Möwe sails on her first cruise

On 29 December 1915 the German auxiliary cruiser Möwe, disguised as a neutral freighter, put to sea from Wilhelmshaven. She was the first German raider in many months that was to break through the British blockade onto the open ocean, lay mines off the coasts of Britain and France and then sink Allied ships. The British chronology of the war places her departure under 26 December, but the British official history of the war at sea, German studies and German lists of warships all give 29 December. The cruise revived German cruiser warfare on the Atlantic shipping lanes for several months.

A banana boat in disguise

Since the spring of 1915 no German warship had been waging commerce warfare on the oceans. The last of the raiders from the start of the war, Kronprinz Wilhelm, had let herself be interned in the United States in April. The large, fast passenger liners converted into auxiliary cruisers in 1914 had proved too conspicuous and too hungry for coal for this role. The German Admiralty therefore decided to try an inconspicuous merchant ship that would arouse no suspicion from a distance. In the summer of 1915 one such ship, Meteor, laid mines in the White Sea, on the route to Archangel, but in August, during her second sortie, to the Moray Firth in Scotland, she was cornered by British cruisers and scuttled by her own crew.

For the next venture Pungo was chosen, a new freighter built in 1914 at Geestemünde to carry bananas from Kamerun for the firm of F. Laeisz of Hamburg. In the autumn of 1915 the naval dockyard at Wilhelmshaven concealed in her hull four 150 mm guns, one 105 mm gun, torpedo tubes and room for about 500 mines. On 1 November the ship was commissioned as Möwe (Seagull). She was commanded by Korvettenkapitän Nikolaus zu Dohna-Schlodien, formerly navigating officer of the battleship Posen, and her crew numbered about 235 men.

Through the blockade

Möwe set out as a neutral ship: according to the British official history she had Swedish colours painted on her sides, and according to German studies she posed as the Swedish freighter Sagoland. Her departure was covered by two German submarines. Making use of the long winter nights and bad weather, the raider evaded the British patrols in the North Sea, passed north of the Faroe Islands and on 1 January 1916, before dusk, was near the islet of Sule Skerry north of Scotland.

There, in a snowstorm and a gale, she laid her first minefield, 252 mines according to the British official history, at the western entrance to the Pentland Firth, not far from the main base of the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow. On 6 January the old battleship King Edward VII, sailing round Scotland to Belfast, struck them and sank off Cape Wrath. Almost the entire crew survived. Möwe, meanwhile, was already heading south. She laid a second minefield in the Bay of Biscay, off the mouth of the Gironde, and from 11 January began stopping and sinking Allied ships on the routes between Europe, the Canary Islands and South America.

The first cruise ended in March 1916 with her return to Wilhelmshaven. In that time Möwe sank or captured more than a dozen ships, and Dohna-Schlodien became a hero in Germany. His account of the cruise sold in enormous numbers, and a propaganda film was made about the voyage. Möwe’s success prompted the German navy to send further disguised raiders out onto the ocean.