SMS Möwe in 1916. |
|
| Career (Imperial Germany) | |
|---|---|
| Ordered: | Laeisz |
| Builder: | Tecklenburg |
| Launched: | 1914 as Pungo |
| In service: | 1 November 1915 |
| Fate: | taken as war reparations by the UK |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 9,800 tons (4,788 gross register tons (GRT)) |
| Length: | 123.7 m |
| Beam: | 14.4 m |
| Draught: | 7.2 m |
| Propulsion: | 1 × 3-cylinder triple expansion; 5 × boiler; 3,200 hp |
| Speed: | 13 knots |
| Range: | 8,700 nm at 12 kn |
| Complement: | 235 |
| Armament: | 4 × 15.0 SK L/45 gun 1 × 10.5 cm SK L/40 gun 2 × torpedo tubes |
SMS Möwe (German: Seagull) was an merchant raider of the Imperial German Navy which operated against Allied shipping during World War I.
Disguised as a neutral cargo ship to enable it to get close to targets, the Möwe was effective at commerce raiding, sinking several ships in the course of the war.
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Built by the Tecklenborg yard at Geestemünde, she was launched as the freighter Pungo in 1914 and operated by the Afrikanische Fruchtkompanie for F. Laeisz of Hamburg. After an uneventful career carrying cargoes of bananas from the German colony of Kamerun to Germany she was requisitioned by the Kaiserliche Marine for use as a minelayer. Her conversion took place at Imperial shipyard at Wilhemshaven in the autumn of 1915, and under the command of Nikolaus zu Dohna-Schlodien, she entered service on 1 November that year.
Möwe slipped out of Wilhelmshaven on 29 December 1915 for her first task, to set a minefield in the Pentland Firth, near the main base of the British Home Fleet at Scapa Flow. This was completed in severe weather conditions. A few days later the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS King Edward VII struck one of the mines; despite attempts to tow her to safety she sank. Möwe then moved down the west coast of Ireland to France. There she laid another mine field off the Gironde estuary, which sank a further two ships.
This part of her mission complete, Möwe then moved into the Atlantic, operating first between Spain and the Canary islands, and later off the coast of Brazil. On January 16, 1916, the Mowe encountered a lightly armed British merchant ship and after a small battle, the British ship was scuttled. In three months she caught 15 ships, two of which were sent, with cargo and prisoners, to port as prizes; the rest were sunk. She returned to Germany, and a heroes welcome, on 4 April 1916. Felix von Luckner served aboard Seagull before his journey with SMS Seeadler in late 1916 to late 1917.
In an effort to maintain security, Möwe was re-named Vineta, after another auxiliary cruiser which had been withdrawn from service. In this guise she set out on a series of short cruises during the summer of 1916 to attack Allied shipping off the coast of Norway. This only brought one success, however, before she was ordered in for a re-fit prior to another sortie into the Atlantic.
Departing on 23 November 1916, Möwe had even more success on her second cruise into the Atlantic.
On 6 December 1916, she captured and sunk the SS Mount Temple sending its cargo which included, besides the war matériel of 700 horses, many crates of dinosaur fossils collected by Charles Sternberg to the depths. On 12 December, it was the turn of the SS Georgic with 1,200 horses that would have been used on the Western Front.[1]
In four months she had accounted for another 25 ships totalling 123,265 GRT. One of these, SS Yarrowdale, was sent as prize to Germany; as Dohna Schlodien hoped, was outfitted as a commerce raider herself. Möwe also retained SS Saint Theodore as a collier, before arming and commissioning her as the auxiliary Geier. Geier operated in this role for six weeks, accounting for two ships sunk, before being disarmed and scuttled by Möwe prior to returning home. On 10 March, she was badly damaged in action against an armed New Zealand merchant ship. Five of her crewmen were killed and another ten men were wounded. The damage forced the raider to return course for Germany. In March 1917 Möwe again successfully ran the British blockade, ironically at the same time as her prize, now the auxiliary cruiser Leopard, was cornered and sunk by the same blockading force. Möwe arrived home safely on 22 March 1917.
On her return Möwe was taken out of service as a raider, being reckoned too valuable as a propaganda tool to be risked again. She served in the Baltic as a submarine tender, before becoming the auxiliary minelayer Ostsee in 1918. After the Treaty of Versailles, she went to Britain, to be operated by Elders and Fyffes as the freighter Greenbrier. In 1933 she was sold to a German shipping company. As the freighter Oldenburg, served between Germany and occupied Norway in World War II.
On 7 April 1945 she was attacked by Bristol Beaufighters of Coastal Command on anti-shipping missions while sheltering off the coast of Norway—near the village of Vadheim in Sogn og Fjordane county. Holed by their rockets and strafed by cannon fire she burned and sunk.[2]
In 1917 the imperial Bild- und Filmamt in Berlin produced Graf Dohna und seine Möwe, one of the most known propaganda films in World War I. The distributor was Paul Davidson; part of the production the Projektions-AG »Union« (PAGU), Berlin. The film was first released on 2 may 1917 in the Deutsches Opernhaus (Deutsche Oper Berlin) in Berlin.