- Author
- A.N. Other
- Subjects
- Ship histories and stories, History - WW1
- Tags
-
- RAN Ships
- HMAS Sydney I
- Publication
- March 2020 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
By A. C. B. Mercer
Stranded on Direction Island, in the Cocos Keeling Group, 50 German sailors and their commander from the cruiser Emden, which had been engaged by HMAS Sydney in 1914, commandeered the schooner Ayesha to make their getaway. The story of their uncomfortable voyage is told in this article.
We have previously written much on the Sydney/Emden battle but not solely on the role played by Ayesha. This article previously appeared fifty years ago in Sea Breezes, dated June 1969, and is reproduced by the kind permission of the editor of that magazine.
On 9 November 1914, just before sunset, a tiny but quite remarkable flotilla threaded its way out of the coral-reef harbour of Direction Island, most northerly of the Cocos Keeling Islands. First came a naval steam-launch, smoke puffing from her shining brass funnel. Behind her, at the end of a tow-rope, rising and falling gracefully in the swell, came a white three-masted schooner, with two white naval cutters in tow. At the masthead of the schooner fluttered the German ensign.
Darkness had fallen before the little convoy had cleared the hidden reefs and was standing out to sea, rolling and swaying on the black waters of the Indian Ocean. At a safe distance from the surf-ringed shore, the crew of the steam-launch was taken off, and the vessel lurched into the night, to be lost forever, while the schooner, taking the wind into her sails, began to move slowly northwards.
Ayesha was a three-masted schooner, and had been engaged in the copra trade in her palmy days, but with the coming of steam her usefulness had declined, and for most of the time she lay idle in the harbour. She was 90 feet in length with a beam of 25 feet and a displacement of 97 tons, and while her foremast had two square sails, the main and mizzen carried fore-and-aft sails. At this time her hold contained only iron ballast.
Originally intended to carry a crew of five or six, she had now to accommodate 50 German sailors, including their commander, Lieutenant Hellmuth von Mücke, a strict disciplinarian, regarded by his men as a martinet and, in their elegant phrase, ‘a bloody Prussian’.
Less than nine hours before, von Mücke and his men had landed from the famous light-cruiser Emden to destroy the cable and wireless station on Direction Island. They had anticipated possible resistance, and were equipped with rifles, pistols, sidearms and the Emden’s four machine-guns.
No opposition was encountered however and after some relatively friendly discussion with the English staff, the Germans proceeded to smash all means of communication with the outside world. The wireless mast was cut down and two of the three cables cut.
Yet, though taken by surprise, the staff had managed to send two signals just before the Germans entered the offices. These were picked up by an Australian troop convoy some 55 miles away, and within minutes the cruiser HMAS Sydney had been detached, and began ploughing her way to Direction Island at 28 knots.
It was the turn of the Germans to be surprised. While they were searching for the third cable, the Emden’s siren blared across the water. It was the signal for ‘Return at once’. Within a few minutes the landing party assembled on the little jetty, and very soon the steam-launch was on her way to the cruiser, with the longboats in tow. Suddenly Emden began to weigh anchor, and almost immediately began to steam towards the open sea. This – to von Mücke – surprising action was explained when the cruiser unfurled her battle-flags and opened fire on some enemy not visible to the Lieutenant. Sydney had arrived.
Five great spouts of water rose into the air near Emden as she drew away at high speed, firing furiously. The launch and her tows could do no other than return to the island, and it was from a roof-top that von Mücke saw Emden, her forward funnel lying across the deck, her foremast gone, and shrouded in steam and smoke, vanish from sight. He was never to see her again, for she was driven ashore, a helpless wreck, on a coral reef two hours later.
Nothing daunted, von Mücke now decided to escape in the white schooner he had noted, and actually had intended to destroy, when he first landed in the harbour. Within a few hours the Germans had provisioned Ayesha and made her ready for sea, and at sundown, as we have seen, the little flotilla stood out to sea.
The station staff sent them on their way with three hearty, if somewhat hypocritical, cheers to which the Germans responded with three ‘Hochs’. Almost at once the sun sank below the horizon, and ships and island were lost in the black tropical night. Ayesha had begun her odyssey.
Conditions on board were at first distinctly unpleasant. Six of the crew were allotted sleeping quarters in the foc’sle, but the rest had to sleep on sheets stretched across the iron ballast in the hold. Petty officers occupied a cabin in the after part of the ship, and von Mücke and his two lieutenants shared a deck-cabin of Lilliputian proportions.
Leaks and drinking water were major problems, as the water they had taken from Direction Island was found unfit for drinking. The staple diet, also taken from the island, consisted of rice, fruit, smoked sausage and corned beef, fragments of which were consumed by enormous cockroaches. The sails were found to be rotting, as were the ship’s timbers. A whole plank, just above the water line under the stern, was broken off by one of the two longboats (which were still in tow) rising on a wave, and it was uncertain how much strain the mast could take.
Leaks in the ship’s bottom were so bad that the water rose almost above the iron ballast the men slept on, and the pump was found to be useless. The packing had gone, and the whole thing had to be taken to pieces and the original leather replaced with cloth soaked in oil. The improvised pump however worked, and finally the water was got under control. The galley, designed to cook for a crew of five, was supplemented with a primitive stove arrangement fixed on the ballast, over which the men held pots and pans on rods.
Aided by a following wind and a heavy swell astern Ayesha ploughed on northwards, her timbers, yards and masts with their patched-up sails all creaking and groaning. During the third night out, during a particularly bad spell of pitching and tossing, the remaining longboat departed, taking with her a large piece of rotten bulwark.
Naval discipline was maintained as far as possible. The ratings were awakened promptly at 6 a.m., and were set to cleaning the vessel’s decks, repairing, cooking, and doing all the odd jobs which were necessary. Breakfast followed, and the men spent the rest of the day in playing games, fishing, sleeping, smoking, and being instructed in the use of the compass and in handling the rigging. (According to von Mücke, no fish were ever caught, probably owing to the fact that the only bait available was rice.).
On 13 November the weather changed, and Ayesha found herself plunging through tropical thunderstorms of great violence, and ‘rolled to larboard, rolled to starboard’ in gales of almost cyclonic force. The first storm struck suddenly, and the crew, dazzled by vivid lightning and hampered by the ship’s heavy rolling, found it next to impossible to shorten sail in time to stop the patched-up sails from being blown away. As the centre of the storm was reached, the wind dropped as quickly as it had blown up, the air became charged with electricity, and St. Elmo’s Fire flickered and burned at each masthead. Such storms were followed by periods of dead calm, when the sails flapped idly, and Ayesha, rolling heavily, drifted along her path.
Von Mücke had only three practical courses open to him if he were to avoid capture – a port in the Dutch East Indies, Batavia or Padang, or German East Africa, where a German force was fighting several groups of British, Belgian and Portuguese troops. He decided to run for Padang, in Sumatra, about 700 miles away. The seas around Cocos Keeling were alive with Allied warships which had been searching for Emden, and he thought Padang offered the best chance of escape.
On the 14th smoke was seen on the horizon, but after a period of some anxiety, the unseen faded into the unknown. Ayesha was now in the monsoon area, where the elements meet in titanic conflict, with the winds changing every few minutes, and producing situations in which skillful seamanship was necessary. ‘A violent gust of wind from the north-west swept down on the ship from forward at the same moment as one from the south approached aft. We were therefore obliged to tack by close-hauling the foresail, while at the same time, the mainsail had to be set for the wind from astern.
During this time, we were deluged with hot-and-cold showers which could not have been bettered in a modern sanatorium. The gusts from the north-west brought torrents of ice-cold rain, whilst the one from the south showered us with water comparatively hot’.
One benefit derived from these rainstorms was that they solved the fresh water problem. With the aid of petrol cans, various utensils, and the ship’s two jolly-boats, water for both drinking and washing became available in reasonable quantity for all.
At 10 a.m. on the morning of 23 November the look-out shouted ‘Land in sight ahead’. With the limited means of navigation at his disposal – a compass, an old map of the eastern Indian Ocean, and an ancient handbook – von Mücke was unable to determine what land it was, but putting all the information from these sources together, discovered by late afternoon that Ayesha was lying just outside the Seaflower Channel, 80 miles from Padang. Von Mücke had decided that should an Allied torpedo-boat or destroyer show up, he would make a fight for it. Accordingly, arms were distributed to the crew, and the four machine-guns set up on deck. He would attempt, by means of an apparently clumsy manoeuvre, to draw alongside such an enemy, and board her.
After a gale which sprang up during the night, the morning dawned on a complete calm. The jolly boats were brought into service, and very slowly Ayesha was towed towards the harbour of Padang. After some shadowing by a Dutch destroyer, the appearance of a Malay pilot, and the overcoming of difficulties raised by the Dutch harbour authorities, Ayesha entered the shelter of Padang. She was visited by boats from several German and Austrian liners lying at anchor, and the crew showered with cigars, tobacco, books, newspapers, and clothing.
Some essential supplies ordered through the German Consul were only delivered in part, and as the Dutch officials were still obstructive, Ayesha slipped out of Padang that evening. From her receding deck there floated across the waters the strains of The Watch on the Rhine.
Having dodged two warships, Ayesha loitered in and out of Dutch territorial waters for three weeks, awaiting the coming of one of the German liners from Padang. No definite arrangements had been possible, but von Mücke expected that one of them would make a bid to help him, and at last, on 14 December, the Norddeutscher Lloyd steamer Choising loomed up out of a grey fog bank.
For two days bad weather delayed the transfer of Ayesha’s crew to Choising, but at last von Mücke and his men, their voyage in the schooner over, watched the scuttled Ayesha sink slowly into the depths. Her bows rose, then plunged downwards, and as the iron ballast rolled forward, she sank, as von Mücke relates, ‘like a stone’.
She had carried the Germans 1,709 nautical miles, and for three months had been their floating home, and the three cheers which followed her sinking were both heartfelt and sincere. The subsequent adventures of the 52 Germans (two reservists had joined up at Padang) are of considerable interest, but for lack of space, can only be sketched briefly here.
They landed near Hodeida, in southern Arabia (Yemen) and assisted by friendly Arabs and Turks, made a fighting march through Arabia losing 10 men on the way, to El Ala on the Hedjaz Railway. Entraining at this point, they finally arrived in Constantinople on Whitsunday 1915, and spick and span in new uniforms, were welcomed by Admiral Souchon, former commander of the German Mediterranean Squadron, and now C. in C. of the Turko-German fleet.
So ended the odyssey of von Mücke and his men, their 5,000-mile adventure neatly rounded off with good fortune almost as in a novel; and if von Mücke, as he lowered his sword before the admiral on that sunny Whitsunday, felt a glow of pride, we may agree that it was justified.
The Ayesha was a topsail schooner once owned by the Clunies – Ross family of the Cocos – Keeling Islands.