Read Online Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service by Hector C. Bywater, H. C. Ferraby - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Hector C. Bywater, H. C. Ferraby
Tags: Historical, Espionage, History, Politics & Social Sciences, Military, True Crime, Autobiography, Intelligence & Espionage, World War I, Memoirs, Politics & Government, Specific Topics, Naval, Engineering, Engineering & Transportation
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international crook of whose appearance they had been advised by New York and Scotland Yard, and that I unfortunately bore some resemblance to him. The end of the interview was really a very pretty little comedy, both sides lying hard, they about their imaginary crook, and I about my belief in their explanations. Then I went back to my hotel, to rout out the night porter and order a double brandy and soda- dringend .
The most amusing feature of the story is that I stayed on in Germany doing ID work for another couple of years and, so far as I know, from that time onward I was never even shadowed.
In connection with the traffic in confidential ship plans a singular comedy occurred in Brussels in 1913.
A shipwright employed at the Blohm and Voss yard in Hamburg absconded with a set of blue prints detailing the internal arrangements and armour disposition of the battlecruiser Seydlitz , which was then building at the yard.
They were absolutely genuine, and the renegade shipwright, having heard about the international spy bureau in Brussels, went there to try to sell his stolen wares.
The simple audacity of the man was too much for the ‘experts’ who traded in military secrets. They simply did not believe him. They assumed him be as tricky as themselves, and flatly refused to do business.
He had gone to Brussels with visions of a fortune. But after a few days his funds ran out. He actually touted the blueprints round some of the low cafés of the Belgian capital, trying to raise £5 on them, but did not find anyone who would believe his story.
Eventually, he managed to scrape a little money together, and with this made his way back to Germany, still carrying the blueprints with him.
He escaped detection at the time, and the story would never have become known but for a queer trick of fate years later – after the war, in fact. Then his crime was discovered, he was tried for treason, and sentence to twelve years’ imprisonment.
The story throws a queer sidelight on the mentality of those who dealt in naval and military secrets as commodities to be sold to the highest bidder. They themselves dealt in so much spurious material that they invariably suspected anything that was offered to them. The men engaged in that trade were, ofcourse, fundamentally dishonest. They were the rabble of the espionage world, and most of them made a living not by procuring information, but by betraying others to the security police of any country that would pay their fees. The majority were known by sight to the regular intelligence men, who carefully steered clear of them, and had the unfortunate Captain Bertrand Stewart, whose story is told elsewhere, been in touch with the ID headquarters, he would probably never have fallen into the trap set for him by the man Rue.
CHAPTER 5
‘THE SONG OF THE SWORD’ — AND HOWITZERS
W HEN THE GERMAN legions swarmed over the Belgian frontier in the early days of August 1914, public opinion in the Allied countries was encouraged to believe that the tidal wave of invasion would be stemmed by the ‘impregnable’ fortresses of Liège and Namur. The massive steel and concrete ramparts of the Belgian citadels were supposed to be proof against the heaviest artillery, and so, no doubt, they were against the most powerful mobile guns of which the world at large had cognisance.
But Germany had up her sleeve a trump card in the shape of the gigantic 16.5-inch howitzers, the ‘Fat Berthas’, whose levin-bolts soon reduced the forts of Liège to a heap of pulverised ruins. So far as the general public was concerned, the appearance of these mammoth cannon was one of the most dramaticsurprises of the war, but to the staffs of the Allied armies it was no surprise at all.
Nearly twelve months before the outbreak of war the existence of these howitzers was discovered by an agent of the British naval secret service, and duly reported by him to headquarters in London.
Presumably, therefore, the information was
The most amusing feature of the story is that I stayed on in Germany doing ID work for another couple of years and, so far as I know, from that time onward I was never even shadowed.
In connection with the traffic in confidential ship plans a singular comedy occurred in Brussels in 1913.
A shipwright employed at the Blohm and Voss yard in Hamburg absconded with a set of blue prints detailing the internal arrangements and armour disposition of the battlecruiser Seydlitz , which was then building at the yard.
They were absolutely genuine, and the renegade shipwright, having heard about the international spy bureau in Brussels, went there to try to sell his stolen wares.
The simple audacity of the man was too much for the ‘experts’ who traded in military secrets. They simply did not believe him. They assumed him be as tricky as themselves, and flatly refused to do business.
He had gone to Brussels with visions of a fortune. But after a few days his funds ran out. He actually touted the blueprints round some of the low cafés of the Belgian capital, trying to raise £5 on them, but did not find anyone who would believe his story.
Eventually, he managed to scrape a little money together, and with this made his way back to Germany, still carrying the blueprints with him.
He escaped detection at the time, and the story would never have become known but for a queer trick of fate years later – after the war, in fact. Then his crime was discovered, he was tried for treason, and sentence to twelve years’ imprisonment.
The story throws a queer sidelight on the mentality of those who dealt in naval and military secrets as commodities to be sold to the highest bidder. They themselves dealt in so much spurious material that they invariably suspected anything that was offered to them. The men engaged in that trade were, ofcourse, fundamentally dishonest. They were the rabble of the espionage world, and most of them made a living not by procuring information, but by betraying others to the security police of any country that would pay their fees. The majority were known by sight to the regular intelligence men, who carefully steered clear of them, and had the unfortunate Captain Bertrand Stewart, whose story is told elsewhere, been in touch with the ID headquarters, he would probably never have fallen into the trap set for him by the man Rue.
CHAPTER 5
‘THE SONG OF THE SWORD’ — AND HOWITZERS
W HEN THE GERMAN legions swarmed over the Belgian frontier in the early days of August 1914, public opinion in the Allied countries was encouraged to believe that the tidal wave of invasion would be stemmed by the ‘impregnable’ fortresses of Liège and Namur. The massive steel and concrete ramparts of the Belgian citadels were supposed to be proof against the heaviest artillery, and so, no doubt, they were against the most powerful mobile guns of which the world at large had cognisance.
But Germany had up her sleeve a trump card in the shape of the gigantic 16.5-inch howitzers, the ‘Fat Berthas’, whose levin-bolts soon reduced the forts of Liège to a heap of pulverised ruins. So far as the general public was concerned, the appearance of these mammoth cannon was one of the most dramaticsurprises of the war, but to the staffs of the Allied armies it was no surprise at all.
Nearly twelve months before the outbreak of war the existence of these howitzers was discovered by an agent of the British naval secret service, and duly reported by him to headquarters in London.
Presumably, therefore, the information was
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