‘Seize German Wireless... at Sāmoa’

Invincible Strangers 23 Chapter 10

The August 1914 opening of the Panama Canal briefly changed the strategic perception of Sāmoa.

The canal, it was thought, would move shipping lanes, and places like Sāmoa would become transit ports and coaling stations. That quickly proved wrong; the outbreak of war and the switch to oil in ships ensured that Sāmoa would again become a little visited outpost. Before that happened, another technology decisively defined Sāmoa. In 1914 the German company Telefunken erected a radio mast in the hills above Āpia. Until the radio station, Sāmoa’s closest point with a telegraphic connection was Auckland, 2800 kilometres to the south, a week or more sailing. Getting a message from Āpia to Germany took, at best, seven to 13 days and up to 33 days if things went badly. One time Sāmoa chief justice Henry Ide reckoned that the issues of the 1890-1899 era had been because of the lack of telegraphic communication, leading to ‘great mischief in unauthorised acts: ‘extreme action on the part of officials located there, remote from controlling authority, magnifying their own positions and powers, and inclined to take extraordinary action under the impulse of sudden and insular excitement.’ Author Stevenson had picked up on it, writing of events in August 1887 when German gunboats sat in the harbour: ‘They waited inactive, as a burglar waits till the patrol goes by. And on the 23rd, when the mail had left for Sydney, when the eyes of the world were withdrawn, and Samoa plunged again for a period of weeks into her original island-obscurity, Becker opened his guns.’

Telefunken radio station outside of Apia. National Library

Germany’s radio network was more than just speed. Its marine cables were vulnerable, and colonies and potential allies could be cut off from Germany. Telefunken would prevent that. Āpia’s new radio would not directly hear or send to Berlin. It was connected through other German territories in Nauru, New Guinea, Yap in Micronesia and China. Radio gave Sāmoa strategic significance to London, preparing for  war. Germany’s Ostasiengeschwader offered little threat to Royal Navy supremacy. It could, if directed by radio, interfere with commerce and the shipment of soldiers from Australia and New Zealand. Sāmoa radio became operational in July 1914, coincidentally at a critical juncture of world history. 

On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip killed the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie as they drove through Sarajevo in an open car. It started a sequence that saw Germany declare war on Russia on 1 August 1914. Telefunken’s network of stations were handed over to the German Imperial Admiralty which began warning the German fleet. Three days later Germany invaded Belgium and declared war on France. Britain went to war on 4 August 1914, dragging its empire along. King-Emperor George V’s declaration of war was read to 15,000 people gathered on the steps of Parliament in Wellington on Wednesday 5 August 1914 by the Governor Arthur Foljambe, the Earl of Liverpool. New Zealand participation was assumed. On that day in the Atlantic the British General Post Office ship CS Albert severed the five undersea telegraph cables that linked Germany with the United States. German message traffic would have to go via neutral Sweden where it could be intercepted by the Allies and coded traffic ended up in Admiralty Room 40 in London, to be broken. 

Deutsch-Sāmoa, thanks to the new radio, was up to date on global events. Schultz notified Thomas Trood, the ageing British consul, that British subjects would be protected if they remained peaceful and neutral. Overseas mail stopped, imported foods disappeared. Traders would not buy copra, Sāmoanische Zeitung dropped to half its normal size. With no militia, the Germans knew they were on their own. The armoury ran to 50 outdated rifles, used earlier in the year on the four teenagers. Its ammunition had been depleted in that action. An old cannon took half an hour to load. Schultz met with settlers. Wilhelm Hagedorn wanted to fight: ‘Giving Sāmoa as a prize without a fight would lower our prestige. If the opposition is too great we could retire. A prize given without resistance amounts to an invitation to the enemy to eat and drink.’ Schultz ordered 100,000 marks (about NZ$1m in 2016 value) loaded onto DH&PG’s boat SS Staatssekretär Solf, and sent it to Pago Pago. A report from the Independent Cable Association out of New York, dated 21 August, was published under the headline ĀPIA UNTENABLE: ‘The German commander in Sāmoa apparently regards Āpia as indefensible as merchant vessels have conveyed all the Government bullion and private deposits to Pago Pago, in American Sāmoa.’ The administration money was stored in DH&PG’s account in neutral American Sāmoa until 1917 when the United States declared war on Germany and it was seized by US Presidential order. The boat was renamed USS Sāmoa, it was armed with four three-pound semi-automatic guns. She spent the rest of the war swinging at anchor. She was to be the only US Navy ship named Sāmoa. There had been a plan to build a cruiser with that name in 1942 but its Alaska class of ship was cancelled.