The German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis, known to the Kriegsmarine as Schiff 16 and to the Royal Navy as Raider-C, was a converted German Hilfskreuzer, or merchant or commerce raider of the Kriegsmarine, which, in World War II, travelled more than 161,000 km (100,000 mi) in 602 days, and sank or captured 22 ships with a combined tonnage of 144,384. Atlantis was commanded by Kapitän zur See Bernhard Rogge, who received the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. She was sunk on 22 November 1941 by the British cruiser HMS Devonshire.
An armed merchantman is a merchant ship equipped with guns, usually for defensive purposes, either by design or after the fact. In the days of sail, piracy and privateers, many merchantmen would be routinely armed, especially those engaging in long distance and high value trade.
SS Kronprinz Wilhelm was a German passenger liner built for the Norddeutscher Lloyd, a former shipping company now part of Hapag-Lloyd, by the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin, Germany, in 1901. She took her name from Crown Prince Wilhelm, son of the German Emperor Wilhelm II, and was a sister ship of SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.
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.
SS Cap Trafalgar was a German ocean liner launched 1913 for the Hamburg Süd line. In 1914, she was converted for use as an auxiliary cruiser during World War I. She was the first armed merchant cruiser sunk by a ship of the same class; she was destroyed by RMS Carmania, also a converted ocean liner, in a furious action in the South Atlantic in September 1914. It was the world's first battle between former ocean liners.
SMS Möwe was a merchant raider of the Imperial German Navy which operated against Allied shipping during World War I.
SMS Prinz Adalbert was an armored cruiser built in the early 1900s for the German Kaiserliche Marine, named after Prince Adalbert of Prussia, former Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian Navy. She was the lead ship of her class, which included a second ship, Friedrich Carl. Prinz Adalbert was built at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel. Her keel was laid in April 1900, and she was launched in June 1901. Her completion in January 1904 had been delayed by a surplus of construction projects at the Imperial Dockyard. She was armed with a main battery of four 21 cm (8.3 in) guns, a significant improvement over the previous armored cruiser, Prinz Heinrich, which carried only two 24 cm (9.4 in) guns. The ship was capable of a top speed of 20 kn.
SMS Karlsruhe was a light cruiser of the Königsberg class, built for the Kaiserliche Marine during World War I. She was named after the earlier Karlsruhe, which had sunk in November 1914, from an accidental explosion. The new cruiser was laid down in 1914 at the Kaiserliche Werft shipyard in Kiel, launched in January 1916, and commissioned into the High Seas Fleet in November 1916. Armed with eight 15 cm SK L/45 guns, the ship had a top speed of 27.5 kn.
SS Arabic was a passenger steamship launched on 7 November 1908 as the SS Berlin and it was built by the A.G. Weser shipbuilding company in Germany. Her Gross Register Tonnage was advertised at 16,786. She made her maiden voyage on 1 May 1909 from New York to Genoa and Bremerhaven. In September 1914 she became an auxiliary cruiser with the Imperial German Navy as a minelayer.
SS Prinz Eitel Friedrich was a German passenger liner which saw service in the First World War as an auxiliary cruiser of the Imperial German Navy. Though largely overlooked, Prinz Eitel Friedrich was, after SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, the most successful of Germany’s first wave of auxiliary cruisers. She was able to remain at large for seven months, from August 1914 to March 1915, and sank 11 ships, for a total tonnage of 33,000 GRT.
The Mediterranean U-boat Campaign in the Mediterranean Sea was fought by Austria-Hungary and German Empire against the Allies during World War I. It was characterised by the ability of the Central Powers to raid with near impunity during the first years of the war, causing substantial shipping losses, until the introduction of the convoy system allowed the Allies to drastically cut their losses from 1917 on.
SMS Albatross was a German minelaying cruiser built for the Kaiserliche Marine, the second and final member of the Nautilus class. Her keel was laid down in May 1907 at the AG Weser shipyard; she was launched in October and commissioned into the fleet in May 1908. Her armament consisted of eight 8.8 cm (3.5 in) guns and 288 naval mines.
The U-boat Campaign from 1914 to 1918 was the World War I naval campaign fought by German U-boats against the trade routes of the Allies. It took place largely in the seas around the British Isles and in the Mediterranean. The German Empire relied on imports for food and domestic food production and the United Kingdom relied heavily on imports to feed its population, and both required raw materials to supply their war industry; the powers aimed, therefore, to blockade one another. The British had the Royal Navy which was superior in numbers and could operate on most of the world's oceans because of the British Empire, whereas the Imperial German Navy surface fleet was mainly restricted to the German Bight, and used commerce raiders and unrestricted submarine warfare to operate elsewhere.
The Battle of Río de Oro was a single-ship action fought in August 1914 during the First World War, when HMS Highflyer attacked the German SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse off Río de Oro on the coast of Northwest Africa.
Châteaurenault was a large protected cruiser built for the French Navy in the late 1890s and early 1900s. She was intended to serve as a long-range commerce raider, designed according to the theories of the Jeune École, which favored a strategy of attacking Britain's extensive merchant shipping network instead of engaging in an expensive naval arms race with the Royal Navy. As such, Châteaurenault was built with a relatively light armament of just eight medium-caliber guns, but was given a long cruising range and the appearance of a large passenger liner, which would help her to evade detection while raiding merchant shipping.
SMS Leopard was an auxiliary cruiser of the Imperial German Navy intended for use as a commerce raider. She was intercepted attempting to break out into the Atlantic and was sunk with all hands in a fierce gun battle with British warships.
SMS Meteor was an auxiliary cruiser of the Imperial German Navy which operated against Allied shipping during World War I.
The German commerce raiders of World War I were those surface vessels used by the Imperial German Navy to pursue its war on Allied commerce, . These comprised regular warships, principally cruisers, stationed in Germany's colonial empire, express liners commissioned as auxiliary cruisers and, later, freighters outfitted as merchant raiders. These vessels had a number of successes, and a significant impact on Allied naval strategy, particularly in the early months of the war.
SS Cap Polonio was a German 20,576 GRT ocean liner that was launched in 1914. She worked the Hamburg Südamerikanische Dampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft route between Hamburg in Germany and Buenos Aires in Argentina. She was named after Cabo Polonio in Uruguay.
German Empire 