HOW OUR COASTS WERE MINED

Northern Advocate, 22 July 1939, Page 5 (Supplement)

HOW OUR COASTS WERE MINED

On July 3, 1917, almost exactly 22 years ago, the citizens of Melbourne and Sydney—and the defence authorities of Australia and New Zealand—were blissfully unconscious that a

ruary, 1918, without having entered a. port. She was leaking and battered, and her empty mine compartments, which had held more than 400 mines were crammed will; pirsoners. In appearance the Wolf was perfectly disguised as an old tramp steamer, but in a few minutes she could be transformed into a powerfully-armed auxiliary cruiser. She carried a crew of more than 400 picked men, and a sea-plane, which did valuable service scouting fer victims and possible pursuers. The concluding stages of the long voyage were among the most exciting and they are summed up by the author in his introduction. “The ship's return up the Atlantic was like seme exaggerated story from a work of fiction: the holds packed with scurvy-strickcn prisoners; the raider badly damaged when attempting to ccai from her collier in a heavy Atlantic swell; the ship leaking and with her plates starting, almost floundering in a gale; the ship covered In ice

many months later. The Wolf then • made for Australian waters ‘‘on what ■ must surely have been the strangest Tasman SJea crossing ever made. It war a crossing more suited to a schoolboy “thriller" than to reality. Here was ship, to all outward appearances just an ordinary largo modern steamer cn her way from Wellington to Sydney. and. with just the usual crew to be seen at their duties cn deck. Yet the ship was in reality a heavilyarmed cruiser; a pirate, months at sea, and existing on the fuel and provisions she commandeered from captured ships. Some of the coal then furnishing power to push the raider along had been only a few weeks before in the I bunkers of a ship belonging to this] Iccalitv, but now looted and lying at I | the bottom of the Pacific.” ; The crossing lock nearly six days. | and action alarms were frequent. “At! the first sign of smoke on the sky line | the whole ship would prepare for ac-j tiou down to ties last detail, excepting! that alt gun crews kept under cover.j and the hinged sides masking the guns! and torpedo tubes would net. be lowered." Mines were taken on deck so that nc time would be wasted at night. “It seemed the riskiest of jobs in that swell —if one mine had slipped sideways to the deck the ship would have simply disappeared in a succession of blasts as the remaining mines were touched off. That afternoon off Gabo seems unreal; somewhat incredible even to one who was present. The good folk cf Sydney and Melbourne they known that a raider was steaming off the coast with her after-deck black with mines, and waiting only for darkness to set in before mining Australia’s most important sea track. Miner Laid at Night “The Wolf eventually slipped in towards the coast, and the mines began to go overboard about 9 p.m. The ship

German raider with a bag cf prizes already to her credit, was laying a mine field close to Cape Gabo on the main steamer route between the two capitals. Details of this practically unknown episode and of the many other exciting events in the raider’s adventurous and successful cruise of (14.000 | miles are graphically described in j “The Cruise of the Raider Wolf” (Angus and Robertson Ltd.. Sydney), j by Roy Alexander, an Australian, who was one cf the captives who travelled for months in the hold of the vessel. The story at times reads almost like j an imaginary tale of a modern pirate, I and it presents a thought-provoking 1 contrast between German efficiency, which had provided charts of many cut-of-the way anchorages, and the blithe carelessness with which officialdom in Australia permitted the transmission cf important wireless messages and ignored the possibility of a raider off the coast. “Seen from all angles,” says the author, “the Tasman Sea activities of the Wolf revealed hopeless incapacity on the part of our administrators—an incapacity so hopeless that it remains almost incredible. Judging from recent incidents off Darwin, our administrative powers have not improved in the 20 years that have passed. Our authorities arc of exactly the same type as those that held office when the Wolf visited our shores. Should we be engaged against any first-class naval power in the next war, and still be saddled with our present methods of administration, the fate of our shipping and our coastal towns and cities may roach the very depths of horror.”

in a gate forcing her way through the ice between Greenland and Iceland in her efforts to avoid passing the North Sea patrols; the final successful effort to run the blockade, and the excitement in Kiel when the long-missing Wolf

came home. A great ship. A great ! cruise. A great commander!’’ Despite the suffering he endured on board from illness, the author speaks with the highest praise of Captain Nerger, whose treatment of his prisoners was as humane as possible in the circumstances. and whose efficiency was shown in the manner of his captures and the safe return of the ship from the amazing perils she encountered. Alexander was the youthful wireless operator in the Wairufla, which was captured by the raider on June 2, 1917, at the Kcrmadec Islands, while on a voyage from New Zealand to San Francisco. The seaplane dropped a message oil the dock, “Do not use your wireless. Stop your engines. Take orders from the. cruiser or you will be bombed.’’ The boarding party was received politely, and given tea —tea and pirates seemed a queer combination, the author remarks in parenthesis—and the crew were then transhipped to the Wolf.

Islands Charted

Speaking of the darts carried by the j Wolf, the writer says that when Germany owned eastern New Guinea much time and money were spent in charting these islands for just such unlikely emergencies as the visit of the Wolf to Offak Bay, in the island of Waigeu, just off the north-west point of New Guinea, where the Matunga was stripped of coal and provisions before being sunk. “Although it was in Dutch territory, it is characteristic that Captain Nerger, of the Wolf, had detailed charts, and used the intricate entrance to this harbour as easily as if it were the entrance to Kiel Bay. The Japanese commenced where Germany ended. By unofficial surveys, Japan has new probably more knowledge of the Pacific coastline than the actual owners of these islands. The Wolf was one of the three disguised raiders that successfully ran the North Sea blockade, the other two being the Moewe and the Seeadler. Official figures credit the Wolf with sinking 135,000 tons of shipping by gun fire, mine and bomb, her victims ranging from mail steamers to old sailing ships. She left Germany in November, 1916, and returned in Feb-

Prisoners in the Hold

In the prisoners’ hold they found about a hundred men, crews of the earlier prizes, all wanting news of the outside world. All had been captured in the Indian Ocean months previously. The prisoners were separated by only a bulkhead from 200 mines, and although anxious for release did not contemplate with pleasure the possibility of a stray cruiser dropping a shell in the cargo. The prisoners watched the Wairuna sunk by shellfire, and after an American schooner had been captured the raider made for the Tasman Sea to iay her mines. A group of 25 was laid between North Capo, Cape Maria van Diemen and the Three Kings, New Zealand, one of these mines being responsible for the loss of the Wimmera

The Amazing Cruise G f German Raider Wolf

was in darkness, cf course, and dodging along between Cape Howe and the Gabo lighthouse. She was being driven nor hardest; the hull quivered and shook as the best possible speed was forced out of her. We could hear the quick orders of the officer as the mines went over the stern from under the poop, and then the rumble of the wheels as additional mines were pushed along the deck in their turn. The prisoners were very still and silent; there was little cf the usual chatter and joking. We-would try to talk, but every man’s attention would wander. Cur ears were strained, waiting for the rush on deck and the clanginig down of the ships sides —which would mean trouble.” There was a scare, and the Wolf ran full belt back into the Tasman. “The cruiser Encounter ' had passed down the coast and just missed sighting the minelayer at work. Nerger (may his eyesight never fail!) had sighted the cruiser first.” On July 6 the steamer Cumberland struck a mine off Gabo, and a Japanese cruiser steed by while the steamer was beached. Experts persuaded the master of the ship that he had not struck a mine, but .that an internal explosion had taken place in the ship. Several small ships disappeared, including the modern collier Undola, “but by some miracle no further losses of large vessels took place in Australian waters.”

The capture of the Matu.n'ga—*th»e complete disappearance of the vesselcaused a nation-wide sensation in Australia—is described in detail, and the remainder of the cruise was even mere exciting than its earlier stages. The bock fills a useful gap in the stories of the remarkable group of German raiders whose piratical feats were performed with a combination of gallantry and chivalry, which entitled them to both respect and admiration.