that a plain frightened fellow, struggling in the shadow of a doorway, was his assailant.
Austria's resentment of the crime mounted during July and boiled over in the ultimatum of July 23. Five days later, with Germany's permission, Austria declared war on Servia. By this time continental tempers had been aroused, and the Central Empires knew that "Der Tag" had come. Austria, Russia, Germany, England, France and Belgium entered the lists within a fortnight.
By mid-July Germany had warned her agents in other lands of the imminence of war and a quiet mobilization had begun of the more important reservists in America. Captain von Papen, after dispatching his telegram from Mexico via El Paso to Captain Boy-Ed, hurried to Washington, arriving there on August 3. He began to weld together into a vast band the scientists, experts, secret agents and German army-reservists, who were under German military oaths, and were prepared to gather information or to execute a military enterprise "zu Befehl!" How rapidly he assembled his staff is shown in testimony given on the witness stand by "Horst von der Goltz," alias Bridgeman Taylor, alias Major Wachendorf, a German spy who had been a major in a Mexican army until July.
A German consul in El Paso had sounded out Goltz's willingness to return to German service. "A few days later, the 3rd of August, 1914, license was given by my commanding officer to separate myself from the service of my brigade for the term of six months. I left directly for El Paso, Texas, where I was told by Mr. Kueck, German Consul at Chihuahua, Mexico, who stayed there, to put myself at the disposition of Captain von Papen." This was two days before the final declaration of war.
All German and Austro-Hungarian consulates received orders to coördinate their own staffs for war service. Germany herself supplied the American front with men by wireless commands to all parts of the world. Captain Hans Tauscher, who enjoyed the double distinction of being agent in America for the Krupps and husband of a noted operatic singer, Mme. Johanna Gadski, chanced to be in Berlin when war broke out, reported for duty and was at once detailed to return to the United States and report to von Papen, as Wilhelmstrasse saw the usefulness of an ordnance expert in intimate touch with our Ordnance Department and our explosives plants. Two German officers detailed to topographical duty, who had spent years mapping Japan, and were engaged in the same work in British Columbia, jumped the border to the United States, taking with them their families, their information and their fine surveying and photographic instruments, and in the blocking out of the country which the wise men in the East were performing, were assigned to the White Mountains. Railroads and ships to the Atlantic seaboard bore every day new groups of reserve officers from the Orient and South America to New York for sailing orders.
They found von Papen already there. He established a consultation headquarters at once with Boy-Ed in a room which they rented in the offices of G. Amsinck & Co., at 6 Hanover Street. From that time forward, New York was to be his base of operations, and it was at that moment especially convenient to von Bernstorff's summer establishment at Newport.
The naval situation at once became active. In the western and southern Atlantic a scattered fleet of German cruisers was still at large. The British set out eagerly to the chase. Security lay in southern waters, and the German craft dodged back and forth through the Straits of Magellan. From time to time the quarry was forced by the remoteness of supply to show himself, and a battle followed; in the intervals, the Germans lay perdu, dashing into port for supplies and out again to concealment, or wandering over seldom traveled ocean tracks to meet coal and provision ships sent out from America.
Captain Boy-Ed received from Berlin constant advices of the movements of his vessels. On July 31, Dr. Karl Buenz, the American head of the Hamburg-American Line, had a cable from Berlin which he read and then forwarded to the Embassy in Washington for safekeeping. Until 1912 Buenz had had no steamship experience, having been successively a judge in Germany, a consul in Chicago and New York, and minister to Mexico. When at the age of 70 he was appointed Hamburg-American agent, one of the first matters which came to his attention was the consummation of a contract between the Admiralty Division of the German government and the steamship line, which provided for the provisioning, during war, of German ships at sea, using America as a base. This contract was jealously guarded by the Embassy.
Dr. Karl Buenz, managing director of the
Hamburg-American Line
The cablegram of July 31 called on Dr. Buenz to carry out this contract. There was consultation at once with Boy-Ed for the location of the vessels to be supplied, merchant ships were chartered or purchased, then loaded, and despatched. The first to leave New York harbor was the Berwind. There was hesitancy among the conspirators as to who should apply for her clearance papers—documents of which Dr. Buenz protested he knew nothing. They finally told G. B. Kulenkampff, a banker and exporter, that the Berwind was loaded with coal, and directed him to get the clearance papers. He swore to a false manifest of her cargo and got them. The Berwind carried coal to be sure—but she also carried food for German warships, and she was not bound for Buenos Aires, as her clearance papers stated. Thus the United States, by innocently issuing false papers, made herself, on the third day of the war, a party to German naval operations.
The steamship Lorenzo dropped down the harbor, ostensibly for Buenos Aires, on the following day, August 6, cleared by a false manifest, and bearing coal and food for German sailors. On these ships, and on the Thor (from Newport News for Fray Bentos, Uruguay), on the Heine (from Philadelphia on August 6 for La Guayra), on the J. S. Mowinckel and the Nepos (out of Philadelphia for Monrovia) and others Boy-Ed and Buenz had placed supercargoes bearing secret instructions. These men had authority to give navigating orders to the captains once they were outside the three-mile limit—orders to keep a rendezvous with German battleships by wireless somewhere in the Atlantic wastes.
The Berwind approached the island of Trinidad and Herr Poeppinghaus, who was her supercargo, directed the captain to lie to. Five German ships, the Kap Trafalgar, Pontus, Elinor Woerman, Santa Lucia and Eber, approached and the transfer of supplies started. It was interrupted by the British converted cruiser Carmania. She engaged in a brisk two-hour duel with the Kap Trafalgar which ended only when the latter sank into the tropical ocean. The Berwind meanwhile put the horizon between herself and the Carmania.
Few of the chartered ships carried out their intentions, although their adventures were various. Hear the story of the Unita: Her skipper was Eno Olsen, a Canadian citizen born in Norway. Urhitzler, the German spy placed aboard, made the mistake of assuming that Olsen was friendly to Germany. He gave him his "orders," and the skipper balked. "'Nothing doing,' I told the supercargo," Captain Olsen testified later, with a Norwegian twist to his pronunciation. "She's booked to Cadiz, and to Cadiz she goes! So the supercargo offered me $500 to change my course. 'Nothing doing—nothing doing for a million dollars,' I told him. The third day out he offered me $10,000. Nothing doing. So," announced Captain Olsen with finality, "I sailed the Unita to Cadiz and after we got there I sold the cargo and looked up the British consul."
One picturesque incident of the provisioning enterprise was the piratical cruise of the good ship Gladstone, rechristened, with a German benediction, Marina Quezada. Under the name of Gladstone, the ship had flown the Norwegian flag on a route between Canada and Australia, but shortly after the outbreak of war she put into Newport News. Simultaneously a sea captain, Hans Suhren, a sturdy German formerly of the Pacific coast, appeared in New York, called upon Captain Boy-Ed, who took kindly interest in him, and then departed for Newport News. Here he assumed charge of the Marina Quezada.
"I paid $280,000 in cash for her," he told First Officer Bentzen. After hiring a crew, he hurried back to New York, where he received messages in care of "Nordmann, Room 801, 11 Broadway, N. Y. C."—Captain Boy-Ed's office. Captain Boy-Ed had already told him to erect a wireless plant on his ship—the equipment having been shipped to the Marina Quezada—and to hire a wireless operator. He then handed Suhren a German naval code book, a chart with routes drawn, and sailing instructions for the South Seas, there to await German cruisers. Food supplies, ordered for the steamer Unita (which at that time had been unable to sail) were wasting on the piers at Newport News and Captain Boy-Ed ordered them put in the Marina Quezada. Two cases of revolvers also were sent to the boat.
Again Suhren went back to the ship and kept his wireless operators busy and speeded up the loading of the cargo, which was under the supervision of an employee of the North German Lloyd. Needing more money before sailing in December, 1914, he drew a draft for $1,000 on the Hamburg-American Line, wiring Adolf Hachmeister, the purchasing agent, to communicate with "Room 801, 11 Broadway."
Then trouble arose over the ship's registry. Though Suhren insisted that he owned her, a corporation in New York whose stockholders were Costa Ricans were laying claim to ownership, for they had christened her and had secured provisional registration from the Costa Rican minister in Washington. Permanent registry, however, required application at Port Limon, Costa Rica. So hauling down the Norwegian ensign that had fluttered over the ship as the Gladstone, Captain Suhren ran up the Costa Rican emblem. He had obtained false clearance papers stating his destination as Valparaiso. They were based upon a false manifest, and he sailed for Port Limon. The Costa Rican authorities declined to give Suhren permanent papers, and he found himself master of a ship without a flag, and in such status not permitted under international law to leave port. He waited for a heavy storm and darkness, then quietly slipping his anchor, he sped out into the high seas, a pirate. Off Pernambuco he ran up the Norwegian flag, put into port and got into such difficulties with the authorities that his ship and he were interned. His supplies never reached the raiders and Boy-Ed learned of another fiasco.
The Lorenzo, Thor and Heine were seized at sea. The Bangor was captured in the Straits of Magellan. Out of twelve shiploads of supplies, only some $20,000 worth were ever transshipped to German war vessels. This involved a considerable loss, as the following statement of expenditures for those vessels made by the Hamburg-American Line will show:
| Steamer | Total payment |
| Thor | $113,879.72 |
| Berwind | 73,221.85 |
| Lorenzo | 430,182.59 |
| Heine | 288,142.06 |
| Nepos | 119,037.60 |
| Mowinckel | 113,367.18 |
| Unita | 67,766.44 |
| Somerstad | 45,826.75 |
| Fram | 55,053.23 |
| Craecia | 29,143.59 |
| Macedonia | 39,139.98 |
| Navarra | 44,133.50 |
| —————— | |
| Total | $1,419,394.49 |
Where did the money come from? The Hamburg-American Line, under the ante-bellum contract, placed at Captain Boy-Ed's disposal three payments of $500,000 each from the Deutsches Bank, Berlin; the Deutsches Bank forwarded through Wessells, Kulenkampff & Co., credit for $750,000 more. "I followed the instructions of Captain Boy-Ed," Kulenkampff testified. "He instructed me at different times to pay over certain amounts either to banks or firms. I transferred $350,000 to the Wells-Fargo Nevada National Bank in San Francisco, $150,000 to the North German Lloyd, then $63,000 to the North German Lloyd. The balance of $160,000 I placed to the credit of the Deutsches Bank with Gontard & Co., successors to my former firm. That was reduced to about $57,000 by payments drawn at Captain Boy-Ed's request to the order of the Hamburg-American Line."
The North German Lloyd was serving as the Captain's Pacific operative, which accounts for the transfer of the funds to the West. (The same line, through its Baltimore agent, Paul Hilken, was also coöperating at this time, but not to an extent which brought the busy Hilken into prominence as did his later connection with the merchant submarine, Deutschland.) Following the course of the funds, federal agents eventually uncovered the operations of Germans on the Pacific coast, and secured the arrest and convictions of no less personages than the consular staff in San Francisco.
The steamship Sacramento left San Francisco with a water-line cargo of supplies. A firm of customs brokers in San Francisco was given a fund of $46,000 by the German consulate to purchase supplies for her; a fictitious steamship company was organized to satisfy the customs officials; on September 23 an additional $100,000 was paid by the Germans for her cargo; a false valuation was placed on her cargo, and she was cleared on October 3. Two days later Benno Klocke and Gustav Traub, members of the crew, broke the wireless seals and got into communication with the Dresden. Klocke usurped the position of master of the vessel, and steered her to a rendezvous on November 8 with the Scharnhorst, off Masafueros Island, in the South Pacific; six days later she provisioned and coaled the German steamship Baden. She reached Valparaiso empty. Captain Anderson said he could not help the fact that her supplies were swung outboard and into the Scharnhorst and Dresden.
Captain Fred Jebsen, who was a lieutenant in the German Naval Reserve, took out a cargo of coal, properly bonded in his ship, the Mazatlan, for Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico. Off the mouth of Magdalena Bay the Mazatlan met the Leipzig, a German cruiser, and the cargo of coal was transferred to the battleship. One of Jebsen's men, who had signed on as a cook, was an expert wireless operator, and he went to the Leipzig with three cases of "preserved fruits"—wireless apparatus forwarded by German agents in California. Jebsen, after an attempt to smuggle arms into India, which will be discussed later, made his way to Germany in disguise, and was reported to have been drowned in a submarine. The Nurnberg and Leipzig lay off San Francisco for days in August, the former finally entering the Golden Gate for the amount of coal allowed her under international law. The Olson and Mahoney, a steam schooner, was laden with supplies for the German vessels and prepared to sail, but after a considerable controversy with the customs officials, was unloaded.
Perhaps the most bizarre attempt to spirit supplies to the Imperial navy was that in which the little barkentine Retriever figured as heroine. Wide publicity was given the announcement that she was to be sailed out to sea and used as the locale of a motion picture drama. The Government found out, however, that her hull was well down with coal, which did not seem vital to the scenario, and she was not permitted to leave port.
The major portion of Germany's naval strength lay corked in the Kiel Canal, where, except for a few indecisive sorties, Germany's visible fleet was destined to remain for more than three years. At the outbreak of war, the Emden, Dresden, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Nurnberg were at large in the southern oceans. On November 1 the German cruisers met the British Monmouth, Good Hope, Glasgow and Otranto off Coronel, the Chilean coast. The Monmouth and Good Hope were struck a mortal blow and sunk. The Glasgow and Otranto barely escaped. In a battle off the Falkland Islands on December 7, as the German army was being thrown back from Ypres, the Scharnhorst, Leipzig, Gneisenau and Nurnberg were sunk by a reinforced British fleet. (Walter Peters, one of the crew of the Leipzig, floated about for six hours after the engagement, was picked up, made his way to Mexico, and for more than three years was employed by a German vice-consul in Mexico in espionage in the United States. Peters was arrested as a dangerous enemy alien in Crockett, California, in April, 1918.) The Dresden and Karlsruhe escaped, and the former hid for two months in the fjords of the Straits of Magellan. On February 26, 1915, an American tourist vessel, the Kroonland, passed east through the Straits and into Punta Arenas harbor, while out of the harbor sneaked the little Glasgow, westward bound. The Dresden, after the American had passed, had run for the open Pacific; the Glasgow, hot on her trail, engaged her off the Chilean coast five days later and sank her, leaving only the Emden and Karlsruhe at large. The Karlsruhe disappeared.
The last lone member of the pack was hunted over the seas for months, and finally was beached, but long before her activities became public the necessity for supplying the German ships expired, from the simple elimination of German ships to supply. Captain Boy-Ed's first enterprise had been frustrated by the British navy and he turned to other and more sinister occupations. Buenz, Koetter and Hachmeister were sentenced to eighteen months in Atlanta, and Poeppinghaus to a year and a day—terms which they did not begin to serve until 1918.[1]