The Last Corsair

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 in

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 A