Gentlemen of War, by Dan van der Vat

Gentlemen of War: The Amazing Story of Captain Karl von Muller and the SMS Emden, by Dan van der Vat
William Morrow and Company, Inc 1983
published in England first, as The Last Corsair
198 pages, plus 8 pages of photos, Sources, and index

Front Matter
Gentlemen of War is a dramatic but strictly factual rendering of what is perhaps the most exciting naval adventure of World War I: the lone campaign of the German light cruiser SMS Emden against the British Empire in the Indian Ocean. For his research author Dan van der Vat went back to British and German naval records to uncover totally fresh information to support this account of how one raider without a base came to be hunted by seventy-eight British and Allied warships.

The amazing feats of the Emden were accomplished in major part because of the genius of her captain, Karl von Müller, who became a hero at sea in the same way the Red Baron von Richthofen did in the air. Muller's valor was recognized not only in Germany and among neutral nations but also by the British themselves, who regarded him as the quintessence of "the gallant enemy." His ship swiftly turned into a legend whose aura was enhanced by the courtesy of its crew and by their skill in military piracy. When the Emden was finally overwhelmed by the huge odds against her, The Times and other British papers expressed relief that Müller had survived!

But before her capture, the Emden wreaked havoc throughout the Indian Ocean, which, in naval terms, was supposed to be a British lake. Surviving on coal and provisions seized from enemy ships, the Emden delayed troop movements, sank two warships, held up twenty-one British merchantmen, sending sixteen to the bottom, abducted four colliers, shelled Madras, causing a huge oil fire, and made a daring hit-and-run raid on Penang.

Nor does the story end with the Emden's surrender. When the ship went to fight her last battle, fifty men under First Officer Hellmuth von Mücke were accidentally marooned on a remote island. Stealing a leaky little schooner, the castaways got home to Germany in the most remarkable evasion of the war. And almost equally startling is the exploit of Lieutenant Julius Lauterbach, who escaped across the East Indies, the Pacific, a still neutral United States and the Atlantic to receive a hero's welcome back in Germany.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Direction Island, 9 November 1914
Part I: The War cruise of SMS Emdem
1. The Swan of the East
2. 'Fair to see and yet bound to die'
3. Farewell to the Squadron
4. Gentlemen-of-War
5. Madras, 22 September 1914
6. Thirteen unlucky ships
7. Penang, 28 October 1914
8. 'Strange ship in entrance'
9. The Battle of the Cocos Island

Part II: Escape to Germany
10. SMS Ayesha - the Kaiser's smallest warship
11. SS Choising to the rescue
12. The amazing adventures of Julius Lauterbach
13. In the hands of the Turkish ally
14. Through the British blockade
15. The Battle of the Dunes
16. The last evasion
17. 'For Germany'
18. Triumph in Constantinople

Part III: Glory and After
19. The later careers of the principle figures
20. Echoes

Epilogue: Emden, 17 December, 1980
A Note on sources
Index

Photos
--SS Emden
--Captain Karl von Muller
--First Officer Hellmuth von Mucke
--Victim number 15: SS Clan Grant
--HMAS Sydney
--Wreck of the Emden
--Direction Island: the transmitter mast and two unidentified men
--Ayesha
--Unidentified crew members of Emden in Constantinople with unidentified officials and soldiers of that city