VON LUCKNER.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4653, 25 January 1924, Page 1

VON LUCKNER.

NOW A PASSENGER CAPTAIN.

One or the most remarkable incidents of the war as far as the Southern. Hemisphere was concerned was the advent of Count Felix von Luckner, the pirate captain of the See Adler, which captured so many small vessels before it was itself captured and its captain and crew interned in Nev.’ Zealand.

Count Felix von Luckner, who 1 commanded the pirate ship, cut - matic figure, especially when «s--caped from his island prison in Auckland, and gave the authorities a few anxious days pursuing him.

Now (says a special correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, writing from Hamburg) he is on one of the passenger steamers plying out of Hamburg, and he has put aside all the boisterous glory of his war experiences. When he was sent,back to Germany from New Zealand he wrote a book which has not been translated. But, with the aid of a German officer, I have read portions of the book, and, although. his tatements about his Australian adventure are true in the main, he dresses himself in great glory. When he arrived back in Germany, he lectured for some time ; then he wrote his book; and then he was put in charge of one of the training ships for mercantile marine officers. But this ship was part of the fleet handed over to England, so he had to seek elsewhere for a post. He has now become captain of a passenger boat. One of the German captains to whom I spoke—a captain who lived in Bremen, and who knew von Luckner—said that he was a very peaceful and fallen pirate in these days. He belong, to a poor German family, with nothing but the title to distinguish it. He was so poor that his people could not send him to be a naval officer, and he had to be content with a career in the mercantile marine.

It is interesting to hear him spoken of by his own people and compare the impression with our own .formed while he was terrorising the South Pacific. I really think he. was a greater hero in our eyes than in the eyes of his own people. One officer to whom I mentione_d von Luckner’s ’name said, “He is nothing. . . • He is not great. ... He talks all th 2 time—and that is all.”