Ferdinand Krokisius Ferdinand KrokisiusRainer F. Buschmann & Hilary Howes Ferdinand Krokisius (1843-1908) was an Imperial German Naval Captain who commanded the corvette SMS Marie during a lengthy trip to the recently annexed portions of the Bismarck Archipelago. Near New Ireland, the Marie hit a reef and needed extensive repairs. During this period, Krokisius acquired several artifacts, at least one of them through the intervention of Otto Finsch (1839-1917), a German naturalist, ethnographer and colonial explorer who travelled extensively in the Pacific in 1879-1882 and 1884-1885. Three of these artifacts are in the current catalog. Captain Ferdinand Krokisius Krokisius joined the then-Prussian Navy in 1863, barely twenty years of age, and quickly rose through the ranks. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in the summer of 1870, the French Navy attempted to lay siege to vital German ports. Prussia and the allied Northern German Confederation were no match for their French counterparts and were forced to ready even aging vessels to counter the French threat. Krokisius, now an Ensign (Leutnant zur See), took command of the aged cannon boat Schwalbe (Swallow) to defend German ports at the start of the Franco-Prussian War. Fortunately for the ensign, the siege was poorly planned and quickly starved for coal. Likewise, the French attempted to launch a seaborne invasion to divert German troops and encourage the Danish Navy to join their ranks but failed due to local long-range coastal batteries. As summer turned into autumn and the French suffered severe defeat on the terrestrial fronts, their naval vessels were recalled, and many of their officers enlisted into newly drawn-up military units. With the French menace gone, the Swallow was recalled from active service in early October 1870. Avoiding an early watery death at the helm of the Swallow, Krokisius would spend the next twelve years overlooking the growth of the new German Navy. Based in Kiel's prominent Baltic naval harbor, he rose again through the ranks while obtaining the Order of the Red Eagle IV Class and the Chinese Dragon Order II Class. In 1877, Krokisius was promoted to corvette captain (Korvettenkapitän). In the early 1880s, he received his next commission on the newly constructed corvette SMS Marie. This steam corvette was built to expand the German Navy following unification to patrol and protect German overseas economic and scientific interests. Completed in 1883, the vessel was named after Princess Marie of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. It was 250 feet long and supported by a steam engine while sporting a complete set of sails. SMS Marie Once Krokisius took control of the vessel, the Marie left Wilhelmshaven in mid-May 1883. Sailing via Madeira and Rio de Janeiro, the corvette arrived in Punta Arenas, Chile, in August. There the Marie relieved SMS Moltke that had transported the German contingent for the First International Polar Year to South Georgia Island. Heavy weather initially prevented Krokisius from reaching South Georgia directly, and he diverted the vessel to Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands for minor repairs. Departing Port Stanley in late August, the Marie would finally reach South Georgia on September 1. After picking up seven German scientists, who were led by the astronomer Carl Schrader, and their equipment, Krokisius ordered the vessel to head to Montevideo, where the scientists transferred to another ship. To illustrate their gratitude for Krokisius’s service to German science, the participants would name a mountain in South Georgia after the captain. The Marie left Montevideo and went south to pass through the Strait of Magellan, arriving in Valparaiso, Chile, in late November. Krokisius’s mission there was to observe the outcome of the Treaty of Ancón that ended the War of the Pacific between the parties of Peru and Bolivia on the one hand and Chile on the other. Departing Valparaiso in January of 1884, the Marie continued sailing up the west coast of South America. Krokisius then received orders to head to the Samoan Islands to rendezvous with other vessels to support German business interests in the archipelago. Around this time, the captain must also have discovered his promotion to full captain (Kapitän zur See), which happened in May 1884. In November 1884, the corvette was ordered to defend against a more or less imagined British threat to the recent German annexations in New Guinea. In the Bismarck Archipelago, the Marie relieved SMS Elisabeth. However, Krokisius fell ill shortly after arriving with a fever, probably malaria. Eduard Hernsheim, who oversaw the German company by the same name, advised him to recover at his central station of Matupi (now Matupit) rather than sailing to mainland New Guinea. When the captain recovered in December, he ordered the Marie to leave and provide a detailed survey of New Ireland’s northern coast and surrounding islands. Near Nusa Island, however, the corvette struck a reef and remained there for almost three days. Krokisius ordered his crew to remove weight from the vessel until the Marie finally cleared the reef. The corvette listed into Nusa harbor for rudimentary repairs. Divers inspecting the ship’s aft revealed a broken rudder and damaged propellors. Temporary maintenance could be undertaken at Nusa to get the Marie seaworthy enough to reach Sydney, where major repair work had to be carried out. Otto Finsch Repairs stretched from late December 1884 to March 1885, and it was probably during this time that Krokisius acquired the three artifacts illustrated here. While the club and the spear are local artifacts crafted between Northern New Ireland and New Hannover, the shield hails from Kranket (also Grager) Island, located near Madang, a place never visited by the captain or the Marie. The handwritten label on the back of the shield clearly indicates that it was collected by Finsch, who had visited Kranket Island in the first half of October 1884 during his travels along the northern coast of New Guinea on the steamer Samoa and had noticed shields in the meeting house in Grager village, the larger of two settlements on the island. In total, Finsch and his fellow expedition members undertook six separate voyages in the Samoa between September 1884 and July 1885, acting on behalf of the Consortium for the Preparation and Establishment of a South Sea Island Company (later the New Guinea Company). Their principal objectives were the “investigation of the unknown or little-known coasts of New Britain, as well as the north coast of New Guinea to the 141st meridian, in order to locate harbors, establish friendly communication with the natives, and acquire land to the greatest possible extent”. However, Finsch also avidly collected ethnographic objects along the way – over 3000 in total, the majority of which were temporarily retained by the New Guinea Company before being on-sold to the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. He kept some ethnographic objects from his various voyages in his personal possession and later sold them to museums in Chicago, New York, Rome, St Petersburg and Vienna. Astrolabe Bay Shield Label with Finsch’s writing Finsch called on Krokisius while the Marie was patched up twice in early February and early March 1885. Finsch’s first visit was mentioned by Krokisius in his diary. The captain highlighted Finsch’s vital role in providing him vital supplies for his over two hundred stranded sailors, as well as German Admiralty dispatches. Finsch, in his later publications Samoafahrten (Voyages in the Samoa, 1888) and Systematische Uebersicht der Ergebnissen seiner Reisen (Systematic Overview of the Results of his Voyages, 1899), likewise mentioned the Marie’s difficulties and added that he had been “pleased to be able to assist”. The German Admiralty dispatches delivered by Finsch, dated December 23 and 24, ordered Krokisius to take the Marie to the north coast of New Guinea to raise the German flag to claim the region for the empire. Given the nature of needed repairs to the ship, Krokisius commented laconically in his diary: “For me, impossible.” Finsch also reported that the English had already reached these waters in early January, as he had discovered in Cooktown, Australia. When Finsch left on the Samoa on February 12, the supply situation for the stranded crew grew more precarious, forcing the captain to cut rations in half by February 24. Fortunately for them, SMS Hyäne (Hyena) arrived a day later from Australia with much-needed supplies and further dispatches. Rather than performing annexations, the Marie was ordered to make the necessary repairs in Australia before returning to Germany. Finsch would rendezvous with Krokisius a second time in early March to check up on the status of the repairs. Krokisius mentioned that on March 6, he held a farewell breakfast that involved Finsch and the captains and high-ranking officers from the Hyena and the Samoa. While never explicitly stated, it is entirely plausible that one or more artifacts changed hands during one of these meetings. It is also noteworthy that looking at the objects Krokisius chose to return with from his mission, he displayed, as was customary among German naval officers, a clear preference for weapons rather than figures or masks. New Ireland club CAPTION While less involved in punitive action compared to the Hyena or the Elisabeth, a fact that can also be attributed to the lengthy repair, the Marie’s crew nevertheless acted against the Indigenous population. In March of 1885, with rudimentary repair work almost completed, several lower-ranking officers of the Marie, while overnighting on the verandah of a guesthouse on Matupi, awoke to find possessions missing. Krokisius immediately had the supposed perpetrators identified, their houses surrounded and destroyed in one of the few retaliatory actions on Matupi Island. In the same month, the Marie, supported by SMS Hyena and, for part of the way, the Samoa, sailed to Australia. Arriving in Queensland, the convoy rendezvoused with the corvette SMS Storch (Stork), which towed the damaged vessel to Sydney. Repairs there lasted from May to September of 1885 when the Marie could slowly, but under her own power, embark on the return to Germany. In February 1886, Krokisius and the corvette he captained finally reached their destination in Wilhelmshaven. Shortly after arriving and with nearly 25 years of active service, Krokisius, perhaps strained by his last voyage's polar and tropical experiences, retired from the German Navy.
