DESTROYER OF EMDEN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22505, 25 February 1935, Page 11

DESTROYER OF EMDEN

VICE-ADMIRAL'S DEATH Memories of the dramatic destruction at sea of the German raider Emden during the war were recalled by the death in a nursing home at Weymouth, England, recently, of Vice-admiral John Collings Taswell Glossop, C.B. Admiral Glossop, who retired in 1921 and lived at Bridporfc, Dorset, was in command of the Australian cruiser Sydney when she destroyed the Emden, which had torpedoed thousands of tons of British shipping in the Pacific. The raider was one of Admiral von Spee's notorious? squadron. Rigging up a false funnel and displaying the British flag, the Emden put into the Bay of Bengal early in September, 1914. Within a week she had cut off all sea communication between India and Burma. Before being caught by the Sydney at the Cocos Islands on Not'emboi 9, 1914, the Emden entered the harbour of Penang and sank a Eussian cruiser and a French destroyer. No fewer than 129 of the Emden's crew were killed in the battle with the Svdney, and Captain von Muller and the survivors were taken prisoners. Captain von Muller and his officers were noted for the humanity and courtesy which they had always shown to their war victims, and the'British Admiralty ordered that, with the other survivors,

they were to be accorded all honours of war. Captain von Muller and his officers were not deprived of their swords.

Vice-admiral Glossop leaves a widow, a son and a daughter. He himself was a son of the Rev. G. G. P Glossop, vicar of Twickenham, and was married in 1918 to the daughter of Mi John M'Phillamy, of Bathurst, New South Wales. Among his other honours, he wore the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun and the Legion of Honour. Adventure befell him early in life, for he was serving as midshipman in H.M.S. Calliope when tha*- ship e«iapcd from the disastrous hurricane at Apia, Samoa, in 1889.