Chief Engineer Rudolf A. Rutz and 2nd Assistant Engineer George S. Cronk were engaged in carrying wounded and burned men from the engine room and their quarters. Rutz ordered Cronk to see to the boat decks, where he found only one lifeboat intact and helped lower it. As that was being done, Cronk saw Captain Buck throw Hopkins’ code book overboard and then walk to the other side of the bridge. Cronk went after him but did not find him and was himself cut off from his comrades by flames spread by the incendiary shells that continued to pelt the ship. He jumped overboard and swam for 20 minutes before finding the lifeboat. He managed to pick up nine other men from the sea and impromptu life rafts. Soon afterward, the survivors vanished into the same rainstorm out of which their attackers had appeared. At 10 a.m. the unequal contest ended as Stephen Hopkins sank in flames.

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Thirty-one days later, the single lifeboat reached land, and the 15 men who remained of Stephen Hopkins’ crew of 57 stumbled ashore at the remote Brazilian fishing village of Barro de Stapanoana. Captain Buck was not among them; neither was Ensign Willett, Chief Engineer Rutz or Cadet O’Hara. Second Assistant Engineer Cronk, the only officer to survive, had lost more than 40 pounds but had kept the last of his crewmen going through the 2,200-mile ordeal. A U.S. Navy lieutenant sent to meet them commented that they “were never for one moment beaten. After 30 days of being battered together on a cramped lifeboat, they were still lavishing praise on one another, helping one another.”

Not until after the war did they learn the full story of what they had accomplished. Even as Stephen Hopkins sank, Stier was herself in serious trouble. Hit by 15 of the 35 4-inch shells fired at her by the Americans, she was on fire and sinking. Captain Gerlach ordered his men overboard, to be rescued by the damaged Tannenfels. At 11:57, a scuttling charge went off, followed by a second two minutes later, and Stier went down by the stern.

Tannenfels searched for survivors from Stephen Hopkins, but they had vanished in the rain squall. Encumbered with prisoners and Stier’s crew, she made for Europe, managing to slip through the Allied blockade and reach Bordeaux. There, Gerlach reported that his voyage had probably been terminated by “an auxiliary patrol vessel or even an armed merchant cruiser” with one 6-inch and six 4-inch guns. Even as the true identity of his last victim became known he refused to believe that she had not been secretly armed more heavily than reported. Peterson, however, gave credit where it was due. “We could not but feel that we had gone down at the hands of a gallant foe…that Liberty ship had ended a very successful raiding voyage. We could have sunk more ships.” On the other hand, however, he added: “She may have sunk us, but she saved most of our lives. We could not have lasted much longer out there those days and there would not always have been a Tannenfels around to pick us up.”

Stier was, in fact, the last German commerce raider to leave German territory for the open sea. Thor, berthing in Yokohama after sinking 10 ships totaling 56,037 tons, was burned out when her nearby supply ship Uckermark blew up. On October 14, 1942, Komet, escorted by torpedo boats T-4, T-10, T-14 and T-19 of the 3rd Flotilla, was attempting a breakout when she was ambushed off Cap de la Hague and sunk by a torpedo from British MTB-236. During another breakout attempt on February 10, 1943, Togo was hit by a bomb from a Westland Whirlwind fighter-bomber and forced to put into Boulogne. She was bombed again while at Dunkirk, limped back to Kiel on March 2 and never tried to run the Channel again. That left only Michel at large, and she sank 17 ships totaling 121,994 tons in the South Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. On October 18, 1943, three days out from Yokohama, where she was returning after a raiding sortie, Michel fell victim to a force that was effectively opposing Japan’s merchant marine–she was torpedoed and sunk by the U.S. submarine Tarpon. With her loss, Germany’s worldwide surface-raiding campaign ended.

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