The German Secret Service in America 1914-1918. John Price Jones

      Dr. Karl Buenz, managing director of the

       Hamburg-American Line

      The cablegram of July 31 called on Dr. Buenz to carry out this contract. There was consultation at once with Boy-Ed for the location of the vessels to be supplied, merchant ships were chartered or purchased, then loaded, and despatched. The first to leave New York harbor was the Berwind. There was hesitancy among the conspirators as to who should apply for her clearance papers—documents of which Dr. Buenz protested he knew nothing. They finally told G. B. Kulenkampff, a banker and exporter, that the Berwind was loaded with coal, and directed him to get the clearance papers. He swore to a false manifest of her cargo and got them. The Berwind carried coal to be sure—but she also carried food for German warships, and she was not bound for Buenos Aires, as her clearance papers stated. Thus the United States, by innocently issuing false papers, made herself, on the third day of the war, a party to German naval operations.

      The steamship Lorenzo dropped down the harbor, ostensibly for Buenos Aires, on the following day, August 6, cleared by a false manifest, and bearing coal and food for German sailors. On these ships, and on the Thor (from Newport News for Fray Bentos, Uruguay), on the Heine (from Philadelphia on August 6 for La Guayra), on the J. S. Mowinckel and the Nepos (out of Philadelphia for Monrovia) and others Boy-Ed and Buenz had placed supercargoes bearing secret instructions. These men had authority to give navigating orders to the captains once they were outside the three-mile limit—orders to keep a rendezvous with German battleships by wireless somewhere in the Atlantic wastes.

      The Berwind approached the island of Trinidad and Herr Poeppinghaus, who was her supercargo, directed the captain to lie to. Five German ships, the Kap Trafalgar, Pontus, Elinor Woerman, Santa Lucia and Eber, approached and the transfer of supplies started. It was interrupted by the British converted cruiser Carmania. She engaged in a brisk two-hour duel with the Kap Trafalgar which ended only when the latter sank into the tropical ocean. The Berwind meanwhile put the horizon between herself and the Carmania.

      Few of the chartered ships carried out their intentions, although their adventures were various. Hear the story of the Unita: Her skipper was Eno Olsen, a Canadian citizen born in Norway. Urhitzler, the German spy placed aboard, made the mistake of assuming that Olsen was friendly to Germany. He gave him his "orders," and the skipper balked. "'Nothing doing,' I told the supercargo," Captain Olsen testified later, with a Norwegian twist to his pronunciation. "She's booked to Cadiz, and to Cadiz she goes! So the supercargo offered me $500 to change my course. 'Nothing doing—nothing doing for a million dollars,' I told him. The third day out he offered me $10,000. Nothing doing. So," announced Captain Olsen with finality, "I sailed the Unita to Cadiz and after we got there I sold the cargo and looked up the British consul."

      One picturesque incident of the provisioning enterprise was the piratical cruise of the good ship Gladstone, rechristened, with a German benediction, Marina Quezada. Under the name of Gladstone, the ship had flown the Norwegian flag on a route between Canada and Australia, but shortly after the outbreak of war she put into Newport News. Simultaneously a sea captain, Hans Suhren, a sturdy German formerly of the Pacific coast, appeared in New York, called upon Captain Boy-Ed, who took kindly interest in him, and then departed for Newport News. Here he assumed charge of the Marina Quezada.

      "I paid $280,000 in cash for her," he told First Officer Bentzen. After hiring a crew, he hurried back to New York, where he received messages in care of "Nordmann, Room 801, 11 Broadway, N. Y. C."—Captain Boy-Ed's office. Captain Boy-Ed had already told him to erect a wireless plant on his ship—the equipment having been shipped to the Marina Quezada—and to hire a wireless operator. He then handed Suhren a German naval code book, a chart with routes drawn, and sailing instructions for the South Seas, there to await German cruisers. Food supplies, ordered for the steamer Unita (which at that time had been unable to sail) were wasting on the piers at Newport News and Captain Boy-Ed ordered them put in the Marina Quezada. Two cases of revolvers also were sent to the boat.

      Again Suhren went back to the ship and kept his wireless operators busy and speeded up the loading of the cargo, which was under the supervision of an employee of the North German Lloyd. Needing more money before sailing in December, 1914, he drew a draft for $1,000 on the Hamburg-American Line, wiring Adolf Hachmeister, the purchasing agent, to communicate with "Room 801, 11 Broadway."

      Then trouble arose over the ship's registry. Though Suhren insisted that he owned her, a corporation in New York whose stockholders were Costa Ricans were laying claim to ownership, for they had christened her and had secured provisional registration from the Costa Rican minister in Washington. Permanent registry, however, required application at Port Limon, Costa Rica. So hauling down the Norwegian ensign that had fluttered over the ship as the Gladstone, Captain Suhren ran up the Costa Rican emblem. He had obtained false clearance papers stating his destination as Valparaiso. They were based upon a false manifest, and he sailed for Port Limon. The Costa Rican authorities declined to give Suhren permanent papers, and he found himself master of a ship without a flag, and in such status not permitted under international law to leave port. He waited for a heavy storm and darkness, then quietly slipping his anchor, he sped out into the high seas, a pirate. Off Pernambuco he ran up the Norwegian flag, put into port and got into such difficulties with the authorities that his ship and he were interned. His supplies never reached the raiders and Boy-Ed learned of another fiasco.

      The Lorenzo, Thor and Heine were seized at sea. The Bangor was captured in the Straits of Magellan. Out of twelve shiploads of supplies, only some $20,000 worth were ever transshipped to German war vessels. This involved a considerable loss, as the following statement of expenditures for those vessels made by the Hamburg-American Line will show: