SHIP BOMBS
Mobilizing destroying agents--The plotters in Hoboken--Von
Kleist's arrest and confession--The _Kirk Oswald_ trial--Further
explosions--The _Arabic_--Robert Fay--His arrest--The ship plots
decrease.
The reader will recall a circular quoted in Chapter VIII, and issued
November 18, 1914, from German Naval Headquarters, mobilizing all
destroying agents in harbors overseas.
On January 3, 1915, there was an explosion on board the munitions ship
_Orton_, lying in Erie Basin, a part of New York harbor. On February 6
a bomb was found in the cargo of the _Hannington_. On February 27 the
_Carlton_ caught fire at sea. On April 20 two bombs were found in the
cargo of the _Lord Erne_. One week later the same discovery was made in
the hold of the _Devon City_. All of which accounts for the following
charge:
"George D. Barnitz, being duly sworn, deposes and says ... on
information and belief that on the first day of January, 1915,
and on every day thereafter down to and including the 13th day of
April, 1916, the defendants Walter T. Scheele, Charles von Kleist,
Otto Wolpert, Ernst Becker, (Charles) Karbade, the first name
Charles being fictitious, the true first name of defendant being
unknown, (Frederick) Praedel ... (Wilhelm) Paradis ... Eno Bode
and Carl Schmidt ... did unlawfully, feloniously and corruptly
conspire ... to manufacture bombs filled with chemicals and
explosives and to place said bombs ... upon vessels belonging to
others and laden with moneys, goods and merchandise...."
Ninety-one German ships were confined to American harbors by the
activities of the British fleet, ranging from the _Neptun_, of 197
tons, in San Francisco Bay, to the _Vaterland_, of 54,000 tons, the
largest vessel on the seven seas, tied up to accrue barnacles at her
Hoboken pier, and later, as the _Leviathan_, to transport American
troops to France. Every one of the ninety-one ships was a nest of
German agents. Only a moderate watch was kept on their crews, and there
were many restless men among them. Every man aboard was liable to
command from Captain Boy-Ed, for the German merchant marine was part of
the formal naval organization. The interned sailors found shortly that
they could be of distinct service to their country without stirring
from their ships.
Not far from the North German Lloyd piers in Hoboken lived Captain
Charles von Kleist, 67 years old, a chemist and former German army
officer. One day there came to him one who spoke the German tongue
and who said he came from Wolf von Igel, in von Papen's office. Those
were good credentials, especially since the gentleman was inquiring on
von Igel's behalf whether Kleist needed any money in the work he was
doing. The polite caller returned a few days later with another man,
who spoke no German. Von Kleist asked whether he was also from the
Fatherland, and was told no, but "we have to use all kinds of people
in our business--that's how we fool these Yankees!" Von Kleist laughed
heartily, and wagged his head, and went out in the garden and dug up a
bomb-case and showed the visitors how it had been made. The visitors
were Detectives Barth and Barnitz.
They assured Kleist that von Igel wanted to know precisely what he
and his associates were doing, so no money might be paid to the wrong
parties. The aged captain wrote out a memorandum of his activities,
which he signed, and the detectives proposed a trip to Coney Island as
an evidence of good faith, so the three had a pleasant afternoon at the
Hotel Shelburne, and the officers then suggested: "Let's go up and see
the chief." "Chief" to von Kleist meant von Igel; he agreed, and was
taken gently into the arms of the chief of detectives.
He implicated, as he sat there answering questions, Captain Eno Bode,
pier superintendent of the Hamburg-American Line, Captain Otto Wolpert,
pier superintendent of the Atlas Line, and Ernst Becker, an electrician
on the North German Lloyd liner _Friedrich der Grosse_, tied up at
Hoboken. The other conspirators were induced to come to New York, and
were arrested at once. Bode and Wolpert, powerful bullies of Paul
Koenig's own stamp, proved defiant in the extreme. Becker, knowing no
word of English, was pathetically courteous and ready to answer. But it
remained for von Kleist to supply the narrative.
Becker, working on the sunny deck of the _Friedrich der Grosse_, had
made numerous bomb cases, rolling sheet lead into a cylinder, and
inserting in the tube a cup-shaped aluminum partition. These containers
he turned over to Dr. Walter Scheele at his "New Jersey Agricultural
Company," where he filled one compartment with nitroglycerine, the
other with sulphuric acid. Scheele supplied the mechanics with sheet
lead for the purpose. The bombs were then sealed and packed in sand for
distribution to various German gathering places, such as, for example,
the Turn Verein in the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum. Wolpert appeared there
at a meeting one night and berated the Germans present for talking
too much and acting too little; he wanted results, he said. Eugene
Reister, the proprietor of the place, said that shortly afterward
Walter Uhde and one Klein (who died before the police reached him) had
taken away a bundle of bombs from the Turn Verein and had placed them
on the _Lusitania_, just before her last voyage, and added that Klein,
when he heard of the destruction of the ship, expressed regret that he
had done it. Karl Schimmel--the same who had negotiated for the Krag
rifles--said later to Reister: "I really put bombs on that boat, but I
don't believe that fellow Klein ever did."
Following Kleist's information, agents of the Department of Justice
and New York police inspected the _Friedrich der Grosse_, and found
quantities of chlorate of potash and other chemicals. They brought back
with them also Garbode (mentioned in the charge as "Karbade"), Paradis
and Praedel, fourth engineers on the ship, who had assisted in making
the bombs, and Carl Schmidt, the chief engineer. All of the group were
implicated in the plot to the complete satisfaction of a jury which
concluded their cases in May, 1917, by convicting them of "conspiracy
to destroy ships through the use of fire bombs placed thereon."
Kleist and Schmidt received sentences of two years each in Atlanta
Penitentiary and were each fined $5,000; Becker, Karbade, Praedel and
Paradis were fined $500 apiece and sentenced to six months in prison.
Dr. Scheele fled from justice, and was arrested in March, 1918, in
Havana. A liberal supply of vicious chemicals and explosives discovered
in his "New Jersey Agricultural Company" implicated him thoroughly, if
the evidence given by his fellows had not already done so. When he was
finally captured he faced two federal indictments: one with Steinberg
and von Igel for smuggling lubricating oil out of the country as
fertilizer, under false customs manifests; the other the somewhat more
criminal charge of bombing.
On April 29, 1915, the _Cressington_ caught fire at sea. Three days
later, in the hold of the _Kirk Oswald_, a sailor found a bomb tucked
away in a hiding place where its later explosion would have started a
serious fire. So it came about that when the four lesser conspirators
of the fire-bomb plot had served their six months' sentences, they
were at once rearrested on the specific charge of having actually
planted that bomb in the _Kirk Oswald_. The burly dock captains, Bode
and Wolpert, who had blustered their innocence in the previous trial,
and had succeeded in securing heavy bail from the Hamburg-American
Line pending separate trials for themselves, were nipped this time
with evidence which let none slip through. Rintelen was haled from his
cell to answer to his part in the _Kirk Oswald_ affair, and the jury,
in January, 1918, declared the nine plotters "guilty as charged" and
Judge Howe sentenced them to long terms in prison. Rintelen, alone of
the group, as they sat in court, had an air of anything but wretched
fanatic querulousness. He followed the proceedings closely, and once
took the trial into his own hands in a flash of temper when the State
kept referring to the loss of the _Lusitania_. It went hard with the
nobleman to be herded into a common American court with a riff-raff of
hireling crooks and treated with impartial justice. In Germany it never
could have happened!
If those trials had occurred in May, 1915, the history of the transport
of arms and shells would not have been marred by such entries as these:
May 8--_Bankdale_; two bombs found in cargo.
May 13--_Samland_; afire at sea.
May 21--_Anglo-Saxon_; bomb found aboard.
June 2--_Strathway_; afire at sea.
July 4--_Minnehaha_; bomb exploded at sea. (The magnetos.)
July 13--_Touraine_; afire at sea.
July 14--_Lord Downshire_; afire.
July 20--_Knutford_; afire in hold.
July 24--_Craigside_; five fires in hold.
July 27--_Arabic_; two bombs found aboard.
Aug. 9--_Asuncion de Larriñaga_; afire at sea.
Aug. 13--_Williston_; bombs in cargo.
Aug. 27--Lighter _Dixie_; fire while loading.
On August 31 the White Star liner _Arabic_, nineteen hours out of
Liverpool was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank in eleven
minutes, taking 39 lives, of which two were American. Germany, on
September 9, declared that the U-boat commander attacked the _Arabic_
without warning, contrary to his instructions, but only after he was
convinced that the liner was trying to ram him; the Imperial Government
expressed regret for the loss of American lives, but disclaimed any
liability for indemnity, and suggested arbitration. On October 5,
however, the government in Berlin had changed its tune to the extent of
issuing a note expressing regret for having sunk the ship, disavowing
the act of the submarine commander, and assuring the United States
that new orders to submarines were so strict that a recurrence of any
such action was "considered out of the question." If the cargoes could
be fired at sea, no submarine issue need be raised. And so fires and
bombs continued to be discovered on ships just as consistently as
before. The log, resumed, runs thus:
Sept. 1--_Rotterdam_; fire at sea.
Sept. 7--_Santa Anna_; fire at sea.
Sept. 29--_San Guglielmo_; dynamite found on pier.
Now von Rintelen's handiwork was revealed in the adventures of Robert
Fay, or "Fae," as he was known in the Fatherland. In spite of the
imaginative quality of the enterprise, and the additional guilt which
it heaped upon the executives of the spy system, it was not successful.
There were vibrant moments, though, when only the mobilization of
police from two states and special agents from the Secret Service
and Department of Justice averted what would have developed into a
profitable method of destroying ships.
Lieutenant Robert Fay was born in Cologne, where he lived until 1902.
In that year he migrated to Canada, where he worked on a farm, and
later to Chicago, where he was employed as a bookkeeper until 1905. He
then returned to Germany for his military service, and went to work
again in Cologne, in the office of Thomas Cook & Sons. After a period
in a Mannheim machine shop he went home and devoted himself to certain
mechanical inventions, and was at work upon them when he was called out
for war service on August 1, 1914.
His regiment went into the trenches, and the lieutenant had some
success in dynamiting a French position. Conniving with a superior
officer, he deserted his command, and was sent to America by a German
reputed to be the head of the secret service, one Jonnersen. Jonnersen
gave Fay 20,000 marks for expenses in carrying out a plan to stop
shipments of munitions from America, and Fay arrived in New York April
23, 1915, on the _Rotterdam_.
Dr. Herbert Kienzle, a clock-maker, of 309 West 86th Street, had
written to his father in Germany bitterly assailing the United States
for shipping munitions, and enclosed in his letters information of
certain American firms, such as Browne & Sharp, of Providence, and
the Chalmers Motor Car Company, of Detroit, who were reputed to be
manufacturing them. These letters had been turned over to Jonnersen,
who showed them to Fay as suggestions. Upon his arrival in New York,
then, Fay called on Kienzle, who, though he was friendly enough,
was reluctant to know of the details Fay had planned. Dr. Kienzle
introduced Fay to von Papen, and later to Max Breitung, from whom he
purchased a quantity of potassium chlorate.
The deserter found his brother-in-law, Walter Scholz, working as a
gardener on an estate near Waterford, Connecticut, and brought him
to New York on a salary of $25 a week. The two crossed the Hudson to
Weehawken, N. J., and set to work to make bombs. Fay had a theory that
a bomb might be attached to the rudder of a ship, and so set as to
explode when the rudder, swinging to port, wound a ratchet inside the
device which would release a hammer upon a percussion cap. Their plan
was to have the parts manufactured at machine shops, assemble and fill
them themselves, and then steal up the waterfront in the small hours
and attach the infernal machines to outward bound vessels. Fay even
counted on disarming the police boats before setting out.
It took the two some three months to get the parts made and properly
adjusted. Meanwhile they employed their spare hours in cruising about
the harbor in a motor-boat. A machinist in West 42nd Street, New York,
made the zinc tank which they used as a model, and the two conspirators
shortly opened a garage in Weehawken where they could duplicate the
bomb cases unmolested.
There came a time when the devices were satisfactory, and Fay actually
attached one to the rudder of a ship to make sure that his adjustments
were correct. The next move was to obtain explosives. Fay's prejudice
against bombs placed in a ship's hold was that they rarely succeeded in
sinking the craft; seventy or eighty pounds of high explosive detonated
at the stern of a vessel, however, would blow the rudder away and not
only cripple the ship but would probably burst a hole in the stern,
mangle the screw, and split the shaft.
Captain Tunney, of the Bomb Squad, heard in October that two Germans
were trying to buy picric acid from a man who stopped at the Hotel
Breslin, and who called himself Paul Seib and Karl F. Oppegaarde,
as the occasion demanded. Tunney's men located the two Germans, and
some days later learned that they had placed an order for fifty-two
pounds of TNT, to be delivered at the Weehawken garage. The delivery
was intercepted, a similar but harmless substance substituted for the
explosive, and two detective-truckmen took the package away on their
truck to deliver it to Fay and Scholz. While they were in New Jersey,
Detectives Coy, Sterrett and Walsh found Fay at the Breslin, and
followed him back to Weehawken. As he left the garage in the evening in
his automobile, the automobile of Police Commissioner Woods followed
at a discreet distance. Up the Palisades the two cars paraded,
until in a grove near Grantwood, Fay and Scholz got out of their car
and disappeared into the woods with a lantern. After a time they
reappeared, and returned to the garage, the police following.
Next morning Chief Flynn was called into the hunt--the morning of
Saturday, October 23--and he assigned two special agents to the case.
The police department directed two detectives to watch the woods at
Grantwood where the conspirators had gone the night before. Detectives
Murphy and Fennelly, each equipped with linemen's climbers, arrived
at the wood-road about noon, and spent the next eleven hours in the
branches of a great oak tree which commanded the road. The perch was
high and the night wind chilly, but the watchers were rewarded at last
by the twin searchlights of an approaching car. Out of it stepped Fay
and Scholz. The men in the branches saw by the light of the lantern
which Scholz carried that Fay placed a package underneath a distant
tree, walked to a safe distance, exploded a percussion cap, watched the
tree topple over and went away, apparently satisfied with the power of
his explosives.
[Illustration: _Copyright, International Film Service_
Robert Fay, who made bombs with which he hoped to cripple the shipment
of munitions to Europe]
Meanwhile other detectives were watching the rooming house at Union
Hill where Fay and Scholz lived, and they saw the two come in about 4
o'clock in the morning. Scholz had very little sleep, for there was a
ship leaving next day for Liverpool. He left the house at 7 A. M. and
went to the garage. Thereupon three detectives returned to the great
oak tree at Grantwood. About noon Fay and his brother-in-law drove up,
and unlocking the door of a rude hut in the wood, took out a bag, from
which they poured a few grains of powder on the surface of a rock. Fay
struck the rock with a hammer; a loud report followed, and the hammer
broke in his hand. A moment later he heard a twig snap behind him.
He turned, and saw a small army of detectives with drawn revolvers
closing in on him. Fay protested and pleaded, and offered to bribe the
detectives for his freedom, but he was locked up with Scholz. The two
had stored in a warehouse several cases containing their completed bomb
mechanisms; the police confiscated from their various caches five new
bombs, 25 pounds of TNT, 25 sticks of dynamite, 150 pounds of chlorate
of potash, two hundred bomb cylinders, 400 percussion caps, one
motor-boat, one chart of New York harbor showing all its fortifications
and piers, one foreign automobile, two German automatic pistols and a
long knife--a considerable arsenal.
Their confessions caused the arrest of Paul Daeche, who had furnished
them with explosives, Dr. Kienzle, Breitung, and Engelbert Bronkhorst.
Fay received a sentence of eight years in the penitentiary, but after
America went to war, Atlanta became too confining for his adventurous
spirit, and he escaped the prison, and is believed to have crossed
the Mexican border to safety. Scholz was sentenced to four years, and
Daeche to three. Kienzle, Breitung and Bronkhorst were not tried, their
apparent ignorance of Fay's designs outweighing in the jury's mind
their obvious German sympathies. Kienzle, upon the declaration of war
of April 6, 1917, became an enemy alien, and was interned.
So Lieutenant Fay never qualified in active service as a destroying
agent. Yet he was profligate in his intentions. He offered two men
$500,000 if they could intrigue among the shippers in order that a ship
laden with copper for England might wander from the path of convoy into
German hands, and he even entertained the fantastic hope, with his
chart and his motor-boat and his bombs, of stealing out of the harbor
to the cordon of British cruisers who hung outside the three-mile limit
and attaching his bombs to their rudders, that the German merchantmen
might escape into the open sea.
On October 26 the _Rio Lages_ caught fire at sea; fire broke out in
the hold of the _Euterpe_ on November 3; three days later there was
fire aboard the _Rochambeau_ at sea; the next day an explosion occurred
aboard the _Ancona_. And so the list runs on:
Dec. 4--_Tynningham_, two fires on ship.
Dec. 24--_Alston_, dynamite found in cargo.
Dec. 26--_Inchmoor_, fire in hold.
1916
Jan. 19--_Sygna_, fire at sea.
Jan. 19--_Ryndam_, bomb explosion at sea.
Jan. 22--_Rosebank_, two bombs in cargo.
Feb. 16--_Dalton_, fire at sea.
Feb. 21--_Tennyson_, bomb explosion at sea.
Feb. 26--_Livingston Court_, fire in Gravesend Bay.
April saw the round-up of the group who had been working under the
Hamburg-American captains, and although numerous fires occurred during
May, 1916, in almost every case they were traced to natural accidents.
The number mounted more slowly as the year advanced. With the entrance
of America into the war, and the tightening of the police cordon along
the waterfront, the chance of planting bombs was still further reduced,
but waterfront fires kept recurring, and until the day of ultimate
judgment in Berlin, when each of Germany's arsonists in America comes
to claim his reward, none will know the total of loss at their hands.
It was enormous in the damage it inflicted upon cargo, but it is
improbable that it had any perceptible effect upon the whole export of
shells for Flanders and France.