Just imagine what his feelings must have been on realising that after spending fifteen months on a raiding and mine laying cruise, and always evading his enemies, he had run his vessel aground almost at the gates of Germany, and in place of receiving the Iron Cross first class, there was the possibility of his facing court martial on his arrival home, provided of course he was lucky enough to escape internment. Thinking this I fell asleep and at 6:30 A.M. of February 25th (shall I ever forget the date?) I was awakened by one of the German seamen named "Hans" knocking at my door and saying: "Kapitaine, Kapitaine, wake up and get ready to go ashore in the boats." I'll bet we broke all speed records getting on deck. Rose asked me to get into the life-saving boat first, as the Danish crew could not speak English, and then I could help the balance as they came down the ladder. I got Juanita firmly on my back and climbed down into the boat. There was a large sea running and as the Igotz Mendi was stationary on the bottom and the life-boat was riding on the seas, one moment it would be even with my feet and in another would be fifteen feet below. The idea was to jump at that instant the boat was even with me. This was easy enough with myself and wife, who understood such things and had had previous experience, but to the balance of the passengers it was hard to make them let go at the right time; they all having a tendency to hang on until the boat had started to go down again. Then, if they should let go, the drop was so great that the men in the life-boat could not hold them when they tried to catch them.
In some cases it was necessary absolutely to tear the passengers off the ladder by main force. However, we finally got all the women, children and men into the boat and we started for the beach. When we got into the breakers and the seas washed clean over us, many thought it would be a case of swim or drown, not reckoning on the kind of life-boat we were in or on the class of men that manned it.
I have seen various life-crews at drill and I spent a season on the beach at Cape Nome, where everything is surf work, but these old Danes, averaging fifty years of age and the living caricatures of that great soap advertisement, "Life Buoy Soap," familiar to all the reading public, were in a class by themselves. On entering the breakers, they dropped a kedge anchor with a long line on it, and literally slacked the boat through. A gigantic comber, one of those curling ones, just commencing to break, would rush upon us; up would go the stern of the boat and just at the instant that I would expect her to go end for end, the old "Sinbad" tending the anchor line would check her and in another instant we would rush for the beach, just as the Kanakas ride the surf on a board at Honolulu. When we finally grounded the men from the beach ran out and seized the women, the balance then ran the boat higher up the beach. The natives must have thought that we were a bunch of raving maniacs, the way we carried on, getting our feet on good "terra firma" again. We danced, we shouted, and cheered, and made damn fools of ourselves generally; but to my mind the situation warranted it. What a fitting climax to an adventure of this kind ... eight months a prisoner on a Teuton raider, and set free at the very gates of Germany, at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute. It is hard to realise just what this meant to us all—possibly the very lives of my wife and kiddie, as I feel sure that they could not have stood much more, and at the best, there was from one to a possible five years' being buried alive in a German internment camp, and living under the conditions that I know to exist in that country.
We were taken to the nearby lighthouse, where the keepers and their families did everything possible for us, drying our clothes and giving us hot coffee to warm ourselves. About midday we went into Skagen, two miles distant, and separated, going to various hotels. My family and I put up at the Sailors' Home and were excellently taken care of by our host, Mr. Borg Hansen. I wish to go on record here as saying that at no place that I have ever been in have I met a more whole-souled, more hospitable or more likable class of people in my life than these Danish people of the little town of Skagen. I met people there who were the quintessence of courtesy and hospitality; in fact, they were "regular Danish ladies and gentlemen." Here at Skagen our various Consuls took us in charge and sent us to Copenhagen, where we separated, going our several ways.
APPENDIX
During her fifteen months' cruise the Wolf laid approximately five hundred mines and captured fourteen vessels, as follows:
1. British tank s/s. "TURITELLA," 7300 gross tons, Captain S.G. Meadows, captured on February 27, 1917, in the Indian Ocean, bound from Rangoon to Europe with a cargo of oil. The captain and officers were taken off this vessel and transferred to the Wolf. A crew of German officers and mine-men were put on board of her, under charge of Lieutenant-Commander Brandes, ex-chief officer of the Wolf, and she was sent away as a mine layer, laying mines at Bombay and at Calcutta, and was afterwards captured at Aden, while laying mines, by a British gun-boat; and her crew of Chinamen were sent back to China, while her German officers were taken prisoners.
2. British s/s. "JUMMA," 6050 gross tons, Captain Shaw Wickerman, bound from Torreirja, Spain, to Calcutta with a cargo of salt. Captured in the Indian Ocean, March 1st. After what coal and stores she had on board had been removed, she was bombed on the morning of March 3rd in latitude 8 degrees 9 minutes north and longitude 62 degrees 1 minute east.
3. British s/s. "WADSWORTH," of London, 3509 gross tons, built in 1915, Captain John Shields, captured on March 11th, in latitude 54 degrees 30 minutes north and longitude 67 degrees east. After taking off about fifteen tons of rice and ship's stores the vessel was bombed on the 18th. Wadsworth was bound from Bassinia, India, to London with a cargo of rice, and was six days out from Colombo.