One of the most amazing journeys of the Great War was taken by Felix von Luckner, who was born in Dresden, Germany on June 9, 1881.
One of the most amazing journeys of the Great War was taken by Felix von Luckner, who was born in Dresden, Germany on June 9, 1881. He was already a member of the German Imperial Navy at the outbreak of the Great War, and saw action at the battles of Heligoland Bight (1914) and Jutland (1916). Shortly after that, Luckner was assigned to command the SMS Seeadler a three-masted windjammer assigned to raid the Atlantic and Pacific in an age of dreadnoughts. The Seeadler left port on December 21, 1916 and managed to slip through the British blockade disguised as a Norwegian ship. In the following three months, Luckner successfully raided and sunk several merchant ships in the Atlantic Ocean. He also captured 300 prisoners and eventually started having problems feeding them and keeping them safe, which forced him to release them by putting them on another captured ship. Eventually, the Royal Navy became increasingly aware of the Seeadler, but Luckner managed to avoid ...