THE TRIUMPH OF THE _SYDNEY_
Nor wonder, nor fear,
When death stared us near,
Could you read in one face of all our crew,
Each to his post and orders true.
JOHN LE GAY BRERETON.
When we are all at peace again–when the Great War is a thing of
yesterday and tales of its thousand fights have passed into the history
and folk-lore of the nations that took part in it–then, I think, perhaps
Germany may be glad to forget about the hundreds of women and children
slaughtered by her runaway warships in bombarding defenceless English
coast towns without warning, by her midnight Zeppelins with bombs that
were dropped on peaceful villages and unfortified towns, by the
torpedoes fired by her dishonoured submarines into helpless passenger
steamers; but she will find consolation and some healing for her pride
in remembering the brilliant exploits of the _Emden_, and the splendid
chivalry and heroism of the _Emden's_ commander. She will talk of Karl
von Müller, and rightly, much as we talk of Drake and Hawkins, or as the
Americans talk of that daring privateer Paul Jones, and of Captain
Semmes and the _Alabama_. But his enemies were the first to pay tribute
to his gallantry and welcome him into the glorious company of their
traditional sea-heroes; for such courage as his naturalises an alien
even in the land of his enemy, and, for all the harm he did us, we have
nothing but the friendliest admiration of von Müller, because he harried
and fought us with clean hands and was always a gracious and honourable
as well as a fearless foe.
At the outbreak of the war, the German Admiral von Spee was at Kiao-Chau
with his China squadron of some half-dozen vessels. He lost no time in
putting to sea, bent on preying upon and, as far as might be, stopping
the ocean-trade of Britain and France and their Allies. Before long he
seems to have decided to set von Müller free to follow his own devices;
the _Emden_ parted company with the Admiral and thereafter, playing a
lone hand, proved a more resourceful and more dangerous marauder than
all the rest of von Spee's fleet put together. For three months it
cruised about the Pacific and the Indian Oceans and was the terror of
the seas. To-day it would be sighted off Borneo, and whilst the
Australian and New Zealand fleets, called by wireless, were scouring the
China Sea for it, it would unexpectedly appear off the Caroline Islands
or in the Bay of Bengal. It left its mark on the harbour works of
Madras, shelled the fort there and set the oil-tanks ablaze, and was
gone into the unknown again before any pursuer could be put on its
track. And all the while its gallant captain was making sudden dashes
into those ocean highways where the merchant traffic was thickest,
taking toll of our traders with the gayest good humour and always with
the strictest consideration for the lives of his victims.
Our experts assured us that this game could not last; sooner or later
von Müller would have to put into port somewhere for coal and stores,
news of his whereabouts would be flashed to the ships in chase of him
and they would be waiting in readiness for him when he came out, and
there would be an end of him. It sounded so simple and true, but von
Müller knew a trick worth two of that. His practice was to bear down
upon his quarry, make her heave to by sending a shot across her bows,
then board her and help himself to what he needed in the way of coal and
other stores, transfer the crew and passengers to the _Emden_, and sink
his abandoned prize with a bomb or with a well-aimed shell or two. After
he had repeated this proceeding so many times that he had more prisoners
aboard than he could comfortably accommodate, he dumped them all on the
next merchantman he overhauled and allowed it to go free with them. He
was so good a sailor, and knew the sea and the ways of the sea so well,
that, instead of making his captures one by one, he occasionally
contrived to round up four or five at a time, shepherded them into
suitable proximity, went through them in succession, helped himself
liberally from their cargoes, collected all the passengers and crews on
one of them, which he politely set at liberty, and swiftly sunk the
remainder and was off again about his business. He had a sense of
humour, and that invariably goes with humanity. One of the ships he
stopped was a small affair with no particularly valuable cargo, so he
relinquished it intact, jestingly making a present of it to the wife of
the captain, who was making the voyage with her husband. History does
not say whether the owners subsequently confirmed the gift. He
discovered that there were women among the passengers on another ship,
and, genially apologising for causing them any discomfort, withdrew and
let his catch go again. Many such stories were rumoured about him, and
even if some were legendary the fact that it occurred to his enemies to
tell them sufficiently indicates the character of the man. His luck and
his daring and his courtesy made a sort of popular hero of him even in
the British Isles and Australasia, but the damage he was doing to our
shipping was so serious that it became more and more imperative that his
career should be ended. By an ingenious ruse he sunk a French destroyer
and a Russian cruiser at Penang; and, to say nothing else of our Allies'
losses, he had destroyed over 74,000 tons of British shipping, the total
value of which has been estimated at upwards of £2,000,000, before he
was brought to bay, and put up a good fight, but was beaten.
[Illustration: THE HORSE LINES AT ABASSIA, EGYPT.]
[Illustration: THE AUSTRALIAN REMOUNTS DEPOT AT ABASSIA.
Over 1,000 horses are in lines here and about and also ready for
transport to any part of the world.]
[Illustration: OUR TROOPS IN EGYPT.
Cavalry galloping out into the desert.]
His little cruiser could make a speed of twenty-four knots, and so long
as he kept out at sea he was able to show his pursuers a clean pair of
heels. Possibly his three months of immunity had rendered him a little
over-confident; anyhow, it occurred to him that he might increase the
difficulties of the chase by destroying the wireless plant on Keeling
Cocos Island, and at 6 o'clock on the morning of the 9th November he
carried out his intention. He sent an armed launch ashore, towing two
boats containing forty men, three officers, and four maxims. They
effected a landing without trouble in a quarter of an hour; the officers
behaved with the correctest courtesy towards the officials and damaged
nothing but the wireless installation, which they very efficiently
reduced to ruins. But it happened that an hour earlier the approach of
the _Emden_ had been detected, and the wireless operator had immediately
flung a warning into the air and an urgent appeal to the _Sydney_, which
was believed to be somewhere in the vicinity. This belief was so well
founded that as the expeditionary force from the _Emden_ were returning
to their boats, after completing their mission, a dense smoke was seen
on the horizon, and breaking through it the _Sydney_, coming under full
steam, hove rapidly into sight.
Captain von Müller was as quick to observe it, recognised that there was
no escape, and instantly prepared for action. Leaving his landing party
to look after themselves, he steamed for the open sea, and his men on
shore with equal promptitude commandeered a schooner that lay at anchor
in the bay, hastily provisioned it, cut the cable, made a dash for
liberty and got away.
As soon as she was clear of the island the _Emden_ opened fire on the
_Sydney_ and at first made excellent practice, but the _Sydney_ answered
by pouring in such an accurate and deadly fire that the enemy's three
funnels were shot away, some of his guns silenced, and all the
speaking-tubes smashed, so that the captain had difficulties in
transmitting his orders, and his firing began to fall off considerably.
If there were pluck and determination enough on the _Emden_, there was
at least as much of both on her antagonist. For three months the
_Sydney_ had been kept waiting for this hour, with her crew spoiling for
a fight, and now they had got what they had been waiting for, and
officers and men alike were keen to render a good account of themselves.
Before the _Sydney_ left the harbour she was named after, three boys
came aboard from the training ship _Tingua_ and offered themselves as
volunteers for service in any capacity. The captain thought they were
too young and did not want to take them, but they were so desperately
bent on going that he yielded and let them have their way. Two of them
were now attached to the officers of the gun crew, and throughout the
action with the _Emden_ they were as eager and as perfectly cool as the
hardiest seaman of them all. One of these youngsters was told off to
help in carrying ammunition to the guns, and he went briskly, capably to
and fro on his job, with the enemy's shells bursting around and
overhead, and never even seemed to think of attempting to take cover.
The fearful joy of battle possessed him as it possessed the rest of the
crew. The cheerfulness and reckless ardour of them all were amazing;
nobody thought of danger; nobody thought of anything except that they
were at grips with the enemy at long last and did not mean to let him
go.
It was a short, sharp, heroic combat; there was no flinching on either
side; but the _Sydney's_ guns were the more powerful and her gunners the
better marksmen. She was very little damaged and her only loss was three
men killed and fifteen wounded; but the _Emden_ was so terribly punished
that her decks became a very shambles; there were over two hundred
killed and wounded, and the finish came when the whole after-part of the
vessel burst into flames. The _Sydney_ at once ceased firing, and von
Müller threw up the sponge and smartly beached his ship to save it from
sinking. The Britishers ashore and rescue parties in the _Sydney's_
boats assisted to get the wounded out of the blazing wreck, and,
accepting the inevitable with his customary good grace, the German
captain surrendered. But Captain Glossop, the _Sydney's_ commander, knew
how to respect a brave enemy and refused to deprive his beaten foe of
his sword. It was characteristic of von Müller that when one of his
officers, smarting under the sense of defeat, accused the _Sydney_ of
continuing to fire after the white flag had been shown, he called the
remnant of his forces together and repeated the charge to them, only to
repudiate it indignantly, saying that no white flag had ever been
hoisted on his vessel.
He and the Kaiser's kinsman, Prince Franz Joseph Hohenzollern, with the
rest of the captured German officers and men, were sent as prisoners of
war to Australia, and the most romantic and one of the most momentous
episodes in the war at sea came to a fitting conclusion when the vast
crowd which gathered at Sydney Harbour to welcome with storms of
cheering the triumphant Captain Glossop and his men, broke into a
generous ovation for the hero of the _Emden_ as his conquerors brought
him in.
The Indian and Pacific Oceans were now swept completely clear of all
enemies, except for the small German fleet that was still groping about
precariously off Chili, and on the 8th December a British squadron drew
this fleet into an engagement and totally destroyed it; but the
significance of the _Sydney's_ dashing victory was not merely that it
removed the last serious menace from the ocean trade routes of the
Empire–it created the profoundest impression throughout India, and did
more to restore confidence among our Indian fellow-subjects in the
eventual triumph of British arms than the hurling back of the German
hordes from before the walls of Paris or the greater successes of our
Navy in the North Sea.
[Illustration: WITH OUR TROOPS IN EGYPT.
The 6th Hamakai (New Zealand) Regiment entrenching at Ismalin on the
banks of the Suez Canal.]
[Illustration: AN AUSTRALIAN SCOUT IN THE EGYPTIAN DESERT.]
4
EN ROUTE FOR EGYPT