VON LUCKNER’S PLANS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 149, 20 March 1931, Page 9

VON LUCKNER’S PLANS

Voyage to New Zealand (Rec. March 19, 8 p.m.) New York, March 19. Count Felix von Luckner hits announced plans for taking his schooneryacht Mopelia to New Zealand next winter, “because I love that country.”

Clearly Count Von Luckner bears New Zealand no ill-will for the exciting happenings associated with his previous visit. During the war Von Luckner, who is an ex-German naval officer, ran the British North Sea blockade in an armed sailing vessel and proceeded to prey with considerable success on Allied shipping in the Atlantic. In due course the little German raider wriggled its way to the Pacific, where it came to grief among the islands, Von Luckner and his men being obliged to surrender to the British authorities. The prisoners were taken to Fiji, thence to Auckland, where they were interned on Motuihi Island, in the Hauraki Gulf. Here the picturesque and genial Von Luckner staged a spectacular escape in which dummy pistols played a prominent part. The Germans decamped in a motor-boat, stopped and boarded a scow, bluffed the civilian crew into abandoning their vessel, and sailed up the coast. The attempt. however, was doomed to failure. The scow was unsuitable for an oecan voyage, and Von Luckner was overhauled and recaptured by the cable ship Iris, which, in his subsequent account of the adventure, be described as an “auxiliary cruiser.” . Von Luckner spent a considerable portion, of the remainder of his New Zealand visit in gaol.