The wolf : the mystery raider that terrorized the seas during World War I
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-363) and index.

On November 30, 1916, a freighter left Kiel, Germany harbor and would not touch land for fifteen months. It was the beginning of an astounding 64,000-mile voyage that would take the ship around the world, leaving a trail of destruction and devastation. This was no ordinary freighter, this was the Wolf, a disguised German warship. In this account of an audacious, lethal World War I expedition, Richard Guilliatt and Peter Hohnen depict the Wolf 's assignment: to terrorize distant ports of British Empire by laying minefields and sinking freighters, hastening Germany's goal of starving her enemy into submission. To maintain secrecy, she could never pull into port or use her radio, and to comply with rules of sea warfare, her captain tried to avoid killing civilians aboard merchant ships he attacked, taking crews and passengers prisoner before sinking the vessels. The Wolf became a huge floating prison, with more than 400 captives, including a number of women and children, from 25 different nations. Forced to survive on food and fuel plundered from other ships, facing death from scurvy, and hunted by combined navies of five Allied nations, the Germans and their prisoners came to share a common bond. The will to survive transcended enmities of race, class, and nationality. Under the command of Captain Karl Nerger, who conducted his deadly business with an admirable sense of chivalry, the Wolf traversed three major oceans and destroyed over 30 thirty Allied vessels. We learn of the world through which the Wolf moved, with its social divisions and xenophobia, its bravery and stoicism, its combination of old-world social mores and rapid technological change. The story of this epic voyage is a real-life narrative and detailed picture of a world transformed by war--Publisher's description.