THE GREATEST SEA RAIDER
The Cruise of the Raider 'Wolf.' By Roy Alexander. (Cape. 8s. 6d.)
THE ' Emden ' everyone has heard of ; her name has become a byword, and is even now upon the lips of our speechmakers. Yet far greater than the Emden's ' were the achievements of a converted German merchantman, the 'Wolf,' whose captain, Nerger, deserves to rank with Drake and Jean Bart and the great sea captains. Of all the German raiders the 'Wolf,' the last of them, remained at sea longest, cruised furthest, and scattered panic most widely. She operated off Australia and New Zealand, in waters where the presence of an enemy was considered unthinkable ; she captured fourteen ships, or five fewer than the 'Emden,' but her mines, laid off ports as widely separated as Aden, Capetown and Singapore, accounted for at least fourteen more. When she returned in February, 1918, having run the blockade both ways, she had cruised for fifteen months without ever entering a port, and had covered 64,000 miles, or more than three times the earth's circumference.
The success of this astonishing cruise was due mainly to the complete secrecy in which Nerger contrived to veil his movements. He sunk all his captures and stowed their crews in his hold ; he used an aeroplane to scout for him—in itself
a complete innovation at that date—and he anchored only off uninhabited islands to strip his victims of the fuel and food which enabled him to cruise for so long. The first authentic information of the raider's movements to reach the Admiralty came from a bottle message clandestinely dropped overboard by a prisoner, and picked up by a native in the Celebes.
The Cruise of the Raider Wolf' is literally an inside story, for Mr. Alexander, a wireless operator on the Auckland-San Francisco mail steamer, was captured off the Kermadecs, and spent the next nine months as a prisoner aboard the Wolf.: It is difficult to forget his description of the growing crowd of captives, who by the end of the voyage represented thirty different nationalities, neutrals included. Though these twit or three hundred men cooped up in the sweaty hold were On- stantly expecting death in many forms, not from the Germans, who treated them fairly enough, but from the gunfire of some pursuing cruiser, a premature mine explosion or, in the end, from scurvy, their morale held remarkably well. Only they could not even in those circumstances forget class dis- tinctions, and erected barriers of grocery boxes to divide themselves off from one another. The author seems to have found the Germans more congenial companions, and says of them : "It would have been hard to have found a finer crowd of men to live among."
The bare facts of the raider's voyage, with its extraordinary setting of desert islands, coral atolls, secret rendezvous, and hairbreadth escapes, make her story as exciting as any invention of Stevenson or Max Pemberton. Mr. Alexander sensibly lets the facts speak for themselves, and his simple, somewhat ingenuous style suits the narrative admirably. The ordinary reader, with no special interest in the sea, will find that the book carries him on breathlessly to its triumphant conclusion in Kiel Bay. There the Kaiser and the whole High Seas Fleet welcomed home the leaky little 'Wolf,' which for fifteen months had been the only surface ship to fly the German flag upon the outer oceans.
The book also contains much to interest the student of war. It is written by a seaman who knows what he is talking about, and has taken obvious care, for example, in the very valuable appendices, to have his facts accurate. It is, therefore, a most useful source for studying the impact of a genius at guerilla warfare upon our vulnerable trade routes. It is a revelation, too, of German thoroughness. Nothing was left to chance in preparing the 'Wolf.' Her complement of picked men pur- posely included an officer who had lived four years in England, and had been a member of various sports clubs. Even such a detail as placing hammock rails in the mine compart- ments ready for the accommodation of possible prisoners had not been overlooked. Captain Nerger and his crew certainly deserved their success, whose best memorial is this book. It is not only, as the author justly claims, "the story of one of the strangest and greatest sea adventures of modem times " ; it is a classic account of the sea raider at work. Let us hope that there will be no more ' Wolfs ' in the next war.
W. V. EMANUEL.
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