On the morning of February 7th we for the first time encountered icefloes, when attempting the northern passage between Greenland and Iceland. About 11 a.m. we stopped and hooted for the Wolf, as a fog had come on—the first time we had heard a steamer's siren since the day of our capture. We waited for some hours in the ice, but no answering signal came, so the Captain decided to turn back, as he thought it impossible to force his way through the ice. We therefore went back again on our course, the Captain hoping that the wind would change and cease blowing the icefloes from off the shores of Greenland.
That morning is unforgettable. The cold fog, the great bergs of ice floating by the ship and sometimes crashing into her, the dreary sea, the cold, filthy, miserable ship, our hopeless condition, all helped to lower our spirits, and we felt we had plumbed the very depths of misery.
After a day or two slow steaming on this course and occasional stopping altogether—what dreary, miserable, hopeless days!—we resumed our attempt to go to the north of Iceland, evidently to escape the attention of the British ships which the Germans expected to encounter between the south of Iceland and the Faroes. But before long it became evident that ice was still about, and in the darkness of the early morning of February 11th we bumped heavily against icebergs several times. This threw some of us out of our bunks; once again there was no more sleep during the night. This time the Captain abandoned his attempt to go through the northern passage, and turned the ship round to try his luck in the passage he did not expect to be so free from British attentions.
We thought perhaps that as we were on short rations and even drinking water was running short, and the case of us all really desperate, the Captain would land us and give up the ship at Reykjavik, leaving us there to be rescued. Even a stay in Iceland would be better than one in Germany, for which country we now all suspected we were bound. The uncertainty concerning our ultimate destination added to our miseries, and these were not lessened when on February 11th the Captain told us, for the first time that it was, and always had been, the intention to take us on the Igotz Mendi to Germany, there to be interned in civilian prisoners' camps. He told us, too, that the women and those of the men over military age would be released at once, but we all declined to believe anything else our captors told us, as they had deliberately and repeatedly deceived us by assuring us at various times they were going to land us in Spain, or Norway, or some other neutral country. The string of German lies must surely by now be ended. But no! There were still more to come, as will be seen later on.
At daylight on the 11th we were still among icefloes, but going away from instead of meeting them, and on that morning we saw in the distance the coast of Iceland, which the Germans tried to persuade us was the sails of fishing boats, as they did not wish us to think we were so near the Icelandic coast, the first land that we had seen since the Maldive Islands, a week after our capture, i.e. more than four months before. We also saw a few fishing boats off the coast.
We now shaped a course for the coast of Norway, keeping to the north of the Faroes. On Sunday, the 17th, we again ran into a very heavy storm. Ever since the storm on January 27th the propeller had been constantly racing and sending shudders through the ship from stem to stern. On this day this feature, which was always disconcerting and to a certain extent alarming, became more marked, and the thud with which the ship met the seas more and more loud, so loud indeed that on one occasion the Captain thought we had struck a mine, and rushed from the saloon to the bridge to ascertain what damage had been done. Luckily for us, the engines were British made. No inferior workmanship could possibly have stood the terrific strain put on these engines during these weeks of terrible storms. The Captain and crew had by this time become very anxious as to the fate of the Wolf, as no news had been received concerning her. Day after day the Captain told us he expected news, but they went by without any being received. But on the evening of the 19th the Captain informed us that he had received a wireless message announcing the safe arrival of the Wolf at a German port. The Germans seemed singularly little elated at the news, and hardly ever mentioned the subject again after that evening. This was so different from what we had expected that most of the prisoners did not believe the Wolf had got home. We hoped that she had been intercepted and captured by a British cruiser, and that with any luck a similar fate might be in store for us.
The Wolf had certainly made a wonderful cruise, and the Germans were naturally very proud of it—almost the only exploit of their navy of which they reasonably could be proud. They had successfully evaded the enemy for fifteen months, and had kept their ship in good repair, for they had first-class mechanics and engineers on board. But she must have been very weather-worn and partly crippled before she arrived at a home port. She had touched at no port or no shore from the day she left Germany till the day she returned to the Fatherland. She was, too, the only German raider which had extended her operations beyond the Atlantic. The Wolf had cruised and raided in the Indian and Pacific Oceans as well. She had sunk seven steamers and seven sailing ships, and claimed many more ships sunk as a result of her mine-laying. Besides the prizes already named, she had captured and sunk the Turritella, Wordsworth, Jumna, Dee, Winslow, and Encore, the last three of which were sailing vessels. Her first prize, the Turritella, taken in February 1917 in the Indian Ocean, was originally a German ship, a sister of the Wolf, captured by the British. On her recapture by the Germans, she was equipped as a raider and mine-layer, and sent off on an expedition by herself. But soon afterwards near Aden she encountered a British warship, when the prize crew scuttled her and surrendered.