SMS Dresden (1908)

The SMS Dresden was a light cruiser (Kleiner Kreuzer in German) of the German Kaiserliche Marine, launched in 1906, measuring 118 m. in length and three funnels, armed with ten 105 mm guns, and the first German cruiser equipped with Parsons-type turbines and four four-blade naval propellers, which allowed it to reach 28 knots, four more than its twin, the SMS Emden, with which constituted class.

He had an outstanding participation in the evacuation of Germans living in the port of Veracruz in Mexico at the beginning of 1914, taking Lieutenant Wilhelm Canaris among his officers, and during those days of siege the deported dictator Victoriano Huerta.

Pancho Villa made an offer to the German government to buy this cruise ship and others.^{[citation required]}

Service history

Before the First World War

On July 20, 1914, after the fall of the Huerta regime, the Dresden took Huerta, his vice president, Aureliano Blanquet, and their families to Kingston, Jamaica, where Britain had been granted asylum. Arriving in Kingston on the 25th, Köhler learns of the growing political tensions in Europe during the July Crisis that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. At this time, the ship needed repairs in Germany, and met her replacement, Karlsruhe, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the next day. Lüdecke, who had come to command the Karlsruhe, changed positions with Köhler aboard the Dresden. The Admiralty initially ordered the Dresden to return to Germany for general maintenance, but the intense threat of war on the 31st led the office to revoke the order instead. He instructed Lüdecke to prepare to carry out Handelskrieg (private) in the Atlantic.

First World War

After receiving orders to remain in the Atlantic, Lüdecke steered his ship south while maintaining radio silence to prevent hostile warships from discovering his ship. On the night of August 4–5, he received a radio report informing him of Britain's declaration of war on Germany. He chose the South Atlantic as the operational area for the Dresden, and sailed to the Brazilian coast. Off the mouth of the Amazon River, it stopped a British merchant ship on August 6. The ship, SS Drumcliffe, whose captain claimed to know nothing of Britain's entry into the war, was allowed to proceed in accordance with the rules of the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. The Dresden encountered the German collier SS Corrientes, a ship of the Hamburg Süd. The cruiser moved to Rock Atoll on the 12th, along with the HAPAG steamers SS Prussia, SS Baden, and SS Persia. After leaving the atoll, en route to Trinidad, the Dresden captured the British steamer SS Hyades; Lüdecke removed the crew from her and then sank her. The Dresden captured the British collier SS Holmwood on 24 August and sank her after evacuating her crew. After arriving in Trinidad, she rendezvoused with the gunboat SMS Eber and several steamers.

Colonel Battle

He joined von Spee's fleet, which came from Tsingtao (China), on Easter Island. From there he sailed with the fleet towards the South American coast, specifically Cape Horn.

It participated in the battle of Coronel (Chile) on November 1, 1914, where the German fleet was victorious.

Battle of the Falkland Islands

During a supply stop in Valparaíso, her sister ship the SMS Emden was disabled in the Cocos Islands (12°11′10.24″S 96°49′ 47.07″E / -12.1861778, 96.8297417) on 9 November by HMAS Sydeny. Von Spee's fleet left Valparaíso and, surrounding Cape Horn, sailed in pursuit of the Falkland Islands to attack Port Stanley. The SMS Dresden was the furthest ship from Spee's squadron, when the British fleet was able to put to sea from Port Stanley, losing the surprise factor that the Germans wanted to obtain.

In the Battle of the Falkland Islands on December 8 of the same year, where the British navy under the command of Vice Admiral Sir Frederick Sturdee sank almost all of Von Spee's ships, the SMS Dresden was the only surviving ship thanks to its turbines, which gave it greater speed (27 knots) during the forced escape.

Pursuit and concealment

The British did not want the SMS Dresden to slip away from them and they hunted throughout the southern region without finding it.

The SMS Dresden sailed through the Patagonian channels in search of refuge. Once the coal was exhausted, she remained hidden in narrow Chilean Patagonian channels not geographically demarcated (Santa Inés Island and Santa Magdalena Island), for several months and changed her position on many occasions, within the same area. The most spectacular place was the Quintupeu Fjord (42°5′41.17″S 72°33′16.40″W / -42.0947694, -72.5545556), at the mouth of which The SMS Dresden barely fit. It was anchored in Llancahué (42°10′17.30″S 72°24′06.37″W / -42.1714722, -72.4017694), Porcelana (42°29′3.36″S 72°26′11.69″W / -42.4842667, -72.4365806), Cahuelmó and Quintupeu. The crew survived thanks to abundant hunting, fishing and sources of natural drinking water, as well as the help of some chosen Germans living in Chile, such as Harry Rothenburg and Albert Pagels based in Punta Arenas (Chile). These people managed the supply of coal, food and news to the German crew.

Stealthy provisioning

Quintupeu is a beautiful, solitary fjord, with a narrow entrance no more than a cable wide, with a surface of three miles and a width of half a mile, surrounded by cliffs about 600 m high, covered with profuse vegetation, useful for supplying the ship's boilers with a waterfall of very pure water.

On February 6, 1915, at dusk, the damaged SMS Dresden arrives here, with the machines complaining and grinding. When passing the enormous cliffs of the narrow entrance, a sailboat with a German flag was observed that turned out to be one of the ships of the fleet of Carlos Oelkers de Calbuco that was captained by Enrique Oelkers, accompanied by the efficient collaborator Albert Pagels, who had informed them of the ship's emergency and brought food, coal and mechanics to take the damaged parts to Calbuco and Puerto Montt. At the end of February 1915 and already being able to sail, although with low coal reserves, he sought to meet a German supply ship on the high seas and then embark on the so-called sailing route to Oceania.

That same night began the glorious stay of the Dresden in this wonderful fjord. The warm summer air, the band playing on deck, beer, good, authentic cured meats made by the resident Germans and sausages in pots of boiling water, there couldn't be anything more wonderful after so many hardships! The next morning, very early, we begin disassembling the damaged pieces. All the staff had something to do, they had to hurry, because it was assumed that they would not be able to stay long, since this contravened the Hague Convention. Two very heavy boiler covers, semi-molten due to the tremendous temperatures to which they had been subjected, were removed, as well as shafts and parts of the rudder controls. Everything was transferred to the sailboat of the Oelkers fleet that would leave for Calbuco and Puerto Montt. The exhausted staff left early. The next day the work of disassembling the last damaged pieces continued with which Captain Wiebliz, Albert Pagels and two sailors would leave the next day at 5 in the morning on the ship's steam launch, heading to Guar Island. to be delivered at noon in the lonely Chipué estuary to the Elfeide, Pagels' schooner commanded by his collaborator Schindling, and taken to repair in Puerto Montt, a stratagem meticulously prepared in advance so as not to give away the position. of Dresden.

Before leaving with Pagels, Schindling gave Captain Wiebliz a bag of correspondence for the ship, collected by very different and strange means. Headed at 182° magnetic, a course they will maintain for 10 miles and then turn to port, to the block of Queultín Island and take the new course of 124° towards Llancahué Island. It was a sunny day with flat seas and light NW winds. The small steam engine of the boat chugged steadily, maintaining a speed, with the help of the wind, of 7 knots that predicted an early arrival in about 7 hours. With more than an hour left to change course on Queltin Island, Captain Wiebliz, at the request of the crew, agreed to open the mail bag. Above all the letters, a box immediately stood out, addressed to one of the crew sailors, Otto Hunger, the ship's cornet, who with great haste and anxiety opened it: it was a thick vest with a fur collar that his mother had knitted for him, because In a letter he had complained about the cold of the Magellanic canals. With great joy he puts it on even though it did not correspond to the summer temperature. By changing course to the west, favored by the downwind wind, the small boat increased its speed to almost 8 knots, which allowed them to reach the ship with the sun still high.

On the deck they found a mysterious drawer. The sawdust and remains of boards that surrounded it denoted its recent construction. When asking what it corresponded to, no one knew how to answer. When Captain Wiebliz went to report his mission to Commander Lüdecke, he asked him about the mysterious crate. The commander informed him that it was the mold that would be used to make the box containing the Mexican treasure, which he was trying to anchor in Quintupeo, since it had not been possible to deposit it in a bank in Germany. “Our destiny is too uncertain to continue with this responsibility,” the commander justified. In the morning, the mysterious drawer had disappeared, no trace of its existence remained. At the bottom of the ship, in a hold in the bilge, Lieutenant Canaris, Karl Hartwig the torpedo boatman and Gregor Bitter the carpenter, in strict secrecy, wrap the treasure box with linoleum and seal it with tar, and then place it in the aforementioned drawer. and concrete it with the mixture that the carpenter already had prepared. Once this last operation was completed, Bittler introduced two iron hooks into the mixture to later, and once set, hoist the heavy block with the torpedo crane.

Crossing attempt

The SMS Dresden put to sea and off the port of Corral it surprised and sank the British ship Cornwall Castle, picking up its crew members, who were transferred later in Valparaíso to a German supply ship.

In principle, his objective was to take the route of the sailboats, once supplied by a friendly ship, but instead of the supplier he found his last prey. The British sailboat came without enough coal, so the fuel estimates to make such a journey put it in danger of being adrift in the middle of the Pacific.

On March 1, while adrift at dawn on a foggy morning, the Germans spotted the silhouette of a British cruiser, which in turn spotted them sailing at low speed. Lüdecke expected it to be a Chilean cruiser, since it had been repainted in a darker color, similar to those of the Chilean Navy. But the British recognized the SMS Dresden and informed the pair about it by TSH, following it under the horizon.

Juan Fernández Archipelago

With its coal reserves alarmingly low, the cruise ship sought supply on March 2 in a Chilean port, in Cumberland Bay on what was then called Isla de Más a Tierra, current Juan Fernández Archipelago. Lüdecke's idea was to supply the ship to definitively embark on sailing towards Oceania to meet her twin SMS Emden .

Ambush and sinking

The Chilean government only offered 72 hours of reparation with its own means or hospitalization. While in these procedures, a British force composed of the cruisers HMS Kent, HMS Orama and HMS Glasgow surprised him at anchor on March 14, 1915. Lüdecke, unable to escape or cope, and trying to gain time to prepare the ship for sinking, raised the parley flag, and sent officer Canaris to HMS Glasgow to parley, but the British ignored him. and they began to shoot. The Dresden fired some shots, but a stern battery was hit, killing seven crew members. Captain Lüdecke ordered the crew to disembark and prepare for the sinking of his ship: Some members of the crew blew up the bow deck and opened the bottom valves, then swam to reach the shore while the imperial cruiser began to sink. 11:35.

The most seriously injured were treated by the British themselves and transferred to Valparaíso on the Orama transport. Later the Chilean cruise ship Esmeralda showed up and transferred the remaining sailors to Concepción.

The crew was interned on Quiriquina Island (Talcahuano, Chile) for the rest of the war. Only three members escaped, among them Lieutenant Wilhelm Canaris, future head of the Abwehr in the Nazi period. The rest decided to join the German community residing in Chile.

Wilhelm Canaris

It is striking because Wilhelm Canaris had a long relationship with Chile, as documented by Richard Basset in The Enigma of Admiral Canaris. History of Hitler's spy chief. He sailed along these shores. He did naval exercises in Tierra del Fuego and Chiloé. Aboard the Dresden, he played hide-and-seek in the South Pacific for several months with the British Imperial Fleet in 1916. The Dresden was the only German ship to survive the catastrophic Teutonic defeat in the Malvinas, at the end of the previous year. And when it was finally caught off the coast of Juan Fernández, a last skillful move by Second Lieutenant Canaris, the intelligence officer on board, allowed the crew to disembark and sink their ship, thus preventing the British from indulging in cannonade at their discretion.. As a reward for his performance, he was the first officer authorized to flee the Chilean archipelago, where the entire crew of the Dresden was supposed to remain interned until the end of the war. The surviving crew of the Dresden, Canaris among them, were interned in Chile, on the Quiriquina Island - opposite Talcahuano - and although they were formally prisoners, the relaxation of the security measures imposed by the Navy He allowed several of the officers to travel to Concepción on more than one occasion. Needless to say, the escape of Canaris (and, later, of almost the entire crew) had the determined support of the hosts.

In August 1915 he escaped with other comrades-in-arms from Chile, from Osorno. There he was staying in the Von Geyso mansion, from where he was sent to the Eggers farm, in Puyehue, in order to prepare for crossing the mountain range, which he did alone and on horseback. On the other side, at one of the points of the Nahuelhuapi, he was waited for by another member of the Eggers family, who crossed him by boat to San Carlos de Bariloche, placing him for a few days at Luis von Bülow's ranch. There he was received by the German consul Karl Wiederhold, who provided him with help.

With an authentic Chilean passport, which was obtained by agents of the German embassy in Buenos Aires, in the name of Reed Rosas, a modest Anglo-Chilean salesman, Canaris undertook a 500 km journey towards Osorno, by train, arrived in this city on August 6, taking advantage of his excellent command of Spanish, and went to Argentina, where he finally managed to embark for Germany on a Dutch freighter that took him to Rotterdam, from where he returned to Germany, where he was quickly promoted to captain.

In addition, he was recruited by German foreign intelligence, given his obvious acting skills and his knowledge of Cervantes' language, and was sent to work at the German embassy in Madrid, where he spent a year performing spy duties, for which He used his false identity as Chilean Reed Rosas as cover, adding - when asked - that he came from a small city in southern Chile called Osorno.

Wreck

The Dresden is today an attraction for professional divers due to the clarity of the water at certain times of the year, and is still preserved in relatively good condition, at the bottom of the island's port about 70 m deep and 516 m from the pier. Many pieces of tableware have been extracted by local divers.

In February 2006, the 155 kg bronze bell from the cruise ship was rescued by a group of archaeologists. It was exhibited for a year at the Naval and Maritime Museum of Valparaíso in Chile before being loaned to Germany by the Chilean authorities, for a period of five years, as a sign of good institutional relations. It is currently in the Military Museum of the city of Dresden.

There is a piece made of cast material from the Dresden in the Seventh Fire Company of Concepción, German Bomb located in Veteranos del 79 S/N

On June 13, 2014, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Chile delivered a replica of the bell of the German light cruiser S.M.S. "Dresden" to the National Maritime Museum – Chile. The replica is a copy of the original bell weighing 144 kilos and its production was financed by the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany. The original bell is scheduled to return to Chile in 2021. It was restored at the Regional Archaeological Museum of Schleswig and since November 14, 2008 it has been exhibited at the Military Historical Museum of the Federal Armed Forces in Dresden.

To commemorate the centenary of the sinking of the light cruiser “SMS Dresden”, the Chilean-German League (DCB) inaugurated on Monday, November 3, 2014 a traveling exhibition with original pieces found and documents from the history of the SMS Dresden. The exhibition opened at the headquarters of the Chilean-German League and then began a tour of Punta Arenas, Puerto Montt, Concepción and Valparaíso. In March 2015, the exhibition will be solemnly delivered along with a second replica of the bell to Robinson Crusoe Island to remain there permanently.

The Dresden Treasure

The political situation in Mexico in 1910 was chaotic, the rulers were continually overthrown, to which Germany sent the cruiser SMS Dresden to safeguard the interests and security of the resident German colony. In Tampico the situation was dramatic and unsustainable, disorder prevailed and in the face of the imminent danger of looting, the German settlers handed over their jewelry, money, gold and valuables to the commander, an initiative joined by other families of foreigners, as well as wealthy Mexican characters. Everything had to be kept safe in a bank upon the Dresden's return to Germany. The treasure was left in a box under the custody of the ship's commander.

The ship was sailing towards Germany when the First World War broke out, August 1914. The commander received the order to carry out the privateering war in the Atlantic and, later, to go to Easter Island to join the admiral's squadron. Maximilian von Spee. In November, the German cruiser squadron achieved the naval victory of Coronel, and this same force, upon entering the Atlantic, was completely defeated in the Falklands, saving only the Dresden, which suffered multiple breakdowns. in the combat of Las Malvinas. She hid in the Patagonian canals of southern Chile where she was helped and supplied by German citizen Harry Rothenburg, who resided in Punta Arenas. Advised by Rothenburg, the ship set course for the Quintupeu estuary, near Puerto Montt. There the ship finished its repair and continued its navigation towards the north, having to anchor on Robinson Crusoe Island, since it no longer had coal for its boilers. She was eventually located by several British warships and sunk in Cumberland Bay.

One of the eyewitnesses stated:

Among the members of the German colony of Puerto Montt it is said that several of his ancestors, who were on board the cruise while anchored in Quintupeu, told that the last day, before the zarpe, from the ship they threw a large drawer to the sea and that this could have contained the treasure of Tampico. For many years fishermen and divers went through the fjord, but they found nothing.

Albert Pagels