Painted canvas 'HELP' sign : French seamen captured by crew of German raider 'Seeadler'

A piece of heavy cream canvas with hand painted lettering in green paint 'HELP!! MopiHa SEPT 1917'. There is fraying around the edges and on the reverse side written in pen 'KEEP AT ALL COSTS'.

Help sign painted by the French crew of the 'Lutece', who had their ship captured and stolen by the German Raider 'Seeadler' and were marooned on the tiny atoll of Mopalia in August 1917. The Seeadler, a 1,571 ton steel-hulled commercial sailing vessel some 75 metres in length, was built by the Robert Duncan Company, Glasgow in 1888, and named the 'Pass of Balmaha'. In June 1915, en route to Murmansk from New York she was boarded and captured by a crew from the German submarine U-36 and sent to Cuxhaven, Germany.

Converted to an armed raider, the ship was re-equipped with machine guns, two concealed 105 mm guns, a radio transmitter and a pair of auxiliary engines and was re-named the 'Walter'. By the time of sailing on 21 December 1916, the ship had been re-named the 'Seeadler', ('Sea Eagle'), and Lieutenant Commander Felix Graf von Luckner took over command. Disguised as a Norwegian ship, 'Seeadler' successfully passed through the British blockade and into the Atlantic, down the east coast of South America and into the Pacific Ocean. Von Luckner and his ship proved to be highly successful and over the following eight months succeeded in seizing and scuttling 16 ships.

On 1 August 1917 von Luckner decided to anchor the 'Seeadler' at Mopelia Island in the French Society Islands (now Polynesia), a small atoll just eight kilometres in diameter, in order to clean the fouled bottom of the boat and stock up on fruit to counter the onset of scurvey amongst the crew. Because of the dangerously narrow coral passage from open sea into the island's lagoon, it proved impossible to enter the lagoon and the crew were forced to anchor outside the coral reef. By either bad luck or bad management, the ship was pushed against the reef the next morning, holed and wrecked. The crew salvaged all they could, including two lifeboats. Taking one of the these, von Luckner and five men sailed for Fiji where he intended to capture a ship and return to rescue his remaining crew. After a 3,500 kilometre journey, he reached the Fijian island of Wakaya where he was captured and sent to a POW camp on Motuihe Island, off Auckland, New Zealand.

The remaining German crew boarded and captured a French trading schooner, the 'Lutece' at gunpoint on 5 September, left the French crew on Mopelia and sailed for Chile. They ran aground off Easter Island and were impounded for the remainder of the war. Four of the American prisoners still on Mopelia, meanwhile, sailed the remaining Seeadler lifeboat to Pago Pago, arriving on 4 October and alerted authorities to the remaining forty four men they thought were still on Mopelia. Only the French remained, and it is unclear who rescued them. This is the Help! sign the French made to attract passing ships. HMAS Encounter was sent to investigate and if necessary, destroy the Seeadler. It is known from HMAS Encournter's log that, while its crew boarded the wreck on 8 November, salvaging what they could, and setting demolition charges upon their departure on 10 November 1917, they did not encounter or rescue the French sailors.