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Updated: June 17, 2025
The name on her stern proclaimed her to be the Igotz Mendi, of Bilbao, and she was flying the Spanish flag. In a short time a prize crew, with Lieutenant Rose in command, left the Wolf in her motor launch, and proceeded to the other ship.
I then asked him whether, if we were all lost on the Igotz Mendi on her return voyage to Spain, the German Government would inform the British Government of our fate. He replied that would certainly be done. I further asked him whether we might send letters to the Wolf to have them posted in Germany in the event of our not arriving in Spain.
One of our fellow-prisoners had been on the P. & O. Mongolia when she was sunk by one of the Wolf's mines off Bombay. Later on, on the Hitachi, he was caught by the mine-layer herself! But he defeated the enemy after all, as he escaped on the Igotz Mendi! One of the seafaring men with us had already been torpedoed by the Huns in the Channel. Within a fortnight he was at sea again.
The headmen salute their visitors Arab-fashion, with flourishes of the sword; but swording ends there. Of late they were attacked by the savages of the interior, Gallinas, Pannis, and Kúsús. The latter, meaning the 'wolves' or the 'wild boars, is the popular nickname of the Mendi or Mindi tribes, occupying the Sherbro-banks. Smith & Elder, London, 1874.
She bumped into us with considerable force when she came up, and not many of us on board the Igotz Mendi will ever forget that night of terror. Both ships were rolling heavily, and repeatedly bumping into each other, each ship quivering from end to end, and the funnel of the Igotz Mendi was visibly shaking at every fresh collision.
It was reported that a German submarine appeared to take off the German officers on this day, but as it was too rough to lower the boats this could not be contrived. The Igotz Mendi was now deserted, but as the Danish authorities had adjudged her, twenty-four hours after her stranding, to be a Spanish ship, she had reverted to her original owners.
The ant-nests were those of Yoruba and the Mendi country; not the tall, steepled edifices built by the termites with yellow clay, as in Eastern Africa, but an eruption of blue-black, hard-dried mud and mucus, resembling the miniature pagodas, policeman's lanterns, mushrooms, or umbrellas one or two feet high, here single, there double, common in Ashanti and Congo-land.
We owe a great deal to her genial Captain and all her officers and crew, who one and all did what they could for us and were invariably kind and sympathized with us in our misfortunes and rejoiced with us at our escape. It may even have been due to the gentle persuasion of her Spanish crew that the Igotz Mendi made such a thorough job of running aground at Skagen.
It must not be supposed that the life of the prisoners on the Igotz Mendi in any way approximated to that of passengers on an ordinary passenger ship. To begin with, there were no ship's servants to wait on us with the exception of the Spanish steward, a youth who "waited" at table and excelled in breaking ship's crockery.
There was, too, the case of the Australians taken prisoner on the S.S. Matunga. The women and military doctors had certainly escaped on the Igotz Mendi, but there were taken into Germany from the Matunga three military officers and three elderly married civilians over military age.
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