ON THE SEYDLITZ.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 28 August 1917, Page 3

ON THE SEYDLITZ.

EARLY DAYS-OF THE WAR

now^ eII> th& Wai* Wfll Soon be over know?™ glSd tO hear h- Howdoyou "Because we've got England tied up "Is that so?" t T eS> • P over tas been destroyed London is burning. The Zepps. have f^/re to it. The Germans have' laSd" an army of 300 >000 men in Ens"Captain, you don't believe that, do you?" ; "Of course I believe it. We have word direct from Berlin. It is official news." . "How the mischief do you get official news from Berlin on this ship?" I am not going to tell you, but we get it all right. Don't you believe it?" omnnk IK™ ay -be i,rue that y°u have 300,000 soldiers in England, but if so tney are there as prisoners." And the captain of the Seydlitz grew very angry at such a suggestion. Xor this conversation took place on board the German steamer Seydlitz •hortly after the Falkland Islands battle, when \on Spec's squadron was practically annihilated, and the speakers were Captain Lavs and Captain J. U. Ragles, of the ship Drummuir, who was a prisoner on board. Captain Eagles told the story recently to a representative of the Sydney Morning Herald Many things have happened smce the Seydlitz slipped out of Sydney harbor suddenly on August 3, 1914 the day before Britain declared war.on Germany, and since Admiral Yon Spec Bailed these waters on the Scharnhorst, with the cruiser Gneisenau with him But there is history in what Captain Eagles has to tell, and as such it is worth preserving. . Captain Eagles sailed from Swansea m command of the Drummuir on September 19, 1914, and on December 2 ne tell m with the German cruiser Leipsie near Cape Horn. "A boat, with aitout 25 men," he says, "put off to board us. I recognised the officer in command of this boat as one who had been sailing as first or second officer on a German line of steamers running to San Francisco, ™™7' c "ere bound with a cargo or Welsh anthracite coal. He claimed ™r e 6niP as a prize of war, but I said No; this ship, although it is flying the British flag, is an American ship owned in San Francisco,' g^ was of no avail. A navigating "officer camS aboard and took away all the recent charts, destroying the old ones. The Leipsie started towing us towards the land, and four more warships and three other vessels soon hove into sight The warships were the Scharnhorst Gneisenau, Nuremberg, and Dresden: the others were the Seydlitz, Baden, and feanta Isabella. We were towed to Navarm Island, south of Tierra del Jniego, and as soon as we anchored the banta Isabella came up on one side and the Baden on the other, and their men started discharging our coal and dismantling the ship. I saw Admiral yon Spec that morning, and protested against the destruction of an Ameri- j can ship, and that in neutral waters ' British flag, British ship,' he said. Everything British must be destroyed ' ■No argument was of any use. "And so: it came about that I found myself aboard the Seydlitz. I must say they treated me well. Shortly beiore this I had met with an accident and broken my shoulder-bone, and the doctors on the Seydlitz, gave me every attention I was given a state room in the saloon, and I took my meals i with the captain of the ship—Captain ; . JLaus. It was on the afternoon of Sun- ■ day, December 6, that we sailed from ! JNavarm. On Monday afternoon the I captain came along, and I said to him, i •Captain, don't you think the Admiral ! is * little rash in steering up so close "I to the Falkland Islands— a British'naval station ?' 'Have you been look- i mg at our compasses?' he said. 'No ' I said I, 'I would not do so without be- I mg invited. But you must give me' credit for a little common-sense I can make a very good guess how a' ship is steering when I can see the ?i? TS A°i r *h<3 sun.' 'Oh,' he replied, i the' Admiral knows what he is doing, j There is nothing at the Falklands! that can stop us. We know exactly i what is there—the Glasgow, the Kent, and the Canopus, and the Canopus is on the ground. Then there are a .couple of steamers with coal there and the coal will come in verY handy if 3f- T Hou\the mischief they, knew all this I don't know, but the facts ! were as stated. He said something! however, about their 'wireless' picking I up messages - Their operators, he said, ! could tell whether a message came '• trom a shore station or a warship, or ; a merchantman, and they could also1 tell the weight of a ship by the sound . or the wireless—whether it was a bat- I tleship a cruiser, or what not. I could not help wondering whether the Germans had a wireless operator in their pay at the Falklands, but I said nothing. "stl"'dee's fleet had not arrived then, but it was coming. It arrived m fact, that evening—the evening of the jth. Next morning, at half-past 10, the purser and I were standing on the forward part of the promenade deck, when I saw smoke coming out of Port Stanley. Then more smoke and more and more, until finally we! made out five warships. A signal came from Admiral yon Spec for the Seydlitz and the two colliers to remain'2o miles off, and we all stopped. Ten minutes later, however, the Seydlitz continued to go ahead, despite an aritated warning from the commander "of the Baden, who was the senior officer. we went on until we were about eight °r«*wi miles astorn of the ™r.ships • ~ \Vhen Yon Spec saw the size of the Jsntish ships he turned and ran away to the eastward. I sa id to the purser: It looks as though the Admiral is running away.' 'Oh. no,' he says 'he's trying to get the British ships clear or the land, so that they won't" be able to get back into Port Stanley.' I said ■ *rom the appearance of things they bS' as if they wanfc *° ge* ''It was not, however, until about halt-past one that the ships were close enough to do any shooting. The Sohara- £? rst Ta£ d the Illvi"cible engaged first r/ 16 i,nflexible enKa-ged the Gneisenau, the Glasgow the Leipsie, the Kent the Nuremberg. You know what happened. Ihe Dresden got away for the time, but was afterwards sunk by the Kent at Juan Fernandez. The two colliers were captured, and, I believe sunk. The Seydlitz and the Dresden were the only two to get away. Our last wireless was from the Scharnhorst at 5 o clock, stating that she was sinkm§-. at was the end of Yon Spec. 1 believe he also lost two of his sons, one of whom was on the Gneisenau and the other on the Leipsie. ''The Seydlitz cleared for her life, and got away down in the ice—l guess we were down in 60 south. We spent three or four days with £he ice all round us, and all the time we were getting all sorts of messages. They told me that there were 20 British ' ships and four or five Japanese engag- I ed in the fight, and when I said I only saw five they said that was nonsense.' 3 And when they told Captain Eagles about the burning of London and the lading of 300,000 Germans he said that: was nonsense. He has since loarnJeo! that it came from the German "lie factory."

Finally, the Seydlitz, after lying for a time in San Jose Bay, behind the Valdez peninsula, put- into San Antonio, at the head of the Gulf of Matthias, and on his arrival at Buenos Ayres Captain Eagles was instrumental in having her interned. "She is still there, as far as I know." lie said. He added that his son Phillip, who had been his second mate on the Drummxiir, sailed for Buenos Ayres in the ship Dominga J. de Silva, under the Uruguayan flag, bound for New York. "He chose that ship because the captain and the mate were both Nova Scotia men, like myself. But it has never been heard of since. Two other ships, similarly bound and with similar cargo, sailed a couple of days afterwards, and reached their destination safely. But of my son's fate I know nothing."