Five Months on a German Raider | Page 9

felt very sore at the
deaths of so many of their countrymen at the hands of the Germans,
and they did as little work as possible. The stewards were said to be

now paid by the Germans, but as they were no longer under the
command of their own countrymen, they certainly did not put
themselves out to please their new masters.
With their usual thoroughness, the Germans one day examined all our
passports and took notes of our names, ages, professions, maiden
names of married ladies, addresses, and various other details. My
passport described me as "Principal of Training College for Teachers."
So I was forthwith dubbed "Professor" by the Germans, and from this
time henceforth my wife and I were called Frau Professor and Herr
Professor, and this certainly led the sailors to treat us with more respect
than they might otherwise have done. One young man, who had on his
passport his photo taken in military uniform, was, however, detained on
the Wolf as a military prisoner. He was asked by a German officer if he
were going home to fight. He replied that he certainly was, and pluckily
added, "I wish I were fighting now."
On October 1st the married prisoners from the Wolf, together with three
Australian civilian prisoners over military age, a Colonel of the
Australian A.M.C., a Major of the same corps, and his wife, with an
Australian stewardess, some young boys, and a few old sea captains
and mates, were sent on board the Hitachi. They had all been taken off
earlier prizes captured and sunk by the Wolf. The Australians had been
captured on August 6th from the s.s.[2] Matunga from Sydney to what
was formerly German New Guinea, from which latter place they had
been only a few hours distant. An American captain, with his wife and
little girl, had been captured on the barque Beluga, from San Francisco
to Newcastle, N.S.W., on July 9th. All the passengers transferred were
given cabins on board the Hitachi. We learnt from these passengers that
the Wolf was primarily a mine-layer, and that she had laid mines at
Cape Town, Bombay, Colombo, and off the Australian and New
Zealand coasts. She had sown her last crop of mines, 110 in number,
off the approaches to Singapore before she proceeded to the Indian
Ocean to lie in wait for the Hitachi. Altogether she had sown five
hundred mines.
During her stay in the Maldives the Wolf sent up her seaplane--or, as

the Germans said, "the bird"--every morning about six, and she
returned about eight. To all appearances the coast was clear, and the
Wolf consequently anticipated no interference or unwelcome attention
from any of our cruisers. Two of them, the Venus and the Doris, we had
seen at anchor in Colombo harbour during our stay there, but it was
apparently thought not worth while to send any escort with the Hitachi,
though the value of her cargo was said to run into millions sterling; and
evidently the convoy system had not yet been adopted in Eastern
waters. A Japanese cruiser was also in Colombo harbour when we
arrived there, preceded by mine-sweepers, on September 24th. The
Hitachi Captain and senior officers visited her before she sailed away
on the 25th. The Germans on the Wolf told us that they heard her
wireless call when later on she struck one of their mines off Singapore,
but the Japanese authorities have since denied that one of their cruisers
struck a mine there.
The Wolf remained alongside us till the morning of October 3rd, when
she sailed away at daybreak, leaving us anchored in the centre of the
atoll. It was a great relief to us when she departed; she kept all the
breeze off our side of the ship, so that the heat in our cabin was stifling,
and it was in addition very dark; the noise of coaling and shifting cargo
was incessant, and the roaring of the water between the two ships most
disturbing. Before she sailed away the Prize Captain handed to my wife
most of her jewels which had been recovered from the bottom of our
lifeboat. As many of these were Siamese jewellery and unobtainable
now, we were very rejoiced to obtain possession of them again, but
many rings were missing and were never recovered.
The falls of the lifeboats were all renewed, and on October 5th we had
places assigned to us in the lifeboats, and rules and regulations were
drawn up for the "detained enemy subjects" on board the Hitachi. They
were as follows:--
RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR ON BOARD THE GERMAN
AUXILIARY SHIP "HITACHI MARU" DETAINED ENEMY
SUBJECTS (d.e.s.).
1. Everybody on board is under martial law, and any offence is liable to

be punished by same.
2. All orders given