Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 249
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[Page 249]
unfair to the men, whose sense of honour was less keen, to make them all lose their lives for a sentiment, and so they saved themselves also.
From what I saw of the Emden's officers, and from the wonderfully plucky fight they put up against every disadvantage, I am quite prepared to believe that they were willing to drown rather than submit to the indignity of hauling down their ensign. It is an unwritten law amongst the big Navies of the world that one never surrenders.
Just imagine what insufferable Hell these Germans went through. A smallish ship with open decks and unarmoured sides pierced through and through with shell and plastered with red-hot jagged splinters, with fire all round and the air filled with the choking fumes of lyddite; imagine this, and then the three great glowing funnels lying on the deck and messmates being blown to pieces and over the side; add the smell of blood and burning flesh, the heat and the roar of the guns, and the reader will have some idea perhaps of the inferno let loose in the defeated ship. Of the executive officers only two remained alive, the Captain and the Kaiser's nephew who were in the conning tower.