FOUR AMERICAN PRISONERS ABOARD THE YARROWDALE
Adventures With the German Raider "Moewe"
Told by Dr. Orville E. McKim, Survivor of the Sunken "Georgic"
This is the dramatic story of the four American surgeons, starved in German prisons, whose demand for release by President Wilson nearly resulted in a declaration of war against Germany. Few more dramatic tales have been brought forth than the story of adventure, hardship and peril at sea, short commons on land and the new danger from the sky which was related by four American professional men. Snapped up by the German raider in mid-ocean, they cruised around for days while the commerce destroyer was gathering in further prizes. Then they made the voyage in the Yarrowdale to Swinemunde, under such conditions that they expected the ship's seams to open and the vessel to sink beneath them at any moment. They lived for more than two months in prison camps in Germany, on the meagre prison fare provided by the German government. This is the record of how the Americans of the Yarrowdale, by enduring hunger, deprivation, cold, despair, and days of pitiless imprisonment, wrote their names in the annals of the United States. It is romantic, for the elements of daring naval adventure and of international diplomacy are present. Ambassador Gerard, after several communications to the Wilhelmstrasse, which were more than energetic, was promised the release of the Americans, and the threatened declaration of war on this issue was averted. Dr. McKim, an American veterinarian, was aboard the White Star liner Georgic, in charge of twelve hundred horses for the Allies, when she was sunk by the German raider Moewe during its romantic exploits. He was taken to Germany, with the other prisoners, on the Yarrowdale. Dr. Snyder was captured aboard the British steamship Voltaire, the first vessel to be captured by the raider, while he was returning to America from France. Mr. Zabriskie was the veterinarian on the steamship Mount Temple, a Canadian horse transport, which lost three men from shell fire. Dr. Davis and Dr. McKim were on the White Star liner Georgic, the most important bag of the German raider. Dr. McKim was the first of the Americans to return and related his experiences in the New York World—Copyright 1917 by the John N. Wheeler Syndicate. A few episodes from his adventures are now retold.
I—"MY FIRST NIGHT ON GERMAN RAIDER"
The first night on board the German raider which had sunk the Georgic (when we were hurled into a sea alive with swimming, drowning horses) was hell. That is the only way to describe it, if you will pardon the expression. At 9 o'clock all lights were put out. Even the tiny bulb that illuminated the compass on the navigating bridge was shielded and not so much as a match was allowed to be struck on the decks.
We were shut up in the forecastle, and we either had to go to bed or sit around in the dark. The ship rolled heavily and the propellers raced and pounded as her stern occasionally lifted out of the water because of the high speed at which she was constantly pushed. Nobody knew where we were nor where we were going.
With the others, I lay down on a hard, thin mattress, stuffed with excelsior, in the middle of the floor, and envied the men who had bunks or hammocks. Each of us had a shoddy blanket which was as damp as it was dirty and smelly. My bones ached from the cold when at last what seemed an endless night was over.
A sailor who had been detailed as a steward for us brought a mixture masquerading under the name of coffee and more of the black bread and beet jam. There seemed to be no end of bread, and Dr. Snider, who had been surgeon on the Voltaire, ate chunk after chunk of it.
"How can you swallow all that stuff?" I asked him.
"When you've been on this d—— ship as long as I have, you'll know," he said. And before I got out of Germany I did.
I had no sooner eaten a few scraps of breakfast than the coffee nauseated me as it had the night before, and my frugal meal and I promptly parted company. As I returned to the quarters where the other men were I started to "beef" about my troubles. Immediately they all broke into song. The tune was that of the hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy," and the words were:
"Growling, growling, growling!
You're always bally well growling.
When you're dead and in your grave
You'll bally well growl no more!"
I didn't quite sense the meaning of it at first, and when they were through singing I started to explain once more that I couldn't stand the coffee out of that infernal, sickening receptacle, looking very much like a wash basin. I hadn't got six words out of my mouth when the song broke out again, and this time the men in the adjacent forecastle room joined in, and I think every English-speaking voice on board the ship was roaring those words. I knew then what it meant, and never after that did I utter one word of complaint. If anybody did, the song was sure to drown his voice. That song might serve a purpose here.
At 10 o'clock in the morning we were led to a washroom, four men at a time. All we had was running salt water and no soap. It drove the dirt in further, but nevertheless it was refreshing.
Many of the men who had been on the raider for a long time were utterly despondent. The treatment to which they had been subjected in the vile-smelling compartments, the lack of decent food and the uncertainty of everything had broken their spirit. Little groups sat about the deck when we were up for our morning airing, their heads in their hands and their shoulders bent and hunched like those of aged men.
A few tried to keep up the spirits of the others. I will never forget Chief Officer Evans of the Voltaire. He had been very stout but he was losing weight at an alarming rate. His features were pinched and his skin hung in folds, yet he was always joking and singing and cheering up the men. It was enough to crack nerves of steel.
Picture us. Some of us have nothing to our backs but pajamas and overcoats in which we left the Georgic. Some of my horsemen have nothing but shirt and trousers, even their socks having been left behind because they were working on the main deck which was awash when the raider fired into us.
None of us expects to reach home! The raider is heavily armed and her officers are brave men. They will tackle anything. Sooner or later it is inevitable we will encounter a British or a French cruiser—and then we will die. We won't be fighting like men. Down there in those rat traps with steel doors bolted against us, we will drown while others are fighting. The fellows who sit around the deck with their heads in their hands moaning, sometimes even sobbing, are not cowards. All they would ask is a chance to die like men. A man doesn't want to go like a drowned rat.
After our little breath of fresh air in the mornings, it seemed worse than ever to go back to that hole—the forecastle. There was just one doubtful cause for thankfulness. We officers, as I was rated, were not in quite as bad a situation as were the men. About 430 of them in all were packed below decks in a hold that smelled to the high heavens with air so laden with soggy, stale tobacco smoke that you could cut it with a knife. The mattresses, which most of them spread on the floor for beds, were made of old cotton waste, and they absorbed filth and dampness like sponges. As for food, the men got sea biscuit for breakfast instead of the black bread—and they were some biscuits. They were as hard as the decks we slept on. For this noon-day meal they were given noodle soup, such as we received, only thinner, and more watery if possible, but they seldom got meat, although we had it nearly every day with a very tasty gravy poured over it.
For the first two days this noon-day meal was the only one I could retain, and I think it was because there was none of that abominable coffee with it. Our manner of eating was somewhat difficult too, for we were given spoons and forks but no knives.
"That's so, you can't file them down and make daggers," explained one of the German sailors. "We aren't taking any chances with neutrals or belligerents either." They weren't. We could readily see that. Of course one of the first things the Germans had done when we went aboard was to take away every firearm or weapon of any character and whatever might have been used to flash a signal to a vessel the raider might pursue or try to elude.
The commander's order was:
"Any man found with firearms or heliograph will be shot summarily." Nobody tried to hold anything out on him after that. The Germans mean what they say.
Every neutral was given a white band to wear around his left arm, and this allowed us more liberty than the other men and officers enjoyed. The belligerents were all obliged to take their air and exercise on the well deck aft, while we were allowed to go up on the head while on deck. I talked to many of the German sailors, and it was one of them who told me how the Georgic had been taken.
II—"WHAT THE OFFICERS TOLD ME"
"We are sneaking along at night," he said in very fair English. He told me later he had once been on a Hamburg-American merchantman regularly out of New York. "We haven't a light showing. The ship's as black as the water around us, and there's not a pipe or a cigar lit on the deck.
"All of a sudden the lookout calls and we see your lights. Keeping them low on the horizon we steam along all night waiting for daylight to run in on you. After that it was simple. You know what happened then. (I certainly did know.) What fools you were to run with lights!"
One of the officers from the Voltaire, already taken and sunk, told me that afterward while the Germans were chasing us a sailor went below and informed the prisoners that the raider was overhauling the White Star steamship Georgic. The name had been chipped off the Georgic's counter and lifeboats and the only conceivable way they could have identified us was by intercepting wireless messages. For that, they must have had the British code. The incident lends color to the story that the Germans had the code when the Lusitania made her last trip and sent a message to the Captain to slow down to eighteen knots. There are many stories among seamen in England to-day that Capt. Turner of the Lusitania punished at least one member of his crew for treachery before he abandoned his ship.
"When we came aboard the raider," the officer from the late Voltaire continued, "one of the Germans said to me:
"'Where were you? You are twenty-four hours late.'
"And we were. It's a cinch those Fritzies never dreamt that. They pick code messages."
I had heard the raider was equipped with both coal and oil burning engines, so I managed to wander into the engine room to try to see how they were arranged while I was out for an airing one day. I hadn't had much time to look around when a heavy hand clutched my shoulder and a German sailor sent me spinning out of the doorway.
Nevertheless we neutrals were allowed a great deal of freedom, and I want to say that what I did discover showed me that the raider was about as cleverly arranged a ship as I have ever seen. While on the forecastle head for airings, I noticed that there were always six men on the bridge. This was an unusual circumstance, but it would be difficult to note it from a distance because the men on the bridge were partially concealed behind a canvas windshield.
There were always two lookouts in the crow's nest and sailors told me they only stood one hour watches each. This insured wide awake, alert men all the time. I noticed these scanners used telescopes most of the time, which gave them a longer range of vision than would binoculars.
There were always three operators in the wireless room—no chance of treachery there. One was continually listening to pick up messages and one was ready to "jam the air" should any vessel the raider was pursuing attempt to send out a message. Not a single ship ever got a message into the air because the raider jammed every one of them. This was accomplished by a noisy and continuous, disjointed sending, like a sputtering gossip of the sea.
Personally I saw seven guns and four torpedo tubes on the raider. She may have had more but I doubt it. They were quite sufficient for any merchant ship she might encounter.
III—"OUR TERRIBLE DAYS ON THE 'YARROWDALE'"
On Wednesday, Dec. 13, four hundred of us prisoners were transferred to the Yarrowdale which had been cruising around in the wake of the raider ever since she was captured. A few provisions having been brought over from the raider, we parted company, and I was mighty glad to see the last of her. I didn't know then what was awaiting me in Germany.
On board the Yarrowdale eighteen German guards under Lieut. Barowitz were responsible for four hundred and sixty-two men, many of whom were belligerents.
I have often heard people laugh at the idea of less than a score of men subduing and holding several hundred, and taking a ship into port under such conditions. Just listen to our predicament:
On the Yarrowdale's bridge, one at either end, are two bombs, each of them large and powerful enough to sink the ship. Lanyards are arranged so that the commander can lower them over the side and explode them, almost with a single movement of the hand.
In the engine room, placed at the most vital points, are three bombs just as big and just as powerful. The German in command of the engine room has orders to explode all three the second he receives a signal from the bridge which has been agreed upon.
Beside the bombs, there are several boxes of hand grenades, always guarded by one of the German sailors who is heavily armed. There never are less than three Germans on the bridge—Barowitz, whom I believe to be crazy as a March hare, usually sleeps there, if he ever sleeps at all—and with these deadly weapons they could quickly quell any disturbance which might arise on the deck by literally blowing us to pieces. If we should succeed in overpowering the guards, Barowitz will blow the vessel up.
The food was a little better than on the raider. As soon as we were on board, Lieut. Barowitz "signed up" the Norwegian crew of the steamship Hallbjourg, and it was they who manned the vessel. He then informed us that we would be obliged to shift for ourselves so far as the commissary was concerned.
"There is enough food for twenty-six days," he said. "And it has got to last twenty-six days. And be careful that you don't skimp the German guards. If you try to hold out food on them you'll find yourselves with worse troubles than starvation."
And this cheerful admonition was carried out to the letter, you may be sure, for Barowitz was a devil in uniform. No matter how long I may live, I shall never forget the first two nights on this madman's ship. The German guards tell us that Barowitz never leaves the bridge. He doesn't sleep and he scarcely eats. He must be trying to get to a certain point by a certain time, or cross some imaginary line before a certain time. His German seamen don't know just what his idea is any more than we do.
IV—"I AM ON A CRAZY SHIP WITH A CRAZY SKIPPER"
I have seen terrific storms at sea. I have been on ships where the floor of the saloon was awash for days and nights at a time, but never before have I been frightened. I am on this crazy ship with a crazy skipper. Straight into the teeth of a ninety-mile gale we are driving ahead at a speed which must be at least nine knots. This is tremendous for a vessel like the Yarrowdale. Continually she sticks her nose down, and her tail comes out of the sea and quivers as the propellers spin. The boilers never got below 220. Barowitz meant what he said. He knocked his own men down just as cheerfully as he did his prisoners—frequently it seemed even more so.
After seemingly endless days on what had become a ship of terror, we sighted Iceland. It was so cold and rainy most of the time that we had not been able to take our airing on deck, but from the time we sighted Iceland we were not allowed above, anyway. For four or five days and nights we jockeyed around. Whenever we sighted a light at night or smoke in the day-time we turned and ran.
We were likely to be fired on at any moment by a British patrol boat or a submarine. We knew we were more than likely to bump a British mine, and as we could not display our colors a German submarine might sink us without warning—as they have been known to do. Finally, there were the German mine fields ahead of us. At last one morning Barowitz came down into our quarters. His face glowed all over and he rubbed his hands with glee, for all the world like a money lender who had just driven a hard bargain.
"We have got through the British patrol," he said. And it seemed to give him more satisfaction to taunt us with the information than it did to accomplish his purpose.
From that time on the attitude of Barowitz and his men changed toward all Americans on board. Until then he had acted with some restraint and the German sailors had been very friendly and courteous. Now that they were nearing the Fatherland, they treated us with the greatest disdain and superciliousness, heaped abuse on us and called us American "swinehunds," which meant dirty dogs.
Well, about 9 o'clock one night we passed Bergen Light, and, in the morning were lying in Ore-Sund which separates Denmark and Sweden. We were certainly in neutral waters, for the sound was only three miles wide, with Sweden on one side and Denmark on the other. Imagine, then, our amazement when a German patrol steamed alongside and made fast.
That night I did not sleep a wink. All night long we would go ahead a little distance then back off, then ahead once more, sometimes at full speed, sometimes very slowly. If I had known what awaited us I think I would have preferred to strike one of the German mines. But we didn't, and shortly after daybreak we slid into the harbor at Swinemunde, and the crew of the Yarrowdale received one of the greatest naval ovations I have ever witnessed. Flags were dipped in salute, guns were fired and whistles shrieked. Barowitz went ashore and was feasted and feted. I saw later in a German paper he was decorated and promoted to the rank of Lieutenant.
What happened after we went ashore is subject for future stories. There had been blood curdling experiences on board the Yarrowdale. They were child's play compared to what we endured in Germany.