Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War

by E. C. Buley

When the Emden ran ashore this collier was already a long distance away; in fact she was almost out of sight. The Sydney put after her, and after a long chase came near enough to send a shot across her bows as a summons to surrender. She was boarded, but by this time she was sinking, as some one on board had turned on the seacocks, and filled her with water. The crew was accordingly taken off her, and she was abandoned to her fate, the Sydney returning to the Emden.

The tide had gone out, and the one-time terror to the commerce of the British Empire was lying high and dry, with her ensign still floating. "Do you surrender?" signalled the Australian warship. To this question the Emden replied by hand signal: "We have lost our book, and cannot make out your signal." Then Captain Glossop sent the curt demand, "Haul down your ensign." As the Germans paid no attention to this, he sent yet another message, intimating that he would resume hostilities if the ensign were not hauled down in twenty minutes. For so long he steamed up and down her stern, while the white flag with the black cross still fluttered upon the wreck. Then reluctantly, and because he had no option, Captain Glossop fired three more salvos at the defiant raider. Down came the German ensign and in its place the white flag of surrender was hoisted.

Those three last salvos, unwillingly discharged at short range into a helpless hull, did terrible havoc. The scorching decks were strewn with dead and wounded sailors, hapless victims to a tradition the Kaiser has sought to impose upon a navy that has no traditions of its own making. The Sydney could not succour them yet, for there was still work left for her to do. A boat manned by the German prize crew of the collier was sent to the wreck, with the message that the Sydney would return to the assistance of those on board early in the morning.

It is now necessary to relate what occurred upon the island, where we left the British and Germans together gazing spellbound at the opening of this remarkable ocean duel. After the deadly salvo which crippled the Emden had been fired, the German landing party recognized that their ship was doomed. They at once ordered the British off the roof of the cable station, and shut them up in a room where they could not know what was going on. They behaved courteously but firmly, taking every precaution that there should be no interference with the work now before them. There was lying at the island the schooner Ayesha, and into this vessel they loaded everything they could find that was likely to be useful for a long ocean voyage.

By the middle of the afternoon they were all ready, and about half an hour before the Sydney returned from her chase of the collier they set sail, taking with them the three boats and four maxim guns with which they had landed. They were about forty in number, and their bold plan of escape was successful. The story of their adventures on the little schooner is a romance in itself; it belongs to the history that Germany will one day produce of the daring of her own men. Before leaving, they had done all the damage they could to the cable and wireless stations.

Next morning the Sydney returned to the wreck, taking with her the doctor from Cocos Island, and all the helpers that could be mustered. The Emden was found in a condition truly pitiful. The deck was a tangle of twisted steel; so shattered that it was impossible to make a way about it. The survivors were huddled together in the forecastle, the only part of the ship which had not been made an inferno by the fire, which was still burning aft, and had scorched the stern out of all shape or even existence. There was not a drop of fresh water on the ship, and the food supplies were inaccessible or destroyed. For quite twenty-four hours the survivors, many of them suffering from terrible wounds, had been without food or even drink.

To reach the shore was a matter almost of impossibility, so heavy was the sea that was running. To make matters worse, the more experienced of the two doctors carried by the German cruiser had had his thigh broken in the action. In their despair some of the crew, including a number of wounded men, had managed to reach the shore, only to be mocked by a waterless and utterly barren patch of sand.

The work of rescue was a difficult business. Only four or five wounded men could be taken off by each boat; and the company of the Sydney worked hard all day at their task. Night fell with it still unaccomplished, but it was completed on the following day. Each wounded man meant a hard task, the work of getting the injured on the boats, and hoisting them from the boats on to the Sydney, being complicated by the roughness of the sea, and the dreadful injuries and sufferings they had one and all experienced.

The losses on both sides showed how utterly the Emden was outfought. The Sydney lost three men killed outright, while one more afterwards died of his wounds. Four were seriously wounded, four more were returned as wounded, and yet another four as slightly wounded. The men killed were: Petty Officer Thomas Lynch, Able Seamen Albert Hoy and Reginald Sharpe, and Ordinary Seaman Robert Bell.