The Wolf Odyssey Book
The Idea
In Peter Hohnen’s youth, his father’s mother often spoke about how her brother Alexander Ross Ainsworth, a merchant navy engineer, spent nine months as a prisoner of war on a German raider called the Wolf. Apparently, so the story unfolded, he then spent another nine months, in a prisoner of war camp, in the Harz Mountains in Germany. Some time later Ainsworth suffered a stroke, while at sea near Indonesia aged 48, and died in hospital, a year later.
Unbeknown to Peter’s grandmother and other Australians, her brother's ship, an Australian merchant ship known as the Matunga, was intercepted and captured by the Wolf on 6 August 1917, near the New Guinea Islands, to the north of Australia.
Until late February 1918, relatives of the Matunga's crew of sixty, and its forty passengers, were informed that their loved ones were believed to have died when the ship sank, due to "an oceanic earthquake ".
The Australian Government knew however, that a German raider was silently operating in those waters but did not want to panic the public, who would have soon realised that Australia and New Zealand had virtually no naval defences. At the time their navies had been sent to England's defence.
When Peter’s grandmother's youngest son was born in Sydney in October 1917 he was named after his "dead” uncle". In 2003 Peter Hohnen attended the funeral of this uncle, who had in many ways been like a father to him. Some cousins suggested he write up the Wolf Story for private publication for family and friends and so the journey began.
The Research
Peter started piecing the story together slowly from contemporary newspaper reports. Then by chance, he was led to a website of a New Zealander, Mike Fraser, who had developed an interest in the Wolf voyage when he was stationed as a meteorologist, on the otherwise uninhabited Kermadec Islands, to the north of New Zealand.
The Wolf had captured and sunk a NZ ship, the Wairuna, in this location. A recreational diver, Mike lost his right arm to a white pointer shark while searching for the wreck. He continued to research the Wolf's story, and discovered the memoirs written by the its commander, Karl Nerger in 1918.
Incredibly, these had never been translated into English. In 2000, Mike organised the translation and sold copies privately on the Internet. Peter purchased a copy and a second part to the puzzle, was now revealed…
Peter has since employed researchers to locate and translate relevant documents in England, Denmark, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Japan. A great deal of research has been conducted at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and the Australian Archives in Melbourne, Canberra & Sydney.
The Characters: Prisoners & Crew of The Wolf
Among the 450 prisoners on the Wolf there were twenty different nationalities, so this story is of very wide international significance.
Peter has located several descendants of the Wolf’s crew and prisoners. They have been extremely helpful in providing primary sources such a photographs and diaries. Further efforts are being made to locate and trace more relatives of the Wolf’s crew and prisoners in order that the authors may meet and authenticate the story further
Peter Hohnen will visit Asia, Europe and the United states in mid-late 2008 to personally interview further potential contributors to this story.
If you recognise a name on the following list as your relative and have any further information to authenticate this story, we would be most pleased to hear from you.
| Prisoners of the WOLF | Crew of the WOLF |
| Eric Minns – youngest prisoner of WW1 |
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| Wendy Cameron | |
| Rose Flood | |
| Carl Rose |