SMS Emden

SMS Emden
SMS ("His Majesty's Ship ") was the second and final member of the of light cruisers built for the German (Imperial Navy). Named for the town of Emden, she was laid down at the (Imperial Dockyard) in Danzig in 1906. The hull was launched in May 1908, and completed in July 1909. She had one sister ship, . Like the preceding cruisers, was armed with ten guns and two torpedo tubes.
spent the majority of her career overseas in the East Asia Squadron, based in Qingdao, in the Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory in China. In 1913, Karl von Müller took command of the ship. At the outbreak of World War I, captured a Russian steamer and converted her into the commerce raider . rejoined the East Asia Squadron, then was detached for independent raiding in the Indian Ocean. The cruiser spent nearly two months operating in the region, and captured nearly two dozen ships. On 28 October 1914, launched a surprise attack on Penang; in the resulting Battle of Penang, she sank the Russian cruiser and the French destroyer .
Müller then took to raid the Cocos Islands, where he landed a contingent of sailors to destroy British facilities. There, was attacked by the Australian cruiser on 9 November 1914. The more powerful Australian ship quickly inflicted serious damage and forced Müller to run his ship aground to avoid sinking. Out of a crew of 376, 133 were killed in the battle. Most of the survivors were taken prisoner; the landing party, led by Hellmuth von Mücke, commandeered an old schooner and eventually returned to Germany. s wreck was quickly destroyed by wave action, and was broken up for scrap in the 1950s.
Design
The 1898 Naval Law authorized the construction of thirty new light cruisers; the program began with the , which was developed into the and es, both of which incorporated incremental improvements over the course of construction. The primary alteration for the two -class cruisers, assigned to the 1906 fiscal year, consisted of an additional boiler for the propulsion system to increase engine power.
was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced as designed and up to at full load. She had a crew of 18 officers and 343 enlisted men.
Her propulsion system consisted of two triple-expansion steam engines, designed to give for a top speed of . The engines were powered by twelve coal-fired Marine-type water-tube boilers and drove a pair of screw propellers. carried up to of coal, which gave a range of at . was the last German cruiser to be equipped with triple-expansion engines; all subsequent cruisers used the more powerful steam turbines.
The ship's main battery comprised ten SK L/40 guns in single mounts. Two were placed side by side forward on the forecastle, six were located amidships, three on either side, and two were placed side by side aft. The guns could engage targets out to , and were supplied with 1,500 rounds of ammunition, 150 per gun. The secondary armament consisted of eight SK L/55 guns, also in single mounts. She had two torpedo tubes with four torpedoes, mounted below the waterline, and could carry fifty naval mines.
The ship was protected by an armored deck that was up to thick. The conning tower had thick sides, and the guns were protected by thick gun shields.
Service history
The contract for , ordered as (replacement) , was placed on 6 April 1906 at the (Imperial Dockyard) in Danzig. Her keel was laid down on 1 November 1906. She was launched on 26 May 1908 and christened by the (Lord Mayor) of the city of Emden, Dr. Leo Fürbringer. After fitting-out work was completed by 10 July 1909, she was commissioned into the fleet. The new cruiser began sea trials that day but interrupted them from 11 August to 5 September to participate in the annual autumn maneuvers of the main fleet. During this period, also escorted the imperial yacht with Kaiser Wilhelm II aboard. was decommissioned in September after completing trials.
On 1 April 1910 was reactivated and assigned to the (East Asia Squadron), based at Qingdao in Germany's Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory in China. The concession had been seized in 1897 in retaliation for the murder of German nationals in the area. left Kiel on 12 April 1910, bound for Asia by way of a goodwill tour of South America. A month later, on 12 May, she stopped in Montevideo and met with the cruiser , which was assigned to the (East American) Station. and stayed in Buenos Aires from 17 to 30 May to represent Germany at the celebrations of the hundredth anniversary of Argentinian independence. The two ships then rounded Cape Horn; stopped in Valparaíso, Chile, while continued on to Peru.
The cruise across the Pacific was delayed because of a lack of good quality coal. eventually took on around of coal at the Chilean naval base at Talcahuano and departed on 24 June. The cruise was used to evaluate the ship on long-distance voyages for use in future light cruiser designs. encountered unusually severe weather on the trip, which included a stop at Easter Island. She anchored at Papeete, Tahiti to coal on 12 July, as the bunkers were nearly empty after crossing . The ship then proceeded to Apia in German Samoa, arriving on 22 July. There, she met the rest of the East Asia Squadron, commanded by (Rear Admiral) Erich Gühler. The squadron remained in Samoa until October, when the ships returned to their base at Qingdao. was sent to the Yangtze River from 27 October to 19 November, which included a visit to Hankou. The ship visited Nagasaki, Japan, before returning to Qingdao on 22 December for an annual refit. The repair work was not carried out; the Sokehs Rebellion erupted on Ponape in the Carolines, which required s presence; she departed Qingdao on 28 December, and left Hong Kong to join her.
The two cruisers reinforced German forces at Ponape, which included the old unprotected cruiser . The ships bombarded rebel positions and sent a landing force, which included men from the ships along with colonial police troops, ashore in mid-January 1911. By the end of February the revolt had been suppressed, and on 26 February the unprotected cruiser arrived to take over the German presence in the Carolines. and the other ships held a funeral the following day for those killed in the operation, before departing on 1 March for Qingdao via Guam. After arriving on 19 March, she began an annual overhaul. In mid-1911, the ship went on a cruise to Japan, where she accidentally rammed a Japanese steamer during a typhoon. The collision caused damage necessitating another trip to the drydock in Qingdao. She returned to the Yangtze to protect Europeans during the Chinese Revolution that broke out on 10 October. In November, (Vice Admiral) Maximilian von Spee replaced Gühler as the commander of the East Asia Squadron.
At the end of the year, won the Kaiser's (Shooting Prize) for excellent gunnery in the East Asia Squadron. In early December, steamed to Incheon to assist the grounded German steamer . In May 1913, (Lieutenant Commander) Karl von Müller became the ship's commanding officer; he was soon promoted to (Commander). In mid-June, went on a cruise to the German colonies in the Central Pacific, and was stationed off Nanjing, as fighting between Qing and revolutionary forces raged there. On 26 August, rebels attacked the ship, and s gunners immediately returned fire, silencing the attackers. moved to Shanghai on 14 August.
World War I
spent the first half of 1914 on the normal routine of cruises in Chinese and Japanese waters without incident. During the July Crisis that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, was the only German cruiser in Qingdao; Spee's two armored cruisers, and , were cruising in the South Pacific and was en route to replace off the coast of Mexico. On 31 July, with war days away, Müller put to sea to begin commerce raiding once war had been formally declared. Two days later, on 2 August, Germany declared war on Russia, and the following day, captured the Russian steamer . The Russian vessel was sent back to Qingdao, and converted into the auxiliary cruiser .
On 5 August, Spee ordered Müller to join him at Pagan Island in the Mariana Islands; left Qingdao the following day along with the auxiliary cruiser and the collier . The ships arrived in Pagan on 12 August. The next day, Spee learned that Japan would enter the war on the side of the Triple Entente and had dispatched a fleet to track his squadron down. Spee decided to take the East Asia Squadron to South America, where it could attempt to break through to Germany, harassing British merchant traffic along the way. Müller suggested that one cruiser be detached for independent operations in the Indian Ocean, since the squadron would be unable to attack British shipping while it was crossing the Pacific. Spee agreed, and allowed Müller to operate independently, since was the fastest cruiser in the squadron.
Independent raider
On 14 August, and left the company of the East Asia Squadron, bound for the Indian Ocean. Since the cruiser was already operating in the western Indian Ocean around the Gulf of Aden, Müller decided he should cruise in the shipping lanes between Singapore, Colombo and Aden. steamed toward the Indian Ocean by way of the Molucca and Banda Seas. While seeking to coal off Jampea Island, the Dutch coastal defense ship stopped and asserted Dutch neutrality. Müller steamed into the Lombok Strait. There, s radio-intercept officers picked up messages from the British armored cruiser . To maintain secrecy, s crew rigged up a dummy funnel to impersonate a British light cruiser, then steamed up the coast of Sumatra toward the Indian Ocean.
On 5 September, entered the Bay of Bengal, achieving complete surprise, since the British assumed she was still with Spee's squadron. She operated on shipping routes there without success, until 10 September, when she moved to the Colombo–Calcutta route. There, she captured the Greek collier , which was carrying equipment for the British. Müller took the ship into his service and agreed to pay the crew. captured five more ships; troop transports Indus and Lovat and two other ships were sunk, and the fifth, a steamer named Kabinga, was used to carry the crews from the other vessels. On 13 September, Müller released Kabinga and sank two more British prizes. Off the Ganges estuary, caught a Norwegian merchantman, which the Germans searched; finding no contraband they released her. The Norwegians informed Müller that Entente warships were operating in the area, which persuaded him to return to the eastern coast of India.
stopped and released an Italian freighter, whose crew relayed news of the incident to a British vessel, which in turn informed British naval authorities in the region. The result was an immediate cessation of shipping and the institution of a blackout. Vice Admiral Martyn Jerram ordered Hampshire and the Japanese protected cruiser to search for . The British armored cruiser and the Japanese armored cruiser were sent to patrol likely coaling stations.
In late September, Müller decided to bombard Madras. Müller believed the attack would demonstrate his freedom of maneuver and decrease British prestige with the local population. At around 20:00 on 22 September, entered the port, which was completely illuminated, despite the blackout order. closed to within from the piers before opening fire. She set fire to two oil tanks and damaged three others, and damaged a merchant ship in the harbor. In the course of the bombardment, fired 130 rounds. The following day, the British again mandated that shipping stop in the Bay of Bengal; during the first month of s raiding career in the Indian Ocean, the value of exports there had fallen by 61.2 percent.
From Madras, Müller had originally intended to rendezvous with his colliers off Simalur Island in Indonesia, but instead decided to make a foray to the western side of Ceylon. On 25 September, sank the British merchantmen Tywerse and King Lund two days before capturing the collier Buresk, which was carrying a cargo of high-grade coal. A German prize crew went aboard Buresk which was used to support s operations. Later that day, the German raider sank the British vessels Ryberia and Foyle. Low on fuel, proceeded to the Maldives, arriving on 29 September and remaining for a day while coal stocks were replenished. The raider then cruised the routes between Aden and Australia and between Calcutta and Mauritius for two days without success. steamed to Diego Garcia for engine maintenance and to rest the crew.
The British garrison at Diego Garcia had not yet learned of the state of war between Britain and Germany, and so treated to a warm reception. She remained there until 10 October, to remove fouling. While searching for merchant ships west of Colombo, picked up Hampshires wireless signals again; the ship had departed for the Chagos Archipelago on 13 October. The British had captured on 12 October, depriving of a collier. On 15 October, captured the British steamer Benmore off Minikoi and sank her the next day. Over the next five days, she captured Troiens, Exfort, Graycefale, Sankt Eckbert, and Chilkana. One was used as a collier, three were sunk, and the fifth was sent to port with the crews of the other vessels. On 20 October, Müller decided to move to a new area of operations.
Attack on Penang
Müller planned a surprise attack on Penang in British Malaya. coaled in the Nicobar Islands and departed for Penang on the night of 27 October, with the departure timed to arrive off the harbor at dawn. She approached the harbor entrance at 03:00 on 28 October, steaming at , with the fourth dummy funnel erected to disguise her identity. s lookouts quickly spotted a warship in the port with lights on; it turned out to be the Russian protected cruiser , a veteran of the Battle of Tsushima. had put into Penang for boiler repairs; only one was in service, which meant that she could not get under way, nor were the ammunition hoists powered. Only five rounds of ready ammunition were permitted for each gun, with a sixth chambered. pulled alongside at a distance of ; Müller ordered a torpedo to be fired at the Russian cruiser, then gave the order for the 10.5 cm guns to open fire.
quickly inflicted grievous damage on her adversary, then turned around to make another pass at . One of the Russian gun crews managed to get a weapon into action, but scored no hits. Müller ordered a second torpedo to be fired into the burning while his guns continued to batter her. The second torpedo caused a tremendous explosion that tore the ship apart. By the time the smoke cleared, had already slipped beneath the waves, the masts the only parts of the ship still above water. The destruction of killed 81 Russian sailors and wounded 129, of whom seven later died of their injuries. The elderly French torpedo cruiser and the destroyer opened wildly inaccurate fire on .
Müller then decided to depart, owing to the risk of encountering superior warships. Upon leaving the harbor, he encountered a British freighter loaded with ammunition, that had already stopped to pick up a harbor pilot. While preparing to take possession of the ship, had to recall her boats having spotted an approaching ship. This proved to be the French destroyer , which was unprepared and was quickly destroyed. stopped to pick up survivors and departed at around 08:00 as the other French ships were raising steam to get underway. One officer and thirty-five sailors were plucked from the water. Another French destroyer tried to follow, but lost sight of the German raider in a rainstorm. On 30 October, stopped the British steamer Newburn and put the French sailors aboard after they signed statements promising not to return to the war. The attack on Penang was a significant shock to the Entente powers, and caused them to delay the large convoys from Australia, since they would need more powerful escorts.
Battle of Cocos
After releasing the British steamer, turned south to Simalur, and rendezvoused with the captured collier Buresk. Müller then decided to attack the British coaling station in the Cocos Islands; he intended to destroy the wireless station there and draw away British forces searching for him in the Indian Ocean. While en route to the Cocos, spent two days combing the Sunda Strait for merchant shipping without success. She steamed to the Cocos, arriving off Direction Island at 06:00 on the morning of 9 November. Since there were no British vessels in the area, Müller sent ashore a landing party led by (First Lieutenant) Hellmuth von Mücke, s executive officer. The party consisted of another two officers, six non-commissioned officers, and thirty-eight sailors armed with four machine guns and thirty rifles.
was using jamming, but the British wireless station was able to transmit the message "Unidentified ship off entrance." The message was received by the Australian light cruiser , which was away, escorting a convoy. Sydney immediately headed for the Cocos Islands at top speed. picked up wireless messages from the then unidentified vessel approaching, but believed her to be away, giving them much more time than they actually had. At 09:00, lookouts aboard spotted smoke on the horizon, and thirty minutes later identified it as a warship approaching at high speed. Mücke's landing party was still ashore, and there was no time left to recover them.
Sydney closed to a distance of before turning to a parallel course with . The German cruiser opened fire first, and straddled the Australian vessel with her third salvo. s gunners were firing rapidly, with a salvo every ten seconds; Müller hoped to overwhelm Sydney with a barrage of shells before her heavier armament could take effect. Two shells hit Sydney, one of which disabled the aft fire control station; the other failed to explode. It took slightly longer for Sydney to find the range, and in the meantime, turned toward Sydney in an attempt to close to torpedo range. Sydneys more powerful guns soon found the range and inflicted serious damage. The wireless compartment was destroyed and the crew for one of the forward guns was killed early in the engagement. At 09:45, Müller turned his ship toward Sydney in another attempt to reach a torpedo firing position. Five minutes later, a shell hit disabled the steering gear, and other fragments jammed the hand steering equipment. could only be steered with her propellers. Sydneys gunfire also destroyed the rangefinders and caused heavy casualties amongst s gun crews.
Müller made a third attempt to close to torpedo range, but Sydney quickly turned away. Shortly after 10:00, a shell from Sydney detonated ready ammunition near the starboard No. 4 gun and started a serious fire. made a fourth and final attempt to launch a torpedo attack, but Sydney was able to keep the range open. By 10:45, s guns had largely gone silent; the superstructure had been shredded and the two rear-most funnels had been shot away, along with the foremast. Müller realized that his ship was no longer able to fight, and beached on North Keeling Island to save the lives of his crew. At 11:15, was run onto the reef, and the engines and boilers were flooded. Her breech blocks and torpedo aiming gear were thrown overboard to render the weapons unusable, and all signal books and secret papers were burned. Sydney turned to capture the collier Buresk, whose crew scuttled her when the Australian cruiser approached. Sydney then returned to the wrecked and inquired if she surrendered. The signal books had been destroyed by fire and so the Germans could not reply, and since her flag was still flying, Sydney resumed fire. The Germans quickly raised white flags and the Australians ceased fire.
In the course of the action, scored sixteen hits on Sydney, killing three of her crew and wounding another thirteen. A fourth crewman died later from his injuries. Sydney had meanwhile fired some 670 rounds of ammunition, with around 100 hits claimed. had suffered much higher casualties: 133 officers and enlisted men died, out of a crew of 376. Most of the surviving crew, including Müller, were taken into captivity the next day. The wounded men were sent to Australia, while the uninjured were interned at a camp in Malta; the men were returned to Germany in 1920. Mücke's landing party evaded capture. They had observed the battle, and realized that would be destroyed. Mücke therefore ordered the old 97 gross register ton schooner Ayesha to be prepared for sailing. The Germans departed before Sydney reached Direction Island, and sailed to Padang in the Dutch East Indies. From there, they traveled to Yemen, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany. They then traveled overland to Constantinople, arriving in June 1915. There, they reported to Wilhelm Souchon, the commander of the ex-German battlecruiser . In the meantime, the British sloop arrived at the Cocos Islands about a week after the battle to bury the sailors killed in the battle.
Legacy
Over a raiding career spanning three months and , had destroyed two Entente warships and sank or captured sixteen British steamers and one Russian merchant ship, totaling . Another four British ships were captured and released, and one British and one Greek ship were used as colliers. In 1915, a Japanese company proposed that be repaired and refloated, but an inspection by the elderly flat-iron gunboat concluded that wave damage to made such an operation unfeasible. By 1919, the wreck had almost completely broken up and disappeared beneath the waves. It was eventually broken up in situ in the early 1950s by a Japanese salvage company; parts of the ship remain scattered around the area.
Following the destruction of , Kaiser Wilhelm II awarded the Iron Cross to the ship and announced that a new would be built to honor the original cruiser. Wilhelm II ordered that the new cruiser wear a large Iron Cross on her bow to commemorate her namesake ship. The third cruiser to bear the name , built in the 1920s for the , also carried the Iron Cross, along with battle honors for the Indian Ocean, Penang, Cocos Islands, and Ösel, where the second had engaged several Russian destroyers and torpedo boats. Three further vessels have been named for the cruiser in the post-war German Navy: the laid down in 1959, the laid down in 1979, and the laid down in 2020.
Three of the ship's 10.5 cm guns were removed from the wreck three years after the battle. One is preserved in Hyde Park in Sydney, a second is located at the Royal Australian Navy Heritage Centre in , the main naval base in Sydney, and the third is on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. In addition, s bell and stern ornament were recovered from the wreck and both are currently in the collection of the Australian War Memorial. A number of other artifacts, including a damaged 10.5 cm shell case, an iron rivet from the hull, and uniforms were also recovered and are held in the Australian War Memorial.
In March 1921, the government of Prussia decreed that Prussian former crew members and relatives of those serving aboard the ship during World War I were allowed to add the heritable suffix "-Emden" to their last names as recognition for their service. Other German state governments followed suit. In March 1934, Paul von Hindenburg, who was then the president, decreed that relatives of those who had been killed aboard the ship could also apply for the suffix.
A number of films have been made about s wartime exploits, including the 1915 movies How We Beat the Emden and How We Fought the Emden and the 1928 The Exploits of the Emden, all produced in Australia. German films include the 1926 silent film , footage from which was incorporated in of 1932, and , produced in 1934. All three films were directed by Louis Ralph. More recently, in 2012, (The men of the ) was released, which was made about how the crew of made their way back to Germany after the Battle of Cocos.
After the bombardment of Madras, s name, as "Amdan", entered the Sinhala and Tamil languages meaning "someone who is tough, manipulative and crafty." In the Malayalam language the word "Emadan" means "a big and powerful thing" or "as big as Emden".
See also
HMAS Sydney I – SMS Emden Memorial
Footnotes
Notes
Citations
References
Further reading
Dresden-class cruisers
Ships built in Danzig
1908 ships
World War I cruisers of Germany
World War I commerce raiders
Maritime incidents in November 1914
World War I shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean
Shipwrecks of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Recipients of the Iron Cross (1914)
Australian Shipwrecks with protected zone