REBEL CREW’S REVENGE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 25 May 1925, Page 8

REBEL CREW’S REVENGE.

SCAB A FLOW MYSTERY

DISCOVERY OF MURDERED

OFFICERS

A story of which tiie Sunday Express vouches seems to reveal a strange mystery attached to the scenes at Scapa Flow when the internal German fleet was sunk by tlieir crews. One of the German destroyers which was sunk on that occasion has just been salved and brought to Aberdeen, where ship-breakers have been at work On the vessel. They discovered a number of bodies hidden by piles of debris and broken woodwork. Remains of the clothing of the bodies showed that the dead men were officers, and it is asserted that in spite of the decomposed state of the bodies after six years under water, there were marks which plainly showed that they had met their death by violence. The Express, in reconstructing the story, alleges that it is known from a narrative%ubsequently published by Admiral, von Reuter, the German Admiral in command of the scuttled fleet, that Red elements had been in control from the day when the ships left their German harbours for the last time. Officers were either ignored or treated with open insult, and more than one recourse was had to the British authorities to repress the turbulence of the German ratings. The admiral himself was obliged to beg for u boat’s crew of British tars to row him from ship to ship of his command.

Plots to place infernal machines in the officers’ quarters were suspected; it is significant that two days after the sinking of the fleet, a heavy explosion occurred in one of the vessels. The actual scuttling of the ships afforded the mutineers, whose temper was exacerbated by their memories of savage ill treatment during the war service, a first-class opportunity for re-

venge. Admiral You Reuter, acting under secret instructions from Admiral Yon Troth a, then chief of the German Admiralty, only took into his confidence officers of high rank and a. few technical experts. It must have been difficult, however, to preserve the secret of a plot, the details of 1 which were passed from ship to ship by men who swam through the darkness of the spring nights carrying dispatches concealed in bottles. In one vessel, at least, it can be assumed that the secret was out, and the rebels ready. Their own plans,> not less wel] laid than those of the high command, would be facilitated by the operation of the admiral’s orders. The destroyer commander and his cheif officers would be below charged with the direct supervision of the scuttling operations. The same hour timed the two plots; for the officers there would be scarcely an instant of tragic surprise before they fell to the bullets and axes of the assassins.

The latter had no need to can- ytheir plans further than the, execution of the murder. Admiral von Reuter was their unwilling accomplice. When the German fleet settled clown on the floor of Scapa Flow it carried with it the traces of a crime which is likely to remain one of the haunting mysteries of naval history.