Chivalrous foe's story lives again 90 years on

Associate Professor James Bade spent 10 years researching and writing his book, launched on Motuihe yesterday. Picture / Paul Estcourt

The colourful life of one of New Zealand's most famous prisoners of war is captured in a new book that took 10 years to write.

Sea Devil, written by Auckland University associate professor James Bade, is a biography of Count Felix von Luckner, a World War I German Navy officer best known in the South Pacific for his escape from a prisoner of war camp on Motuihe Island nearly 90 years ago.

The book was launched at Motuihe yesterday by Prime Minister Helen Clark, in support of the Auckland Heritage Festival.

As commander of the Seeadler (Sea Eagle) in 1916 and 1917, von Luckner sank 14 allied ships in the Atlantic and Pacific.

It was his knack of waging war without any casualties that made him a folk hero.

Because he preferred taking enemies prisoner to killing them, von Luckner eventually faced the problem of feeding nearly 300 prisoners, in addition to his own crew.

So when he captured the French sailing ship Cambronne off South America, he put his prisoners aboard it and told them to sail to nearby Buenos Aires.

They arrived safely, but von Luckner had reduced the ship's speed by removing some of its masts and rigging, giving the Seeadler time to escape.

Von Luckner was captured off Fiji when he was fooled into believing that the ferry Amra was armed.

He and his party surrendered and were taken to Motuihe, then used as a quarantine station and internment camp.

Professor Bade said von Luckner's escape from the island was not the daring event he later described.

The camp commander used a motor boat to travel to and from the island. He removed the engine's spark plugs when the boat was not in use, but two German mechanics who looked after the craft had a spare set.

Von Luckner had been on the island only a few weeks when he made his escape on December 13, 1917. He, the German mechanics and some other prisoners used the spare spark plugs and escaped on the boat.

"It was probably about the easiest escape you could think of," said Professor Bade. "It certainly wasn't daring, it was audacious in its straightforwardness."

The escapees were recaptured in the Kermadec Islands.

Professor Bade studied ship logs and von Luckner's war diaries for his book, which also has rare photographs from private collections.

Von Luckner died in Sweden in 1966.