Felix Graf von Luckner (9 June 1881 – 13 April
1966), sometimes called in English, Count Luckner, was a German nobleman, naval
officer, author, and sailor who earned the epithet Der Seeteufel (the
Sea-Devil), and his crew that of Die Piraten des Kaisers (the Emperor's
Pirates), for his exploits in command of the sailing commerce raider SMS
Seeadler (Sea Eagle) between 1916 and 1917.
It was Luckner's
habit of successfully waging war without casualties which made him a hero and a
legend on both sides.
In the early months
of the First World War Felix von Luckner saw action at the Battle of Heligoland
Bight (1914). At the Battle of Jutland he commanded a gun turret on board the
battleship Kronprinz Wilhelm.
At the beginning of
the War, Germany converted a considerable number of merchant ships into
merchant raiders by equipping them with guns and sending them in search of
Allied merchant shipping. Most of the armed raiders were not particularly
successful, but they did tie up considerable Allied forces in hunting them. By
early 1915, most of the armed raiders had either been hunted down and sunk or
else had run out of fuel and been interned in neutral ports.
Hoping to revive
commerce raiding, the Imperial Navy equipped the impounded three-masted sailing
ship Pass of Balmaha (1,571 tons) with two 105 mm guns hidden behind hinged
gunwales, several machine guns, and two carefully hidden 500 HP auxiliary
engines. She was commissioned as the auxiliary cruiser Seeadler ("Sea
Eagle"). As he was almost the only officer in the German Navy with
extensive experience of large sailing ships, Luckner was appointed to command her.
Seeadler left port
on 21 December 1916 and managed to slip through the British blockade disguised
as a Norwegian ship. Many of the crew of six officers and 57 men, including
Luckner himself, had been selected for their ability to speak Norwegian, in
case they were intercepted by the British. By Christmas Day, Seeadler was
southeast of Iceland, where she encountered the British armed merchant cruiser
Avenger. Avenger put an inspection party aboard, but failed to detect the
German deception.
On 9 January 1917,
Seeadler came upon a single-funneled steamer, raised a signal requesting a time
signal (not an uncommon thing for a sailing ship long out of contact with land
to do), and raised the German ensign too late for the target ship to take any
evasive action. Three shots were needed to persuade the 3,268 ton Gladys Royle,
carrying coal from Cardiff to Buenos Aires, to heave to. Her crew was taken off
unharmed, and she was scuttled.
The following day,
Seeadler encountered another steamship, which refused to identify itself. The
German ensign was raised and a shot fired across the bow of the Lundy Island,
which was carrying sugar from Madagascar. The steamer still refused to heave
to, and Luckner fired four rounds directly at her. The steamer then hove to and
lowered her boats, but her captain ignored an order to come to Seeadler. A
German boarding party was sent over and discovered that the crew had abandoned
ship when the first shots were fired, leaving the captain alone on board.
Captain Bannister later told Luckner that he had previously been captured by a
German raider and had given his parole, which he had broken; thus, he was not
anxious to be a prisoner of war again. Luckner continued his voyage southwards,
and by 21 January he was in mid-Atlantic between Brazil and West Africa when he
found the 2,199 ton French three-masted barque Charles Gounod, which was loaded
with corn. She was quickly dispatched, but her log book recorded information
about other ships she had met and their intended route.
On 24 January, the
small 364-ton Canadian schooner Perce was met and sunk by machine gun fire,
after taking off her crew and her captain's new bride. The 3,071 ton French
four-master Antonin, which was loaded with Chilean saltpetre, was overhauled on
3 February and soon scuttled. On 9 February, the 1,811 ton Italian Buenos
Aires, also carrying saltpetre, was sunk. On 19 February, a four-masted barque
was spotted, which immediately piled on sail in an effort to get away; however,
Seeadler's engines allowed her to overhaul the 2,431 ton British steamer
Pinmore, which was carrying a cargo of grain. By coincidence, Luckner had
himself sailed in Pinmore in his civilian sailing days, back in 1902. He took
Pinmore into Rio de Janeiro in order to get more supplies, before eventually
scuttling her.
The next ship to be
stopped was the Danish barque Viking, but as there was nothing unusual about
her cargo the neutral ship was allowed to proceed unmolested.
The ensign which
Luckner would raise on the Seeadler to convey hostile intent is now on display
at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.
On the morning of
26 February, the 1,953 ton British barque British Yeoman, carrying a welcome
cargo including chickens and pigs, was stopped and sunk; the same evening the
French four-master Le Rochefoucauld fell victim to the Seeadler. The boarding
party discovered Le Rochefoucauld had only recently been stopped by a British
cruiser which was looking for Seeadler.
On the evening of 5
March, Seeadler discovered a four-masted barque in the moonlight and signalled
"Stop immediately! German Cruiser". Bizarrely, the captain of the
2,206 ton French ship Dupleix rowed across to Seeadler, convinced another French
captain was playing a practical joke on him. He was soon disabused of the idea
when his ship was scuttled. Seeadler's next victim on 10 March was asked for
the time, but ignored the signal. Luckner ordered a smoke generator to be lit,
and the 3,609 ton Horngarth turned back to render assistance to the 'burning'
sailing ship. A single shot put the British ship's radio out of action; this
resulted in the only loss of life in the Seeadler's voyage. A British sailor,
Douglas Page, was killed when a steam pipe was ruptured by the shot. Horngarth
was soon scuttled by Seeadler's now experienced crew.
By this time,
Luckner had the problem of feeding and keeping safe nearly 300 prisoners, in
addition to his own crew. Consequently, when on 20 March, the French
four-masted barque Cambronne was captured, Luckner arranged for the ship's
topgallant mast and additional spars and sails to be removed, before putting
his prisoners aboard Cambronne under the command of Captain Mullen of Pinmore.
The much-reduced rigging on Cambronne ensured Seeadler would be able to escape
before her location could be reported to the hunting ships.
The Royal Navy was
well aware of Seeadler's general location and set a trap consisting of the
armed merchant cruisers Otranto and Orbita and the armoured cruiser HMS
Lancaster at Cape Horn. However, a severe storm blew Seeadler considerably
further south, before she entered the Pacific Ocean on 18 April and sailed
north along the Chilean coast. By early June, Seeadler was east of Christmas
Island and learned that the United States had entered the war. Seeadler
therefore turned her attention to American shipping, sinking the 529-ton A. B.
Johnson of San Francisco on 14 June, the 673 ton R. C. Slade the next day, and
the schooner Manila on 8 July. By this time, Seeadler needed to be laid up so
that her hull could be scraped clean. She put into the small island of Mopelia,
also known as Maupihaa, a coral atoll some 10 km (6 mi) in diameter in the
Society Islands, some 450 km (280 mi) from Tahiti.
Seeadler was too
large to enter the sheltered lagoon of Mopelia, and consequently had to anchor
outside the reef. On 24 August, disaster struck. According to Luckner, the ship
was struck by a tsunami which wrecked her on the reef. However, some American
prisoners alleged that the ship drifted aground while the prisoners and most of
the crew were having a picnic on the island.
The crew and their
46 prisoners were now stranded on Mopelia, but they managed to salvage
provisions, firearms, and two of the ship's boats.
Luckner decided to
sail with five of his men in one of the 10 m (33 ft) long open boats, rigged as
a sloop and named Kronprinzessin Cecilie. Ever the optimist, he intended to
sail to Fiji by way of the Cook Islands, capture a sailing ship, return to
Mopelia for his crew and prisoners, and resume his raiding career.
Three days after
leaving Mopelia, the seamen reached Atiu Island, where they pretended to be
Dutch-American mariners crossing the Pacific for a bet. The New Zealand
Resident, the administrator of the island, gave them enough supplies to reach
another island in the group, Aitutaki, where they posed as Norwegians. The New
Zealand Resident in Aitutaki was suspicious but had no means of detaining the
group, and Luckner quickly took his party to the island of Rarotonga.
Approaching Rarotonga in the dark, Luckner saw a dark ship which he thought was
an auxiliary cruiser, but in fact it was a beached ship.
Luckner pressed on
to the Fijian Wakaya Island, arriving after a voyage of 3,700 km (2,300 mi) in
an open boat. Most people on Wakaya accepted the Germans' story of being
shipwrecked Norwegians, but one sceptic called a party of police from the old
Fijian capital of Levuka. On 21 September, the police threatened that a
non-existent gun on the inter-island ferry Amra would blow Luckner out of the
water. Not wishing to cause bloodshed, and not realizing the police were
unarmed, Luckner and his party surrendered and were confined in a
prisoner-of-war camp on Motuihe Island, off Auckland, New Zealand.
Meanwhile, back on
Mopelia, a small French trading ship, the Lutece, anchored outside the reef.
Leutnant Kling of Seeadler, having heard on the radio of his captain's capture,
sailed out to Lutece and captured her at gunpoint. The French crew was put
ashore with the other prisoners, and all the Germans embarked on the ship,
which they renamed the Fortuna, and set course for South America. The master of
A. B. Johnson, Captain Smith, then took the remaining open boat from Mopelia
with three other American seamen, and sailed 1,600 km (990 mi) to Pago Pago,
arriving on 4 October, where they were finally able to inform the authorities
of the activities of Seeadler and arrange for the rescue of the other 44
sailors left stranded on Mopelia.
Fortuna, meanwhile,
came to grief when she struck uncharted rocks off Easter Island. The crew
scrambled ashore, where they were interned by the Chileans for the remainder of
the war.
Luckner still
refused to accept that the war was over for him. The commander of the prisoner
of war camp at Motuihe had a fast motor boat, the Pearl, at his disposal, and
on 13 December 1917, Luckner faked setting up a play for Christmas with his men
and used his provisions for the play to plan his escape. He and other prisoners
seized the Pearl and made for the Coromandel Peninsula. Using a machine gun,
Luckner then seized the 90-ton scow Moa and, with the help of a handmade
sextant and a map copied from a school atlas, he sailed for the Kermadec
Islands, which was a New Zealand provisioning station, with larger ships
anchored there. A pursuing auxiliary ship, the Iris, had guessed Luckner's
probable destination and caught up with him on 21 December. A year after his
mission began, the war finally ended for Felix von Luckner. He spent the
remainder of the war in various prisoner of war camps in New Zealand, including
Ripapa Island in Lyttelton Harbour, before being repatriated to Germany in
1919.
Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d8,Strength
d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d6, Knowledge (Battle) d8, Notice d8,
Persuasion d6, Piloting d6, Repair d6, Shooting d6
Charisma: +2; Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Sanity:
6; Toughness: 5
Hindrances: Code of Honor, Loyal, Stubborn
Edges: Charismatic, Command, A few good men, Death
before dishonour, Elan, Hard to Kill, Level Headed, Lucky, Upper class, Rank
(Officer)
Gear: Uniform, nautical maps, compass
SMS Seeadler
Acc/Ts Toughness Notes
3/10 19(4) 20 Heavy
Armor, Acc/TS is 1/3 under sail
Weapons
Type Range
Damage ROF Notes
10.5mm Cannon x2 50/100/200 2d10,AP
4 — 1 Heavy Weapon
MG08 7.92mm 30/60/120 2d8 Auto, May not move
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