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THE “EMDEN

Driven Ashore, Burning and Disabled, on the Keeling Cocos Islands, November 9, 1914

By Marshal South


THE page is closed.   No more across the waste of boundless waters shall her gray hull rise.

No longer shall her restless, pulsing screw furrow the sea lanes ’neath the tropic skies.

No longer shall her smoke cloud drift and trail, hazy and lone across the water dun,

Melting mysterious from dawn to dark.   The page is closed; her last hot race is run.

Her race is run.   No more her three stacks rise in distant menace from the lone sea rim,

The haunting terror of the open sea, an Ocean Ishmael, watchful, swift and grim.

No more with reckless daring will she steam beneath the battery guns to seek her foe;

No more the night shall hide her or the dawn reveal her clear against the sunrise glow.

Her fight is done.   She faced o’erwhelming odds—four thousands tons and four-inch guns alone,

Pitted against the warships of four powers—her speed the only friend to call her own.

She fought the losing fight and fought it well; by all the rules of war she played the game.

No stain nor blot nor coward action clings to dim the clean-cut record of her name.

Her record ends.   Upon the lonely isle, where gloom the palms against the setting sun—

Upon the Keeling Cocos, gaunt she lies; her guns are still; her long lone fight is done.

The sea birds wheel and skirl above her hull, the waves sob through her plates with every tide;

Her buckled decks are scorched and scarred by fire; the shell holes gape along her riven side.

The Emden!   Be ye Teuton, Briton, Gaul—Rejoice ye in her fall or mourn her loss—

Know that the men who manned her guns were men; like men until the end they held her course

No coward corsair this!   A gallant foe.   A dauntless fighter.   Though her flag be furled,

The Emden, captain, officers and crew, stand worthy of the laurels of the world.

—From the Los Angeles Times.



South, Marshal. “The ‘Emden’.” The Fatherland 1, no. 19 (December 16, 1914): 15.


South, Marshal. “The ‘Emden’.” The Fatherland 1, no. 19 (December 16, 1914): 15.

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Ishmael

In the Bible, Ishmael is the son of Abraham and his concubine Hagar, handmaid to his wife Sarah. When Sarah gave birth to Isaac, Ishmael was cast out. Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick (1851), begins with “Call me Ishmael.” In the American novel, the sailor Ishmael tells the story of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, and his obsession with finding Moby Dick, the white sperm whale that had bitten off his leg.


Rowe, Joyce A. “Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Oxford University Press, 2004. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195156539.001.0001/acref-9780195156539-e-0189.

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Keeling Cocos

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands, between Austrialia and Sri Lanka, were annexed by the British in 1857. The Germans lost the Battle of Cocos, one of the first naval battles of the war, on November 9, 1914.

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Teuton, Briton, Gaul

Reference to the German, British, and French.

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corsair

A private ship approved by the government to attack the merchant shipping of an enemy.


“corsair.” In The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, edited by I. C. B. Dear and Peter Kemp. Oxford University Press, 2006. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199205684.001.0001/acref-9780199205684-e-683.

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The Emden

The SMS Emden was a German light cruiser based at the port city of Qingdao (German Tsingtao), China, in June 1914, as part of the German East Asiatic Squadron, commanded by Admiral Maximilian Reichsgraf von Spee (1873–1923) and tasked with guarding German colonies in the Pacific Ocean. In mid–August, the squadron left Tsingtao to avoid capture by the Japanese; the Emden alone headed for the Indian Ocean, intercepting 29 Allied and neutral merchant ships, sinking 16 British merchant ships, a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer. On September 22, at night, the Emden bombed the city of Madras. The SMS Emden was destroyed by the Australian HMAS Sydney on November 9, 1914, in the Battle of Cocos, one of the first naval battles in the war.


Massie, Robert K. Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003, 181, 190, 195–96.


See also Suchoples, Jarosław, and John R. Robertson. “Emden, SMS.” In 1914–1918–online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, edited by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson. Freie Universität Berlin, 2014–. Article published December 4, 2017. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/emden_sms.

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The Emden

The SMS Emden was a German raider, a light cruiser based at the port city of Tsingtao (Qingdao), China, in June 1914, part of the German East Asiatic Squadron, commanded by Admiral Maximilian Reichsgraf von Spee (1873–1923) and tasked with guarding German colonies in the Pacific Ocean. In mid–August, the squadron left Tsingtao to avoid capture by the Japanese; the Emden alone headed for the Indian Ocean, intercepting 29 Allied and neutral merchant ships, sinking 16 British merchant ships, a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer.” On September 22, at night, the Emden bombed the city of Madras. The SMS Emden was destroyed by the Australian HMAS Sydney on November 9, 1914, in the Battle of Cocos, one of the first naval battles in the war.


Massie, Robert K. Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003, 181, 190, 195–96.


See also Suchoples, Jarosław, and John R. Robertson. “Emden, SMS.” In 1914–1918–online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, edited by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson. Freie Universität Berlin, 2014–. Article published December 4, 2017. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/emden_sms.