Internment of the gunboat Geier in Honolulu

At the beginning of November 1914 the American authorities interned the German warship SMS Geier and the steamer Locksun, which had been supplying her with coal, in the port of Honolulu in Hawaii. For the German crew the war was practically over. The British chronology gives the date as 9 November, but according to most sources the internment took place on 7 or 8 November, immediately after the deadline set for the Germans had expired.

Geier was an old small cruiser, built in the 1890s and used as a gunboat for colonial service. The outbreak of war found her in South-East Asia. She was ordered to join Admiral Maximilian von Spee’s squadron, but the rendezvous never took place. For nearly three months she wandered around the Pacific, capturing only one British ship. Because of her worn-out engines and lack of coal, in mid-October she put into Honolulu, the capital of the American Territory of Hawaii.

The neutral United States allowed warships of the belligerent states to stay in its ports only briefly. Geier’s commander, Lieutenant Commander Graßhoff, nevertheless obtained permission for a stay of several weeks for repairs, on condition that if he did not sail by 7 November the ship would be interned. Just outside territorial waters Japanese warships were waiting for him, the battleship Hizen and the armoured cruiser Asama. Putting to sea would have meant a hopeless fight, so Graßhoff chose internment. The ship and her crew remained in Honolulu.

In February 1917, when the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, a fire broke out aboard Geier which destroyed her boilers. It was most probably deliberate sabotage, agreed among the masters of the German ships lying in Honolulu so that they would not fall into American hands. After the United States entered the war in April 1917 the ship was seized, repaired and commissioned into the US Navy as USS Schurz, in honour of the German-American politician Carl Schurz. She served as an escort ship off the American coast. On 21 June 1918 she sank after a collision with a merchant ship off the coast of North Carolina.