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SMS Emden (1906)

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For other ships of the same name, see SMS Emden.

Career

Built by:	Kaiserliche Werft, Danzig
Laid down:	April 6 1906
Launched:	May 26 1908
Commissioned:	July 10 1909
Cost:	6,38 Mill. Reichsmarks
Fate:	sunk (scuttled)
General characteristics
Displacement:	3,364 tons normal
Length:	118 m
Beam:	13.4 m
Draught:	5.3 m
Propulsion:	Twelve boilers, two 16,000 shaft horsepower (12 MW) 3-cylinder triple expansion reciprocating steam engines driving two propellers
Speed:	23 knots (43 km/h) designed, 24 knots (44 km/h) best recorded speed
Range:	3,700 miles (6,000 km)
Complement:	360
Armament:	ten 105 mm rapid fire guns in single turrets, and two torpedo-tubes
Armour:	Deck 13 mm, Belt 51 mm, Conning tower 102 mm

SMS Emden was a light cruiser of the German navy. Its raiding cruise in late 1914 was one of the most romanticised and notable incidents of World War I. In the second half of 1914 Emden raided Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean, sinking or capturing thirty Allied merchant vessels and warships before being run aground by its captain to prevent it from sinking, after engaging HMAS Sydney at the Battle of Cocos.

1 Early service
2 The first war cruise
3 Great successes
4 Raiding and daring
5 The end for Emden
6 Further reading
7 See also
8 External links

Early service

Emden was launched on May 26 1908 and commissioned into the Kaiserliche Marine, Germany's Imperial Navy, on July 10 1909. She was the last German cruiser to use reciprocating engines. Emden's sister ship Dresden, and all following cruisers, were equipped with steam turbines. Like most ships of the time, Emden's twelve boilers were heated by burning coal, which had to be constantly shoveled into the fireboxes manually by stokers. Emden was named after the German town of Emden on the Ems River who sponsored the ship. On April 1 1910 Emden officially entered the German fleet and was assigned to the German naval base and garrison at Tsingtao, in Germany's Chinese Kiautschou colony. Emden never returned to Germany. Once in Tsingtao, she acquired the nickname "Swan of the East" because of her graceful lines. Emden saw her first action suppressing the Sokehs Rebellion on the island of Ponape in the German colonies of the Carolinas Islands in January of 1911. Together with the German cruiser Nürnberg she shelled a rebel fortification with her 4.1 inch (105 mm) guns and then sent an armed landing party of seamen ashore to capture the rebel stronghold. In May 1913 Emden received her last, and finest, commanding officer, Korvettenkapitän (Lt. Commander) Karl von Müller, who was born on June 16 1873. The chivalry and honor of Captain von Müller during his command of Emden would earn him much respect even from his enemies. An enigmatic and quiet man, von Müller suffered from recurring attacks of malaria and would eventually die from it in 1923. A few months after von Müller assumed command, Emden was sent to put down another revolt of Chinese along the Yangtze River. In August 1913 she joined several British and Japanese warships on the Yangtze River and shelled a rebel fort into submission on August 13.

The first war cruise

Captain Karl von Müller

Captain Karl von Müller was a profound student of naval history, and he was only too aware of how the Japanese fleet trapped and destroyed the Russian fleet in Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War. Thus when news came from Europe that war was imminent, Captain von Müller was determined not to let history repeat itself. On July 31 1914, Emden left Tsingtao and was at sea when news of the outbreak of World War I was received on August 2. On August 4th, Emden captured her first war prize, the Russian steamer Rjasan (Ryazan), which was boarded by German sailors and taken back to Tsingtao. Later, Rjasan was turned into an auxiliary cruiser with eight 4.1 inch guns taken from the gunboat Cormoran but had no successes and eventually surrendered. At the time, the German colony at Tsingtao was surrounded by enemies; the Russians, Japanese, British and French all had bases and warships near Tsingtao, and the deep-water port with its advanced shipyard facilities was coveted by the Allies. Captain von Müller knew that Tsingtao couldn't possibly hold out for very long against so many enemies and so Emden left Tsingtao for the last time to join up with the German Asiatic Squadron, commanded by the cunning Admiral Maximilian von Spee. On August 8 1914, Emden rendezvoused with von Spee's squadron at the German island of Pagan. Admiral von Spee wanted Emden to stay with the squadron, but von Müller convinced the admiral to let Emden go to the Indian Ocean to raid British merchant shipping. Taking along a collier for fuel, Emden departed from German territory for the last time on August 14. Quietly Emden slipped through the Dutch East Indies and into the Indian Ocean, fooling the Dutch battleship Tromp which had intercepted Emden and demanded that the German ship leave neutral Dutch waters immediately. Once in the Indian Ocean Emden began to prey upon the hundreds of unescorted and defenceless British and Allied merchant ships there. In 1914 the Indian Ocean was sometimes referred to as a "British lake" because of the high traffic of British merchant vessels.

Great successes

In September 1914 Emden captured seventeen ships, all British except for two which were neutral Italian and Norwegian ships, and duly released. Most of the British ships captured were sunk quickly either by gunfire from Emdens 105 mm guns or by placing explosive charges deep in the ships hulls. Captain von Müller was always the perfect gentleman to every captain of the ships he captured, and he made doubly certain that every captured British sailor was treated well and kept safe. Emden began to cause great panic among the British and Allied shipping offices in the Indian Ocean. Insurance prices for merchant ships skyrocketed and no captains could afford to leave harbour. It was a source of much embarrassment to the British and the Allies that a single German cruiser was effectively putting the entire Indian Ocean into a hopeless gridlock. Dozens of warships were dispatched to hunt down Emden, but von Müller cleverly avoided them all. By putting a dummy fourth smokestack on the ship, von Müller made Emden closely resemble the popular British cruiser HMS Yarmouth. Some captains of British merchant ships, seeing Emden approaching, would salute Emden thinking it was the friendly Yarmouth passing by. Instead, Emden would fire a shot over the bow, hoist the German naval ensign, and signal "Stop at Once".

Raiding and daring

Late at night on September 22 1914, Emden quietly approached the city of Madras on the east side of the Indian peninsula. Once in range Emden opened fire on many large fuel oil tanks that the British kept near the city. After Emden fired 130 shells the oil tanks were burning and the city was in a panic. Although the raid did little damage, it was a severe blow to British morale and thousands of people fled Madras, thinking that Emden might be planning another attack. Emden then sailed southwards down the east coast of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), causing panic among the British. H.H. Engelbrecht, a Boer wildlife officer of German descent was falsely accused of supplying meat to the cruiser and jailed. Sri Lankan mothers frightened their children with the Emden bogeyman, and to this day a particularly obnoxious person is referred to as an Emden. Emden supplied new words to many South Indian Languages. A Tamil lexicon emden which means 'streetsmart'[1]was created following its successful attack on Madras Port. Captain von Müller returned to raiding regular merchant shipping again for about a month, working his way south-east towards the British port of Penang in then Malaya. On October 28 Emden entered the harbour at top speed, still disguised as a British cruiser with the fake fourth smokestack. Once inside the harbor it raised the German flag and began shooting at the Allied ships in the harbor. Emden fired a torpedo at the small Russian cruiser Zhemchug, a veteran of the Battle of Tsushima, which exploded spectacularly. Several other ships fired back at Emden but missed, and several shells ended up hitting other friendly ships in the harbour. As quickly as Emden had arrived, von Müller turned the ship around and made good his escape. The French destroyer Mousquet followed Emden, unwisely, and was quickly sunk by Emden's much heavier firepower. Its sister-ship Pistolet also tried to shadow Emden, but soon lost contact. (See Battle of Penang)

The end for Emden

The Emden after its destruction

Main article: Battle of Cocos

By now no fewer than sixty Allied warships were combing the waters of the Indian Ocean in search of Emden. A critical part of ship-to-ship communication by wireless in the Indian Ocean was the British communications station at Direction Island in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Captain von Müller decided to send a landing party ashore to destroy the station's radio tower and equipment. Emden reached Direction Island on November 9 1914. Fifty seamen with rifles and machine guns were sent ashore but the British civilians did not resist and the Emden landing party even agreed not to knock the radio tower down over the island's little tennis court. Unfortunately for Emden, the people on Direction Island had seen Emden coming and had radioed a frantic plea for help. The Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney was dispatched from a convoy a mere 50 miles (80 km) away from Direction Island and arrived there in about two hours. When lookouts on Emden spotted Sydney approaching, Captain von Müller had no choice but to raise anchor, leave his landing party still on Direction Island, and engage the Australian cruiser. Sydney was larger and faster than Emden and outranged her, but still the fight went on for nearly an hour and a half. Early on, Emden managed to knock out a gun on the Sydney and destroyed the Australian ship's rangefinder. However, Emden herself suffered massive damage, being struck over 100 times by shells from Sydney. Her firing dwindled and Captain von Müller beached Emden on North Keeling Island at 1115 to avoid sinking. At this point Sydney left the scene to pursue a collier that had been supporting Emden. Returning later to the beached cruiser, Sydney's commander, Captain John Glossop, saw that the Emden was still flying its battle flag, denoting its intention to continue resistance. A signal requesting surrender was sent but was not answered. Sydney re-opened fire on the Emden, causing further casualties before Emden finally struck her colours. Glossop later said that he "felt like a murderer" for ordering the last salvoes, but had no choice under the circumstances. German losses were 131 dead and 65 wounded. Captain von Müller and the rest of his surviving crew were captured by the British, and Emden was destroyed. As a signal mark of honour, the Imperial Government of Germany allowed all of the surviving officers and men to suffix the word 'Emden' to their names; the honour is remembered to this day in the form of the numerous 'X-Emdens' amongst German citizens still extant. According to the Almanach de Gotha, Volume I (2000), one of them was Franz Joseph, Prince of Hohenzollern-Emden (1891-1964). The stranded German landing party seized the Ayesha, a 123 ton, three-masted schooner and some supplies and made for Padang on Sumatra, in the neutral Dutch East Indies, where they rendezvoused with a German merchant vessel on December 13. The party made their way to Turkey by way of the Red Sea, arriving on May 5 1915. From there they travelled overland to Germany. The mascot of Emden, a 12 cm bronze figure of a woman, was presented to Sir John Hope Simpson, then acting commander of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The 105mm gun taken from Emden, in Hyde Park, Sydney.

In 1917, a 105 mm gun from Emden was installed as a monument in Sydney's Hyde Park. Another is located on display in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, alongside a projected video map of the engagement. The wreck itself was largely salvaged for scrap metal by a Japanese company in 1950, but scattered parts of the wreck remain. After the destruction of this ship in 1914, a second Emden was built in 1916. She was beached at Scapa Flow in 1919 when much of the High Seas Fleet was scuttled. She, however, did not sink and was given over to the French Navy, which eventually scrapped her in 1926.