After attacking Penang, Karl von Müller decided to attack the British coaling station in the Cocos Islands, thus drawing away British naval forces that were searching for him. Following on from our last issue, Peter Hart continues the Emden story as the ship steamed to her destiny.
At the start of the Great War, the SMS Emden, under the inspirational command of Freggatenkapitän Karl von Müller, proved an irritating thorn in the side of the British. She preyed on merchant shipping, attacked ports, and even sank two Entente warships during her dramatic career as a commerce raider between August and November 1914. Then, after his successful attack on the Penang port, von Müller planned to attack the British coaling station in the Cocos Islands - his intention to destroy the wireless station there and draw away British forces now searching for him in the Indian Ocean.
The Emden arrived off Direction Island at 06:00 on the morning of 9 November. Since there were no British vessels around, Müller sent ashore a landing party led by Kapitänleutnant Hellmuth von Mücke. (See Iron Cross magazine # 7) But there was a problem. Although the Emden was using strong jamming signals, the British wireless station managed to transmit a message which was received by the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney, just 60 miles away, on escort duty for an Australian troop convoy heading for Egypt as Lieutenant Rupert Garcia of HMAS Sydney recorded:
“About 07.00 hours we received a garbled radio call from the Cocos sta¬tion: ‘Strange ship off entrance!’ The Melbourne, whose captain was senior officer on the convoy, ordered us to get up steam for full speed and to check out the situation. I was just taking a bath, when my shipmate, Bell-Salter, barged in with the news that the enemy was only 40 nau¬tical miles away. At first, I regarded the whole thing as one of his jokes, but soon he convinced me that this time he was serious. The noise of the turbines accelerating to high speed added to the mounting excitement.1
The Emden picked up wireless messages from the Sydney, but from their strength believed her to be nearly 300 miles away. A terrible surprise awaited them when, at 09.15, Emden’s lookouts spotted smoke on the horizon.”
The second torpedo officer on the Emden, Franz Joseph, Prinz von Hohenzollern, takes up the story:
“It was reported that the ship approaching, which we had taken for the Buresk, had the tall masts of an English warship. Immediately afte
