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The Last Corsair: The Story of the Emden

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If you're like me, you're constantly irked by your inability to remember which German cruiser or pocket battleship served in what war, and what their assorted deeds and fates were. I mean, I'm often trying to recall if it was the "Graf Spee" that was sunk on the River Plate or the "Gneisenau" that got blown up in a Norwegian fjord. With that in mind, I decided to pick up this volume so I could at least figure out what the "Emden" got up to in WWI.

This light cruiser, launched in 1908 and the last ship of the Imperial Navy to be outfitted with a piston engine, was stationed in Germany's overseas base of Tsingtao in China when the war broke out. Her captain, Karl von Muller, requested that he be detached from Spee's cruiser squadron so he could undertake independent action in the Indian Ocean, which permission was granted. Soon after, the "Emden" commenced the series of raids on merchant vessels, shore installations, and harborbound warships that would make her and her crew famous. Though she was inferior in practically every respect to the ships of the opposing British and Japanese navies and was seriously hampered by her dependence on coal (necessitating that she sail with one or two companion colliers at all times, since there were no German bases at which to restock), in these pre-radar days it was comparatively easy for one small ship to undertake hit and run attacks and then disappear over the horizon. Thus, through expertly calculated risks, the "Emden" was able to elude all pursuit for weeks on end, although it was virtually inevitable that she would eventually be cornered.

The author provides considerable detail on her pre-war missions and recounts all of the strikes she made against merchant shipping and the disposition that was made of captured crews. He also gives such background on the principal figures as could be dug up, although Muller remains a frustrating cipher.

A large portion of the book consists of the rather incredible exploits of a landing party from the "Emden" that escaped her destruction, having been ashore nearby at that time, and their efforts to cross the Indian Ocean and then the Arabian Peninsula to reach sanctuary in allied Turkey. There's also a chapter on the amiable blowhard Julius Lauterbach, a captain from the Hamburg-America Line and navy reservist who joined the "Emden" in time for her fabled exploits, and who after his capture by the British engineered a daring escape from Singapore (by fomenting a mutiny amongst colonial troops) and opted to return home to Germany by crossing the Pacific, the U.S. (still neutral at the time), and the Atlantic, using a variety of disguises, aliases, forged passports, assistance from former merchant crewmembers, and the help of various lady friends.

This account is well researched and briskly written, and the concluding chapters that relate what happened to the major players in the remainder of the war and thereafter are quite valuable. The sole map, however, is highly indifferent, and the selection of photos is very sparse. Those shortcomings aside, this is a very readable tale of one ship's brief but shining career on the high seas when it was yet possible to fight the enemy in a gentlemanly and civil fashion.

The book follows the adventurous and successful exploits of the last practitioner of 'cruiser warfare', Imperial Germany's SMS Emden. The intrepid German light cruiser boldly sallied out of her Tsingtao, China port at the beginning of World War I and single-handedly conducted a strikingly effective and highly spirited anti-shipping campaign in the Indian Ocean. While being pursued by countless enemy warships, the plucky Emden managed to capture and/or destroy 16+ merchant and warships. During her spectacular, though short-lived, three-month career, she scored painful material losses and prestige points on British forces in the Indian Ocean region. But she also won a rare German propaganda success by adhering to traditional, Napoleonic-era 'prize rules', earning the admiration of neutral nations and even enemy sailors.

But the ship's success record is only half the story. The officers and men of the Emden proved what a few determined men can do in the face of the most daunting odds. The ship's landing party, led by the ship's intrepid executive officer von Mucke, found itself stranded on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles away from the nearest 'friendly' Turkish territory in the Arabian Peninsula. Incredibly, with the ships of the British and Australian navies soon to be in hot pursuit, the landing party commandeered a wind-powered schooner to make their getaway. With the aid of some of their countrymen, the landing party transfered to an unseaworthy merchant vessel to reach the scorching sands of Arabia. But in this supposedly 'friendly' territory they fought off hordes of Arab bandits and several dangerously conniving Turkish officials on their way to the nearest railhead a thousand miles away. After an epic journey, the survivors were feted in grand style in Constantinople.

The writer, Dan Van Der Vat, is a journalist by trade, and his prose is always direct, engaging, and immensely enjoyable. This is a remarkable modern tale of bravery and chivalry set in 1914, even more suprising as its protagonists are the oft-derided, supposedly unscrupulous, Germans. The narrative is well complemented with a set of some elegant photos - though more photos of the personalities involved would have been nice. This book is an outstanding narrative unit history of one of WWI's most famous and successful ships. I highly recommend this book.

The Last Corsair is a solid account of the raiding cruise of the German light cruiser Emden in the first three months of the First World. Alone and outnumbered, this lone German cruiser conducted a bold hit and run campaign against Allied ships in the Indian Ocean under the undaunted leadership of its taciturn captain, Karl von Müller. However after sinking sixteen merchantmen, a Russian light cruiser, a French destroyer and bombarding the oil storage tanks at Madras, the Emden's luck ran out on 9 November 1914 when it was caught and destroyed by the Australian cruiser Sydney.

Dan Van Der Vat's account makes ample use of primary sources but it is very readable, and both general readers and historians will find it useful, if not definitive. The book briefly covers Emden's pre-war career in the German East Asia squadron, then spends about one-third of the text covering the period September-October 1914 when Emden was most active in raiding and concludes with her destruction. A second part of the book, some seventy pages in length, covers the remarkable escape of the Emden's landing party and some other individuals back to Germany. Even those readers familiar with the Emden's cruise will be interested in the details of those sailors who refused to surrender and made it back, as well as the treatment of those who were captured.

In dubbing Müller the "last corsair," the author paints a romantic picture of the German captain as a gentleman-warrior who (mostly) fought by the rules in an independent style of combat that was fast disappearing. Most of this romanticizing about Müller and the Emden was based upon wartime recollections of liberated British sailors who rarely, if ever, met Müller. My impression was that Müller a talented skipper, but also a remote, cold fish who fought by the rules and who was fortunate enough not to command as the war became less "noble." Furthermore, the author's conclusion that the "Emden [had] the distinction of being the most successful undisguised commerce-raiding surface warship, or cruiser, of modern times," is a bit much. The German pocket battleship Scheer conducted a five-month cruise in 1940-1941 that bagged 16 ships of 99,000 tons and made it back to Germany, unlike Emden.

One interesting aspect of the book is the author's discussion of how Germany's pre-war naval doctrine served to doom the Asiatic Squadron. German naval focus was on short-distance missions in the North Sea and cruisers were designed as short-range units to support the battleship fleet. Since German cruisers were designed to shield their own battle-line from enemy light units, they relied on firepower from the German battleships and lacked heavy armament of their own. The Asiatic Squadron in China was the only overseas-based unit of the German Navy in 1914 and its warships were totally unsuited for independent warfare. Every Allied cruiser was faster and more heavily armed than Emden. Nevertheless, the superior Allied forces in Asia were spread out conducting many missions in the first few months of the war and little effort was made to catch Emden. This changed when Emden began a series of brazen attacks off India's coast.

This account is highly readable and offers interesting details of the Emden saga. However, the author spends little effort to put this cruise into historical perspective in relation to other German raiders and tends to assign a romantic interpretation to what was in fact, part of Germany's cold-blooded attempt at European domination in 1914.

I got hooked into reading the true naval stories about the WWI German Naval raiders through the exploits of Count Luckner: Count Luckner: The Sea Devil by Lowell Thomas, and Count von Luckner;: Knight of the sea, by Edwin Palmer Hoyt. The sea- tales of these chivalrous latter day privateers are fascinating, and you can root for the "underdog" with a clear conscience as most of these captains followed the rules of naval warfare scrupulously and with the sort of chivalry not seen since.

If you haven't read about Count Luckner, now is the time, you won't be disappointed.

This is the story of the light Cruiser Emden, of the WWI Imperial German Navy and the exploits of it's "landing party". The Emden was a slim and beautiful ship, and thus it's nickname "Swan of the East". For over three months, the SMS Emden avoided scads of Allied warships, and sank over 15 ships, including other warships.

The Emden was commanded by Korvettenkapitän (Lieutenant Commander) Karl von Müller, who was renowned- even by the allies- for his chivalry, daring and adherence to the rules of warfare. For this he was awarded the Pour le Mérite, aka "the Blue Max".

This book also goes into great details about the "Away Team"....err make that the "Landing Party" of the Emden, which got left ashore during the Light Cruiser's final battle. They sailed a small craft across the wide Indian Ocean to Arabia, then made their way by boat and camel, fighting bandits and sandstorms, all the way back to Constantinople.

One warning: this book has two titles- "The Last Corsair: The Story of the Emden" & also "Gentlemen of War: The Amazing Story of Commander Karl Von Muller and the S M S Emden". More or less the same book in two editions. Don't buy both, like I did!

Further reading on this subject:

Hoyt, Edwin P Elusive Seagull

Lochner, R. K. Last Gentleman-Of-War: Raider Exploits of the Cruiser Emden

The Germans who never lost;: The story of the Konigsberg, by Edwin Palmer Hoyt

Walter, John The Kaiser's Pirates: German Surface Raiders in World War

This well researched, well thought out, easy reading book was a pleasure to read. While not as clever, visceral or detailed as say Jim Hornfischer or Angus Konstam, one must remember the era in which the version I read was published was not rich with veteran's accounts, and most of the Emden's sailors had by then already gone on permanent patrol.

This book presents not only the research of multiple other books, but archived interviews of the men behind the story, as well as writings from both British and German naval archives in an easily digestible format. Unlike some books on the topic which even for the grognard require a google search ever other sentence to clarify, van der Vat's volume reads lightly and easily, often drawing a chuckle.

You are transported 100 years back in time to an era when radar did not exist, with aircraft and radio not yet practical to use in combat. This was a time when a single, well handled ship with a few puny guns could sink dozens of freighters, blow up multiple port installations, sowing panick all the while evading nearly 80 enemy vessels pursuing her and pretty much shutting down trade in an entire ocean for months on end, well after her sinking. Due to the advances in technology, this was the last time in naval warfare that a warship could approach other, less powerful ships and simply capture them by firing a shot across the bows.

Interestingly, the author also brings about new research. Many of the wartime stories now make more sense when the reader takes into account use of british Ultra crack the German code thanks to an enigma machine whose public awareness began sometime in the 1970's. The author mentions this fact as an analogy to the First World War because then too did the Russians gain posession of a German code book and share it with the British, thus allowing the allies pretty much unfettered knowledge of Axis movements during the first conflict as well. I thought I should mention that this did not affect our Corsair's cruise because she observed strict radio silence and was operating completely on her own due to the very romantic, bygone reasons of the previous paragraph.

Despite the Emden's exploits, I found the most interesting part of the book to be not of its time on the high seas, but how its survivors managed to escape back to Germany. There was a landing party that was left behind by accident as the Emden had to rush off to her last combat against the HMAS Syndey. This group managed to escape the island they had occupied by commandeering a sailboat, then slipping into a decrepit German steamer to make it across the Indian ocean, taking advantage and trying to violate all kinds of neutrality laws. Their biggest trial occurred in the Arabian peninsula, and it becomes clear that the Germans' greatest enemy was not the British, but the opportunistic Arabs who would have slit their throats just for the weapons and ammunition they had on their bodies.

This book is worth a good read. It won't keep you busy for very long, thankfully, as most Naval and History buffs will have way too many painstakingly detailed tomes that take months to decode. This will give you a nice read for a long bus ride or two, teach you something new, and make you smile.