SWEEPING THE SEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1939, Page 2

SWEEPING THE SEAS

ACTIVITIES IN LAST WAR. CHECKING ON RAIDS ON SHIPS. It is stated that a German pocket battleship, the Admiral von Scheer, is operating as a raider in the South Atlantic. At worst, the situation is far less difficult than it was for the Navy in 1914. When war broke out. Admiral von Spee was in the China Seas with two armoured cruisers and two light cruisers. One of the latter, the famous Emden, began a career of her own in the Indian Ocean and met her end at the hands of the Sydney at Cocos Island on November 9. Her story should need no retelling. Admiral von Spee. his strength increased by two light cruisers from the Atlantic, kept afloat until December 8. when his force, with one exception, was destroyed by Admiral Sturdee in the battle of the Falkland Islands. Before that he had, at Coronel, sunk two British cruisers, over 1600 officers and men of the Royal Navy perishing in the action.

In addition to actual warships, five armed German merchantmen were at sea in the early months of the war. They were gradually hunted down and destroyed or forced into neutral ports. To sum it up, there were 13 German warships abroad on August 4, 1914. Only one remained at large b'v the end of the year, and that one, the Dresden, survivor from the Falkland Islands, was sunk on March 14. Only two of the merchantmen survived into 1915 and by April both were interned in an American port. The seas had been swept clean of enemy surface ships, and so they remained, save for the single-handed ventures of such raiders as the Wolf, until the end of the war.