GERMANS CLAIM RETURN OF THE RAIDER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16497, 24 March 1917, Page 7

GERMANS CLAIM RETURN OF THE RAIDER.

I ( VESSEL SAID TO HAVE BEEN THE MOEWE. V: SAFE IN PORT AFTER HER /SECOND CRUISE. ■ - „ Australia]], and-TT.Z. Cable.' : :" :■ (Received 9 t>.m.) ''""' "' AMSTERDAM, March 22.v-' " - An official message from Berlin states that the auxiliary cruiser > Moewe has returned home from, her second cruise in the Atlantic. •? \ Tlio German raider which has recently been operating in the Atlantic is: presumably the vessel referred to. She was once declared to be the Moewe, but ! has also been referred to under a variety of other names and descriptions. She : « was first reported on January 17, when the British Admiralty announced the 1 sinking of eight British'and two French merchantmen in the Atlantic. The 1 Yarrowdale was captured and sent away with 400 men from the vessels which 1 k were sunk, and reached a German port. For some weeks nothing has been ) heard of the raider. The Moewe's first raid took place in January and February of last year. A vessel of 4500 tons, she had been launched as a fruit ship, and christened the 1 Ponga, but had been transformed into an auxiliary cruiser carrying 6in guns, i and renamed the Moewe, after a gunboat sunk at Dar-es-Salaam. Her com- i mander was the Burgrave Count von und zu Dohna-Schlodien, who had been the ' navigating officer on the battleship Posen. He was afterwards killed ' in action on the western front. ' Disguised with false sides to look ' like a tramp, and flying the Swedish flag, sho slippod through the watching ■ British cruisers in the fog, and, making a wide circuit. round the north of Scotland, arrived in the Atlantic. There she began her predatory career. She , took the Corbridge off Cape Finisterre on January 11, and presently added the Author, Trader, Ariadne, Dromonby, Farringford, and Clan Hactavish. The last vessel, which carried a 3in gun, put up a gallant fight, and lost eleven men killed. . ' a On,. January 15 the Appam, a vessel of nearly 8000 tons, with the Governor of Sierra Leone on board, was taken off Madeira. Count Dohna, who behaved ' with humanity, put the crews and passengers of his different captures into the Appam, and sent her off under Lieutenant Berg to Norfolk, Virginia, where ■ sho duly arrived on February 1, and raised a. new legal difficulty for the American Government. Meantime, the Moewe proceeded on her course, haunting the junction of the South American and West Indian trade routes, and added to her victims the Westburn, Horace, Flamenco, Edinburgh, and Saxon Prince, as well as the French Maroni and the Belgian Luxembourg She sent the crews of these vessels in the Westburn to Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe, and, after landing them, blow the ship up. The Moewe then turned toward home by the same route as she had come, her arrival at Kiel being announced by the German Admiralty on March 4. The commander and crew were decorated with the Iron Cross. %