Photo [c] A. Aubrey Bodine
July 9, 1916
The long dark shape was sighted just after midnight off the Capes and was met by a Virginia pilot and a Maryland pilot who went aboard to bring the vessel north into the Chesapeake Bay. The revenue cutter ‘Onandaga’ followed with the Collector of Customs at Norfolk aboard.
The ship flew no flag until it had fully entered the bay and then it raised the German Merchant Marine flag. After entering the harbor at Baltimore, the ship dropped anchor off the quarantine station at Sandy Point to await daylight. At eight o’clock in the morning, a yacht approached the vessel with a dozen or more newspaper reporters on board.
‟Hello, ‘Deutschland’,” they yelled.
‟I am Captain Paul Koenig, Master of the Deutschland,” came a sharp reply. ‟Who are you? What do you want?”
One of the reporters climbed higher on the side rail and yelled, ‟Where do you come from?”
‟Helgoland,” came the reply. ‟We left on 23. Juni.”
‟Did you see any British ships?”
‟Nein.”
‟French ships?”
Captain Koenig shook his head. ‟Nein,” he said. ‟We saw no enemy ships.” He turned to walk away and then turned back to face the newspapermen.
‟Ich habe keine zeit für diesen dummen scherz,” he said and waved his hand as if to end the questions.
‟Geh weg, Amerikanisch!”
‛Deutschland’ is a cargo submarine, the largest submarine in the German fleet. It is 315 feet long, much longer than the U-boats which have been raiding shipping in the Atlantic Ocean with little regard for nationality or type of vessel. Its beam is 30 feet, speed 14 knots on the surface, and lists a crew of 29 men.
Its draft is 17 feet and it has a cruising range of 5,000 miles. ‘Deutschland’ left 16 days earlier from Bremerhaven, carries no armament and is commercially owned by the Ocean Navigation Company. The company’s agents in Baltimore are the Shumacher Company. ‘Deutschland’ carries about five hundred tons of dyestuffs, mail and, it is rumored, a letter from Kaiser Wilhelm to President Wilson.
The crew is given leave to see the sights of Baltimore, itself a city with a large German immigrant population. After sampling beer from the many breweries in the city, and a bit of carousing along Baltimore Street, known for its sausage sandwiches and sinful women, the crew stumbles back to the ship around midnight.
Three hours later, several dark figures leave the ship, walk in shadows to a waiting delivery truck, and disappear into the night.
Ten days later, while Captain Koenig was being wined and dined by the good German community of Baltimore, an explosion occurred two hundred miles to the north in Jersey City, New Jersey. A sprawling munitions rail depot, on Black Tom Island, shook with the explosion of tons of gunpowder, shells and bullets. The munitions had been destined for Britain and France. Five people lost their lives in the conflagration
There were rumors that the explosion was the work of the German secret service - the Sektion Politik. Baltimore was a city with a large German population and a local Baltimore businessman was said to have been the traitor who had financed the act of sabotage.
The ‘Deutschland’ left Baltimore harbor on August 2nd and returned to Bremen.
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September 5, 1916
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George Ellsworth tightened his grip on the hanging leather strap to compensate for the curve the #15 streetcar made as it negotiated the last turn on Belair Road when he became aware that he was being watched. When he turned his gaze to the people in the packed streetcar he saw a woman look away, then slowly turn her face back to him.
She was a woman he judged to be in her early thirties with long brown hair and a rather angular face beneath a dark brown, wide brimmed hat. While her head faced toward the front of the streetcar, her eyes were locked on him.
George raised an eyebrow and was surprised to see a tiny smile tease across her mouth before she turned her head to look out the window. He leaned against the front support pole and realized he’d seen this woman before on his long daily ride home from Fell’s Point. Truth be known he’d seen her every work day on the #15 for the last month or more. She’d actually become a fixture in his long day and he grudgingly admitted to himself that he had become somewhat intrigued by her. She was always well dressed and always wore a stylish hat but it was her face that had caught George up. She had the most symmetrically perfect face he’d ever seen.
The streetcar crossed a bumpy spot in the road and George was forced to adjust to the motion and when he turned to her again, she was reading a newspaper. Their moment was gone . . .
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