Career and Fate of the Raider Seeadler
A German Adventure in the Pacific
Fitted out as a motor schooner under command of Count von Luckner, with a crew of sixty-eight men, half of whom spoke Norwegian, the German commerce raider Seeadler (Sea Eagle) slipped out from Bremerhaven in December, 1916, encountered a British cruiser, passed inspection, and later proceeded, with the aid of two four-inch guns that had been hidden under a cargo of lumber, to capture and destroy thirteen merchant vessels in the Atlantic before rounding the Horn into the Pacific and there sinking three American schooners before meeting a picturesque fate in the South Sea Islands. The narrative of the Seeadler's career as here told by Current History Magazine is believed to be the most complete yet published.
On Christmas Day, 1916, the British patrol vessel Highland Scot met and hailed a sailing vessel which declared itself without ceremony to be the three-masted Norwegian schooner Irma, bound from Christiania to Sydney with a cargo of lumber. As nothing was more natural, the vessel was allowed to pass, and soon disappeared on the horizon.
A few days later, in the Atlantic, running before a northerly gale, this neatlooking, long-distance freighter threw its deck load of planks and beams into the ocean, brought from their hiding places two four-inch guns, six machine guns, two gasoline launches, and a motor powerful enough to propel the vessel without the use of sails on occasion. Then a wireless dispatch sent in cipher from aerials concealed in the rigging announced that the German raider Seeadler was ready for business. On the bow the legend, "Irma, Christiania," and at the masthead the flag of Norway remained to lure the raider's victims to destruction.
The Seeadler had formerly been the American ship Pass of Balmaha, 2,800 tons, belonging to the Boston Lumber Company. In August, 1915, while on its way from New York to Archangel, it was captured by a German submarine and sent to Bremen, where it was fitted out as a raider. Under the name of the Seeadler it left Bremerhaven on Dec. 21, 1916, in company with the Möwe, ran the British blockade by the ruse indicated above, and began its career of destruction on two oceans. While the Möwe waylaid its twenty-two victims along the African coast, the Seeadler turned southwest and preyed on South American trade.
One by one the Seeadler sent to the bottom the British ships Gladis Royle, Lady Island, British Yeoman, Pinmore, Perse, Horngarth; the French vessels Dupleix, Antonin, La Rochefoucauld, Charles Gounod, and the Italian ship Buenos Aires. On March 7, 1917, it encountered the French bark Cambronne two-thirds of the way between Rio de Janeiro and the African coast and forced it to take on board 277 men from the crews of the eleven vessels previously captured. The Cambronne was compelled to carry these to Rio de Janeiro, where it landed them on March 20, thus first revealing the work of the Seeadler to the world. On March 22 the German Government announced the safe completion of the second voyage of the Möwe. (See Current History Magazine for May, 1917, p. 298.)
Having thus ended its operations in the Atlantic, the Seeadler rounded Cape Horn with the intention of scouring the Pacific. In June it sank two American schooners in that ocean, the A. B. Johnson and R. C. Slade, adding another, the Manila, on July 8, and making prisoners of all the crews. Captain Smith of the Slade afterward told the story of his experiences. His ship had been attacked on June 17, and he had at first tried to escape by outsailing the raider; but after the ninth shell dropped near his ship he surrendered. He continued:
They took all our men aboard the raider except the cook. Next morning I went back on board with all my men and packed up. We left the ship with our belongings June 18. We were put on board the raider again. Shortly after I saw from the raider that they cut holes in the masts and placed dynamite bombs in each mast, and put fire to both ends of the ship and left her. I saw the masts go over the side and the ship was burning from end to end, and the raider steamed away.
After six months of hard life at sea the raider was in need of repairs and the crew longed for a rest on solid land. Casting about for an island sufficiently isolated for his purpose, the Captain, Count von Luckner, decided upon the French atoll of Mopeha, 265 miles west of Tahiti; he believed the little island to be uninhabited. The Seeadler dropped anchor near its jagged coral reefs July 31, 1917. On Aug. 1 Captain von Luckner took possession of the islet and raised the German flag over what he called the Kaiser's last colony. But the next day, during a picnic which he had organized "to entertain his crew and prisoners," leaving only a few men on board the Seeadler, a heavy swell dropped the ship across an uncharted blade of the reef, breaking the vessel's back. The Germans were prisoners themselves on their own conquered islet!