The Wolf

Richard Guilliatt and Peter Hohnen

2009

Military History

Published by William Heinemann Australia

Random House Australia

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

The Wolf is the story of a successful commerce raider, a German merchant ship converted to a warship in World War 1 to harass allied shipping. Germany was in dire straits. The Royal Navy had blockaded German ports and essential imports like fertiliser and food were not getting in. Germany had a powerful Navy of its own but the Kaiser was unwilling to risk it in a confrontation with the British fleet, so it stayed in port.

The British had their own problems. Like Germany they were dependent on imports and these were being choked off by the almost unrestricted submarine warfare waged by the German Navy. This was so effective that there was really little need for Germany to field its capital ships. Meanwhile in the rest of the world’s oceans Allied shipping was almost free from interference. This included the vital food trade from Australia and New Zealand and the troop reinforcements being sent from there.

The commerce raider concept was designed to harry this mostly unprotected shipping. A raider would sow sea mines in the approaches to harbours, sink shipping, and generally make a nuisance of itself. This would divert important defensive ships from the Atlantic convoys and give the submarines a better chance of a kill. It was good value from Germany’s point of view. The ships were converted from merchantmen that could not otherwise be used and their cargo space could hold captured crews, extra fuel and any goods taken from the captured ships. They were fitted with heavy guns hidden by drop-down panels along the side of the ship. They would be self sufficient as far as possible, not putting into port and keeping out of radio contact. Their mobility was their strength. They could not fight a running gun battle with a modern warship so it was prudent to slip away and start up again somewhere else.

The drawback was that ships need regular maintenance and would eventually break down or finally have a run in with a warship. The results of such encounters were rarely in the raider’s favour and their sorties earned a reputation as suicide missions.

The Wolf’s beginning was not auspicious. Originally christened the Jupiter, it ran aground and was almost destroyed before it left the Baltic. Rebuilt as the Wolf it was put under the command of Kapitan Karl Nerger. Nerger was a bit of an outcast in the Navy. He was from the wrong social background and had a de-facto wife and four children as the Navy had not given him permission to marry. He was a competent captain and spent a long time preparing the Wolf for its mission. His task was to drop mines off Cape Town, the ports of India and Ceylon, and Australia and New Zealand. He would then continue to attack shipping as long as possible.

His biggest advantage was the incompetence of the Allied naval authorities. As ships ran into Nerger’s mines the authorities blamed saboteurs on the docks – they could not believe that a raider was around. As ship after ship disappeared the blame was repeatedly put on saboteurs, bad weather, espionage – anything but the truth. Their position turned from incompetence to a coverup. Partly this was political. The Australian and New Zealand navies had no minesweepers and most of their capital ships were seconded to the British navy in the Atlantic. This was an admission that the public would not want to hear. Nerger had a fairly free run of the oceans and militarily his mission was a success. The ship was at sea for 444 days and travelled an estimated 64,000 miles. More than 138,000 tons of shipping was sunk or damaged.

Where this book excels is in the human aspect of the voyage. The authors have gone to a lot of trouble to research the people on the ship, both the 350 crew and the (eventually) 467 prisoners. Conditions on the ship were dreadful with overcrowding, disease and dissatisfaction among the crew. In spite of this many friendships were formed between the Germans and their prisoners. Nerger appears to have been a relatively humane man but he had to rely on food and coal from captured ships. This left the ship with a deficient diet and eventually scurvy and other diseases broke out. It says much for Nerger that few of his prisoners died on the voyage.

Other people were affected by the Wolf’s voyage. Although the British Naval Intelligence Service suspected a commerce raider was at large their warnings were disregarded by the Australian and New Zealand governments and naval staff. The local newspapers whipped up anti-German sentiment and many innocent Australians and South Africans of German origin were interned or persecuted during the war. Families of missing seamen were left completely uninformed of the fate of their menfolk and it was only when the Germans released the news of the completion of the Wolf’s voyage that they found that their men had not died at sea after all.

Nerger was determined to bring his ship home to the Baltic at the end of his mission. This alone was a brilliant feat of seamanship since it required taking the now worn-out, dreadfully slow freighter through some of the coldest, roughest ocean in the world and dodging the British blockade and his own submarines along the way. Although he was feted as a hero, his glory was soon overshadowed by other more socially acceptable and self-promoting captains of ships like the Emden and Seeadler.

I found the book compelling reading as much for the human side as for the historical information. It is essential reading in so many fields of military history. The authors have done a brilliant job of humanising this relatively small byway of the war that had such a big effect.

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This review will appear in Volume 2 No.5 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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