Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 319
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[Page 319]
get into wireless touch with the Gloucester and the Liverpool coming south. One night the message came telling us of the capture of the Macedonia by the northern squadron, and we now felt sure that the Kronprinz Wilhelm would not be there to meet us. Two nights later, just as we reached the rendezvous, we learned that she had interned in Newport News, U.S.A. The Macedonia on sighting our cruisers had shouted a warning over the sea to the Kronprinz, and the Huns, seeing that the game was up, made for shelter. In the darkness of night they ran the gauntlet of our patrolling cruisers off the American coast, and went in and interned. The ship was at her last gasp. Badly battered by foul weather, and overcome by engine-room troubles and the hundred and one defects which a ship inevitably develops when she is forced to keep the seas too long, she had called the game off and now lay impotent in a neutral harbour. We learnt that her crew had been practically starving for weeks and had developed beri-beri from the rice which had been almost their sole article of food, and the ship just made neutral waters on her last knob of coal.
With the departure of the Kronprinz Wilhelm went the last German ship from the outer seas, and for the moment the Sydney's work was done. We were sorry, of course, to have missed an action, but in a way it would have been poor sport to stand off and blow out of the water a badly crippled merchantman which even in her best days could not have fought a cruiser with any chance of success. However one may