Ayesha (ship)

The Ayesha owned by Clunies-Ross of Cocos Keeling Islands was a wooden topsail schooner, which was commandeered by a landing party of the German light cruiser SMS Emden.

This landing party was able to escape being taken as prisoners of war, in November 1914, after their ship was destroyed in a battle with the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney.

It originally served as a supply vessel in the British occupation of the Cocos as well as a transport for copra to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies.

On 9 November 1914, a landing party of the German Imperial Navy's light cruiser Emden was on the island to attack the local cable and radio station.

The Ayesha was in bad shape, with the seals of the seacocks having been removed, and the bilge pumps not working properly, it was constantly taking on water.

Emden ' s landing party going ashore on Direction Island ; the three-masted Ayesha is visible in the background
SMS Ayesha before Hodeida in January 1915. Painting by Willy Stöwer 1915 In fact, the Ayesha had previously been scuttled weeks before in the Indian Ocean, and the Emden landing party was transported on the steamship Choising . The picture was probably no longer published after 1916.