Remembering the Emden

von Muller 

On September 22nd, the day a hundred years ago when the German light cruiser Emden shelled Madras, there came to a close this year a month-long photographic exhibition mounted by the Australian Deputy High Commission in South India of the Sydney-Emden battle that brought to an end the saga of the daring German raider that had terrorised the Indian Ocean for three months

 To have been held with the exhibition were talks by Australian author Mike Carlton who has written the latest in a long list of books on the Emden and its ultimate fate, which offered him the title of his book, First Victory — 1914 , the reference being to the first ever victory in war of the then new nation, Australia, thanks to H.M.A.S. Sydney . Unfortunately, that part of the programme did not come off, but a copy of the book came my way — and I must say it is by far the best of the published material I’ve read of theEmden .

von Mucke

One of the things in the book that grabbed my interest was the example after example of the chivalry and gentlemanliness shown by Karl von Muller and his men to the crews of the ships they captured (not one life of an Allied merchant seaman was lost during the cruise of the Emden ) and the appreciative reports this behaviour received in the English-language press everywhere. “The Gentleman of the German Fleet”, he was called. This appreciation of von Muller almost bordered on reverence — or should I say typical British irreverent humour?

One newspaper, The Empire , Calcutta, carried this classified advertisement:

“ There is no doubt that the German cruiser Emden had knowledge that the Indus was carrying 150 cases of North West Soap Company’s celebrated ELYSIUM Soap, and hence the pursuit. The men on the Emden and their clothes are now clean and sweet, thanks to ELYSIUM Soap. Try it! ”

 Lauterbach

A month later, in October 1914, an Australian newspaper reported that “all British residents in India hold the captain of the Emden in very high regard, although they would like to hear of his capture.” Then the report goes on to burnish von Muller’s reputation further, stating: 

“ When the Medina was at Bombay, an interesting story was going the rounds of official circles there which goes to show that theEmden’s commander is not without a keen sense of humour. Knowing that the ships were hung up at Rangoon (fearing the Emden ) he despatched a wireless message to the authorities there stating that if they wished to send any mails to Calcutta he would take them on .” The Brisbane Courier concluded its report: “The humour of the situation was fully appreciated in Calcutta.”

The couple of stories I’ve related above about the Emden are from the newspapers of the time, but for years now there has been celebrated, beside the Emden plaque on the Madras High Court’s eastern wall, a tale of an Indian being aboard the Emden and “guiding it to Madras” and then visiting kinsfolk in Cochin. 

This well-publicised annual commemoration on September 22nd celebrates these ‘exploits’ of a ‘hero’ from the Nagercoil area, Chempakaraman Pillai. Sadly, none of the material I have read on the Emden by British and German writers, and now this detailed history by an Australian, mentions Chempakaraman Pillai. Nor do a couple of German friends of mine who checked the Emden crew list in the German records.

On the other hand, Chempakaraman certainly deserves remembrance for being in the forefront of the Indian freedom movement, founding one freedom-for-India Committee in Switzerland and then merging it with the Indian Independence Committee in Berlin in September-October 1914 (when he was supposed to have been on the Emden in South Indian waters!).

 He was a student in Germany at the time (of engineering? of medicine? — both are mentioned) and is said to have been the first to raise the ‘Jai Hind’ cry. He also urged Indian soldiers in Europe to revolt. Later, he was associated with Subhas Chandra Bose, after Bose had visited Vienna. Making Berlin his home, Chempakaraman championed Indian freedom till he passed away in 1934.

While there is no evidence to show that Chempakaraman was on the Emden , there is plenty to show that he was one of the earliest and most dedicated champions of Indian freedom. And that certainly deserves commemoration. Even on September 22nd, because, it has been suggested, that one of von Muller’s reasons for shelling Madras was “to stir up local discontent against the British.”

Footnote: To clear up several different stories about what happened to von Muller and what was left of his crew after the ‘Battle of the Cocos Islands’, Carlton tells us: the Sydney took von Muller and most of his surviving crew to Colombo and then to Malta where they remained prisoners till the end of the War; his second-in-command,

 Hellmuth von Mucke, and his landing party who blew up the Cocos Islands’ communications post escaped to the Dutch East Indies, from there to Yemen and, thereafter, by foot and dhow, along the Red Sea coast, to reach Turkey, an ally, and then Germany; and the third group, the prize crew on a captured vessel were imprisoned in Singapore but escaped when the Sikh infantry guarding them mutinied. 

The Emden and von Muller’s story have been the subject of a couple of films, but von Mucke’s and prize captain Julius Lauterbach’s epic escapes would certainly be film-worthy even today, I had long speculated, till a film buff recently told me that the von Mucke story had been made in Germany into an exciting film, Odyssey of Heroes , that was released last year. When do we see it? And will a film of Lauterbach’s peregrinations be made someday?

H S Muthiah 6 Oct 14

War And The City

 September 22, 1914, the day Madras was bombed by the German light cruiser SMS Emden, a new word, emden, entered the Tamil lexicon indicating the derring-do spirit of the German raider. By S. MUTHIAH

STRANGE, they did not celebrate Madras Day on August 22 in those times considering the seeds Madras sowed for the growth of British power. But exactly a month later, on the night of September 22, 1914, the sky over Madras harbour was suddenly lit up brightly, the area around it reverberated to a constant barrage of noise, and the ground from First Line Beach to the Fort shook. This was no celebration; it was the entry of a new word into the Tamil language: EMDEN.

A daring person ever ready to take on any challenge, avan thaan emden (“he’s an emden”), that is the usage today. Only, the word in this case derives from SMS Emden, a German light cruiser named after the town of Emden, which for three months had every British (and Allied) sailor from the China Sea to the Maldives fearing for his life even as the Royal Navy and its allies had at one time 60 warships scouring the seas for the raider that was proving to be a will-o’-the-wisp.

Emden, captained by Kapitan-Lieutenant Karl von Muller, described as “one of the finest officers of the Kaiserliche Marine [the Royal German Navy]”, was part of the German naval squadron in Tsingtao, then part of the German concession Kiao-Chau in China, some way north of Shanghai. When the Great War (the First World War) broke out in August 1914, the squadron was asked to head for home, leaving the fast, 4,500-tonne, 10-gun Emden to search the Indian Ocean for unescorted Allied merchantmen.

SMS Emden's captain Kapitan-Lieutenant Karl von Muller. Photo:By Special Arrangement

Few lone raiders in naval history have been as successful as Emden. It captured or sank 21 merchant vessels, and in a battle off Penang on October 8, it sank a Russian light cruiser and a French destroyer. Among those it sank were half a dozen ships it had captured to serve as supply ships; when each one ran dry, it was sunk. To help in this here-I-am, here-I-am-not game, Emden used deception. It often added a fourth funnel which made it look like a British cruiser, HMS Yarmouth; sometimes, it was even acknowledged with a traditional naval salute as the ships passed by. But in a legendary display of chivalry, before each merchant ship was destroyed, Muller ordered the crew to take to the boats and board one of his prizes, which was then sent on its way to a nearby port.

The damage caused to the Madras Sailing Club pavilion by Emden. Photo:By Special Arrangement

Emden’s voyage saw it cruising in August past the coasts of Java and Sumatra, then part of the Dutch East Indies and neutral at the time, and entering the Bay of Bengal. Heading north for Rangoon, it sank six ships off the Burmese capital, including the British Indian Steam Navigation’s (BISN) Aronda, which made regular runs between Calcutta and Rangoon. Then, it steamed straight across the Bay to Madras, making the crossing north of the Andamans. On the basis of the chronicles Muller recorded after the Great War ended, it would seem that Emden slowly made its way towards Madras on the afternoon of September 22, taking its time to reach there in darkness. It made Madras Light (the beams of the lighthouse) around 8 o’clock. Across from Emden was a brightly lit city that did not seem to have a care in the world; in fact, most of the senior officers were at a dinner in the Madras Club, it was reported.

Fuel storage tanks burn after the Emden raid. Photo:By Special Arrangement

At 9 o’clock, Muller ordered slow steam ahead, and 45 minutes later, Emden was in position, 2,500 yards (2,250 metres) from shore and just across from the harbour. It was then that its guns, ten 105 mm ones, opened up. Harbour installations and four all-white Burmah Oil Company fuel tanks were the target of the 130 shells it rained on a city seeing military action for the first time since Hyder Ali’s raid some 125 years earlier! All night long the fires blazed, and as Emden steamed south, it could see the fires even when it was 90 miles (144 kilometres) away.

An unexploded shell from Emden. Photo:The Hindu Archives

Past Pondicherry and Negapatam, Trincomalee and Galle, before heading further south to round the Chagos archipelago, and head past the Maldives and round the Laccadives went Emden before it headed for eastern waters again, Penang as its target. Among the ships Emden sank during this part of its journey was one with the “Cities in History” exhibition that Paul Geddes, the famous town planner, was bringing to India to tour the country. Geddes, who had come by an earlier ship, then decided, being stuck in India, to study and write about its cities. What he bequeathed India—thanks to Emden —was a rich corpus of the subcontinent’s urban history.

Morale-shattering loss

The plaque marking the damage Emden caused to the Madras High Court’s east wall. Photo:S.R. Raghunathan

What the Emden, however, left behind in Madras was a morale-shattering loss. Two of the oil tanks were destroyed, two others badly holed, and Burmah Oil was out of pocket by £30,000, including the loss of 350,000 gallons of fuel. In the harbour, a BISN ship and a Japanese cruiser were damaged and a Binny’s lighter and a Gordon Woodroffe launch were lost. Ashore, railway wagons, the walls of the Disinfection Shed, the Boiler Shed, the Port Trust’s new staff quarters (Springhaven), the Madras Sailing Club and the General Post Office’s stables were all damaged. Shells cratered roads leading to Springhaven and the General Hospital and streets as far away as Maddox Street in Vepery, Haddow’s Road in Nungambakkam, and Poonamallee High Road. Shrapnel hit the gun battery in Royapuram, the High Court wall, a Binny company house on Casa Major Road and buildings in various parts of George Town and on 1st and 2nd Line Beach.

The voyage of Emden in the Indian Ocean: August to November 1914.

K.N. Prabhu, the well-known cricket writer, once told me that when he studied in St Mary’s School on Armenian Street 25 years after the Emden bombardment he was shown a piece of shrapnel embedded in a wall of one of the ground floor classrooms and ever since then he had been fascinated by the story of “antha emden”. He also told me that he had been told that the shelling did not lead to panic and mass evacuation of the city as it happened after the dropping of a couple of bombs near the harbour by a Japanese plane or two in October 1943.

End of journey

But to get back to “that emden”, it headed from Penang south past Sumatra for the Cocos Islands where on Direction Island there was a British communication station (manned by men from the Ceylon Signals, who later in the war were to mutiny) playing a signal part in the search for Emden. To destroy this post, Muller landed his deputy, Lt Helmut von Mucke, with 50 armed sailors. It was while anchored, waiting for his shore party, that fate caught up with Muller.

Nemesis arrived in the form of HMAS Sydney, a light cruiser that had joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1913. As part of the escort for the first ANZAC convoy heading for Europe—these Australians and New Zealanders wound up in Gallipoli fighting alongside Indian troops in one of the bloodiest battles of the Great War—it was steaming south of the Cocos Islands when it was ordered to head for Cocos from where an SOS had been signalled that the station was under threat. Sydney was only a couple of hours sailing away when the signal was received. It was full speed ahead—and the moment the two ships spotted each other their guns opened up. It was an uneven battle. Sydney was a bigger (5,500 tonnes) and faster ship and had more firepower, eight 150 mm guns as well as a variety of other armaments.

Battered

For a while, it was an even battle but before long Sydney’s heavier shells battered Emden. Muller refused to give up. Rather than have it sink, he beached his ship on North Keeling Island, another island in the archipelago, but refused Capt. John Glossop’s call to surrender. Sydney then kept firing until the German flag was finally lowered. It was November 9. Emden’s 56,000 km memorable journey had come to an end. There were 130 dead and 65 wounded aboard Emden. The Australians lost four sailors and had four wounded. The Australian press hailed Sydney’s as “Australia’s First Victory”.

The German prisoners were put on their supply ship, one of those captured vessels, and sent to Singapore, then Colombo and on to Malta. While in Singapore, a Sikh regiment guarding them mutinied and asked the Germans to join them. Muller and his men refused and awaited their onward journey.

Sydney’s victory did not include the capture of Mucke’s shore party. After lying hidden and watching the action, they took over a three-master schooner and some supplies and sailed to Sumatra, just north of Cocos, as soon as Sydney left the scene of action. Even though none of them knew how to handle a sailboat, they eventually got there and found a German merchant ship getting ready to head for German East Africa. Reaching Yemen in early May 1915, they began a long trek along the eastern Red Sea coast to get to friendly territory, and then to Constantinople in Turkey, before making their way to Germany. Truly, those of Emden were made of stern stuff. Recognising Emden’s feats, the Kaiser awarded the Iron Cross to the ship and all its crew besides granting them the right to suffix their names with the word “Emden”. Muller became Muller-Emden, a naval legend.

 Frontline print Edition Sep 5,2014

Exhibition of centenary of Emden's attack of Madras being held

This day, exactly 100 years ago, Madras, as Chennai was known then, became the first and only Indian city to be attacked during World War I. On August 26, 1914, the German light cruiser SMS Emden shelled the city from the harbor.

Though the loss of lives was minimal, the sheer audacity of the attack led to the coining of a new word in Tamil, 'Emden', meaning 'a daring challenger'. The SMS Emden was later defeated by the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney, the first victory for the Royal Australian Navy.

A hundred years on, the centenary of this attack is being celebrated by the Australian Consulate General at the Hyatt Regency Hotel via an exhibition, 'Centenary of the Emden Spirit: 100 Years of Shared Military History'. The exhibition consists of a collection of photographs, portraits and artifacts obtained from the Australian War Memorial, the Royal Australian Navy's Sea Power Centre and the Royal Madras Yacht Club, among others.

"This unique exhibition recognises the historical link between the city of Chennai and Australia represented by the Emden. The exhibition is also highly significant for Australia as it marks one of the very first overseas commemorations of our country's involvement in the First World War," said Sean Kelly, Australian Consul-General.

In addition to highlighting the Emden's raid on Madras and its subsequent defeat by the Sydney, the exhibition also features a number of photographs depicting Indians and Australians serving together on a number of battle fronts, particularly during the First and Second World Wars. (ANI)

Big News Network (ANI)Tuesday 26th August, 2014