A Memory Of Von

Luckner

Was His Treasure Hidden On Mopelia?

From Our Own Correspondent PAPEETE. April 26.

MEMORIES of . a famous wartime in cident of World war I were revived by the recent death in Paris of - Madame Genin, wife of Docteur Genin, from shock received when the Japs bom barded Shanghai.

Madame Genin formerly was Madou Miller and was a sister of the well-known Pedro Miller, of Papeete. Before World War I he was the sub-manager of the German “Long-handle Firm.”

Unaware of the presence of the German raiders around the islands, Pedro Miller was making his calls in the islands in their trading schooner, Lutece. When he arrived at the island of Mopelia, he was surprised to see the shores crowded with white faces. At the lagoon entrance was the wreck of a very large sailing ship that turned out to be the Seeadler.

When he landed, Pedro Miller was met by one of the officers of the Seeadler, Kircheiss, who informed him that he was now a prisoner of the Kaiser.

The French flag on the Lutece was hauled down, and replaced by the Ger man flag, and the Germans made their escape on the Lutece, leaving behind the crew of the Lutece, and the three cap tains and crews of American lumber schooners that had been sunk in the Pacific.

Some months later, the Lutece arrived at Easter Island, and eventually the Ger mans reached Chile.

When the Lutece arrived at Mopelia, Count von Luckner, commander of the Seeadler, had already gone off in one of the ship’s large motor-boats. He was caught sometime later in Fiji and taken to New Zealand as a prisoner of war.

Kircheiss was von Luckner’s chief officer on the Seeadler.

The Governor of French Oceania des patched the schooner, Tereora, under Captain Joe Winchester (who figured in Frederick O’Brien’s book, White Shadows in the South Seas, as Bill Pincher) to bring back from Mopelia, the Lutece crew and the three captains and crews of the former American lumber schooners, named respectively, RC Slade, Manila, AB Johnson.

Some years later, von Luckner called at Papeete, on his little ship the See tufle (meaning sea-devil). When he landed, he made straight for the Parc Albert and looked at his gun, which had been brought over to Tahiti from his ill fated Seeadler at Mopelia. He knelt down and kissed it and said: “Here we are again. You did a splendid job.”

When von Luckner left Tahiti, he went on to Mopelia; and, when he left Mopelia they noticed a large trench dug, some where in the coconut groves. It was then declared that von Luckner had hidden there his treasure collected from his raiding voyage. He had buried it before embark ing on that motor-boat voyage, with the intention of going back someday to get it.

Kircheiss also circumnavigated the globe on his little vessel the Vaterland, but never called at Tahiti.

T Mr, and Mrs. W. D. Forsyth and their two young daughters, arrived in Sydney from Noumea in mid-June. Mr. Forsyth is the retiring Secretary General of the South Pacific Commission. Mrs. Forsyth des cribed life in Noumea as “very gay, very colourful, sometimes boring and always

expensive.”