Wreck sheds light on ignominious downfall of World War I sail-raider

It was built in Glasgow, captured by Germany during World War I and sent to the South Pacific to hunt allied vessels as one of the last sail-powered warships, before smashing into a reef and meeting an ignominious end. Now, more than 100 years later, German divers have found the remains of the Seeadler strewn across the Mopelia atoll, almost 500km west of Tahiti in French Polynesia.

Originally named the Pass of Balmaha, the ship was captured by a German U-boat in 1915 and chosen as a raider because it was able to disguise itself as a Norwegian wood carrier and would not need to stop for coal.

Engineers fitted it with a secret auxiliary diesel engine and two bow cannon were concealed under huts on the deck.

It slipped through the British blockade of Germany in December 1916 and set about stopping and sinking British, French and American freighters in a seven-month, 29,000km campaign that ended only when it was dashed against a reef.

Despite successful attacks on more than a dozen vessels, the Seeadler was responsible for only two deaths: that of a 16-year-old sailor on board the Horngarth who was wounded by a warning shot fired by the raider, and the Seeadler’s dachshund Schnauzchen, who is said to have suffered a heart attack after encountering a hermit crab.

The ship’s end was romanticised by the captain, who claimed that it fell victim to a tsunami, but the recently published log book suggested that it had been poorly anchored when he and the crew had gone ashore.

‘‘The tsunami was an excuse. They just said that because they didn’t want to look stupid,’’ Florian Huber, who led the dive, said. The sinking left the crew of more than 60 and their prisoners stranded on the uninhabited atoll.

The research is part of a wider operation to trace 25 lost wrecks of German navy vessels that were deployed in the Indian Ocean, Pacific and South Atlantic.