The end of the Emden

On 9 November 1914 the career of the German light cruiser Emden, the most famous raider of the first months of the war, came to an end. In the morning the ship put a landing party ashore on Direction Island in the Cocos Islands to destroy the cable and wireless station there. The station’s staff managed to send a distress signal, which was picked up by a convoy carrying Australian and New Zealand troops that was passing nearby. The cruiser HMAS Sydney, detached from the convoy, was stronger, faster and better armed. After less than two hours of fighting the burning Emden ran herself onto the reef of the islet of North Keeling.

Two months in the Indian Ocean

Emden belonged to the German East Asia Squadron. In August 1914, while Admiral von Spee was leading the squadron eastwards across the Pacific, her captain, Fregattenkapitän Karl von Müller, obtained permission for an independent cruise into the Indian Ocean. There, far from German bases, taking coal and supplies from the ships he stopped, he waged a commerce war for two months.

On 10 September Emden stopped her first ship in the Bay of Bengal, and then others. On 22 September she bombarded Madras and set fire to oil tanks, spreading panic along the Indian coast. Later she hunted on the routes around Ceylon, and on 28 October she slipped into Penang by a ruse and sank the Russian cruiser Zhemchug and the French destroyer Mousquet. In all she sank or captured more than a dozen merchant ships, according to the most often cited figures with a combined tonnage of over 70,000 gross register tons. Several others she stopped and released with prisoners on board. More than a dozen warships of several nations were hunting Emden, and underwriters in London raised their rates for ships crossing the Indian Ocean.

The raid won Müller fame among his enemies too. He took care that the crews of the ships he stopped did not die. Before sinking a ship he transferred its people to other vessels and set them free. Part of the British press wrote of him admiringly as a gentleman who fought the war fairly.

The last battle

A landing party of about 50 men under Kapitänleutnant Hellmuth von Mücke went ashore on Direction Island. When Sydney arrived, Emden had to go out to meet her without these men. The Germans opened fire first and accurately, but Sydney, commanded by Captain John Glossop, drew off to a range at which her 152 mm guns had the advantage over Emden’s lighter guns. At about 11.20 a.m. Müller ran the wrecked ship ashore. In the afternoon, as the ensign was still flying on the wreck, Sydney fired a few more salvoes, after which the Germans hoisted a white flag. Glossop reported briefly that Emden was “beached and done for”.

Depending on the source, between about 115 and more than 130 men were killed on Emden. Sydney lost four killed. Mücke’s party escaped captivity. In the evening it sailed from the island in the old schooner Ayesha and, after a journey of many months across the Indian Ocean, Arabia and the Middle East, reached Constantinople in 1915.

Müller’s fate

Müller was taken prisoner together with the surviving members of the crew. They were taken to Ceylon, and from there the officers to Malta. The British treated him with respect but guarded him closely. In 1916 he was moved to a camp in England, where in 1917 he took part in an escape of more than twenty prisoners through a tunnel, which ended in recapture. Suffering from malaria, in 1918 he was sent to the Netherlands under a prisoner exchange, and in October he returned to Germany. He received the Pour le Mérite. After the war he left the navy, was a member of the Brunswick parliament and died in 1923, weakened by recurrent bouts of malaria.

In Germany Emden became a legend. Emperor Wilhelm II decided that the ship’s successor, the new cruiser Emden, would bear the Iron Cross on her bow. Members of the crew and their descendants were later granted the right to add “-Emden” to their surnames.

Australia’s pride

In Australia the news of the victory was received with enthusiasm. The young navy, created only a few years earlier, had in its first real battle defeated a ship that for weeks had been the terror of the Indian Ocean. The soldiers in the convoy, sailing to their first war, celebrated together with the sailors. Souvenirs from the wreck, especially silver coins recovered from Emden, became sought-after trophies. Sydney received the battle honour “Emden 1914”, and after the ship was withdrawn from service her mast was set up as a memorial on Bradleys Head in Sydney Harbour.