HOW THE SYDNEY WON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 163, 16 December 1914, Page 3

HOW THE SYDNEY WON.

♦ EMDEN COMPLETE WRECK. I MASS OF TANGLED STEEL. 1 CLEVER MANOEUVRING. ■I The following description of the fight '•. between the Sydney ana the Emden has . been furnished to Australian papers by i Captain C. E. W. Bean, the Australian k press representative with the forces: — > "As the Emden lias 4in guns, and the • Sydney a fewer number of Gin. the Em- • den's game was naturally to close, and ■ use her guns at short range, at which > they were most effective. This she tried - to "do again and again during the first • part of the action, but the Sydney would i never let her manage it. The Sydney's j engines were in perfect condition; dur- , ing part of the fight, when full speed ; was called for, she. probably attained her full trial speed. The Emden was never a match for her in this respect, even be- . fore the event took place, which placed . her entirely at the Sydney's mercy. "As the Emden came out, the distance rapidly decreased, and the range ; was reached at which the Sydney expected to begin the battle. She swung ' round on to the parallel course, and the order had been actually given to fire when the Emden surprised onlookers by firing the first shot. It went whistling overhead, exactly where the first broadside ought to go. "The Emden's shooting at the beginning of the fight was extraordinarily rapid. Her little 4in. guns were being fired at an extreme range so great indeed that it can only be explained by i the fact that the Germans use their guns at every elevation amounting; to as much as 30 degrees. The result was that her shots, by the time they reached the Sydney, were falling at a very heavy angle, a fact which is made quite clear by the direction of the shot holes in the Sydney, where they can be traced in almost every ease from an entry high up on the port side, to the exit much lower on the starboard side. The Sydney's shots, on the other hand, pierced the Emden almost horizontally. EXCELLENT GUNNEKY. The Emden's fire was so fast that she must actually have had at times no less than three salvos in the air at once, each on its way towards the Sydney.: The water around the Sydney was'lashed as with a flatt, the spray being thrown all over her, and for the first ten minutes or so the hits were fairly frequent. It was about the Emden's fourth salvo | —which means in her case, a discharge ' of five guns at once—which did the first ; damage to the Sydney. By this time the Sydney's shells were undoubtedly hitting the Emden, but the bursting of a shell inside the enemy's ship can only be told when something falls. "The first sign which those on board the Sydney saw of their own fire was when the Emden's foremost funnel was seen to fall overboard. Shortly afterwards the enemy's foremast suddenly, lurched over the side of the ship. Part of it remained there, striking out horizontally like a boom; ; the rest went into the sea. The Germans set their main ] fire control position high up on this mast and the men in it were all thrown into the sea. BROADSIDE THAT SETTLED, IT. It was just after this, about a quarter of an hour after the first shot was fired, that a salvo from the Sydney entered the stern of the Emden, and burst just before her after-deck. The effect of this shot was astonishing. The deck itself was lifted and torn from its beams, and left with a surface like that of a sea wave. The after gun upon it was instantly put out of action. Seventeen —probably the greater part of one gun crew—were blown alive overboard into the sea, when they swam about, with no j wreckage to help them, and most of them i wounded, until the Sydney happened tf come across several of them at var- j ious periods from seven to eight hours ' later, and picked them out of tlie water i alive. The same salvo set the Emden ' furiously on fire aft—a fire which could s not be and was not put out. And most ■ serious of all, the same shot destroyed < her steering gear. , i With, every portion of her on fire ex- | cept the forecastle, with her stern ac- j tually growing red hot, and the smoke I from the stokehold escaping through [ three holes in the deck where once three ( funnels had been, the Emden was turned ( towards North Keeling Island to save her i from sinking. The German colors— the ( white ensign with the black cross—were j still flying from the mainmast; those ( on the foremast, had, of course, been . shot away. Almost to the end, one gun : still barked at intervals. Then the ship ] ran high on to the coral reefs. Her | nose was lifted almost clear of the sea. , A short stretch of seething surf separ- - atod her from the shore. The Sydney , gave her two more broadsides as she | passed her stern, and then stood off at \ once to hunt a collier that had appeared. , NOT TO BE DESCRIBED. When the Sydney returned to the Emden, she carried with her the doctor from Cocos Island and other helpers. The condition of the Emden's people was pitiable. Her stern was simply unree- , ognisable. The greater part of the ship was nothing more than a mass of tangled steel. It was difficult even to get about her. Her survivors were all in the fore- , castle—one five had started there and had burned itself out or had been extinguished. There was not a drop of fresh water in the ship, and it is doubtful if any stores at all remained, except perhaps a few biscuits. The survivors had probably nothing either to eat nor drink since the action started, the. day before. Heavy seas washed past the ship, and made it almost impossible to reach the land. In spite of them, most of the badly wounded had struggled to the shore. It is almost certain that some must have been drowned in doing this, although the exact facts of this part of the story will probably never be known, simply because the survivors were not in a condition to tell or remember them. The most experienced of her doctors seems ;to have had one, of his legs broken, not in the action, but in reaching the land; and it is said that he drank salt water and died on the evening of the day of the fight. There was no fresh water on the island. It had been, uninhabited for ten years—and most of the men there were badly wounded. For the whole of the day the Sydney worked at bringing off the wounded. Darkness come on before it could be finished.

The only largo span tliat could bo rigged as ii hospital iir the Sydney was the waist of the ship, and in this the Germans were laid out side by side, and tended with tlie utmost rare as was possible under the conditions. The inhabitants in the nearest port naturally wished to give a hearty reception to the cruiser which had cleared tlie Indian Ocean of its worst scourge. But by the wish of everybody on lioard tlie Sydney 'forwent that demonstration. Xo one had any wish that the signs of cheering should' reach those that wore lying in the Rydneyte waist. Only one ship in harbor, which had apparently not re- / ceived this message, broke this rule —the Sydney came, up the roadstead in al- / most absolute silence.