The Administrator sent another messenger to the officer in charge, promising to repair to Herbertshöhe the next day to negotiate a surrender. As the French cruiser _Montcalm_ had now arrived the most sanguine German could not expect any continued resistance, and the surrender was signed.
Thus on September 13 all resistance had been crushed in the Bismarck Islands, and the Colony had been reduced by the Australians at a cost of two officers killed--Captain Pockley and Lieutenant-Commander Elwell--and three men. One officer, Lieutenant Bowen, and three men were wounded.
On September 24 the warships put in an appearance at Friedrich Wilhelmshafen, the chief settlement in German New Guinea, where no resistance was encountered. That evening the German flag was blotted out of the Pacific Ocean, the last of the German colonies there having fallen to the energetic Australian navy.
Two wireless stations established by the Germans, one at Nauru and the other at Anguar, were seized and destroyed, to the disadvantage of the German Pacific squadron against which the Australian navy now directed its operations, taking a prominent part in the driving movement which finally committed them to the battle of the Falkland Islands and their destruction by Admiral Sturdee on December 8.
On the morning when the news of the sinking of the _Emden_ reached London there was at least one good Briton of that city whose elation was curiously mingled with puzzlement. He was puzzled to know how Australia came by a navy; he had seen references to an Australian navy before, but had always supposed that a misprint had been made for "Austrian navy."
His wonder is so far excusable that the first ship of that navy was only launched as recently as 1911, when the battle cruiser _Australia_ left the stocks in the yards of Messrs. John Brown & Co., of Glasgow; and she only arrived in Australia two years later. The other units of the navy are of even later construction. The existence of these vessels in Australian waters is a tribute to the enterprise and foresight of the Commonwealth of Australia. Their history and performance since the outbreak of the war has utterly confounded the naval experts of this country, who, if they had had their way, would not have had such ships in such a place.