Merchant raiders are armed commerce raiding ships that disguise themselves as non-combatant merchant vessels.
SegelschulschiffNiobe was a tall ship used by the Reichsmarine to train cadets and aspiring NCOs. She sank during a white squall on 26 July 1932, with the loss of 69 lives. A memorial monument to Niobe was erected at Gammendorfer Strand on Fehmarn island, within view of the site of the sinking.
The SS Cameronia was a twin propeller triple-expansion 15,600 IHP passenger steamship owned by the Glasgow-based Anchor Line and built by D. and W. Henderson and Company at Glasgow in 1911. The ship provided a transatlantic service from Glasgow to various destinations.
SMS Wolf was an armed merchant raider or auxiliary cruiser of the Imperial German Navy in World War I. She was the fourth ship of the Imperial Navy bearing this name, following two gunboats and another auxiliary cruiser that was decommissioned without seeing action.
SMS Seeadler was a three-masted steel-hulled sailing ship. She was one of the last fighting sailing ships to be used in war when she served as a merchant raider with Imperial Germany in World War I. Built as the British-flagged Pass of Balmaha, she was captured by the German submarine SM U-36, and in 1916 converted to a commerce raider. As Seeadler she had a successful raiding career, capturing and sinking 15 ships in 225 days until she was wrecked, in 2 August 1917, in French Polynesia.
During World War I, conflict on the Asian continent and the islands of the Pacific included naval battles, the Allied conquest of German colonial possessions in the Pacific Ocean and China, the anti-Russian Central Asian revolt of 1916 in Russian Turkestan and the Ottoman-supported Kelantan rebellion in British Malaya. The most significant military action was the careful and well-executed Siege of Qingdao in China, but smaller actions were also fought at Bita Paka and Toma in German New Guinea.
SMS Möwe was a merchant raider of the Imperial German Navy which operated against Allied shipping during World War I.
Gustaf Adolf Mauritz Erikson was a ship-owner from Mariehamn, in the Åland islands. He was famous for the fleet of windjammers he operated to the end of his life, mainly on the grain trade from Australia to Europe.
The Action of 16 March 1917 was a naval engagement in which the British armed boarding steamer SS Dundee and HMS Achilles, a Warrior-class armoured cruiser, fought the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Leopard, which sank with the loss of all 319 hands and six men of a British boarding party.
SS Dundee was a British steamship that was built in Scotland in 1911 and sunk by enemy action in the Celtic Sea in 1917. She was designed as a coastal passenger and cargo liner for the Dundee, Perth & London Shipping Company Ltd, but in 1915 she was converted into an armed boarding steamer for the Royal Navy. She took part in the Action of 16 March 1917, was sunk by a U-boat six months later, and lost members of her crew in both actions.
SM U-66 was the lead ship of the Type U-66 submarines or U-boats for the Imperial German Navy during World War I. The submarine had been laid down in Kiel in November 1913 as U-7, the lead ship of the U-7 class for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. They became convinced after the outbreak of war in August 1914 that none of these submarines could be delivered to the Adriatic via Gibraltar, and sold the entire class, including U-7, to the German Imperial Navy in November 1914.
Sylvan Arrow was a steam tanker built in 1917–1918 by New York Shipbuilding Co. of Camden for Standard Oil Company, with intention of transporting oil and petroleum products between United States and ports in the Far East. The ship was briefly requisitioned by the US Government during World War I but returned to commercial service in early 1919.
The action of 29 February 1916 was a naval engagement fought during the First World War between the United Kingdom and the German Empire. SMS Greif, a German commerce raider, broke out into the North Sea and Admiral Sir John Jellicoe dispatched Royal Navy warships to intercept the raider. Four British vessels intercepted the commerce raider Greif. The armed merchant cruiser RMS Alcantara and Greif fought a brief engagement before British reinforcements arrived when both were severely damaged, both being sunk.
SMS Leopard was a British cargo steamship that was built in 1912 as Yarrowdale, captured in 1916 by the Imperial German Navy, converted into a commerce raider in Germany, and sunk with all hands by the Royal Navy in 1917.
SS Vigrid was a Norwegian steam-powered cargo ship built in 1915. Sailing during the First World War, she was torpedoed and sunk without warning by a German U-boat on 31 December 1917.
Cymric was a British and Irish schooner, built in 1893. She joined the South American trade in the fleet of Arklow, Ireland, in 1906. She served as a British Q-ship during the First World War; she failed to sink any German U-boats, but did sink a British submarine in error.
The German commerce raiders of World War I were surface vessels used by the Imperial German Navy for its Handelskrieg, a campaign against Allied seaborne trade. The ships comprised warships, principally cruisers, stationed in the German colonial empire before the war began, express liners commissioned as auxiliary cruisers and later, freighters outfitted as merchant raiders. These vessels had a number of successes and had a significant effect on Allied naval strategy, particularly in the early months of the war.
Afon Cefni was an iron, four-masted barque. She was named after Afon Cefni, one of the rivers of Anglesey. Her sister ship was Afon Alaw, also named after an Anglesey river. Like Afon Alaw, Afon Cefni was built in Glasgow, Scotland by A. Stephens & Sons for Hughes & Co from Menai Bridge, Anglesey.
The Geertruida Gerarda (2) was a steel four-mast barque launched in the Netherlands in 1904. Measuring 2505 tons, she was the largest sailing vessel ever built in that country and also the last tall ship built by a Dutch yard for commercial purposes.
