THE MARAUDER

Captain Edward Fegen knew that the eight 6-inch guns of his thin-skinned armed merchant cruiser Jervis Bay stood no chance against the approaching German pocket battleship. Jervis Bay, converted from a 14,164-ton liner, was escorting 37 cargo ships across the North Atlantic Ocean to Britain. Without enough time to disperse, all of them were defenseless prey.

And so, when the German warship opened fire at 17,000 yards, Fegen didn’t hesitate to engage it. While its 11-inch guns demolished Jervis Bay, the pocket battleship’s secondary 5.9-inch guns flailed at the scattering merchantmen, badly damaging the tanker San Demetrio and the cargo liner Rangitiki before they escaped. Inevitably Jervis Bay sank, taking Fegen and 179 of his crew with it; 65 survivors were later rescued by the Swedish freighter Stureholm. For his valorous sacrifice in the face of impossible odds, Fegen was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

While many Britons are well versed in Jervis Bay’s heroic stand on November 5, 1940, fewer know that its adversary’s exploits were just beginning.

Launched at Wilhelmshaven, Germany, on April 1, 1933, Admiral Scheer was one of three capital ships that Germany built under the 11-inch gun and 10,000-ton restrictions imposed on it by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. The first, Deutschland, actually exceeded the limit by 1,700 tons, but the British Admiralty failed to question the ship’s weight when it was launched in 1931. Essentially designed to outgun anything it could not outrun at its maximum speed of 26 knots, Deutschland was classified by the German navy as a panzerschiff (armored ship), but its heavy armament led the British to dub it a “pocket battleship.”

From 17,000 yards out, Scheer’s 11-inch guns demolished Jervis Bay.