OASIS OF MAAN, 620 Kilometers South of Damascus, May 9.--As we ride
through Arabia, Mücke and Lieutenant Gyssing, the only returning Emden
officers, narrate:
"We on the Emden had no idea where we were going, as on Aug. 11, 1914,
we separated from the cruiser squadron, escorted only by the coaler
Markomannia. Under way, the Emden picked up three officers from German
steamers. That was a piece of luck, for afterward we needed many
officers for the capturing and sinking of steamers, or manning them
when we took them with us. On Sept. 10 the first boat came in sight.
We stop her. She proves to be a Greek tramp, chartered from England.
On the next day we met the Indus, bound for Bombay, all fitted up as a
troop transport, but still without troops. That was the first one we
sunk. The crew we took aboard the Markomannia. 'What's the name of
your ship?' the officers asked us. 'Emden! Impossible. Why, the Emden
was sunk long ago in battle with the Ascold!'
"Then we sank the Lovat, a troop transport ship, and took the Kabinga
along with us. One gets used quickly to new forms of activity. After a
few days capturing ships became a habit. Of the twenty-three which we
captured, most of them stopped after our first signal. When they
didn't, we fired a blank shot. Then they all stopped. Only one, the
Clan Mattesen, waited for a real shot across the bow before giving up
its many automobiles and locomotives to the seas. The officers were
mostly very polite and let down rope ladders for us. After a few hours
they'd be on board with us. We ourselves never set foot in their
cabins, nor took charge of them. The officers often acted on their own
initiative and signaled to us the nature of their cargo; then the
Commandant decided as to whether to sink the ship or take it with us.
Of the cargo, we always took everything we could use, particularly
provisions. Many of the English officers and sailors made good use of
the hours of transfer to drink up the supply of whisky instead of
sacrificing it to the waves. I heard that one Captain was lying in
tears at the enforced separation from his beloved ship, but on
investigation found that he was merely dead drunk. But much worse was
the open betrayal which many practiced toward their brother Captains,
whom they probably regarded as rivals. 'Haven't you met the Kilo yet?
If you keep on your course two hours longer, you must overhaul her,'
one Captain said to me of his own accord. To other tips from other
Captains we owed many of our prizes. I am prepared to give their
names," Captain Mücke added.
"The Captain of one ship once called out cheerily: 'Thank God, I've
been captured!' He had received expense money for the trip to
Australia, and was now saved half the journey!
"We had mostly quiet weather, so that communication with captured
ships was easy. They were mostly dynamited, or else shot close to the
water line. The sinking process took longer or shorter, according to
where they were struck and the nature of the cargo. Mostly the ships
keeled over on their sides till the water flowed down the smokestacks,
a last puff of smoke came out, and then they were gone. Many, however,
went down sharply bow first, the stern rising high in the air.
"On the Kabinga the Captain had his wife and youngster with him. He
was inclined at first to be disagreeable. 'What are you going to do
with us? Shall we be set out in boats and left to our fate?' he asked.
Afterward he grew confidential, like all the Captains, called us 'Old
Chap,' gave the Lieutenant a nice new oilskin, and as we finally let
the Kabinga go wrote us a letter of thanks, and his wife asked for an
Emden armband and a button. They all gave us three cheers as they
steamed away. 'Come to Calcutta some time!' was the last thing the
Captain said, 'and catch the pilots so that those [unprintable
seaman's epithet] fellows will feel something of the war, too.'
"A few days later, by Calcutta, we made one of our richest hauls, the
Diplomat, chock full of tea--we sunk $2,500,000 worth. On the same day
the Trabbotch, too, which steered right straight toward us, literally
into our arms.
"But now we wanted to beat it out of the Bay of Bengal, because we had
learned from the papers that the Emden was being keenly searched for.
By Rangoon we encountered a Norwegian tramp, which, for a cash
consideration, took over all the rest of our prisoners of war. Later
on another neutral ship rejected a similar request and betrayed us to
the Japanese into the bargain. On Sept. 23 we reached Madras and
steered straight for the harbor. We stopped still 3,000 yards before
the city. Then we shot up the oil tanks. Three or four burned up and
illuminated the city. They answered. Several of the papers asserted
that we left with lights out. On the contrary, we showed our lights so
as to seem to indicate that we were going northward; only later did we
put them out, turn around, and steer southward. As we left we could
see the fire burning brightly in the night, and even by daylight,
ninety sea miles away, we could still see the smoke from the burning
oil tanks. Two days later we navigated around Ceylon, and could see
the lights of Colombo. On the same evening we gathered in two more
steamers, the King Lund and Tyweric. The latter was particularly good
to us, for it brought us the very latest evening papers from Colombo,
which it had only left two hours before.
"Everything went well, the only trouble was that our prize, the
Markomannia, didn't have much coal left. We said one evening in the
mess: 'The only thing lacking now is a nice steamer with 500 tons of
nice Cardiff coal.' The next evening we got her, the Burresk,
brand-new, from England on her maiden voyage, bound for Hongkong. Then
followed in order the Riberia, Foyle, Grand Ponrabbel, Benmore,
Troiens, Exfort, Grycefale, Sankt Eckbert, Chilkana. Most of them were
sunk; the coal ships were kept. The Eckbert was let go with a load of
passengers and captured crews. We also sent the Markomannia away
because it hadn't any more coal. She was later captured by the English
together with all the prize papers about their own captured ships. All
this happened before Oct. 20; then we sailed southward, to Deogazia,
southwest of Colombo. South of Lakadiven on Deogazia some Englishmen
came on board, solitary farmers who were in touch with the world only
every three months through schooners. They knew nothing about the war,
took us for an English man-of-war, and asked us to repair their motor
boat for them. We kept still and invited them to dinner in our
officers' mess. Presently they stood still in front of the portrait of
the Kaiser, quite astounded. 'This is a German ship!' We continued to
keep still. 'Why is your ship so dirty?' they asked. We shrugged our
shoulders. 'Will you take some letters for us?' they asked. 'Sorry,
impossible; we don't know what port we'll run into.' Then they left
our ship, but about the war we told them not a single word.
"Now we went toward Miniko, where we sank two ships more. The Captain
of one of them said to us: 'Why don't you try your luck around north
of Miniko? There's lots of ships there now?' On the next day we found
three steamers to the north, one of them with much desired Cardiff
coal. From English papers on captured ships we learned that we were
being hotly pursued. The stokers also told us a lot. Our pursuers
evidently must also have a convenient base. Penang was the tip given
us. There we had hopes of finding two French cruisers.
"One night we started for Penang. [A graphic narrative of this raid on
Penang from the special correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES, who was
ashore there, appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY of March,
1915.] On Oct. 28 we raised our very practicable fourth
smokestack--Mücke's own invention. As a result, we were taken for
English or French. The harbor of Penang lies in a channel difficult of
access. There was nothing doing by night, we had to do it at daybreak.
At high speed, without smoke, with lights out, we steered into the
mouth of the channel. A torpedo boat on guard slept well. We steamed
past its small light. Inside lay a dark silhouette; that must be a
warship! But it wasn't the French cruiser we were looking for. We
recognized the silhouette--dead sure; that was the Russian cruiser
Jemtchug. There it lay, there it slept like a rat. No watch to be
seen. They made it easy for us. Because of the narrowness of the
harbor we had to keep close; we fired the first torpedo at 400 yards.
Then to be sure things livened up a bit on the sleeping warship. At
the same time we took the crew quarters under fire, five shells at a
time. There was a flash of flame on board, then a kind of burning
aureole. After the fourth shell, the flame burned high. The first
torpedo had struck the ship too deep because we were too close to it,
a second torpedo which we fired off from the other side didn't make
the same mistake. After twenty seconds there was absolutely not a
trace of the ship to be seen. The enemy had fired off only about six
shots.
"But now another ship, which we couldn't see, was firing. That was the
French d'Ibreville, toward which we now turned at once. A few minutes
later, an incoming torpedo destroyer was reported. He mustn't find us
in that narrow harbor, otherwise we were finished! But it proved to be
a false alarm; only a small merchant steamer that looked like a
destroyer, and which at once showed the merchant flag and steered for
shore. Shortly afterward a second one was reported. This time it
proved to be the French torpedo boat Mousquet. It comes straight
toward us. That's always remained a mystery to me, for it must have
heard the shooting. An officer whom we fished up afterward explained
to me that they had only recognized we were a German warship when they
were quite close to us. The Frenchman behaved well, accepted battle
and fought on, but was polished off by us with three broadsides. The
whole fight with both ships lasted half an hour. The commander of the
torpedo boat lost both legs by the first broadside. When he saw that
part of his crew were leaping overboard, he cried out: 'Tie me fast; I
will not survive after seeing Frenchmen desert their ship!' As a
matter of fact, he went down with his ship as a brave Captain, lashed
fast to the mast. Then we fished up thirty heavily wounded; three died
at once. We sewed a Tricolor, (the French flag), wound them in it and
buried them at sea, with seamen's honors, three salvos. That was my
only sea fight. The second one I did not take part in."
Mücke, who had been recounting his lively narrative, partly like an
officer, partly like an artist, and not trying to eliminate the flavor
of adventure, now takes on quite another tone as he comes to tell of
the end of the Emden:
"On Nov. 9 I left the Emden in order to destroy the wireless plant on
the Cocos Island. I had fifty men, four machine guns, about thirty
rifles. Just as we were about to destroy the apparatus it reported,
'Careful; Emden near.' The work of destruction went smoothly. The
wireless operators said: 'Thank God! It's been like being under arrest
day and night lately.' Presently the Emden signaled to us, 'Hurry up.'
I pack up, but simultaneously wails the Emden's siren. I hurry up to
the bridge, see the flag 'Anna' go up. That means 'Weigh anchor.' We
ran like mad into our boat, but already the Emden's pennant goes up,
the battle flag is raised, they fire from starboard.
"The enemy is concealed by the island and therefore not to be seen,
but I see the shells strike the water. To follow and catch the Emden
is out of the question; she's going twenty knots, I only four with my
steam pinnace. Therefore, I turn back to land, raise the flag, declare
German laws of war in force, seize all arms, set up my machine guns on
shore in order to guard against a hostile landing. Then I run again in
order to observe the fight. From the splash of the shells it looked as
if the enemy had fifteen-centimeter guns, bigger, therefore, than the
Emden's. He fired rapidly, but poorly. It was the Australian cruiser
Sydney."
"Have you heard?" Mücke suddenly asked in between, "if anything has
happened to the Sydney? At the Dardanelles maybe?" And his hatred of
the Emden's "hangman" is visible for a second in his blue eyes. Then
he continues:
"According to the accounts of the Englishmen who saw the first part of
the engagement from shore, the Emden was cut off rapidly. Her forward
smokestack lay across the ship. She went over to circular fighting and
to torpedo firing, but already burned fiercely aft. Behind the
mainmast several shells struck home; we saw the high flame. Whether
circular fighting or a running fight now followed, I don't know,
because I again had to look to my land defenses. Later I looked on
from the roof of a house. Now the Emden again stood out to sea about
4,000 to 5,000 yards, still burning. As she again turned toward the
enemy, the forward mast was shot away. On the enemy no outward damage
was apparent, but columns of smoke showed where shots had struck home.
Then the Emden took a northerly course, likewise the enemy, and I had
to stand there helpless gritting my teeth and thinking: 'Damn it; the
Emden is burning and you aren't on board!' An Englishman who had also
climbed up to the roof of the house, approached me, greeted me
politely, and asked: 'Captain, would you like to have a game of tennis
with us?'
"The ships, still fighting, disappeared beyond the horizon. I thought
that an unlucky outcome for the Emden was possible, also a landing by
the enemy on Keeling Island, at least for the purpose of landing the
wounded and taking on provisions. As, according to the statements of
the Englishmen, there were other ships in the neighborhood, I saw
myself faced with the certainty of having soon to surrender because of
a lack of ammunition. But for no price did I and my men want to get
into English imprisonment. As I was thinking about all this, the masts
again appear on the horizon, the Emden steaming easterly, but very
much slower. All at once the enemy, at high speed, shoots by,
apparently quite close to the Emden. A high, white waterspout showed
among the black smoke of the enemy. That was a torpedo. I see how the
two opponents withdrew, the distance growing greater between them; how
they separate, till they disappear in the darkness. The fight had
lasted ten hours.
"I had made up my mind to leave the island as quick as possible. The
Emden was gone; the danger for us growing. In the harbor I had noticed
a three-master, the schooner Ayesha. Mr. Ross, the owner of the ship
and of the island, had warned me that the boat was leaky, but I found
it quite a seaworthy tub. Now quickly provisions were taken on board
for eight weeks, water for four. The Englishmen very kindly showed us
the best water and gave us clothing and utensils. They declared this
was their thanks for our 'moderation' and 'generosity.' Then they
collected the autographs of our men, photographed them and gave three
cheers as our last boat put off. It was evening, nearly dark. We
sailed away. After a short address, amid three hurrahs, I raised the
German war flag on 'S.M.S. Ayesha.'"