It was built in England by Irvine's Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. Ltd. built in West Hartlepool . The drive was a 3-cylinder steam engine with triple steam expansion from Richardsons Westgarth & Company . It initially sailed under the English flag as Nigaristan for Anglo-Algerian Steamship Co. In 1913 it was sold to HAPAG. After the First World War he was at the coal shop in Japan . Since the journey to Germany was too dangerous, the ship went to the German colony of Tsingtao . Here it met the German warship Emden and accompanied it as a supply ship from August 2, 1914.
The Emden captured and sank many ships and the Markomannia temporarily took the captured crew on board. When the Markomannia ran out of coal , the Greek coal freighter Pontoporos was captured . On October 13th, the coal was loaded from one freighter to the other near Sumatra . The English light cruiser Yarmouth tracked the Markomannia and approached at full speed. One tried to flee quickly into neutral waters, but the warship prevented this with warning shots. For this reason, the captain Walter Faaß surrendered.
Now the crew of the Markomannia was brought to the Yarmouth and then the ship was sunk. The crew was taken to the detention center in Penang brought.
literature
Arnold Kludas , Herbert Bischoff: The ships of the Hamburg-America line: 1907–1926. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, 1989, ISBN 978-3-7822-0430-9 , p. 38.
Gerhard Dannemann: Trapped at the other end of the world: Germans in World War I in East Asia and Australia. ISBN 978-3-7460-4595-5 , pp. 70-77.