Description
The first edition of Count Luckner, The Sea Devil, by Lowell Thomas, inscribed by Count Felix von Luckner, Captain of the SMS Seeadler.
Octavo, [8], 308pp, [map], [appendix], [4]. Blue cloth, title stamped on the spine. The first printing, with no additional printings noted. Cloth torn on the spine, soiling to spine. Front hinge starting, but stable. Occasional foxing throughout. Frontispiece portrait of Count Luckner, numerous illustrated plates, endpaper maps. In the publisher’s near fine dust jacket, likely married with this copy, faint soiling to spine, bright illustrations.
Inscribed on the second free endpaper: “By Joe / Mr. John W. Binford / never say die! / yours Felix Count Luckner / Xmas 1936.”
Count Felix von Luckner (1881-1966) was a German naval officer famed for his World War I commerce-raiding exploits aboard the Seeadler, a wind-powered auxiliary cruiser he commanded with an unusual emphasis on minimizing loss of life; over an 11-month cruise in 1916-17, he captured or sank more than a dozen Allied ships while taking hundreds of prisoners without a single combat fatality. Nicknamed the “Sea Devil,” he cultivated a public image of chivalry at sea, and his postwar career mixed lectures, memoir writing (The Sea Devil’s Fo’c’sle, The Sea Devil), and occasional controversy tied to his status as a nationalist symbol during the Weimar and early Nazi periods, though he later distanced himself from the regime. His dramatic escape attempts after the Seeadler was wrecked on Mopelia Island-culminating in a brief recapture after seizing a small boat-added to his legend.
