Sank 200 Ships

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 663, 15 May 1929, Page 1

Sank 200 Ships

U-BOAT ACE TO VISIT AUCKLAND Captain of German Cruiser Emden NOW in command of the German cruiser Emden, wh:/.ii will arrive *at Auckland on a training cruise on June 26, Captain Lothar von Arnauld de la Periere, of French ancestry, was the most successful and most famous U-boat commander in the German Navy during the Great War.

Captain von Arnauld de la Periere, or simply Captain von Arnauld, as he is called, is the grandson of a French officer who fought as a soldier of fortune under Frederick the Great of Prussia, and who rose to the rank of general. The general founded a family in which the fighting tradition ran strongly, so that Captain von Arnauld began a service career almost automatically. For several years before the war he was torpedo officer of the first Emden —the ship which met its fate at the hands of H.M.A.S. Sydney, off the Cocos islands. When war broke out he was on the staff of the German Admiralty. Seeking excitement he asked for the command of a Zeppelin, but as none was available he went to the other extreme and entered the submarine service, taking command of a U-boat in 1916. Between January, 1916, and November, 1918, a period of 34 months, Captain von Arnauld sank over 200 ships of a total of 500,000 tons. For some reason or other most of the vessels he sank were merchantmen or transports. Almost all his work was done in the Mediterranean,

so that his “bag” was fairly evenly divided among the ships of all the Allies. On his first and record cruise in the Mediterranean, which lasted three weeks, he worked from his base at Pola, on the north-east corner of

the Adriatic, and sank 91,000 tons of shipping —no fewer than 54 ships. He remained in the Mediterranean until the spring of 1918, when he was ordered back to Germany and given command of one of the famous big submarine cruisers, the U-139. It wiil be remembered that in 1917 a large submarine, the Deutschland, visited the United States with a cargo and returned safely. This proved that the Atlantic was no insuperable barrier to under-water craft and at intervals during a period lasting from April to September, 1918, seven huge submarines were dispatched to raid the east coast of the United States. The last of these seven was the U-139. She never reached the American coast, being recalled by wireless when mid-way across the Atlantic as the armistice negotiations were on the point of being concluded. Before the signal of recall was received, however, she and her crew had been involved in the last great submarine battle of the war. This was a fight with a wellprotected convoy off Cape Finisterre, on the north coast of Spain, where the U-139 succeeded in sinking one of the convoy and damaging others by gunfire before slie was compelled to submerge. Two days later she captured and sank another steamer and also sank the gunboat convoying it. HUMANE OFFICER That was the end. She set off for America but was recalled. After the armistice she was handed over to the French, and, as if unwilling to serve her new masters, sank for ever on her first trip with a French crew. Captain von Arnauld’s name appears in many British accounts of the war—both official and otherwise. Each one of them has many gracious things to say of his courage, his humanity and above all, his sportsmanship Never once is he accused of the brutality that was laid at the doors of so many other U-boat commanders, and at least one of the merchant captains, who became his prisoner, wrote a letter of appreciation of the courteous way in which he had been treated. It may be said that Captain Lothar von Arnauld de la Periere went farther toward winning the war for Germany than any other individual fighter, so that the praise which he has received from his former enemies is all the more valuable.