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:

SteamerTotal payment
Thor$113,879.72
Berwind73,221.85
Lorenzo430,182.59
Heine288,142.06
Nepos119,037.60
Mowinckel113,367.18
Unita67,766.44
Somerstad45,826.75
Fram55,053.23
Craecia29,143.59
Macedonia 39,139.98
Navarra44,133.50
——————
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.