SMS Seeadler (ship, 1878)
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The SMS Seeadler was an auxiliary cruiser of the Imperial Navy (1916 to 1917) and one of the last sailing ships in the war. The three-masted windjammer was used by Germany in the naval war of the First World War .
background
Since at the end of 1916 German warships could hardly operate outside the areas blocked by the Allies due to a lack of bases to supply coal , the idea was born to convert a sailing ship as an auxiliary cruiser and to use the routes of the sailing ships. A sailing ship could operate very far without fuel. Felix Graf von Luckner was in charge of the operation .
Conversion to an auxiliary cruiser
The former American full-rigged ship Pass of Balmaha , raised as a prize by U 36 in 1916 , was converted for this purpose at the Joh. C. Tecklenborg shipyard . It was also equipped with an auxiliary machine. It also received hidden loading and lounges, quarters for additional crew and captured seamen and was armed with two 10.5 cm cannons, two heavy machine guns and hand weapons for equipping prize squads.
Patrol
The ship was camouflaged as the Norwegian timber freighter Irma with a false Norwegian flag and forged ship's papers and was able to pass the British blockade line undetected despite an investigation . It then hunted down allied merchant ships for over half a year and sank 14 ships, including three steamers that shouldn't have been attacked according to the order.
The sea eagle's voyage ended in August 1917 when the ship was driven onto a reef (position 16 ° 53 ′ S , 153 ° 55 ′ W ) as a result of inattentiveness when anchoring off Mopelia ( belonging to the Society Islands ). To protect his officers (including Carl Kircheiß ), Luckner later spread the claim that a tsunami-like wave had thrown the unguarded ship onto the reef and destroyed it.
Ships annoyed by the sea eagle
During the seven-month patrol through the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the crew of the sea eagles sank 14 ships. Two more ships were arrested, but then released again. One last ship was hijacked after the sea eagle was stranded off the island of Mopelia.
Sunk ships
- Gladis Royle , 3,268 GRT , British cargo steamer from Sunderland , brought up and sunk on January 9, 1917.
- Lundy Island , 3,095 GRT, British cargo steamer, brought up and sunk on January 10, 1917.
- Charles Gounod , 2,199 GRT, French barque from Nantes , seized and sunk on January 21, 1917.
- Percé , 364 GRT, British auxiliary schooner from Halifax , Nova Scotia (now Canada), seized and sunk on January 24, 1917.
- Antonin (IV) , 3,071 GRT, French four-masted barque belonging to the shipping company AD Bordes & Fils , raised and sunk on February 3, 1917.
- Buenos Ayres , 1,811 GRT, Italian full ship from Naples , raised and sunk on February 9, 1917.
- Pinmore , 2,431 GRT, Scottish four-masted barque from Greenock (built in 1882 as a four-masted full ship and re-rigged in 1885), raised and sunk on February 19, 1917.
- British Yeoman , 1,953 GRT, British barque from Victoria (British Columbia) (then still Great Britain), seized and sunk on February 26, 1917.
- La Rochefoucauld , 2,200 GRT, French barque from Nantes, seized and sunk on February 27, 1917.
- Dupleix , 2,206 GRT, French barque (1901) from Nantes, raised and sunk on March 5, 1917.
- Horngarth , 3,609 GRT, British freight steamer from Cardiff , sunk on March 11, 1917, 1 dead by scalding.
- AB Johnson , 529 BRT, US four-masted schooner, raised and sunk on June 14, 1917.
- RC Slade , 673 GRT, US four-masted schooner, raised and sunk on June 18, 1917.
- Manila , 731 GRT, US four-masted schooner, raised and sunk on July 8, 1917.
Released ships
- Viking , 2,959 GRT, Danish four-masted barque, applied, then released unmolested because of "harmless cargo".
- Cambronne , 1,833 GRT, French barque (1907; shipping company AD Bordes & Fils ), applied, cargo (saltpeter) rendered unusable by water, released without brambles and replacement sails with 263 prisoners on March 21, arrived in Rio de Janeiro , Brazil, on March 30, 1917.
After the sea eagles were shipwrecked , the French schooner Lutece (126 GRT) was landed on September 5, 1917. He sailed to Easter Island as Fortuna and arrived there on October 4, 1917.
painting
- Christopher Rave : SMS Seeadler
- Wilhelm Busse: SMS Seeadler signed by Felix Graf Luckner
literature
- Felix Graf Luckner: Monkfish . Heyne Verlag, Munich 1993; ISBN 3-45301-303-4
- Hans D. Schenk (ed.): Graf Luckner's "Seeadler": the war diary of a famous pirate voyage (edited by Uwe Schnall for the German Maritime Museum), Die Hanse / Carlsen, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-551-88480-3
- Entry: Auxiliary cruiser "Seeadler" , in: Kapitän zur See a. D. Hugo von Waldeyer-Hartz: The cruiser war 1914-1918. The cruiser squadron. Emden, Koenigsberg, Karlsruhe. The auxiliary cruiser , Oldenburg i. O. 1931, pp. 209-211.
- Chapter: SM auxiliary cruiser "Seeadler". In: Eberhard von Mantey : The German auxiliary cruisers , Berlin 1937, pp. 325–354.
- Chapter: Captain Seeteufel from "Seeadler", in: Oliver E. Allen (Ed.): Die Windjammer . Eltville am Rhein: Bechtermünz, 1992, ISBN 3-86047-034-5 , pp. 120-135.
- Norbert von Frankenstein: "Seeteufel" Felix Graf Luckner: Truth and Legend , Hamburg 1997.
- What Really Happened to von Luckners' Seeadler in 1917? , James N. Bade, University of Auckland ( PDF ; 33 kB)
- Schmalenbach, Paul: The German auxiliary cruisers 1895-1945 . Gerhard Stalling AG, Oldenburg, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-7979-1877-1 .
Web links
- Photos and articles on www.deutsche-schutzgebiete.de
- Detailed story ( Memento from February 9, 2019 in the Internet Archive )
- Cannon of the white-tailed eagle in Papeete Tahiti ( Memento from January 13, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) (French)
- Location of the wreck of the white-tailed eagle on Mopelia ( memento of October 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (French)