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
My wife and I continued our aërial jaunt across Europe, via Berlin,
Königsberg, and Smolensk, to the capital of the Bolsheviks, but later
on, while flying back and forth across Germany on our way from
Constantinople to Copenhagen and from Finland to Spain, whenever we
dropped down out of the skies in Germany we heard more of this Sea
Devil. That first encounter with this modern buccaneer had aroused
my curiosity, and each new yarn that I heard made me keen to see more
of him. Incidentally, we found that he and his dainty countess were
doing almost as much flying as we were, although entirely within the
borders of Germany and Austria. Cities were declaring half holidays
in his honour, and apparently this Sea Devil was more of a popular
hero than even the great Von Hindenburg. As for the youth of
Germany, they fairly idolized him, and crowds of boys met him at
every aërodrome.
There were other German sea-raiders during the World War that most of
us remember far more vividly than we recollect the _Seeadler_. They
were the _Emden_, the _Moewe_ and the _Wolf_. But these three were
either modern warships or fast auxiliary cruisers, while this giant
count with the foghorn voice and the sea legs had run the blockade in
a prehistoric old-fashioned sailing ship. That, together with an
almost unbelievably adventurous personal story, made romance
complete. Added to which we discovered that he had the unique and
enviable reputation of disrupting Allied shipping without ever having
taken a human life or so much as drowning a ship's cat.
Upon returning home from his buccaneering cruise the Count of course
received a score of decorations, and his own government signally
honoured him in a way that has rarely happened in German history. He
was presented with a cross that places him outside the scope of
German law. Like the kings of old, he "can do no wrong"--at any
rate, not in his own country. He was even called to Rome and
decorated by the Pope as "a great humanitarian."
When we encountered him at Stuttgart, he was on a sort of triumphal
tour of Germany, exhorting the youth to prove worthy of their
inheritance, and in cheery seaman's language he was telling the boys
and girls to keep up their courage, "stay with the pumps, and not
abandon the ship." They in turn seemed to look upon him as a modern
Drake or John Paul Jones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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