THE GREAT WAR DUEL ON THE HIGH SEAS
A century after a Merchant Navy captain was posthumously honoured with the nation’s highest military award, Steve Snelling charts the story of a remarkable sea fight which has been described by one of the combatants as “a duel as gallant as naval history can relate”.
Masked by a smother of fog and rain, the harmlesslooking freighter pitched and rolled as she forged on, windblown waves breaking over her bows and spindrift coursing across her decks. To all intents and purposes, the one-time banana boat seemed just another nondescript ‘tramp’battling the elements in one of the busiest of all Atlantic shipping lanes.
However, appearances were more than a little deceptive in the case of the Pungo. Behind a flush-deck veneer of innocence lay a lethal arsenal of weaponry that had made her the most celebrated and most feared disguised man o’war in the Imperial German Navy. In the space of a little over 15 months, the crew of the re-christened 4,788-ton Möwe (meaning Seagull) and her aristocratic commander, the chivalrous, goateebearded Fregattenkapitän Nikolaus Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien, had become national heroes.
Feted as latter-day buccaneers, their exploits were the stuff …
