Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1915 — EMDEN'S GAREER LIKE ROMANCES OF SPANISH MAIN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

EMDEN'S GAREER LIKE ROMANCES OF SPANISH MAIN

Daring Raids of Captain Von Muller Smack of Days of Buccaneers. SURVIVORS ROVE THE SEAS Escape In Schooner of "Uncrowned King” of Cocoe Island After Warship Is Destroyed—English Pay Tribute to Foe's Bravery. New York.—Every lover of sea romance, every collector of piratical lore, everjr worshiper of Jean Lafitte, “Blackbeard” Lathobe, Morgan the buccaneer aQd Captain Kidd and other pirates, as well as of John Paul Jones and Admiral Nelson was given new and added Interest in the great war when on the morning of November 11 he read that the German cruiser Emden, which had destroyed more than a score of British ships In eastern waters, had been driven ashore and burned on Cocos island. The Em den waa not a pirate ship, but a small cruiser of the navy of a big world power, perfectly accredited, and in its actions and the actions of its heroic commander something for everyone with a drop of the old Teu-

ton blood in him to be proud of. But In Its desperate cruises, Its daring attacks, its sailing of the high seas without fear and without let from the mighty power of England’s navy, there was a suggestion of John Paul Jones—and there was something of the old, free, devil-may-care spirit of the buccaneer days. In the name of the islands where she was finally driven ashore there was a wealth of historic suggestion of the years when the pirates Lathobe, Morgan, Kidd and Lafltte sailed wherever they listed, battled under the flag of the Jolly Roger amd took what prizes they cared to In spite of the navies of the civilized world arrayed against them. *

Held Seas Against Forty Warships. The gallant little 3,500-ton cruiser, knowing the whole time that she was inexorably doomed to destruction, gallantly held the seas for three months against fully forty hostile warships, sinking in that time 55,000 tons of her enemies’ shipping, looking for trouble by bombarding Madras, looking for more trouble by sinking two hostile warships under the guns of hostile forts, and, as the London Daily Telegraph pointed out, her captain showed himself always an “officer and a gentleman,” and wrought the Teuton vengeance upon his British enemy “without the loss of a single life." In the 14 weeks she had sent terror into the heart of every British merchantman’s captain and had done a damage estimated from four to twenty millions of dollars. It would have made any of the old pirates turn over in their sea-washed graves to have heard such a sum mentioned, and Paul Jones, the yankee skipper, who did a little twisting of the lion’s tall in his day, would have taken off his hat and struck palms with sturdy, boyish looking Capt. Karl von Muller of the Emden.

The story of her raiding the shipping of the allies reads so much like the stories Of the days when the free sea rovers attacked, rolled, scuttled and sank ships that the collector of data about the pirates would be tempted to give the gallant and legitimate little Emden a place in his gallery of buccaneers and when he came to the end of the Emden the temptation would be almost irresistible but that the Emden was a legitimate warship. The End of the Emden. ••The Emden, which had been completely lost sight of after her actioh vith the Russian cruiser Jemtcbug, arrived at Keeling, or Cocos islahd, and landed an armed party to destroy the wireless station,” the dispatches stated. “Here she was caught and forced to fight by the Australian cruiser Sydney, Capt. John Glossop. A sharp action took place, in which the Sydney suffered the loss of three men killed and 15 wounded. The Emden was driven ashore and burned. Her losses in personnel arjs reported as very heavy." Three officers and 40 men, had been landed, all fully armed and having four Maxim guns. The cable station was seized, the smashed, the operators were turned out and - guns wers -set over all the . buildings. The elec tricaWs tores were blown up. At this point the Emden sounded her

atren frantically to recall the men. tor die Australian cruiser Sydney was coming up. The Emden did not wait for the 40 men ashore, but put about and tried to escape—and right • there begins another chapter that is even more fascinating to the lover of adventure and stirring deeds than anything the • plucky little German cruiser had done. The story of the 4bSseh and two officers will live in sang and story wherever the Rhineland songs are sung or wherever brave men honor true courage and initiative in other brave men. The Emden sailed away to he driven ashore and destroyed. Burvivors Capture Schooner. ~ "And so the great naval duel paused from our sight.” wired an eye witness “and we could turn our attention to the portion of the German crew that had been left behind. These men had put off in their boats, obedient to the signal of the siren, but when their ship steamed off without them they could do nothing else but come ashore again. On . relanding they lined up on the shore of the lagoon, evidently determined to fight to a finish if the British cruiser sent a party ashore, but .at si* o'clock p, m. the German raiders embarked on the old schooner Ayessa, which belongs to Mr. Ross, the ‘uncrowned king’ of the islands. Seizing a quantity of clothing and stores, they sailed out and nothing has been seen or heard of them since." It was all as fine and colorful as in more reminiscent old days when men fought with smooth bore guns behind the walls of their bandbox ships, their bulwarks lashed to those of the enemy, and the personal dash and bravery of the men as they fought vrith cutlass and knife, breast to breast and face to face, decided the victory. One sees the big blond Germans, some of them probably nothing more than boys, but

everyone anxious to do and dare, watching silently and grimly as their ship sailed away from the tropipal island with its cocoanut trees and its hinterland of jungle, and then their hasty consultation with the three lone officers left to them. This group of coral islands in the Indian ocean furnished Charles Darwin with the typical example of an atoll or lagoon Island. A dense vegetation of ironwood and other trees and shrubs, together with forests of cocoanut palms decorates some of the islands. -

Facing Desperate Situation. As the lone little party of 40 stand starlhg out at sea and listening to the diminishing sound of the battle they look back at the employees of the cable station, the new British inhabitants, all of whom they have treated with' respect. Myriads of sea fowl, frigate birds, boobies and terns from the neighboring uninhabited islands wheel and scream challenges In the air. The afternoon wanes and there is no return of the Emden or the men of the Sydney. By now the little party begins to fear that the victory had f-.llen to the Australian ship with its longer range guns. They will be coming back —but the 49 men cannot fight the crew of a big cruiser. They must get away. But where? How? True seamen feel safest with the tossing deck under them—no matter what sort of a deck. At the shore, her keel hung heavy with tropical sea weed and her weather bleached rigging almost as white as dead men’s bones, was the crazy old schooner Ayessa, perhaps a relic of -the pearl fisheries, perhaps worn out in the cocoanut trade. With extreme politeness, doubtless, the young officers inquire and learn that she belongs to Mr. Ross, the “uncrowned king." "The Uncrowned King" of Cocoa. They have heard of Mr. Ross, aa what sailor man of these seas has not? He is a descendant of the Scotchman, J. Ross, who two or three years after Alexander Hare, the English adventurer, came in 1823, settled on the southern island. Ross had commanded a brig during the Engliah occupation of Java. He settled here with his family (who continued the occupation) on Direction island, and his little colony was soon strengthened by Hare’s runaway slaves. The Dutch government. had, in au informal way, claimed possession of the islands since 1829; but they refused to allow Ross to hoist the Dutch flag, and accordingly the group was taken uadar British protection in 1856. In 1878 it was attached to the. government of Ceylon, and In 1882 placed under the authority of the governor of the Straits settlements. The ownership and auperintendency continued In the Ross family, of whom George Clnniea Ross died In 1910, and was succeeded' ,by his son Sydney. So the old rattletrap schooner sleeping at the Jetty on the edfe of the coral lagoon belonged to him, and he was the “uncrowned king" and British, and so they seised a quantity of clothes and stores very necessary to them, aboard the old sea tab, and as the purple tropical sun sank into the sea beyond the far stretches of coral reefs and the Indian sea of starlit stretches of brilliant sky they sailed away into the magie

oriental sea. “and,” says tne narrator of November I*. “nothing has been Opportunity for Adventure. But could men with such an opportunity for adventure put it aside T Could the sons of the old sea kings of the Baltic, with a thousand yean of the legends of the Danxig, WoUhl. Grelswald and the stormy shores of Arcoata urging them on, he baffled simply because their shipmates had sailed away to their death, leaving them on a coral island to carry on the mission of the Emden? The soft sea air, the perfume of a thousand nameless flowers, the broken head of the old volcano Krakatoa towering through the night sky on North Keellag Island and defying both the earth and sea, could but lead them on- The romanticism of the Orient was in every wavelet against the sides of the old ship and in every whisper of the night winds blowing off the atollTerrific storms sometimes brqak over the islands and scourge these seas and the schooner might become their coffin, but they were sailors of the Fatherland, and “Deutschland ueber Alles!” Cocos island saw them no more. Burvivors Continue Raids. But December 16 came this telegram from Manila, Philippine Islands: “Forty men of the crew of the German cruiser Emden, who were left on Cocos island when the Australian cruiser Sydney discovered the Emden and chased and forced her to run ashore, some time ago, have captured a collier and have mounted two Maxim guns on her and are now raiding commerce in the Pacific, according to a report received here. The report came through officers of £he British steamer Malacca, which has arrived at Jolo. The men of the Emden had gone ashore on Cocos Island to dismantle the British wireless. When the Sydney put in an appearance they fled, but were unable to join their ship. The German party, which is commanded by Lieutenant von Muecke, left Cocos Island with a commandeered schooner and plenty of provisions and also their own armed launeh and two boats. Where they captured the collier is not Btated. The Malacca reports that she steamed to Jolo without showing lights at night.” Fresh Romance of the Bea. And notv comes, under date of Paris, December 18, the announcement that the British auxiliary cruiser Empress of Japan had captured the collier Exford having on board the three officers and 40 men of the Emden. Apparently all the Emden’s bravery did not go on the rocks at the behest of the Sydney guns. To be “raiding commerce in the Pacific” on a collier which they had captured, "armed with two Maxim guns" and the rifles ana pistols of the landing party, has a dash of something about it that makes one remember that the days of romance and adventure are not all over yet. The London Ti mes said when the Emden was destroyed: “We rejoice that the cruiser has been destroyed at last, but we salute Captain von Muller as a brave and chivalrous foe. We - trust his life has been saved, for if he came to London he would receive a generous welcome, bur maritime race knows how to admire a daring and resourceful seaman, and there are few episodes of modern naval history mors remarkable than the meteoric carwsr of the little Emden.”

The German Cruiser Emden.