Ahoy Shipmates

Part 2 of the The Voyage of Seeadler

On the 24th January the small 364-ton Canadian schooner Perce was met and sunk by machine gun fire, after taking off the crew and the captain's new bride.

The 3,071 ton French four-masted Antonin, loaded with Chilean saltpetre, was overhauled on 3 February and soon scuttled.

On 9 February the 1,811 ton Italian Buenos Ayres, also carrying saltpetre, was sunk.

On 19 February a four-masted barque was spotted, which immediately piled on sail in an effort to get away; however, Seeadlers engines allowed her to overhaul the 2,431 ton British grain-carrying Pinmore. By coincidence, von Luckner had sailed on Pinmore in his civilian sailing days, back in 1902. Luckner took Pinmore into the port of Rio de Janeiro in order to get more supplies, before eventually scuttling her.

The next ship to be stopped was the Danish barque Viking, but as there was nothing unusual about its cargo the neutral ship was allowed to proceed unmolested.

On the morning of the 26th February the 1,953 ton British barque British Yeoman, carrying a welcome cargo including chickens and pigs, was stopped and sunk, and the same evening the French four-master Le Rochfoucauld fell victim to the Seeadler. The boarding party discovered that Le Rochfoucauld had only recently been stopped by a British cruiser which was looking for the Seeadler.

Regards

Sean