CRUISE OF THE MOEWE—LOSS OF BRITISH BATTLESHIPS

The cruise of the Moewe stands out as one of the heroic, almost Homeric achievements of the war. She left Bremerhaven on December 20, 1915, according to one of her officers who afterward reached the United States, and calmly threaded her way through the meshes of the British navy's North Sea net. After leaving the shelter of home waters, with the Swedish colors painted on her hull, the Moewe boldly turned her nose down the Channel. She answered the signals of several British cruisers and on one occasion at least was saluted in turn. Having a powerful wireless apparatus aboard, her commander, Count zu Dohna-Schlobitten, a captain-lieutenant in the Imperial navy, was able to keep up with the movements of British patrol vessels. Several intercepted messages told of a strange white liner that refused to answer questions. This was the Moewe, and before passing into the Atlantic she had changed her coat to black. She was sighted by probably a dozen British warships before reaching the North Atlantic. By refusing to heed the signals of distant vessels, which she had a good chance of outdistancing in a race, and showing every courtesy to those close at hand, the raider made her escape.

The Moewe had about three hundred men aboard. They were a picked crew, and her commander a man of daring. Within a period of less than three months he sunk fifteen merchant ships, captured the Appam and sent her to Norfolk, Va., then returned home with 199 prisoners and $250,000 in gold bars. And he may have been responsible for the loss of the British battleship King Edward VII, of 16,500 tons, which struck a mine in the North Sea on January 9, 1916. It is certain that the Moewe left a chain of mines behind her on the outward voyage, some of which undoubtedly caused loss to allied shipping. Once past the British Channel fleet, the Moewe struck for the steamship lane off the Moroccan, Spanish, and Portuguese coasts. There she was comparatively safe from pursuit, and so skillfully were her operations carried on that it was many weeks before the fact became known that a raider actually was abroad. But one by one overdue steamships failed to reach their ports and suspicion grew. Either the Karlsruhe had returned to life as a plague upon allied shipping, an able successor appeared, or a flotilla of giant submarines was at large that could cruise almost any distance. Several vessels brought tales to England of being chased by a phantom ship near the African coast. But such stories had been repeated so many times without any foundation that the British admiralty was in a quandary. To overlook no clue, a flotilla of cruisers swept the seas under suspicion. They came back empty handed.

At dawn, February 1, 1916, a big steamship passed into Hampton Roads, disregarding pilots and the signals of other craft. She hove to at an isolated spot and waited for daylight. When the skies cleared the German naval flag was seen floating at her prow. Newport News could scarce believe the report. Then the city remembered the Kronprinzessin Cecile and the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, both of which had stolen in under cover of night from a raiding career.

But this was no raider. It was the Appam, a raider's victim. She had sailed across the Atlantic from a point on the South African route, held prisoner thirty-three days by a prize crew of twenty-two men and one officer, Lieutenant Hans Berg, of the Imperial German Naval Reserve. Aboard the Appam were 156 officers and men, 116 of her own passengers, 138 survivors of destroyed vessels, and twenty Germans who had been en route to a prison camp in England when rescued. This large company was cowed by the lieutenant's threat to shoot the first man who made a hostile move, or to blow up the vessel with bombs if he saw defeat was certain. And, like a good stage director, he pointed significantly to rifles, bayonets, and bombs.

There were several notables among the prisoners, including Sir Edward Merewether, Governor of Sierra Leone, and his wife. They were homeward bound from his African post for a vacation when the Moewe took the Appam. All of the persons aboard, save the Germans, were released and the ship interned. Then followed a long wrangle as to the status of the vessel, Germany claiming the right of asylum for a prize by the terms of an old Prussian treaty with the United States. Great Britain protested this claim and demanded that the ship be released. Without actually affirming one or denying the other, the United States allowed the Appam to remain in German hands, enjoying the same privileges as other interned ships.

The Appam was a rich prize indeed. Having a registry of 7,781 tons, she was a modern vessel throughout, having been employed for several years in the trade between South Africa and England. She was worth $1,000,000 stripped, while her cargo sold for $700,000. The $250,000 in gold bars which subsequently went into the Berlin strong box also came from the Appam—a round $2,000,000. Altogether it was a very good day's work for the Moewe.

Not till the Appam arrived in the Virginia harbor was it positively known that a raider had eluded the allied navies. The search that followed was conducted on a broader scale and with more minute care than any similar hunt of the war, but to no avail. On February 20, 1916, the Westburn, a British vessel of 3,300 tons, put into Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, a Spanish port. She, too, had a German captor aboard. One officer and six men brought in 206 prisoners from one Belgian and six British ships. Having landed all of those on board the German lieutenant in command asked for permission to anchor at a different point, and, this being granted, steamed beyond the three-mile limit, where the Westburn was blown up. Long use of sea water in her boilers caused the explosion, her commander said. He was arrested along with his half dozen men, then paroled. It was the fortune of war. Once more the Germans had won, the British lost.

Again word was passed that the Moewe must be found. The British public took her feats much to heart. They rivaled the finest accomplishments of British sailormen in the days when privateers went forth to destroy French commerce. But the Moewe never was caught. On the morning of March 5, 1916, she put into Wilhelmshaven with 4 officers, 29 marines and sailors, and 165 men of enemy crews as her prisoners. And the gold bars were secure in the captain's safe.

Immediately a fervor of enthusiasm ran through Germany. The Moewe was back after a trip of many thousand miles, with prisoners and bullion aboard. She had sunk fifteen allied vessels—thirteen British, one Belgian, and one French—with an aggregate tonnage of nearly 60,000. This had been accomplished in the face of her enemies' combined sea power. The Moewe first sailed through the blockade and then came home again by the long way round. She skirted the whole of Iceland to reach Wilhelmshaven safely, making a perilous voyage into Arctic waters at the worst season of the year. All this and more the German papers recounted with pardonable pride. It was said that Germany had flung the gauntlet in the British face and escaped unscathed.

Count zu Dohna-Schlobitten had the honor paid him of a visit from the kaiser aboard his ship, where he received the Iron Cross. Wilhelm was much pleased, as may be imagined, and the example of the count was held up to the German navy as an illustration of what daring could achieve.

The Moewe's exploits evidently were part of a concerted plan. Whether the raider actually sunk all of the vessels accredited to her is a question that probably never will be answered. The evidence tends to show that it was Germany's aim to create a fleet of auxiliaries in the mid-Atlantic. It seems likely that the naval board in Berlin conceived the idea of having a number of their interned vessels break for the sea on a stated day and meet at a common rendezvous, or undertake raiding upon their own account.

Whatever the plan, it was carried out in part. Two German liners escaped from South American ports on February 12, 1916, and never were heard from again, so far as the records go. They were the Bahrenfeld and the Turpin. As the identity of the Moewe already had been established and allied warships were scouring the seven seas for her, it appears plausible that the Bahrenfeld and Turpin both assumed the same title, and that one or other of the vessels was taken to be the original Moewe by persons on ships which they sunk. Or one or both may have been run down and the fact kept secret.

The Bahrenfeld and Turpin commanders were wily men. They told the authorities at Buenos Aires, where the first named had sought asylum, and Puenta Arenas, Chile, where the second was interned, that the machinery of their ships was suffering from disuse, and requested permission for a day's run in the neighboring waters that the engines might have exercise. This was granted, and they quietly put to sea. That was the last seen of them by the South American folk. But the port officials at Rio de Janeiro were suspicious when the Asuncion tried the same ruse. As she began to edge beyond bounds a shot across her bow cut short the plan.

Both the Bahrenfeld and the Turpin were built in England, the former having a registry of 2,357 tons, and the latter 3,301 tons.

The first day of the new year was marked by the explosion of the British armored cruiser Natal in an east-coast port. Three hundred men of a crew numbering 700 were killed, the others escaping because they had shore leave. Not a man on board lived to tell how the explosion came. It was one of a mysterious chain that had shaken even British nerves in the early days of the war when a half dozen warcraft were blown up in home ports. The explosions were, in every instance, extremely violent, literally blowing the vessels to bits. Several of them were affirmed to have been accidental by the British admiralty, which rendered that verdict upon the Natal, but these official explanations never were convincing.

The Natal, a vessel of 3,600 tons, had but recently returned from sea service and was in good condition throughout. The explosion that rent her apart came in the quiet of the evening when the men either were sleeping or preparing for supper. Suddenly there was a crash, and the Natal was no more. Such of her hull and superstructure as had not been scattered in every direction sank beneath the surface of the water. Just nine days later the King Edward VII, a pre-dreadnought of 16,500 tons, collided with a mine in the North Sea and soon foundered. She was a second-line ship of heavy battery and carried a crew of 777 men, all of whom were taken off before the big craft sunk. This was one of the few instances in which there was no loss of life from mine or torpedo explosions. The accident occurred at a time when the King Edward VII was accompanied by a number of other vessels, or most of the men aboard probably would have been drowned. On a warship, even more than a passenger vessel, it is impossible to carry enough boats for all. The price of defeat in a naval action inevitably is death. For this reason there was general thanksgiving in England that the crew of the battleship had been saved, even though the ship was lost.

During the month of January, 1916, three British sailing vessels and ten steamships were sunk by enemy warships, with a respective tonnage of 153 and 31,481. Four hundred and ten lives were lost. Three steamships struck mines and foundered in the same month, having a tonnage of 3,357. Two persons died in the trio of accidents.

The Amiral Charner, an old but serviceable French armored cruiser of 4,680 tons, was torpedoed in the Mediterranean near Syria on February 8, 1916. She went down within a few minutes, although about a hundred men managed to reach the lifeboats and rafts. The weather was bitterly cold, and only one survivor lived to bring the news. He was picked up on a raft with fourteen dead companions and told an incoherent story that bore little relation to the truth. But it was only too easy to guess what had happened.

During the early period of the war the French navy escaped the heavy blows that fell upon the British, partly because Germany concentrated on her larger antagonist's navy, and partly due to the fact that the British ships were nearly all engaged in the Atlantic, while the French confined themselves more especially to the Mediterranean. With the opening of operations at the Dardanelles and the coming of German submarines the losses of the French sea forces began to grow rapidly. But they held the Mediterranean against all attacks. The Arethusa, which torpedoed the BlÜcher after she had been put out of action by the Lion in that famous fight, collided with a mine near the east coast of England on February 14, 1916. She went down with a loss of ten men, neighboring vessels doing notable rescue work. The Arethusa was a cruiser of 3,600 tons and had taken an active part in all of the work that fell to the British fleet. She was one of the pet ships of the navy, having a reputation for speed and luck that made her name familiar to readers the world over. A half dozen brushes with the enemy had found her well up in the fighting line, and she was said by sailormen to have a charmed existence, never having been hit. But she sunk quickly after striking the mine. The passing of so gallant a ship was one of the chief developments of the month in its naval history.

The Peninsular and Oriental liner Maloja was blown up in the Channel on February 28, 1916, supposedly by a mine. The loss of life was large, 147 persons being drowned.[Back to Contents]