Читать книгу Five Months on a German Raider - Frederic George Trayes - Страница 10

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The Hitachi was now a German ship, the Prize Captain was in command, and German sailors replaced the Japanese, who had all been transferred to the Wolf. The German Captain spoke excellent English, and expressed a wish to do all he could to make us as comfortable on board as we had been before. He also told us to report at once to him if anything were missing from our cabins. (He informed us later that he had lived some years in Richmond—he evidently knew the neighbourhood quite well—and that he had been a member of the Richmond Tennis Club!) There was of course considerable confusion on board; the deck was in a state of dirt and chaos, littered with books and chairs, and some parts of it were an inch or two deep in water, and we found next morning that the bathrooms and lavatories were not in working order, as the pipes supplying these places had been shot away when the ship was shelled. This state of affairs prevailed for the next few days, and the men passengers themselves had to do what was necessary in these quarters and haul sea-water aboard. The next morning the transference of coal, cargo, and ship's stores from the Hitachi to the Wolf began, and went on without cessation day and night for the next five days. One of the German officers came over and took photos of the passengers in groups, and others frequently took snapshots of various incidents and of each other on different parts of the ship.

We know now that we were then anchored in a British possession, one of the southernmost groups of the Maldive Islands! Some of the islands were inhabited, and small sailing boats came out to the Wolf, presumably with provisions of some kind. We were, of course, not allowed to speak to any of the islanders, who came alongside the Wolf, and were not allowed alongside the Hitachi. On one occasion even, the doctor of the Wolf went in the ship's motor launch to one of the islands to attend the wife of one of the native chiefs! On the next day—the 28th—all the Hitachi passengers returned on board her, and at the same time some of the Japanese stewards returned, but they showed no inclination to work as formerly. Indeed, the German officers had no little difficulty in dealing with them. They naturally felt very sore at the deaths of so many of their countrymen at the hands of the Germans, and they did as little work as possible. The stewards were said to be now paid by the Germans, but as they were no longer under the command of their own countrymen, they certainly did not put themselves out to please their new masters.

With their usual thoroughness, the Germans one day examined all our passports and took notes of our names, ages, professions, maiden names of married ladies, addresses, and various other details. My passport described me as "Principal of Training College for Teachers." So I was forthwith dubbed "Professor" by the Germans, and from this time henceforth my wife and I were called Frau Professor and Herr Professor, and this certainly led the sailors to treat us with more respect than they might otherwise have done. One young man, who had on his passport his photo taken in military uniform, was, however, detained on the Wolf as a military prisoner. He was asked by a German officer if he were going home to fight. He replied that he certainly was, and pluckily added, "I wish I were fighting now."

On October 1st the married prisoners from the Wolf, together with three Australian civilian prisoners over military age, a Colonel of the Australian A.M.C., a Major of the same corps, and his wife, with an Australian stewardess, some young boys, and a few old sea captains and mates, were sent on board the Hitachi. They had all been taken off earlier prizes captured and sunk by the Wolf. The Australians had been captured on August 6th from the s.s. Matunga from Sydney to what was formerly German New Guinea, from which latter place they had been only a few hours distant. An American captain, with his wife and little girl, had been captured on the barque Beluga, from San Francisco to Newcastle, N.S.W., on July 9th. All the passengers transferred were given cabins on board the Hitachi. We learnt from these passengers that the Wolf was primarily a mine-layer, and that she had laid mines at Cape Town, Bombay, Colombo, and off the Australian and New Zealand coasts. She had sown her last crop of mines, 110 in number, off the approaches to Singapore before she proceeded to the Indian Ocean to lie in wait for the Hitachi. Altogether she had sown five hundred mines.

During her stay in the Maldives the Wolf sent up her seaplane—or, as the Germans said, "the bird"—every morning about six, and she returned about eight. To all appearances the coast was clear, and the Wolf consequently anticipated no interference or unwelcome attention from any of our cruisers. Two of them, the Venus and the Doris, we had seen at anchor in Colombo harbour during our stay there, but it was apparently thought not worth while to send any escort with the Hitachi, though the value of her cargo was said to run into millions sterling; and evidently the convoy system had not yet been adopted in Eastern waters. A Japanese cruiser was also in Colombo harbour when we arrived there, preceded by mine-sweepers, on September 24th. The Hitachi Captain and senior officers visited her before she sailed away on the 25th. The Germans on the Wolf told us that they heard her wireless call when later on she struck one of their mines off Singapore, but the Japanese authorities have since denied that one of their cruisers struck a mine there.

The Wolf remained alongside us till the morning of October 3rd, when she sailed away at daybreak, leaving us anchored in the centre of the atoll. It was a great relief to us when she departed; she kept all the breeze off our side of the ship, so that the heat in our cabin was stifling, and it was in addition very dark; the noise of coaling and shifting cargo was incessant, and the roaring of the water between the two ships most disturbing. Before she sailed away the Prize Captain handed to my wife most of her jewels which had been recovered from the bottom of our lifeboat. As many of these were Siamese jewellery and unobtainable now, we were very rejoiced to obtain possession of them again, but many rings were missing and were never recovered.

The falls of the lifeboats were all renewed, and on October 5th we had places assigned to us in the lifeboats, and rules and regulations were drawn up for the "detained enemy subjects" on board the Hitachi. They were as follows:—