NEW STORY OF MOEWE.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7719, 13 May 1916, Page 4

NEW STORY OF MOEWE.

AN AMERICAN’S EXPERIENCES. THE HOMEWARD TRIP. f£AN FRANCISCO, April 11. The astounding story of the return of the German raider—hitherto known as the Moewe—to her home port, Wilhelmshaven, was detailed in New York for the first time on April 10th. The narrator is a plain Yankee sailor, John Brennan, of South Providence, Rhode Island. On February 25th the Pen Wing—the real name of the raider—captured and sank the British freighter Saxon Prince. Brennan, one of the Saxon Prince’s crew, was taken prisoner. He has just returned to America. Of the liandful of men who ran the British blockade of Germany and returned to Wilhelmshaven, Brennan was the first’ to reach the United States. The story is told in his own words. Bluntly, he tells of the nonchalance of the Pen Wing’s crew. He describes, too, for the first time, the ship that sank sixteen enemy merchantmen, and then mocked the British fleet by slipping through it for the second time in three months. He tells of the periscoped mine, of the little raider planting the mines within sight of the Irish coast, and of the scorn of the Germans when he wanted to be set adrift in a small boat rather than be imprisoned in the hold when the Pen Wing slipped back to Wilhelmshaven through the British battleships. Brennan is a keen, well-read American sailor. He is 37 years of age, and for twenty years has sailed the seas in the ships of every civilised country. He was imprisoned in a German detention camp. Later he was taken to Berlin. There Ambassador Gerard helped him, and sent him back to America. Although, as he admits, his sympathy is with the Allies, he tells in iiis own homely way his admiration, ns a sailor, of the little German raider and its defiant crew.

Recounting bis experiences, Brennan said:—“On October 29th last, in Hull, England, I signed aboard the Saxon Prince. She was a cargo steamer, of 3471 net tonnage. Of course, there was much talk of submarines and mines, but I was not much concerned. Having lived through storms that snapped the masts off at the deck, and smashed wheel-houses and rudders like eggshells, the idea of the seas being dangerous did not impress us sailors a lot. Besides, we had to work, and the sea was the only trade we knew. “Well, the Saxon Prince took on steel rails and fittings, and sailed for Buenos Ayres, discharged, and took on a light cargo of hides and cattle products for Santos and Rio de Janeiro—Brazilian ports. In Brazil we loaded with coffee for New Orleans, and in New Orleans we switched to grain and cotton. It was about February 4th that we left New Orleans for Hull. We were a mixed crew—four or five Americans, and the rest Scandinavians—thirty-three of us in all, including Captain James Jameson, one of the whitest men that ever drew breath. “There was another fellow though —Johannsen —that wasn’t liked. He was a Norwegian. He never said anything we could find fault with. He was a good sailor, but he wasn’t popular. Johannsen knew too much about Germany to suit some of us. About (i. 45 on the morning of P’ebruary 25th we were hailed by a German vessel. She came toward us until there was only about 300 feet of water between us. A couple of her guns spit at us, and we prepared to drop the boats.

“I was doing the four-to-eight watch below. We got the word that a raider had us, and that it was every man for himself. Wall, by the time we got the boats ready, the Germans were coming toward us in their small boats. They took us off and let us stand on the deck of their raider so that we could see how they did it. “They planted one of their bombs on the port side forward and another forward on the starboard. They planted another aft near No. 3 hatch. They touched them off, and in thirty minutes the Saxon Prince disappeared with her nose in the air. It was as neat a piece of business as I have ever seen. Now, mind you, we were only 700 miles west of Ireland. Those Germans were about as much worried as if their little raider was the only ship in the world that mounted guns. They talked about returning to Wilhelmshavon with the air of men who didn’t know that there was a British fleet. “They let us look the ship over. T learned, first of all, that she was tin* Pen Wing, one of twin cargo ships built near Bremen for the West Coast trade. She had never made her first trip to the fruit ports. She was finished just before the war started. They immediately fitted her up with guns and sent her out as a commerce destroyer. 'The thing that impressed me most was the utter lack of secrecy. They told us that we were the six tcenth boat they had sunk. They even told ns they expected that their cruise would go a long way towards belittling the strength of the British on the seas! Under the forecastle head she mounted two G-inch guns. The forecastle head was false. The guns were hidden by steel plates that dropped down and left the guns clear. Abaft the forecastle head she mounted two more 6-inch guns. I had never seen or heard of guns like these. They could tie collapsed telescope-like. Abeam No. 2 hatch —forward of the bridge—there were two torpedo tubes, one on each side. There was provision for six torpedoes near each tube. Then on the other end, abaft the ujain mast and No, 4 batch, the raider carried two more guns, I don’t know whether they were four or six-inch. “In her hold she carried a number of queer-looking mines. These mines were long, narrow affairs. Each was equipped with a fake periscope. This attachment looks exactly like the periscope that a submarine carried. “With her guns hidden and her tanks filled so that she lay low In the water like a heavily-cargoed ship, she ran northward until she sighted the Lizard. She was in plain view of Great Britain, arid did not entertain a fear. They backed half a dozen of their periseoped mines out of the hold and placed them overboard. The British Admiralty, you know, has issued orders to all British ships to run down any German submarine, providing the German submarine doesn’t get the j Britisher first. j “Well, all of that wine that we I could sec as they planted her in the |

water was the fake periscope. On the face of things there was nothing to indicate that it was anything but a submarine. They told me that they had planted a dozen or so around Ireland. I am still wondering whether any misguided British steamer or warship ran down one of those periscopes. If they did—good night! “One of the finest men I ever met was the Captain of the Pen Wing, Count Dohna-Sehlodein. The cruise of the Pen Wing, or Moewe, as you know her, speaks for his daring and ability. But lie was very humane very white, and very kind to us neutrals. They fed us well and gave us comfortable quarters. The day they planted the mines off the Lizard I got a jolt. Our friend Johannsen was on the bridge with the captain. Of course, I don’t know what he said. But there was Johannsen—supposedly ft neutral. “That night the attitude of the crew changed. A guard with fixed bayonets took charge of us. We were told that the Pen Wing was going northward and back to Wilhelmshaven. I heard it like a man getting a death sentence. Johnson (my mate) and I asked that we be given a small boat and a few days’ rations and set adrift. We figured that one of the British cruisers would sight us. We knew that if they did they would blow us out of the water. We did not like the idea of being drowned in a lower hold. „

“They laughed at Johnson and inc. They took us to the captain. He laughed, too. He declared that we would be in real danger if set adrift, and in no danger if we did exactly what we were told. Well, I bid a lingering good-bye to the sky and went below. We were kept below until we reached Wlihelmshaven. How we got there I don’t know. They kept us below decks. “Whether we went north of Iceland or got in between Iceland and the Shetlands, I don’t know. Afterwards I asked them how they did it. They shrugged their shoulders, grinned, and replied: ‘ My friend, we ran in while they were asleep.’ The marvellous part of this is that the Pen Wing’s boilers were encrusted and her machinery needed overhauling. She was in no shape for speed. If she was capable of 15 knots at her best, I’m no sailor. They marched us through AVillielmshaven to a naval detention camp.

“Captain Schlodein bade us a very courteous adieu, and told us Americans to give his regards to our country. I heard that lie sent several of the British civilian prisoners ashore and gave each four or five quid to pay their passage home. There in the detention camp I learned more about the Pen Wing. She had never been registered at Lloyd’s. Her sister ship had not been sent out. She was returned to Wilhelmshaven within two and a half months after she left. She simply sailed right past the British ships in going out. She wasn’t out of Wilhelmshaven 21 days before she captured the Appam and sent her to Norfolk. Of course, 1 knew nothing of official affairs in Germany. But I saw in Bremen great crowds of women in the bread lines. Folks told mo that meat was a forgotten luxury.