Five Months on a German Raider / Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf'

by Frederic George Trayes

It was a most bitter disappointment to us, comparable to that of shipwrecked sailors on a desert island watching a ship expected to deliver them pass out of sight. Our hopes, raised to such a high pitch, were indeed dashed—we felt very low after this. Would help never come? Better we had not seen the ships than to be deceived and disappointed in this way. But it was a great relief to the Germans. We never discovered what ships they were, but the American said he believed them to be American transports and that each mounted a gun. If only we had seen them the day before, when we were in company with the Wolf, they might have been suspicious, and probably have been of some help to us. The Captain was very worried by their appearance, and did not feel that all danger was passed even when the ships disappeared. He feared they might communicate with some armed vessel met with, and give them a description and the position of his ship. Also, had these two ships seen the Wolf, from which we had parted only twenty-four hours before?

In the middle of the excitement the Spanish chief mate had rushed on to the bridge into the wireless room, and while the wireless operator was out of the room, or his attention had been diverted, he took from their place all the six or eight bombs on board and threw them overboard. They fell into the sea with a great splash just near where I was standing, but I did not then know it was the bombs which were being got rid of. It was a plucky act, for had he been discovered by the armed sentry while doing it he would have undoubtedly been shot on the spot. On the next day, on the morning of which we saw two sailing ships far distant, an inquiry was held as to the disappearance of the bombs, which would, of course, have been used to sink the ship, and the chief mate owned up. He said that he did it for the sake of the women and children on board; as the sea was rough, their lives would have been in danger if they had been put in the lifeboats when the ship was bombed. He was confined to his cabin for the rest of the voyage, but we managed to see and talk to him from time to time, and thanked him for his bravery. Later he was sentenced by the Commander of the Wolf to three years' imprisonment in Germany and a fine of 2,000 marks. From this time all the Spanish officers were relieved of their duties.

The Germans had told us that, in the event of the prize being captured while the weather was rough, the ship would not be bombed or sunk, as they had no desire to endanger the lives of the women or children amongst us. In fact, so they said, the ship would not be bombed under any conditions when once the Wolf had got all the coal she wanted. It was indeed difficult to see what purpose would be served by the Germans sinking the Spanish ship, if she were overhauled by an Allied cruiser. The Allies could not keep her, as she would have to be restored to Spain; the Germans said they would not keep her, but return her to her owners. To have deliberately sunk her would only have meant a gratuitous offence to Spain. Nevertheless, the next time we met the Wolf a new supply of bombs and hand grenades was put on board our ship. At the same time an extra Lieutenant came on board, additional neutrals were sent over to help work the ship, and the prize crew was increased from nine to nineteen. All the prize crew now wore caps with the words "S.M.S. Otter" inscribed thereon. Somewhere about this time the American Captain and the second mate of one of the captured ships had returned to them their instruments which had been taken from them at the time of their capture.

The Kaiser's birthday, which fell on a Sunday, was honoured by the sacrifice of the last calf, and was marked by a most terrific storm. The wind was raging for hours at a hurricane force between eleven and twelve, the seas were between thirty and forty feet high, and it seemed impossible that the ship could live in such a sea. It seemed that she must inevitably founder. But notwithstanding terrible rolling, she shipped very little water, but all of the prisoners were alarmed at the rough weather and the rolling of the ship. The wireless aerials were brought down by the storm, and any seas that did come on board smashed whatever deck hamper had been left about.

From this day onwards we lived in a condition of great misery, and death stared us in the face many times. The prospect was a gloomy one: just when my wife and I had reached the time to which we had been looking forward for many years it seemed daily increasingly unlikely that our lives could escape a violent and brutal ending. Such thoughts inevitably occurred to our minds during these dark and anxious days. But there was still to come even worse than we had yet experienced. It got colder and colder every day for a considerable time; the food got worse and worse, and we were on short rations; the ship became more and more dirty, smokes ran short—only some ancient dusty shag brought from Germany by the Wolf and some virulent native tobacco from New Guinea remained—and conditions generally became almost beyond endurance. Darkness fell very early in these far northern latitudes, and the long nights were very dreary and miserable. What wretched nights we spent in that crowded saloon—crushed round the table attempting to read or play cards! It was too dismal and uncomfortable for words, but we had either to endure that or our cold, wet cabins. Sundays seemed to be the days on which the worst storms occurred, though on very few of the days from this time onwards did we have anything but very dirty weather. The Australian stewardess became very ill with asthma, and with no adequate medicine supply on board, no suitable food, and no warm or dry cabin for her, it is indeed a miracle that she lived through these last few weeks. She owes her life to the devotion of the Australian Major of the A.M.C. on board and the lady prisoners who assisted in nursing her.

On February 5th we again met the Wolf—we had sighted her on the evening of the 4th, but it was too rough then to communicate, and, it was said, the Wolf did not recognize our rocket signals. With the Wolf's usual luck, the weather moderated next day, and the ships stopped. Just as the Germans on land always seemed to get the weather they wanted, so they were equally favoured at sea. This was noticed over and over again, and the Hitachi passengers had very good reason to be sick about this. The two days previous to her capture the sea had been so rough that the "bird" could not go up, but on the actual day of the capture the sea had very much calmed down, enabling the seaplane to go up and spot the Hitachi's position.

Those who had written letters to be sent on the Wolf sent them over on this day, and the Spanish chief mate expected to be sent on the Wolf, as we might not meet her again. Luckily for him, however, for some reason or other he was not transferred that day, and neither he nor we ever saw the Wolf again after the morning of February 6th. Doubtless the Wolf expected to meet us again before the final separation occurred, when the transference of the officer would have been effected.

We heard from the Wolf that she was getting very short of food, and that there was much sickness, including many cases of scurvy, on board. The pigeons must have gone the way of all flesh by this time, and perhaps the dachshunds had too—in the form of German sausages! Some of the prisoners, we knew, had very little clothing, and positively none for cold weather, and our hearts were sore at the thought of so many of our fellow-countrymen, many of whom we had known, in good and ill fortune, being taken into captivity in Germany.

The next day we entered the Arctic Circle. The cold was intense, the cabins were icy, the temperature falling as low as 14° F. in some of them. There was no heating apparatus on the ship, with the exception of a couple of small heating pipes in the saloon. These were usually covered with the officers' thick clothes, and some of the passengers' garments drying. The cabin curtains froze to the ports; all the cabin roofs leaked, and it was impossible to keep the floors and bedding dry; and in our cabin, in addition, we had water constantly flowing and swishing backwards and forwards between the iron deck of the ship and the wooden floor of the cabin. This oozed up through the floor and accumulated under the settee, and on many nights we emptied five or six buckets full of icy water from under the settee, which had also to be used as a bed. At last I persuaded the Captain to allow one of the sailors to drill a hole in the side of the cabin so that the water could have an outlet on to the deck. I had asked that this might be done directly the water appeared in our cabin, but was told it was against the regulations of the Board of Trade! Quoting the Board of Trade under such conditions—was this a sample of German humour? We managed to secure a piece of matting for our cabin floor—it was soaked through every day, but we had it dried daily in the engine-room. Since the great storm on the Kaiser's birthday our feet had never been dry or warm, and were in this condition till some hours after we got ashore.

The ports of the cabins had all long ago been painted black in order that no light might show through, and the darkness at night, especially in these stormy seas, was always very sinister and ugly, not to say dangerous—not a spark of light showing on deck. We had to sit in these cold and dark cabins during the day. The weather prevented us from being on deck, which was often covered with frost and snow, and often there was nowhere else to sit. The electric light was on for only a limited time each day, so, as the ports could not be opened, it being far too cold, we asked and obtained permission to scratch a little of the paint off the ports in our cabin. This made things a little more bearable, but it can easily be imagined how people who had been living in tropical climates for many years fared under such conditions. As for our own case, my wife had spent only two winters out of Siam during the last twenty years, while I had spent none during the last twenty-one, and it is no exaggeration to say that we suffered agonies with the cold. It was nothing short of cruel to expose women and children to this after they had been dragged in captivity over the seas for many months. The Captain had ordered a part of the bunkers to be cleared, so that the prisoners might sit there in the cold weather. But the place was so dirty and uncomfortable, and difficult of access, in addition to it being in darkness, and quite unprovided with seats, that most of the prisoners preferred the crowded little saloon. Luchs was provided with a swanky kennel for the cold weather. The Spanish carpenter contrived it, and it looked like a small model of a Norwegian church—painted the Allied grey! Even the Captain's dog was more comfortable than we were!