Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
MLMSS 3052/Item 6

R. T. Vowles diary of the capture of the Emden, November 1914

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The Capture of the Emden
Copyrighted

9th November 1914.
On the evening of the Sunday 8th November 1914 the inhabitants of the little cable settlement on Cocoa Island in the Indian ocean were visited by a strange warship. She was a four funnelled cruiser corresponding somewhat to the British Town or Yarmouth. She did not come to shore but steamed away at night time. Next morning just before sunrise the same cruiser was seen approaching the island again. She was clearly intending to send a boat ashore; but this time as she approached the beach her aftmost funnel was seen to wobble & then come down on the deck. It is not known whether this was an accident or not but the people at the wireless station had just time to send one message broadcast over the Indian Ocean when three boats put off from the cruiser & a strong landing party arrived at the island

(Actual message sent out:- CQ de VPK – SOS.SOS.SOS. STRANGE WARSHIP IN ENTRANCE – SOS. VPK) They were Germans. The strange warship had refused to answer the wireless calls sent out to her from Cocos Island & began to make signals to some other unknown ship nearby, When Cocos sent out its warning call, the stranger tried to drown it by loud wireless calls. That warning however was picked up by H.M.S. Sydney about 60 miles a way. The Sydney turned & made straight for Cocos. Her speed averaged 20 knots. At (9.15 am land was seen ahead about 17 miles away. Almost immediately to the right & behind it was seen the smoke of a steamer. The Sydney was now covering 1 mile every two minutes, & the masts 7 funnels of the other ship came quickly into sight. The stranger got underway & began to move out at a rapidly increasing pace to the northwards.

The officers were practically certain that the stranger was the cruiser that had already sunk 20 British merchantmen 7 done 2 ½ million pounds worth of damage, - THE EMDEN. She looked a very pretty little ship as she came out. The Germans ashore who had not time to get back to their ship could not refrain from gathering to watch her. The british residents collected on the roof of the cable station, the largest building on the main island & they & the Germans watched as if from a galley one of the prettiest little naval actions fought. As the Emden had 10:4 inch guns & the Sydney 8:6 inch guns, it was the Emden’s game to close & use her guns at that short range at which they were most effective. This she tried to do again & again but the Sydney would never let her do it. The Sydney’s engines were in perfect condition. & during the fight when speed was called for sheet at time averaged over 30 knots.

The Emden was never a match for her in this respect, even before the event took place, which placed her at the Sydney’s mercy. As the Emden came out, the distance rapidly decreased & the range was rapidly reached at which the Sydney expected the battle to begin. She swung round on a parallel course & the order to fire had actually been given 9.40 am when the Emden surprised everyone by firing the first shot. It went whistling overhead exactly where the first broadside should go & is described as a piece of perfect shooting. The Sydney’s first broadside (or salvo) also went well over the Emden. The Sydney’s second salvo was a trifle irregular & fell short. Her third salvo clearly hit the Emden although the effect of her bursting shells could not be seen. The Emden’s shooting at the start was extraordinarily rapid & good. Her little 4 inch guns were being fired at an extreme range, so great indeed that their elevation was as high as 30 degrees. The result was that the time her shells reached the Sydney they were falling at a very heavy angle which is made clear that the shot holes in the Sydney can be traced in almost every case to pass from an entry high up on the port side to an exit much lower on the starboard side. The Sydney’s shots on the other hand pierced the Emden almost horizontally. The Emden’s fore was so rapid that at times she had three salvos in the air at once on their way towards the Sydney

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The water around the Sydney was lashed to fury as with a flail, the spray being driven all over her and for the first ten minutes or so the hits were fairly frequent. It was in her fourth salvo (in her case it means a discharge of five guns at once) which did the first damage to the Sydney. A shell entered a position containing an officer & several men. It almost brushed the arm of one man, scored a deep groove along the whole of one wall & passed through, to fall harmlessly off the deck below. Nobody was hit but the structure was shaken to such an extent that all were thrown down They were just clambering up on their hands & knees when the second shell coming from precisely the same direction burst beneath the floor. Every man in the structure was wounded. By this time the Sydney’s shells were undoubtedly hitting the Emden; The bursting of a shell however can only be told when something falls.The first sign that those on board the Sydney saw of their own fireon the Emden was when the Emden’s foremost funnel fell overboard. Shortly afterwards the Emden’s foremast lurched over the side of the ship. Part of it remained there sticking out like a boom.: the rest of it went into the sea. The Emden had her main fire control positions on a platform high up on this mast & and the men in it were all thrown into the sea. It was just after this – about a quarter of an hour after the first shot was fired that a salvo from the Sydney entered the Emden’s stern & burst below her after deck. The effect of this shot was astonishing. The deck itself which was steel, covered with corticene, was lifted, torn from its beams, & left with a surface of the sea waves. It was rent and riddled with holes. The after guns were immediately put out of action.Seven men, probably the greater part of one gun crew were blown alive overboard into the sea, where they swam about with no wreckage to help them & most of them wounded until the Sydney came across five of them, about eight hours afterward & picked them out of the water still alive. The same salvo set the Emden furiously on fire aft, a fire which could not & would not be put out, & most serious of all it completely destroyed her steering geer. Those on the Sydney saw the effects of this fire first when they noticed the smoke pouring out of the Emden’s after deck. The very paint on the ship’s side was furiously burning. It was noticed from time to time that the Emdem’s speed was much decreased but it was not known till after the fight that the Emden’s steering gear was destroyed. The cause of the decrease of speed from this time to the end was owing to the Emden steering by her screws which meant an enormous loss of speed. This part of the action was all the spectators on Cocos saw. During these fifteen minutes all the British casualties occurred, whilst the battle was more or less even but the moment the German landing party saw the Emden’s funnel fall they ordered the inhabitants into a room from where they could not see the result of the fight. The behaviour of the landing party is said to have been , but from this time onwards they were occupied in very important business. They realised which way the fight was proceeding & occupied themselves in seizing every useful article they could find on the island, loading it into a schooner lying in the port. They desired no interference during these operations. Before her steering gear was destroyed, the Emden had ported her helm and made a rush at the Sydney, but the Sydneu eluded it, slipping far ahead and & keeping at her favourite range. The Emden now doubled back in an endeavour to close but the Sydney simple doubled & steamed parallel to her. The Emden was still firing rapidly but from this time onwards the Sydney was practically unhurt by any of her shots. Two telling shots had been fired from the Emden previously. The first of these was a lyddite or high

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explosive which passed the funnels and exploded not far from the Sydney’s second starboard gun, that is a gun on the unengaged side of the ship. The high explosive set fire to some paint & some cordite ready for loading. Some
of the gun’s crew picked up this cordite & dumped it overboard, burning themselves in doing so, but saving the ship from fire. They had just finished when a second shell, said to be shrapnel exploded behind them. Almost every portion of the gun bore some mark of the fragments of the explosion but curiously enough the gun itself was absolutely uninjured. Of the gun’s crew
however only two escaped, two being killed and the rest injured. The second hit was from a shell which passed over the shoulder of the gunnery lieutenant in another fire control position, & struck & struck a youngster who was sitting at a range finder behind him, stunning him, taking one leg off at the thigh & killing him instantly. A fourth shot tore a great hole in the forecastle deck & left its traces all over the flay below, tearing the men’s kitbags to shreds, destroying tables & chairs but doing little other damage. This was the last damage the Emden did. Her failure to hit after the first quarter of an hour must have been due in the first place to the mental suffering her crew had been undergoing the awful hail of shells that now began to fall upon them, but from this time also, one by one her guns began to disappear. Smoke was pouring from every part except the forecastle, & finally as she doubled again she was hidden from the Sydney by a cloud of smoke & seized firing altogether. The Sydney’s men thought that she had sunk or surrendered but in the midst of their cheering she emerged she emerged and began firing again. Gun after gun on the Emden ceased firing & time after time bodies were seen floating about in the water. An explosion had made havoc of the deck just aft of the bridge; the second funnel hung over the side as though draped from the gunwale, the inner case lolling out of its mouth into the water. The last & only funnel subsided & lay across the second one, the smoke from all three pouring along the deck. From the bridge aft she seemed one continuous fire. At last only one little gun was left, a gun forward on the port side, which spat viciously & occasionally with long intervals between shots. The Emden was so crumpled that it was impossible to get ammunition up through the hoists so that ,each time this gun fired, it merely showed that some instalment of ammunition had arrived by hand. At a certain stage in the fight there had appeared a merchantman. This ship appeared anxious to join in the fight so suspecting that she may be a merchant cruiser, the Sydney kept a few gun’s trained on her but did not fire. The ship turned out to be a collier summoned by the Emden to meet her there. She seemed to come up with the intention of helping the Emden & at one time it is stated she intended ramming the Sydney. The idea was a very gallant one but absolutely hopeless as the Sydney’s engines were capable of any speed called for, whereas the collier could only do 10 knots. When the result of the action became obvious the collier made off. With every portion of her on fire except the forecastle, with her stern actually red hot & the smoke pouring out of three holes in the deck where the funnels used to be the Emden was turned towards North Keeling Island to prevent her sinking. The German colours – a white ensign with a big black cross – was still flying from the mainmast, those on the foremast having been shot away. Almost to the end this solitary gun barked at intervals. Then the Emden ran high up on the corals – her nose high out of the water. A short stretch of seething surf alone separated her from the shore.

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The Sydney gave her two more broadsides as she passed her stern & then stood off at once to hunt down the collier. It was just 11.20 am & took fifty minutes to overhaul the collier. A gun was fire across her bows & she stopped. She turned out to be a British collier -The Buresk - captured & manned chiefly with Chinese. A German prize crew of 16 was found on her. A party from the Sydney which boarded her found her already sinking. The valves in the ship’s bottom had been opened & destroyed so as to prevent checking the inrush of water. This was a pity as with the extra ship a great deal more comfort could be given to the Emden’s wounded. As it was it took till 4 pm to transfer the collier’s crew to the Sydney who, on leaving, fired several shots into the collier to make certain of her fate. The Sydney then returned to the Emden. Although high and dry her colours were still flying. For twenty minutes the Sydney steamed up and down past her stern signalling to her to surrender but the Emden neither hoisted a white flag nor hauled her ensign down. Accordingly two more broadsides were fired into her already shapeless mass. Then at last a white flag slowly appeared and the ensign was lowered. It was now towards evening & the tropical night falls quickly & the Sydney had not been able to visit the Wireless Station on direction Island, 15 miles to the south so she immediately left for there. A boat was sent off to the Emden, manned by the German crew taken off the collier with a message that the Sydney would return & assist them in the morning. As a matter of fact it was even then too late to prevent the escape of the landing party from the settlement. Between North Keeling and Cocos a man was found swimming in the water. It was necessary to rescue him & the result was that by the time the Sydney had reached the Homestead it was night time & would have been dangerous to land. It was not known but that some other cruiser of the enemy might turn up & the Sydney had no desire to be caught napping. She stood off the island till daybreak & then learned that the wireless & cable stations had been damaged & that the landing party of about 40 in all with three boats and four maxim guns had left in their schooner about half an hour after the Sydney arrived on the previous night & had not been heard of since. At 10 am the Sydney was able to return to the Emden with Cocos island doctor & other helpers, The condition of the Emden’s people was pitiable. No one could describe nor even wish to describe the state of affairs on the cruiser herself. The greater part of the ship was a mass of bursted and tangled steel. It was most difficult to get about her. The survivors were in the forecastle where a fire had started & burnt itself out. There was not a drop of water on the ship and only a few biscuits. The survivors & wounded had had nothing to eat since the start of the action the previous day. Heavy seas had made it impossible to land. In spite of this about 20 had either been washed up or carried ashore but being wounded some had been drowned. The most experienced of her doctors had his leg broken trying to reach the shore & it is said he drank salt water & died the previous evening. There was no fresh water on the island, which had been uninhabited for 10 years. For the whole of the second day the Sydney worked at bringing off the wounded. They had taken all those off the ship by 5 pm. But there were still some 20 on the island, badly wounded when darkness fell before their rescue could begin. Work started in the grey of the next morning. The wounded were brought down to the shore on stretchers, taken off in a

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cutter & slung on the Sydney by an improvised derrick. It was not until half past ten on the third day that the Sydney was able to steam away for Colombo. A British warship is abroad a pretty congested ship with her full crew & the conditions on the Sydney with all the survivors on board passed description. The German wounded had been uncared for for days. All the Emden’s medical comforts having been destroyed in action. The only large space in the Sydney that could be rigged as a hospital was in waist & here The Germans were laid side by side & given every care possible to add to their comfort. The Empress of Russia afterwards met her & took half the wounded and prisoners. The ships in this convoy naturally wished to give a hearty reception to the cruiser that had cleared the Indian Ocean of its worst scourge but the wish of all on board the Sydney forewent that demonstration. no one had any wish that any sound of cheering should reach those lying in the Sydney’s waist. Only one ship in the harbour a New Zealand transport which possibly not received the message broke this rule. The Sydney came up the lines of transports into the roadshead in absolute silence. The Emden’s casualties are not known & possibly never shall be, They are Stated to be 12 officers & 119 men killed & three officers & 55 men wounded. About 8 officers & 140 men were not wounded. The Sydney managed to transfer most of those not seriously wounded to another British warship at sea. The Sydney lost three killed & one mortally wounded & 12 wounded also.

[Transcribed by Margaret Swinton and Margaret Russell for the State Library of New South Wales]