#20: SMS Emden: The Gentleman Raider of World War I
In just 70 days between August and November 1914, the light cruiser SMS Emden captured or destroyed 30 Allied ships across the Indian Ocean, shelled the oil tanks at Madras (modern Chennai), sank a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer at Penang, and terrorized shipping from the Bay of Bengal to the Cocos Islands. Her captain, Karl von Müller, was so chivalrous to captured crews that even his enemies praised him.
Emden displaced just 3,650 tons and carried ten 4.1-inch guns, modest armament even by 1914 standards. Yet her hit-and-run naval strategy tied up over 70 Allied warships searching for her across thousands of square miles of ocean. Von Müller's gentlemanly conduct, he always ensured captured crew were safely transferred before sinking merchant ships, earned him international respect and became a model of honorable warfare. The Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney finally cornered Emden at the Cocos Islands on November 9, 1914, destroying her in a fierce gun battle. Emden's raiding career remains a textbook case in military training on how a single determined warship can disrupt an entire ocean's commerce.
