Stories of the ShipsFreeman, Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome)
History
Stories of the Ships
Freeman, Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations
"A rather decent sort of chap, who said that he had learned his English
working on a Scotchman's farm in Argentina, took me to a doorway leading
to a flat from which a ladder had descended to the engine-room and
stokeholds. Across that doorway was lying the body of an officer, which
nobody seemed to have taken the trouble to move. He was the Gunnery
Lieutenant, the chap said, and had been driving up stokers at the point
of his revolver to serve a gun whose crew had been knocked out when he
was killed. The officer's body was somewhat scorched by lyddite, but
from the line of the burns it looked as if they were made after he fell.
"What looked to me very much like a bullet wound in the side of the head
struck me at once as the likely cause of his death. 'Did one of his own
men shoot him?' I asked; but the chap--seeing a young officer who, I
later learned, was Prince Franz Joseph Hohenzollern, a relative of the
Kaiser, approaching--only shrugged his shoulder and raised his eyebrows
and walked away. I didn't like to ask about the incident after the men
were prisoners on the _Sydney_, but just the same there has never been
any doubt in my mind as to what occurred.
"Most of my time on the _Emden_ was put in standing by on the
quarterdeck in case there was any signalling to be done, and this gave
me a good chance to get a line on a little ceremony which had been
carried out there just after she sent her flag down.
"We had seen them burn that flag, but just what other things went into
that fire we never knew exactly. The nature of some of them, however, I
began to surmise when I came upon charred fragments of Bank of England
notes lying about among the wreckage and sticking in the cracks of the
warped deck. Several coins which I picked up turned out to be English
shillings and German marks. I noticed that some of our lads were pushing
the search with much energy whenever they had a chance, paying especial
attention to the cracks between the charred planking and the deck. When
fire-blackened gold sovereigns began to make their appearance in the
_Sydney_, and kept appearing even after we had been for months in the
West Indies and South Atlantic, I understood the reason for their
energy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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