Interesting don't you think ?? There is a book `Des Kaisers Kulis` by Theodor Plivier, published in Berlin in 1930. A translation was published in the US in 1931 by Alfred Knopf Inc. Plivier describes how the crew of the SS Lesbos arrived back in Germany from the Mediterranean at the end of July 1914 and were rounded up by police in a raid on a bar reminiscent of the press-gang abandoned by the Royal Navy 100 years before and "Shanghaied", as he puts it, into the German Navy, where "we remained coolies at fifty pfennig a day." They were harassed by petty restrictions - a raid on a theater in Cuxhaven by shore patrols resulted in the arrest of a number of sailors wearing overcoats - orders specified only officers in dress uniform were allowed in theaters. He served in the protected cruiser Ariadne which was sunk at Heligoland Biight in 1914, at Jutland and in the raiders Belgravia and Wachtfels renamed S.M.S. Wolf. The Wolf, her crew and prisoners all suffering from scurvy, after 444 days at sea, returned to a Germany disintegrating under the effects of the Allied blockade. They are presented with the same medals again and again in front of different cameramen, but their families no longer had sufficient money to by the rationed substitute food. October 28th 1918; to the popping of champagne corks on the Thuringen, Lieut. Cdr. Rudloff stands up glass in hand " We shall fire our last two thousand rounds at the English and then go down gloriously. To the death ride of the German fleet." The coolies looking down through the skylight into the wardroom have different ideas. Marines arrest 300 mutineers in Thuringen and the same number in Helgoland but the cells are smashed and the men released. Five thousand officers had sworn loyalty to the flag but only three - on the Koenig - defend it. Firing pistols until the grey tide of coolies sweep over them. The Admiralty in Berlin capitulates to a petty officer and six men.
