THE KARLSRUHE.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 24 January 1917, Page 5

THE KARLSRUHE.

A NAVAL MYSTERY SOLVED AT LAST. At last one of the greatest mysteries of the war, the fate of the German commerce raider Karlsruhe, has been solved (says the Central News Agency). The cruiser was blown up by an internal explosion on the evening of November -t, 1914, a short distance off the north - .eastern coast of South America. Most of the crow perished, but the surviving officers and men, sailing in one of her prizes, succeeded in slipping through the British network of warships, and reached a New York port on November 29. The "New York Times” publishes lengthy extracts from the diary of captain Aust, who was the adjutant of the cruiser’s commander, Captain Erich Kohler, who went down with the ship, in which the disaster is fully described. In his diary Captain Aust writes: “The first officer had just risen from the supper table, and some of the officers were on the point of leaving the hot afterpart of the ship for the cooler iffmosphere of the bridge, when a heavy shock, followed by a muffled cracking an,) grinding, shook the vessel. The electric lights went out. The ship immediately heeled over sharply on her port side. Right in front of our how I saw the floating hull of a ship, whi'-h sank in a few minutes. I thought it, ; must be a strange vessel with which ; wo had been in collision. As a matter of fact it was the forward part of out own ship. A terrific explosion had blown tlie Karlsruhe into two piece.-.- j The captain’s bridge and the foremast I must have been blown to atoms. No one had seen even a piece of them. Inc forward half of the ship 'went down, with the greater part of the crew, in a | few minutes. The after part remained i afloat ton about twenty minutes. 1o | this circumstance the sew survivors owe their salvation.” 1