Count Luckner, the Sea DevilLuckner, Felix, Graf von
History
Count Luckner, the Sea Devil
Luckner, Felix, Graf von
Germany. Kriegsmarine; Luckner, Felix, Graf von, 1881-1966; Seeadler (Ship); World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations
Only men who have been to sea in windjammers can imagine what it is
to set sail in a hurricane. The canvas whipped as though a devil had
taken hold of it. The masts bent under the force of the wind as it
blasted against the sails. The ship and its rigging creaked and
groaned as though crying out against the sudden strain.
"The cruiser is coming," Leudemann shouted in my ear. "She is making
straight for us."
"More sail on, by Joe," I sang out to the men aloft.
Never mind the hurricane. To the south we go. We'll bury ourselves
in the Antarctic ice before we let them catch us, if the wind doesn't
snap off our masts.
So, with the combined force of the gale and our 1,000-horsepower
motor, we scudded southward. Suddenly, a flooding rain broke over
us, a providential squall if there ever was one. It was like a gift
of heaven. It blotted us out from the cruiser, just like the squall
that rescued the raider _Moewe_.
"It is the hand of God," I shouted. "Our hour hasn't struck yet."
Under cover of the squall, we got away from there as fast as we could
go, and after a few hours we felt certain we had given our pursuer
the slip. In reality, we had not been pursued at all. The cruiser
hadn't even seen us, and our lookout had been sharper than hers. We
learned this from later reports. The ironical thing now would have
been for us to have impaled the _Seeadler_ on an iceberg in that mad
sprint southward. But luck was with us again. The storm blew itself
out.
Still, we were not out of the danger zone. Days went by before we
were safely out of that boisterous region and spreading our wings on
the broad expanse of the Pacific. Cruisers were still watching for
us, and we had to keep a constant lookout. Our problem now was how
to put them off the scent.
The _Seeadler_ carried twenty lifeboats and a corresponding equipment
of life preservers. These were much more than enough for our crew.
We had taken ten of them off captured ships to accommodate our
prisoners in case of necessity. Now we threw all these extra
lifeboats overboard, taking care that on each boat and each life
preserver was painted _Seeadler_. Our hope was that some of them
would be picked up, and that the report would then be sent out that
we had gone down off the Horn. That was exactly what happened. Two
days later we picked up a wireless. It carried the news that a
coastguard cutter had found one of our little boats. Later, two more
were picked up. Then three. All along the coast of South America we
were now given up for lost. The cruisers abandoned the chase and
steamed north.
This left the way clear for us, and now we sailed out to continue our
adventure on the greatest of all the seven seas.
Fourteen days after rounding the Horn, we picked an interesting and
rather puzzling wireless out of the air:
_Seeadler_ gone down with flags flying. Commander and part of crew
taken prisoners and on their way to Montevideo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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