YELLOW JOURNALISM - PART 03

[sailorkitty]

I was going to talk smack about Nazi Germany today, but I think that's best left for after the Spring holidays end.

So here's a story about a German practising Ethical Piracy instead.

Felix von Luckner was born in 1881. He grew up during the day of ’Treasure Island’ being required reading material for little boys, as was ’Peter Simple’ and other tales of Wooden Ships and Iron Pirates. As his family was a) composed of Cavalrymen and b) Prussians, he was expected to join the Cavalry. In childhood this was easy to dissmiss, but at 13, he began to worry about his long-term prospects of starring in a Boys’ Own novel.

After failing various entrance exams to several significant institutions, he he stole daddies’ pistol and ran away to work as Cabin Boy on a Russian sailing ship, tearfully vowing not to return until he was wearing ’the Emperor's naval uniform, and with honour’. A few weeks after leaving port, Luckner was knocked overboard. Since he was only a cabin boy, the Russians did not bother saving him. So Luckner swam back to the boat by himself, because he was going to be an adventuring sailor of the old school, and nobody was going to stop him from doing that.

Once they reached Australia, one of the few still-largely-undiscovered frontiers, Luckner ditched the ship and took a job in a lighthouse. He lost said job after being caught with his bosses’ daughter, and took up Kangaroo-hunting instead. This lasted until he wanted to check something else from the ’Stuff Boys do in pulp fiction’ list, and so ran off to join the circus. His career went on to professional boxing, which somehow developed into a short stint at sea, taking him to South America where he served in the Mexican Army.

Once that got boring, he started working in railway construction, eventually going on to tend bar in a tavern, until he got arrested for stealing pigs and got sent to jail. At some point, he broke his leg in Jamaica and got kicked out of the hospital for being broke (Upon which I choose to believe that he was lovingly nursed back to health by a bosom companion).

At the age of 20, he grew tired of the rambling life and returned to Germany, where he enrolled in a naval college. And did in fact return home in the Kaiser’s uniform, with a Masters’ degree. His parents were overjoyed, as they had thought him dead.

But our tale does not end there. That was simply the late 1800’s pulp saga. The real Iron Men and Wooden Ships begun in 1916.

Von Luckner was, thanks to his experience with sailing ships, given command of the coolest, most amazing, incredulous ship ever known to Man. Or at least that’s the way he saw it. The rest of the German fleet were just relived to not have to worry about what to do with the old wooden sailing ship Seeadler. Originally built in Scotland in 1888, the ship had been boarded by a German U-boat and refitted with a reserve engine, along with secret compartments for extra manpower. It also bore machine guns and two canons that could be hidden under deck for extra Steampunk points. To a normal German, the ship was cucumber-some and very obviously an attempt at using what one had to make the best out of a less than ideal situation. To Von Luckner, it was his chance at living the boyhood dream of Wooden Ships, Iron Men and Piracy the likes of which the world had not seen in over one hundred years.

Luckner’s first challenge was getting around the British Naval Blockade that were hindering German ships from leaving European waters. Luckner, having lived Young Indiana Jones for the past 7 years or so, took aboard a few Norwegian-speaking officers and made the rest of his men STFU. He explained to The Royal Navy (in Norwegian) that this wooden ship was obviously just an old Norwegian whaling ship heading to the Atlantic.

British people are really bad at Scandinavian accents, so they shrugged and allowed the ship through. And thus Von Luckner had started his pirating career in the most iconic way possible; Getting a one-up on the Royal Navy.

After this, Luckner set to work pirating his way through the Atlantic. He’d run down merchant ships (or send out false distress calls), board the ship (Presumably with a knife between his teeth because why else would you), demand surrender and take the crew prisoner, then grab any cargo that looked interesting. He earned the name of Der Seeteufel (Demon of the Sea), while his crew were known as Die Piraten des Kaisers (the Emperor's Pirates).

Their glee-full carnival of John Silver-ing went on for four months. French, English, Italian ships were all fair game, as long as they were at war with Germany. Notably, he did remember whose army paid for his ship - Neutral boats were off-limits, which he lamented due to the neutral Dutch having the best alchohol. The entire carnival of plunder was carried out without killing anyone, probably because that’s maybe not the part of being a pirate that appealed to him, he just wanted to sail the cool ship and collect booty.

The problem with not killing anyone was that he ended up with ca 300 prisoners. Once he started running out of space, he captured a French ship, plundered the weaponry, and replaced it with all 300 prisoners, who were instructed to wait for 24 hours and then sail to Rio de Janeiro. This gave Luckner an unprecedented amount of good PR.

By 1917, Luckner had sunk 14 ships. As he was doing what Pirates do in waters that Pirates know best, he ended up stranded in the South Seas after a tsunami hit the Seeadler and sunk it on a coral reef. (Remember, this is a pirate story. We can’t have our hero being shot down by machine guns or artillery shells, that would be a WWI story and this is not that. It just happens to take place at the same time.) Luckily, Luckner managed to save the entire crew and supplies, and set up camp on the island. After several days and the unfortunate realisation that there was no treasure to be found on the island (I’m going to assume that Luckner buried some of his own because again, this is a pirate story), Luckner decided to try and get to Fiji using what was available to them, that is to say, he put five men and himself in a rowboat and went to Fiji. This trip took nearly a month and spanned 1,800 miles.

But land in Fiji they did. Unfortunately, the Fijians were not the Royal Navy, and so did not believe them to be Norwegians. Luckner was arrested and sent to New Zealand, Land of the Sheep. Because again, this is an 18th century Pirate story, Luckner was blamed for having sunk a passenger ship with civilians still on it. While the New Zealanders were busy figuring out that Luckner couldn’t possibly have done that, Luckner was imprisoned and placed in a Great Escape plot. This was extremely distressful, as he still had a full crew waiting for his return. If there’s one thing One Piece has taught us about Pirates, it’s that you do not under any circumstances abandon Nakama.

After two months of plotting, tapping prison telephone lines and building primitive navigational equipment, Luckner and his men opened the cell doors, cut the telephone and power cables, stole the camp commandant’s motorboat, and hoisted an Imperial German flag, crafted from a bedsheet and a sack of flour.

They sailed all night before reaching a civilian fishing boat, which they forcibly enlisted in the name of the German Empire. Unfortunately, the New Zealanders were not as bad at recognising pirates as the UK had been, and managed to catch our hero with one of their own warships. Luckner was sent off to a small prison camp on an island off of the coast of Auckland, presumably the closest thing NZ had to that creepy gaol from The Count of Montecristo and other books of the time.

But what of his crew? Well, they still bore their captains words close to their hearts. A French commercial ship landed to inspect the wreckage of the Seeadlar. Being true Pirates of the old school, the crew forcibly boarded and sailed it to South America in the spirit of their absent captain.

After the war, Luckner sailed off on a world tour. He was seen as a hero by both sides for his honourable conduct and low-kill count, leading him to be welcomed by his former enemies. New Zealand considered him to have been a formidable opponent, and he became for all intents and purposes a celebrity in his own right.

Oh, and Hitler did try to use Luckner for propaganda purposes. Luckner refused, so Hitler tried to get him arrested, but Luckner had more important Pirate things to do. Like smuggling humans, except instead of trafficking, he was helping a Jewish friend get out of Germany. Eventually he was given the death sentence by the Nazi Regime, but like a true Blackbeard he laughed in their faces, retired to Sweden, settled down in Malmö with a Swedish lady, and lived peacefully until his death in 1966.

Comments

[sonofgodzilla]

It takes a lot of dedication to turning your life into an adventure story. The way things are in the world right now, I think I'd be content to be a pirate, you know.