Ulrich Mohr and A V Sellwood show that the German surface fleet mostly stayed in port during WW2 with the greater part of the action being "covert" through U Boats attacks and the not so well known Surface Raiders that are the subject of this book.

It was surely preferable for an Allied merchant ship to be engaged by a chameleon like Ship Sixteen captained by Bernard Rogge and his ADC Ulrich Mohr than a U Boat, since they were usually given a chance to surrender when the "German Raider" identity was revealed within firing range. There was a learning process here. Rogge originally tried a shot across the bows but found that they continued to send radio SOS messages. He then tried ordering them to halt and not broadcast but that usually didn't work either (they turned to escape and continued to send SOS messages) so eventually he showed a large illuminated message quickly followed by shellfire against the radio room if there was any evasive action or broadcasting.

In any event Rogge's ship kept changing its identity with flags, lettering, paint, wooden structural alterations etc. to look for the most realistic matches with ships registered around the world and eventually managed to sink more Allied shipping (21 ships over 661 days) than any other surface ship. An interesting feature was Rogge's "Admiral Colombo" wall map of the Indian Ocean, with the subtitle "Think like your opposite number". He spent a good deal of time making reasonable assumptions about the whereabouts of Ship Sixteen based on existing knowledge and making sure he was somewhere else.

The book almost reads like a novel (better really) especially the episode when they were almost shipwrecked on the remote Kerguelen Islands near the Antarctic circle. ( )