Count Luckner, the Sea Devil

The most successful raider of the Great War was not a destroyer or a submarine but a windjammer, a square-rigged sailing ship disguised as a harmless merchant vessel. Her captain was Count Felix von Luckner, a man who looked like a Viking and had the storyteller's gift to match his gift for naval warfare. In this memoir, written with Lowell Thomas, Luckner recounts his extraordinary cruise aboard the Seeadler, which broke through the British blockade in 1916 and spent eight months wreaking havoc on Allied shipping across the Atlantic and Pacific, capturing sixteen merchant vessels without losing a single man's life. The book traces his swashbuckling life before the war, his globe-trotting adventures, and the incredible logic and charm that allowed him to commandeer ships without bloodshed. It's a relic of an era when sea captains were folk heroes and war still carried a whiff of romance. For anyone who longs for the age of adventure.