THE H FILES The day in 1917 when Sea
100 years since escape of colourful Count and 10 other prisoners
Astiff northerly was blowing when Count Felix von Luckner and 10 other German wartime prisoners hopped into a stolen motor boat and slipped out of Auckland unnoticed.
They were resourceful. They had built a navigation sextant and radio, stored up food and pilfered petrol, and disabled their captors’ telephone line at the internment camp on Motuihe Island in the Hauraki Gulf.
They also took the only other boat on the island, a dinghy, leaving the guards unable to follow. It wasn’t until midnight that the phone line was repaired and authorities on the mainland could be notified. Von Luckner, a German naval officer, had a six-hour head-start on his pursuers.
His audacious escape on the evening of December 13, 1917 during World War I, and his recapture at sea eight days later, captivated the New Zealand public and helped to create his folk hero status.
“No local news which has been published in Auckland or in New Zealand since the war commenced has aroused such an indignant storm of protest as the escape of the Germans,” the Herald wrote.
An indignant storm of military protest swung on to the camp commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Turner, on whose boat Pearl the Germans had fled. He faced a court-martial and was sacked over the lax security at the camp.
“There was virtually no security; there were no fences,” says Fiona Alexander, of the Motuihe Island Restoration Trust. She is helping to organise an event, including historical talks and walks, at the island next Sunday to mark the centenary of von Luckner’s stay.
Von Luckner commanded the Seeadler (Sea Eagle), an armed sailing ship with auxiliary engines, in which he attacked merchant ships in the Atlantic and Pacific.
He sank 14, with the loss, it is said, of just one life, and his captives, some of whom he sent off in a French ship he had captured, said he had treated them well. All of this, along with his earlier life as a circus worker, professional boxer and international jack-of-all-trades after running away to sea at 13, fed his later reputation in New Zealand as a decent chap.
His good fortune ran out in August 1917 when the Seeadler hit a reef at Maupihaa Island in French Polynesia. The crew stripped gear off the ship and got ashore with their 46 prisoners and set up camp.
Von Luckner and five men set out in one of the ship’s boats for Fiji, 2900km to the west. On the way, they stopped at the Cook Islands, passing themselves off as Norwegians to the New Zealand resident at Aitutaki, who was suspicious but hadn’t the means to detain them.
At the Fijian island of Wakaya, the police were called. They arrested the Germans and sent them to Auckland.
The Motuihe wartime internment camp was for “first class” Germans, such as the Governor of Samoa Dr Erich Schultz, his chief judge and other senior officials. Von Luckner the aristocrat joined them, with his second in command and a rating as a steward. The other three seamen were sent to Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington.
Such was the gentleman’s security that camp commander Turner is said to have requested von Luckner not to escape. The internees were even allowed trips into the city.
“Not just shopping, but for medical treatment,” says Judit Tunde McPherson, who will give one of the historical talks on Sunday.
One prisoner, a radio technician, made a radio from scratch.
“There were a couple of bits they couldn’t make from scratch so he pretended to have tooth ache. They put him on the launch and took him to the barber [who did dental work] at Narrow Neck where he got the parts he needed.”
The escapees made for the Mercury Islands, northeast of the Coromandel Peninsula. With a gun they boarded a timber transport boat the Moa and turned offshore. But they were seen from Moa’s companion boat the Rangi several kilometres away.
The armed steamer the Iris was sent in pursuit and on December 21, 1917 glimpsed the Moa’s masts at the Kermadec Islands, nearly 1000km northeast of the mainland. Von Luckner hoisted sails and a German naval flag and tried to flee.
“. . . but we overhauled her in about