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By Root 1889 0

the tiny township outside the mission church. This circumstance was of no concern to the crew of the Southport who had not heard a hint of the international tensions that had bubbled to the surface in Europe during their absence, nor did they have the faintest idea that Britain was at war with Germany. The crew crowded on deck, cheering the Geier as she sailed into the anchorage. The captain and his wife were ashore and it was Chief Officer Dodd who ordered the ship’s ensign to be dipped and who waited on deck, beaming in welcome, as a cutter from the battleship approached. He attached no significance to the fact that the Geier’s guns were trained on his vessel, and he was only slightly surprised to see that the boarding party was armed to the teeth and looking far from affable. The German officer saluted correctly then, speaking English, but without so much as wishing him a good day, dropped the bombshell.

Chief Officer C. Dodd, SS Southport.

He said, ‘Of course you know that war has broken out between Britain and Germany?’ I said, ‘No.’ The German said, ‘Oh yes. We have been fighting about a month.’ I said, in as casual a manner as I could muster, ‘I suppose we are prisoners of war then.’ The officer made no reply. He said he preferred to wait until the captain arrived on board. But he was perfectly polite. There was nothing domineering about him, but he posted the armed guard around the ship, and they looked none too friendly. Then he wanted to know what provisions we had but when I told them of what straits we were in for tucker ourselves, they didn’t bother. Still, they went over the ship with a fine toothcomb and spent a long time in the engine room, fiddling about with things, which the chief engineer didn’t like at all. We were all dumbfounded. Then the captain came back and had a long talk with the officer.

Capt. A. Clopet, SS Southport.

The upshot was that our flag was hauled down and the German flag hoisted for half an hour while the Germans read me the proclamation that my ship had been seized in the name of the Kaiser. They left the guard on board and stayed in the bay for two days. Next day another ship sailed in. It was the German merchant steamer Tsintau of Bremen and they sent the steamer alongside the Southport and took a great deal of our coal. Soon afterwards an officer in command of marines on the Geier came on board with another party whose job was to put the engines out of commission to prevent us putting to sea. They removed nearly all the eccentrics and other parts of the machinery and took away the main stop valve.

The officer of the Geier told me that he would not sink us but that we would have to remain at Kusaie until after the war was over. I pointed out to him that we were short of provisions and that the natives, on account of the cyclone, were also short of food. The officer replied that there were coconuts on the island and he said, very sneeringly, ‘The people of Paris once lived on rats.’ This infuriated me. I was born of French parents, although I am a naturalised British subject, and my parents were in Paris during the siege by the Germans in 1870 and they told me enough of that terrible time to make me fully appreciate the reference to rats! I told him in no uncertain terms that my men would be starved out, and I could not be responsible for what starving men might do on the island. That gave him second thoughts, he wrote out there and then an order to King Sigrah to secure supplies of meat and so on. It said that whatever he gave me would be paid for after the war.

Not content with taking our coal the Germans on the steamer Tsintau took some of our kerosene oil and everything else they thought would be of use to them, although the officer on the Geier had obviously told them not to touch our provisions, because we had none to spare. The Geier also took off our boatswain and two of our firemen, who were all German and they went willingly enough, and one of our Norwegian sailors – a man with a good appetite! – left the ship voluntarily to go on the German steamer Tsintau. This,