"SEA-DEVIL" AT TAHITI

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 81, 29 December 1937, Page 5

"SEA-DEVIL" AT TAHITI

Our Own Correspondent).

Von Luckner to arrive in N.Z. in January POLITICS NOT INVOLVED

(From

SYDNEY, Dec. 23. Count Felix von Luckner, the famous German ex-naval officer, and his young wife pushed their way through a group of .natives and climbed the gangway of the British motorship Hauraki while it was at Papeete (Tahiti). "I've come across for a chat. My yacht is down the bay," he told the offieers standing on the deck. "Von Luckner was eager ,to talk about the sea and was very friendly," an officer said when the Hauraki reached Sydney from Vancouver and island ports this week. Von 'Luckner smoked his pipe as he told the offieers he was making a point of visiting all of his old haunts on his leisurely cruise. He was on his way to Samoa from Hawaii, and hoped to be in New Zealand by the end of January. He made no niention of visiting Australia. He had a longing, he said, to retum to New Zealand, "that most wonderful country in the world." "This cruise is a wedding present to my wife. I promised it to her before we were married," he said, and smiled at his little wife, who is fair-haired and charming. Von Luckner had been at Papeete for several days, and had had a hearty reeeption from the inhabitants. He was keenly interested in the gun from his old wartime ship, the Seeadler, which had been mounted on the foreshore of the harbour facing the reef. His auxiliary yacht, the Seeteufel, is a modern vessel, and von Luckner likes to talk about it. He told the_ offieers that it had been a Norwegian* fishing schooner, and he had fitted it with the latest in navigation equipment. Count von Luckner was indignant about the report that he was not wanted in New Zealand because he was thought to be a Nazi agent. He protested that in all his life he had had nothing to do with politics — he had always been a sailor and a citizen of the sea.